Karl Marx was really sick.

Did the Zits from Hell make him think that stuff up?

Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands — found mainly in the armpits and groin — become blocked and inflamed.

“In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem,” said Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology.

My wife has had something that sounds suspiciously like that, and it hasn’t made her call for mass theft. Nor has it stopped her from working. To say of somebody who was completely wrong about history and who developed the most dysfunctional economic system ever that he was covered with gross pustules is a way lot like kicking a man when he’s down.

Ooh, Mitt!

Nice slam…

She hasn’t run anything, and the government of the United States is not a place for a president to be an intern.

…given that “intern” has a special meaning in that family.

Governator on marijuana

Schwarzenegger told GQ that he had never taken drugs as a bodybuilder. But when asked about marijuana usage, he said “That is not a drug. It’s a leaf.” Which led his staff to “clarify”.

No clarification needed. It’s an herb. Besides:

In the interview for the magazine’s December issue, Schwarzenegger refused to condemn politicians who decline to answer questions about drug use.

“What would you rather have? A politician taking stuff and not saying, but making the best decisions and improving things? Or a politician who names all the drugs he or she has taken but makes lousy decisions for the country?” Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying.

“A politician’s job is to do what’s best for the people and to improve the country, the economy, the environment. Why should I care if a politician takes sleeping pills every night so long as he can do his job?” he added.

Actually, Ahnold, I’d prefer a politician too stoned to get out of bed. But in general, you’re thinking in the right direction.

Our star counterterrorist

…is a housewife in Montana. I hope. Because there’s enough info in this article to violate operational security, and I’d hate to see some innocent get offed by a jihadi. I’d hate to lose “Shannen Rossmiller” too, but you can’t say she hasn’t earned it.

Maybe it’s propaganda. Wired doesn’t generally do propaganda, but they could have been duped. What if the woman in the photographs is somebody that someone (the journalist, a friend of the journalist, the government) wants killed? Branding her as an anti-jihadi could do it, at no risk to the real perp. Maybe we’re being played the same way “Shannen” plays the jihadis. There’s enough accurate information to make it plausible:

The FBI, on the other hand, has failed in every attempt to modernize its technology since 2001, and it so restricts the software available to agents that they can’t even begin to match what Rossmiller does. “The FBI is a dinosaur in many respects,” says Cressey.
Rossmiller agrees. “I went to a meeting in Great Falls, and we got to talking, and someone had to look something up online,” she says. “I asked, ‘What do you use for Internet access?’ and one agent said, ‘We have to go to the public library down the street.’”
She also tells a story about another agent who had to get permission to open a Yahoo account because it violated office regs. “They weren’t allowed,” she says.

It’s a good story. Which makes it a terrible story: terrible if false, more terrible if true. May God protect her, if she exists.

Who needs journalists at a press conference?

Not FEMA, apparently, which called a press conference on the California unhappiness with 15 minutes notice, and had its own staff ask all the questions, which were predictably softball. They deny that the staffers made up the questions, as if that were somehow germane to the fact that they were staffers and not independent actors. Which got these zinger comments:

“the staff did not make up the questions”

WTF?? It’s one thing to say the dog ate your homework. It’s whole other thing to say the dog did your homework for you.

******************************

It’s also like turning in the homework after it has passed through the dog.

If FEMA is doing such a great job now, as they claim, what’s wrong with a little scrutiny? Hmmm?

UPDATE: Apparently the DHS and the White House are also less than thrilled with this performance.

The Brady Campaign to Decrease Graduation Rates

“You don’t like the fact that you can’t have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school,” said Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Yep, that’ll solve everything. It’s bad enough that LIEberals think that gun owners are ignorant yahoos; now they don’t want them to get an education.

I haven’t played; unlike the students, I’m not a paying customer, so I’m easier to punish.  So I guess I’m a wuss…oh well.

Modest proposal for presidential primaries

Carl Levin is all cranked up (as are a lot of people and states) over the order of presidential primaries and the “cockamamie” role of New Hampshire in all this. We could end that bias easily, Let’s just have all the primaries on the same day.

“But…but…we need that long campaign so that we can really get to know the candidates.” Well, you’ve been getting to know them all year, will two more months make a difference? This isn’t about policy; it’s about waiting for somebody to screw up. Which might be a good shakedown period, except that the skills needed to survive the primaries are not necessarily the skills needed to govern.

And if that staggered approach is so important for the primaries, why not do it for the general election? We could start with New Hampshire (just for Dixville Notch)) in August sometime, and finish with California on the first Tuesday of November. When candidates fell behind, they could revise their approach and organization. People would be more likely to vote 3rd party if they saw that their candidate was going to lose anyway. And if that would somehow “rig the system”, why doesn’t it do so for the primaries?

Feminist Burma-Shave

AXΩ is doing Domestic Violence Awareness week, and they have all these signs around campus, where a simple message is spread out over 4 little signs in sequence, sort of Burma-Shave style. Only none of them are old enough to remember Burma-shave signs (Heck, I’m almost too young to remember them; they went out when I was 6), so they’re way too wordy and boring. They need to be cute jingles, like the originals:

He hit me once.

He hit me twice.

Now in the morgue

he sleeps on ice.

AXΩ

Or, if you aren’t the sort of feminist who realizes that Samuel Colt liberated more women than Catherine MacKinnon:

60%

of household fights

involve the children.

That ain’t right.

AXΩ

Or, since Burma-Shave is still produced, maybe we could do a twofer:

Use your razor

on your face

not on your wife;

that’s a disgrace.

Burma-Shave.

Yes, I know domestic violence is no laughing matter. Rusty has a friend whose grandchild was killed by the live-in boyfriend (not the father). But given that those smart enough to make it to Case are generally not the perps, this all seems rather silly.

Book burning meets property rights

There’s been a pile of books near the woodstove for a day or so. I had a suspicion what that was about, but I was in denial about it, and it really isn’t fire weather anyway. I came home last night, and there were several missing. The librarian and the libertarian in me both freaked at the same time. “You’re burning books? You don’t burn books!”

“Well, what should I do with them?” my wife asked.

I scooped the pile up and put them on the kitchen table, checking the titles. “Give them away. Anything but burn them. Besides, you burned one of my books.”

“Oops,” she said as she turned colors.

“Civilized people don’t burn books.”

“OK, I’m a barbarian. But those are my books. Can’t I dispose of my property as I see fit?”

I stopped, picked up the pile of books, and set them where they had been originally. “Uh, yeah.”

This is one reason I love my wife: she has a reasonable hierarchy of values, one consonant with mine. I realized I had to let her burn those books if she wanted, even if I think that books in general are not for burning. And the book of mine? Diet for a New America, which I’d picked up cheap at some used book sale, and which would deserve to be burned, if I believed in book burning.

Redstate goes brownshirt

I think it was better when people just ignored Ron Paul. This is inexcusable, and counterproductive. As Richard May, my old Cleveland ward leader said, “Big Tent means you don’t run anybody down. If you don’t like them, you don’t work for them.” If miracles happen and Paul is nominated, I expect the Three Monkey Republicans to sit on their hands and pocketbooks and shut up, just as I would do if some others were nominated. But they won’t shut up. There’s an incredible hatred of Paul out there, totally out of line with legitimate disagreement about his war policy. This comment to this post sums it up precisely:

“The presumption behind the ban that most Paul boosters are liberals is embarrassing to RedState.”

To the neoconservatives (which is what most conservatives have become) a “liberal” is anyone who won’t sacrifice to their god of war.

At the pitch of their hysteria in 2003, these idiots reviled my wife just for posting on a discussion board her concern that US troops in Iraq were under-equipped. A “pro-troop” statement! But hinting that ANYTHING might be wrong with Dear Leader’s plans amounted to treason and cowardice in their eyes.
Houston | 10.24.07 – 5:39 pm | #

Just so. An example from Individual-Sovereignty@yahoogroups.com:

Ron Paul was a libertarian in the past. He is now a leftist liberal
whose only issue is defeating the US.

You only have to silence somebody when you have no ideas of your own.