Posts by Russell Brown
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Is that the same place that sold you stale wine?
No. That was the Pt Chev Liquor Centre. I don't go there any more.
Super Liquor is the one in the Goldmine Centre, managed by a genial Indian family, and patronised by stoned 19 year-olds who spill out of the pub next door in the evenings.
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"... sending my cousin Vito over ..."
Seconded - stocks can't be that limited, surely?
Oh, alright. The tasty Talisker price is from my local Super Liquor franchise, which is a, er, colourful place.
The same price probably pertains at all the others, but I do fret that it's only that shop ...
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That Glenn Beck is a piece of work. I was less impressed with his acting abilities - that was some of the most fake shit I have ever seen - but his everyday demeanour is scary simply because he sounds so reasonable and level-headed (okay, that's in comparison to Hnnity and O'Rielly, but I think you get my point)
I confess to finding him fascinating in a way that Hannity and O'Reilly aren't. They're just pompous asses, where he's actually really crazy.
Even the play-acting is oddly interesting: he's expressing what he presents as sincere feelings in what anyone should be able to see is a mechanically insincere fashion.
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Metanui.
Is that new?
I like it.
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He's going to hate me for this, but hey, who cares: the thread that keeps on giving gets its first official review care of Jake.
I rather enjoyed that.
Grigg, for his part, recognises the use of copyright, but consistently argues for a need to face reality and recognise the need for changing business models. He doesn't believe that the industry will deserve to 'go the way of the dinosaur' if it can't reconstruct its practices, but he is generally thoughtful and realistic about the future. He also can handle about two pages of circular arguments, pointless nit-picking, and low-level abuse from Robbery before declaring that he's walking away from the thread, only to come back for another round a few days later.
The real star of the show, and the reason for its tremendous run, is Robbery. I won't attempt to describe Robbery's inimitable style, but I suggest you have a look at his latest coup. First, he describes an event he didn't attend to people who were there, baits them into re-describing it, accuses them of wanting to cover up their bad behaviour, insists that there are only two possible 'sides' one can be on in the debate, claims victim status for being outnumbered, and then, as the estimable Sam F predicts, proceeds to question the credentials of those who were there. Truly, he is a master of arguing on the Internet.
Jake should try moderating this stuff ...
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Looks like you had a real fun day, Russell. Where should we send the valium?
I took the precaution of obtaining some Talisker, which has a similar effect -- along with Braveheart hallucinations if you do it right.
$85!
But I'd have to kill you if I told you where ...
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Here's the speech, the launch of Beck's incomprehensible 9/12 Project:
With Chuck Norris!
Should've been in the main post, I suppose.
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You're probably spending time with family, or reading a book, or even worshipping. I've been spending my Easter holiday looking into the New World Order, and the people who would warn us of its impending takeover. I have seen many things on YouTube, and I feel I need to share them with you.
Anyone who follows this stuff will know about the "Tea Parties"; would-be citizen tax revolts evoking the Boston Tea Party, and editorially marketed by the likes of Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds and Fox News Channel, the latter most notably via its newest star, the genuinely deranged Glenn Beck.
Problem is, some of the people involved got a bit carried away and came up with slogans like "Teabag the White House!" and called themselves "teabaggers".
You don't even have to know that Wikipedia defines "teabagging" as "a slang term for the act of a man placing his testicles in the mouth or on or around the face (including the top of the head) of another person, often in a repeated in-and-out motion as in irrumatio," to sense that the name is a little unfortunate. And you certainly don't need to know what "irrumatio" means. Easy laughs don't come any easier, as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow gleefully demonstrates:
Oh, and then there's the Crazy. Some fairly odd people are turning up to the Tea parties: white power and militia groups, Ron Paul fans, flat-out paranoids. This clip from a Tea Party, uploaded in all good faith by one of the teabaggers, has attracted quite a bit of attention.
It was too much for even Little Green Footballs' Charles Johnson, who offered the following account:
At a “Project 912 Glenn Beck Tea Party,” an unnamed speaker rants about “infiltration by the Communist Party” (a John Birch Society talking point), says that digital cable boxes are “brainwashing machines” planted in our homes by the government, and swears to stop paying taxes. The rant begins at about 1:58. This is some really deranged stuff, and the audience is eating it up.
And notice the comment about evolution at about 5:00:
Woman: [Shouts] “Burn the books!” [applause]
Man: “I don’t think you were serious about that, were you?”
Woman: “I am too.”
Man: “Burn all the books?!”
Woman: “The ones in college, those, those brainwashing books.”
Man: “[laughs] Brainwashing books?”
Woman: “Yes.”
Man: “Which ones are those?”
Woman: “Like, the evolution crap, and, yeah...”It would be easy to see this as simply a bunch of deranged ultra-right-wingers. Johnson's observation about the John Birch Society influence is on the mark. But there were placards decrying the same impending New World Order (henceforth: NWO) in the London G20 street protests. Some of the protesters shared with the teabaggers their great anger that their money as taxpayers had gone to bailing out big banks. Some of them take the extra step into a global financial conspiracy.
The beyond-left-or-right centre of gravity is The Obama Deception; two hours of manipulative editing and wild-eyed talking heads (KRS-1 among them, sadly) that seeks to demonstrate that the shiny new president is merely a stooge for the financial cabals who really run things. Its producer, radio host Alex Jones, was a key player in the infamous Loose Change films alleging the 9/11 attacks were an inside job.
Across hundreds of websites, you can read this warning from Jones:
We have reached a critical juncture in the New World Order's plans. It's not about Left or Right: it's about a One World Government. The international banks plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves on a Global Plantation.
After a short while it's like being trapped by a bore at a party, but the whole of The Obama Deception is available in high quality on YouTube:
You might prefer the "trailer" -- also impossibly-long-winded at 10 full minutes:
These kinds of beliefs have, of course, been around for a long time. But there probably has not been a time in the mass-media age when so many factors have combined to nourish them: a focus for resentment in the bank bailout, a President with mythic qualities, the unfocused anger of the Republican grassroots -- and the very considerable assistance of Fox News.
Clearly, Roger Ailes has a brilliant feel for his market. He's seen this crazy populist thing emerging, and he's given it Glenn Beck.
But it's not just Beck. Here's Sean Hannity and the loathsome Dick Morris seriously discussing the way the G20 meeting advanced the NWO agenda:
And Fox has had plenty of time for "trends" forecaster Gerard Celente, one of the talking heads of The Obama Deception:
Here's Celente again, this time with Beck:
And an extremely crazy episode where Beck eagerly explains the secret signs on the back of a particular 10 cent piece.
And a Beck compilation. Bear in mind that all of it is from this year:
Beck is mentally unbalanced, and he doesn't mind letting you know. His clowning, his theatrical wiping away of tears ("I just love my country") and his jumbled declarations seem merely to amplify his constant internal voices. In his way, he's brilliant.
But it does appear that Fox management has some boundaries. Beck went on Fox's asinine group show Fox and Friends and started blathering about the secret network of internment camps retained across America by FEMA. "We can't debunk them," he declared, adding, reassuringly, that "there are more of us than there are of them" and "we just have to be honest about this."
The secret what, you say? Here's some information. And a video:
You'd have to guess that Beck tainting some of Fox's other stars with this stuff set alarm bells ringing. So he had to back down on that expose he promised:
And then he had to interview James Meigs of Popular Mechanics, one of the authors of the definitive demolition of Loose Change 's claims, and claim that he'd never believed the camps were real, while Meigs explained that the buildings in the pictures and videos were not prisons of any kind, rather, things like Amtrak repair sheds.
Part 1 is here:
And Part 2 is here.
There's also a transcript here
For the true believers, though, it all confirmed one thing: that Beck had been heavied by the New World Order.
Yet it doesn't seem that Fox (along with the odd outlier like CNN's Lou Dobbs) is going to stop marketing this thing any time soon. Media Matters made this compilation of TV talking head fearmongering.
And Crooks and Liars pointed out that the same paranoid rhetoric -- Obama will take away our guns! -- has already served to motivate one triple murder of policemen.
It actually seems reasonable that someone should ask Rupert Murdoch himself he long he plans to let this go on.
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If you didn't find that funny, perhaps you'd like these. Andy Cobb on teabagging (somewhat NSFW).
And … an anti-gay marriage lobby has called itself "Two Million for Marriage" and chosen an acronym for short 2M4M. Rachel Maddow explains why that would be funny:
We all need a laugh in troubled times.
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It's not really essential to reach conclusions in a discussion like this.
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That's entirely probable. On the other hand, I'd like to point out that Italy was completely immune to the very dubious charm of Abba. You've got to give us point for that.
Au contraire, as they say in another Romance language. Abba is one of the few acts to emerge from the Eurovision cesspit with honour intact. The emergence of Labrador Records has suggested a Swedish perfect pop tradition.
And how is this not a great song?
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