Paco Enterprises

Michael Moore's big snorkeling adventure

2012-01-26T19:55:00.003-05:00

"Divers find large, unexplained object at bottom of Baltic Sea"

Happy Feet Friday

2012-01-26T19:41:00.006-05:00

Fellow North Carolinian Johnny Long and his band shoot us a little boogie woogie.

Weer not just cunservitive…

2012-01-26T19:38:00.001-05:00

… weer stoopid, to.

Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

Hm. Paco so upset by news, go have smoke now, try to calm down (but how to work matchbook?) Maybe, later, hoot and throw s**t at smart, liberal neighbors (if Paco can find own ass. I know! Maybe use both hands do trick! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!)

Before the spirit moves you...

2012-01-25T23:14:00.002-05:00

...it might be a good idea to make sure you have a good lawyer.

(H/T: Overlawyered)

Dang!

2012-01-25T22:03:00.004-05:00

Bob Belvedere gets much more interesting spam than I do.

Profiles in righteous pissedoffery

2012-01-25T21:55:00.002-05:00

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is taking no crap from The One.

Reason 1,127 why I'm glad I don't live in D.C.

2012-01-25T21:47:00.004-05:00

The Supreme Court finally compelled the city government to allow locals to own handguns, but there's a mountain of red tape you have to cut through to buy one (and even if you buy a gun, you just might wind up not getting to keep it).

Check out Emily Miller's series of stories in the Washington Times, "Emily Gets Her Gun" (H/T: Instapundit).

Also via Professor Reynolds: Virginia's getting ready to scrap its one-gun-per-month law.

Junius to Joe Biden

2012-01-25T18:23:00.010-05:00

(Third in an occasional series)

Sir:

Even democracies have their rough equivalent of a “royal court”, and so it is apposite that in our own the office of jester should be elective. Rarely, however, have the people evinced such felicity of understanding, such penetrating acuity, as when they measured Your Excellency’s head for the cap and bells.

That a merry buffoon should be so positioned as to stand next in line for the presidency, in the event of the death or incapacity of the Chief Executive, is perhaps a matter of less genuine levity than the citizenry, upon more sober reflection, would have bargained for. That is as may be; however, since a morning-after repentance by an electorate that has come tardily to its senses affords no effectual means for correcting this rash deed before the next election, you have been perfectly at liberty to disport yourself before the public eye without let or hindrance, and the alacrity with which you have exercised this right is the stuff of legend.

Doubtless a long apprenticeship in the clown profession furnished the experience that has, thus far, stood Your Excellency in such good stead during your Vice Presidency. What astute observer of public affairs could forget your risible appropriation of a British Labour leader’s cri de coeuer, or your failed attempt at faith healing when you invited a state senator, confined to a wheel chair, to “stand up”? What person, be his disposition never so dour, could suppress a smile at the recollection of Your Excellency’s wonder over the seeming magnetism that draws our Hindu brethren irresistibly toward employment in those commercial establishments known as “7-11s”?

Ah, but what refinements in drollery Your Excellency has instituted upon assuming your present office! Surely, the Irish Prime Minister was deeply impressed when you unseasonably attempted to pack his mother off to Paradise; and the airline industry, in all likelihood, didn’t truly suffer overmuch as a result of your discourse on the subject of the heightened communicability of disease in confined spaces. And although prudish sorts may have recoiled in horror as you employed a particularly vulgar expression during a public appearance, just imagine how this breach of etiquette raised you in the esteem of the Great Unwashed (who are every bit as likely to vote as their more genteel fellow citizens – always with the proviso, of course, that sufficient monetary or alcoholic incentives are made available).

It is obvious that Your Excellency has taken as his credo that famous exhortation to “leave them laughing.” Rest assured that nothing would more gladden the hearts of true patriots than that you should fulfill at least the first part of this self-imposed obligation at your earliest convenience, and that you should not, for any reason, consider yourself bound to stand upon the necessity of accomplishing the latter; for, on my word of honor, Sir, we have had a surfeit of your whimsicality.

(The image at the heading of the post is of Sir Philip Francis, considered by many scholars to have been the author of the original Junius letters)

Under Obama, things are looking up

2012-01-24T22:34:00.002-05:00

For example, things like the price of gasoline, the price of hamburger and…Oh, no!...the price of bacon.

Good news, bad news

2012-01-24T22:31:00.002-05:00

In reverse order.

Bad news? Obama gave another dishonest and divisive State of the Union speech tonight.

Good news? It's his last one.

Actually, a fool and his money sometimes aren’t parted at all

2012-01-24T19:52:00.003-05:00

JWF notes some recent comments made by George Soros, among which this one rather stuck out:

Soros believes Obama still has a chance of winning this year’s election. “Obama might surprise the public. The main issue facing the electorate is whether the rich should be taxed more. It shouldn’t be a difficult argument for Obama to make.”

Really, George? The big issue facing the electorate is whether that section of the populace that already bears a disproportionate share of the tax burden should be forced to pay even more? Unemployment’s not a problem, the criminal extravagance of the government is a side issue, the encroachments on individual liberty by rogue, unaccountable federal agencies, such as the EPA, are just a figment of the fevered imagination of a few right wing crazies?

Of course, Soros is not really a fool. He knows, as well as every other tax-hiker, that taking more from the rich ultimately means taking a lot more from the productive middle class, and increasing its dependency on the state. It’s easier, that way, for powerholics like Soros to implement their vision of the kind of world favored by Ellsworth Toohey.

Which reminds me: Colonel Milquetoast – who modestly refers to himself as “Colonel”, but whom I promoted to “Field Marshal” some time ago – responded to the call, and created an Obama bumper sticker that features the Tooey philosophy. Behold!

Update: Some people are conspicuously rejecting the leash, e.g., Tim Thomas of the Boston Bruins, who declined to join in the team trip to visit with the preshizzle, in protest against the unbridled growth of the state (note, in the post, the screen-cap of a scurrilous tweet by Dave Hodge, TSN sports announcer and human tick).

There are a lot of things that can be done in a thousand days or less…

2012-01-24T19:51:00.001-05:00

…but getting the Democrats to pass a budget ain’t one of ‘em.

Update: And here’s a clever video ad for Republican House candidate, Mark Oxner, who’s running in Florida (Alan Grayson as Obama’s parrot is priceless).

It's that time of year again

2012-01-24T07:21:00.002-05:00

A belated happy National Pie Day!

Liberals say the darnedest things!

2012-01-23T19:32:00.002-05:00

Here’s an excellent summary.

Uh oh

2012-01-23T19:30:00.002-05:00

Looks like Teresa caught John going through her purse again ("ice hockey", indeed!)

The cloud of unknowing

2012-01-23T18:38:00.000-05:00

On the subject of primaries, voters and surprised (and even aghast) pundits, I’m with Jim Treacher: “Come on, everybody. Admit you have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next. It’s not so bad. I kind of like it, actually.”

I also agree with Michael Walsh on the specifics of the Romney/Gingrich matchup in South Carolina. Whatever Newt’s failings – as a congressman, as a husband, as a man – he does, indisputably, excel at articulating important intellectual concepts and injecting passion into them (he’s also good at connecting with the base in its long-simmering contempt for the obvious liberal biases of the legacy media). In contrast, Romney’s well-groomed and calculated ambivalence makes him look (to borrow from, and mangle, Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s comment on Thomas Dewey) like one of the grooms on a gay wedding cake. Ok, so he’s Not Obama; is he sufficiently Not Obama to be able to convince the voters that he will make a positive difference? Myself, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Romney would be a better president than Obama; the question is, can he convince primary voters that he’d be a better president than Gingrich? That’s Romney’s big challenge going into Florida.

State of the union

2012-01-23T18:37:00.001-05:00

Why listen to the preshizzle’s long, boring speech? I got your state of the union right here.

Sauerkraut

2012-01-23T18:35:00.000-05:00

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, has taken a gander at the parlous state of the global economy and put the blame right where it belongs: on ~~the absurdly unrealistic expectations of European social democracy~~ capitalism.

"We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations," said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.

"Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole.

"We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual," the 73-year-old said, adding that "capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us."

Well, good news, Klaus! There are some folks right there near your confab in Davos, Switzerland who can help you articulate your problem with capitalism, “in its current form.”

The Occupy WEF protestors have built igloos in the middle of the village perched 1,500 metres above sea level and are planning a protest against those they call "self-proclaimed elites."

Here’s my two-cents-worth, Klaus: there’s very little wrong with free enterprise capitalism that a general loosening of the heavy hand of the state won’t cure. Of course, there’s the slim possibility that you’re talking about the kind of crony capitalism practiced by our own Venture-Capitalist-in-Chief - in which case I’m with you a hundred percent.

Monday movie

2012-01-22T13:20:00.006-05:00

The marvelously sinister Robert Douglas as Ellsworth Toohey, outlining the liberal fascist game plan in The Fountainhead.

One neck, one leash. That's the unspoken Obama campaign slogan; in fact, it would look great on a bumper sticker (especially with the Obama "O"; get cracking, photoshoppers!).

We've got to get rid of this guy

2012-01-22T13:15:00.006-05:00

Yeah, Obama, too. But Harry Reid's the one I'm talking about. Here's Fred Grandy on the importance of taking back the Senate:

The message should be apparent for card-carrying Republicans and for all those unaffiliated voters who still cling to the belief that there can be such a thing as “good government.” Capturing the White House is now and always will be a consummation devoutly to be wished. But if changing the direction of this country from the course Barack Obama appears to be plotting for us is our primary objective, then unseating Harry Reid as Senate leader and controlling both houses of Congress is equally important.

Obama's all about jobs

2012-01-22T13:10:00.006-05:00

Just not American jobs, or so it seems.

Update: More on Keystone XL from Smitty.

Let us now praise famous men

2012-01-22T09:47:00.003-05:00

Here's an interesting collection from Slate of controversial monuments, which includes a bust of one fellow who's made an appearance here at Paco Enterprises from time to time:

I find the cross in the background...incongruous.

H/T: Right Wing Death Bogan

Sunday funny

2012-01-21T23:23:00.002-05:00

Continuing with the presidential fantasy theme...

Update: A blast from the past as Tim Blair continues to celebrate his first ten years as a blogger.

Who likes whom

2012-01-21T12:34:00.004-05:00

There have been a couple of interesting endorsements over the last few days; John Bolton has come out for Romney, and Chuck Norris has sided with Gingrich (Today's Chuck Norris fact: Chuck Norris has a grizzly bear carpet in his living room. The bear isn't dead, it's just afraid to move).

Me? I'm staying focused on the main enemy.

Who, incidentally, gave a speech at Disney World this week. Sorry, Barry, but you really asked for it. Caption time!

(Reuters)

"Someday is now, and your prince has come!"

If you ever wondered why there's not a book called The Wit and Wisdom of Robert Redford...

2012-01-20T22:35:00.005-05:00

... wonder no more. Note how Redford conflates European culture and government handouts:

Dressed in jeans and a black sweater, Redford recalled the time he spent in France and Italy when he was a student, saying it probably still influences his outlook -- and even the Sundance Film Festival, which he launched in the 1980s.

More generally, he added: "For years and years and years, you've all experienced what we had to live with, the fact that other countries are far more supportive of their artists than we are...

"But when you have congressional narrow-minded people, people who are afraid of change when change is the only thing that succeeds, the only thing we know is going to happen is that things are going to change.

"There are people that are afraid of it so they fight it .. it's just tragic that we don't support our artists more than we do. And as long as we're going to have that kind of thinking in Congress, we're going to have to fight it."

Question: if change, like s**t, "happens" - i.e., it's inevitable - why do we need the government to nudge it along? And even if government subsidizes movies, how are you going to make people watch them? Is that something else liberals believe the government can mandate?

How about the " Corner Canyon Pussies"?

2012-01-19T23:07:00.005-05:00

There is stupid, and then there is STUPID: "Utah School Board Says Cougar Mascot Too Offensive To Women".

One Utah school district believes a cougar mascot would be insensitive to women.

The Canyons School District overrode the students top choice of a cougar mascot for their high school that is to be completed in 2013.

Would-be Corner Canyon High School students chose the Cougars as their mascot — a name principal Mary Bailey said carries an ugly connotation that is disrespectful to women.

In popular culture, the cougar is a sexually aggressive middle-aged woman who attracts younger men.

Hitting a little too close to home, Mary?

Happy Feet Friday

2012-01-19T19:25:00.003-05:00

Benny Goodman and the boys (check out those sidemen: Lionel Hampton, Harry James, Gene Krupa…very hep!)

What the hell's up with that, eh?

2012-01-18T21:50:00.005-05:00

Not content to simply leave U.S. citizens shivering in the dark, fat cat Yankee foundations are now meddling in Canada's environmental politics. Vivian Krause reports:

By my analysis and calculations, since 2000, U.S. foundations have granted at least US$300-million to various environmental organizations and campaigns in Canada, especially in B.C. The San Francisco-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation alone has granted US$92-million. Gordon Moore is one of the co-founders of Intel Corp. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation have granted a combined total of US$90-million, mostly to B.C. groups. These foundations were created by the founders of Hewlett-Packard Co.

The Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, created by the founders of Sun Oil, has granted at least US$82-million over the past decade and at least US$40-million has been granted by other U.S. foundations.

Of the US$300-million that I’ve traced, at least US$150-million was specifically for the Great Bear Rainforest Initiative, the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area and the Boreal Forest Initiative.

H/T: Captain Heinrichs

Well, now, that’s rich

2012-01-18T19:41:00.005-05:00

The President’s Jobs Council apparently is under the impression that Obama actually wants real advice.

President Obama’s “Jobs Council,” formed to take the heat out of criticism that he’s not doing enough to foster job growth, has come back with an interim report that can pretty well be distilled into three words: “drill, drill, drill”:
President Obama’s jobs council called . . . for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil-and-gas drilling as well as expediting energy projects like pipelines.

“[W]e should allow more access to oil, natural gas and coal opportunities on federal lands,” states the year-end report…released Tuesday by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Boy, talk about not getting the memo!

Update: No surprise. The preshizzle obviously didn’t get the advice he wanted.

“These are not your father’s Democrats”

2012-01-18T19:39:00.002-05:00

Peter Ferrara at the American Spectator catalogues the Democrat Party’s evolving authoritarian dynamic.

This is the party that rejected Hillary Clinton because she was not left enough. Instead it literally took a Marxist street agitator from the Chicago political machine and put him in the White House. Barack Obama was actually teaching the social manipulation methods of openly communist revolutionary Saul Alinsky to other Marxist revolutionaries for the radical communist front group ACORN. His weird name reflects his personal rejection of American culture. This is the person today's Democrat party wanted for President.

Defeating Obama may turn out to be the most patriotic thing we, as a nation, have done in recent memory. If we can do it, that is. I am, to use a tired phrase, “guardedly optimistic”; however, I am also aware that people, and nations, sometimes have short memories, and frequently have to learn the same hard lessons over and over. Are we really going to have to trudge all the way to the terminus of a dead-end path in order to find out that we’ve been moving in the wrong direction? I pray not. Of course, contra Andrew Sullivan and Newsweek, the problem isn’t really that Obama’s critics are dumb, it’s that so many voters are. The “dumbing down” of America can’t help but have a negative impact at the polls, over time, as the lazy, stupid, envious, complacent and misinformed, mostly unwittingly, trade away their freedom in return for empty hype and unfulfillable promises (these are in addition to the ideological diehards who either can’t see how bad the end result will be, or can see it perfectly, but expect to be among the nomenclatura). Here’s hoping that the dumb factor is lower than it was last time.

An instant bumper sticker classic

2012-01-17T20:19:00.001-05:00

Avenge Me.

Junius to Eric Holder

2012-01-17T19:26:00.010-05:00

(The second installment in an occasional series)

Sir:

It has been well said, and frequently so, that Life ofttimes imitates Art. Few, however, have brought off this accomplishment with the consummate skill that Your Excellency has demonstrated in the management of the office of Attorney General of these United States. Save for your contemporary haberdashery, a minor difference that we may dismiss as irrelevant, you are the veritable embodiment of Jonathan Wild.

I take it for granted that one who has risen so high in the field of the Law without being overmuch troubled by an ignorance of its most elementary principles, is likely to be even more grossly deficient in his knowledge of literature. Permit me, therefore, to describe the historical and literary model which you have adopted as your familiar (unwittingly, I presume, but, curiously, with no less unerring genius than that of a natural mime who has made a thorough study of his subject).

Wild was the most famous thief-taker of his era, a man who cultivated an unparalleled reputation as the leading adept in the arts of detection and in the recovery of stolen property. So great was his fame, that he was even consulted by Government on the best methods to reduce the plague of theft then epidemic in London. His success, however, did not stem from any preternatural acuteness of reasoning or from the possession of extraordinary wisdom or the gift of second sight. Nay, he succeeded through the simple expedient of running the gangs of cutpurses and footpads who stole the property in the first place, subsequently publishing advertisements of the recovery of the goods, and collecting fees for their restoration from the grateful victims. He was eventually found out, and an incensed citizenry turned out in huge numbers to see him hanged at Tyburn.

Those are the bare bones of Wild’s notorious career; but it required the capacious and inventive brain of revered novelist Henry Fielding to put flesh on those bones, and to author a literary masterpiece that not only catalogued his subject’s criminal deeds, but, through the plentiful use of ironic construction, illustrated the utter perfidy that frequently underlies the claims to greatness of notable men, and most especially of those whose vehemence in making asseverations of their own competence and honesty is in direct proportion to the lack of any recognizable surety.

And here, Sir, the analogy touches you nearly, inasmuch as you, like Wild, have employed the Law as a curtain for the concealment of your unlawful aims. Your administration sought, ostensibly, to curtail the flow of weapons to the Mexican warlords, whose outrages have led to the murder of thousands of that nation’s people, and to the intimidation and, ultimately, to the corruption of their army and constabulary. But your stratagem, on its face, was a schematic of inevitable failure, since it involved transporting arms to the bandits without any effectual means for the interdiction of the weapons, or for the identification and prosecution of the traffickers. Yet, peeping behind the Japanese screen which hides your true motives, one sees that this is an instance of wheels within wheels. The secret rationale for a plan of such manifestly dubious merit was to exacerbate, rather than reduce, the violence at our southern border, in order to excite the passions of our own people against the private possession of firearms. Having played the arsonist, and set alight these emotions, it was your intention to consign the Second Amendment to the flames.

Do you follow me, Sir? Do you smoke my meaning? If not, then I shall be plain: you have indubitably made the same discovery as did Wild, to wit, that the best way to profit from abusing the public trust is to hide behind it, taking care to so thoroughly identify your person with the public office of Justice, and the trappings appertaining thereto, as to make yourself indistinguishable from the institution of Justice, itself. And when, in the course of your maladministration, and in despite of your smug assumptions concerning their inability to do so, the people nevertheless came to suspect that the connection between the putative Man of Law and the Law proper was tenuous, you thought it sufficient to declaim loudly against the evidence, or to cast the blame upon your minions.

Your Excellency will, I pray, forgive me for constructing such a coarse metaphor, but it should be clear to the meanest intelligence that one who is afflicted with chronic flatulence cannot hope to escape censure by baldly denying the existence of the odor, or mendaciously attributing the effluvium to his fellows. You are irrefutably the cavity at the center of a miasmic vortex of corruption, and the disgrace of your conduct dooms you to ignominious failure. Whether it ultimately places you within reach of that Justice which you swore to uphold, but have so openly flouted, is a matter to be disposed of by better men in the fullness of time.

A tale of diminutive pigs, three in number

2012-01-16T11:54:00.005-05:00

Mr. G has a video featuring a very clever rendering of the Three Little Pigs into Shakespearean English.

I'm thinking that's gotta be one slow race

2012-01-16T11:22:00.004-05:00

Contestants are signing up for Chile's second solar car race, to take place in November of this year.

For more traditional cross-country racing enthusiasts, check out this spectacular photo essay on the 2012 Dakar rally that features a grueling trek through Argentina, Chile and Peru.

(H/T to that intrepid internet explorer, Captain Heinrichs)

The p***ing match continues

2012-01-15T13:37:00.003-05:00

Right Wing Death Bogan reports.

Personally, I think this whole business of the Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters may just be a big misunderstanding, a case of something getting lost in translation. I have read Islamic literature and history, and the original authors were always saying about one notable or another, "Peace be on him..."

Socialist bullet points

2012-01-15T12:46:00.001-05:00

Courtesy of Doug Ross.

Monday movie

2012-01-15T11:21:00.007-05:00

Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas, in a clip from the wonderful 1948 movie, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.

Bonus video clip from the same movie.

Meanwhile, in "real time", Libertas discusses what promises to be a fascinating new foreign film, The Hunter (check out the trailer linked in the post).

Sunday funnies

2012-01-14T23:00:00.006-05:00

One thing that has gotten better under Obama.

Mercedes-Benz, embarrassed by the response to its use of an image of Che Guevara in an advertisement, tries again.

Junius to the Mayor of Washington, D.C.

2012-01-14T20:58:00.011-05:00

"Junius" was the pseudonym of a writer who penned a series of public letters in the late 1760s and early 1770s criticizing the ministry of the Duke of Grafton for its corruption and encroachment on the historical rights of Englishmen. The letters were little masterpieces of irony and sarcasm, though cloaked in highly formal and polite language. I take quill keyboard in hand to revive the pseudonym and, I hope, something of the author's style, however inferior it inevitably will be to the original, in this, the first of a series of occasional letters to various political notables, both high and low.

Vincent C. Gray
Mayor of Washington, in the District of Columbia

Sir:

I will be pardoned for holding to the belief that the naming of the capital city of these United States after the late President Washington was originally intended as a mark of honor, conferred by a grateful nation upon a man justifiably known to posterity as the Father of his Country. That this very tangible encomium has, based on the evidence of my own eyes, been permitted to lose much of its luster is a shame that has many authors, among whom Your Excellency has played no small role through a display of complacency and inattention to the virtues of good order.

I make reference to McPherson Park, a plot of public land situate two blocks from the presidential palace, and upon which significant funds were expended barely a year ago in a program of beautification, with many improvements being made, such as the laying of flower beds and the reseeding of the lawn. It was recently my misfortune to wander through this park – but stay; “wander” is not the word I want, implying, as it does, a somewhat idle perambulation. No, Sir, it is better said that I picked my way with painstaking care through a rambling aggregation of miserable hovels that at first I took for a leper colony, peopled, as it was, and still is, with the most scrofulous and wretched-looking assemblage of degraded human beings ever seen in such numbers within the close environs of the seat of government.

However, I do an injustice to lepers everywhere, inasmuch as their affliction is an unhappy occurrence of nature concerning which no moral taint should attach to the sufferers. Nay, these base louts, who style themselves as Occupiers, are the products of an overindulgent society that has encouraged a false claim to entitlement, a demand for the necessities, and even the luxuries, of life, in exchange for which they are unwilling and unprepared to offer even a modicum of effort. Their only sacrifice is the abandonment of the most basic habits of personal hygiene, which loss seems to strike them as no sacrifice at all, but has created, rather, a funk whereby these human cattle cheerfully recognize their own. Above their camp flutter, incongruously, the banners of both anarchy and Russian despotism, and the foulest stews of London do not contain a larger concentration of cutpurses, unhorsed highwaymen, beggars, opium eaters, whores and bedlamites.

And yet, Your Excellency, this secular conventicle of radical levelers is suffered to occupy a public square without let or hindrance - or official license - in a perpetual affront to, and on the charge of, the tax-paying citizenry of the city. They prowl about the park, in their habiliments of canting, self-righteous outrage, fouling their own nests and creating a breeding ground for rats and pestilence. The most slatternly hog-drover would not bed his charges down in this sty, nor would the least discriminating of carrion-eaters alight except in the uttermost extremity of hunger.

It is indeed a wonder to see your constabulary – on your orders, Sir! - circumambulate the park, as if they were no more than gawkers at a zoological garden, rather than drive these Visigoths out of the city under the lawful blows of their truncheons. The deficiencies of our country’s educational system are too well advertised to require a lengthy animadversion by the writer on such a painful subject; nonetheless, I profess myself amazed that a man may gain the distinction of the mayoralty of the nation’s capital without ever having learned to secern citizens exercising their Constitutional right to free speech from a mob of parasites for whom the Constitution is but an obstacle to the overthrow of liberty, and an inconvenient cattle guard preventing their trampling of property rights. May it please God that a latent spasm of common sense may supply the want of your schooling before the city succumbs further to mindless violence and epidemic disease.

Under totalitarian regimes...

2012-01-13T20:37:00.003-05:00

...faking sincerity is key.

North Korean authorities are punishing mourners who failed to exhibit sincere sadness and despair after the death of Kim Jong Il on Dec. 17, the Daily NK reported Wednesday.

The online North Korean newspaper, which is published by opponents of the governing regime, said a source in North Hamkyung Province revealed the information. The source told the paper “authorities are handing down at least six months in a labor-training camp to anybody who didn’t participate in the organized gatherings during the mourning period, or who did participate but didn’t cry and didn’t seem genuine,” according to the Daily NK.

Madame Prime Minister

2012-01-13T17:58:00.003-05:00

I have no idea whether the Streep portrayal of Margaret Thatcher is any good or not; though, given the knee-jerk leftist impulses of Hollywood, I wouldn't exactly be stunned to discover that it's a hack job.

Therefore, I will continue taking my Thatcher straight.

Marines make a splash

2012-01-13T17:45:00.003-05:00

I'm frankly having a hard time getting worked up over the Marines who took a leak on some Taliban corpses. If it's absolutely necessary to "do something", I think Rep. Allen West has the right idea.

There are scores of reasons why I wouldn't live in Massacusetts on a bet

2012-01-13T16:27:00.004-05:00

This is one of them.

McKay is the young father who, seeing a local druggie breaking into his truck and stealing the tools he uses to pay the bills, confronted him, subdued him and held him for the police. When the police arrived, they found the bad guy had a knife, a billy club and — thanks to the unarmed McKay — a broken jaw.

Instead of thanking McKay for helping get an armed criminal off the streets, Swampscott officials charged him with a felony. As a Swampscott police spokesman said at the time, “We don’t urge anybody to fight back. We want them to call us.”

This particular story had a "happy" ending - the District Attorney declined to prosecute - but things might have turned out differently if it hadn't been for the publicity generated by the Boston Herald. The police can't have it both ways. They cannot, on the one hand, insist that they're not liable for not protecting you and your property, and on the other, prevent you from protecting yourself and your stuff.

Update: Daytona Beach authorities have a more commonsensical attitude (H/T: Jeff).

Sometimes a wannabe commander-in-chief...

2012-01-12T22:57:00.004-05:00

...just can't be bothered shaking hands with the troops.

(H/T: Drudge)

Happy Feet Friday

2012-01-12T17:31:00.003-05:00

The Andrews Sisters harmonize on “Straighten Up and Fly Right.”

Mission accomplished

2012-01-12T17:15:00.003-05:00

Whew! Boy, am I exhausted. While the missus was in the recovery room, I went off in search of the cafeteria and must have wandered a quarter of a mile through a maze of halls, different floors, detours and dead-ends before I found the place. Then I stood in the wrong line for ten minutes, and had to go stand in another one. I had a vastly overpriced hamburger (tasty, though), with some fries and a Coke. Finally, I had to make the long trek back to the surgery center.

What's that you're asking? Oh, of course! How's Mrs. Paco. She did fine. As usual, it took her longer than most to come out from under the ether, but the surgery went well, praise God and her surgeon, and she's now home, resting comfortably. Many thanks to the good people at Inova Fairfax Hospital.

And many thanks to my friends here who offered up prayers and best wishes. You guys are the best.

From the shelves of the Paco library

2012-01-11T22:16:00.002-05:00

One thing the Kindle has allowed me to do is to expand my library at no cost, since so much of what I read is in the public domain. I recently finished reading another freebie: The Mirror of Kong Ho, by Ernest Bramah.

Readers with long memories will recall that, a while back, I posted a review of one of the books in Bramah’s series of yarns featuring the Chinese storyteller, Kai Lung (the review is located here). Kong Ho is a variation on the oriental theme, featuring the adventures of the son of a Chinese merchant who has traveled to 1920s England to learn something of the ways of these island-bound barbarians, but who is continually baffled in his understanding by the difficulties presented by an unfamiliar language, incomprehensible technology and a completely alien culture. The book, composed of a series of letters to his “venerable sire”, hilariously traces Kong Ho’s uncertain progress as he attempts to school himself in the day-to-day rituals of English life, as well as the overarching themes of religion, literature and sport.

Here, he attempts to describe rugby to his father:

There is a favorite and well-attended display wherein two opposing bands, each clad in robes of distinctive colour, stand in extended lines of mutual defiance, and at a signal impetuously engage. The design of each is by force or guile to draw their opponents into an unfavorable position before an arch of upright posts, and then surging irresistibly forward, to carry them beyond the limit and hurl them to the ground.

Unfortunately, our hero does not succeed in grasping the essentials of another sport to the same extent, having made a fatal mistake in a too literal interpretation of the name of the game.

This trial of sportiveness, it became clear, -less of a massacre than most of their amusements – is really a rivalry of leapings and dexterity of the feet: a conflict of game crickets or grass-hoppers, in the wide-angled obscurity of their language, or, as we would more appropriately call it doubtless, a festive competition in the similitude of high-spirited locusts.

This huge misunderstanding concerning the game of cricket causes him considerable personal embarrassment, since he has been invited to participate in a match by his host, Sir Philip – or, rather, it would have caused him embarrassment, had he possessed even a glimmering of the true quality of his performance.

If a fuller proof of what an unostentatious self-effacement hesitates to enlarge upon were required, it might be found in the barbarian printed leaf, for the next day this person saw a public record of the strife, in which his own name was followed by a numerical emblem signifying that he had not stumbled or proved incompetent in any one particular. Sir Philip, I beheld with pained surprise, had obtusely suffered himself to be caught out in the committal of fifty-nine set offenses.

Kong Ho’s other experiences include getting lost in the underground, accidentally starting a riot by kow-towing outside a “temple” (in reality, a pub), thwarting two con-men, and tragically misconstruing the meaning of one of the pretty female occupants of his boarding house when she remarks, wistfully, that she’d “like to have a dog”. Throughout all these perils, Kong Ho conducts himself with admirable dignity and the most exquisite politeness.

A highly entertaining read, this person (as Kong Ho might say) humbly submits it for your consideration, in a benevolent spirit of no reluctance.

Prayers requested

2012-01-11T19:37:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Paco is undergoing surgery tomorrow to have a bad parathyroid gland removed, so your prayers for a successful outcome are fervently requested. It’s supposed to be a fairly simple procedure, and may have the upside of halting or even reversing her osteoporosis.

I may be offline for a day or so, but I will post one of my increasingly rare Paco library book reviews tomorrow morning.

And remember: if you can’t say anything nice about the Obama administration, then feel free to drop by the comments section and say it with gusto.

An American institution

2012-01-11T19:35:00.001-05:00

Daniel Flynn has written an interesting article on Ray Bradbury. This particularly stood out:

Liberals attracted to a writer who took out a full-page advertisement in Variety after the 1952 elections to blast Joseph McCarthy, Dwight Eisenhower, and the Republican Party should be thoroughly horrified at Bradbury’s political transformation. Ronald Reagan “was one of the best presidents of the last century,” the born-again Republican maintains. The 40th president and Pope John Paul II, he holds, won the Cold War. Friend Charlton Heston was an “intellectual” hated by liberals “because of the NRA. That’s a lot of crap.”

What happens when the civilizing effect of women is absent

2012-01-11T07:37:00.001-05:00

Doug Ross has the photographic evidence.

Better put on your Kevlar shorts, Barry

2012-01-11T07:18:00.001-05:00

Early in his first term, Barack Obama famously told a group of bankers that he was the only one standing between them and mobs with pitchforks. Will he now stand idly by while his pal Jon Corzine gets perforated?

Montana farmers have filed a class action suit against former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, charging that the failed financial firm run by Corzine stole millions from their accounts to pay off its spiraling debts, and that Corzine’s “single-minded obsession” with making MF Global a big player on Wall Street led to the firm’s collapse.

Is Corzine a crony too far? Stay tuned!

Why, yes, as a matter of fact, it can happen here

2012-01-10T19:40:00.001-05:00

One of the most ominous developments of the first term of the Obama administration is the obvious contempt that this president, many members of his party, and their fellow-travelers in the media have for individual rights and the concept of constitutional checks and balances. Fred Siegel and Joel Kotkin explore the threat of “soft” authoritarianism in this article at City Journal (H/T: Powerline). An excerpt:

Much of the administration’s approach has to do with a change in the nature of liberal politics. Today’s progressives cannot be viewed primarily as pragmatic Truman- or Clinton-style majoritarians. Rather, they resemble the medieval clerical class. Their goal is governmental control over everything from what sort of climate science is permissible to how we choose to live our lives. Many of today’s progressives can be as dogmatic in their beliefs as the most strident evangelical minister or mullah. Like Al Gore declaring the debate over climate change closed, despite the Climategate e-mails and widespread skepticism, the clerisy takes its beliefs as based on absolute truth. Critics lie beyond the pale.

And one of the by-products of depreciating even the legitimacy of the concept of criticism is a tendency to dehumanize the critics, which, as history has shown, can turn so-called “soft” authoritarianism into something far worse. The authors shy away from using the words “civil war”, but the aggressive political and social polarization pursued by this administration in its intense ideological assault on tradition, precedent and the Constitution itself can ultimately have no other conclusion as long as there are millions of people who decline to go peacefully into that liberal fascist night. We have, however, a long history of avoiding that kind of conflict (with one notable exception) through the exercise of our right to vote; make yours count, come November.

Update: Herewith, a recent example of big-government thuggery.

Looking forward to the day…

2012-01-10T19:32:00.002-05:00

…when the only thing I have to read concerning Hugo Chavez is his name on a tombstone.

Well before President Obama gave President Hugo Chavez a handshake at a 2009 summit, wiser heads at the State Department warned him against a "reset." Obama ignored them.

The rube-like naivete has now come to bite Obama as the craziness in Caracas spirals wildly in just the last few days. The Rumsfeld Maxim that "weakness is provocative" seems to be operative here, setting the stage for the astonishing string of lawless acts that now demand hard sanctions.

Now, what kind of lawless acts might those be? Here are two juicy ones from the list

• Naming a drug kingpin as head of military. Chavez appointed Henry Rangel Silva — identified by the U.S. Treasury as a "kingpin" — as his defense minister. That act not only flouts global efforts to stop organized crime, but effectively turns Venezuela into a narcostate and its army into a drug cartel.

• Plotting war against the U.S. A Venezuelan diplomat was kicked out of the U.S. last weekend for soliciting cyberattacks on U.S. military, intelligence and nuclear targets. Her acts were clumsy, but her malevolence extended straight to Chavez's palace, where she said she had ties.

I think Obama’s schmoozekrieg isn’t working out too well.

One group of Washingtonians is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore

2012-01-10T19:31:00.001-05:00

Steve Burri reports.

Looks like the Arab spring...

2012-01-10T07:22:00.002-05:00

...is going to turn into a long, hot summer.

Great new meme!

2012-01-09T19:49:00.013-05:00

Moonbattery, inspired by the site, HTTP Status Cats – which features HTTP status codes illustrated with humorous cat pictures – is carrying the idea a step farther by applying the concept to the Obama administration. I now proceed to get in on the act:

(Jay Carney, White House spokesman)

And keep your fingers crossed...

Let’s help make Barack Obama’s dream come true

2012-01-09T19:15:00.004-05:00

The WSJ, in a review of Jodi Kantor’s book, The Obamas, cites this interesting passage:

“What Obama really looked forward to, said his friends, was the period that followed the presidency, whenever it arrived,” Kantor writes. The president’s close friend, Eric Whittaker, says Mr. Obama talks about going back to walking in the streets and wandering around bookstores. Another close Obama friend, Marty Nesbitt, says the president has told him he will be able to accomplish a lot after leaving office “because he would finally be free of politics,” Kantor writes.

Time for a new grassroots movement: Free Obama in 2012! (November, to be precise). C’mon, folks, let’s put him back on the street where he longs to be, browsing in bookstores, sneezing over dusty copies of his own remaindered autobiography, cadging free lattes from college students, telling tall tales about his golf game, furtively bumming cigarettes while keeping a sharp eye out for his tobacco-hating missus. Good for him, good for us; a better America all ‘round.

Unrelated update: The one place where Obama is having an indisputably positive economic impact.

Mitt Romney: “Hey, thanks a lot for that endorsement, John”

2012-01-09T19:15:00.003-05:00

John McCain allowed his Freudian slip to show recently as he referred to Romney as “President Obama”.

Barry the fable guy

2012-01-08T19:47:00.003-05:00

Here's a site where you can track Obama's accumulating falsehoods.

"Socialism; let's get 'er done."

The Obamas in Wonderland

2012-01-08T16:30:00.010-05:00

According to this story in the New York Post, the preshizzle and his ball-and-chain threw quite a bash on Halloween of 2009, but were careful not to release details to the public.

A White House “Alice in Wonderland” costume ball — put on by Johnny Depp and Hollywood director Tim Burton — proved to be a Mad-as-a-Hatter idea that was never made public for fear of a political backlash during hard economic times, according to a new tell-all.

“The Obamas,” by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, tells of the first Halloween party the first couple feted at the White House in 2009. It was so over the top that “Star Wars” creator George Lucas sent the original Chewbacca to mingle with invited guests.

It all seems to fit, somehow...

But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

* * * * * * *

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

* * * * * * *

"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is--'Be what you would seem to be'--or if you'd like it put more simply--'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"

(Post article via Drudge)

Monday movie

2012-01-08T16:16:00.008-05:00

Wyatt Earp demonstrates superior crowd-control skills in Tombstone (the scene features two great lines, one from Kurt Russell and one from Val Kilmer).

There's just something about Darwin, Australia

2012-01-08T11:52:00.006-05:00

Friend, commenter and blogger, Spot the Dog, offers some, er, highlights of life in Darwin and environs. Here's one of my favorites:

A MAN who broke into a Darwin pub handed himself into police after recognising his bum crack in security footage. Labourer Leslie Clarke, 29, did not remember breaking into the Hidden Valley Tavern during a drunken spree until he recognised himself in the CCTV footage in the media. He pleaded guilty in court to breaking into the pub and stealing $240 worth of grog.

Some feminists apparently aren't going to be happy until we have a completely androgynous society

2012-01-08T11:34:00.005-05:00

Some organization called SPARK is accusing LEGO of sexism.

Enraged by what they see as gender stereotyping, pressure group SPARK started a petition on web site change.org asking Lego to stop "selling out girls." Thus far it's attracted nearly 3,000 signatures.

"Raising healthy girls and boys is all about creating a wide range of possibilities and options for our children," says SPARK co-founder (and developmental psychologist) Dr. Lyn Mikel Brown in the petition's preamble. "The rainbow of colors and a range of options for young children to create the scenes they are most interested in is much better for them than feeding them a narrow set of stereotypes."

Yeah, but the problem, Doc, is that LEGO hasn't had a lot of luck with the female market. It's not as if little girls are prohibited from building pirate ships and medieval castles - and, no doubt, these items may well appeal to many - it's just that not as many girls as boys are interested in the traditional themes.

Hey, I know! Maybe the federal government should intervene and subsidize sales of the more male-oriented toys to girls (in conjunction with a gender-studies program, of course).

It just seems odd, to me, how the concept of "diversity" keeps getting translated into a dreary sameness.

Assortment

2012-01-08T10:59:00.001-05:00

Learn to say it right, with Miss Red.

Randy notes that Jon Corzine doesn’t seem to have any trouble keeping track of his own money.

Liberty at Stake wonders if Romney is up to the task, not only of defeating Obama, but of defeating Obamunism.

Steve at the Pub, on the subject of greenhorn constables.

Watts Up With That celebrates 100,000,000 visits (H/T to Spot at Tizona).

Anthony Wiener wins the 2011, er, Wiener Award (another H/T to Tizona).

Kae ponders the concept of charred snow.

Hmmmmm. The Venezuelan Consul General in Miami is getting booted out of the country due to evidence linking her to a cyber-conspiracy against the U.S. involving Venezuela, Iran and Cuba.

Barack Obama, extremist.

Blog news

2012-01-07T17:10:00.008-05:00

Gavin Atkins, much to my dismay, is taking an indefinite hiatus. I will miss his wide-ranging observations and his marvelous sense of humor. Don't stay gone forever, man!

Noted blogger, beanpole and Wisconsinite, Troglopundit, has celebrated his 5,000th post. Nice goin', Lance!

Sunday funnies

2012-01-07T17:00:00.006-05:00

Rogue concrete buffer defies all comers.

Full employment, Cuban style.

"I find your lack of sesame seeds...disturbing."

The continuing love affair between Australians and their crocodiles.

Cli-Fi Man

2012-01-06T20:19:00.006-05:00

If the government is going to be throwing money away on something called “environmental justice”, shouldn’t we at least get a superhero out of it?

“Sorry, Brandi, looks like there’s no time for a massage after all. The Commissioner has just flashed the dead polar bear sign in the sky and I've gotta go. Hi-yo Kyoto!”

Emergency!

2012-01-06T18:47:00.003-05:00

The ER in an undisclosed hospital. A patient on a gurney is writhing in pain, clutching his stomach.

Doctor: Ok, what’s wrong with this guy?

Nurse: He accidentally ingested some bad mushrooms.

Doctor: Have you administered an emetic?

Nurse: Yes, doctor. We tried syrup of ipecac, but it didn’t work. We also tried tartaric acid; same thing. He just won't vomit.

Doctor: All right. It’s dangerous, but I think we’re going to have to take drastic measures. Wheel him over to the computer, connect with the internet and make him read the piece at Newsbusters on Bryan Williams.

Three minutes later…

Patient: Bleahhhhh!!!!!

Nurse: Success!

(H/T: Small Dead Animals)

Some call him a “bitter clinger”

2012-01-06T18:46:00.000-05:00

But I think that Jeff G. may well be a genuine prophet.

One of the problems we in the US have is that we haven’t really seen tyranny up close, so we seem to think of it in cartoonish ways — a dictator in his camouflage fatigues and a Radar O’Reilly cap speaking from a balcony while the masses, ringed by a military protectorate, gather below and clap like trained seals — and as a result, we can’t believe it is actually happening here, now, in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

But it is. And Obama is telling you so. Harry Reid is telling you so. The activist progressive media is telling you so.

It’s a slow-motion revolution, but the pace is accelerating, and we can count on the fourth estate continuing to serve as a fifth column.

Let us join together to stop Red November!

Then, what does it do to your innards?

2012-01-06T07:30:00.001-05:00

Apparently one of the benefits of Mountain Dew is that it dissolves mice.

That's ok, we'll now have the money to build more Chevy Volts

2012-01-06T07:21:00.002-05:00

Charles Krauthammer criticizes Obama's decision to substantially shrink our military capabilities.

News from the Department of "Duh!"

2012-01-06T07:17:00.002-05:00

David Brooks finally deduces that Obama is a leftist.

If you've got a little time...

2012-01-05T18:54:00.004-05:00

In the comments section at Tim Blair's, commenter backseatelvis of 2479 (great handle, by the way) provides a link to a complete list of things caused by global warming.

Just made for leisurely browsing! And it's so comprehensive; you'll find everything from Afghan poppy destruction to the zebra mussel threat (although "great tits" isn't what you might think).

Happy Feet Friday

2012-01-05T18:35:00.009-05:00

Red Allen and his band rock the “House on 52nd St.”

Bonus video: Some swingin’ saxophone by Coleman Hawkins, from 1945.

Democrats challenged to do the right thing

2012-01-05T17:19:00.001-05:00

Smitty throws down the gauntlet to our two Virginia senate critters. Odds of success? Remote. But it is gracious and magnanimous of him to at least suggest that they are susceptible to the demands of honor. If nothing else, I do them the justice of believing that they possess a sense of shame. Which is why the letter is well-directed; a similar appeal to the honor of, say, Harry Reid or Charles Schumer would be viewed by the recipients as something completely inscrutable, as incomprehensible as a psalm rendered in Church Slavonic or the laws of the Marylebone Cricket Club.

The return of Dale – now with Kathy! – Peterson

2012-01-05T17:18:00.000-05:00

Dale Peterson, the (unfortunately) unsuccessful candidate for Alabama Agriculture Commissioner whose campaign video was a monster hit on YouTube, is back in a supporting role for his wife, Kathy, who’s running for the Republican nomination for President of the Public Service Commission. Watch Kathy’s campaign video at The Daily Caller - and be sure to watch all the way to the end, especially if you think you might get a hankerin’ to steal Kathy’s yard signs.

On the lighter side

2012-01-05T07:16:00.003-05:00

Ace of Spades has created an "Obama Not Satan" Twitter page which features numerous proofs that Barry is not, in fact, Lucifer. Sampler:

Satan wouldn't wear mom jeans.

Satan wants to take your soul, not your stuff.

We know what Satan did in the past.

Poor Mexico

2012-01-04T22:36:00.001-05:00

Joe Bendel reviews El Sicario, Room 164, a documentary on the Mexican drug cartels, over at Libertas (fascinating video clip included). The movie consists primarily of a lengthy interview with a former sicario, or professional killer, that takes place in a hotel room somewhere in the desert border country. Bendel’s conclusion? “If just half of what the sicario says is true, then the drug war is over in Mexico. The cartels won.” The reviewer also notes:

Frankly, it makes it pretty clear narco-terrorist warlords have taken over the country. This is not happening in remote Afghanistan, but along our southern border. It is also evident the current administration is not capable of thinking sufficiently strategically over the long term to combat them in any meaningful way. Sending them a bunch of free guns as part of Operation Fast & Furious just is not going to do it.

Eric Holder obviously didn’t create the drug problem in Mexico and the U.S., but he still has one hell of a lot to answer for. Putting guns into the hands of these animals was indefensible on any score.

There goes the narrative

2012-01-04T19:34:00.003-05:00

Let us take a brief walk down memory lane and recall the salad days of Obama’s presidential candidacy, as it appeared in that hope-filled era in Iowa, back in 2008 – and, while we’re at it, let us fact-check his ass.

Important questions for those who seek the presidency

2012-01-04T19:11:00.002-05:00

Chuck Norris has proposed the first five of an eventual ten questions that we should be asking about the Republican presidential aspirants. They’re all good questions, but I particularly like this one:

Who is most committed to follow and lead by the U.S. Constitution?

It's one thing to take the presidential oath of office, but who has the strongest track record of citing and standing by the Constitution?

James Madison, America's fourth president and regarded as the "Father of the Constitution," explained: "The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

Strictly following the Constitution includes restoring the 10th Amendment balance of power to our states and shifting solutions away from an "only government" savior (to which Obama committed early in his presidency) to encouraging local communities, agencies and neighborhoods across our nation to rally together, strategize and resurrect the golden rule in caring for their own, just as it was done in America's heyday.

Today’s Chuck Norris fact:

If Chuck Norris catches you looking him up on Google, he will smash your head into the keyboa…. as; dhffas;difsfd;sfdkl;dfwn;jwjn;f;wk;ewsddccknewioasd

“There’s nothing more dangerous than a woman with a child”

2012-01-04T19:10:00.002-05:00

As armed home invader, the late Justin Martin, discovered to his great cost.

Judging by the video, incidentally, it looks like Mrs. McKinley was wielding a Stoeger coach gun, or something very similar. I have a Stoeger 12 ga., and am gratified to learn that it performs so admirably.

Professional jealousy or deep calling to deep?

2012-01-04T19:10:00.001-05:00

Al Gore thinks Ron Paul is “silly”.

Zombees

2012-01-04T07:18:00.002-05:00

The zombie honeybee apocalypse. Actually, this is a problem that could have devastating effects on U.S. agriculture.

A heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect in colony collapse disorder a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U.S. honeybee populations, which are needed to pollinate many important crops. This new potential culprit is a bizarre and potentially devastating parasitic fly that has been taking over the bodies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in Northern California.

Issue #1

2012-01-03T22:59:00.005-05:00

Regardless of which Republican wins the nomination, the number 1 issue on the domestic front should be the repeal of Obama Care. The Heritage Foundation has loads of ammunition (oh, I'm sorry; is "ammunition" too provocative?)

Hey, I'll take what I can get

2012-01-03T22:49:00.002-05:00

Mexico's Grand Warlock has predicted that Obama will lose the election this year.

The unfriendly skies

2012-01-03T22:40:00.003-05:00

If global warming is true, then I guess flying sharks were inevitable.

Update: Even flying sharks are more believable than this:

Obviously a clumsy photoshop effort.

Iowa

2012-01-03T19:46:00.003-05:00

For those who are interested in the inside baseball of the nomination process, I will leave you in the capable hands of specialists such as Stacy McCain, Professor Jacobson, and Pat Austin.

My own views are from what one might call the 20,000-feet level. Romney appears poised to win, narrowly, in the caucuses, though it remains to be seen whether he can move on to victory in the many upcoming state primaries. If he does win the nomination, I will support him, with appropriate misgivings. He is a technocrat, which I take to mean someone who is interested primarily in making government work. Since, in our present circumstances, that means making big government work, I believe that he is not by any means the solution to our long-term problems. Still, I assume that he is not a man who dreams big, socialist dreams in the way Obama does, and if conservatives make further inroads into the Senate and House, Romney would be far more inclined to work with them than the congenitally hyperpartisan Obama ever would be. So, I suppose that Romney is a kind of methadone that could conceivably help us step down from our addiction to the Obama heroin. Of course, it is still a tad premature to start talking authoritatively about the Romney nomination; Santorum, Perry, Bachmann and Gingrich have all vowed to soldier on, regardless of the outcome in Iowa. And remember: in 1980 in Iowa, George H.W. Bush beat Ronald Reagan.

In any event, looking down the road a term or two, I don’t know that we really begin to get “clean” until the next generation of conservative Republicans starts moving up and demonstrating presidential potential: people like Senator Marco Rubio, for example, and perhaps Rep. Allen West, Governor Bobby Jindal and Governor Bob McDonnell; no doubt there are others, little known today, who may outstrip these in due course. And, most important of all, we need to work harder at electing conservatives at all levels of government, including state and local. If we want to have a great major league team, we need to have an extensive farm system.

We interrupt this blog’s regularly-scheduled programming…

2012-01-03T18:48:00.002-05:00

…to welcome new readers who enjoyed the George Washington letter, and who may, on the basis of that post, decide to return from time to time. One of my late, sainted grandmother’s favorite quotes from her beloved Farmer’s Almanac was, “He who tooteth not his own horn, the same shall go untooteth.” In that spirit, permit me to direct your attention to some of the historical highlights of this blog (not to worry; there aren’t that many, so this won’t take long).

Like H.L. Mencken, I tend to view democracy as a circus run from the monkey cage, so there is much in the way of satire here at Paco Enterprises. And yet, I am under no illusions concerning the provenance of the main threat: a secular leftism that seeks to reorder the relationship between the citizen and the state, diminishing the dignity and liberty of the former by vastly expanding the power and reach of the latter. Nonetheless, you will find only a few undiluted rants here; my chief weapon is the horselaugh. Toward that end, I deal largely in satire, having created a number of fictional characters (and fictional versions of real persons) to shoulder the burden of my political and social observations. Herewith, a sampler.

Many years ago, in the comments section of a blog far away (belonging, in point of fact, to the excellent Australian blogger, Tim Blair), I created a fictional private detective, a throwback to the 1940s gumshoe, named simply (and perhaps immodestly) “Detective Paco”. When I created my own blog, I brought him with me. Here’s Detective Paco’s most recent adventure, involving the “Fast and Furious” scandal.

Che Guevara kept a diary of his doomed revolutionary escapades in Bolivia; but there were numerous entries which never made it into the various published editions. You might enjoy this one (By the way: the complete Che stories, many of which have never been posted on this blog, are going to be released as a book this year – may it please God and my publisher).

Another fellow who appears at Paco Enterprises, from time to time, is a fabulously wealthy capitalist named J. Packington Paco III (who bears an intriguing resemblance to Sydney Greenstreet); and I mustn’t neglect to mention his gentleman’s personal gentleman, the redoubtable Spurgeon. In this yarn, J.P. tackles representatives of the “Occupy” movement, and in this story, he carries out a complex financial negotiation with Santa Claus.

Brad Smilo is a fictional newsman employed by the equally fictional Paco World News Daily (PWN’D). In this interview, he has a frank discussion with Joe Biden about the latter’s plagiarism problems.

Finally, there is one series that I enjoy writing, but will be glad to bring to an end, for obvious reasons: the various Obama White House skits. Here, Obama encounters the ghost of the last good Democratic president.

Mayan prediction of the end of the world silly superstition

2012-01-02T22:59:00.002-05:00

Say...Cuba's Santería priests.

Sue the bastards!

2012-01-02T16:16:00.004-05:00

America is, indeed, a comparatively litigious country. Here are eight of the most curious private legal actions of 2011. This guy, in particular, has cajones the size of coconuts:

A fugitive who took a Kansas couple hostage in their home sued them for $235,000. Accused murderer Jesse Dimmick claims Jared and Lindsay Rowley accepted his knifepoint offer of money to hide in their house. But the Rowleys later breached their "oral contract" by escaping as he slept, Dimmick says, "resulting in my being shot in the back by authorities."

(H/T: Overlawyered; also note the site's "Most Popular Posts of 2011", including the exciting saga of Rep. Dennis Kucinich's fight against "Big Pit interests")

And on the general subject of law, can we really any longer uphold the idea that "ignorance of the law is no excuse?" Even where there are 40,000 new ones?

How crony capitalism works

2012-01-01T17:19:00.015-05:00

Leaving aside, for the moment, the irony of President Barack Obama - who frequently gives the impression that he looks upon himself as a considerably more hip, charismatic and telegenic version of Eugene V. Debs - working hand in glove with Wall St. banks and major corporations to divvy up government-subsidized favors in exchange for political donations, one still wonders at the actual mechanics of the process. How does the president prioritize and divide the taxpayer spoils?

It's a simple matter, really, as revealed in this video captured by Paco World News Daily (PWN'D). Note, incidentally, the superior wheeling and dealing of GE's Jeffrey Immelt at approximately the 32-second mark.

Monday movie

2012-01-01T15:56:00.004-05:00

Now, that’s how you light a cigarette! Evelyn Keyes vamps it up in 99 River Street.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T19:17:00.013-05:00

No predictions, no retrospective "10 best/worst" lists. Just a prayer:

May God bless our valiant troops and grant them victory. May He also have mercy on the souls of those troops who have died, and give comfort to their families and their friends. And may He heal those wounded in body and spirit.

God bless my readers and their families, and may the coming year bring them happiness, good health and prosperity.

May God give us the wisdom and the determination to extricate ourselves from the coils of an expansive and parasitical State in this critical election year.

* * * * * * * * *

Good luck to all, and don't miss watching the big event, tonight.

No, no; not the dropping of the big red ball in Times Square. The dropping of the giant Moon Pie in Mobile, Alabama.

Update - Sunday funny: Occupy Lego!

The envelope, please...

2011-12-31T15:03:00.002-05:00

Doug Ross has posted his "2011 Fabulous 50 Blog Award Winners", and I was surprised and gratified that my George Washington bit won "Post of the Year". Many thanks, Doug!

You should drop by Doug's place and check out all the winners. I was particularly amused at some of the booby prizes, particularly this trio:

The David Brooks Award for Demi-Conservatism: David Frum
The David Frum Award for Faux Conservatism: Jennifer Rubin
The Jennifer Rubin Award for Pseudo-Conservatism: David Brooks

Legacy

2011-12-30T16:45:00.003-05:00

(Gratefully pinched from Moonbattery)

Happy Feet Friday

2011-12-29T19:29:00.003-05:00

Fats Waller and Ada Brown team up on "That ain't right" (from Stormy Weather).

George Washington writes a letter to President Obama

2011-12-29T17:43:00.007-05:00

Dear Mr. President:

Although it is two hundred years, and more, since I laid down the cares of an eventful temporal existence and took up residence in my long home, Our Gracious Lord has seen fit to bestow upon my spirit the gift of perpetual cognition, and He has granted the further boon of permitting me, for a few moments, to assume sufficient corporeality to pen this letter, which I place before Your Excellency as the cri de coeur of a patriot whose efforts on behalf of his country have been deemed by its citizens to possess no little significance.

I have watched, frequently with pride and joy, occasionally with grave misgivings and sadness, the arc of our country’s history over two centuries, since those of my generation first established that Orchard of Liberty on the North American continent that would become the envy of the world. Over many seasons that Orchard has borne good fruit, and has flourished in the golden light of our Sacred Constitution. In evil times, this Arboreal Garden has been watered with the blood of heroes, which sustenance has served to make it even hardier and more prolific.

Imagine my consternation then, Sir, when I look upon our Orchard today, and see the fruit withering on the branch, the crowns blighted, and the whole cloaked in the gauzy shrouds of assiduously destructive bagworms. How slothful and inattentive have become the arborists who constitute what my friend Thomas Jefferson referred to as our natural aristoi! What bovine complacency has afflicted a once alert and industrious citizenry! And – Your Excellency will pardon the boldness of one who was present at the creation – what pernicious and invidious husbandry doth your own administration display!

Under the sanction of what right, divine or human, do you and those of your faction undertake to transform a free people into a herd of lowing cattle? By what law, constitutional or legislative, do you and your like-minded philosophes propose to turn a great nation into a vast ward for the feeble-witted, or a prison for three hundred millions of debtors? You join with hordes of warlike Musselmen to beset our Hebrew brethren with chimerical demands, your Department of Justice - Justice, sirrah! – has taken pride of place amongst the criminal caste, and everywhere your rapacious clerks and petit judges harass honest citizens with encroachments on their liberties from which even His Late Majesty, George the Third, would have recoiled in disgust.

Our Garden is become a tangled bed of weeds and thorns as those of your school have beggared the working man, and stood as highwayman to the banker and merchant. Our system of public education is like unto an academy for the teaching of treason, and a university for the manufacture of a large class of impertinent mendicants for whom the taxpayers must serve as unwilling almoners in perpetuity. And you strive, through cunning and secret stratagems, to disarm the people, thereby subjecting them to the caprice of an all-powerful central government, in one stroke imposing tyranny and depriving the citizenry of the capacity for resisting it.

In spite of this accumulation of political felonies, you have had the temerity, the astonishing rind, to posit an intellectual and spiritual kinship with several of your distinguished predecessors. I note, with considerable relief, that you have not as yet presumed to impute to me the same act of bastardy with which you have sought to malign the honor of these illustrious gentlemen. I caution you never to do so, for, in the event, I would bargain with Almighty God that I should pass an hundred years in purgatory in exchange for the grace of an hour in which to call upon you, to offer the choice of sword or pistol.

Your most obedient servant,

George Washington

Oh, no!

2011-12-28T22:49:00.014-05:00

We've got some worrisome security leaks.

First, bitter presidential clinger Manuel Zelaya of Honduras finds out about the secret Jew rays, and now Hugo Chavez has uncovered the CIA cancer sauce.

This, however, has been declassified: Kim Jong-Il's last words...

"Thanks for the Cabernet, son. By the way, why does it taste like almonds?"

Is Mitt Romney just John McCain with hair?

2011-12-28T17:45:00.006-05:00

I don’t mean to suggest a similarity of temperament or judgment. The question occurs to me solely in the context of electability.

The situation is far different now than it was in November of 2008, of course. John McCain suffered from a number of disadvantages, not the least of which was a campaign in which instances of ineptitude on the part of himself and his staff frequently manifested themselves at inopportune moments like so many dead goldfish floating to the surface of a stagnant ornamental pond during an outdoor wedding reception. McCain’s biggest drawback, however, was his ill-disguised hostility to the conservative base, and the lingering fear among many conservatives that, in any contest with Democrats in Congress, McCain’s almost totemic veneration for compromise would encourage him to sell his – and his fellow citizens’ - birthright for a mess of pottage.

And then there was the spectacle of Barack Obama, sailing along easily on the trade winds of a story-book liberal narrative, crafted by his political machine and assisted by an adoring media. He was the healer, the “light worker”, the cosmopolitan brainiac who would miraculously cure the ills of the planet and its peoples, the man who was so conspicuously not George Bush. Possessing nothing in the way of tangible accomplishments, he was nonetheless armed with the indispensable tools of success in this know-nothing era : an obscure history buried under a mountain of hagiographical applesauce, a sonorous baritone and the borrowed trappings of a divine afflatus. It was all so impressive, so momentous, so promising, so…transparently fraudulent - but this last, unfortunately, only to voters who were both (1) paying attention and (2) not entirely unmoored from common sense (which is why, in the end, I grudgingly cast my vote for McCain, the lesser, by far, of two evils).

Fast forward, and today it is clear that even many of Obama’s dizziest fans, fetched early during his skyrocketing rise to national fame by all the glittering hype, have figured out that he is not a high lama of the Yellow Hats or the 12th imam, so his campaign for reelection has been brought back down to earth and is now taking the form of traditional demagoguery, garden variety mendacity and government baksheesh scattered among his well-heeled donors and favored constituencies. The economy limps along under the crushing weight of excessive government borrowing, unemployment is maddeningly high, the leftist satraps of the executive branch’s far flung regulatory network continue to chip away at our liberty, the Department of Justice has assumed a high place among our leading criminal enterprises, and the world beyond our shores is an increasingly dangerous environment in which this administration’s diplomats have proved to be ominously unsure guides.

In short, the banner of leftist ideology, carried by its boldest and most well-favored champion, has been shot to doll rags by reality, and there is a yearning among the people for a return to truth, justice and the American way. But is Romney Superman?

I am skeptical. While Romney’s organization is more competent and efficient that McCain’s ever was, his historical flip-flopping on a number of issues, and present reluctance to tip his hat to, let alone embrace, the concept of genuinely limited government, have cast him in the role of the much-maligned RINO. Does he have deep-seated beliefs – in anything – or is he truly a mere weathervane of establishment opinion? I have written before about the tendency of “moderate” Republicans to content themselves with serving as nothing more than a mass of barnacles on the Ship of State, slowing down, but not altering the course, of our apparently ineluctable voyage to socialism. Does Romney have settled conservative convictions, and the courage to defend them? Or is he just the Un-Obama?

Because if he’s simply the latter, I’m not sure that’s going to be enough. Romney has been running for president for years, and has never been able to break out of the 25% range of support among Republicans - largely, I believe, because of the slipperiness of his worldview. Is he really the person we want to send into the ring to duke it out with a weary, but still determined, foe? One who, moreover, is not averse to delivering rabbit punches and who will draw strength and confidence from a cheering press section?

Mark Levin has stated on many occasions that he would vote for a can of orange juice if that were the only alternative to Obama. So would I, and so will I vote for Romney if he is the Republican nominee – after all, if nothing else, at least he doesn’t burn with a desire to remake the country according to the hallucinatory visions of Richard Cloward and Frances Piven. But, aside from the absence of radical impulses – and even that virtue is suspect, given RomneyCare and the candidate’s refusal to back away from the individual mandate (which is akin to spiking one of our biggest guns in next year's battle, incidentally) - does Romney have more positive substance than the otherwise delightful breakfast beverage? And if not, will he still be able to beat Obama? In the meantime, I pray for a boost in the fortunes of Santorum or Perry or even Gingrich.

Update: Bryan Preston - a Romney endorser who isn’t reluctant to criticize the candidate – has some thoughtful observations on the Republican field.

Australia: one endless struggle between man and beast

2011-12-28T17:43:00.000-05:00

Elvis the crocodile steals a lawnmower (H/T: Mrs. Paco).