Master baiter

Holocaust denier David Irving, released from an Austrian prison last week after serving just over one year of a three-year sentence for you-know-what, gave a press conference on his return to England Friday and just couldn't resist letting his inner child out for a tapdance. ThisisLondon (great name) reports:

Controversial historian [sic] David Irving has come under attack for comments he made after being released from prison in Austria, including a reference to a "n***** brown"
Rolls-Royce . . . .

Having strayed from his usual scholarly concentration on the Jewish Question, Irving quickly reverted to form when queried on the theories of fellow academic Dr. Melvin Gibson:

The writer endorsed drunken comments by Hollywood actor Mel Gibson to the effect that Jews had been behind all modern
wars . . . .

Asked if he was agreeing with the actor's drunken comments, he said Gibson had "touched a raw nerve" and characterised them as "in vino veritas".

Nobody'd know that better than Ol' Grog Blossom.

Eric Moonman, President of the Zionist Federation and a former Labour MP, said: "He served only 13 months of his three-year sentence. But if he had served 10 years I don't think that would have altered his thinking."

Moonman's grasp of the obvious is profound but oddly phrased:

"[Irving's] latest comments suggest that he is a racist, and I think that we are going to hear more from David Irving about his beliefs in relation to Jews and coloured people. As a prominent Jewish person, I am troubled by this."

As an unprominent non-Jewish person, I too am troubled by this, but much more troubled by this:

Labour peer Lord Foulkes, a member of the Policy Council of Labour Friends of Israel, said the police should keep a close watch on Mr Irving's comments to see whether they breached anti-racism laws.

He said: "Mr Irving should be aware that since he was last in the United Kingdom, the laws have been strengthened to deal with people who hold racist views and who stir up antagonism on the basis of either race or religion."

Why can't these Euro-trons figure out that the sanctions they use to threaten and imprison Irving only assure him the attention he craves, as well as an audience eager to think he's a martyr? It's nuts.

Irving's comment about the Rolls with the hard-to-match color is explained a few paragraphs down:

He said the sales of his book on Rommel enabled him to walk into a car showroom with a brown paper bag stuffed with cash to buy a "nigger brown" Rolls-Royce.

Enchanting. But notice how ThisisLondon uses "n*****" in the lead but the full word further down? Protecting our delicate sensibilities while providing a platform for demented racists. It's so MSM.

Anyway, the demented racist had other interesting things to say, including the somewhat-contradicted-by-where-it-was-made comment:

"There has been a worldwide attempt to silence me," Mr Irving said.

And this ominous bit of prognostication:

"My books will be the ones that survive into the next century."

Maybe. But one can only hope, not for the reasons Irving thinks.

(via prolific commenter "pounce" at B-BBC, who also points out that the BBC itself somehow failed to note this portion of Irving's news conference. Pounce, we salute your indefatigability!)

Update: Next time some gink asks me for ID I'm gonna say, "Fool! Do you not recognize Moonman of the Zionist Federation?!" and run away.

Quote of the Day--times have sure changed edition

From Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938):

Polly (Ann Rutherford), coyly: Why, Andrew Hardy! You kissed me by force!

Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney): Well, it's good that way too!

Is CU ethnic studies prof serial slanderer "John Moredock"?

Benjamin Whitmer, an adjunct professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, may be the anonymous blogger "John Moredock," who for nearly two years at his "Try-Works" blog specialized in the slander of critics of Ward Churchill.

Documentarian Grant Crowell apparently discovered that "Moredock" was Whitmer by examining the IP addresses of e-mails sent to him by Moredock. Soon after Crowell informed Moredock of his discovery, the Try-Works site was taken down.

Lots more coming on this one.

Update: The e-mail that exposed Moredock apparently came in an exchange with Crowell after this Try-Works post, in which Moredock and frequent contributor "Charley Arthur" accuse Crowell of, among other things, hiring people to illegally record Churchill's speech at the New School last week, and then staging interviews with the same people for Crowell's upcoming documentary on Churchill.

Update II: One of Moredock/Whitmer's favorite targets was editorial writer Vincent Carroll of the Rocky Mountain News. Here's one not atypical sample out of many (sorry, you have to scroll through the cached entries):

The late Rocky Mountain News editorialist, race-baiter and suspected pedophile Vincent Carroll—he did recently die of AIDS, didn’t he?—once tried a variation on the same theme, opining that those attempting to halt public celebrations of genocide on the streets of Denver every October were the equivalent of Hitler’s “brown shirted thugs.”

"Moredock" also once posted a picture of Carroll with a photoshopped swastika on his forehead.

Moredock also enjoyed accusing Dan Caplis, of the popular (I think--too lazy to look) drive-time double-lawyer radio show "Caplis and Silverman," of "beating up pregnant women with flagpoles," an accusation which had its start nearly 30 years ago when Caplis was a student at CU, and which Caplis had already sued another person for making.

Probably Moredock/Whitmer's favorite target, though, was Jim Paine of the anti-Churchill blog Pirate Ballerina. Moredock actually had a separate category for his rants about Paine, whom in his kindest moments he would refer to as "Pony Pimp" (Paine raises horses in Colorado).

Moredock even went after me a few times, though spotless is my escutcheon, saying, for example, that my personality might be improved by a lead injection, that my wife was having it off with a Pabst Blue Ribbon salesman, and that I often fellated employees and managment of the Rocky Mountain News. Here's a post accusing me of racism, imaginatively titled, "John Martin's a bigot, blah, blah blah" (again, scroll down a little; you can't miss it). And here's a piece of invective I rather liked:

You're the worst of a type. A shitty little character assassin; a bottom-feeder with all the critical faculties of a ball-peen hammer. You're the reason the rest of us get stuck with the shit that passes for news around here, because you're exactly the kind of half-literate cocksucker they cater to. Stick to photos of your fucking dog, and we'll leave you alone.

Update III: Pirate Ballerina:

The identity of "Moredock's" sometimes-coauthor, "Charley Arthur", remains unknown; the only clue being "Arthur's" remarkably intimate knowledge of Ward Churchill's private and public life stretching back for decades.

Is Arthur Churchill himself? It would sure fit. In any case, one can only hope, as "Moredock's" hero Hunter Thompson used to say, that whoever these guys turn out to be, they get the bastinado for this.

Update IV: In response to "Moredock's" accusations, Crowell has posted an interview with a student he hired to cover Churchill's speech.

Update V: Title of this post changed to reflect (slight) fear of being sued for everything I've got.

Update VI: Grant Crowell received this e-mail from Moredock/Whitmer today:

Good Lord, get some sleep, sir. Look, I'm rather ambivalent about this. I like being anonymous, but if (and I think it's a pretty if) you manage to get the local media in this, it'll give me a hell of a platform to expound on all those dirty tricks played in the Churchill coverage - from William Bradford, to NAIM and Anna Mae, to Jim Paine as the Rocky's genealogist, to your paying for interviews - which is all I was after in the first place. I'll make sure my side of the story gets out. As to whatever you have to incriminate me with, it ain't much more offensive than the average Wonkette posting, so I ain't too worried. So, do what you're gonna do. I'm not gonna call you, I'm not gonna bargain with you, I could care less. Cheers.

"Ain't much more offensive than the average Wonkette posting." Uh-huh. (See above quote concerning Vincent Carroll.) As a commenter at PB (where I got this e-mail) said, "the bluster is instructive." Westword's Michael Roberts, who once described the Try-Works blog as "fiercely funny and proudly profane" (he forgot "assholily anonymous") is a "local media" type who might be interested in Moredock's unmasking.

Update VII: I inserted the Caplis example of Moredock/Whitmer's nastiness and a couple more instances of it towards me to balance the quote about Vincent Carroll, which seemed to stick out a little too much, as if it were something unusual for the creep to say. Of course, he wrote equally bad things about anybody at any time.

Weird Bird Friday

Snow Bird. (Photo by Tanya Clark Photography.)

Happy Solstice!

--The Drunkawife

Fake historian David Irving released

Holocaust denier David Irving was released yesterday from an Austrian jail where he'd served one year of a three-year term for (natch) Holocaust denial. The BBC (which still calls Irving a "historian") has a more detailed story, including reaction from various Jewish organizations.

Update: Think Irving's pissed he was released too late to attend the Tehran denier-fest last week?

Update II: The Jerusalem Post notes that the judge who released Irving has ties to the Austrian Right.

Update III: The neo-nazis at Stormfront are happy (no link):

“Mr. Irving’s release is the result of more than a year of protests, letters to Austrian authorities, letters to the editor and protests organized by Lady Michele Renouf in London and CAFÉ in Ottawa,” said Paul Fromm [my link], Director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression. “It’s a tribute to hundreds of free speech supporters in Canada, America, Europe and Australia who wrote those letters of protest to Austrian authorities and kept up the pressure. Equally important, I believe, the recent conference in Tehran skewered Western hypocrisy about free speech. Ironically one of the few places on earth where scholars could meet to question the so-called holocaust account of World War II was Tehran. Despite the West’s breast beating about its commitment to human rights, the outspoken Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad pointed out that writers and scholars were in Western prisons for merely questioning aspects of the new state religion of Holocaust.”

A commenter at Stormfront expresses the general feeling:

Looks like I won't be needing any other Christmas presents this year as this is what I was asking for.

Merry Christmas David Irving!

Yeah, merry Christmas.

Correction (not of anything I posted, of course)

Grant Crowell has video of ex-weatherpersyns Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers' recent appearance at CU, during which they deny knowing Ward Churchill in the sixties, let alone having learned bomb-making from him. Pirate Ballerina comments, so I'll just point out an incorrect detail in "Dig it" Dohrn's subsequent defense of Churchill: she says he attended the University of Illinois in Champaign, but Drunkablog readers know he received both his degrees from the once-venerable, now sadly defunct Sangamon State University in Springfield.

Update: Okay, now a correction. The Rocky Mountain News' Linda Seebach points out that since Sangamon State became the University of Illinois at Springfield, it cannot, strictly speaking, be described as "defunct." To which, after due consideration, I answer: Aaaaah, shaddap.

No biggie

We got this much:


About two feet: nowhere near as bad as the March, 2003 blizzard.



Okay, maybe a little more than two feet.



I took Billy Bob over to the Continuing Education Center (aka voc-ed high school) this noon. It has a running track the D-blog uses--though not, of course, to run. It's just Billy Bob's neighborhood frisbee field. We floundered around out there for a while (Billy Bob, lower right).

Please, please, please be nice

The Post asks the "group representing union stagehands" to quit making trouble for Denver's bid to host the 2008 Democratic Convention:

Lots of Democrats are hoping to hold their party's 2008 national convention in Colorado. It would give the party an opportunity to showcase a modern and moderate face, and to challenge Republicans on their own turf. New York is also in the running, but there's less to gain by convening in a city where the Democrats have been time and time again . . . .

Organized labor is a key part of the Democratic coalition, in Colorado and elsewhere, but the party's convention shouldn't be an up-or-down union prerogative. If that's the tenor of Democratic strategy, the party will be hard put to compete for votes outside the industrial states.

Torpedoing a Denver convention would diminish the reputation of organized labor when it should be pursuing opportunities for growth. Labor leaders should make this non-issue go away.

How many union stagehands can there be in Denver? Oh. Well, as usual, Lenin knew what to do. Militants Notice!

Creamed

A little before seven this morning there was less than an inch of snow on the ground. It's just past noon now, and there's over half a foot.


Forecast is for two feet or more in the metro area. The Post says we're "paralyzed," but I'm feeling pretty good.

Update:


Billy Bob lost his frisbee.

Update II: Gov. Owens declares (semi-redundant) "disaster emergency"; calls out National Guard:

Guardsmen were deployed to assist the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Colorado State Patrol in helping stranded drivers, towns, ranchers and others. They guard had positioned emergency equipment such as Humvees, snow tractors and emergency vehicles in strategic locations prior to the storm.

That was smart.

Update III: The Post just keeps updating its main snow story:

At 3 p.m., officials closed Denver International Airport and Pena Boulevard, stranding up to 3,000 travelers and airport
workers . . . .

Passengers said the baggage conveyor belts frequently clogged with bags being returned from cancelled flights. One ramp worker said bags from 25 planes was [sic] sent back up to the terminal. Unclaimed bags were stacked five feet high around the carousels, one observer said. Bags were coming up onto the carousels unannounced and in no order, with passengers searching chaotically and frantically not only for their bags but also for the Christmas presents they were carrying.

Christ. That'd piss off the jolly old elf himself.

Pena Boulevard was described as a "white-out" with traffic crawling bumper to bumper out of the airport. All ground transportation was closed down at 3 p.m. Officials said they would break out the small number of cots they had at the airport, as well as water and blankets. Food concessionaires were jammed. One observer said the main terminal resembled a battle field with travellers stretched out everywhere.

(source unknown for the candid pic of Saint Nick and child) If that's your darling Ruddiger sitting on Santa's lap with a chunk of his little head missing (love the tooth marks), let me know and I'll add the credit.)

Update IV: Somebody's going to bring up the legendary Christmas Eve Blizzard of 1982, so I'll do it first.

Update V (10:00 p.m.): Okay, all kidding aside, I think it's time to panic. Current conditions:


Buried. And it's still snowing hard.

Update VI: The Schoolchildren's Blizzard makes this one seem like a day at the beach--or, you know, a nice day basically anywhere.

Breaking: Colorado still weird

The Democratic National Committee put off until January deciding between Denver and New York for the 2008 convention. Despite earlier pessimism, this pestiferous ol' buboesburg may still be in the running.

News: Crime plunges in Denver; Post: Violent crime rises nationwide.

Allowing cougar hunting in Boulder County: will it make them (cougars) stop eating people?

Nice picture of snow in this weather story.

Just what we need: another Colorful Colorado pervert for Rita Cosby: Parker teacher arrested. Guess what for:

An Elizabeth High School teacher accused of having sex with a 17-year-old student during a football trip last month had brought along her two children and their babysitter, all of whom were in the motel room where the alleged incident took place, according to an arrest affidavit.

I blame schools of education.

Finally, to get rid of the sleazy taste, a semi-heroic dog story:

A prominent Colorado adventure athlete can thank her dog and a Utah search-and-rescue team for saving her life after she fell and injured herself while running and spent two nights in subfreezing weather near last week.

Danelle Ballengee, 35, of Dillon, will have surgery today at Denver Health Medical Center to repair a broken pelvis suffered while running with her dog near the Amasa Back Trail south of Moab last Wednesday.

She also is recovering from severe frostbite on her feet, internal bleeding and numerous cuts and bruises.

The two-time adventure racing world champion and elite triathlete, trail runner and mountain biker slipped on a patch of ice on Hurrah Pass and tumbled off three successive rock faces of 10 to 20 feet each.

Bet she didn't shout "Hurrah!" as she went over the edge. Sorry. Ultra athletes are "the other" to me, and I tend to dehumanize them.

A Grand County (Utah) Search and Rescue team on all-terrain vehicles found Ballengee at about 3:30 p.m. Friday after her dog, Taz, a 3-year-old German shepherd-golden retriever mix, led rescuers on a five-mile journey to the accident site.

After the fall, Ballengee crawled about a quarter-mile on her hands and knees to try to find help. During the night, she did sit-ups and kept her upper body moving to keep warm. She drank snowmelt from a puddle when the water in her hydration pack ran out and ate two packets of raspberry energy gel she had carried on the run.

Sit-ups? Raspberry energy gel? The Drunkablog would have killed a cougar, 'et it raw, and done crunches after supper. What about the faithful Taz?

Moab police found Ballengee's pickup truck at the Amasa Back trailhead at 12:30 p.m. Friday. As search-and-rescue personnel arrived, a dog matching the description of Taz was seen running around the trailhead.

"We were going to try to identify the dog, but the dog basically didn't want to be caught and instead turned around and headed back toward the trail," said Curt Brewer, chief deputy with the Grand County Sheriff's Office.

"When that happened, the search crew decided to follow the dog. And the dog took our rescue personnel right to her. I think we would have eventually found her, because we were in the right location, but the dog saved us some time," he said.

Oh, you'd have found her with or without "the dog," would you have, Curt old sock? Why you ungrateful, credit-thieving cur(t). Sic 'im, Taz!

Update: At least Ballengee was luckier than double Darwin-award-dodger Aron Ralston.

Update II: Bonus heroic dog story!

Update III: No leg discussions! Or any other part of her body! Thanks!

Update IV: They called me Johnny Cougar.

Dialogue halted

The Drunkawife just now: "Speaking of bloody piles . . . "

We weren't.

Immiseration feared

Pirate Ballerina links to another hunk of audio recorded by Joseph Sullivan during Ward Churchill's speech at the New School the other day. In this one Chutch refines (once again) his definition of "little Eichmanns":

If your business is to maximize profit by forcing brown-skinned children into sweatshop labor and immiseration for life somewhere out in the third world, to starve them to death, to get across a point that they had to stay in line and hear and obey U.S. commands . . . so there can be a greater payment of dividends to stockholders, so that the commissions paid to the brokers, who are basically the technicians who are handling these transactions--and they can have the newest designer sofa or the latest fashion and the best cappucino that it is possible to manufacture and on Manhattan Island and with the occasional ski trip to Aspen Colorado where they buy all new gear while they come back to their loft apartment and getting ready for their transatlantic vacation--at 25 years of age--oh they're going to Paris by the way--if that's your notion of what value or priority is then you are the perpetrator.

The retarded college kids clap and cheer, apparently at Ward's ability to spew THAT MUCH bullshit without taking a breath. Then Ward offers advice to perpetrators everywhere:

If you don't like living with those terms, then change how you're living. If you don't want to be called a perpetrator of genocide . . . change what you're doing. But don't expect me to . . . pretend you're something you're not. Namely, innocent.

Zen-like. Listen to the rest if you don't think it'll immiserate you.

Small-group activities

Everybody knows this blog covers sports religiously, but the only reason I'm posting the video of the brawl between the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks is because everyone else is:




Update: Okay, now it hurts: Melo suspended for 15 games.

Update II: Snaps, in comments: "No doubt they were fighting over my cheeseball."

Update III: As of 9:22 p.m. the News has links on its front page to four stories, one column, a slideshow, a post on their main blog and two polls about the brawl. It's that important.

Update IV: We're saved. He's a philosopher, too.

Demanding your compliance since 1934! It's NorthDenverTribuneWatch!

Just a couple of items from Crime Beat! (my exclamation point):

Detectives identified and arrested two brothers who were committing burglaries in the Highland neighborhood. Well done!

and

In the Sloan Lake neighborhood, several hard working detectives identified a house where a possible burglary suspect might be located. They gained consent to search the house and recovered several flat screen television sets which were likely stolen, a stolen mountain bike, and several illegal drugs. The residents of the house were arrested, and the neighborhood is no doubt a safer place.

No doubt. The jolly-good-show tone, of course, is because the writers of Crime Beat! (MEP) are Denver cops. Well done!

Dems not coming to Demver?

The Post:

Mile-high hopes are dimming that Denver will secure the 2008 Democratic convention.

Democrats posted against-the-odds victories in several statewide elections last month in the West, making Denver an attractive choice for a party looking to expand on recent gains in the Republican-leaning region. But even once-optimistic Colorado boosters are lowering their odds to 50-50 that Denver will beat out New York City for the convention.

Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar said this week that in private conversations Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean had expressed legitimate concerns about whether Denver can raise the necessary $55 million and put on a seamless convention.

That's only, what, a hundred bucks apiece from everybody in Denver? C'mon, gang! We can do it! Unfortunately:

It's not money alone that raises questions about Denver's ability to put on the convention. Salazar said Dean also questioned him about whether Denver can handle the 35,000 convention-goers.

Another outstanding issue: who pays for bum clearance?

Denver needs to prove it has about 19,000 hotel rooms, union support and adequate security - hurdles that many believe New York can more easily clear.

Hotel rooms? We've got plenty. Security? No problem. Union support? Uhhhhh . . .

But still there's hope!

Salazar, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper [Hick!] and Colorado Gov.-elect Bill Ritter talked again with Dean on Friday. Salazar spokesman Cody Wertz said the three "came away feeling hopeful" that they can alleviate Dean's concerns about Denver.

The West has a political story Democrats are eager to tell - something solidly Democratic New York can't supply . . . .

Many Democrats argue that if the party pays more attention to the West, the region will help elect a Democratic president.

"We always have felt that the pathway to the presidency is through the West," Wedgeworth said. "We think it's our turn and our time."

Earlier but equally scintillating convention post here.

Update: And a slightly more upbeat AP story on this septic ol' crotchtown's chances of snagging the convention here.

Update II: Fans of the Old West should check out the wiki on legendary conman "Soapy" Smith, who's mentioned in the Bat Masterson page linked above.

Update III: I propose we make an offer to the DNC to change Denver's name to "Demver" (© me, 2006), with the Drunkablog collecting a small but large royalty on every product bearing that name, including but not limited to every sign, poster, gew-gaw, drink (The "Demver"), omlette (the "Demver Omlette"), nasty bottle of mustard or even nastier serving of Rocky Mountain Oysters sold in Denver County between now and the end of time.

Update IV: Ever hear the joke about the guy who ordered Rocky Mountain Oysters on the half-shell? Now you have.

Update V: Union support? Uh . . .

Sat Eve Post, 4-20-68

Despite the chirpy teasers, a relentlessly downbeat issue.


Bet it flew off the stands.


Black federal employees were disproportionately clustered at the bottom of their pay grades.
Two ads:


Creepy: Looks too much like this pic from the cover of Ook.



Look at me, I'm holding the biggest goddamn safety pin in the world: "A full inch seems to have disappeared from your waistline (and been added to your height) in the first 30 seconds alone!"

Ho, ho, ho: Yes.

Just after Tet, of course. Quotery from Alsop:

Ho Chi Minh has never expected to defeat the U.S. forces on the battlefield, and he will not do so. He expects, instead, to win this war in the United States, just as he won his earlier Vietnam war in France. And that is what he is doing.

The evidence that he is doing so takes many forms. Powerful newspapers and magazines which a few months ago were staunchly supporting the war are now
backing away from it. So are many influential commenters . . . .

It is even more significant that two great television networks, NBC and CBS, have now in effect taken a position against the war. Frank McGee (who?) of NBC and Walter Cronkite of CBS . . . have in effect pronounced the war unwinnable. The certainly would not have done so without the approval of the high command of their networks.

Nobody mentions that Walter must have run it by The Big Guy before he so famously declared the war lost. And yes, I know who Frank McGee was--silver-haired, sounded like a duck, smoked himself into an early grave? (At least we'll always have Walter.)

The cover story:


Never again: "'We have had our riot,' said [Newark, N.J., "police director" Dominick A.] Spina, a compact, square-jawed man who wears on his right hand a skull-faced silver ring that he took from a German SS officer in World War II. 'And I can tell you this,'--he spoke the words very slowly and very positively--'it will not happen here again.'"


Nasty-acetate: Don't anybody tell Ward Churchill about this.


A small town and the Vietnam War: "The town hates 'war protesters' more than the Vietcong."
They weren't crazy about hippies, either:


"Hippies are regarded the way witches once were."

Okay, finally something a little upbeat:


Hip, hip, you're dead.
One more ad:


A slice of history--and make it a la mode.

And the editorial:


No cheap jokes, please.
The excerpt from the Galbraith novel? Eh. If you want to read it, there are lots of copies out there, some for just a penny (+ $3.49 ripping and mangling).

Churchill A/V extravaganza!

Or something. Joseph Sullivan, who asked a rude question of Ward at his appearance at the New School Monday and for his temerity was told to "get his ass back in his Klan robes," sends along a couple more soundbites from the same occasion. In the first, Ward seems unfamiliar with the term "Beslan," as in the "Beslan Massacre"; in the second, he ranks out a robotic Marxist freak who asks a robotic Marxist question.

Finally, Snaps points out a video of Ward's appearance at the Philadelphia meeting in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal last week. It's over 2o minutes long, it's Ward's usual drivel, and the film is loaded sideways, so here's perhaps the one "interesting" quote:

Diallo didn't take anybody with him. 'Hey lemme me see your ID--bambambambambam--oh we thought the billfold he was pulling out was a gun.' No! You don't comply, you don't cooperate, you don't collaborate, you don't prevaricate, you don't rationalize. You see it clearly and you respond according to the set of circumstances presented to you, and Bobby Seale put that one real clear a long time ago, when he first came up with the no-knock rule that was used on his old lady who was perforated with 130 rounds of SWAT team ammunition. When common thugs kick in your doors in an armed and aggressive manner you blow their ass right back out the fuckin' door and see if they want to come in again!

No idea what he's talking about when he mentions the supposed lead poisoning of Bobby Seale's "old lady." He might be conflating Seale and Fred Hampton, whom he also mentions.

Weird Bird Friday

My very first Weird Bird Friday was a couple of weird owls. Here's yet another pair!


Two very stern-looking lovebirds, residing (as most of my weird birds do) at the aviary in Parque Ecológico in Puebla, Mexico

A new contest this week! Which is the male and which is the female? This, of course, is really designed to probe the question of which one represents Mr. Drunka and which Mrs. Drunka. Prizes for all correct answers to be announced soon!

--Drunkawife

Swiftiana

Many more stories from the raid on the Greeley meat-packing plant and its aftermath, including:

Comments from Denver's archbishop: "Catholics should 'vigorously question the timing, manner and focus' of the Swift raids, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput said Wednesday, adding that the tactic won't solve the immigration problem."

A couple of victims of the identity theft who tell their (bad) stories:

As soon as Caraveo was notified by the IRS, she alerted the credit bureaus and
the police - but her credit problems were just about to start.

A mom who hasn't been heard from since the raid:

"I'm driving myself crazy," said [sister-in-law] Nora. "Nobody has heard from her. I've heard rumors that she might be in Nogales. I don't know if she told them she was from Mexico."

Rubicelda moved to Greeley from a small town in Guatemala to look for work.

She found a job cutting meat at Swift & Co. that paid $11 to $12 an hour, Nora said . . . .

[Rubicelda] . . . was sending money home to have a house built next to her parent's [sic] home in Guatemala. So far, she has been able to buy a small plot of land, Nora said.

"Our dream is to work to build a home for our children. It's sad to go home with our hands crossed, no money, and in a worse position than when we came," she said.

Mini-rant: Okay, the identity theft is bad, but absent that it's not only stupid to keep people like this out of the country, it's immoral. Rubicelda's already bought a piece of land. Anyone who's read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (fantastic book; less-good movie) will remember how Francie's poor Irish immigrant family saves for years to do the same, only to end up using the money to buy--a graveyard plot. (In the meantime they become Americans, so, happy ending.) And no, it doesn't matter that Rubicelda's land is in Guatemala; in fact, it's better--she's increasing prosperity there, too.

Finally, the story that hints at racism:

In the wake of Tuesday's raids at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant, many in the Hispanic community are worrying about the fate of their loved ones, about the children left behind and about the threat to their livelihoods.

Others - mostly longtime residents - worry about the changing face of their town, shrinking property values and the challenges of supporting families that can't always support themselves.

Oh shut up, you portentous twit. Rubicelda! Llama a casa! (And maybe the News will follow up when she does.)

Himself

The Rocky's Vince Carroll on the Anglican bishop of Liverpool's true creed:

Bishop James Jones is certainly no miser when it comes to self-flattery. The Anglican bishop of Liverpool, England, told a News reporter during a stop in Denver last week that the campaign to combat global warming is comparable, in terms of its importance for the world's poor, to the struggle to abolish slavery.

Since Jones is a leading religious voice in Britain against global warming, that would make him - what? - today's equivalent of William Wilberforce, presumably. Wilberforce, the great Christian anti-slavery crusader and member of Parliament, led the campaign that resulted in the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807 and emancipation 26 years later.

The story referred to, by the Rocky's religion writer Jean Torkelsen, provides even more evidence of Jones' fatuousness:

Jones said it is appropriate to liken global warming to slavery because the poor are being oppressed by climate changes that are ruining harvests.

Um, where's that happening, again? No matter, the bishop has solutions:

He said individuals could change their behaviors, such as using energy more efficiently and buying hybrid cars.

Radical. But the Man of God goes ever farther out, uh, man:

He plans to call on people next year to give up using one lightbulb for Lent.

Dude. Oh, there's one last leeeeetle detail:

Public policy changes are also necessary, but Jones said it wasn't his place to say which ones.

This ranks in deliberate cluelessness with the suggestion of the organizer of Peacejam (as uncritically paraphrased by Torkelsen earlier this year) that we should act "to cut down on the use of plastic bags in Africa where pools of stagnant water collect and breed disease-laden mosquitos. A simple change to absorbent canvas bags would prevent millions of cases of malaria."

Idiocy explained

The reason the bishop and the pacifist sound like such dingbats (besides the fact that they're dingbats, of course) is that neither can bring himself to say what he really believes: that in order to save the planet, "we" must radically restrict both human life and human productivity. Many are not so reticent.

Update: It's always good karma to relive Peacejam!

Update II: C.S. Lewis sure did call it, didn't he?

Swift justice

The Rocky is all over yesterday's raids at the Swift meatpacking plant in Greeley and five other plants around the country. Federal agents rounded up more than 1,200 people for various charges related to identity theft and illegal immigration. What a mess, and the Rocky's got the angles covered:

Hysteria and anger in the aftermath of the raid:

As ICE agents stood in a line outside the Greeley plant, supporters of those being questioned expressed anguish time and again.

Marta Granillo ran toward the crowd, screaming. "Why is this happening? Why?

These are our families," she said before slumping over in tears.

Union to the rescue:

"Essentially, the agents stormed the plants, many of them in riot gear, in an effort designed to terrorize the work force," said Mark Lauritsen, director of a division of Washington-based United Food and Commercial Workers International. . . .

Lauritsen, in a statement, described Swift workers as "innocent victims in an immigration system that has been hijacked by corporations for the purpose of importing an exploitable work force."

They're safe now! Their union leader is mouthing platitudes!

Arrested parents leave kids stranded at school:

Alice Navia, who said she has lived in Greeley most of her life, heard about the raid on the radio and rushed to the school to offer her home to kids whose parents might have been taken into custody.

"I could not sit there and do nothing," Navia said. "I wanted to take all the children whose parents got arrested home."

Identity theft is rampant, and Swift has problems identifying illegals anyway, one of which is:

A 20-year-old federal law [which] lists 29 different documents that employees can use to establish their identities and employment eligibility when they fill out what's known as an I-9 form to apply for work.

Reaction from Colorado's congressional delegation. Both senators voiced support for the Colorado raid, as did, of course, Rep. Tom Tancredo, who probably really scares companies like Swift:

"No matter how high up it goes in Swift, (anyone) that is culpable in this needs to be gone after to the fullest extent of the law. We need to know who knew what and when they knew it and what they did about it."

Wipe the foam off your lips, Tom. The Post has all kinds of stories, too, and is first out of the box with a "let's be sensible" editorial.

Operators are standing by

Michael Medved just now: "If you agree with Ward Churchill that we basically asked for it [9/11], give me a call . . . "

Update: Hardly anybody did, except for one guy who repeated several times that he backed Chutch only "to the extent that he supports the progressive agenda." Thud. All the crazies wanted to talk about was Israel.

All I've got is the "Camper"

And the itty-bitty two-implement one, but the Guardian has a review of the newest Swiss Army Knife--all nearly three pounds and 85 implements of it:


An £495 doorstop: but I want it.

(via Arts and Letters Daily)

Update: Outdoor Life lists all the tools and says the knife retails in the U.S. for $1,200; Engadget notes that the "Giant" has "seven different knives, a golf shoe spike wrench, a bike chain rivet setter, and a laser pointer with a 300ft range," but asks plaintively, "where's the freakin' USB flash drive?"

Cowtown v. Gotham

If you believe, clap your hands. The Rocky: "Down to wire on Dem convention":

Denver boosters are buzzing with anticipation as a decision on whether the city will win the 2008 Democratic National Convention is expected this week.

Now I know I won't sleep tonight.

The bids have been filed and the two finalists, Denver and New York City, are fine-tuning their master contracts, which must be approved before the Democrats' presidential nomination bash is awarded . . . .

Ultimately, DNC Chairman Howard Dean will choose between Denver and New York after reviewing reports by the party's convention assessment panel.

"The chairman, who is very detail-oriented, has stayed abreast of information as it's developed," said Denver 2008 Host Committee Executive Director Debbie Willhite . . . .

Sorry, that was extremely immature, but "detail-oriented"? I don't even have that on my resume (too lazy for accents) anymore.

"This has been very intense. There has been a lot of preparation," said Willhite, perched at her desk in front of a "Whiners" sign with a red slash through it.

Great eye for the telling detail, reporter-critter!

While New York has been less public in lobbying the DNC than Denver, Willhite said, "I'm sure both senators (Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chuck Schumer) and the governor-elect (Eliot Spitzer) are all weighing in." . . .

But given the recent wave of Democratic election victories in Colorado and the West, Willhite said, a Denver convention would send a powerful "message of where the party's growing and going" in the battle to reclaim the American heartland.

Where the party's growing and going? I'll listen to that message! Here's a pic from the last Democratic convention in Denver to give you an idea what to expect if (please God) this crusty ol' scabtown gets it in 2008:


Smokin': the Rocky has a nice piece on the 1908 confab.

(convention pic from Hello Metro!)

New School, old rant

The New York Sun covers Ward Churchill's speech ("without notes"!) at New York's New School yesterday:

An ethnic studies professor from the University of Colorado, Ward Churchill, received a standing ovation last night from a crowd of more than 200 New School students after blaming the 2001 World Trade Center attacks on America's support of Israel and its sanctions against Iraq in 1996.

In a two-hour speech at the New School titled "Sterilizing History: The Fabrication of Innocent Americans," delivered without notes [see?], Mr. Churchill traced what he called a pattern of mass murder as American foreign policy from the time of the country's inception to the events of September 11, 2001, which he said the country was essentially asking for.

Way past time for some new material, Ward. I wonder, though, if the title of his speech is a takeoff on Keith Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History? That would be unusually subtle for the esteemed perfesser.

Any alleged subtlety went out the window, however, when Ward brought up the president of the New School:

Mr. Churchill also called the president of the New School, Robert Kerrey, a former senator of Nebraska, a "mass murder [sic] and serial killer to boot" for having served in Thanh Phong, Vietnam. Mr. Churchill also served in Vietnam, an act for which he said he has spent the rest of his life apologizing.

Mr. Churchill received cheers from the audience for comparing Mr. Kerrey to the serial killer Charles Manson. "That's who you've got moral equivalency in the president's chair at this institution," Mr. Churchill said. "How about a cage rather than a president's suite?". . .

"That's who you've got moral equivalency . . . "? Typically felicitous Churchillian phraseology. The Sun continues:

Mr. Churchill arrived on the national stage after September 11, 2001, when he wrote that many victims of the World Trade Center attacks were "little Eichmanns," comparing them to the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann because they worked as technocrats of an evil empire.

While students yesterday jumped to his defense, arguing that his "little Eichmann" statement was taken out of context when it was publicized on Fox News, Mr. Churchill yesterday seemed happier to cultivate his image as a provocative figure than to defend himself . . . .

Mr. Churchill's critics call him a symbol of academic free speech gone wrong and an ethnic fraud. His Native American ancestry has been called into question by some who think he is not of Native American descent, but is exploiting a culture that is not his own to propagate his politics.

Longtime Churchill critic Grant Crowell gets a quote, though it's unclear if he was at the speech:

"He exploits their culture and has never done anything for their groups," a documentary filmmaker, Grant Crowell, who is making a film on Mr. Churchill titled "Hate U: The Politics of Teaching Hate," said. "Someone like Ward Churchill totally manipulates academic freedom and identity politics."

The last graf of the story gets it wrong:

The University of Colorado has tried to fire Mr. Churchill, but has been unable to take such recourse against a tenured faculty member for exercising his freedom of speech. Mr. Churchill has also been accused of research misconduct.

As those who've actually followed the Churchill saga know, the process of firing Ward continues, if at a pace a little slower than dirt.

(h/t Snaps)

Update: Michelle Malkin posts on Churchill's speech and links to Pirate Ballerina, whom, she says, "continues to keep watch." I think she glanced too hastily at the beginning of PB's most recent post and thought it referred to today's story in the Sun. Instead it's almost a week old and mentions Churchill's upcoming appearance at the New School. Didn't Malkin say the other day that she was so efficient she blogged on the john or something? Maybe she needs to slow down a mite.

And where is PB, anyway?

Exercise = Death

The Drunkablog works hard to keep in shape, consistently testing in the top 30 percent in physical fitness among men 80 years and older. He runs. He works out. He believes, with the noble Roman, "men's santa in corporate santa." But some people go too far:

Durango Herald columnist and long-distance runner Marc Witkes, 40, collapsed and died yesterday in the last mile of the Tucson Marathon, the Herald reported this morning . . . .

Durango Motorless Transit Club President Marjorie Brinton was running in the same marathon. Her husband, Scott Brinton, saw Witkes’ collapse.

Witkes, president of the 250-member club from 1999 to 2005, competed in the Sri Chinmoy 700-mile run, Earth Journey Vermont and at least 30 marathons and 25 ultramarathons.

He took part in double and triple Ironman competitions, including kayaking 22 miles, biking 336 miles and running 78.6 miles, all within 60 hours.

That 700-miler, by the way, is for wimps. Chinmoy also offers 1100- and 1300-milers. In the early years these runs were held indoors on a one-mile "sealed" track in Queens, for pity's sake. According to blogger Kevin Tiller (lack of capitalization denoting humility, sic):

since 1985 . . . chinmoy's students have held ultrarunning events of 1,300, 1,000 and 700 miles, along with five, seven or ten day races, where the athletes accumulate mileage around the clock on a one-mile race loop in a format known as 'go as you please.' for the first five years the races were held on a sealed track at flushing meadows park in queens, new york, site of the old world's fair; subsequent races have been held in a city park on remote wards island, new york.

So what happened to triathlons being hairy guys in bathing caps splashing about together? Now ultra sports has to have a message--and that message (besides "I'm a masochist") is peace and love and understanding. In fact:

that Chinmoy is a tireless proponent of peace is salient. lesser known, however, is that chinmoy, as spiritual leader of the sri chinmoy marathon team, is as effusive and ardent in espousing aspiration and sport as he is relentless in pursuit of world peace. he is both sport's most eloquent spokesperson and aspiration's unremitting ambassador.

Aspiration's unremitting ambassador! That's what everybody calls the Drunkablog!*

Getting back to poor Mr. Witkes, some of you oldsters will remember Jim Fixx, the runner/author who personified the 70s running craze. Fixx wasn't any mimsy-wimsy world peacenik. He didn't do purification rituals, had no special diet, and never, ever meditated. He'd just have a good hearty breakfast every morning and go run. That was a man.

Exercise = Death.

*Check out the quote at the top of the page.

Lyin' like a rug

Mason Oller (whose website makes the Drunkablog's look quite sick--check out the photos) sent me a link to a page of Soviet-era "propaganda carpets," and they are pure downhome Party slavishness.

Here's Leon "Leaky" Trotsky. A commenter here once insisted that Trotsky was murdered with a pick-axe rather than an ice-axe. Here's a fascinating article on Trotsky's killer (who was made a Hero of the Soviet Union for the murder) in the no doubt peer-reviewed journal Shat Upon (#6).


Doesn't look anything like his picture, does he? (Update: it doesn't look like Trotsky because it's Kalinin, president of the Supreme Soviet in the 30s, as several strange people point out in comments on the page.)
Next up, Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.


Kissable: he's a Hero of the Soviet Union of my heart!
And Breshnev:


Three-time Hero of the Soviet Union? That's pushing it, Lenny.
And finally, one of the Beatles:


John Lennon, Hero of the Soviet Union for Imagine.

Fillerino

Keess me, you fool.

Update: See Billy Bob's dead tooth? And why does it look like his left eye's been gouged out?

Lesson learned

Here's something I didn't know. It's possible to accidentally leave one's cellphone in one's pants after one has removed said pants. Try that with your old-fashioned landline phone.

Update: Chipper tonight, ain't I?

Quote of the Day

In the Post:

"The Westminster Fire Department reminds citizens that they should never attempt to climb down a chimney."

Recognize it? Yes, it's from everybody's favorite Christmas story, "Man rescued from own chimney."

Update: I am willing to bet that alcohol was not involved.

Blogger cheats on Weird Bird Friday post

I think I've posted this picture before. Pelicans aren't weird birds, either. Hey, this isn't my gig, man.


The Esther Williams lookalike in the foreground, you'll be surprised to learn, is Billy Bob.

One MIM, two MIM

Constant commenter Snaps has a good eye for spotting Maoist Internationalist Movement material. She just e-mailed to point out, for example, a MIM-made piece of video agitprop against the Ward Churchill "witch hunt."

Synopsis: To a Sex Pistols tune, words appear on the screen--"Whites murdered the First Nations Natives"; Whites enslaved blacks"; "Amerika is murdering the earth."

Then a cut to Ward, speechifying. After pointing out that people who voted for Bush or thought "John Kerry was an alternative" are, like 9/11 victims, "little and big Eichmanns" (the audience claps and cheers), Ward turns awkwardly to the erstwhile Iraq sanctions, which constituted (of course) "genocide," and denied the future to half a million Iraqi children

in the interests of American domination of the rest of the planet in order to support a material way of life and mentality which is absolutely on its face indefensible to anyone with a scintilla of moral integrity [audience, no doubt college kids, claps and cheers again].

More music, more words on-screen. Then Ward again, deploying his legendarily circumspect and precise language to decry the "U.S. taxpayer-subisidized holocaust that is going on in Palestine."

Music. Then, on-screen: "Organize Resistance! Join MIM!"

Ma, I'm signing up tomorrow.

But wait, there's more!

A couple of other video pieces, including an excerpt from a film I'd never heard of called The Canary Effect, which was shown free on the internet on Columbus Day last October. From the clip and the trailer it appears to be a standard-issue white guilt-fest in which Ward and others speak truth or whatever to power. It's been shown at film festivals and even won the 2006 "Stanley Kubrick Award for Bold and Innovative Filmmaking" at Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival. (And you know that means "Quality!")

There's also a speech Ward gave at the Monterey Bay campus of California State University last year called Perpetual War: U.S. State-sponsored Terrorism and the Limites [sic] of Academic Dissent. I'll listen to it to so you don't have to, but I ain't gonna watch it, and I ain't gonna like it.

Update: Snaps! Snaps! Snaps!

MIMimum wage

In hys most recent communiqué, Security Minister of the Maoist Internationalist Movement discusses once again the "provocations and rumors started by federal agents" against MIM, and the targeting in this "psy-war" of Ward Churchill:

Sickening, terrifying and more explicit rumors then surfaced in connection to Ward Churchill. These rumors involved the cruelest use of psy-war to date against MIM.

Security Minister is such a drama queen.

Regarding Ward Churchill and struggles that broke out in 2005:

1) He has been required reading in party study groups since the 1980s.

That'll make your Party hearty!

2) MIM has purchased wholesale and redistributed South End Press books since the early 1980s. We distribute Ward Churchill books into prisons.

MIM's well-known love for prisoners in action. Goooood works.

3) MIM still expects to win the struggle in connection to him and return academia to the status quo.

So Security Minister finally confesses (say in bogus Russian accent)! Ward Churchill is the "status quo" in academia. We knew it all along. Back to you, SM:

Lately MIM has been accused of having weapons of mass destruction, being pedophiles, being schizophrenic and being other things we won't mention. Those with lesser degrees of knowledge about MIM found the rumors spread by Internet even more disturbing than MIM did, because some knowledge of MIM turned out to be the worst situation to be in when reading various hallucinations.

Uh-huh. Read the rest on your own. Oh, let me quote one more paragraph, this month's Involuntary-72-Hour-Hold award winner:

Every single important underlying factual presumption of our critics is wrong. MIM comes off as omniscient to some of our enemies sometimes and we deserve that reputation in professional matters. However, we do not spend great amounts of time being omniscient [I can relate--ed.] about people with no desire or drive to be with us or against us. Those who think that MIM has threatened specific people physically should reflect internally why they find MIM so threatening.

(h/t Snaps, who had to tell me twice.)

Update: There is (or apparently in the band's case, was) both a book and, yes, a band called "72 Hour Hold."

Update II: More MIM "fun" all over this pathetic excuse for a bog.

Surfing

On CNN's Nancy Grace program right now: "Breaking Developments: MISSING DAD: PANTS FOUND!"

That's a good headline. Missing Dad's been missing in the Oregon woods for a week. His wife and daughter were rescued after eating berries and burning tires (or maybe vice versa) to survive. Expert: we'll probably never know why Missing Dad took his pants off.

Next up, not at all surprisingly: the 2-month-old brought to a hospital in Colorado Springs yesterday with a blood-alcohol level of 0.364. The girl's mother says she inadvertently mixed vodka the father had put in a water bottle with the baby's formula.

Oh no, Grace has a profiler on to comment. The profiler says, rather sensibly, that it could well have been an accident, but if it wasn't, psycho city, man.

Now a psychologist. I miss what she says, but hear Nancy say the baby was "loaded."

Now a doctor, who rather poetically says the little girl will need "the tincture of time" to recover. Grace asks, "So she'll just have to sleep it off?" Class act.

Update: Really, Nancy Grace seems a very unpleasant woman.

Update II: I can also understand why the boyfriend or husband or whatever would have vodka in a water bottle. He drove his girlfriend to the store to buy diapers. He was already drunk and wanted to drink more along the way, but be inconspicuous about it. Wallah! (as the French say): vodka in a water bottle. Truth is, I drove with a nalgene bottle full of booze many, many, many times. Alcoholics are dangerous jerks.

Update III: In related news, "what the heck is going on?"

Update IV: They found the pants-less guy. Dead.

Borlaug blog

Error Theory's Alec Rawls on why Malthus and Ehrlich and their ilk are wrong:

Malthus had only looked at the diminishing marginal productivity caused by adding labor to a fixed production function (a fixed amount of land, in his example), but the fact that wages and population actually tend to rise rapidly together implies that on average an additional person must raise marginal productivity by raising the production function more than he lowers marginal productivity by moving total labor input out along the production function.

That "on average" was a relief to the Drunkablog, for without it the following "must" would have a distinctly unpleasant ring to it. Seeing as how he spends almost all of his time "lowering marginal productivity by moving total labor input out along the production function" (aka "staring into space"), the D-blog probably wouldn't last long if Malthus had been correct.

This is all by way of pointing out that Rawls has a nice post on Norm (God calls him "Norm") Borlaug, the man who showed just how wrong Malthus was, and, incidentally, "saved more lives than anyone else who ever lived." Rawls also links to a fine Borlaug tribute at Jurisdynamics. The comments and links at both blogs are well worth checking out, too.

(via Instapundit, I forgot to mention)

Update 12/12/06: Still think we need to drastically reduce the world's human population? Tim Blair: "Why not use Zyklon B?"

Lazy, lazy, lazy

So one more picture of bloody Billy Bob frolicking in the goddamn snow.


Waiting for (a Godot brand™) frisbee.

What do you call a guy who's been hung on the wall? Art!

The Denver Post's main blog asks the perennial question, "Is art supposed to be distrubing [sic]?" The question links to a piece in the Post today:

"Art is made to disturb," Georges Braque, the cubist painter and Pablo Picasso buddy, once said.

But art museums?

Yep, the Daniel Libeskind-designed addition to the Denver Art Museum is back--in the news!

Staring up at the soaring walls is - in a few people - causing tiny crystals to tumble around the inner-ear balance center, hitting cells and making the visitors woozy.

Add the building's unusual angles and curving stairways, which can confuse the eyes, and the results can be stomach-churning.

Experts expressed concern:

"My patients are not going to the art museum," said Carol Foster, an ear specialist and balance expert at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

"You could bus a bunch of them over there and they'd be flopping around on the floor," she joked.

Ha ha! Humor is the best medicine. The museum's "communications director" tried to "spin" (once again, ha ha!) the story:

Museum officials say the effect is tiny - there has been only one official complaint of dizziness.

"There was never intention on the part of the museum to create a perceptual challenge," said Andrea Fulton, the museum's communications director.

In fairness, the Post notes that it's not the only building that messes with people. The addition:

joins a list of buildings with high-profile architecture and unintended consequences.

There is the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles designed by Frank Gehry, for example.

The building, a swirl of shiny metal, caught and reflected so much Southern California sunlight that it raised the temperature on a nearby sidewalk to 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

And the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. - designed by Edward Durrell Stone - has a massive awning with no visible supports that triggers anxiety in some people, creating an urge to flee.

"Architecture is a speculative project," University of Colorado architecture professor Taisto Makela said. "Just by drawing things, making models, thinking about things, you can't tell how that space will be experienced until you do experience it . . . ."

However:

Makela has been a critic of the building not for its ability to induce vertigo, but as a strange and difficult place to display art given its tipped walls and odd spaces.

He's not alone there. The article goes into a long, slightly bullshit-sounding explanation of what happens in the inner ear to cause the dizziness.

Communications Director Fulton, meanwhile, kept a stiff upper, um, ear:

"Our approach in general is that not everything has to fall into the normal boundaries of what you might expect. We like that," Fulton said. "We like the conversation it's created."

Frontpage racist redux

My last post linked to an article at David Horowitz's Frontpage Magazine. A few months ago a French blogger noticed that one of Frontpage's longtime contributors, David Yeagley, a "Comanche patriot" and adjunct professor of something or other in Oklahoma, was a fulminating racist of the old school, both at Frontpage and on his own blog. Quote from a piece actually published by Frontpage (no link, but it's still there):

WHITE WOMEN ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL, desirable creatures on earth, judging from the way dark men crave them.

It gets worse.

Somehow though, Yeagley's lurid bigotry got almost no attention in the blogosphere. I even mentioned it to a group of seven or eight bloggers, not all of whom were right-wing. Maybe it was the way I put it, but there was total silence and a quick move to another subject, as if some faux pas had been committed. Very strange, because whatever persuasion of blogger one is, it was a good story.

Pirate Ballerina (on whose blog I first read of Yeagley's rants) even e-mailed Frontpage about the Comanche Patriot's lapses of taste. Naturally he got no reply, but you had to figure somebody would notice, and that Yeagley would quietly be shelved.

Nope. After having nothing published there since August 21, almost exactly when the racist stuff came to light, Yeagley last month had a new piece up at Frontpage (no link).

Can't find it, but I remember hearing an interview with Horowitz during which, taxed with some other excrescence committed by his mag, he claimed he was on the road so much he rarely had a chance to read Frontpage--which is, of course, on the internets. He said this with what can be described only as a characteristic commie smirk in his voice--"it doesn't matter whether you believe me or not"--and for some reason the interviewer didn't follow up on the obvious lie. Horowitz must know about Yeagley. If he doesn't, it amounts to criminal negligence. If he does and still chooses to publish the guy, it's--well, duh.

My admiration for Horowitz reached its peak some years ago when I read Radical Son, a riveting and, I thought, honest repudiation of marxism and all its concomitants. Since then it's been straight downhill, to the point where Horowitz's (whether he reads it or not) Frontpage is less trustworthy than even a crap factory like WorldNet ("Don't call me a Little Entenmann")Daily.

Kamm v. Kurlansky

Oliver Kamm is a lefty British writer (and sort-of blogger) who recognizes the threat posed by radical Islam, supports Israel, and is generally anti-anti-American--at least, anti the ludicrous heights anti-American rhetoric has risen to in recent years. Like Norm Geras or the much more acidic Christopher Hitchens (except for the supporting Israel) part, Kamm is a lefty who gets it. He even signed Geras' wishy-washy-but-better-than-nothing Euston Manifesto, the "democratic progressive" document which explicitly supports a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem (increasingly rare on the left), denounces "Islamist" terror, and urges economic globalization (of a kind that won't cause any problems whatever, of course).

As a plus, he regularly dissects the Alzheimeric bloviations of Noam Chomsky. Anybody can do that, obviously, but he's good at it.

Kamm's also a little stuffy, and his "progressivism" sometimes requires him to take the long way 'round to the obvious. But he often gets there (a notable but unsurprising exception: he doesn't believe the BBC leans left).

Taking a while to get there myself, ain't I?

Kamm had a post last week on Mark Kurlansky, author of Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Apparently he had a (truncated) debate with the pacifist on Sky News, during which he used an argument against pacifism dear to the D-blog's sullen and violent heart:

We discussed briefly Kurlansky's view that nonviolence is an effective and principled course in foreign policy. I pointed out that passive resistance against colonialism or oppression has been effective only where the protestors have been able to appeal to a common set of moral values with the oppressor.

I cited George Orwell to the effect that it's difficult to see how Gandhi's techniques could work against a regime where political opponents disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. I said it was perfectly obvious that against the secular totalitarian states of Hitler and Stalin, or the theocratic totalitarians we fight today, an appeal to conscience will be rebuffed if it is even understood. I added that the only way you can make such a plainly implausible case on historical grounds is by minimising the evil of aggressors and emphasising the sins of omission and commission by our own side.

An appeal to conscience would be "rebuffed if it is even understood," eh? Kamm can be quite wanker-like. But he's right: Beria would have stuck Gandhi in the Lubyanka and, after a short interrogation (and assuming he didn't have the gink strangled with his own yarn or whatever it was he made on that stupid spinning wheel), put him on a timber-cutting gang in Kolyma, where the G-man would have lasted about three days. Kamm continues:

Having read Mr Kurlansky's book, I was very sorry to see that this is what he does; one of his most egregious historical claims, I pointed out, had come straight from David Irving . . . .

Yep, good ol' Honest Dave, currently doing three years in an Austrian prison for Holocaust denial. And the "egregious historical claim" Kurlansky borrowed from the fat liar was the central historical fact tested in Irving's libel action against real historian Deborah Lipstadt:

Astonishingly, Kurlansky asserts (p. 141) that "historians estimate that between 100,000 and 130,000 people" died in the Allied bombing of Dresden. Reputable historians of modern Germany in fact estimate that around a fifth of that total perished at Dresden . . . . Irving, whose work directly on this subject (his book The Destruction of Dresden, published in 1963 and running to numerous later imprints) was exposed by Professor Richard Evans as being founded on "consistent and deliberate falsification of the historical evidence" to serve the end of "achiev[ing] implicit and in the end explicit comparability with the mass murders carried out by the Nazis at Auschwitz and elsewhere" (Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust and the David Irving Trial, 2001, p. 183). . . .

Here's a link to Evans' superb book.

Mark Kurlansky, author of bestselling histories of Cod and of Salt, has thus written a book that I initially thought was shady and disgusting, but turns out mainly to be historically illiterate, morally vacuous and professionally incompetent [well, anybody can make a mistake]. The publisher of this foul and stupid work is, I regret to record, the respected house of Jonathan Cape. The book carries a preface by the Dalai Lama, who expresses the "hope and prayer that this book should not only attract attention, but have a profound effect on those who read it" - in the gut, presumably.

That's a little joke from Kamm, who's definitely not a ha-ha kind of guy. How liberating would he find it to say, just once, "Bite me, Dalai Lama"? Very, probably. But he's a progressive, so he can't say any such thing. He can't even say the truth, that the much-revered (scroll up to "Private Life") Dalai Lama's pacifism is every bit as delusional as Kurlansky's.

Weird Bird Friday

Drunkawife is off on a Zen retreat for seven days starting tomorrow. To mark the occasion, a zenny bird for Weird Bird Friday.


Zen Bird says: I'm so enlightened, I poop Japanese characters*.
I'll still be on retreat next Friday, so Drunkablog is on his own! Think he's up to the task of creating his own Weird Bird Friday? [No--jgm]

*The characters in this painting, "Zen Bird" by Oishi Junkyo (1887-1967), actually say "Keep your mind as round and complete as the full moon," although I prefer, "I poop Japanese characters."

--Drunkawife

When idiots collide

Colorado congressman and anti-immigration embarrassment Tom Tancredo was supposed to speak last night at Michigan State University, but protestors decided he shouldn't. The Post:

Police were called after protestors pulled a fire alarm prior to the speech on immigration policies. There were at least three violent incidents with protestors targeting student backers of the event, Tancredo, R-Littleton, said today.

"One was spit on, one was kicked, and one was punched," Tancredo said in an e-mail. "Tires were also slashed."

Sounds amazingly like the protest at Columbia in October which prevented anti-immigrant "Minuteman Project" founder Jim Gilchrist from speaking.

Tancredo went to Michigan State University College of Law as part of a visit to the state to talk about immigration. He leads the group that opposes legal status for illegal immigrants.

No idea what group that is. I thought Tancredo was a lone loudmouth.

The News provides details:

According to The State News of Michigan, Tancredo's talk on illegal immigration "turned violent" when about 10 to 20 protesters crashed the event and scuffled with event sponsors from the MSU College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom.

"It saddens me that my fellow Spartans would display this type of behavior," Kyle Bristow, chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom, told the newspaper.

He was quoted saying that he was kicked and spat upon by protesters outside the MSU College of Law, where the event took place.

Tancredo has become both famous and infamous for his controversial statements denouncing what he calls uncontrolled immigration and the "cult of multiculturalism."

Most of this week, he has been in a public spat with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and other Floridians after he described the city of Miami as resembling a "Third World country."

At Thursday night's event, protesters reportedly gathered inside the building where the event was being held, some carrying signs reading, "Ignorant Racist," the newspaper reported.

Twice during the event, fire alarms were pulled and the building had to be evacuated.

The State News quoted protester Randy McPhereson, who carried a sign saying, "Where's the wall to keep you out?"

"God works in mysterious ways," McPherson said about the second fire alarm. "(Tancredo) shouldn't be here."

He may be a totalitarian in training, but at least the lad is religious.

"The speech had lots of disruptions by protestors trying to 'silence' me," Tancredo wrote. "Apparently they declared ahead of time on (facebook.com) that they would not allow me to speak."

Why'd he put "silence" in "quotes"?

The Post says "about 40" attended Tancredo's speech. Wonder if that includes the "10 to 20" protestors. Either way, it's gratifyingly pathetic.

Another manufactured holiday

It's National Methamphetamine Awareness Day and I didn't get my mom a thing.

(via a voice on the radio)