Archive for May, 2010
Great Merciful Zeus: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is kind of our new hero
Seriously, this is the sort of campaign ad we’d make if we worked for Brewer’s campaign.
And had puppets.
Who are we kidding, we’ve already got the puppets.
We just need to work on figuring out how to make campaign ads…that are chock full of awesome, like this one.
We’ve seen much speculation on exactly why our race-baiting Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (and seemingly everyone in the Obama Administration) keep claiming they have not read Arizona’s immigration enforcement law.
It’s either because these people are illiterate, which is unlikely, because they’re all also on record praising the literary heft of both Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope (authored, respectively, by William Ayers and Jon Favreau), OR it’s because someone at the White House told all these people to “just say you never read it” so that the administration would not have to come out against a sensible law enforcement maneauver.
All the Arizona law does is enforce existing federal law in the absence of the federal government’s will to do that itself.
Obama knows this. His administration knows this. Holder and Big Sis and the rest all know this.
And they also know admitting they have actually read the bill, know what’s in it, and still have a problem with it means they’d all look even more stupid than they do being taunted by a puppet.
Hope!
Change!
Saturday Open Thread: May 22nd, 2010
What’s on your minds this Saturday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
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VOCABULARY UPGRADE: Criminal entrants vs. illegal aliens
Here’s an interesting note we got from a reader, asking us to start using the term “criminal entrants” instead of “illegal aliens”.
Words have immense power.
The “aliens” always lends itself to cute ET or Roswell green imagery.
The “undocumented workers” garbage the PC-police on the Left keeps trying to push is something we never used for the Mexican reconquista invaders who illegally cross our borders and believe American immigration laws do not apply to them.
“Criminal entrants” is the term we’re going to start using…unless you can think of a better one.
Remember: the Left is always brand-managing, always running psy-ops, and always calling cockroaches “hug-a-bugs” to make them more palatable. They use creative vocabulary for everything. Yesterday, when a rat darted in front of Obama at the White House during one of his professorial lecture sessions, the MSM reported it as “a small mammal” or “a small creature”. They refused to use the word rat.
Just as the Left refuses to call the reconquistas what they are: CRIMINALS.
They’re breaking immigration law.
People who break laws are criminals.
They are, thus, criminals.
Call a rat a rat, and never let the Left choose your vocabulary for you.
QUESTION: Do you think the euro and EU are zombies — still shambling around, but effectively dead?
Please chime in on this one, especially those of you who follow Europe closely.
Years ago, in college, some of us here were very big on the idea of a United States of Europe, with a president or supreme chancellor, and the European countries becoming, eventually, very much like Georgia, Ohio, Florida, and the rest of our US states. Why we wanted this is anyone’s guess, but maybe it was some desire to see Europe become a twin to America, and together we could oppose Islam and whatever future threats arose in the world. Freedom and democracy would, thus, have two superpowered defenders in the New and Old western worlds.
But, Islam conquered Europe in the last ten years. Europe, as we see it, is a failed continent. It’s a decade away from being second, if not third, world.
We don’t mourn this loss, as the fools that ran Europe into the ground did it to themselves.
Are we being too harsh in this…or do you think Europe has a chance to rebound?
Do you think the euro is a goner and the EU itself will collapse, or can this be saved?
We tend to see the whole mess as comparable to all the Zombie Banks that are still shambling around here in the US. These are insolvent, failed ventures that keep all the lights on, maintain the pretenses of existence, but for all intents-and-purposes these are failed institutions that will never recover. They are dead, or rather undead, and just not buried yet.
Is that how you see the EU and euro?
What think you?
Pie Hole Pizza Joint Update
Well, our favorite pizza place in Boystown is closing soon, so tonight we’re going to have our last sausage-and-marshmallow After School Special pizza. It’s very sad, actually, for a lot of reasons — but most interestingly because this is a bigger story than just a pizza shop closing in a bad economy.
Yesterday, we did an interview with the Chicago Tribune on Pie Hole, for their token gay section. A reporter’s covering the closing of the shop, and wanted our take on it, because so many of you out there were so kind to Pie Hole and sent them loads of encouragement and support when we told you about this little slice of Boystown that had lost its lease. We were very vocal supporters of Pie Hole, and contacted the neighborhood Alderman, Merchants’ Association, and other business owners on Halsted to see if anyone could help them keep their lease or alternatively find a new spot on the street to reopen.
We were amazed at how little support anyone in Boystown wanted to give this little business — and how much it seemed that everyone WANTED Pie Hole to close, because the perception was that this place had become a nuisance.
Or, more apt, a nuisance-attractor.
What we saw as a fun place to get pizza super late at night, with a great staff we loved talking to, and great product we loved ordering up, was also a main draw for all of the young criminals who’ve invaded Boystown and have been terrorizing the neighborhood since the Center on Halsted opened a few years ago and started actively recruiting gangs from the Southside to head north “to hang out”. After the Center closes each day, it discharges the “youth” its given a club house to all day. They’re on the street then, far from home, looking for ways to get into trouble…and then there’s Pie Hole, open late, with a policy of giving them a new late night club house.
The owner is a very nice man whom we like very much. He should be running a troubled youth center — on the Southside — to help these kids. He is a born social worker.
As a businessman, he’s not so much doing what he needs to do to run a thriving business. At best, Pie Hole broke even at the end of a week, mainly because so many customers were driven away by the gangs of loud, obnoxious, pushy, underaged, and often criminal thugs that Pie Hole allowed to congregate on their property. Because of Pie Hole’s proximity to other businesses on Halsted, others lost customers because people didn’t feel safe — or didn’t feel like putting up with these “kids” — by going out in Boystown.
It’s a damn shame, all of it. The problem starts with the misguided Center on Halsted, and it’s exacerbated by the well-intentioned-but-delusional stance Pie Hole’s owner took on all of this. The owner has a very big heart, but he never understood that his main mission should have been running a pizza shop the neighborhood wanted…not a pizza shop/late night center for troubled Southside youth. The two things do not go together.
It’s a shame there isn’t room in the Center on Halsted itself to have just folded Pie Hole into that building…then those kids would have never had to leave. Add a troubled youth pancake shop on the roof or something, and it could be open 24/7 and then those gangs would never have to leave the building. They could focus on terrorizing the well-intentioned-but-delusional occupants and proprietors of the Center instead.
Then everyone would win.
All of this is fascinating to us because when we started writing about Pie Hole, it was because something we personally liked was in jeopardy and for our own purposes, we wanted to save it — so that we could personally enjoy the pizza we liked late at night.
But, investigating WHY it was closing and WHY absolutely no one wanted to help save this business we realized just how complicated some things are. There are times when what we personally want needs to take a backseat for what’s best for the neighborhood. Sometimes, the damage something is doing far outweighs the enjoyment we personally get from it. As much as we love everything about Pie Hole as a business, we don’t think Pie Hole as a Late Night Troubled Southside Youth Center is what Boystown needs.
We’re curious to see what take on all of this appears in the Tribune next week when the article is written up. Will it be more of the same “everyone’s picking on those kids!” or will it be similar to what we’ve said, that it’s a shame this business is closing, but the business owner should not have mixed his business with a well-intentioned-but-delusional effort to run a late night youth ministry?
Friday Open Thread: May 21st, 2010
What’s on your minds this Friday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
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We’re seriously debating what we want to do going forward around here.
This week, we’ve been very busy with work…work that we need to, you know, earn money to buy stuff, pay rent, and survive here in Chicago. This is a feast or famine town for us as freelancers, and when the weather’s nice, we take absolutely every gig we can get to make sure we’re covered during the lean times. So, if we don’t have the free time to put out 15,000 words a day, it’s because we are off at the various and sundry things we all do to earn a living.
The sheer nastiness we receive from some of you for not writing the equivalent of a small magazine a day for your enjoyment is remarkable. Some of you complain because some comment you made didn’t turn up from moderation yet. Others of you complain because we didn’t talk about something in the news yet. Some of you lie in wait for months waiting for a week like this when we’re just too busy to keep up with everything, so you can launch your little attacks.
It’s a lot like being trapped in a carwash, inside a tiny little car, with firehose-grade streams of criticism aimed directly at you, nonstop.
It is exhausting.
Last night, our friend Althea was over and we were checking email and she looked at the screen and couldn’t believe what she read. ”Who are these crazy people?”, she asked, scrolling through the 800 emails that came in yesterday, alone. ”Why do they behave like this?”. She was supposed to help us by going through the moderation queue and sorting through what was in the spam filter for us, but after 15 minutes Althea didn’t want to do it anymore. ”How can you read all this garbage every day? I don’t want to sit here and sort through this, it’s just too nasty”.
And, honestly, for some reason the trolls aren’t the hardest things to deal with — it’s all the “Why hasn’t my comment posted? When will my comment post? I spent an hour writing a comment and it’s not posted? Blah blah blah”. It’s just so tiresome.
The cumulative effect of all of this tends to be that when we’re running nonstop, working doubles and triples, and we have only 45 minutes to an hour of free time, the absolute last thing we want to do is sit in front of a computer and be hammered with this garbage…not when the sun is shining, the sky is blue, and we could be reading a book somewhere verdant and peaceful. Althea couldn’t put up with this for a quarter of an hour…dealing with comments alone is at least an hour a day of our time. And that’s before getting to the email.
Part of why we keep writing for this site is because it bothers Obama supporters so much and because, for whatever reason, we seem to drive many on the Left so crazy, just by existing. The other part of it is that we want to be able to have some sort of impact on the 2012 race, since all of us want to do everything possible to make sure Dr. Utopia is defeated, and every last Leftist is driven from office so that normal people can take back this country and begin to undo the damage of The Golden Age of Hope and Change.
But, going forward, we’re going to have to find some better way to handle how we operate things. Either we’re going to find someone in our circle of friends who will take over comment moderation and email reading completely, so that none of us have to be directly subjected to this, or we’re going to stop reading the comments and emails. It’s just too much complaining and negativity in our day, and it’s just too tiresome and repetitive for us to subject ourselves to any longer.
Call us crazy, but it’s just no fun being criticized nonstop, often in the most hateful of ways possible, by thousands of strangers every day. It would be one thing if we wrote for a newspaper or magazine or something, and this was our actual jobs — then it would be part of our job description to put up with this. But, as private citizens doing this as a hobby that has taken over our lives, it’s just soul-killing to come home drained from very hectic and tiring days to find so much complaining and negativity waiting for us.
Something’s got to give.
Who's Dressed Better? The First Spouse, or Whitney Houston?
Click above to embiggen
Who looks better, in context?
The current first spouse, wearing a costume to a state dinner…or Whitney Houston in “The Bodyguard”, wearing a similar getup while performing a song?
Question: How appropriate is it for Mexico to question US law enforcement policy, when Mexico's law enforcement and immigration policies are at least 10 times more invasive and harsh than America's?
We believe this current White House should not hold any more state dinners — because they lead to disasters of epic proportions.
The India state dinner was an amateur-hour affair that embarrassed the nation, due largely to the incompetence of Desiree Rogers, the prima donna who’d rather spend the night partying down than standing up to do her job and ensure a smooth and respectable event.
This was followed by the Mexico state dinner on Wednesday, which produced the remarkable remarks by Mexico’s president criticizing American law enforcement policy, while claiming there are no borders between the United States and Mexico.
Mexico’s president proved himself to be a schizophrenic at best, and a damn fool and liar at worst — because he’s ignoring Mexico’s own immigration and law enforcement policies, as pertains to the third world countries that share Mexico’s own southern border.
When Guatemalans, El Salvadorians, Costa Ricans, Columbians, you name it, try to filter up through Central America and enter Mexico, the way Mexicans have been invading the United States, these people are met with a harsh rebuke by Mexican border troops. If they make it into the country, Mexican police hunt them down, then Mexico jails and ultimately deports them. It’s routine for Mexican authorities to demand paperwork from whomever they want to see paperwork from.
Mexico’s president has no problem with this.
He also has no problem exporting all the Mexicans he doesn’t especially want in his own country, so that they can be someone else’s welfare drain.
Mexico should be humiliated that, as a country, it’s so terrible people risk their lives swimming rivers, crossing deserts, and breaking the law to leave.
It is highly inappropriate for Mexico, and its president, to come to the White House and criticize American immigration and law enforcement policy.
It’s downright repugnant that the current American president has the audacity to stand there and agree with him — a foreign leader — as he trashes our country.
We don’t know what Obama hopes to achieve by continually attacking the country that elected him president. Maybe he really is running for UN Secretary General and sees this stint at 1600 Pennsylvania as just a stepping stone to becoming some sort of “President of the World”.
Why else would he keep behaving so unpresidential by attacking America every chance he gets?
Thursday Open Thread: May 20th, 2010
What’s on your minds today?
What are people talking about in your neighborhood?
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HELP ARIZONA: Target all major California Convention and Visitors' Bureaus and let them know you won't be coming to California as long as it boycotts Arizona
Letter sent to LA Mayor reminding him LA receives 25% of its electricity from Arizona
Here’s some insight we have from our days in Cleveland — a city’s Convention and Visitors’ Bureau is generally staffed by very reactionary people who are fairly easy to spook, and who almost always have a direct line to the city’s mayor. A lot of times, these are wives of very rich people in town, who are only on the CVB because they like going to big parties and have lots of pretty pastel suits they can wear when having pictures taken with famous people in town for these events. So, anything that mars the joy of collecting big salaries to sit in fancy offices with the best views of the city — while doing relatively little to actually bring business to town, except smile and meet people at the airport with Merchants’ Association gift baskets — is something that strikes immediate terror into their precious hearts.
These, in our experience, are not the brightest people in any room. At least they weren’t in Cleveland.
They panic really, really easily. Whenever they detect anything at all that could harm a potential convention, or keep any group at all from coming to town, the CVB reacts swiftly, putting enormous pressure on mayors and city councils to get in front of the problem.
So, we wonder what would happen if nationwide an effort was spent to fire off thousands of letters to the CVBs of California cities, letting them know the actions being taken against the state of Arizona by California’s elected officials have made you cancel your trips to the golden state?
This feels, to us, like a backdoor pressure point that will quickly get the attention of people like Gavin Newsom and other California mayors who are slamming Arizona for actually enforcing federal immigration law.
Pair this with a continued Buycott Effort to help Arizona businesses, and the fact that nationally 60% of Americans (and growing) agrees with Arizona’s law enforcement policy, and California should start issuing new talking points on this matter really quickly.
Especially now that Arizona is threatening to stop selling California its surplus electricity.
Maybe should have thought of that before Sacramento and San Francisco declared war on its fellow state, for the heinous crime of enforcing existing law.
