Schadenfreude, the Germans concocted it; it's one's vague pleasure in another's discomfort. Leave it to the Germans, by the way, to concoct an intricate glossary of pain terminology.

Thanks to Mr. Vanderleun

 

The elections are over, we've voiced our squeaky thoughts in a relentless stream and I think it's high time for a little master wordsmithing on ATW.  Vanderleun channels greatness on Public Opinion, here's a taste, go enjoy the whole feast.

Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, corn-pone stands for self-approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is conformity. Sometimes conformity has a sordid business interest -- the bread-and-butter interest -- but not in most cases, I think. I think that in the majority of cases it is unconscious and not calculated; that it is born of the human being's natural yearning to stand well with his fellows and have their inspiring approval and praise -- a yearning which is commonly so strong and so insistent that it cannot be effectually resisted, and must have its way.

A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in its two chief varieties -- the pocketbook variety, which has its origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental variety -- the one which can't bear to be outside the pale; can't bear to be in disfavor; can't endure the averted face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, "He's on the right track!" Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd. For these gauds many a man will dump his life-long principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We have seen it happen. In some millions of instances.

The Onion sums it up.

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."

 Have at it my friends!  

Wandering through the internet tonight, I followed a tiny, intriguing lane off my main road and ended up at The Dipso Chronicles.  It was an unexpectedly wonderful turn, it's so rare to find a place so beautifully tended that I had to share it with you when I encountered this post.  Pete Moore immediately came to mind, followed in quick succession by several other manly writers and regular pundits who grace this site. Andy's a wordsmith of fine order and his entire site is a well crafted statement of his thoughts. There is nothing political to dissect in this excerpt, unless gnashing your teeth over traditional gender related activities juices your gears, I just thought you might enjoy reading something a little different off our well beaten path.

"There is nothing better than a few turns of the wrench for keeping a man anchored in his masculine nationalism, and when a man can live in that, he can truly be at home. We have industry in our bones, we have gears and oils and tunability to thank for our oddly coarse sensitivity, our harsh and unyielding adaptability. Paradoxical? To be sure. But it must have been a thoughtful, careful, and compassionate bunch of men to conceptualize the garish industrialism that has brought us to this particular sense of national confidence and promise that we can harbor. No one slow and brutish could have brought about something as delicate as an engine, those 12 cylinder beauties in the noses and wings of WWII aircraft; the turbo-diesels of today's massive main battle tanks, whose incredible weight belies their agility and nimbleness. This is why I, we, are at home under the hood and breaking our knuckles. Why a man's only real comfort zone is in the seat of his rig. Because for those of us who give credit for our prosperity not to god, but to the hand of man himself, a greasy garage floor is the only altar we can take seriously."

New York Senator Chuck Schumer (D) is in line for a little taxpayer ire this evening too.

Senator Schumer's Official Website, August 16, 2007

Last Tuesday, Senator Schumer wrote a letter to James B. Lockhart III, the director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), urging him to consider temporarily raising the limit on purchases of home loans by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in response to increasing concerns of a credit crunch spilling into the broader mortgage market.  Raising the caps would allow Freddie and Fannie to provide much needed liquidity in a mortgage market that is drying up for all lenders—including Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender.

Then he went on to cover his narrow ass. This man endorsed and historically voted for substandard lending practices, asked for this travesty to be extended when he knew it was tanking and then had the unmitigated gall to blame Bush for not making more risky moves to bail his party out of their own self made, vote buying, pigpen.

Here's Schumer's latest press releases. No mention of the current Fannie/Freddie induced meltdown or bailout, plenty on his pork barrel earmarks for New York. You've got to love his home page on frequently asked questions, first out of the shoot.....

"How can Chuck help me?"

I'll tell you how you can help me Chuck. Start acting like a responsible, Goddamn grownup who's been elected to oversee America's best interests. A little fudiciary responsibility of our tax dollars would be nice too, you grubby little worm.

Democrat Barney Frank needs to be investigated, indicted, stripped of his personal assets and left to rot in a dank prison for the massive financial collapse he helped to engineer.  I'm ready to hang every last bastard, corporate and elected, that created this disaster. Dodds and Raines are next in my sights.

"Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s. So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.

Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.

Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.

"It’s absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?

"If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane," added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. "But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard."

All Ace Of Spades

Where is Mcain on all of this? I don't hear a damn thing.

"The most successful hunters are not the ones who bag something every time, but the ones who hunt all the time, and 2 Para has been hunting the most dangerous prey.  The soldiers of C-co 2 Para are not sure how many they’ve killed in the past five months, but the estimates are around 200, and during the days I spent with them, their average daily kill would put them well over that number."

Michael Yon, Death In The Corn: Part II


These guys could use your support, Support Our Soldiers sends care packages to the British men serving abroad, send them a donation and make a soldier's life a little bit easier.

I've got a deeply sentimental soft spot and the highest regard for people who serve their country in times of war, especially the men who front the battle lines. I may start doing a post a week on the soldiers who deserve our recognition and respect for their willingness to lay their lives on the line to serve the us and our nations.

The Taliban’s eagerness to embrace ignorance will doom them eventually, but how many of us will they kill first?  They are a relic of the beasts in our nature.

....Michael Yon, Death In The Corn

If we held the intent of the beasts that we keep
In far fields and dark valleys, in the pale light of sleep,
In marked shards of clay, in papyrus and parchment,
Beneath the brick hearth, in the marks on old bones,
In the marrow of bones, in the plowing of stones
Parting sand furrows where our dreams are pale sparks
In the roots of our nerves, sprouting to thoughts,
To the tee-shirt philosophies of cheap magazines,
And the afternoon shows of electronic dreams,
That drown our blank selves now dredged up from sleep.

If we knew the intent of the beasts that we keep,
We would surely sit senseless, would hide from the sun,
And turn on ourselves the unregistered gun.
If we held the intent of the beasts that we seek.

If we knew the intent of the beasts which we slay
From couches confessional, in the stone barns of God
Where the soul's soundings echo the light in the sod
To our penitent minds; which illumines our stark
Hearts from within, that dazzles our dark
With His fierce pyrotechnics, with His animate spark
That glows in that womb where all yearning starts,
And yearns for the flare at the top of the arc,
But burns like dead screams flung down in the dark,
Like torches cast deep where drowned Incas decay...

We would know then this life takes place in one day,
That the beasts which we keep are the beasts of our sleep,
Created from dust in the long dusk of God,
That we know the intent of the beasts which we keep.

Van der Leun

A recent article by Dr. Linda Halderman, a policy adviser to the California State Senate on infant mortality in the United States.

Q: If socialized medicine is so bad, why are infant mortality rates higher in the U.S. than in other developed nations with government or single-payer health care?

A: U.S. infant mortality rates (deaths of infants <1 year of age per 1,000 live births) are sometimes cited as evidence of the failings of the U.S. system of health care delivery. Universal health care, it’s argued, is why babies do better in countries with socialized medicine.

But in fact, the main factors affecting early infant survival are birth weight and prematurity. The way that these factors are reported — and how such babies are treated statistically — tells a different story than what the numbers reveal.

Low birth weight infants are not counted against the “live birth” statistics for many countries reporting low infant mortality rates.

According to the way statistics are calculated in Canada, Germany, and Austria, a premature baby weighing <500g is not considered a living child.

But in the U.S., such very low birth weight babies are considered live births. The mortality rate of such babies — considered “unsalvageable” outside of the U.S. and therefore never alive — is extraordinarily high; up to 869 per 1,000 in the first month of life alone. This skews U.S. infant mortality statistics.

When Canada briefly registered an increased number of low weight babies previously omitted from statistical reporting, the infant mortality rose from 6.1 per 1,000 to 6.4 per thousand in just one year.

Click to read more ...

I grew up surrounded by men who owned guns, predominately rifles and shotguns. They spent their free time on deer leases, duck blinds and the gun range when they weren't on boats catching whatever the water had to offer that day. These traditions go back generations on both sides of my family. My great grandmother was a pretty fair shot in her day, but I've been the only other woman in my family since to handle firearms on a regular basis. My Uncle Bud took me to the gun range for the first time when I was ten, I knocked the eye out the target that day with his smallest rifle and I was hooked. I've been on gun range dates where I've outshot my men friends, ruining any potential romance and javelina hunts in South Texas where the mad pigs sent everyone scrambling for the roof of the truck. (I have to admit to a range preference, I don't care for the taste of game.) I find having competence with firearms empowering, it's a great skill and I'm glad to see Sarah Palin motivating more women to learn the sport.

I found this video at Tigerhawk's place, his caption is too juicy not to share!

"The Europeans are never going to understand this. Their loss."

 

A novel way to pay for college;

Look for Howard Stern to shock again on Tuesday morning when he's due to kick off the auction of a 22-year-old beauty's virginity.

Expected to step on the block, so to speak, of Stern's Sirius radio studio is a San Diego woman who says she wants to sell her maidenhood to pay her college tuition.

"I don't have a moral dilemma with it," says the pretty brunette, who's using the pseudonym of Natalie Dylan "for safety reasons."

"We live in a capitalist society," she tells us. "Why shouldn't I be allowed to capitalize on my virginity?"

Dylan was introduced to Stern by Dennis Hof, proprietor of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, Nevada's famed legal brothel (seen on HBO's hit series "Cathouse.")

Hof says the auction will be conducted online via bunnyranch.com, and that the deal will be consummated at the Bunny Ranch, where Dylan's sister already works. "I think it's a tremendous idea," he says. "Why lose it to some guy in the backseat of a Toyota when you can pay for your education?"

She's already earned a bachelor's in women's studies and is hoping her shiny little moneymaker will bring in enough to pay for a Masters degree in marriage and family therapy. I'm loving the irony.

So, we've got one spineless mother, an absentee father, a thieving stepfather, a prostitute sister and this virgin (choke, cough) willing to whore herself off on national radio to earn a few bucks.  I'm torn between cracking jokes at her expense or raging at the societal cesspool I live in that would actually sell a young woman for ratings.

Hurricane Ike is bearing down hard on the Texas coast. The upper coastal region, Houston and Southwest Louisiana are going to take a fierce beating tonight. Parts of the coast are already under water and the coming storm surge will crest 20 feet in some areas, completely flooding  the inland for several miles in some locations. This is one very big, bad storm. Except for one crazy stubborn uncle, it looks like all of my family living In Galveston and along the rest of the beach areas have evacuated to higher ground in North Houston.  If you've never ridden out a big hurricane at night, I can you promise you it is one of the most terrifying experiences imaginable. The tornadoes that spin off sound like freight trains, the flying debris, crashing trees, slashing rain and howling wind are scary as hell, especially when you're crouched in a closet or bathroom with your entire family praying the roof doesn't blow off. Living without power or water for weeks afterward is no picnic either.

Since this post wouldn't be complete without a touch of local color, here's a shot of some local boys taken in Houston in 2005 right after Rita blew through.

***10:30PM CST -  The coast is already under water by several feet. Surfside, Freeport, High Island, and Bolivar are completely submerged. The lower Louisianna coast has already flooded too. The west end of Galveston is under several feet of crashing waves and the downtown buildings, protected by a twenty foot seawall, are seeing water nearing the second stories. Half of the population of Galveston, around 30,000 people, refused to evacuate. This could be really bad.

The call came early that morning, my mother's voice tight, low, worried. I was sweeping the floor or loading the dishwasher, busy with some mundane task, no thought for the world outside my door. "Turn on the tv, the World Trader Center was hit. A plane crashed into the building, turn on the tv!"  I watched the burning building, phone held to my ear as the second plane hit. Jesus, I couldn't breathe. Tears streaming, I called my husband, I wanted him home. He was standing in the conference room with everyone else, crying, they were all staring at the television and crying. Silently weeping with the rest of the country.

America stopped that day. We put down our lives that early September morning and we watched and we wept.

I'll never forget that day, neither will my fellow countrymen.

Instead of posting a video, I'll share an excerpt of Tilly's story.  Hit the link and read every last word.

It took me exactly 17 minutes to get down 59 flights of stairs because eventually it turned out to be the time difference between the two planes hitting each tower. I exited the emergency stairwell into the 1st floor lobby center elevator vestibule servicing floors 3 thought 43 about eight seconds before the second hijacked plane went through my Tower 2. I didn't think of it until later, but now as I recall, at this point I lost track of Karen.

What followed was unlike anything I have ever experienced, or could imagine experiencing; the only thing that comes close is the movie Die Hard. When that plane blew through upstairs the repercussions only took about 25 seconds, but it all seemed in slow motion to me, as if I was watching myself on a movie screen. All of the oxygen was sucked out of the building and my lungs (like being in a vacuum). I felt doomed because the turnstile exiting the elevator bank would not unlock for me to get out and run for the revolving doors leading out of the lobby and into the underground mall, under the plaza level. I could not have known at that panic-filled moment, but that locked-up turnstile would save my life. Instead I'm thinking, "This is where I will die," because I can hear an explosion roaring downward inside the building. Yet somehow I looked over to see that the end turnstile wraps around a support beam forming about a two-square-foot space, but there is only about six inches to squeeze through between the end of the turnstile and wall beam. Something inside me told me to get in there. I'm about 100 pounds soaking wet, so I pressed myself through and balled up facing the support beam with the steel barrier wrapped around my back giving me a little protected cubby hole.

This is when the explosion came.It progressed down the building, breaking the windows as it went; the entire building was groaning, an unnatural, unearthly sound, much like a can squeezing, or cracking uncooked spaghetti. By the time it reached the lobby, the marble veneer was cracking and falling off the walls; the chandeliers shattered on the floors along with the plaster ceiling, and the force imploded in at about 50 mph, pulling metal, balled safety glass, and other material with it. The pipes were bursting over my head and dense materials were flying around me as if they were being pureed in a blender. In the next instant came a horrible noise and a flash of extreme heat and light blown directly over my head. I concluded later in the day that this was from the huge airplane fireball sent down the 78-110 elevator shaft that exploded out into the lobby, and blew around the walls and curled into the center vestibule where I was taking cover. The third and last explosion occurred when a huge chunk of burning wreckage fell to Liberty Street, which runs parallel along the south side of the South Tower, and crashed through the building into the lobby behind me, bringing metal, glass, marble and revolving doors with it. There had been four security men and some fleeing WTC workers behind me near those revolving doors; I realized that they were all taken out by either a huge chunk of the building exploding outwards or the tail end of the plane falling to the street. I now know that there were nine of us in the lobby that day when the plane hit, two NYPD officers on the 44-77 elevator side, and two others coming out of emergency stairwells on the 78-110 elevator side. The two officers and I were the only ones who made it out alive.

A collection of liberal first responses to Sarah Palin's convention speech.

The girls over at The New Republic

Several moderate-Democrat friends of mine have been emailing--few if any would ever vote for McCain--but all agree that Palin was very strong. The more liberal among them are a little panicked.

I completely misjudged how negative she would be. Her lines about Obama were brutally cutting and possibly over the top in places. But she's a far better messenger than an angry white man. (Note, by the way, how both Rudy and Huckabee employed a tone that was more bemused than angry. That's the modern GOP's favorite trick--comedic ridicule in place of outright nastiness.)

The Obama Campaign whines over the obvious fact that Palin didn't write her own speech. Like Obama does?

“The speech that Governor Palin gave was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush’s speechwriter
 ........

The HuffPo can't deny the power of Palin, but they definitely have their west coast noses out of joint

Does she belong in the big time? Judging from this performance, yes. She delivered under enormous pressure, and with great poise. It was an an effective attack on Obama and his supporters, from the right.

The Daily Kos  is not too happy with the Governor of Alaska

Wolf Blitzer called Sarah Palin's speech Wednesday night a "grand slam." It certainly had some slams in it, with the knife stuck in and twisted while she smiled, which might well be part of the governor's vaunted managerial experience.

Here's the speech that has the big boy democrats upset and running scared.

Brilliant men deserve gorgeous talented women......

We aren't the only ones speculating on possible repercussions the Russian/Georgian war may have on Iran's nuclear ambitions. Meir Javedanfar has written an article today highlighting the Iranian's concerns on how this war might affect their close relationship with Russia and their nuclear program.

Tehran sees Georgia as an important part of U.S. plans to increase its influence in the region — and fears that such a plan may affect them directly.

These concerns were reflected in an article published in Tabnak, owned by former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezai. In an interview with Dr. Mehdi Senai, a politics lecturer at Tehran University, Senai said that Tehran’s nuclear program, and the international approach to resolve the dispute surrounding it, may become part of a wider agreement between the U.S. and Russia after the end of the conflict. What worries him is that “Russia’s capacity to confront the U.S. is limited.”

Iran is concerned that if Russia comes out looking bad in this conflict, it could have two negative repercussions for Tehran.

One is that Iran will lose the influence and support of one of its important allies in the 5+1 group of nations. This influence is very important for Tehran, as Russia recently broke ranks with other members of the group by stating that Iran should be given more time to respond to the recent incentives proposal.

The other worst-case scenario for Tehran is that a weakened Russia, seeking a deal over Georgia, could give the U.S. the green light to launch a military operation against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “In the dealings between international powers [i.e., Russia and the U.S.], Iran has to be very careful,” warns Dr. Senai.

Where do the more moderate Palestinian terrorists go when they're injured and in need of sanctuary? Looks like Israel tops the list of safe havens out of all the surrounding Muslim states. Color me surprised! Let the lefty wailing, excuse mongering, Jew bashing begin.................

Fatah members receiving medical treatment in Israel said Sunday that they didn't want to return to the Gaza Strip, out of fear that they would be killed by Hamas.

The men, who were brought late Saturday to the Soroka and Barzilai hospitals, accused Hamas of waging a "war of genocide" against Fatah supporters in the Gaza Strip. Twenty-three Palestinians, most of them belonging to the Hilles clan, are currently being treated in the two hospitals.

Almost all of the 180 Fatah supporters who fled to Israel from a deadly Hamas crackdown Saturday were supposed to be returned to the Palestinian territory on Sunday as per the request of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.