Artist Shepard Fairey (haaaaa!) – the numbskull responsible for creating those nifty “HOPE” posters for Obama’s campaign of doom – admits that he totally lied about which Associated Press photo he used for his nifty little art piece. Oh, that’s totally, you know, his bad.
As if that isn’t sad enough, the dude is also a vandal. Oh, now there’s some art I can believe in.
Michelle Malkin’s site has two pieces about a disturbing Obama rap performed by children in New Jersey. As if you parents needed another reason to homeschool.
Personally, if I had kids, I’d teach ‘em this ditty right here:
(The "Obamination" video comes to us, by the way, courtesy of SilenceDogood1978).
Government General Motors is now offering American auto buyers a seemingly-sweet deal: if you find yourself disliking your new ride within thirty to sixty days, you can return it for the big pile of money that you paid for that piece of crap (minus applicable taxes, naturally).
Of course, it really doesn’t matter how sweet a GM deal seems, because taxpayers with new GM vehicles are, you know, buying the same car twice.
As is so often the case, Sept. 1 is the day when Texas' new laws go into effect. You can grab the press release, in PDF format, from the Department of Public Transportation's Web site. That covers the major, need-to-know stuff, not everything, but you get the idea.
Of course, if you think that I'm happy about most of the changes listed on that press release, you're probably a newcomer to this blog.
For a real piece of work, check out Joyce Carol Oates’ recent article about Ted "Stone Cold Killer" Kennedy:
'There are no second acts in American lives'– this dour pronouncement of F Scott Fitzgerald has been many times refuted, and at no time more appropriately than in reference to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, whose death was announced yesterday. Indeed, it might be argued that Senator Kennedy's career as one of the most influential of 20th-century Democratic politicians, an iconic figure as powerful, and as morally enigmatic, as President Bill Clinton, whom in many ways Kennedy resembled, was a consequence of his notorious behaviour at Chappaquiddick bridge in July 1969.
Yet, ironically, following this nadir in his life/ career, Ted Kennedy seemed to have genuinely refashioned himself as a serious, idealistic, tirelessly energetic liberal Democrat in the mold of 1960s/1970s American liberalism, arguably the greatest Democratic senator of the 20th century. His tireless advocacy of civil rights, rights for disabled Americans, health care, voting reform, his courageous vote against the Iraq war (when numerous Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted for it) suggest that there are not only "second acts" in American lives, but that the Renaissance concept of the "fortunate fall" may be relevant here: one "falls" as Adam and Eve "fell"; one sins and repents and is forgiven, provided that one remakes one's life.
Kennedy was 36, a senator from Massachusetts whose political career had been managed by his father Joseph Kennedy and facilitated by family wealth, as his expulsion from Harvard as an undergraduate for cheating on a final examination was rectified by family pressure. Like George Bush, another spoiled younger brother of a well-to-do and influential family whose subsequent success in politics had little to do with his own evident talent, intelligence, or ambition, Ted Kennedy was groomed for public office despite dubious qualifications.
At Chappaquiddick, having been drinking and partying with young women aides of his brother Robert Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, at this time a married man and a father, slipped away with 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped in his car after he took a wrong turn off the Chappaquiddick bridge, lost control of his car which was submerged in just eight feet of water.
Kennedy chose to flee the scene , leaving the young woman to die an agonising death not of drowning but of suffocation over a period of hours. Incredibly, it was 10 hours before Kennedy reported the accident, by which time he'd consulted a family lawyer. The senator's explanation for this unconscionable, despicable, unmanly and inexplicable behaviour was never convincing: he claimed that he'd struck his head and was "confused" and "exhausted" from diving and trying to rescue the young woman and had gone home to bed.
There followed a media circus, as all of the world rushed to Chappaquiddick to expose Kennedy's behaviour and to speculate on his future. Yet, appealing to his lawyer and not rather seeking emergency help for the trapped Mary Jo Kopechne would seem, in retrospect, to have been a felicitous move.
If Kennedy had summoned aid, he would very likely have given police officers self-incriminating evidence, which might have involved charges of vehicular manslaughter or homicide. The local prosecutor was not nearly so outraged by Kennedy's behaviour as other prosecutors might have been: the charges were "failing to report an accident" and "leaving the scene of an accident." The punishment: two months' probation.
That the Kennedys had always been a family operating outside the perimeters of the sort of legal restrictions that bind other citizens to "moral" behaviour publicly, is well known; no occasion so exemplifies this than Chappaquiddick and the subsequent cooperative silence of the Kopechne family who agreed never to speak of the tragedy.
One is led to think of Tom and Daisy Buchanan of Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby, rich individuals accustomed to behaving carelessly and allowing others to clean up after them. It is often in instances of the "fortunate fall", think of Joseph Conrad's anti-hero/hero Lord Jim as a classic literary analogy, that innocent individuals figure almost as ritual sacrifices is another aspect of the phenomenon.
Yet if one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?
The poet John Berryman once wondered: "Is wickedness soluble in art?". One might rephrase, in a vocabulary more suitable for our politicized era: "Is wickedness soluble in good deeds?"
This paradox lies at the heart of so much of public life: individuals of dubious character and cruel deeds may redeem themselves in selfless actions. Fidelity to a personal code of morality would seem to fade in significance as the public sphere, like an enormous sun, blinds us to all else.
If our politicians would follow that advice during these town-hall meetings, I think that most people, if not everyone, would get a chance to express their opinions – and we wouldn’t have nearly as much of the yelling and general discontent that’s running through these meeting places.
The hired help doesn’t want to listen to the boss, though. Instead, they’re telling us what’s best for us, and that we need to just let them do their jobs. The last time I checked, they work for us, so shouldn’t they be listening to us – not the other way around? I think so.
I suggest that we ALL make sure that we’re registered to vote – go ahead and take care of that right now if necessary – and be ready to vote to fire the worst offenders when the polling places open. If you try to tell your boss how to run the place, do you still have a job? No. Why, then, should our employees keep their gigs? They shouldn’t. Screw them – they’ve run the show long enough, and they’re blatantly disregarding their employers.
In the meantime, it would help if we all remembered that everyone else has the same First-amendment rights that we possess. We can’t shout down anyone at town-hall meetings. We can’t accuse others of hiring plants. We can’t do these things and NOT look like jackasses when we complain about similar, or identical, things being done to us in return.
Keep things as civil as possible until the voting booths open, folks.
On Tuesday, there was an interesting post on the White House blog. I won’t bother going into details, because I took a screen capture – might as well just let you see for yourself. I find the whole thing rather disturbing:
"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
- George Orwell, "1984"
When you catch yourself thinking that it’s a good idea to let the federal government run yet another aspect of our lives, ask yourself this:
What federal program in America’s history has turned out for the best in the long run? Have the feds actually done anything that’s cost effective, efficient, and truly useful?
The first thing that comes to mind is The Manhattan Project. From my perspective - i.e. the winning side - this turned out to be a pretty-good venture. Oh, sure, it cost billions, but the project worked.
Then again, we were trying to kill hundreds of thousands of people, and jack up their descendants for as many generations to come as possible – not solve peoples' problems.
Now, if I wanted the feds to annihilate a country or two, I'd cheer them on until one of my lungs collapsed. Their track record proves that they're freaking awesome at this. They fail only at, you know, pretty much everything else.
Some of the weirdest things show up in the search keywords that lead people to The Pointy Pen. Like…this, for example:
Obviously, our dear Internet searcher is looking for a sarcastic piece about the ridiculousness of such an idea. I’m sorry to be the one to disappoint him (or her) on this one.
That idea – legislating inanimate objects out of existence in the name of safety – has some merit. Innocent, beloved children have been poking out eyes for thousands and thousands of years, with pointy sticks no less, so we need to do something. You know. For the children.
[Here’s where I pause, close my eyes reverentially, and inhale deeply, obviously fighting the urge to begin weeping at the thought of little Pirate Patch Patrick struggling to explain to the Vision Center employee at Walmart that he needs JUST ONE CONTACT LENS, DAMMIT. In the background, you hear the faint, but increasing, strains of Michael Jackson’s “Heal The World.”]
I have only one request of every politician in the United States re: national healthcare:
You first.
This means that you will have to follow all of the regulations and requirements that you create for the rest of us. No favors, special consideration, or other goodies, either: you should be treated exactly how you intend for the rest of us to be treated. That’s only fair, after all.
If your ideas are good, then you and your families will benefit from your creation, just as we will. If your ideas suck, then you’ll have to wallow in the filth that you shoved down our throats. Either way, you should be active participants. If your plans are good enough for ordinary citizens, then they’re good enough for you as well.
Yesterday was not a good day for Americans who play poker on the Internet. I'm unhappy, to say the very least, about this whole "Let's take their money - without a warrant, no less! Because we're the feds!" crap.
The Poker Players Alliance has released a statement explaining what in the world is going on:
[NY] PPA Statement on Southern District of NY Action Against Online Poker Players - PPA (06/09/09)
Wanda Sykes - man, I hope she falls into a giant vat of boiling grease. That would be great…if she fell into a McDonald’s vat and just bubbled away to a pile of deep-fried bones. They could put her skeleton on the dollar menu, right next to those kangaroo-meat burgers and fake-chocolate shakes. They’d have McRibs, McSkull, McFingers…the single restaurant that was lucky enough to get her would be the most-famous McDonald’s ever!
Better yet, they could prop her up in the McPlayground with her arm extended to the maximum height limit for the kids who want to go into the ball pit. They could crack open her French-fried jaw and insert a tape recorder so that kids would hear, “You must be this short to play” over and over and over.
Oh. None of you are laughing? You don’t think my comedy routine is funny? I’m just being bitter and mean?
Wait. Wait. Hang on, guys. You mean to tell me that it’s not funny to wish serious, physical harm – up to, and possibly including, a painful death – on someone? I’m shocked. I took my comedic cues from Sykes, and was led to believe that this was hee-larious stuff. You’re saying that, even though everyone’s sense of humor is different, and even though not very many of us laugh at everything that’s presented as a joke, she’s just not cutting it?
Well, pooh. That’s the last time I let a celebrity tell me what to think and do.
Apparently, thanks to the Department of Homeland (in)Security's recent "ZOMG! Terrorists!" documents, which were released to law-enforcement agencies all over the United States, it's now cool to pull over a guy whose truck sports a Gadsden-flag bumper sticker, tell him that his choice of vehicle decoration is an extremist kind of thing, and hold him while you look into his background.
Gee...the last time I checked, the "Don't tread on me" flag was a symbol of America, much like Old Glory in her various incarnations. The last time I checked, terrorists don't exactly embrace the symbols of the nations they're trying to destroy...I mean, come on - when was the last time you saw Muhammad McBomberson wearing an American-flag tee shirt underneath his bomb vest?
I was also under the impression that all Americans still had our First-amendment rights to freedom of speech and of expression (among the other rights outlined in that particular Amendment).
Yeah...I'll be buying these bumper stickers by the case, just to prove a point.
Well, folks, the Tea Party in my part of Texas was small but good. My eyeball estimate of "a few hundred folks" should be about right, considering that the courthouse lawn was packed with all sorts of people. Young and old, military veterans and civilians, Republicans, Democrats, independents...it was really great to see so many people coming together.
The assembly began with the Pledge of Allegiance and closed with every one of us singing "God Bless America." Why? Because, regardless of what the Department of Homeland (In)security might say, we aren't "extremists." We love this country, and we embrace the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Those documents are what make the United States such an amazing, wonderful, free place to live - and getting back to those ideals would be fantastic as far as we're concerned.
Despite what most of the mainstream media had to say about us, we weren't upset just because we pay taxes like all the other employed folks out there. We're upset because our federal government is out of control. Runaway taxing and spending...an outrageous national debt that our children, and their descendants, will inherit...and a very-disturbing disregard for the Constitution that's supposed to dictate the federal government's actions.
We were not violent. Rather, we peacefully assembled to petition our government for a redress of grievances, which is our right. None of us made any types of threats - and we even took our garbage with us when we left. Nobody can accuse any people at that Tea Party of any impropriety - not even littering.
All in all, it was very nice to be around so many other people who are just as sick of the situation as I am. I hear rumors that people are thinking of organizing a Fourth of July assembly in Austin. That would not be a bad time and place to get together at all if you ask me.
The pictures: 
April Fifteenth is going to be a busy day for the family. We’re going to be at one of the Tax Day Tea Parties that are going on in our part of Texas. Which one? I don’t quite know yet, because there are several to choose from. All I know is that most of us have already made plans to be there, because we’re sick of the runaway taxing and spending that’s been going on for too long.
I realize that protesting is usually reserved for granola-munching, tofu-defecating, tree-humping hippies, but there are times when peacefully assembling to petition the government makes the most sense. All of the Tea Party locations near me are at court houses, which would of course be logical places to protest the outrageous things that our government is doing even as I type this. This, I imagine, will be slightly more productive than assembling on a college campus to blow bubbles as a protest against the Iraq War. (This is exactly what a bunch of people at my college did. Really.)
Make plans to be at a Tea Party in your area, on Tax Day, if you’re sick of the taxing and spending. If you’re tired of working hard to support welfare bums, big government, and insane social programs with your tax dollars, be there. If you’re looking around and muttering, “This isn’t the change we were promised,” go.
I’ll have a trip report, possibly with pics, for you all after Tax Day. In the meantime, keep writing to your elected officials – our hired help - and letting them know exactly what they’re doing wrong.
Would anybody care to tell me why our media is not widely, rabidly reporting the fact that Military Police were sent into Samson, Alabama following a civilian's murder spree?
You see, good citizens, the military cannot legally do this sort of thing. Oh, no. They cannot just waltz into a community and do their thing, because that violates federal law.
Even so, the personnel were there, and now people are wondering why.
Why isn't this all over the news? Shouldn't this be the lead story? Shouldn't every major newspaper and TV-news program in the nation cover this? You would think that, because the mainstream media is so awesome at tearing into our military, they'd be all over this. But...they aren't.
Weird.
So...this event is covered in a very-limited fashion, even though it's definitely newsworthy. Fortunately, we don't have to rely on the MSM to give us information. We have Teh Intarwebz, dangit!
(And, to be clear: I love our military. Don't even think that I'm blaming the personnel who were on the ground in Alabama for this. I just despise the thought of the military being used in a manner that violates our current laws, that's all.)
My middle brother's a contract laborer. He doesn't have a company or anything like that - just works for an employer who doesn't want to cough up half of the employee-related taxes, that's all.
Bro. just did his taxes yesterday.
And is still shrieking.
Because this year...even though he made an average of one thousand dollars a month...he owes more than two thousand dollars in taxes. This is quite a bit more than the few hundred or so that he paid this time last year.
He's none too happy about this huge increase...and I can't say that I blame him. But, hey...this is what happens when politicians can't figure out that, when they don't have enough money to fund all their little programs and other crap, they need to reduce their spending.
So...if you hear the distinct POP! of somebody's head a'splodin' somewhere in Texas, it's probably his.
England's oppressive nanny, a.k.a. the government, loves to ban things, like firearms. And crossbows. And swords. My thinking is that this not-so-free nation is going to eventually outlaw pointy sticks, because their socialized health-care system can’t afford to pass out eyepatches to all the people who are too stupid to keep their sticks pointed in a safe direction at all times. Liberty? Please – not in England, where there are plenty of security cameras watching all the citizens and tourists.
But what’s hilarious, in a pathetic way, is the recent move to ban the apostrophe. No. Really. It seems that the powers that be in London are tired of arguing over the lowly apostrophe's place on road signs. So, they’ve decided to stop using this particular punctuation mark, regardless of whether that’s the grammatically-correct choice or not.
One Councilman, Martin Mullaney, offered the Stupid Quote of the Century about the decision to ignore proper grammar:
Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed," he said. "More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it.
Some Texas politicians are scum. If you don’t believe me, check out H.B. 738, related to inattentive driving. Should this piece of garbage pass, it will be illegal for Texas drivers to do the following while operating our vehicles:
Interact with pets
Interact with a passenger
Eat or drink
Interact with your stereo, CD player, MP3 player, et cetera (including changing the station or track)
Et cetera, so forth and so on, blah, blah, blah. These are just the most outrageous things that Rep. Chente Quintanilla included in this piece of crap.
Up yours, Quintanilla. You’re an embarrassment to Texans, because you’re in league with the nanny state. Instead of holding people accountable for the things that they choose to do, your introduced legislation attempts to prevent all of us from doing normal, routine things – like talking with passengers or taking a sip of soda while we’re going to work to earn the taxes that pay your useless, miserable ass.
What sort of scum-sucking, anti-freedom oxygen thief would even think of introducing legislation like this?
