Even Better

Via Bighugelabs.com, the motivational poster-maker! This one took me all of two seconds. Imagine how nice it would be if I actually spent time on it.

At Long Last! Equality!

Not Really

Curt Jester has the story with the parallel that is in the mind of all faithful Catholics these days. Discussion question: What is the next pillar of useless traditional morality to fall?

Discuss among yourselves. I have been real busy this week ...

汽車人和狂派變形金鋼是中共黨的人質

Sorry, kids

在美國我們常常說“聖誕節之前不能打開禮物”。在中國應該有“宣傳看完之前不能看變形金鋼”的說法。

中共黨要讓人民快樂地收看《建黨偉業》的電影，可是因為有可能性沒有人要給錢看工廠黨的講道，所以在中國有新的規則：

 “在《建黨偉業》拿下一定的票房，比如8個億以前，《變形金剛3》之類的進口片都不能上。”

 我跟汽車人有衝突多次。他們是恨強的、恨勇氣的。我不知道工廠黨還有這樣偉大的能力能。到現在我以為工廠黨之有財政的能力。English below.

New York Hit With Epidemic of Cold Feet

Victim Card: Revoked

Because if there is anything men who can freely have sex without consequence want, it is a 200lb ball-and-chain named Todd.

According to Thomas Peters, this gay marriage in New York thing is simply political shenanigans and, in a way, Politico corroborates his analysis. As much as I am for political end-runs to grasp power and enforce certain points of view (my points of view), when legislative bodies perform top-down revolutions in democratic societies, the results are always fleeting.

Mud-Stained Eurotrash Hippies Attempt Coherence

Economic Quagmire

BWAHAHAHAA! Part of me relishes U2 having to confront its own inconsistencies in conservative practices and liberal messaging. Part of me enjoys watching sheep-eyed Europeans double down on the lemming queue to economic oblivion.

Winner? All me, all the time.

Loser? Balloons:

The anti-capitalist group Art Uncut inflated a 6-metre balloon emblazoned with the message "U Pay Your Tax 2." Security guards wrestled them to the ground before deflating the balloon and taking it away. About 30 people were involved in the angry clash.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/violence-erupts-as-u2-rocks-glastonbury-20110625-1gkbg.html#ixzz1QJUm2Gtg

What have we learned here? Well, for one thing liberals will say anything, no matter how unsubstantiated and mindless to "convince" normal thinking people to hand over more money and power to the those least qualified to use it: the government. Remember how Obamacare would "create jobs" and "save the American taxpayer millions"? What did that even mean?

And now we have the enlightened folks in Europe, blithely unaware that higher taxes always impoverish  charities and thereby hurt the poor. You know who knows how to organize charity? Why, charities, that is who. Charities are positioned with the necessary manpower, infrastructure, and know-how to actually carry out their mission. When you rely on government to run charities, they create panels of useless college grads who debate endlessly on which end of six-figures their salaries should be and how many limousines get to park out front of their palatial headquaters. Hidden, of course, from unapproving onlookers. Because how can you justify asking congress for $10 million when it looks like you are rolling in all that cash yourself?

"Never mind all that! Let's act like the entitled snobs we are and demand U2 funnel all its largess into the gaping maw of system that is so undeniably broken that its only future lies in being a charity unto itself with the express purpose of squandering hard-earned money! Hooray for stupidity!" Say the toothless loser hooligans.

Full disclosure: I pay no taxes and convert all my earnings into gold bullion which I keep in a vault with my lifetime supply of incandescent bulbs and guarded by tigers which I feed with environmentalist volunteers too personally torn up about the size of their carbon footprints to go on living.

Push Back: the 時代s they are a'changing

Reverse Smackdown?

Via Drudge and CBS.

Times are changing. The Central Party has decided to release dissident artist Ai Weiwei and, though he is under a gag order to not relate anything about his last three months in prison, there is real reason to hope.

For one, the government trumped up charges to arrest Ai in the first place when they could have just arrested him on suspicion of being anti-government or anti-party or reactionary or whatever. The charges appear to be tax evasion which again is actually kind of nice. It would have been easy enough to plant evidence seeing as the same party which controls the government also controls the courts, the military, and the police.

If they were able to plant drugs or phony money on him, the famed artist would be very dead by now as both drug trafficking and counterfeiting are capital offenses in the Worker's Paradise (Progressivism be praised). Yet Beijing is downright sweet for a change.

The point is, if they really wanted him taken care of, the Communists could have done whatever they felt like. Especially back in the day.

So call it "Arab Spring with Chinese Characteristics" and blame it on grinchy hearts in Beijing finally thawing. Or maybe it was the international pressure brought on by a combination of diplomatic and economic manueverings and a self-generating information infrastructure that has become an echo-chamber of antipathy and hostility towards the CCP.

Whatever it is, I like it.

On Going Rogue

It happened before and it has happened again and again. What is it? Have we entered some sort of weird phase in our culture? Why do people choose to go rogue?

I think I can answer that and not just because this blog itself is an attempt to "go rogue" (actually, it goes further. I "go villain" here) but because in my own professional life, I have on one occassion been pushed to the point where I could see no other alternative than to just break out.

In all three cases linked above: Palin, myself, and Corapi, we were put in a position of basically being bullied into a position of silence. (So great was the impact of the bullying in my case, that I went as far as to write a 270-plus page novel about bullies. After years of maltreatment by an untouchable few, I had a few issues to work out and writing was my only outlet.)

In both my case and the case of Palin those doing the bullying were untouchable because of they were well-respected. In Palin's case it was the media. Not just a few namable members, but the whole entire enterprise of news reporting and entertainment media from the radio to TV to the internet. This was not just a small conspiracy this was the American Communications Establishment. To the average joe, earning the scorn of a few reporters can do much damage to a person's reputation, but to earn the unceasing hatred of Media is not the kind of thing that you can come ever hope to redeem yourself of. We want to be able to trust our media and to trust that it serves us as a people.

It does not serve us. But who would know if Sarah Palin had not gone rogue?

And that is the point. Bullies like to present their victims with some Faustian bargain. What were governor Palin's choices?
1) Shut up
or
2) We will keep dragging your name through the mud