The pre-modern Middle East and the postmodern west don’t mix, Mr. President.
He has delusions on many subjects.
An Open Letter To Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton
“I demand that you arrest me.”
My film is likely to be inspired by a fascinating lecture I heard by the very Rushdie during which the novelist, who read Islamic history at Cambridge, explained the origins of that faith. He said it began with Mohammed’s ruthless and violent battle with the mother cults that then controlled Medina over local trade routes. It was about money then, but, as I will show in my movie, that war evolved into a kind of perpetual “War on Women” that has been waged by Islam since.
Interesting, huh? Good cinema. Action, adventure, sex (matriarchy vs. ultra-patriarchy), even a little meaty conversation like Lawrence of Arabia.
Don’t let me do it. There’s only one “War on Women” and you know it — the one your fellow Democrats ascribe to Mitt Romney and company. I wouldn’t want to undermine that.
So stop me, Hillary, before I write. The Bill of Rights is a fusty old document anyway, obviously subject to revision by an UN-approved committee of trans-global multi-culturalists.
Censor me all you want. I’m ready. I don’t want to cause any international incidents. I have enough sleepless nights as is.
But you will excuse me if, in the process, I think of you as the deepest of reactionaries. I knew you were a big time liar when you blamed the “right-wing conspiracy” for your husband’s obvious serial adultery. That was nothing compared to this, however. By blaming filmmakers, even the most amateurish ones, for the murderous actions of fanatical Islamists, you have placed yourself in complete opposition to everything our country ever stood for and to the essence of the U.S. Constitution.
They have no idea how they’re simply encouraging the enemy.
The Apollo Program
The forgotten opposition. Most people don’t realize how close it came to not happening, which is why they foolishly insist on trying to do it again. Not also the implicit but false assumption that Apollo (and human spaceflight in general) was about science. It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now.
Behold The Power Of Mitt Romney
He singlehandedly prevented the media from properly covering Barack Obama’s pooch screwing.
Just amazing. With that kind of influence over the press, he should be a shoe in for election.
The First Amendment
It seems to have created a huge speed bump when Obama threw it under the bus.
Not that this is anything new, of course.
[Saturday morning update]
Kirsten Powers: “Mr. President, stop blaming the victim.”
Less than two months for our opportunity to make this constitution contempting, lawless administration history.
Space And The Election
Andrew Moseman (my editor at Popular Mechanics) interviews Jonathan Card of the Space Frontier Foundation.
The ACLU
President Strawman
I’m listening to Paul Ryan take it to him at the Heritage Foundation. I’d like to see him debate Obama instead of Biden. The Biden debate will probably have to be called for a mercy rule.
[Update early afternoon]
Katrina Trinko has some of the transcript:
Say things like this, and our opponents will quickly accuse you of being, quote, “anti-government.” President Obama frames the debate this way because, here again, it’s the only kind of debate he can win – against straw-man arguments.
No politician is more skilled at striking heroic poses against imaginary adversaries. Nobody is better at rebuking nonexistent opinions. Barack Obama does this all the time, and in this campaign we are calling him on it.
The President is given to lectures on all that we owe to government, as if anyone who opposes his reckless expansion of federal power is guilty of ingratitude and rank individualism.
More at the link.
[Bumped]
The Arab Street And The Mainstream Media
They are both shameful and shameless.
When My Dog Lucky Disappeared
…so did I.
I haven’t mentioned it, but last Saturday we put Jessica down. She was eighteen, and still loving, but she had become incontinent (not in the sense that she had lost control, but in that she didn’t care where she went, and the litter box was generally last on the list). She was down to half her peak body weight from an original nine pounds, just skin and bones, and very finicky about food, demanding not food per se, but to be fed.
She was always a very social cat (even when we rescued her at the age of one and a half, she seemed more dog than cat in her need for attention), and remained so, but she was tired, and didn’t seem to enjoy anything in life other than eating, and lying on us. At the end, she had to stay outside lest she destroy the house, and when I took her to the vet to diagnose a diarrhea problem, we both concluded that despite her continued affection, she was suffering from dementia. Patricia and I made an appointment for Saturday, and saw her through to the end, which came very quickly and painlessly, at least for her. There was very little fight left in her. We brought her home and buried her in the yard where she used to play when she was young.
While we’re relieved that we can finally clean floors (and perhaps replace some of the wood flooring where she’d made permanent urine stains through a rug that we hadn’t seen), there’s a hole in our lives as well, after over sixteen years. Rerun (the young cat we adopted three years ago) doesn’t know what happened to the older cat she used to try to play with, but she’s been more subdued than usual. At some point, I hope we’ll get her companionship her own age.
[Update a while later]
Thanks for the condolences in comments. It’s interesting to note that what we did was very common when we were growing up (and not unusual at all to our great grandparents), but a lot of people think it’s weird today, I think. Some friends of mine live in a farmhouse west of Ann Arbor across the road from a church in which some of their relatives are buried in the yard.
When we first got a quote for the procedure from the vet, it included cremation, with an option to keep the ashes. That’s in fact what I did when Stella died, but I didn’t really have a choice, because I was half a continent away when it happened. Apparently keeping the body of the animal is an unusual request. When we asked, the vet said that we weren’t supposed to bury it ourselves, but she would give it to us as long as we didn’t tell her what we were going to do — for all she knew we were taking it to a pet cemetery for interment. It actually saved us a little money, and made us feel like we were taking care of her ourselves.
And apparently dealing with pet remains is a pretty good business. We just used a cardboard box. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t care. The vet did make a little clay cast of her paw print, that the young women in the office paint (one of them was a little apologetic about it — “It’s nothing fancy, sort of like a kid’s art project”). I’ll pick it up tomorrow. Maybe I’ll embed it in a cement slab.
[Update late afternoon]
One more point, per comments. I am never offended by someone offering their prayers for me, though I’ve been god blind all my life (and expect to go to my grave that way, which is one, but not the only reason that I’m into life extension).
I can’t imagine how they would hurt me (well, OK, I can, but only in a ludicrous, Pascal’s-Wager-denying thought experiment), and I assume that they at a minimum benefit the person praying. I always appreciate everyone’s good will, and good thoughts, in whatever form.