It’s the Year of the Rooster!
Of course, if you’re into rampant Beavis-and-Buttheadism like me,
you’re going to be and keep referring to it as “Year of the Cock” or
better yet, by my own coinage: “Cocktoberfest”.
(I prefer my coinage: it’s poultry in motion!)
Kung hei fat choy, everybody.
At least, we finally know what KFC truly stands for. D’you think Colonel Sanders and General Tao ever served together?
[via Bacon and Eh’s] The headline says it all: Sherry Enema Kills Man.
Ayn Rand (nee Alissa “Alice”
Zinovievna Rosenbaum) would’ve turned 100 yesterday. To quote Chistopher “Incoming Signals” Bahn, we should all bake cakes and then not share them with anybody.
Rand did get a few things right, in my opinion: communism bad,
capitalism good, reward the talented who produce good output. But her
philosophy, Objectivism, also casts petty selfishness, meanness and
“screw you” as virtues and altruism and charity as vice. Its version of
morality is overly simple and already comes built-in with any five-year
old.
Her followers at the Ayn Rand Institute are no picnic either. Consider the essay What Young People Really Need: Not Volunteerism but Happiness and Heroes:
There is nothing wrong with an individual doing charity work, if it
is not a sacrifice for him. But charity is not a moral ideal, nor does
human life depend on it. Achievement is the moral ideal because man’s
life does depend on it.
If you live by this code of achievement, and struggle for your own
values and attain happiness, then, as a by-product, your life will
serve as an inspiration to others, showing them how much is possible,
giving them courage to struggle for their own achievements. Michael
Jordan, for example, has been termed a “know-nothing capitalist” by
those who, like the President [Bill Clinton at the time the article was written — Joey], hold that goodness consists of taking
poor children to the zoo on a summer day. But a question needs to be
raised to the advocates of volunteerism. What do you think young people
find more inspiring: the sight of Jimmy Carter building churches in the
jungles of Guatemala, or the vision of Michael Jordan soaring through
the air, winning championships and earning millions, then flashing his
joyous, brilliant, life-giving smile? The truth is that Michael
Jordan’s extraordinary success has inspired far more young people,
poor, middle-class or rich, black, white or Asian, to strive for their
own dreams than an army of social workers could ever think possible. As Ayn Rand puts it in Atlas Shrugged, “The sight of an achievement is the greatest gift that a human being could offer to others.”
What. An. Ass. The parable A Boy’s Life or Death is even worse, suffering from both bad philospohy and ham-fisted writing.
Ayn Rand is the topic of discussion on MetaFilter and on the cover of this month’s issue of Reason magazine. If you’d like to find out more about her from a devotee and a detractor, consider this essay by acolyte Leonard Peikoff and this smackdown by Catherine Daligga.
(Amusing note: according to Daligga’s essay, Rand’s funeral wreath was a six-foot floral dollar sign. She was gangsta rap before gangsta rap!). Bling bling, Annie!
Proof that there’s a dating service for every subculture: there’s an Ayn Rand dating and networking site!
Who wants to bet that all those dates are “Dutch”?
“And Canada also pitched in during the War of the Worlds in 1938…”
Here’s a video clip (700K, QuickTime, enclosure) featuring Ann “Four
legs good, two legs better!” Coulter doing what she does best — going
with her gut feeling and coming up with unsubstantiated facts to back
them up. In this segment, an appearance on the CBC’s news magazine show, The Fifth Estate, she’s quite sure that Canada participated in
the Vietnam war (which in fact, was not the case).
I’ll put my cards on the table right now: Coulter is a completely
insane bitch. Her worldview is that sort of “if you’re not completely
with us, you’re must be an enemy after our precious bodily fluids”
thinking — consider her books Treason (in which she equates anything other than her brand of neoconservatism as such) and How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)
(the sort of back-patting cliquery that one should’ve dispensed with
after high school). I’ve read both books and must say that I’ve seen
better paper after wiping my ass.
Click the image to see the full-size version.
Thankfully, what actually happened…
…was much better than National Lampoon’s joke predictions:
All things considered, I hope the vote goes to Iyad Allawi of the
“Thinly Disguised American Puppet Party” rather than Ahmad Chalabi of
the “Iranian Puppet Party”.
Let’s just see what we can do about making history not repeat itself. As Daily
Kos points out, there was an another election that had an equal
promise:
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3– United States officials were surprised and
heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential
election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.
According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million
registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked
reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.
The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to
destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a
preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete
returns reaching here.
[The article links to the original New York Times pieces.]
Cross your fingers, folks.
Here, thanks to
the file sharing site that I’m not allowed to talk about, is a video of an interview with Vanity Fair contributing editor Judy Bachrach and empty-headed “Faux News” drone Brigitte Quinn [QuickTime,
9.7 MB, included as an enclosure]. It was supposed to be an
inconsquential “isn’t it great that Dubya got re-elected?” interview
about the inauguration, but it didn’t end up being the fawning Bush
love-in as planned and Bachrach took the opportunity to burst Quinn’s
bubble. Quinn, who shows herself to be clearly incapable of independent
thought, went down with the first verbal blow and proceeded to get
beaten like a rented mule.
Here’s the transcript:
it’s
really coming down! I hope that doesn’t put a crimp in anybody’s plans.
Look at that gorgeous shot of the White House…
Judy: Well I, I have a feeling that maybe it should put a
crimp, or at least something should put a crimp in the plans of the White
House to have such a very lavish inaugural at a time of war.
Fox News: Really?
Judy: Yes. What I’ve noticed is the worse a war is going, the more
lavish the inaugural festivities.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President, during a time of war, of
course as you know,
he had a very modest inauguration and a very tiny party where he served
chicken salad, or where chicken salad was served. And that was when we
were winning a war.
Fox News: Right, but, well, no, I, look, I mean, the President
has, has addressed
this, hasn’t he, he said that this is a, I believe the quote was that
we’re
celebrating, we’re celebrating
democracy, we’re celebrating a peaceful transfer of democracy. What’s
wrong with doing that?
Judy: Have you noticed any peace or any transfer of democracy
in Iraq? If you have, you’re the first person to have seen it.
Fox News: Well, I’ve noticed the elections coming up, and, to
be honest…
Judy: They don’t seem very peaceful.
Fox News: ….I didn’t want to argue politics with you this
morning.
Judy: Oh really? I thought I was allowed to talk about what I
wanted to talk about.
Fox News: You certainly, you certainly have that right. Let me
ask, let me ask you this: what, I mean, what — what should they have cut
back on? I mean we…
Judy: How about $40 million.
Fox News: All right, well…
Judy: May I say something? May I say something?
Fox News: Sure.
Judy: We have soldiers who are incapable of protecting
themselves in their humvees in Iraq.
They have to use bits of scrap metal in order to make their humvees
secure.
Their humvees are
sitting ducks for bombs. And we have a president who’s using $40 million
to have a party.
you do it?
Judy: How about a modest party? Just like FDR. I’m sure
you’ll agree he was a pretty good President with a fine sense of what’s
appropriate and what’s not. And during a time of war, 10 parties are not
appropriate when your own soldiers are sitting ducks in very, very bad
vehicles.
Fox News: Well, don’t you think that the President has,
has given
his
proper respect to our troops? I mean yesterday, as far as I can tell,
the festivities opened with a military gala, they ended with a prayer
service. There does seem to have certainly
been a tremendous effort over the past couple of days and more
than that to honor our troops!
Judy: Well, gee, that prayer should sure keep them safe and
warm in their
flimsy vehicles in Iraq.
I’d rather see that money going to them, rather than to a guy who already
is President, for the second time.
Quinn on the ropes. The lesson to be learned: don’t shoot off your mouth when your brain is full of blanks. Click to see the video.
Fox News: All right, well, Judy Bachrach, I think we’ve given
you more than your time to give us your point of view this morning.
Judy: Thanks for having me on.
No, Judy, thank you.