I received some terrible news today by way of our friends at Rumproast. Terrific blogger StrangeAppar8us has taken ill and is currently hospitalized. His three cats are in urgent need of a new home(s). The cats are in the Pennsylvania area.

We will be doing everything we can for Strange, including setting up fundraisers and putting together his work, but for now we have an immediate need for homes for his three cats, most likely permanent homes, though I hope with all my heart someday he may be reunited with at least one. They are all seven years old, spayed and neutered, and I am hoping he may get one back someday, but we have no idea if that will ever happen.

So, anyone interested in taking in the charming 7 year olds, two males one female, see the post here. Or at least contact Strange’s friends at strangecatrescue@gmail.com.

Anything you could do in this regard would be much appreciated. Get well soon, Strange.

–t

Dilbert’s creator and libertarian ink-bag, Scott Adams, mounts a campaign for most-hated internet denizen.

We come to terms with his ‘Dilbert’ without saying. But we note the Misogyny of His March, where women were slap-worthy toddlers, or something:

The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.

Then there was the Appreciation of His April, where he took to message boards to socketpuppet-ly masturbate himself:

3. Can he repeat his success with Dilbert? He already turned a failing comic into a household word by transforming it from a generic comic into a workplace comic. He wrote a number of best selling books. He was one of the top paid public speakers for a decade. His website has earned him millions while no other comic property has done the same. One of his two restaurants was solidly successful. And now he’s one of the most popular writers in the Wall Street Journal. You can argue that all of his successes spring from his one lucky success with Dilbert, but I would argue that all entrepreneurs leverage whatever advantages they start with, whether that is technical knowledge, contacts, or whatever.

4. As far as Adams’ ego goes, maybe you don’t understand what a writer does for a living. No one writes unless he believes that what he writes will be interesting to someone. Everyone on this page is talking about him, researching him, and obsessing about him. His job is to be interesting, not loved. As someone mentioned, he has a certified genius I.Q., and that’s hard to hide.

Now comes the Justification of His June, where we men are all turgid, peg-ged rapists in a world full of criminally defenseless and geometrically displeasing holes:

If you have a round peg that doesn’t fit in a square hole, do you blame the peg or the hole? You probably blame neither. We don’t assign blame to inanimate objects . .

Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.

The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?

Here’s where I impress you with my commentary: wow.

Isn’t disappointment guaranteed you when you choose to be a Conservative? Doesn’t it hurt, the way so few people behave? Think of the problems that would vanish if we could all be the same.

State multiculturalism has failed, says David Cameron
BBC News | 5 February 2011

David Cameron has criticised “state multiculturalism” in his first speech as prime minister on radicalisation and the causes of terrorism.

At a security conference in Munich, he argued the UK needed a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to all kinds of extremism . .

The speech angered some Muslim groups, while others queried its timing amid an English Defence League rally in the UK . .

“Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism,” the prime minister said.

Your liberalism, yes, as in ‘squeeze the outsiders.’ So Britons are to do what, exactly? Or Americans, who have been bludgeoned by right-wingers with “naive multi-culturalist,” they need to change, how? I’m curious to know what you’d have me do from now on.

When I see someone wearing a headscarf, should I criticize them? Should I tell them that a normal person doesn’t dress like that?

When I smell someone cooking strange, odoriferous food, should I knock on their door? Should I remind them of the mainstream pleasures of hamburgers and hot dogs?

When I see somebody observing strange customs, like praying to an unfamiliar God, should I point out that most of us doubt He exists? Should I add that some think His religion evil? Or, at least, hilarious?

I am nauseated at the sound of “multi-culturalism has failed.” In what way should I change my tolerant habits? I can’t tell you how I would love to know. Because the only alternatives to acceptance and mutual respect, as far as I can tell, are outdated regionalism and racism.

When someone criticizes institutions or traditions, like our flag, our holidays, our celebrities, I oughta take them to task? I might lecture them on the meanings of such things? Perhaps I’ll make it personal and tell them what it all means to me. That should be effective, right, because I am such a typical, wonderful, national-type person. Gosh, lucky me.

And, please, do let me know how to go about tightening up Cameron’s “collective identity.” What is it, by the way? Is it somewhere where I can see it? Or must I read about it in a book? Such things were once the fancies of historians, gazing long hours into their way-back machines.

This attack on multi-culturalism is ugly politics, period. They offer no alternative because there is no civilized alternative. Only an anachronistic fool would want to beef up the cultural, if not criminal, codes on behavior, attitude and appearance. The absences of such things are the trademarks of open, Western societies. You can’t tighten freedom.

Remember these guys?

They look pretty normal to me. To you, maybe not. So what are we really talking about?

So the pro-Israel folks still can’t let it go? Jimmy Carter’s likening the former treatment of Blacks under Apartheid to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in their territories?

And there, apartheid exists in its more despicable forms, that Palestinians are deprived of basic human rights. Their land has been occupied and then confiscated and then colonized by the Israeli settlers. And they have now more than 205 settlements in the West Bank itself. And what has happened is, over a period of years, the Israelis have connected settlements with highways, and those highways make the West Bank look like a honeycomb and maybe a spider web. You can envision it. And in many cases, most cases, the Palestinians are prevented from using the highways at all, and in many cases, even from crossing the highways.

Gee, what a pile of . . facts. Anyway, good luck beating a guy who won a Nobel Prize for his work in the Middle East:

President Carter named in $5 million lawsuit over his “Palestine” book
By Stephen Lowman | WaPo | 2/2/2011

More than four years after its publication, five disgruntled readers have filed a class-action lawsuit against President Jimmy Carter and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, alleging that his 2006 book “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” contained “numerous false and knowingly misleading statements intended to promote the author’s agenda of anti-Israel propaganda and to deceive the reading public instead of presenting accurate information as advertised” . .

The suit accuses Carter and his publisher of violating New York consumer protection laws because they engaged in “deceptive acts in the course of conducting business” and alleges that they sought enrichment by promoting the book “as a work of non-fiction.”

In a press release, one of the attorneys, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner stated: “The lawsuit will expose all the falsehoods and misrepresentations in Carter’s book and prove that his hatred of Israel has led him to commit this fraud on the public. He is entitled to his opinions but deceptions and lies have no place in works of history.”

They don’t? Nitsana apparently doesn’t read much history. What a bunch of red-asses.

for a little while . .

..that’s better.

Punishment, punishment. When will these people get around to reading the New Testament?

Georgia’s Christian right comes out against bills aimed at child prostitution
February 1, 2010, by Jim Galloway

The season’s most disputed issue may have just surfaced at the state Capitol.

The weight of the state’s Christian right movement just came down in opposition to a pair of bills that would steer young girls under the age of 16 into diversionary programs instead of arresting them on charges of prostitution…

Representatives from the Georgia Christian Alliance, the Georgia Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, and the Georgia Baptist Convention all put in appearances…

“Who will benefit from the passage of H.B. 582 or S.B. 304? I’ll tell you who – the very profitable and growing pedophile industry,” said former state Sen. Nancy Shafer. “It is imperative that these bills be defeated.”

That makes no sense. The only thing being ‘decriminalized’, for the purpose of bettering the lives of young people, many of whom will have been forced into prostitution, are the acts of the prostitutes themselves. Many of these are as young as 12, or 11. The rest of the industry is on the hook for its actions, as before.

“Decriminalizing that means the police would have absolutely no interest in it at all,” said Sue Ella Deadwyler, who writes a Christian conservative newsletter. “They wouldn’t arrest the girls, they wouldn’t pick the girls up, they wouldn’t protect them from influence on the street from the pimps and the johns. It would be an absolute cultural upheaval in our state. Never in the United States, as far as I known, has juvenile prostitution been legalized.”

Unhinged much? The cops just pick them up as before, but they’re not formally arrested. And I don’t know what sort of life you’d have to lead to result in “absolute cultural upheaval” if sexually abused 14 year olds aren’t prosecuted.

“Sure there are those who are forced into prostitution, but I think most of them volunteer,” Deadwyler said of under 16-year-old prostitutes. “Many, many children have been scared straight because of arrest.”

Punish the horny little things.

This is all pretty much par for the course for Fascists:

Neda Soltan’s death was faked, says documentary on Iran state TV

THE young woman killed during the June election protests in Tehran was an agent for the United States and Britain who faked her own death, says a documentary made by Iran state television.

Neda Agha Soltan, 27, became a symbol of Iranian democratic resistance when her death was filmed on a mobile phone and then posted on YouTube [above], where it was watched by millions of people.

“The latest is this documentary.”

How could they be so stupid? Why would they even bother? Fear. Check out the comments of the guy who posted the English version of the ‘documentary’ at YouTube:

shabbirh (1 day ago) Show Hide

@weekendperson1 with respect are you illiterate? Do you understand English? The report is about a DOCUMENTARY made by a THIRD PARTY about the murder of Neda Agha Soltani. Just because you can’t cope with the fact that the western media you idolize was lying. You say all manner of things about Press TV. Eh do you worst – you’re just so pathetic and irrelavent it matters not. Neda was killed by her own allies; poor misguided and confused soul. Sad yes – but also true. Also – hands off Iran

The blog-o-matic says traffic is up through Google searches about the strange Nadya Suleman soap opera. Hey there. Feel free to post comments, the site is new.

Apparently off the cuff, and better than any speech W. ever gave.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k-rpuTNs4I]

 
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTuHgewKn1g]

public service and transparency underscored, lobbyists whacked

 
The 2006-2007 contract of new NBA Champion and Finals MVP Dwyane Wade.

$3.84 million.

 
Sotheby’s auction: self-portrait.

Andy Warhol, 1964. Who would have loved Natalie’s gimmick.