The Buttle’s World Monday Film Festival continues.
22 June, 2009
Balaam’s Ass
It had to happen sooner or later. Someone has really put Pixar in its place.
Why the Messiah is on the Mullah’s Side
Andy McCarthy is today’s required reading.
It’s a mistake to perceive this as “weakness” in Obama. It would have been weakness for him to flit over to the freedom fighters’ side the minute it seemed politically expedient. He hasn’t done that, and he won’t. Obama has a preferred outcome here, one that is more in line with his worldview, and it is not victory for the freedom fighters. He is hanging as tough as political pragmatism allows, and by doing so he is making his preferred outcome more likely. That’s not weakness, it’s strength — and strength of the sort that ought to frighten us.
13 June, 2009
Iran on Fire
One problem the Mad Mullahs of Iran didn’t count on is that, if you stage some sham elections for the benefit of the gullible international press, you have to make sure that the Iranian people get the memo. Some of them seem to be operating under the delusion that the elections actually meant something.
I’ve seen Twitter reports of people chanting from the rooftops, videos of massive protests, and this:
The government is now cutting off electricity to Tehran. For grid repair. At 5am.
You can follow those tweets here. Michael Totten has a continuously updated page here. Jpod sums it up.
For more than a decade, we’ve been hearing about the real Iran—the one whose youth is Westernized, desirous of connection with the United States, and tired of living in a theocracy. It’s too soon to know whether the protests today in Iran represent the fruition of the ideas about popular sentiment and the possibility of an uprising. But it is clear that this is a time of testing for the idea that the mullahcracy can be shaken to its foundations by an aggrieved populace. If it can’t, then the regime will prove itself stronger than some of its most heated critics say it is, and the world will have to adjust accordingly. If this is Tienanmen II, and the regime crushes it, there will be no easy approach to regime change. And there will be no pretending any longer that Iran’s regime isn’t a unified, hardline, irridentist, and enormously dangerous one.
I don’t hold out a lot of hope, really. A huge percentage of Iranians are still anti-Semites who believe in the Twelfth Imam. That kind of hatred and superstition is hard to combat. Note what the protestors are shouting:
“My next door neighbor is an Iranian immigrant who came here in 1977. He just received a SAT phone call from his brother in Tehran who reports that the rooftops of nighttime Tehran are filled with people shouting ‘Allah O Akbar‘ in protest of the government and election results. The last time he remembers this happening is in 1979 during the Revolution. Says the sound of tens of thousands on the rooftops is deafening right now.” It’s almost four in the morning in Iran. (emphasis added)
Update:
Another Twitter feed: ChangeforIran
12 June, 2009
Beck Serves Krugman
I’m not a big fan of Beck, and some of what I’ve heard from him is definitely, as Allapundit puts it, “febrile”. But he gets Krugman where he lives in this video.
And I like the exit question.
How come all jihadist killers act alone but all “right-wing” killers have a million accomplices?
So Much for “The Obama Effect”
I almost gagged last night when my local CBS television “news” show was blathering about the elections in Iran. They breathlessly intoned about youth involvement, about the charismatic “reform” candidate who actually campaigned with his wife. And they said “some” (there goes that straw man again?) were calling it “The Obama Effect.”
Yes, they desperately wanted to credit the Messiah with changing an election in Iran.
Made me laugh right out loud.
The elections are just window dressing for the gullible international press. Just how gullible is probably beyond the mullahs’ wildest dreams. Every candidate in the election was selected by the mullocracy. It doesn’t matter who wins; the Sharia Sh*theads will still be calling the shots. The office of president in Iran has no real power, anyway. He’s a figure head for, mostly, the gullible international press.
But now it looks like I’mANutJob has won again anyway.
I wonder if the sycophants in the state-run media will credit that to the “Obama Effect”.
11 June, 2009
Sound Familiar?
Here’s a primer from How the Mighty Fall on the stages failing companies pass through.
- Stage 1 is hubris born of success. The company’s people become arrogant, regarding success as virtually an entitlement.
- Stage 2 is the undisciplined pursuit of more — more scale, more growth, more acclaim. Companies stray from the disciplined creativity that led them to greatness in the first place, making undisciplined leaps into areas where they cannot be great or growing faster than they can achieve with excellence, or both.
- Stage 3 is denial of risk and peril. Leaders of the company discount negative data, amplify positive data and put a positive spin on ambiguous data. Those in power start to blame external factors for setbacks rather than accept responsibility.
- Stage 4 is grasping for salvation. Common “saviors” include a charismatic visionary leader, a bold but untested strategy, a radical transformation, a “game changing” acquisition or any number of other silver-bullet solutions.
- Stage 5 is capitulation to irrelevance or death. Accumulative setbacks and expensive false starts erode financial strength and individual spirits to such an extent that leaders abandon all hope of building a great future. In some cases their leaders just sell out. In other cases the institution atrophies to utter insignificance.
Remind you of any large countries?
David Letterman, meet Dan Rather
This whole thing makes me sad. I was such a fan of David Letterman back in the 80’s. I time shifted his show and watched it religiously. He was hip, quick, and funny.
Not anymore. And CBS knows it.
I guess I owe the NY Times an apology from when I suggested they altered the Letterman transcript and failed to note it. Courtesy of Tim Blair, it seems that it was CBS itself that altered the transcript before it was released. They obviously knew it was problematic. Why haven’t they apologized as a network, at least to the Palins, for airing it?
Given that it was CBS, the only question that remains is, did they use a word processor, PC or an imitation of an old typewriter from Bush’s National Guard days to do it before they sent it out?
This makes me sad the way seeing an old friend go bats would. Like what happened with Ben Stein.
Update:
Credit where it’s due: NOW has added Letterman to its Media Hall of Shame. Of course, they manage to whine about what Rush Limbaugh said a decade or more ago:
On that point, it’s important to note that when Chelsea Clinton was 13 years old she was the target of numerous insults based on her appearance. Rush Limbaugh even referred to her as the “White House dog.” NOW hopes that all the conservatives who are fired up about sexism in the media lately will join us in calling out sexism when it is directed at women who aren’t professed conservatives.
I remind the gals at NOW that Rush got just as much criticism from the right as from the left for that joke. He also offered a sincere apology. The moral equivalency game really breaks down when you compare calling a kid ugly to making jokes about raping one.
10 June, 2009
Obama “Straight Face” Watch
The Messiah beheld the murder of the Holocaust Museum guard by a deranged racist and deigned to pronounce:
This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms.
Amen. Let us all remain vigilant against anti-Semitism on the part of deranged racists.
And then there were 112
It’s official: There’s a new element. It needs a spiffy name. And no, unobtanium is not in the running.
Hey, isn’t Sábia (Wise) an adjective?
Truly, our next Supreme Court Justice has a dizzying intellect.
Una Latina muy sábia. Sí.
The Messiah’s Sense of Humor
My guess is that they tell these “jokes” around the White House with straight faces.
“We have a joke around the White House: We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working. And nowhere is truth-telling more important than the Middle East.” –Barack Obama **”Apologies if that caused you to spew coffee on your keyboard.” –James Taranto
9 June, 2009
8 June, 2009
Jenny McCarthy’s Real Contribution to Children
It’s a body count.
With at least 168 kids dead so far, the CDC is fighting back with a video aimed at most of the bullcrap the antivaxers are peddling. Watch it all the way to the end for some extra cuteness.
Update, and bumped:
Somehow the video didn’t get embedded. Here you go:
You Scare Me
Before it hits your email inbox with a zillion ‘>’ marks from being forwarded, let’s just use Snopes.com to confirm that Lou Pritchett really did write this open letter to The Messiah.
Hijab, Hajib, Whatever
Hitch on The Messiah’s Cairo speech.
Take the single case in which our president touched upon the best-known fact about the Islamic “world”: its tendency to make women second-class citizens. He mentioned this only to say that “Western countries” were discriminating against Muslim women! And how is this discrimination imposed? By limiting the wearing of the head scarf or hijab (a word that Obama pronounced as hajib—imagine the uproar if George Bush had done that). The clear implication was an attack on the French law that prohibits the display of religious garb or symbols in state schools. Indeed, the following day in Paris, Obama made this point even more explicitly.
Moral Equivalency Watch
Raymond Ibrahim looks at the comparitive violence of Judaism and Christianity vs. Islam. It’s an interesting read, and its conclusion not a surprise. Seems to me, though, to ignore the basic point: So-called moral equivalency arguments of this type are tu quoque fallacies.
No matter how bloody or brutal Judaism or Christianity may or may not have been in the past, nothing justifies the brutal violence of jihadists today. It’s the kind of argument one can expect on a school yard among nine year olds. “Tommy did it first!”
6 June, 2009
The Longest Day
Mark today’s 65th Anniversary of D-Day by watching this interview with a man who was there.
Update:
Also a good day to re-read The Gipper’s Boys of Pointe du Hoc speech.
5 June, 2009
Oprah Makes Me Sick
Or, rather, she probably would if I were foolish enough to pay any attention to her. Kudos to Newsweek for taking her on.
But back on the Oprah show, McCarthy’s charges went virtually unchallenged. Oprah praised McCarthy’s bravery and plugged her book, but did not invite a physician or scientist to explain to her audience the many studies that contradict the vaccines-autism link. Instead, Oprah read a brief statement from the Centers for Disease Control saying there was no science to prove a connection and that the government was continuing to study the problem. But McCarthy got the last word. “My science is named Evan, and he’s at home. That’s my science.” Oprah might say that McCarthy was just sharing her first-person story and that Oprah wasn’t endorsing her point of view. But by the end of the show, the take-away message for any mother with young kids was pretty clear: be afraid.
James Randi has also had experience with the manipulative charlatan.
Back in April of 1995, I’d been contacted by the Oprah show and made an offer to do a second appearance with them. I simply told them, “No thanks”; I’d already been sandbagged by that show. In that appearance, I’d been told, just before I left my hotel for the studio, that the previously-scheduled “psychics” – for whom I was well prepared – would not be showing up. I went all the way out to the location and then found out, moments before the show went on the air – live – that those major “psychics” actually were appearing on the show. Though I’d I’d prepared video and newspaper material to contradict the pompous and false claims of those two scheduled “psychics,” I’d left the data behind at the hotel when told I’d be without opposition, and I had nothing in hand. It was a blatant, calculated lie designed to trap me, and I fell for it. But I’d not do it again. I’m sure Oprah doesn’t need me, and I have no need of such unethical behavior. There are rules, even though Oprah doesn’t seem to know them.
Woo is not harmless. Woo can kill. Oprah’s overexposed name should be added soon alongside Jenny McCarthy’s in the Body Count.
1 June, 2009
The Reality Behind the Fantasy
I didn’t actually work on Up so I’m not exactly tooting my own horn when I send you off to read about some of the very real geology behind the movie.
I did, though, contribute to Partly Cloudy.
Which has pretty much no science in it at all.
