AdamSmith

Typical of his class that he views such things as "gifts" rather than as rights or justice.

Just stumbled over this delightful treasure trove of a site... http://artofmanliness.com/ ...both contemporary and historical stuff, from '50s business etiquette to way-back times. Pretty witty in places. May waste the rest of today prowling around there.

No, no -- we are all trying to become you! Me: 2856.

Vud not be difficult, Mein Fuhrer! Zat is to say, ze scene pictured is embarrassingly close to one or two of ze realities. But, you know, we are all made of the same protoplasm. ...More or less!

Yes!! ...Couple months ago, away on a bidness trip, that got me into bed with a straight guy. Who -- rather than clocking me, thank goodness -- discovered a couple new degrees of freedom! (As the engineers at this conference would put it. )

Same here, exactly. I used to hate eating out alone. But after years of business travel, about 10 years ago I got fed up, so to speak, with room service and the alternative of slimy fast food, and discovered it was a relief to go out somewhere decent for a real meal. Don't really know why my former discomfort with "table for one?" evaporated. Maybe just getting too old to give a fuck any more about anything other than what I put in my mouth. Also, as noted above, full menu is often available at the bar if the restaurant has one, where -- depending maybe on the Ph of the particular city -- it can be easy to strike up talk with the person to your left or right. Once or twice that has worked out quite well!

My tongue, to begin with.

That would be to give La Coulter much the benefit of the doubt.

The Atlantic offers the lyrics and an explication of Pussy Riot's 'Punk Prayer.' Fascinating. Interesting all the Western comment on the case, yet no reportage of their act itself until this, that I know of. http://www.theatlant...ly-said/264562/

Let's see. The Caananites stabilized the Israelites, and vice versa. Roman pagan occupation, together with abuses within second-temple Judaism, stabilized the Jesus movement. The Jesus movement in turn stabilized rabbinic Judaism, and vice versa. Gnosticism stabilized orthodox Christianity. Mohammedism stabilized -- well, the Arab world to stew in its slow ceding of dominance to the western European barbarians, once the latter were stabilized by the secular religion of Occam and Bacon? The Christian and Islamic worlds were stabilized relative to one another by the Crusades. The Reformation stabilized Catholic against Protestant. Joseph Smith stabilized... Well, here it perhaps becomes a game of Mad Libs. That said, what have I left out?

TY, thx for the sharp-eyed look at the Romneys in home stretch. I haven't been able to stomach watching him lately. Useful to see they Know. Fascinating to ruminate by comparison on Hillary late in the '08 primary, and how she never gave up the fire even after the handwriting was more than on the wall. Now that's a political pro, one with a core, with conviction, with authenticity. As for how the GOP base vs. establishment will shake out -- exactly. Having so long been the party of iron top-down discipline, has been fascinating to watch the elders not know what to do with tea partiers and like upsurge rabblement in their rank and file. Dumping longtime gray-hairs like Lugar et al., defying Boehner in the House, etc. One thought occurs that the establishment could turn to corporate dollars to try and simply drench the messaging coming up from below by brute force. And through intra-party application of subterfuges of old, such as when the religious right worked to sneak its candidates onto local ballots by picking ones who could publicly pose as much more moderate than they actually were -- only now in reverse. And other against-their-own application of such Atwater-esque ploys. They have a tortuous road ahead, in all events. I look forward to the spectacle.

Not sure if my past report is relevant any more, but here again: Before the site upgrade, I had reported that when I was logged into the site's mobile version on my iPhone, sometimes when I logged out from the iPhone, it would take a couple of hours for the system to recognize the logout. During that interval, if I tried to log in from my laptop, the system would tell me that I was already logged in, even though my login did not show and the site would not let me post. However, after the site upgrade, that issue became moot, because I can no longer log into the mobile version. As EXPAT pointed out, I can log in from my iPhone if I toggle over from the mobile version of the site to the full version. From the full version, logging out on my phone registers instantly.

In this bedraggled time of political world-weariness I was tickled to stumble on this online archive of Winsor McKay's brilliant comic strip "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend." Being a string of lunatic nightmare adventures induced by said supper item taken too close to bedtime. Better even than his brilliant "Little Nemo in Slumberland" series, for my money... http://www.comicstri...results?title=3 (Click any strip image for a large high-def view thereof.)

"Technically, sir, tomatoes are fags." -- Japanese scientist struggling with the language American scientist, sotto voce, to another: "He means fruits." -- from "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"

So a top Chrysler exec fires back. I love it... Ralph Gilles, Chrysler Executive, Lashes Out At Donald Trump Reuters | Posted: 11/01/2012 6:22 pm EDT Updated: 11/02/2012 3:19 am EDT By Bernie Woodall DETROIT, Nov 1 (Reuters) - A Chrysler executive told Donald Trump in a Tweet on Thursday that the real estate executive and television personality was "full of shit" for repeating a notion that Chrysler is shipping U.S. Jeep production to China, which the automaker refutes. Ralph Gilles, the head of product design for Chrysler, became the second top Chrysler executive in three days to strongly deny the claim, which was first made by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last week to a crowd in Ohio. Trump, from his Twitter account, said, "Obama is a terrible negotiator. He bails out Chrysler and now Chrysler wants to send all Jeep manufacturing to China--and will!" To which Gilles, from his Twitter account, responded to Trump: "You are full of shit!" In a second Tweet, Gilles added: "I apologize for my language, but lies are just that, lies." On Tuesday, Chrysler Group LLC Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne, in an e-mail to employees, also flatly denied Romney's claim. "I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China," Marchionne wrote. Romney, speaking a week ago to a crowd in Defiance, Ohio, said that he had read a news article that said Chrysler's Jeep brand is considering moving "all production to China." Jeep, Chrysler's global brand, has three U.S. assembly plants, including one in Toledo, Ohio. The others are in Illinois and in Detroit. Ohio is seen by pollsters as a key "swing" state in next Tuesday's presidential election. It has been the site of intense competition between the campaigns of Romney and President Barack Obama. After Romney spoke in Defiance, his campaign aired an advertisement that did not repeat the move of production from Ohio but said that Chrysler is considering making Jeeps in China, which Chrysler has said it intends to do. Marchionne said that any Jeep production in China would be for the Chinese market, and that the company would not take any production away from Chrysler's U.S. plants. Rather, he said, Chrysler is adding jobs and investment at its Ohio plant. Chrysler has been managed by Fiat SpA since it emerged from its 2009 bankruptcy, when the Italian company took 20 percent ownership. Fiat has since increased its ownership to 58.5 percent. Marchionne is chief executive of both Chrysler and Fiat. http://www.huffingto...ref=mostpopular

Taking her cuntiness to new depths... Ann Coulter tweets "disown your [gay] son day" Posted by David Zimmerman October 16, 2012 03:28 PM Conservative media pundit Ann Coulter has tweeted a message in response to last week's National Coming Out Day; While apparently a joke, Coulter's tweet has not gone unnoticed by lgbt organizations around the world. Aaron McQuade, director of news and field media for GLAAD, released in a statement: I recognize that this is a joke, and that she is not really taken seriously in any context anyway, but with this coming right after National Coming Out Day, at the start of Ally Week and just days before Spirit Day, I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about this idea of hers. There was a time in our culture's history when, if thousands of LGBT kids were to come out on the same day, the next week genuinely would be exactly what Ann describes, all across the country. Fathers disowning their sons and kicking them out onto the street. Mothers locking up their daughters or sending them to charm school. Children forced to undergo electro-shock or even worse forms of "therapy" to rid themselves of their orientation. To learn how to not be true to themselves. And although we've come a long way from those ideas as a cultural collective, I have no doubt that last week, more than a few American households experienced the tragedy that Ann joked about. Approximately 50% of LGBT youth experience some degree of family rejection. There are as many as 100 thousand homeless LGBT youth on our nation's streets, and it's estimated that LGBT youth make up as much as 40% of our nation's homeless youth population. LGBT youth who are completely rejected by their parents are more than 8 times as likely to have attempted suicide. Pretty funny, right? Again, I know it’s a joke, but ANYTHING that adds to the idea that family rejection of LGBT young people is expected, or even "normal" enough to be casually joked about, causes harm. The kind of harm that Spirit Day was specifically created to protect against. So this week we'll let the rest of America stand up for those young people. With Spirit Day on Friday, I thought it would be a nice thought to list some of the corporations and individuals who will be standing up against Ann Coulter's idea, and showing their support for LGBT youth this week by going purple: Facebook, the NBA, Major League Soccer, Times Square, the New York Stock Exchange, the hosts of ‘Good Morning America,’ ‘The Talk,’ ‘E! News,’ ‘Chelsea Lately,’ Dianna Agron, Sir Ian McKellen, Fun., Bernadette Peters, the cast of Days of Our Lives, Joel McHale, Cesar Milan, the Duke Energy Tower, Toyota Financial Services, AMC Entertainment, NBCUniversal, Nielsen, Omnicom Group, American Apparel, AT&T, PepsiCo, American Airlines, Thomson Reuters, Warner Bros. Not to mention the millions of everyday people across North America who will be participating, and standing up in support of every LGBT young person, including – and especially – those who came out last week. Like I said, I've never taken Ann Coulter seriously, and I'm certainly not going to start now. But the idea of family rejection is one that does deserve serious attention as a society. Go purple on Friday, not just to show LGBT young people that you support them, but to show Ann Coulter what you stand for. http://www.boston.co...?camp=obnetwork

Well, I offered, but you refused. Remember?

The sequence of actions is difficult to interpret as "accidental."

One is curious how you would defend your own good intentions, in certain similar situations where there were dishonorable intrusions into personal information sources that one would have presumed inviolate? If the situations are not commensurate, I can gladly be educated.

At last, some good news... http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/10/11/elizabeth-warren-leads-scott-brown-points-new-poll/dIqKKnDu8yMTtf5P4EcsxN/story.html

Search on old threads no longer works. WTF?

Papa Simpson seems also to have been outed to the media by NYC escort Joey Anderson. Please pardon the breach of communal decorum, but here is a thread about this topic Over There that seems useful for the commonweal: http://www.message-forum.net/showthread.php?89986-Joe-Simpson-Allegedly-Hired-Joey-Anderson-from-DaddysReviews

THEY DON'T CLAIM TO! Do you not read newspapers? OK, once more, with feeling: For just about any newspaper in the U.S., unsigned editorials are called out with a heading "EDITORIAL" or "OUR OPINION" or the like. The unsigned editorials canonically appear on the far left side of the first editorial page. They cannot be mistaken for anything but what they are. The unsigned editorials just about universally are printed directly above a listing of the paper editorial staff's names and titles. (That is to say, papers are religious in communicating SPECIFICALLY AND PERSONALLY who is writing these editorials. And, in keeping with their elsewhere expressed standards of journalistic ethics, in keeping a high wall between editorial opinion on the one hand, and objective news coverage on the other.) Somewhere nearby there are usually listed multiple ways to send your opinion back to them. What more do you want, mermaids? (Forgive. One's mission as high-school newspaper Managing Editor may peek through here. One had on certain occasions to reign in some extremist instincts of the hot-tempered Editor-in-Chief, who was correct as visionary but not always as executionist. His personal-opinion column was titled "Editorial Etchings." (As in "Her piss would etch glass.") He never failed to excoriate the school administration (or occasional other deserving demons -- his judgment was ever spot-on) for a deserved stupidity, or worse. (This was 1977, when the ruling class was fairly willing to roll over and accept our 17-year-old judgment that they were idiots.) (hitoall, you know I only take all this trouble of responding because of the hots I have for you. What does that say about either of us?)

What hilarious horseshit. If there was 0.01% to their proposition obviously they would give it free to users and reap from the other side. Mad TV could do this one in high style.