Over at Cracked.
Auschwitz
A photoessay from Rachel Lucas:
You think of Auschwitz, or Poland in general after the Nazis invaded, and you think of bleakness and dreariness. Dark dank sickly winter and snow and death. I took that picture five minutes away from the camp, and there is little doubt in my mind that it looked generally the same way 65 or 70 years ago. The same green grass and the same bright sunshine. Those things didn’t disappear in 1939 and magically regenerate in 1945.
It cracks the heart open to fully comprehend that things like the large-scale industrial genocide that happened at Auschwitz-Birkenau took place in the middle of a perfectly normal world like we saw on that bus ride. It didn’t happen in hell, or in some bleak desert, or any permanently winter-bound nightmare landscape where you can explain away these things more easily. It was just in the middle of this gorgeous countryside.
It’s long, but well worth the read.
It’s Not Just Death Panels
Now it may be…something else panels. All I can say is, you can touch my genitals with your cold, dead hands…
If You Call Someone A Koolaid Drinker
…you’re a racist. Just in case you thought that the Urban Dictionary should have any credibility. This is really astonishingly stupid.
Political Censorship
…at Flickr.
Who asked to take this down, and who decided? Flickr has a right to censor its own site, if it wishes, but we have a right to know that’s what they’re doing, and not let them hide behind the skirts of DMCA.
[Thursday afternoon update]
Per a comment, I worded that badly. I don’t mean that we literally have a right. I simply meant that if they expect us to use their service, there should be more transparency in their policies.
The Dog That Didn’t Bark
Anyone see something missing in this message from the administrator?
Lori and I are meeting on a regular basis with our NASA senior leadership to develop our strategy for the future once the final report is released. Additional details on the process will be shared as they become available. In the meantime, staying focused on our current missions is critical. Let’s safety fly out the shuttle manifest and complete the construction and build out of the International Space Station (ISS). Let’s continue our robust exploration of Mars through our robotic rovers and other vehicles yet to be launched. Let’s continue our superb execution of the missions of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) as we gather more data to support future human exploration of the moon. Let’s vigorously pursue the critical missions designed to enable us to gain the essential knowledge of Earth’s environment – our atmosphere, our oceans, our weather – that will enable our policy makers to make wise, informed decisions on climate change and other threats to our environment.
There seems to be one “current mission” not mentioned. It starts with a “C.” And ends in “onstellation.” At least as far as the administrator is concerned, Ares would seem to be dead.
The Obama Torture Regime
Details here. I’m sure that the howls from the left will start any minute.
[Crickets chirping]
A New S3xual Aid Breakthrough?
A robot with “bones” that moves like a human. I can imagine that it might have superhuman strength, too. The future continues to rush upon us.
The Twelve Most Annoying Types
…of Facebookers. I’m pretty confident that I’m none of the above.
It Makes Them Nuts
…that Cheney was right:
There is a principled human-rights position on all this. You can say: “No one wants to see bad things happen to people, but I honestly believe abusive tactics are so corrosive of our society’s principles that it would be better for 10,000 Americans to be killed in a terrorist attack than for us to prevent the attack by subjecting a morally culpable terrorist to non-lethal forms of coercion that cause no lasting physical or mental harm.”
That would be the honest argument, but it is not going to persuade many people. Thus the continued pretense, against all evidence and logic, that the tactics don’t work. Fewer and fewer people are fooled.
No, this administration and its enablers (including some in my comments section) is having trouble continuing to fool us on many fronts.
[Update a few minutes later]
Thoughts on “the Narrative,” and the lies of both commission and omission of the leftist media.
[Update another few minutes later]
Fouad Ajami — Obama’s summer of discontent:
A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the “loudest voices” are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed.
It was true to script, and to necessity, that Mr. Obama would try to push through his sweeping program—the change in the health-care system, a huge budget deficit, the stimulus package, the takeover of the automotive industry—in record time. He and his handlers must have feared that the spell would soon be broken, that the coalition that carried Mr. Obama to power was destined to come apart, that a country anxious and frightened in the fall of 2008 could recover its poise and self-confidence. Historically, this republic, unlike the Old World and the command economies of the Third World, had trusted the society rather than the state. In a perilous moment, that balance had shifted, and Mr. Obama was the beneficiary of that shift.
So our new president wanted a fundamental overhaul of the health-care system—17% of our GDP—without a serious debate, and without “loud voices.” It is akin to government by emergency decrees. How dare those townhallers (the voters) heckle Arlen Specter! Americans eager to rein in this runaway populism were now guilty of lèse-majesté by talking back to the political class.
We were led to this summer of discontent by the very nature of the coalition that brought Mr. Obama, and the political class around him, to power, and by the circumstances of his victory. The man was elected amid economic distress. Faith in the country’s institutions, perhaps in the free-enterprise system itself, had given way. Mr. Obama had ridden that distress. His politics of charisma was reminiscent of the Third World. A leader steps forth, better yet someone with no discernible trail, someone hard to pin down to a specific political program, and the crowd could read into him what it wished, what it needed.
I think the spell is finally breaking. The polls would certainly indicate it. And without his charisma, he is truly an empty suit.
Read the whole thing.