What Elf Stuffed Into His Brain On His Commute This Morning...

[elfs]

Fox to FCC: Your sexual fantasies are not our problem

Wait, isn't this the channel that promotes good family values?

The Long Defeat

David Brooks, whom I would not normally quote, tells us about the eventual nomination of Barack Obama and Hillary's spoilsport tactics.

Pat Buchanan's America: Blacks Not Included.

America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

...

No people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Wait, those services have never gone to white people? I'm pretty sure they have. And as for "Christian Salvation," I'm pretty sure the faiths they had before then were serving them just fine, Pat. The whole thing is pure WTF. Hilzoy has the same complaint, and more.

"You have exported poisoned financial products."

Remember how Americans felt about China when we discovered that there were poisons in our cat food and dog food? That's exactly how European and Asian markets now feel about American collateralized bond obligations, credit default swaps, and other derivative exotic financial instruments, and many of them are going to make us pay for it. The legalism system used here in the US may not be as robust as the reputation system familiar to Europe. (On the other hand, the reputation system makes it much harder for newcomers to get into the game. I'm not sure which is better.)

John McCain: We're winning. I don't care what anybody says.

McCain says this after being "on the ground" in Iraq. The soldiers call McCain's visit combat slumming.

US Assistant Attorney General for Ronald Reagon, Doug Kmiec, endorses Barack Obamam

In various ways, Sen. Barack Obama and I may disagree on aspects of these important fundamentals, but I am convinced, based upon his public pronouncements and his personal writing, that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view and, as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them.

...

As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic. Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or a clear objective. In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment. Today, I do no more than raise the defense of that important office anew, but as private citizen.

Whoa.

Hillary Clinton sits down with Richard Mellon Scaife

I'm still in WTF mode after Buchanan, so the fact that Hillary is sitting down with Scaife, a man who spent almost two million dollars trying to prove the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered and used state troopers to cover up their other crimes, simply has my poor little neurons melting down.

The Obama Doctrine

A much better article by Spencer Ackerman on Obama's foreign policy team and their focus on restoring not just America's dignity in the world, but on treating other nations as if had dignity and worth of their own. An excellent read.

Grid-Based Design: Grid-Based Design: Six Creative Column Techniques

All play and no work makes Elf a poor boy.

Ten Unusual Wordpress Themes

A nice collection of layouts that show the different kinds of density you might try to acheive depending upon the kind of website you're running.

The Correct Answer To One Common Stupid Question (Thanks, Mike!)

Last night, I concluded my talk with a quote from Dover, PA creationist school board member William Buckingham, who declared, "Two thousand years ago someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?"

My response was, "In the last two minutes, someone died from a bacterial infection. We take a stand for him."

Giant Squid Homosexual Tentacle Rape (SFW)

No comment.

Comments

[gromm.livejournal.com]

The whole thing is pure WTF.

That's because Pat Buchanan is pure WTF from head to toe. The three dimensional projection of Pat Buchanan we see in our universe is in fact only a small extension of his true self, which lives largely in an entire other dimension.

Alternatively, he dedicates every waking moment windmilling his fists at anything politically to the left of Robert Byrd.

[stephdray.livejournal.com]

Naturally, I clicked on the squid link. I hope that doesn't say anything about me.

[stephdray.livejournal.com]

Oh, I also clicked on David Brooks. Unfortunately, he's always wrong about everything, so the fact that he thinks Hillary is losing means that Obama might be doomed.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

I don't know; Hilary seems to be determined to beat Pinocchio, with her statements getting wilder and wilder -- her statement about her trip to Bosnia as First Lady where she landed under sniper fire and had to run to her vehicles, forgoing any welcoming ceremony, reiterating the statement later, only to have CBS footage from her trip showing her walking calmly off the plane, talking to soldiers on duty, then receiving flowers from a young girl there... But she merely 'misspoke'. She claims years of human-rights experience -- during a period she was working as a corporate lawyer. She claims years of foreign-policy experience -- when she had no authority for forming the foreign policy she was presenting and no responsibility for its consequences. But when her claim for experience 'under fire' to bolster her foreign policy credentials sinks faster than the Britannic, it was a 'minor blip' among her "millions of words a day" (a volume that would take an auctioneer, at 400 words a minute, 42 hours to reach). Eventually, even her supporters are going to start recognizing how far over the edge she's pushing herself.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I drove home during lunch and on talk radio (yeah, I know, that bastion of sanity) they were interviewing military personnel who were utterly fucking furious at Hillary. Her Bosnia "misspeaking" was tantamount to accusing the military command of mis-identifying the risk in a "show the flag" operation so badly they put the First Lady, First Daughter, and guests in harm' way. Her words amount to an accusation of incompetence and malfeasance. They are not happy.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

"No people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans."

I keep hearing this comment. Mostly from people who have never traveled outside the US.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

I suppose that it loses a great deal from lack of context if they don't distinguish between elevating them to equality and hauling them up in a lynching...