Archive for February 22nd, 2010
Have you ever read "Daughter of Persia" by Sattareh Farman Farmaian?
A must read. Trust us.
Possibly, we’re thinking of her today because we went to Reza’s for lunch on Saturday (all you can eat Persian buffet with all the kebobs, the shirazi salad, hummas, and all sorts of other Persian goodies), but we wonder if you have ever read the excellent book “Daughter of Persia” by Sattareh Farman Famaian?
She’s the daughter of a Persian prince who grew up in opulence, lost everything in the revolution, and started a school for social work in Iran before moving to the United States and lecturing on women’s rights and resistance to militant Islam.
In college, one of us was assigned the book in a political science class, and one of the essay assignments was to write about what Sattareh would think of several questions the teacher posed. So, we wrote to Sattareh herself, on a lark, and asked her the questions, not thinking she would ever respond. But, she did…answered every one of them…and it made for one of the best essays we ever wrote in college. The professor didn’t believe it was really her, and was shocked we were able to get through like that. But, if people have a contact button on their website, and they do public speaking, chances are they’ll write back to you if you are nice to them. Especially people who aren’t necessarily inundated with fan mail by the public at large. Old movie stars and retired politicians write back quite often (Claudette Colbert, in the early 90s, was especially penpal-receptive). Same with authors of books published a while ago. Try it…you’ll be surprised who you hear from. Most of these people are very nice, especially the ones with stories to tell as remarkable as Sattareh’s.
It’s sad, but her website has not been updated in five years regarding her speaking engagements, so perhaps she’s passed away and her Wiki bio has not been updated yet. That’s a shame because she’s someone we would have liked to have met — at Reza’s for lunch, especially — to hear more of her life’s story.
Seriously, people, it’s like Gone With the Wind in Iran, where Scarlett was smarter, had more morals, was more beautiful, and faced down the forces of true evil in the form of the Ayatollahs. It was the most riveting and exciting book we ever read for any class in all of our years in school.
Like we said, we have no idea why we had this sudden urge to tell you about this book today, but when something like this happens, and there’s an energy to write something, we do. Maybe you are meant to read this book right now for some reason, to give you a better picture of the people of Iran.
The REAL Iranians…not the Ayatollahs and religious nuts. The real Persians, not the lunatic fundamentalists in charge over there.
If you’ve read “Daughter of Persia”, chime in here with your thoughts, especially if you have an update on what Sattareh’s doing now, especially since we very much hope she is still with us, speaking somewhere.
If you haven’t read it yet, please add it to your reading list. You won’t be sorry.
The newest horseman of the GOP apocalypse: Mitch Daniels
Now, Mitch Daniels is being put forward as the favored cucumber-and-mayonnaise boring white guy the GOP should run to lose to Dr. Utopia in 2012.
That makes him the latest in the string of destined losing GOP 2012 nominees, all of whom the media cheerleads so that Dr. Utopia can be guaranteed a second term.
We’d love to focus this thread on collecting the history of these Horsemen, so that we can create a graphic that shows what’s going on, and keep a running list of all the MSM’s attempts to game the 2012 nomination on the GOP side.
Starting November 4th, 2008, the MSM has been pushing the following people to be the GOP’s next nominee:
(1) Bobby Jindal – semi-retired as Horseman post-awful performance in rebuttal to Dr. Utopia’s 2009 Address to Congress
(2) Tim Pawlenty
(3) Charlie Crist – will be retired as Horseman once Marco Rubio defeats him in GOP Florida primary
(4) Mitt Romney
(5) Mark Sanford – retired as Horseman when he imploded post-affair and missing person scandal
(6) Haley Barbour
(7) John Thune
(8) John Huntsman
(9) Bob McDonnell
(10) Mitch Daniels
(11) Mike Huckabee – retired as Horseman because of his pardons as Arkansas governor, which included the man who went nuts in Washington state and killed several policemen
Are we missing anyone?
It would be interesting to create a timeline that we could graph, showing the ups and downs of these Horsemen. Which ones did the MSM push which week? Mitch Daniels is clearly the Horseman the memo’s gone out to push this current week. Who was last week’s? Thune? Romney? Who will be next week? More Pawlenty?
To be honest, all of these guys are so interchangeably dull and boring (with the exception of Barbour, who is actually kind of fun to listen to sometimes) that it’s hard to tell them apart sometimes. Jindal, Crist, Sanford, and Huckabee are at least interesting to watch…though they all have a doughnut’s chance in Oprah’s pantry of ever making it to the Oval Office for anything other than a school-sponsored field trip from the University of Cucumbers and Mayonnaise. Since the Electoral College won’t send these men there, they’d have more luck with an imaginary alma mater. Cucumbers and mayonnaise for everyone!
Here’s what we need help with: we know the MSM is deliberately interfering with the GOP 2012 nomination. We know they need to be stopped. We believe the DNC and Organizing for America is advising the MSM which boring white men (or oddball Indian, in the case of Jindal) to push each week, so that Republican voters turn against Sarah Palin — who is the one person on the scene we believe is guaranteed to defeat Dr. Utopia in 2012.
We can’t do much to help Palin, as we’re just a bunch of amateur writers in Boystown. BUT, we do have all of you out there, so we’ve potentially got thousands of pairs of eyes to keep watch on what the MSM is doing. If we can pull together these resources, and build an accurate and constantly updated timeline and chart of what is going on, maybe, JUST MAYBE, we can wake Republicans up to how the DNC games their nomination…so that, FOR ONCE, Democrats don’t get to run against the Republican they want most think they can beat.
It’s time for us to start to evolve from guys who just randomly snark about politics, to guys who find a way to clearly articulate a battle plan to stop the bad things we see the DNC doing. It’s an evolution for us. It’s going to be hard. But, it’s important to do everything we can to throw a wrench in the DNC machine’s plan to award Dr. Utopia that second term.
We hope you all evolve from being regular readers of snark into a research army unparalleled in the political world. Together, we could all make things happen that alone we’d never be capable of.
One of those things has to be to stop the nomination of people like Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney, or other guaranteed losers to Utopia. We think the surest way to do that is to make it clear these men are being propped up and pushed by the DNC, through its mouthpiece, the American media.
How can you help us do this?
$2 bills are not rare and you should spend them like any other bill
There is no shortage of $2 bills. Honestly. Trust us.
Today, we had an interesting adventure with $2 bills here in Boystown.
Sebastian is very fond of $2 bills, and always asks for them when getting change at the bank. Banks are always happy to give them to him, since most people don’t want them, for whatever reason. ”I like them because they take up half the space in my wallet as ones do, and I think they’re the best looking bills we have. The painting of the Founders on the reverse is gorgeous, and I like leaving these as tips in bars because that’s a great way for bartenders to remember me. When they remember you, you get your drinks faster, and they’re stronger.”
Well, it’s amazing, but some people don’t think $2 bills are real, and others think they’re too rare to ever spend.
Do you know the last time $2 bills were printed was in 2006…and that over 200 million of them were printed? When those are used up, more will be printed. As long as there is a republic. So, as long as we can keep Dr. Utopia (or, Miss Thang, if you prefer), from voiding the constitution and declaring the First Utopian Empire, we’ll never run out of $2 bills.
Today at a gas station, Sebastian tried to use a pair of $2 bills to buy a vanilla Coke and the cashier looked at the money and said it wasn’t real. She wouldn’t take it. Panda was no help, agreeing with the cashier, saying “I’ve never seen those. I think those are fake.” We love Panda to death, but man alive, sometimes the guy just doesn’t help.
A woman behind us in line backed Sebastian up and said “Yes, those are real. But they’re worth a lot of money, don’t spend them”.
“But, I want to spend them. They’re currency. They’re for spending”.
“Well, then I’ll take them from you. I’ll give you $10 for them. Here,” she said, waving a ten in front of Sebastian and taking the twin $2s out of his hand. He tried to tell the woman they weren’t worth more than $4, but she wouldn’t listen. ”Oh, I know what these are worth, I saw it on TV. They’re worth a lot, so I’m glad to have them,” the woman insisted.
Just to be sure, as soon as we got back to Buzzquarters we double-checked and Sebastian is right: $2 bills are worth $2. Each $2 bill is the equivalent of two $1 bills. Five $2 bills equal a $10 bill. So, that woman traded Sebastian one orangey-yellow new Alexander Hamilton for a pair of 2006 Thomas Jeffersons…winning Bast a $6 unexpected, and unwanted, profit.
“They still don’t look real,” Panda kept muttering as we walked down Halsted, “but they would be cool to leave as tips. I bet people would collect them and never spend ‘em. To me, they’re boring to collect because who cares about that stuff, but some people are boring, so more power to them.”
UPDATED: FOUR things to say about Scott Brown, who remains Hottie McAwesome to us
H/t Mizz Jodee
Some of you are kicking around Scott Brown today because he voted with Democrats on a Jobs Bill the Democrats in Massachusetts successfully convinced voters Brown needed to vote for — lest he be seen as anti-jobs at a time when the people of Massachusetts want more jobs, and are still getting used to the idea of someone with an “R” after his name sitting in a Senate seat representing the Bay State for the first time in decades.
Here are four things we want to say about Scott Brown:
(1) He’s hot and awesome and that hasn’t changed.
(2) He is single-handedly the reason Democrats were not able to ram through the Rationing Bill last month. So, Brown served a great purpose to the nation already. Whatever he does good in the future is just gravy, folks. For us, he has served his purpose. Now, going forward, Brown will vote on the side of sense and reason more often than he will vote with lunatics. If it was Senator Coakley in Massachusetts, there would never be any reason at all. Brown will vote more than half the time for fiscal responsibility, national security, economic development, and the preservation of the constitution. Coakley would have voted the way the DNC wanted her to 100% of the time. So, you need to see that Brown is a man who wants to be re-elected to the Senate in 2012. To do that in Massachusetts, he needs to be a Massachusetts Republican, in the way that the Weird Sisters are Maine Republicans. Purist trolls out there don’t seem to understand this, but to win elections, people like Brown must do what his constituents want. They wanted a Yes vote on this bill. So Brown gave them one. In the future, it’s up to Brown to juggle his votes between what Massachusetts wants and what he knows is best for the nation. We have confidence this man will do what’s right much more often than not.
(3) Scott Brown will not be president. Ever. We really like the man…as a Senator. But, did you learn nothing from the McCain campaign? Republicans need to run a true conservative because that’s what Independents want when they are desperate to vote for a Republican in an election year. They will not vote for a Republican who is Democrat-lite. Meanwhile, they don’t vote for a Democrat unless they think that Democrat is a moderate (which Dr. Utopia claimed he was…even though we all knew better…and was able to trick Independents into believing him). Brown is a great-looking guy. He has a wonderful wife and a pair of gorgeous, smart, and talented daughters. They are the perfect Senate family. We hope he’s in the Senate until retirement many years from now. We’d love to help with his Senate re-election campaign. But, he is not presidential timber. As a Democrat, he’d probably be a conservative or moderate Dem like us, and he could be president someday, taking Evan Bayh’s place now that Bayh’s revealed himself to be anything but moderate. But, Brown has that “R” after his name and won’t be switching parties ever. Thus, the Senate is as far as he’ll go…unless he wants to be Governor of Massachusetts some day. Which, come to think of it, is a very good place for Brown in the future.
(4) UPDATE: The other thing that occurs to us that many of you need to remember is that Brown was not a deciding vote on this matter. Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, George Voinovich, and K.I.T.T. Bond, the legal name of the car from Knight Rider, apparently, all voted with Democrats for this “jobs bill”. So, the ire directed at Brown, and the melodrama over him “abandoning you” or “throwing you in a well” or “stabbing you in the back” is just misplaced on this one, folks. This bill was going to pass with Brown or without him. It would be a different story if the Weird Sisters, Voinovich, and that car all voted AGAINST the bill, and Brown broke ranks to vote with the Dems. Then, and only then, would we see your side of betrayal regarding Brown. Frankly, even in that event, if Brown thought his constituents wanted a YES vote on this, then he needed to give them a YES vote. It’s Brown’s job as Senator to represent his constituents as best he sees fit. If he read this bill and didn’t think it would damage the country, and that his voters wanted it, then his duty is to vote yes. Just like, we wish every day Scott Brown came to work in just a red, white, and blue Speedo to conduct business in all his centerfold glory. Man, we’d just love that. But, would the voters of Massachusetts want that? No. Would that be good for the country? No. So, we’re disappointed. We live in Illinois, and can never vote for Brown, so us being disappointed in Boystown for the lack of Speedos in his daily wardrobe doesn’t amount to a hill of Boston baked beans.
So, that’s our take on all this.
Brown saved us from the Rationing Bill, so he’s a hero.
Brown will occasionally take votes he has to so that he can stay in the Senate.
Brown is not going to be president so long as he is a Republican.
Give the guy a break, don’t berate him, and always look at the big picture.
Especially when that picture’s a smokin’ hot centerfold.
Keep Dick Cheney in your thoughts: resting comfortably in the hospital
Get better so you can get back to being awesome and haunting Obama's dreams.
Dick Cheney’s in the hospital tonight, after suffering chest pains.
This man is the country’s #1 supporter of LGBTQ rights, he worked hard for 8 years to keep this nation safe, and he’s working overtime in what should be his retirement to prevent the naive socialist in the Oval Office from destroying the country.
Some call him “Darth Cheney”. We kind of think of him as Superman in a cowboy hat, with glasses, taking no crap from anyone.
If you’re the sort, please send some prayers Cheney’s way.
This is someone we spent the last decade or so hating, because as Democrats we were told to. So, it’s only been a year or so since we discovered his awesomeness. We want the guy around for many years so we have a chance to revel in everything he does post-Vice Presidency, and maybe get the chance to thank him for his efforts in person.
PLUS, Cheney needs to keep mentoring and guiding his marvelous daughter Liz, grooming her to be a future president some day down the road.
God Bless and Keep Dick Cheney Safe, Healthy, and In Fighting Spirits…ALWAYS.
Why won't MSNBC hire black people?
The Dallas Tea Party has invited Keith Olbermann and the other Leftists at MSNBC to come to Dallas and explain why MSNBC does not hire black people to be prominent on-air talent. It is the only television network we can think of that refuses to hire black people.
Why is that?
Is Jerry Brown senile?
Did Jerry Brown paint this?
There are an increasing number of reports that Jerry Brown, who is running for Governor of California, is senile. His speeches are rambling, he loses his train of thought frequently, and many supporters leave the room baffled as to what he was talking about.
Recently, a friend’s mother was diagnosed with dementia. This came after several years of her making odd choices, losing her place in the middle of a thought, fumbling with things that used to come easily for her, etc. And that woman spoke better than Jerry Brown does.
Have you heard anything else on Brown being senile? Are Democrats truly going to run this man for Governor when in a year or two he might not be able to execute the duties of the office with a clear mind and sound judgment?
If there’s any validity to the claims of his impairment, then Brown needs to step aside immediately…so a decent Democrat can run, as suggested by sites like The Temple of Mut, and give the people of California a good choice in the coming election.
