From Pine View Farm

November, 2008 archive

It Occurs to Me That Some Persons Who Visit Here May Think That I Am Outraged 0

I am.

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Beyond the Palin 0

From the Anchorage Daily News:

The man (Saxby Chambliss-ed.) who couldn’t bring himself to serve in the military said a man who left three limbs behind in war was a weakling who would turn the country over to terrorists.

Chambliss was a congressman during the 9-11 attacks. Congressional Quarterly’s “Politics in America 2006” noted that Congressman Chambliss “quipped that one route to security would be for local sheriffs to ‘arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line.’”

So there you have the fine American that Palin is trying to re-elect to the U.S. Senate.

Gov. Palin’s eldest joined the Army and has been deployed to Iraq. As a justifiably proud military mom, she might ask herself why she is using her conservative star power to support such a reprehensible Republican chicken hawk.

The answer is, natch, Republicans don’t care about truth.

Or justice.

Or the American Way.

They care just about Republicanism.

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Drinking Liberally 0

Tuesday, Triumph Brewing Company, 117 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa., 6 p.

Doesn’t seem like I will make it. Lousy cold. So go hoist one for me.

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It’s Always the Way 0

Management sucks, the working stiff gets, well, you get the drift.

Walter Brasch lays it out at ASZ.

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Drive Bye-Bye 0

I’ve often driven past this place, but it’s too far away for me to have ever seen a movie there. Frankly, it didn’t look like much:

When the lights went out at the Diamond State Drive-In, it wasn’t just the end of a double feature, it was the end of an era. The patch of land with a projector screen along U.S. 13 was the last of its kind in the state.

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Joke of the Day (Updated: Link Added) 0

Here.

The webmaster is on the radio right now talking about “modernizing.” (Link when it goes up.)

Corruption and moral bankruptcy do not need to be modernized. They just are.

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First Amendment 0

Down the hall, second door on the right. What he said.

Aside: Back when I grew up Southern Baptist, Baptists believed in separation of church and state. Why they have chosen to become establishmentarians is beyond me.

No religion ever won a convert by ramming the damned religion down other persons’ throats. It may have won compliance, but not converts.

Jesus.

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From the Quotemaster 0

Winston Churchill:

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Sound like anyone on AM radio?

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Breaking: Republican Party Solves Illegal Immigration Problem 0

By screwing up the economy so much that illegals are going home on their own.

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No Accident (Updated) 0

Kos, on Republicans’ expressing desires to emulate the Democratic machine:

Yet here’s the funny thing — their machine is still bigger and better funded than ours. If I could trade Daily Kos for Fox News and the entire AM radio dial, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d make some major changes at those media outlets, of course (beyond a change of ideology), most of them dealing with how they interact with their audiences online, but really, their problem isn’t that they don’t have an equivalent to Daily Kos or MoveOn, their problem is that their ideas suck, and now progressives have enough of a machine to counteract their lies and smears.

Remember, a party predicated on the notion that government sucks and can’t do anything right can’t possibly run an administration that doesn’t suck and can do anything right. Competent conservative governance would instantly invalidate conservatism’s core tenets. That’s why Bush named horse lawyers to FEMA, and why fourth-tier law school grads have infested every corner of the Justice Department. George W. Bush wasn’t an anomaly, he delivered the most effectively conservative administration in history.

(snip)

So now the Patrick Ruffinis on the Right argue that they need their own machine to replace their powerful existing one, as if shiny new websites will suddenly fix what ails them. In reality, their problem is that their ideology has failed. Conservatism has failed, in a very public way, and people now recoil from its siren song. That’s not a marketing problem. It’s as if people suddenly realized that what they were drinking wasn’t Coke, but New Coke. And hundreds of millions of dollars wasn’t going to fix that problem.

A note from the reality-based world: Democrats are not docile enough to have a machine, at least not on a national level. What Democrats had this year was a decision to be on the right, which means the left, side of history this time around and a candidate who is a good, decent, honorable person.

And the capable assistance of the Republican Party, which, once it gained power, showed us what Republicanism (as opposed to principled conservatism) is really all about.

ASZ has more.

Addendum, Later that Same Day (If I Ever Planned This Wouldn’t Happen):

Delaware Liberal has more, here and here.

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Thirst 0

After listening to this, I wanted a beer.

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And Now for Something Completely Different 2

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It’s Saturday 0

Time to take that bath:

A “Male Beauty” survey of nearly 10,000 men and women in 12 countries conducted by market research firm Synovate found that good hygiene was actually the top requirement for men to being considered handsome.

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From the Quotemaster 0

For years, I’ve subscribed to Van’s Quotes of the Day.

Today’s mailing included this gem from C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live
under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity
may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for
our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with
the approval of their consciences.

Sound like any political parties persons you know?

Fair use: I emailed Van about posting his quotes a long time ago. The gist of his response was, “The quotes are public domain, and please mention my mailing list.” Follow the link to join his list.

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I’m Too Old To Stay Up This Late 4

But The Fellowship of the Ring is on TNT.

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Two Hours on a Ladder 2

And, just like always, it’s not the prettiest tree on the block.

But it’s the tallest.

Tree

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Roll of Honor 0

Transcript here.

Aside: In the Bushie world, “family values” refers to sex. They have nothing to with honesty, honoring the public trust, fiduciary duty, or any of that other boring old stuff that involves other people’s money. Or other people’s lives. It’s just other people’s not having anything other than hetero sex within marriage–except for Republican Congresspersons, appointed officials, lobbyists, heads of mega-churches, and people like that there–that must be worried about.

Nope, if it’s not about sex, it not about family.

Or values.

Via Raw Story.

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Black Friday (Updated) (Updated Again) 1

The consumer culture claims two lives:

“They’re savages,” said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. “It’s sad. It’s terrible.”

Via Atrios.

Addendum, the Next Day:

Meg Kane in the Guardian:

I don’t care how nervous you are, how much your pay raise was cut, or how small your bonus will be this year. That is no excuse for behaving like an animal. It’s not like this madness occurred in line at a food bank – your family would still pull through this season without the Wii Fit. Certainly, retailers don’t help the matter at all when they fuel shopping enthusiasm into overdrive with coupons, contests, queues, and promotions, but at the end of the day the responsibility can be found on the hands of the store-chargers themselves. I hate to reduce these tragedies into an aphorism not even fit for a fortune cookie, but perhaps next year we can pause a moment, remember these events and monitor ourselves, thereby managing to check “Not Cause Harm to Others” off of our shopping list.

Addendum-dee-dum-dum:

kpshea on Kos:

Who needs peace on earth, goodwill toward men when there are only five Garmin GPS devices available for $99?

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One More Time: The Internet Is a Public Place 0

When will they ever learn?

A Norristown woman suspected of writing dozens of graffiti tags was identified after she used her MySpace account name in her work, according to police.

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Let the Circle Be Unbroken 0

What Glomarization said.

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