Michelle Malkin's intrepid reporting: a summary

Posted by Raznor

Courtesy of Sadly, No:

1. Breaking: The moon is literally made of cheese.


2. Like I said, the moon is made of really hard, rock-like cheese.


3. Here’s yet more proof that the moon is made of a soft rock which resembles cheese.



4. Breaking: According to Flopping Aces via Patterico (hat tip: Confederate Yankee), Gateway Pundit has posted a screen-capture of an AP story that says (and I quote): “Because I’m still in love with you, I want to see you dance again, Because I’m still in love with you, On this harvest moon.” So the moon has harvests. Will the MSM admit cheese? Wai-ting…
   
5. Liberals deny the similarity between the moon’s cratered surface and that of certain cheeses, for instance Neufchâtel.
   
6. UPDATE: Whoops, I meant Gruyère — the circular or wedge-shaped kind with craters in it from ancient meteor strikes.
   
7. As I’ve said many times, the real issue is that if the moon were cheese, the liberal MSM would attempt to sweep the truth under the rug, as is usual for them. As the present case clearly demonstrates.
   
   
8. Breaking: The moon is literally made of cheese. Big surprise, eh, MSM? Blue Crab Boulevard reports that Flopping Aces writes that Confederate Yankee finds that Gateway Pundit reports that Dan Riehl writes that…
   
9. UPDATE: Whoops. The AP story actually reads, “The [Rev. Sun-Myung] Moon[’s hairpiece] is made out of [the pubic hair of North Korean 13-year-olds, and his office smells like the Incredible Hulk just cut the] cheese.” Story developing…
   
10. “Hi, this is See-Dub guest blogging while Michelle hides out for awhile is traveling on journalism business. Say, how about those liberals? Pretty unhinged, huh?”
    
11. I have many emails now from people, and I will now respond. Liberals dishonestly claim that no cheese is not never unmade of not-moon. Yet despite their best efforts to embolden terrorism, no amount of wild, unhinged ranting by the left can [mumble-mumble] about the [mumble-mumble], because okay, lunar rock, as I’ve said many times.
    
12. Ha ha! Sneer! For certain the MSM has no credibility left, but are they willfully ignorant of the commonality of double vowels in the center of the words, ‘moon’ and ‘cheese’? Oo! Ee! (Hat tip: Gateway Pundit)
    
    
13. Burning questions remain in the evolving moon/cheese double-vowel controversy.
    
14. With the moon having been proven to be possibly cheese, I have decided to go to the moon to personally report on the cheese which is there.
    
15. I came to the moon a darkening cheese-skeptic, but left with unexpected hope and resolve. Sure enough, here’s a picture of some rocks on the moon.
    
16. [etc.]
    

Read the rest.

(Technical html note: I didn't know how the good D. Aristophanes did his nice enumerated list, so I just copied the source code. Apparently how my template is set up instead of the list being itemized by numbers, I get flower-shaped bullet points. I have no idea how to fix this, and I have homework to do. So there you go.)

Music blogging: The Thermals

Posted by Raznor

The Thermals are simply an awesome band from Portland. I first heard of them because they did a great cover of "Ballad of Big Nothing" on To: Elliott, From: Portland. Here's "A Pillar of Salt".

Genarlow Wilson update

Posted by Raznor

See my first post on this here.

Via Scott Lemieux there's a new article on Wilson. And in case you didn't think this was a grave injustice, check this out:

The District Attorney -- who makes the decision on how to handle cases: which ones to prosecute, which to drop -- charged Wilson with rape and aggravated child molestation. The jury found Wilson not guilty of the rape charge.

According to the jury forewoman, the jury did not know that by convicting Wilson of the aggravated child molestation charge that they had just sentenced him to a mandatory 10 years in prison. “People were screaming, crying, beating against the walls,” she recalls. “I just went limp. They had to help me to a chair.”

Yet right down the hall, Alexander High School English teacher Kari McCarley was standing trial for "carrying on a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old male student." She was married, with children. This wasn't a one-time sexual encounter. Her sentence? Three years probation and 90 days in jail.

But lest you think this has nothing to do with Wilson being black, check this out:

Atlanta Magazine points out the inconsistency when the Douglasville defendant is an adult white male:

But there are also other cases of adults—white adults—prosecuted by the Douglas County District Attorney’s office for sex crimes involving minors and received far lighter sentences than any of the teens in the Douglasville Six case.

Case in point: Jack Stewart, a 24-year-old volunteer coach at Heirway Christian Academy in Douglas County, who received 30 days in jail and 10 years probation for fondling the 15-year-old daughter of a couple whose house he was living at temporarily. McDade notes that he objected in court to the “inappropriately light” sentence.

In the case of 26-year-old George Tsimpides, First Offender status was extended in a sex crime. Tsimpides received 20 days in jail after he pleaded guilty to luring a 15-year-old girl he’d met on the Internet to Arbor Place Mall with the intention of engaging in sex with her. McDade says he publicly objected to that sentence.

The DA is white. At any time, previously and currently, he could change this. Maybe his decision to completely destroy the life of a young black man who did nothing wrong has nothing to do with his race, but I doubt it, and really would that make it better?

Wilson was 17 when he went to prison. He'll be 27 when he gets out. I'm 25 now. I think of everything I've done with my life for the past 8 years and simply shudder to think what my life would be like if I were incarcerated for that time.

An Anniversary come and gone

Posted by Raznor

So three four years ago last Saturday I posted my very first blog post. Pretty exciting beginning to this humble blog.

I do feel that I have had moderate success with this blog. I'm not sure how much of a readership I've retained but there was a period in there, shortly after starting the blog and before graduating college, where I had some measure of success, in that people I've never met would regularly read my blog. Then of course came the blogger burnout. I don't know what keeps some of these regular bloggers going. So, what modest fame I had was mostly lost. But hey, what the hell. I originally started blogging so that I didn't have to e-mail everyone I knew important news items. Anything beyond that is just icing.

. . . adding - holy crap, four years? Really? Wow.

Bask in my reflected glory. Bask!!!

Posted by Raznor

For only the second time, my hilarious comment was included in the Comics Curmudgeon's weekly round up. Check it out. And the rest of that site. It's a damn fine blog.

Haven't you heard? Real is brown.

Posted by Raznor

There are so many levels on which I enjoy the latest installment of VG Cats.

Note to pundits - stop pretending sophistry is seriousness

Posted by Raznor

Glenn Greenwald points to a Peggy Noonan column that is really quite indicative of the level of cowardly posturing that is considered "serious" by today's pundit class. Greenwald notes:

Among the political and punditry establishment, there has emerged a consensus that there is only one way to show that one is a truly respectable, mainstream, Serious Thinker about the war. It is to do this:

(1) acknowledge (reluctantly) that the war is going very poorly and wrinkle one's foreheads to show grave concern over the problem;

(2) oppose escalation (but respectfully, acknowledging what a serious, thoughtful -- even resolute -- option it is);

(3) oppose withdrawal (categorically, dismissively, snidely, as though any person with a grain of responsibility would never think of such a thing, given how patently reckless it is).

It all really is a disgusting exercise. And it's not just Noonan. This is a standard for political pundits, even, and especially, the so-called "liberal" pundits, like Joe Klein and Richard Cohen, who go on about the illiberal left, but don't have the cojones to actually offer a solution.

But really, I wanted to respond to Noonan's concluding paragraph:

What is paramount, it seems to me, is a hard, cold-eyed, even brutal look at America's interests. We have them. I'm not sure they've been given sufficient attention the past few years. In fact, I am sorry to say I believe they have not.

Really? That's nice because I and many other war opponents have been saying this for the past four years while you've been blindly triumphing Dear Leader's resolve. But let's take a "hard, cold-eyed, even brutal look at America's interests."

Iraq is a quagmire. There were so many mistakes made early on (not least of which was invading Iraq in the first place) that there really is no way to repair the damage. As soon as we leave there will be a blood bath. I expect that the government that we installed will partake in a massive ethnic cleansing of Sunnis, then act as a puppet government of Iran, then there will be another bloody war as the Kurds seek secession from the Shia government, which, if we're lucky, will result merely in a bloody conflict that is negotiated to a partitioning of Iraq to allow for a Kurdistan. Of course, it could also suck in Turkey and Iran who wish to prevent a Kurdistan from existing, and spiral into a massive regional war. The only possible winner of this war can be Iran, and lo and behold, Iran will emerge as a new great power, just as Japan emerged as a great power after the Russo-Japanese War.

But this is a worst case scenario. The only thing up there I'm more than 50% certain of occurring is the ethnic cleansing, but I hold out some hope that that can be prevented. The thing I'm 100% certain of, though, is that Iran will emerge as the most powerful nation in the region, whose chief regional rival will be Israel, since Israel has vastly superior military technology. But what Iran lacks in hard power it makes up for in soft power, or do you think the population of of Central Asia and the Arab Penninsula trusts Israelis more than Persians?

What I'm also certain of is that there is very little chance that there's anything America can militarily do to prevent this. We best damn well start normalizing relations with Iran, because we'll have to deal with them one way or another. We do not have the ability to occupy Iran, and I'm not entirely sure we could even overthrow the Iranian government if we were to invade. What is also certain, is the longer we stay in Iraq, and especially if we escalate to invade Syria and Iran, the weaker we'll be, and the more leverage we give to Iran.

And all this is not based on an unserious frivolity, it's based on a "hard, cold-eyed, and even brutal look at America's interests." There is nothing to salvage in Iraq. The only thing to do is to ignore our damn national pride and get the fuck out of there as soon as possible. In fact, I would even remember Bismark's advice to stay out of the Balkans and apply that to the Middle East. Get as far away from the Middle East as possible. Find alternative fuels to oil so that we can stay out and let it work itself out.

But for now, get out of Iraq. Of course, to Bush, his ego is more important than America, so we'll have to wait at least 2 years until that happens. I hope we still have a military after that.

I'm as firm as red clay and as constant as . . . drinking. I'm constantly drinking.

Posted by Raznor

In lieu of any substantive posts by me here, I thought I'd post an episode of Squidbillies. Because, why not?

The Darkness From Gitmo

Posted by Ross

A devastating letter from a current detainee was published in today's LA Times.

Concerning "Borat"

Posted by Ross

Raznor's and my mom didn't really like "Borat" because she felt it was too mean-spirited. And I understand what she means. There are times you really feel bad for the people he's lampooning, and reading interviews later I couldn't help but feel sympathy for some of the subjects.

I think it's alright to feel sympathy for some of the subjects in the film, while simultaneously thinking it's funny as hell when Bortat expresses, in front of a crowd of cheering rednecks, his hopes for Premiere Bush to drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq.

I love how Borat can draw out such incredibly ignorant, hateful, sexist, racist, anti-semitic remarks from otherwise patient, kind, hospitable people. And I think that's incredibly important to notice.

I'm a huge fan of the Morgan Spurlock show "30 Days." I've showed a couple episodes -- the one where a Christian man has to live as a Muslim and the one where a Christian man who believes homosexuality is a sin has to live with a gay roommate in the Castro district -- in my Sunday school class and it's just so amazing to see these people transcend small-mindedness and bigotry simply by living in close proximity with that "unpleasant other."

It's not that we should point and ridicule these folks because they say things that have been deemed "wrong" by the slow and strange evolution of thought, but rather that we recognize our own horrible selves in them, as well as the extraordinary capacity for a person to learn, grow and change...while all the while laughing our asses off.

Sunday Music Blogging

Posted by Raznor

I believe this needs no introduction.

Transgendereds and Feminism

Posted by Raznor

I've been wanting to write the great American blog post on transgenedered people and feminism, but my lack of knowledge on both subjects, especially in comparison to any number of highly qualified bloggers, has prevented me. Fortunately Ampersand is on the case. The entire post and following comments thread is highly worth a read.

I may soon post my own thoughts on the subject but I need to organize them a little better. So go ahead and read Amp, as well as the thoughts of regular Raznor commenter Little Light.

Better keep your story straight

Posted by Raznor

When I read this gem by Cliff Kincaid (via:

He [Barack Obama] had wanted this “drawdown” to begin by 2006. Now he wants the “drawdown” in 2007. [ed: this was written on December 29, just fyi]

I immediately thought of this: