Random Notes

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Just a few random musings this week:

• The most hyped movie of this holiday season seems to be the Tom Cruise vehicle "Valkyrie." It's a heartwarming holiday tale about one of the failed plots to kill Adolf Hitler, and it opens, for some unaccountable reason, on Christmas Day. Because, as several of my friends have pointed out, nothing says Christmas like a movie about trying to kill Hitler. My personal theory is that it's aimed at giving Jewish people something to do on Christmas Day other than going out for Chinese food.
• New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress capped off an injury- and fine-plagued year by accidentally shooting himself in the leg in a New York nightclub. Then, to add insult to injury, he got arrested for illegal possession of the weapon and benched for the rest of the season. But none of this answers the main question for me: What the heck kind of name is "Plaxico"? It sounds like a cholesterol drug.
• Am I the only person who finds it really really disturbing to hear the voice of Steve Buscemi, the oddly visaged actor who's made a career out of playing creeps, coming out of an animated gingerbread man in an AT&T ad?
• Recently when looking back over the last few months' news, I started feeling a strange sensation of déjà vu. Gas shortages and high gas prices. Stock market crashes. Recession. Auto companies going to Congress for a bailout. Suddenly, a chill ran down my spine as I realized: We are facing the return of the 1970s. If disco comes back, I really am moving to Canada. Unless there's a corresponding Led Zeppelin reunion to offset it.
• Speaking of the '70s, though, the Big Three automakers who recently went to Washington to beg for a bailout should have studied up a little better on their history, particularly the trip Chrysler chairman Lee Iaccoca made to Capitol Hill in 1979 to ask for Congress' help in saving his company. He went up there with a plan for changing the cars the company had been making. He didn't ask for a handout; he asked the government to guarantee loans to the company--loans that not only got paid back in full, they got paid back early. And he sure as heck didn't fly there in a private jet. When the CEO of a major company does something that makes the vast majority of the people who hear about go, "How stupid is this guy?" one can't help but question the wisdom of giving that company money.
• One of the things that's really redlined my BS meter recently is the media's attempt to start a fight between Barack Obama and his Cabinet picks, in particular Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton. Reporters are acting like junior high school students trying to stir up drama: "Did you hear what she said about you?" The attempts to sow dissent (and therefore boost ratings) don't end with Clinton. Fox News' Chris Wallace even asked if Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, would "follow orders" when it came to Obama's timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. This is patently stupid, even by the standards of Fox News. Politicians making nice with one another after slamming each other on the trail has not previously been regarded as remarkable. Bush the Elder, after all, was picked for veep by Ronald Reagan after calling Reagan's domestic policy "voodoo economics." I'm betting that Obama's wishing he'd never mentioned he was reading that book about the Lincoln administration called "Team of Rivals." The media's obsession with that phrase ignores the fact that Obama, first and foremost, has picked a team of professionals. I know that seems strange and exotic after the past eight years, but the press just needs to accept that the government is finally in the hands of grownups.
• I am chuckling, however, at the irony of the fact that a lot of the harshest criticism of Obama's picks comes not from the right wing, but from the left. Progressive bloggers like The Nation's Christopher Hayes are shocked that the Cabinet-to-be doesn't contain "a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive." They're particularly incensed that Obama has relied heavily on people who served during the Clinton years. "That's not change!" they whine. But you have to ask: Where else are you going to find people who have experience implementing Democratic policies? All of the Carter veterans are really, really old by now. Again, picking people with actual experience in the jobs they're supposed to be doing may seem strange after eight years of Bush putting incompetent cronies and wild-eyed ideologues in charge, but it's really the way it ought to be done.

  A Cabinet picked for competence and experience -- that really is change we can believe in.

But Now, Who'll Find Nicole and Ron's Real Killer?

O.J. Simpson gets at least 15 years in prison - CNN.com

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) -- A Las Vegas judge sentenced fallen gridiron great O.J. Simpson to at least 15 years in prison for leading an armed confrontation last year at a Las Vegas hotel room over sports memorabilia.

Here's my favorite bit from OJ:

"I just wanted my personal things. I was stupid. I'm sorry. I didn't know I was doing anything illegal. I thought I was confronting friends. I thought I was retrieving my things. I didn't mean to hurt anybody and I didn't mean to steal anything," Simpson said.

You didn't mean to hurt anybody? Really? That why you took guns with you? You didn't know that doing that was illegal? Please.

Sorry, dude, you were caught on tape taking stuff at gunpoint. Makes no difference that you claim it was your stuff. Even in Vegas.

And I actually believe the judge when he says it wasn't payback for the murder acquittal. He could have given OJ life if he was going to play it that way. 15 years for armed robbery, kidnapping and assault, with parole possible in nine, is not an unusual sentence.

Concentrated Essence of Awesome

Bruce Lee playing Ping Pong.

With nunchucks.

Need I say more?



Hat tip to Ain't It Cool News.

Yeah, it's probably CGI. Still.

No Retreat, No Surrender

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Well, friends, I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving. I hope you had a fine time and good fellowship with friends and family, and that you had occasion to reflect upon all of the things for which we should be truly thankful.

And I hope you got some rest.

Because, dear readers, we are faced with desperate times. We have a great battle upon us, and I hope you won't think I'm overstating the case when I tell you it's a battle more desperate than the Alamo, the Siege of Khe Sanh, Stalingrad and the stand of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae combined.

I'm speaking, of course, of the War On Christmas.

You know the one I'm talking about. It's the battle fought every year against the forces of secular socialist progressive liberalism and their fiendish campaign to replace the word "Christmas" with the word "Holiday" in our commercial discourse. Because, as we know, any time someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," a little bit of America dies.

Don't just take my word for it. No less an authority than Wall Street Journal Deputy Editor Daniel Henninger has warned us that the current collapse of the financial sector has its real roots, not in years of failed Bush financial policies, but in the disappearance of "Merry Christmas."

"What really went missing through the subprime mortgage years," Henninger writes, "were the three Rs: responsibility, restraint and remorse. ... Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees. Each must be learned, taught, passed down. And so we come back to the disappearance of 'Merry Christmas.'"

If Christmas, Henninger cautions, becomes the holiday "that dare not speak its name," then "we are erasing the chalk lines. ... Go ahead. Banish Merry Christmas. Get ready for Mad Max."

Now this might sound like insane gibberish to some, especially if, like me, you've never in your entire life met a single person of any religious persuasion who claims to be offended or insulted by the words "Merry Christmas."

But let's not forget, this man is a deputy editor of one of the nation's most prestigious newspapers. And if he says that the use of "Happy Holidays" is going to lead to the collapse of civilization and leave us all running around in the desert driving souped-up vehicles, wearing leather bondage gear, and fighting to the death over a few drops of gasoline, then perhaps we should listen. I'm betting that it's the forces of secular socialist progressive liberalism (hereinafter referred to as the FOSSPL) that have kept him from being a full editor. Those guys are everywhere.

So, in these dark times, where is our champion? Where is our leader in the fight to save Christmas? Our General Patton, our Lone Ranger, our Gandalf?

Where is Bill O'Reilly?

I did some more research on the Internet (and by "research," I mean "idly wasting time while pretending to be working on this column"), trying to find out what Mr. O'Reilly has been up to in his valiant battle against the anti-Christmas hordes.

My friends, what I saw shocked me. Appalled me. I was aghast. I was agog. It seems that Bill O'Reilly, sworn enemy of the word "holiday" in regard to the Yuletide celebration, had been co-opted by the FOSSPL. There, big as life on the O'Reilly.com Web site, was Bill's -- I
shudder to even say it -- "Holiday" reading list.

Say it ain't so, Bill-o!

And the news gets worse. Focus on the Family, the religious group that's provided such a valuable early-warning system for "Holiday"-based threats to America's Christmas, announced recently it was laying off more than 200 staffers, citing "the faltering economy and a decline in donations."

So is the traditional American Christmas, in which we celebrate the birth of Our Lord with paranoia, a chronic persecution complex, and bullying people over imagined slights, a thing of the past? Is this a world in which fear-mongering is no longer profitable?

I can't believe it. I won't believe it! We are going to carry on the fight. We shall fight them in the malls. We shall fight them in the Walmarts. We shall fight them in the PetSmarts and Best Buys. We shall never surrender. We will bring the true spirit of Christmas back to this country if we have to cram it down the throat of every man, woman and child in it.

God bless us, every one.

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, practices law, and celebrates Christmas in Carthage.

They Just Don't Get It

The person selling this bumpersticker over at Cafepress has the following to say about it:

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism - Anti-Obama style! Liberals thought this was a pretty clever slogan during the Bush years. Now let's see how THEY like it!

Actually, you drooling fuckwit, I still like it just fine. In fact, you want to dissent from what President Barack Obama has to say, or bitch about what he's doing, have at it.

The difference is that, while I reserve the right to question your logic, your intelligence or your sanity, I'm not going to use your disagreement over policy to question your love for America or to call you a traitor. You know, the way you wingnuts have been treating everyone who dared to question your Dear Leader for the past eight years.

They just don't get it. They really do think everyone else is just like them: small-minded, piss-scared, mean, and ignorant.

One thing I'm thankful for is that on January 20th, we'll see concrete proof they're wrong.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Reasons to Be Thankful

Ann Coulter's Jaw Wired Shut (New York Post):

...although we didn't think it would be possible to silence Ann Coulter, the leggy reaction- ary broke her jaw and the mouth that roared has been wired shut .

Is is possible to break your own jaw by clenching it in insane rage?