Words Fail Me category archive

A flock of schlock at Delaware Liberal.

(Be sure to sample the comments.)

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The Senate has approved almost $4.6 billion to settle long-standing claims brought by American Indians and black farmers against the government.

The money has been held up for months in the Senate as Democrats and Republicans squabbled over how to pay for it. The two class action lawsuits were filed over a decade ago.

If these folks had not been not-white, this would have been approved long ago.

My disgust-o-meter is off the chart.

If you see a “cheesesteak” on a menu more than 35 miles from Philadelphia, you can be certain it’s not a true cheesesteak sandwich.

If the menu says, “Philly Cheese Steak,” you can be certain that it’s an abomination that would warrant a kneecapping at 2nd and South.

This is from the menu at one of the nicer restaurants around here:

French Baguette? Pat Oliveri would be insulted. Does “Oliveri” sound French to you?

Bell peppers? They had better not try that at Broad and Passyunk.

(Given the track record of this restaurant, it’s probably quite palatable, but it is not a “Philly Cheesesteak”–maybe a Virginia Beach Frenchie Steak.)

There’s another dive in these parts that actually puts mayonnaise on some vile concoction that they refer to as a “Philly Cheesesteak.” (I worked up the nerve to try that one. I shouldn’t have.)

Words fail me.

Science 2.0 (Scientific Blogging under a new name) reports that the United States has more plastic surgeries (“procedures” if you want to pretend they aren’t “operations”) than any other country.

It does not surprise that the majority are cosmetic. Worldwide rankings of the top procedures are:

For the last ten years, the consensus has been that breast augmentation was the most popular plastic surgery procedure but the ISAPS Global Survey puts liposuction at the top, representing 18.8% of all surgical procedures, followed by breast augmentation at 17%, and blepharoplasty (upper or lower eyelid lift) at 13.5%, rhinoplasty (nose reshaping) at 9.4% and abdominoplasty (Tummy Tuck) at 7.3%.

The popularity of surgical procedures varied by country with Brazil, the United States, China, Mexico, India and Japan the dominant countries for the top five procedures.

(snip)

The top five non surgical procedures are: toxins or neuromodulators injections (Botox, Dysport) (32.7%), hyaluronic acid injections (20.1%), laser hair removal (13.1%), autologous fat injections (taking a patient’s fat from one location and transferring it in the same patient in another location) (5.9%) and IP Laser treatment (4.4%).

Lots of money for not much of anything, if you ask me. Or even if you don’t.

The new radical danger: the Humane Society.

A conservative group in Missouri is picking up the backing of the Tea Party and Joe The Plumber in its quest to stop the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and other animal rights groups from passing “radical” anti-puppy mill legislation.

Certainly, protect those puppy mills.

We all need more of puppy mills.

Truth, justice, and the American Way puppy mills.

Eric Zorn reports in the Chicago Trib:

(University of Chicago law professor Todd Henderson) posted a now world-famous jeremiad to his blog griping that he and his wife, a physician, “are just getting by” on a combined income that “exceeds the $250,000 threshold for the super-rich” who will owe more in taxes under Obama’s plan.

The nanny, the lawn service, the maid service, the private school for their three children, the cable TV … “If these cuts don’t work, we will sell our house,” he bleated.

I am somehow unable to feel Professor Henderson’s pain. Never having been elevated to ranks of the privileged, I cannot grasp the horror of having to vacuum one’s own floors, of having to rear one’s own children, or of having to push one’s own lawn mower.

Offered without comment:

Gucci, the Italian brand owned by Paris-based PPR SA, and Burberry Group Plc, the U.K.’s largest luxury retailer, are targeting status-conscious parents with $340 fur-lined suede infant boots, a $375 baby cashmere outfit and a girl’s double- breasted gabardine trench coat retailing for $750.

Children’s wear accounted for 5 percent of Burberry’s 1.28 billion-pound ($2 billion) sales last year and may double to 10 percent “over time” . . . .

Bet you can’t watch it all the way through:

I don’t think that even Krafft-Ebbing had a word for this.

And it is getting creepy.

Emphasis added.

Filipino teenage singer Charice Pempengco says she prepared for her debut on the hit TV show “Glee” by getting Botox and an anti-aging procedure “to look fresh on camera.”

The 18-year-old Charice, whose singing career rocketed after appearing on Ellen DeGeneres’ and Oprah Winfrey’s talk shows, underwent a 30-minute Thermage skin-tightening procedure and Botox to make her “naturally round face” more narrow, celebrity cosmetic surgeon Vicki Belo told ABS-CBN television.

Mithras reports.

Gosh, I hope he’s wrong. But the track record indicates that Buccaneer Petroleum pretty much can’t find its rear end with both hands.

And John Boehheadner wants no more regulation.

The Republican Party–the Party of “Thank you, Mistress, may I have a please have another.”

Furrfu.

Addendum, a Day Later:

So far, holding on.

In Colorado.

Steve Benen explains.

Much criticism of Obama does not contain an undercurrent of racism.

It contains an undertow. In the eyes of some, he will never get anything right.

So do did others.

Via Shaun Mullen.

Addendum:

Brendan (warning: language).

Apparently, British Airways considers every man to be a child molester.

The Revolutionary War was clearly justified.

Oh, my.

Republicans defend BP’s wild well.

I guess they like oiled pelicans.

Words fail me.

This is just macabre.

It is also most disrespectful to make such an announcement above one’s smiley-faced campaign picture.

One can argue that the subject of the twit deserved no respect (he was a pretty lousy human being by all indications), but somewhere he has family who do not share his guilt.

Follow the link. Read the whole thing.

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town’s most prominent intersections.

“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”

Wall said school Principal Jeff Lane pressed him to make the children’s faces appear happier and brighter.

“It is being lightened because of the controversy,” Wall said, adding that “they want it to look like the children are coming into light.”

Lane said that he received only three complaints about the mural and that his request for a touch-up had nothing to do with political pressure. “We asked them to fix the shading on the children’s faces,” he said. “We were looking at it from an artistic view. Nothing at all to do with race.”

City Councilman Steve Blair spearheaded a public campaign on his talk show at Prescott radio station KYCA-AM (1490) to remove the mural.

In a broadcast last month, according to the Daily Courier in Prescott, Blair mistakenly complained that the most prominent child in the painting is African-American, saying: “To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?”

The excuses of those who claim this is not bigotry are lame. They lie, to others and to themselves.

This is all about bigotry.

I’m a Southern Boy. I know the damned code, for Christ’s sake.

Via Jamelle Bouie.