In an otherwise unremarkable editorial about the tax returns of John Kerry’s wife, the Wall Street Journal writes:
Given Mrs. Heinz Kerry’s fortune, estimated by the Los Angeles Times at between $900 million and $3.2 billion, it’s unlikely she is doing anything unethical to raise the money for a mortgage, like the Clintons. [Emphasis added]
We look forward to much more of this in the coming months:
Your turn:
Is it too late to apologize for this post’s title? Probably. Peggy “Crazy Jesus Lady” Noonan is in London, where she has set her mind free:
History has been too dramatic the past 3 1/2 years. It has been too exciting. Economic recession, 9/11, war, Afghanistan, Iraq, fighting with Europe. fighting with the U.N., boys going off to fight, Pat Tillman, beheadings. It has been so exciting.
Yes, we haven’t been this excited since the US dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima.
Over at the always excellent Elementropy, Retardo (who, in an attempt to be called the anti-skippy, signs his comments RETARDO,) tries to get our attention:
I confess that I want to be like Seb when I grow up. I wish to excel at digging out from the bottom of the gooey and fly-ridden dumpster of the net the most retarded “conservative sensations” possible, and fuel their rise to stardom in my own especial way. Seb is a showman, brandishing before the camera of the blogosphere his golden needle of wit with which he deflates the most distended of fucktards whose rapid contractions, though doubtlessly causing flight, morbidly delight the room with a flatulent demise so like that of an untied balloon sculpture.
See you at the bottom of the dumpster, shall we say 17h?
WorldNetDaily, as is its wont, is once again at the forefront of critical commentary on all things homosexual:
Could your kids be given to ‘gay’ parents?
Isn’t it possible after all that once the party of the Antichrist is in power the government will kidnap children of heterosexual parents (specifically, Meghan Cox-Gurdon and Michelle Malkin’s) in order to give them to gay parents? Sorry, we mean ‘gay’ parents. Stephen Baskerville opens his article with this:
In the debate over gay marriage, strikingly little attention has been paid to the impact on children.
As long as “strikingly little” means 24/7 non-stop coverage, we’re with Stephen so far.
Almost no attention has been devoted to what may be the more serious political question of who will supply the children of gay “parents,” since obviously they cannot produce children themselves.
Perhaps we can get those children from… The Matrix?:
The matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth.
Having answered this question, let us move on:
…gay couples already seem to enjoy a marked advantage over straight ones in the allocation of supposedly superfluous children.
The supply of superfluous little ones (Mr. Meghan Cox-Gurdon can only get sufficiently drunk so many times after all,) being inherently limited, we shall concede this point to Stephen. Yet we wonder when did all those problems begin?
Ever since the federal government became involved in the child-abuse business some 30 years ago…
Damn liberal nanny state, beating our children!
This is the bureaucratic milieu ? largely hidden from all but those who must endure it ? into which gay marriage advocates want to inject millions of new couples in search of children to adopt.
Millions of gay couple will seek to adopt children? Sadly, No!
The number of truly abused children cannot begin to fill this demand without government help. We know that statistically child abuse in intact two-parent families is rare, and two-thirds of reports are never substantiated. Yet even in those instances of confirmed abuse, a little digging reveals the pernicious hand of the government generating business (and children) for itself.
So even when parents do abuse their children, it’s the government’s fault! Adam Smith’s invisible hand is mistreating Elpatha, Giovanna, Perseus, and Daisy Duke! Is there anything the government won’t do??? :’-(
Child abuse is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of single-parent homes. Government and feminist propaganda suggest that single-parent homes result from paternal abandonment. In fact, they are usually created by family court judges, who have close ties to the social service agencies that need children. By forcibly removing fathers from the home through unilateral or “no-fault” divorce…
Not only will the government steal your children, they will also force millions of mothers to drop their husbands, leaving their kids exposed to the evil influence that is… the single-parent home. Those damn single moms, always abusing their children. We wonder what government statistics show about that:
Among children in single-parent households, those living with only their fathers were approximately one and two-thirds times more likely to be physically abused than those living with only their mothers.
Oh. Well, these men wouldn’t be divorced if it weren’t for that nanny state anyway. What can we do though, oh please do tell us Stephen:
Opponents must bite the bullet and confront the two evils that pose a far more serious and direct threat to the family than gay marriage: the child protection gestapo and the even more formidable “no-fault” divorce machine.
Do you think that goes a bit far? Do you imagine that maybe “bite the bullet” doesn’t mean what Stephen thinks it means? Do you figure that Stephen is a few bullets short of a full revolver? Wait until you see Stephen’s conclusion:
[the public] has been led to view social conservatives, however unjustly, as puritanical bigots who want to deny equal rights to homosexuals ? rights that entail powers of totalitarian dimensions, undreamed of before the sexual revolution
Don’t let gays adopt children — it’s just what Mussolini and Stalin would have done. Saddam Hussein had gay parents adoption chambers for fuck’s sake!
Exploding the Fireworks Safety ‘Threat’
My statistical analysis proves that my children are dirty and stinky little rascals.
Inspired by MattT.
Shorter concept inspired by busy, busy, busy from an idea by D-Squared.
Added: Lott also writes:
This issue is badly distorted by the media. A search of the top 100 newspapers found 140 news stories in the last year warning that fireworks could be deadly if used improperly. But, despite this edge to the coverage, on average just six people a year died in fireworks-related incidents from 1990 to 2002. […]
By comparison, about 20 times more children under the age of 10 drown in home bathtubs each year than the number of people who are killed in fireworks accidents.
Lott claims the issue is “distorted” by the media, but gives no data as to how many stories were published about the number of bathtub drownings. Without this piece of the puzzle, how are we to conclude that the coverage is “distorted?” Lott then adds:
Despite the fears raised by the media, fireworks deaths are just not something that people should spend any time worrying about.
Lott found an average 1.4 stories per paper per year — and this amounts to fear mongering by the media? Did you know that according to LexisNexis, there were 232 stories in major papers* about poisonous snakes?
* Approximately 50, mostly American, papers.
Edit: Via Tim Lambert, we find out that Hunt Stilwell was equally unimpressed.
Some things must be read to be believed:
Pentagon and Justice Department officials said they were considering moving all the prisoners from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a conservative judicial district within the United States, according to the [LA Times.] […]
“They really didn’t have a specific plan for what to do, case by case, if we lost,” a senior Defense Department official was quoted as saying in the report. “The Justice Department didn’t have a plan. State didn’t have a plan.
“It’s astounding to me that these cases have been pending for so long and nobody came up with a contingency plan.” [Emphasis added]
Yeah, it’s astounding. In other astounding developments:
Have you been astounded lately?
PS: It’s astounding that we say thanks to Blair for the link.
Blair sends this link featuring Carole Coleman (that terribly rude Irish woman who wanted George Bush to answer her questions) discussing her interview with the President:
He was tough. He was very tough.
Tough as a stump.
In his continuing quest to call Michael Moore names, Andrew Sullivan writes:
JACKASS BEAT FAHRENHEIT: Yep, the movie with all those hot young straight dudes shoving toy cars up their posteriors actually beat out Michael Moore at the box office. F9/11 wasn’t the biggest grossing documentary. Jackass was. It was non-fiction, and about as informative as Mr Moore. And a lot more to look at.
Andrew posted this on June 30 at 12:17 am. Had he actually read the comments on the post he linked to, he would have noticed that (leaving aside the ultra lame premise) the assertion is, in fact, inaccurate. A commenter pointed out on June 29 at 6:42 pm:
The estimate may not have beaten Jackass [$22.8 million,] but when the actual numbers came in it turns out it actually pulled in $23,920,637.
Andrew linked two days late to a story that had turned out to be bogus a day later. Good luck with your fundraising. [For bonus entertainment, F9/11 managed to outsell Jackass while the latter was shown on 2,509 screens, compared to 868 for Moore’s movie.]
Is there anything the angry right won’t stoop to?
Update: Sadly, No! gets results:
JACKASS UPDATE: The initial returns of “Fahrenheit 9/11” were less than “Jackass.” But the adjusted returns show F9/11 inching ahead of the boys with the toys. Let’s see if Moore’s propaganda beats out “Jackass’s” total $64.2 million.
Yeah, let’s see Andrew. Will you shut the fuck up when it does? Isn’t it great how when Jackass was thought the winner (by $1.0 million) it was just a win, but F9/11 winning by $1.1 million is called “inching ahead?”
Fresh from our latest visit to The Rant in our quest to find a new Brian Cherry, we are happy to introduce you to Justin “Dapper” Darr, whose column is titled To Thy Own Self Be True. Justin is mad that another American has been killed in Iraq:
Savage is too kind a word to describe the perpetrators of this act. Savage is a word you apply to human beings.
Yes, savage is a word best used for humans — and these people were obviously not humans. Justin, fortunately, knows why the terrorists psychopaths hate us:
Over 80 years ago, before there was an Israel, and America had no real interests in the Middle East, radical Islamists first wrote out the evils of our society based on the fact that we allowed unmarried men and women to dance together. That is correct. America was targeted as a decadent threat to Islam because we have high school proms.
Gee, radical Islamists sound a lot like these guys:
Now for the Christian young person you have more issues to deal with. First and foremost, does God want you to attend this prom? It would be really easy to just sweep this question under the rug and try to ignore it, but Christians should never ignore the things of this world that confront them and the things that tempt them to do evil. So let’s get some answers from the Bible […]
But did you also know that the sinful people got involved in fleshly dancing and that led to all kinds of immorality?
Justin has more:
John Kerry is not trouncing Bush in the polls because we understand that a Kerry victory would be tantamount to announcing open hunting season on Americans overseas.
So far, “we” know that Kerry isn’t trouncing Bush because “we” realize that if Kerry is elected terrorists will start killing Americans all over the place. (Why they don’t do so now remains unexplained.) But why are some people supporting Kerry instead of Bush:
Polls show support for Bush declining not because Americans feel bad about how we are treating the Iraqis, but because he is not being forceful enough.
Bush is being too nice, so voters say they will vote for Kerry even though they realize that voting for Kerry will mean “open season on Americans overseas.” You really can’t argue with that logic.
So what should we do now?
The time has come for decisive action no matter what the cost in international popularity.
Because if there’s anything that smacks of indecisiveness, it is spending $200 billion and sending over 100,000 troops to occupy a country headed by a dictator whose arsenal of weapons of mass destruction consists of a single pre-1991 chemical warhead.
Justin: we’ll see you at the Armed Forces Recruitment Office!
As for you, poor readers, you’ll be seeing a lot more of Justin in the weeks to come. He is, after all:
a fountain of relatively useless knowledge do to years of University study.
as well as:
the hottest new conservative writer on the web so book mark this page and you can say you knew him before he was famous!
All aboard the Justin Darr Celebrity Train, now leaving Delusion City. If you need Justin, you can find him at a Wal-Mart in the Philadelphia area:
Justin Darr is a veteran retail manager from the Philadelphia area.
Yesterday, we took a first whack at David Frum’s sorry attempt at economic analysis. Brad DeLong followed and wasn’t impressed either.
Courtesy of The Toronto Star, we’re happy to note that David Frum found himself again on the receiving end during CTV’s election night coverage last night:
Best moment of the night came when Frum (the man who co-created the “axis of evil” line), opining in his eager-beaver way about how the Conservatives had positioned themselves left of this and right of that here or there, got slapped into the boards by Tobin, a former Liberal MP and premier of Newfoundland.
“George Bush’s speeches don’t work here!” snapped Tobin to a startled Frum.
In somewhat related news, here is one sentence from the same article that is begging for a creative ellipsis:
CTV took the low-budget road but gave us plenty of lively talk from the likes of former politicos Brian Tobin, Sheila Copps, John Crosbie and Deborah Grey, with consulting types such as Peter Donolo, Gerry Caplan and David Frum thrown into the mix.
could become:
CTV took the low-budget road […] with consulting types such as Peter Donolo, Gerry Caplan and David Frum thrown into the mix.
Oh, the comedy!