My fellow Morons, the sad truth is that in the last week I've done precious little reading for pleasure of any kind, and the little bit that I did do was blog-related. (Apparently I am allowed to read this blog in addition to posting on it. Think of that!)

I am planning to pick up Erik Larson's new book In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, about which I have heard lots of good things. I've heard Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America mentioned in several past book threads, so I'll get that book too while I'm at it.

What is everyone else reading?

Posted by: Monty at 04:11 AM | Comments (104)
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"An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing." --Alexis de Tocqueville

Posted by: Monty at 04:05 AM | Comments (306)
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Hello, hello all M&Ms. Welcome to your temporary back-up stunt CatSaturday night ONT.

And maybe if you curb your Moronic ways, there's a chance you might make the next Raptor.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:37 PM | Comments (775)
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Genuine? I don't know.

Columbia college has a unique system. EVERY student takes approximately the same 81 credits. This is the “core curriculum”.
Unlike other schools this is not ‘one from column A, and one from column B’ but the same courses for all undergrads.

You need 161 credits to graduate.

The college handbook clearly discusses the fact that it is effectively impossible to transfer in as a junior because there is no substituting these credits for classes taken anywhere else.

Hence, you will not be able to graduate, with the required major credits. (there is a way to appeal this – it has just never happened. Or, apparently did in his case).

So, how did a self admittedly poor student from a third rate college (Occidental) get into one of the worlds great liberal arts colleges at a time when they do not accept any transfers?

This is a question I have continued to ask.

Posted by: Ace at 04:12 PM | Comments (289)
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Prediction: The fastest horse will win.

I don't think this will actually help you handicap the race, but it probably can't hurt, either.

Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (262)
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My guess is he's just lying low, so no one knows he's still here, so then we'll all think, "Ohhhh, the Rapture came, but it was just far less people than we thought. Well, good on him for getting the one slot!"

Anyway, in case any of you hadn't heard, the world acted stupidly and failed to end properly.

With no sign of Judgment Day arriving as he had forecast, the 89-year-old California evangelical broadcaster and former civil engineer behind the pronouncement seemed to have gone silent on Saturday.

...

Camping previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994.

Missed it by 14 years.

...

The Oakland, California, headquarters of the network of 66 U.S. stations was shuttered with a sign in the door that read "This Office is Closed. Sorry we missed you!"

...

Camping, whose deep sonorous voice is frequently heard on his radio network expounding the Bible, could not be reached for comment on Saturday.

Well, he said the apocalypse would begin in Asia at midnight, and Asia has had midnight come and go with no apparent rapture-like shenanigans.

Technically, he's still got until 6pm eastern -- 17 minutes left -- until he's proven wrong entirely.

So why don't I wait?

Well, if he's right, and the rapture comes, I don't get to tell my "We Apologize For The Lack of Technical Difficulty" joke, and I kind of like that joke.

I'd like to go out on that one.

Posted by: Ace at 01:44 PM | Comments (244)
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Puss in Boots will be coming out soon.

And then comes the follow-up. Like a one-two punch.

"The Skin I Live In" is a delightful madcap romp about a fish-out-of-water doctor whose daughter is brutally (and explicitly) raped and murdered... and then the fun really starts when this "kooky" doctor kidnaps his daughter's rapist/killer, a lovable oddball in his own right!

So it's an opposites attract/buddy picture situation, with these two bickering Bickersons just not seeing eye to eye at all! About anything!

But ultimately, through a series of comic misadventures and all kinds of wacky sheananigans, they learn the true value of friendship and to just be themselves.

FOX 411 in Cannes: Horrified Viewers Flee Antonio Banderas' New Flick Due to Extreme Sex, Violence Scenes

...

Banderas then gives the rapist a sex change and transplants his deceased daughter's face onto his body.

He later has sex with the man he has brutally experimented on and turned into a woman.

The movie also contained several disturbing rape scenes and nudity.

Co-starring the voice of Gary Shandling as "Cuttie, the Snarky Skull-Saw."

I'm probably going to wait and see them as double (trouble!) feature.

Last Line: Bugler got a copy of the DVD and tips me that the last line of the movie is:

"...The Aristocrats!"

Ah, now it all makes sense.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (79)
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Pretty sure he's in the Tea Party.

In U.S. District Court filings, Chesser’s lawyer and family members described him as a passionate young man whose interests pinballed from subject to subject (sports, Japanese anime, break dancing, heavy metal, Buddhism, Islam) and often turned on a dime. His attorney reported that despite Chesser’s “increasing devotion to a rigid form of Islam,” he “volunteered to campaign in the 2008 presidential election.” However, “by the time the election came on November 4, 2008, Mr. Chesser had become convinced it would be a violation of Islamic law to vote.”

In a character letter, Chesser’s stepmother recalled him “ranting about how the Koran says he can’t support Obama even though he had signed up to help with the campaign."

Wait, let me get this straight -- he was faddish, leftist, and looking for some kind of grand supernatural narrative to make sense of his insignificance and emptiness.

But then-- how could he have wound up volunteering for Obama? That just makes no damn sense to me.

As the media continues to make shit up to pin on conservatives, they also continue to studiously ignore and suppress anything that might look liberals and Obama supporters look bad.

I Pledge... Commenters note Ashton Kutcher's "serve your president" fadvertisement. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:34 PM | Comments (77)
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Let us enjoy bacon and art one more time:

I would have thrown breasts up here too, but Ace would probably frown. There is a pile of tits arguing with him already in the thread below.

OPEN THREAD for your Afternoon of the Day of Doom.

Posted by: CAC at 12:19 PM | Comments (52)
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Sighing. They keep doing it and doing it. Mostly we don't fall for it. This is one of those times we are falling for it, as the Democrat is ahead by four, and the fake Tea Party candidate, who supported Obama and ObamaCare and ran as a Democrat here three times, has 9% of the vote.

Jack Davis, "Tea Party" candidate, is a complete fraud and Democratic plant. Says the Tea Party Express. Oh, and everyone else not named "Jack Davis."

GOP nominee Jane Corwin, an independently wealthy state lawmaker, was largely expected to dominate the race, held in what may be the Empire State's most conservative district. But the candidacy of deep-pocketed third-party candidate Jack Davis, who will appear on the ballot on the Tea Party line, has gotten in the way. Recent polling suggests that he's draining support from Corwin, giving Democrat Kathy Hochul, the Erie County Clerk, a chance to pull off an upset.

At least one local tea party group has been attacking Davis, a Republican-turned-Democrat-turned-Republican, as a tea party fraud for several weeks. American Crossroads, which invested $650,000 on the contest so far, and other outside conservative groups have joined that refrain.

Each party's national campaign committees have also committed at least $250,000 for television advertising.

American Action Network, another major conservative outside group, will begin airing campaign ads as well, according to Politico.

But the Tea Party Express' involvement suggests the beginning of a ground war as well in what has suddenly become an election with national implications symbolically, if nothing else.

“The press conferences will clearly reveal Jack Davis as a big-government supporting liberal who only wishes to split the Republican vote and gain a House seat for Democrats,” reads the advisory released by the Tea Party Express.

A reader told me this guy's ads were running on this site, at least when accessed in this district. I didn't approve that ad and didn't know about it. The appearance here is not an endorsement. He's just buying ads on conservative blogs in order to trick people.

Here's how this happened: Someone in the "Tea Party Coalition" got into a snit about not being suitably stroked.

In the wake of Chris LeeÂ’s resignation (for his shirtless stupidity), the local Republican Party put forth Jane Corwin as the establishment replacement. As Jazz Shaw points out, the decision-making under a special election in New York is left up to Republican chairmen, which gives rise to infighting. Yet Jane Corwin had a solid voting record and was rated the second-most conservative member of the state legislature. The same Conservative Party that endorsed Doug Hoffman and injected the third-party challenge for NY-23 sided with Corwin.

However, Tea Party Coalition leader Jim Ostrowski was unsatisfied with the lack of input allowed in the selection process. He decided to enlist millionaire and three-time Democrat congressional candidate Jack Davis to run on a Tea Party ballot. Up until now, Tea Party insurgents have run to the right of the establishment. Jack DavisÂ’ run sets a new paradigm.

Jack Davis’ Republican credentials are nonexistent. Like Dede Scozzafava, he has a history of ACORN/Working Family Party endorsements and is ardently pro-abortion. Davis’ signature issue is a new tariff program that is advocated by Keynesian and far-left economist Paul Krugman — the policy makes Smoot-Hawley look like free trade. He is opposed to any and all entitlement reform at the federal level, and his campaign manager is a progressive consultant.

While tea partiers were protesting the Obama stimulus, GM takeovers, cap and trade, and ObamaCare, Jack Davis was sending campaign donations to Democrats who voted to enable these laws. A donation was sent to Louise Slaughter one week after cap and trade passed the House. Louise Slaughter was the Democrat leader who came up with the “deem and pass” rule for ObamaCare that helped sway fence-sitters to vote yes.

So, because this asshole didn't feel that the very properly consulted when the GOP nominated the very-conservative Corwin, he decided to recruit and back a liberal.

Jack Davis is also a little mentally unstable:

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 AM | Comments (322)
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