21.6.11

the Devil's best trick







"the devil's best trick is to persuade
you
that he doesn't exist"




Have you ever heard this phrase?

the odds are you have - it's often on the lips
of radical Christian preachers and other denizens
of the Conservative  world, often when they are speaking about some nebulous new "liberal/leftist/progressive" nefariousness afoot somewhere
in the land.

Given the strict moral commandments so many
of these people allegedly live by, I wonder if they know who they are citing...



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The original version reads:

«Mes chers frères, n'oubliez jamais,
quand vous entendrez vanter le progrès des lumières, que la plus belle des ruses du diable
est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas!»


...which translates thusly:

"My dear brothers, never forget, when you
hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted,
that the devil's best trick is to persuade
you that he doesn't exist!"


It first appeared in France (duh) on February 7, 1864, in the writings of Charles Baudelaire.


Now seen as one of the giants of French literature, back in 1864 he was seen as a radical libertine even by his friends. these  included writers like Victor Hugo and Balzac, painter Édouard Manet, composer Franz Liszt and other culturati of the times.





as a young man, he began frequenting prostitutes  and his muse was Jeanne Duval, a famous Creole courtesan in Paris.

his best-known work is a collection of poems
called "Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil)", that hit the unsuspecting streets of Paris 1857.

among the poems about sex and death, as seen through a prism of lesbianism, sacred and profane love, metamorphosis, melancholy, the corruption of the city, lost innocence, the oppressiveness of living... and wine, is one called "The Litanies of Satan".








some thought the poems brilliant, but most did not. one major daily said "Everything in it which is not hideous is incomprehensible, everything one understands is putrid". Baudelaire was arrested
and convicted of creating an offense against public morals and some of his poems were banned by the government.

then as now, censorship can be very good for business and he continued to write and publish widely over the years. He also continued to smoke opium, take laudanum, drink and visit whores
until dying in poverty in 1867.







a first edition of Fleurs du mal now
goes for about $40,000.



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Baudelaire was, in word and deed, the antithesis
of someone conservative Moral Crusaders to be quoting around town but more than a taste for irony that has him on my mind these
days...

because if the devil's greatest trick is convincing you that he doesn't exist, then perhaps god's greatest trick is convincing you he does.



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Consider Sarah Palin's recurring use
of the "lamestream media".





She first used it in 2009 on Sean Hannity’s radio show- Palin said that “some on the left, that lamestream media, they’re contradicting what I wrote in the book.” Hannity jumped in to ask, “did you say lamestream media?”

“Yeah, lamestream,” Palin responded. “They are contradicting those facts that I laid out regarding what Reagan had to say.”


As in so many things Palinese, she didn't come
up with this herself. It first turned up in print in 10 years earlier, in the Waukegan News-Sun... but certainly Ms. Palin brought it to a wider audience.






two years later, it's an assumed truth among
the parroting classes in the US and Canada. The "the lamestream media" is seen as a sewage system of “journalism”.

FOR INSTANCE


Your blogger stood beside
a retired New York City police captain for a few minutes.  He was well-versed in crowd counting and estimated the group to be between 65,000 - 70,000. 
Meanwhile, the "lamestream" media was calling the crowd at only 1,500 - 2,000.  They were declaring that Americans were happy with the bill and wanted it to pass.







Newsweek is one of the lamestream media mouthpieces for Barack Obama and the Democrats. Given that this periodical is a firm supporter of the liberal/progressive destruction of America it is quite surprising to see this cover... If Obama isn’t actually any of these things then it means Newsweek is saying he is not the President.




Two recent stories will probably not garner much coverage (if any) by the lamestream media (NY Times, Wash Post, CNN/CBS/NBC/ABC/MSNBC et al).  Why? Because they don’t fit the leftist narrative.





They are now LAME - this means Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity, Malkin, Free Republic and Drudge are the MAIN STREAM MEDIA. The paradigm has now completed it’s shift!
Use the term “Lame Stream Media” anytime you can and pass it on!










...and in Canada...

You just know that the Left and Lamestream Media will try to claim he's "right-wing" and will try to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and "vitriolic rhetoric" and such for what happened.


It has been evident for some time that the liberal LSM (Lame Stream Media)—what Glenn Beck calls the “Fringe Media”—are out of step, out of line, and out of time.




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Voila! Certain people - and there are many of them - have been persuaded "lamestream media" exist. All media that don't agree with them and tell them things they think they know already are "lamestream".

Such is the road from some ones' or twos' opinion to received truth. It is now a fact of life among those who prefer that others do their thinking for them, and stitch it into some kind of spiritual blankie to comfort them when the sun goes down each night.

... and it gets worse.










to be continued







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20.6.11

more Sunday Funnies!




another selection of humorous thoughts
to brighten up your day of rest.













































































































later...





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19.6.11

10 Capitalism demotivators





...so i went on bing and did an image
search for "capitalism demotivators"
and these are the first 9 that came up...














































































...some of them are funny, some aren't.
there's one or two where i'm not even sure what exactly the deal is.


...and just to bring us up to 10,
this is my contribution...








keep on rockin' in the free world!





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18.6.11

Marilyn Monroe rocked!






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self portrait











hadn't tried to do one in a while...
always an interesting exploration.




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it's the War on Drugs birthday!!!





Richard "the Watergater" Nixon was a hater.
he hated anyone who got in the way of his mission from god on any given day.

among his handful of accomplishments before
he was removed from office was starting America's 'other war', and it has proven to be the most enduring part of his 'legacy'.









this is the first page of a six page letter that Elvis Presley wrote to Nixon, volunteering to help with the War on Drugs. a few years later, Elvis would
be dead on the floor of his bathroom following years of abusing sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics.









this chart details the growth in staffing and their expenses. the usual  ballpark figure for the US investment in this war is about one trillion dollars.

these figures do not include how much money other countries have spent over those same years. there are no figures on how many people have died around the world, or even in America as a result of this War. there are no figures on how many people's lives have been ruined, or how many families have been destroyed either.







the War on Drugs has been pretty much a total failure. people are still selling drugs and people
are still buying them and taking them, and then going back for more.


never before has so much money been spent to such poor effect. the War on Drugs has been going on for forty years and has changed nothing...
except perhaps creating more jobs for cops and seriously increasing the prison population.










there are a lot more cops,
and a lot more people in prison.

when he was a candidate in 2004, Obama said
the War on Drugs was  "an utter failure".  in 2011, according to the Associated Press, the War accounted for $10 billion of Obama's $15.5 billion budget for drug control, and these warriors want more than $26 billion in 2012 to continue the battle.

other programs in 2011 have been cut and/or trimmed, but the Obama administration
has asked that funding for the war on drugs be increased. how weird is that?






just recently, Global Commission on Drug Policy released a major  report. the members included:

former Brazilian President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso

former Colombian President
Cesar Gaviria

former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman
Paul Volcker

British billionaire
Richard Branson

former president of Mexico
Ernesto Zedillo
former prime minister of Greece
George Papandreou

former UN secretary general
Kofi Annan


former US secretary of state
George Shultz

one can imagine how radical
the report's conclusions were...

read it for yourself!
you can get your own copy right here.










here are the reactions of drug warriors
to the report's recommendations:

Rafael Lemaitre, communications director of White House drug policy said "Making drugs more available — as this report suggests — will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe," Lemaitre said.

the next day, Justice Canada spokeswoman Carole Saindon said “Making drugs more available – as this report suggests – will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe.”


i'm serious. she really did.

White House Drug Tsar Gil Kerlikowske iscounted the panel's recommendations as "misguided".

Russia's Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov said “We have to realise that we are dealing with global propaganda of illicit drugs here”.

The Russian anti-narcotics chief said he had discussed the report with his U.S. counterpart Gil Kerlikowske and they agreed that the Global Commission on Drug Policy had drawn unacceptable conclusions.

Surprise.




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the War on Poverty in America lasted less than 6 years. the War on Drugs is now 40 years old and despite the fact that it is a complete and total FAIL, it's getting more money to do more of the same.

it's all pretty depressing, as birthdays or any other days go... but if you really want to get depressed, remember that the same kinds of people and the same kinds of thinking are now fighting the War on Terrorism.





SOURCES
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Weiners in America





I can't believe how many people on how many programs keep making stupid pee-pee jokes about Anthony Weiner. I feel like I'm trapped in a special kindergarten class for the socially retarded...




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Ayn Rand




Ayn Rand didn't write the worst books ever
written - but aside from maybe "Mein Kampf", she did write the worst books that anyone ever took seriously.




...more about Ms. Rand right here!



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16.6.11

Political Irony Demotivators



well, despite my best intentions, i started reading the news again and big surprise, it bugged me...


first up was this beautiful moment of protest
as our new Conservative Government kicked off
it's first session...






Brigette DePape, a student who'd been working
as a page in our Senate, created this Kodak moment

as the session opened. Needless to say, there followed
a mad clicking of tongues and as we speak
the security arrangements are under review!

Coming on the heels of a session where our Conservative Government had been formally censured for Contempt Of Parliament- a first
in parliamentary history by the way - i found the clucking insufferable...

Brigwette's perspective on here actions
can be found right here






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a few days later, i was reading about Obama's budget and the protest from the head of Homeland Security about how $43.7 billion bucks just wasn't going to get the job done...











...it got me thinking about the poem on the plaque on the base of the Statue of Liberty...






...which led to:







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if you're not Canadian - or even if you are - these next two might not register, so briefly...

Jacques Parizeau is a rabid separatiste who
thinks the province of Quebec should be an official Country, separate from the official country of Canada.

...when the second official referendum on this
was held in Quebec and was defeated, he blamed it on "outside money" and the "ethnic vote" -ie - people of colour...

now 81 years old, he's been sounding off lately
in the news about it all (again)....








...as in the American South, this all goes back
to a war- if there's a difference, it might be that in the case of Quebec, the big battle in question was fought (won, lost, etc) in 1759, not 1865.

like the American South, there are still
any number of weenies who have not moved on...








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and just this week, our new Contemptuous government has taken issue with locked out
postal workers and striking airline workers across Canada...











and the beat goes on.




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14.6.11

the 5 Major Food Groups



...seen a lot of graphs, but i've never
really tried to make them.
here's a recent kick...









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You think you know stupid...



...you think you have some idea
of just how stupid people can be,
how ignorant, how illiterate, how petty
and hateful and then something
like this comes along...









...and the realization slowly dawns
that one was prideful, arrogant even,
to think one had plumbed anywhere
near the depths of stupidity that is
all around us.





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Your Argument is Invalid






sorry, that's just the way it is. clearly.





















































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