My New Logo

Lileks also came up with this one.

Very appropriate for a Grumpy Old Man.

Porky Commits Seppuku

I've always been amused by cartoons and drawings of animals joyfully contemplating their imminent demise at the hands of carnivorous humans. These are found in Mexican restaurants and small-time fast food joints, mostly.

This French offering is in a class by itself, however.

"The French don't care what they do, actually, so long as they pronounce it properly."

HT: Lileks.

Put That High-Octane DNA In Your Pipe, and . . .

The DNA of the people they hire tends to be a little higher octane in terms of aggressiveness and energy,” said Jason E. Klein, president and chief executive of Newspaper National Network, which sells ads on behalf of a variety of newspapers across the country.

--NY Times, on News Corp.'s takeover of the Wall Street Journal

Eye of newt, nitro, and a spark of creativity. That's how to sell advertising.

Entrusting Health Care To . . . Idiots?

Mitt "Headroom" Romney boasts of his healthcare plan in Massachusetts.

There's a swarm of flies in Mitt's ointment--doctors aren't signing up to treat patients under the plan. Here's why:

In Massachusetts, the state-subsidized plans, collectively called Commonwealth Care, are provided by private insurance companies. Patients can choose from among six options. Residents who make between one and three times the poverty level ($48,000 for a family of three) are now eligible for coverage under the plan. Doctors are reimbursed by insurance providers -- at below-market rates comparable with Medicaid reimbursements.

Imagine that. We could have government-sponsored steak at $ 1.59 per pound, or gasoline at $ 1.00 a gallon, but Exxon and Safeway won't play.

Would you trust your child's health to a doctor who was stupid enough to sign up for such a plan?

Mitt's supposed to have been a successful businessman. He must be lucky, because he sure don't know economics.

HT: Dr. Bob.

Fit for Active Service

Dr. Deb, who runs a mental health blog, retails a report that the Veterans Administration is deliberately misdiagnosing Iraq War vets with post-traumatic stress disorder as having personality disorders (not service-related), to avoid having to treat them.

Sounds plausible, given the way they are treating our veterans.

If true, it's disgusting, and the George Grosz drawing above, a satire on the German Imperial Army, is right on target. So much for "supporting the troops."

Bizarre Life Forms From the Depths of the Sea

Here.

Rest In Peace, Bat Boy

The Weekly World News, supermarket tabloid, is dead.

The website lives on, at least for the moment.

So sad. No other paper revealed that most of the U.S. Senate are aliens. It's the world's "only reliable newspaper."

More here.

Don't worry. American culcha is not maturing. Lindsay Lohan lives.

UPDATE: Another requiem here.

Totten From Baghdad

Michael Totten is an independent blogger-jounalist who goes places I don't care to, and provides photos and factual reports.

He's been in Baghdad recently, embedded, and provides this fascinating stuff.

Doesn't mean we're suddenly winning, but one unit in one neighborhood is doing rather well. I haven't suddenly become an optimist or backslid into interventionism, but the story appears to be accurate as far as it goes, and it's a positive one, worth a read.

Polynesian Follies Yet Again

French Polynesia's politicos are at it again.

It seems the "autonomist" (pro-French) group obtained a few defectors and threw out pro-independence President Oscar Temaru. Part of the deal, however, was that the Ferdinand Marcos of Polynesia, Gaston Flosse, would not be put back in office. Instead, Gaston Tong Sang was made President.

Now there has been a falling-out between the Gastons. Five ministers resigned, and Gaston No. 1 has been meeting with Oscar to strike a deal, to the dismay of many. The deal might provide for an independence referendum some time in the future, say 2028, when Gaston No. 1 and Oscar will either be dead or won't know what country they are living in, anyway.

Gaston No. 1 was a pal of former French President Jacques Chirac, who has problems of his own (a criminal investigation, now that he no longer has immunity). The French have let it be known that the highest level of subsidy might depend upon the return of some degree of political stability.

The French in Polynesia are a distinctly unpleasant bunch, but they do subsidize the place. The independence dilemma is that without the subsidies, even with fewer duties and trade preferences for the métropole, the economic would go to hell in a handbasket. Hence the independence faction is for independence--but not quite yet.

Don't count Gaston-Ferdinand out until he's dead--with a stake through the heart.

In WWII we flattened cities and interned an entire ethny, citizens and all. In the Cold War we banned the entry of communists into our country — and, as a matter of fact, the entry of long-inactive ex-communists and “fellow-travelers,” too.

There is no prospect of our doing such things in the War on Terror. We shall not be interning any Muslim citizens or excluding foreign Muslims or Muslim “fellow-travelers” (what would one of those look like? Karen Armstrong, perhaps), let alone annihilating any cities. It’s just not that big a war.

So far as military operations are concerned, our preferred means is counterinsurgency — the “surgical” winkling-out of jihadis from among civilian populations, with as few collateral casualties as possible. There is a respectable body of thought that argues this is a waste of time founded on illusions, that the only effective counterinsurgency techniques are those employed by the Romans, the Ottomans, and the Nazis.

Whether that is the case or not, these dainty means, with their dainty economic and diplomatic equivalents, are all we shall employ. The grosser means of earlier wars — carpet-bombing, ethnic internment, mass exclusion, government requisition of entire industries — are not appropriate. We all feel that instinctively. Why do we feel it? Because we know that the end — the suppression of a worldwide nuisance — is not really that important, except in the president’s flights of gassy rhetoric.

-- John Derbyshire

Smart guy, Derb. There's no hue and cry for conscription or tax surcharges, or anything like that. It's not World War III, or IV, or n.

Poignant

On a darkening winter afternoon I came to see them in their upstairs bedroom. His head, resting on a pillow, now had a kind of skeletal beauty; he could speak only little, forcing out a few words with increasing difficulty; near the foot of his bed she sat huddled in a wheelchair at a table, uttering a few sensible words, not many. I went out, crushed with sadness; and then Pamela, my wife-to-become, soothed me quietly: ‘They were together for so long; they are together now; in the same room; aware of each other; still alive.’

--John Lukacs of George and Annelise Kennan, quoted by Daniel McCarthy.

Yasser the Sod

Apparently Yasser Arafat died of AIDS.