Posted 10:37 PM by Gene

His Omnipotence singles out Israel after promising not to single it out.

I guess He's going to try to win the midterms without Jews.

Posted 10:32 PM by Gene

The backlash against climate science is also about the way in which leading scientists allied themselves with politicians and activists to promote their cause. Some of the IPCC’s most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, newspaper articles, and corporate reports—including claims of plummeting crop yields in Africa and the rising costs of warming-related natural disasters, both of which have been refuted by academic studies.

WhooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS!!!!!

Posted 9:13 PM by Gene

The Osama Channel, still up to its old tricks:

The two language services are editorially separate. The English one’s choice of topics reflects the third-world interests of its viewers, concentrating more than its Western counterparts do on global poverty and the anger often felt towards America and the West. But it offers a wide range of opinion and covers Western politics well too. Both language services have bureaus in Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah (the Palestinian Authority’s seat), regularly giving Israelis a voice.

The Arabic service is a lot more controversial. Pro-Western Arab governments, particularly those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which denies Al Jazeera a bureau, repeatedly accuse it of bias. In particular they say it favours the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s chief opposition, and Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza and refuses to recognise Israel. The Arabic service’s head, Waddah Khanfur, and his news editor, Ahmed Sheikh, are both West Bank Palestinians said to enjoy cosy relations with Hamas. Many of the station’s Egyptian staff are deemed sympathetic to the Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch....

Al Jazeera’s anti-Western populism was strongly echoed at its recent forum on “the Arab and Muslim world: alternative visions”. Many speakers, denoting piety or loyalty to political Islam, prefaced their remarks with incantations of reverence for the Prophet Muhammad. On Palestine, not a single one of 200-odd invited participants spoke up for a two-state solution, apart from a clutch of doveish Americans; Hamas’s official one-state preference for the Jewish state’s abolition easily prevailed. A senior Hamas man waxed eloquent. If a representative of the Palestinian Authority, now in “proximity talks” with Israel, was present, his voice was unheard.

On Iraq, not a single speaker, apart from a forlorn parliamentarian from the Iraqi prime minister’s party who made a desultory comment by video-conference, expressed a flicker of sympathy for the new Shia-led order, which several voices denounced as wholly illegitimate. The Gazan who edits al-Quds al-Arabi, a populist London-based newspaper that resonates in the Arab world, drew the loudest applause with a ringing call to back the continuing Iraqi “resistance”, even though the fight is now almost entirely between Arabs. No wonder Al Jazeera makes pro-Western Arab leaders, excoriated as puppets, feel queasy—Qatar’s, of course, excepted.

Posted 8:19 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



A $2 million doghouse!

Posted 7:23 PM by Gene

Speaking of successes, this vast one has written a colyumn (not online yet) praising our mayor's attempt at a soda tax. I do not like writing about things employer-related but so goaded I must. As a Cocaholic with nerves and teeth to evidence it I was intensely concerned our City Council would have a mass Profile in Courage and approve the thing. We all agree caffeinated carbonated high-fructose-corn-syrup water is dubious for the health. But to put it in a league with tobacco and alcohol is at best obtuse, with the sort of PC hectoring that underlines such a tax's true purpose. What is more our guvment paid out millions to bribe Tasty Baking Co. to stay in Philthydelphia. You want junk food? Consider its recent totally artificial imitations of Yodels. And what guvment taketh guvment can give away. This would have cost jobs -- and revenues to our city's Water Department, where I work. (Guess who two of our biggest customers are?) We might not have lost as much as we made but it's the sort of lawmaking we've been so accustomed to lately, where the three-fingered right hand scribbles a law and the palsied left hand administers it, and there's never the passing of the baton or even a shaking of hands.

Buzz wrote this because he can afford the taxes -- hundreds of times over. Too many colyumnists have gotten the effete-snob way because they're so much better than the reader simps. And Buzz has made millions from the royalties from "the best book on sports over the last quarter century", and HIS movie, and HIS TV show, not to mention HIS speaking engagements; so maybe the time has come for HIM to retire, as did his dear friend that former StinkyInky colyumnist the DOG MAN, and live the life of Riley in Southern Cal, where he belongs -- or better still in BRISTOL, LAND OF ZILLIONAIRES.

Posted 7:00 PM by Gene

Terry Teachout has written a somewhat fatuous column about "masterpiece fatigue" -- somewhat fatuous in that Terry's become a different writer since the "success" of his AH-pe-RAH, and the "success" of his Satch bio, and perhaps somewhere he figures his musical masterwork should take the place of those fatigued masterpieces. (Never mind it got rotten reviews -- but didn't Tchaikovsky?) That said the problem with Kind of Blue may not be fatigue but groupthink; as it's the victim of so much CRITICAL ACCLAIM you must steel yourself up to like it, and it turns out to be, well, dull. What Mark Twain said of books applies to CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED jazz albums. And the chances of your throwing jazz away with Kind of Blue vastly increase if you're a neophyte. (I happen to like Birth of the Cool myself.) There's plenty of good obscure music floating around. How many thousands of jazz CDs are there? The excellent British label Hyperion has made a whole series out of forgotten piano concertos. The problem is most were forgotten for a reason. Nikolai Medtner (one example) was as profound a composer as Rachmaninoff -- but his works are basically all harmony and no melody. Too much art inevitably must succumb to the long-tail syndrome (ugh!). But another part of it, a part Teachout is obscuring in no small way because he's written a "successful" opera, is that nobody's writing the works that could supplant the Messiahs and Nutcrackers, for the genius isn't there anymore, however many raves Terry writes.

Posted 4:20 PM by Gene

We have not had to read that longtime PEOPLE WARNER MAGAZINES toady B. S. DEFENDER for awhile, but HENRY HONEST!!!!! has forced him on us, and we can say just as bloggers like B. S. have NOT led to America to jernalistic nirvana, so we doubt His Omnipotence will tax them into submission -- though we may make an exception with B. S.

Posted 3:59 PM by Gene

Several years ago we said, "Any big business that calls itself 'international' gives itself carte blanche to commit treason." BP is a nominally British corporation -- it was British Petroleum even after the crying jag over Diana -- but if you asked the company's senior lummoxes where they're headquartered they'd say, in a fit of automatic cliché spouting, "WE'RE HEADQUARTERED ALL OVER THE WORLD!!!!!" (The more the oil leaks the more it would seem that way.) The same with STEVEDOM, HP and Dell. Ask that Phil Mickelson lookalike who founded the last excuse for outsourcing what country he's headquartered in and it would add ten strokes every round to his daily golf game. STEVEDOM? STEVEDOM knows no bounds; it is a religion, a philosophy -- and a COUNTRY! With such attitudes international traitors like BP can foul the water anywhere, and STEVEDOMs can administer all manner of ill treatments to their wage slaves.

P. S.

Working at Foxconn dramatically reduces people’s risk of suicide! (Boldface SIC)

Tom's ready for a con-SER-va-tive BLOG!

Posted 3:41 PM by Gene

Long before SLIME and His tool SIMON, there was Eurovision. In 4,000 years when SLIME finally leaves this mortal coil (due to an error by the same cryonics technicians who will have preserved SUMNER) there will be Eurovision. Long after the earth has turned cinder there will be Eurovision.

Posted 3:36 PM by Gene

In discussions with some of the 115 rig workers who were rescued after the blast, Billy Anderson said he learned that his son’s efforts during the final minutes to control the pressure surge saved scores of lives.

“My boy was cremated,” Billy Anderson said. “But the actions he and those other 10 heroes took are what made it possible for more than 100 other people to escape with their lives.”

Jason Anderson was a toolpusher, an offshore drilling job akin to foreman on a construction site, which gave him responsibility for overseeing the workers involved in the nuts- and-bolts of drilling and finishing wells.

Anderson had worked aboard the Deepwater Horizon since it was launched from a South Korean shipyard in 2001, his father said. Once the vessel arrived in the Gulf of Mexico, he worked alongside exploration specialists from BP, which had the rig under lease for all of its existence. Prior to that, he was assigned to the Cajun Express, another of Geneva-based Transocean’s most sophisticated rigs.

Shortly before last month’s disaster, Anderson had been promoted to senior toolpusher and was scheduled to transfer to his new post aboard another rig, the Discoverer Spirit, by helicopter at 7 a.m. on April 21. The Deepwater Horizon exploded nine hours before his flight was due to lift off.

Anderson, a father of two and a former high school football middle linebacker, started working aboard offshore rigs in 1995, scraping paint from below the water line, the lowest-ranking job on a rig.

His father thought the grueling labor would convince his son to study harder after two lackluster years of junior college. Instead, Jason Anderson decided he enjoyed being offshore and began working his way up to jobs of increasing responsibility, his father said.

“He loved his work and thought of his crewmates as family,” said Billy Anderson. “He was the kind of son a man wants and loves and hopes his son will be.”

These are the people the Chief DILBERTS must sacrifice in order to pay themselves what they don't deserve.

P. S. BP meekly pays a $69,200 fine, less than some CEOs earn in a day.

Posted 8:32 PM by Gene

Reading of Art Linkletter it's clear he had opportunities impossible in our time, but more than that, he had that inner gumption to overcome his earliest adversity of abandonment (and the awful tragedy of his daughter's death thanks to drugs) to become a living embodiment of Ben Franklin's wisdom, an active man who lived, and who had that unconquerable optimism of the sort that once guided America, and in this case made for a truly happy man who made others happy too.

Posted 12:02 PM by Gene

JUXTAPOSITION OF THE DAY, from IWantMedia:

Posted 11:57 AM by Gene

Advertising is BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!

(Via NYTimes.com via MediaBistro)

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

World must respond to sinking of S. Korean ship, Clinton says

Posted 11:37 AM by Gene

We must wonder how many stories the GANNETTOIDS had to ignore to make room for this ad about edible logos and other merchandise from our favorite amalgamation of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTITUDE, but it was enough to earn them another



NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD!

Posted 11:28 AM by Gene

The same megalomaniacs prostrate with grief three years ago at the funeral of ST. JACK OF VALENTI had a reunion in Lincoln Center, and we can be sure between backslaps they were very busy blaming THEIR AUDIENCE for the crappy pictures THEY somehow manage to make.

And there was another inconvenience last night, too.

Posted 6:07 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Rocco and his hopeful believers want to wave their TRANSGRESSIVE middle fingers at the public again (M----ms thankfully excluded), but this won't happen because the public has learned how to be transgressive BACK.

(Via the usual AHTSJournal)

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



$100 million -- and when do the LAWSUITS begin?

A "clinic for brain health in Las Vegas". We could think of a few people who could use it.

And it goes without saying -- Veg DESERVES IT.

At least it doesn't rain in Veg -- for now. (Although that MIT lawsuit was settled, dammit!)

I want to be with those doctors after a year in one of MR. STARCHITECT's trapezoids.

AND:



A nursing home!

Could it be -- an advanced case of STARCHITECTURAL SENILITY?

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

Another example of what we would not miss if Zeitgeist finally gathered up the courage to fold.

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

And speaking of His Honorary, isn't This Wondrous News an argument against neutral sites?

And it only took millions of taxpayers shaken upside-down to do it!

Of course I can think of arguments for it: INBEV (Anheuser-Busch), P&G, Coke, PepsiCo, the Clunker Brothers, the movee extruders, etc., etc., ETC.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

Three heds from The Usual Romy:

Bankrupt Tribune wants to give another $15 million in bonuses to executives (Link)

$15 million colyumnists? $15 million bonuses.

Bloomberg: 'BusinessWeek lost its way and it was not germane to its audience' (Link)

Honorary Mayor, judging from Your version it's still in a dark forest in the dead of a cloudy, foggy, rainy night.

Two more editors resign from Harper's Magazine (Link)

When does that irrelevance finally kick its long-awaited bucket?

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Really I wish both sides would sit down and shut up, but His Omnipotence brought this on Himself by being something -- different.

(Via the usual NRO)

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

Fifteen years ago (I think) that hack Connell, Cornell, whatever her name is, started writing in The Cute Little Pink Paper about well-dressed upscale sailor-whores, and I subscribed to the paper, and my first reaction was EW!!! YUCK!!!! GROSS!!!!! It is exasperating to think, fifteen years later, that the world has finally caught up to me, especially when this new revulsion is expressed by hypocrites who fifteen years ago would have been leading the raves.

Posted 6:50 AM by Gene

"WE WERE GIVEN A CHANCE TO RE-BRAND, TO KEEP WHAT WAS TRADITIONAL BUT MAKE OURSELVES MORE TODAY, AND I THINK WE'VE DONE THAT!!!!!" he said. "WE'RE NOW BACK WITH A LOT OF STRENGTH AND BACK TO SHOW EVERYONE THAT MISS AMERICA IS THE AMERICAN TRADITION. IT'S A POP ICON!!!!!!!!!!" (Strong traditional iconic overemphasis added)

TRANSLATION: UB IGER frequents fire sales.

Posted 6:44 AM by Gene

We doubt the Koreas will war, in part because the WORRRRRRULD COMMUNITY wants to maintain its fictions; but by not warring they set a new standard of diplomacy: The Obama Doctrine -- taking as many blows as you can before staging a national tantrum. Perhaps both sides perceive the costs of war are far greater than what might be gained by throwing tantrums. Yet in this conflict one side is utterly morally wrong; nonetheless the onus is plainly on South Korea, being the aggressed, and the WORRRRRRULD COMMUNITY believes all war wrong, no matter how justified (except against ISRAEL). But if any side can take infinite blows in the name of preserving "peace" at what absurd point is war justified?

Posted 6:39 AM by Gene

The Blutos were relatively silent last night, probably because 1. It was a Monday, and only alcoholics get drunk on Mondays -- the definition of melancholy; 2. The stupids -- students were mostly gone back home to eventually root for teams other than "ours", and to look for other excuses for debauchery; 3. It was a blowout series (thankfully); 4. Winning a conference championship lacks the same mythical standing as a pennant, whose importance is a carefully-preserved figment of SELIGISM's sordid imagination; and 5. For all the talk of COMEBACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, professional hockey remains a hopelessly niche (read: largely ignored) sport whose self-inflicted wounds of the last decade are still very open, and which still smart. Now onto another celebration for the very affluent, and for the very affluent sports hacks engaged in another form of sleeping on a virtually nonexistent job, and for the crooked politicians who waste tax dollars to get free seats, and the hope that this will be a blowout sweep -- either way.

Posted 8:28 PM by Gene

Nearly every town had a Wee Willie Webber. He was our Jewish version of the "Kansas City Star" who unspooled the cartoons in the afternoons. Yes, nearly every town had them. Now no town has them. We are not better for it.

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Look GANNETTOIDS, we know of your obsession with PROFITS, but don't you think sometimes you carry it a bit too far?



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO STEVE, BRIAN, ELYSA, JERRY -- AND DAVE 'N' JOHN!