One down

Ron Paul, the Libertarian wacko from Texas, has announced that he will leave Congress in order to focus on a run for the Presidency, Since he has less chance of being nominated, let alone elected, than I do, that means effectively one fewer incumbent jackass in Washington, giving TX an opportunity to elect a new one.

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For your entertainment, here's a classic piece of Ron Paul nonsense. The man should be institutionalized. Perhaps in the same room as Rick Perry.

Spank Newscorp while the spanking is good

2011 07 14: Yay! The FBI took my advice! Or they're operating independently. Whichever.

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As a long time believer in the efficacy of kicking a man while he's down, this strikes me as a really great time to open investigations into any potential coziness between Rupert Murdoch's US enterprises (can you say Fox News?) and our own gummint. Whether there's anything to be found is hardly the issue -- if just a few congress critters call for hearings, the fun on Wall Street will be immense.

If he was willing to just shut down The News of the World as a sacrifice to criticism, what would he do if Roger Ailes were found to have approved something moderately despicable? Something that touched on the lives of, say, the families of US soldiers killed overseas? Ah, the schadenfreude. I can taste it now.

Quote of the day

"It is sufficient that we understand clearly the strategic lack of logic of the fundamental idea of the crusades and that we understand their genesis. The mystical-transcendental trait of mankind is capable of developing a gigantic force, but the ability to direct this force to practical, down-to-earth goals is lacking, and the force is consumed fruitlessly,"

Hans Delbruck, writing in 1923, in Germany, Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte. Dr. Delbruck died in 1929, sparing himself the irony of a first-hand view of the subject.

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He's not a jackass, he's just Type B

The Japanese official who resigned after a week for, essentially, being a jerk, claims it's his blood type that made him do it. His wife reminded him of it, he says. Incidentally, I'm a type O. See what the article says the Japanese think about that.

The revolving door keeps on rollin'

Back and forth, back and forth.

The content-industrial complex against which President Eisenhower warned us continues to trade execs in a pathetic effort to avoid obsolescence.

With the troubles at Borders ...

... one small casualty has been the video link on Bob Sparrow's web site to some Ann Arbor interviews with Anthony Bourdain. I took a few minutes this AM to poke around the net and came up with one video and a blog entry. In the first one, you'll see fleeting glimpses of Bob and also Mike Monaghan, the Fish Market king.

Bourdain eats smelt, disses Food Network

Ok ... that appears to be all Utube has. Here's a Bourdain blog entry about Grange.

Anybody have anything other than the video on Utube? The reason I ask is that it was described to me as "Bourdain interviews Bob Sparrow," and that's certainly not in the link here. Just a quick cameo of Bob, plus Mike delivering a plate of smelt.

Michigan Anti-affirmative action amendment overturned

You go, 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. In yo' face!

Some alert readers may recall that I posed this question, some time back: what's the difference between the Taliban and people who voted for Proposition 2? One group is hiding in caves in Afghanistan and the other one should be.

Among people who were pleased: the Mayor of Grand Rapids, for some reason. He said, "Wow, wow, wow!" in fact. Not what I'd expect from a West Michigan Pol, but good for him.

The only good argument

,,, for being a vegetarian,

"I'm not a vegatarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants,"  A. Whitney Brown

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Well, maybe.

I think this guy did most of his Sci-fi reading in the sixties, too. But nice to see someone optimistic about contact, in the good old fashioned Heinlein and Clarke style, instead of the Hawking, "We should hide from aliens" point of view.

An inconvenient connection

Doing some medieval reading these days, and ran across this view of cultural dispersion.

Think Texas, Montana, cow country, the cowboy ethos. Ever wonder where all those Anglo-Saxon whities got the cowboy life style from? Well, pardner, they got it from the Spanish, who brung it with 'em when they conquered Mexico and the Southwest. And where did they bring it from? Spain. And where did they get it while they were still in Spain? From the moors, natch. The Muslims who conquered most of the Southern Iberian Peninsula in the middle ages. Until then, the local Christians were mostly sheep-shaggers, not cattle abusers.

So the next time you run into George W., ask him which direction he faces when he prays.