Charlie Sheen reminds me of Oscar Wilde...

...only in this regard:

"Well, in the beginning he was the most enchanting company, don't you know. His conversation was so simple and natural and flowing — not at all epigrammatic, which would have been unbearable. He saved that for his plays, thank heaven. My brother Herbert [Beerbohm Tree] produced Oscar's play A Woman of No Importance. During rehearsals, at the Haymarket, we used to go to a little bar around the corner where they served sandwiches. Oscar asked for a watercress sandwich. When the waiter brought it, it seemed to Oscar excessive. 'I asked for a watercress sandwich,' he said to the waiter — oh, in the friendliest manner possible, smiling at him as if asking for, and being sure of, the waiter's sympathy — 'not for a loaf of bread with a field in the middle of it.'" . . .

"But, you know" — Max's eyes darkened with regret, and his brow furrowed — "as Oscar became more and more successful, he became . . ." Max paused, as if he couldn't bear to say it, but he did say it. "He became arrogant. He felt himself omnipotent, and he became gross not in body only — he did become that — but in his relations with people. He brushed people aside; he felt he was beyond the ordinary human courtesies that you owe people even if they are, in your opinion, beneath you."
-- Max Beerbohm, quoted in Behrman, S. N. Portrait of Max: An Intimate Memoir of Sir Max Beerbohm. New York: Random House, 1960.

Charlie Sheen is special

After checking himself out of rehab, Sheen set up his own home rehab facility called “Sober Valley Lodge,” from which the principles of A.A. had been banned. “I will not believe that if I do something then I have to follow a certain path, because it was written nice,” he said. “It was written for normal people, people that aren't special. People that don't have tiger blood, you know, Adonis DNA.”

“I’m tired of pretending like I’m not special,” Sheen continued. “I’m tired of pretending like I’m not @#!*% a total fricking rock star from Mars, and people can't figure me out; they can't process me. I don't expect them to. You can't process me with a normal brain.”

It's certainly not nothing to be the most popular man on American TV. I have no idea what it is like to live and thrive at that level of the food chain, either artistically or financially. But surely he knows, as most successful people do, that he didn't get there or stay there all on his own. Carrying on like this makes him seem like an overgrown adolescent, who just can't get over his own uniqueness. Sounds like he's been spending too much time cocooned with sycophants, who have warped his self-perception. Just remember, Mr. Sheen: the further up the ladder you go, the more people can see your a$$.

Didn't get the job, but...

...hey, they'll cope! A fortunate family, that.

The best line I saw on the internet yesterday was this:

"Islam is the Religion of Peace. If you don't agree, you're an Islamophobe. But if you do agree, you've lost your mind."

And on the third hand...

...Here's a roundup of anti-union tales. Make due allowance for bias and read, if you've never heard a discouraging word about unions before.

But then again...

...Here's a dissenting view, saying that the public unions in Wisconsin really haven't cost the taxpayers anything.

If the Wisconsin governor and state legislature were to be honest, they would correctly frame this issue. They are not, in fact, asking state employees to make a larger contribution to their pension and benefits programs as that would not be possible- the employees are already paying 100% of the contributions.

What they are actually asking is that the employees take a pay cut.

That may or may not be an appropriate request depending on your point of view – but the argument that the taxpayers are providing state workers with some gift is as false as the argument that state workers are paid better than employees with comparable education and skills in private industry.

Maybe state workers need to take pay cut along with so many of their fellow Americans. But let’s, at the least, recognize this sacrifice for what it is rather than pretending they’ve been getting away with some sweet deal that now must be brought to an end.

Wisconsin public union protests

Funny. The socialists in Madison don't seem to think it's so hot when they themselves are the object of envy. Didn't they ever stop to think what would happen once they got done redistributing the fruits of everyone else's labors? Didn't they realize that they themselves would become targets, once they set the precedent for government by popular envy? "Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie."

Qadaffi says drugs play a part in the rebellion

Irony meter redlines: Col. Klink accuses other people of trippin'.

Another self-dispatched jihadist

He apparently acted alone.

The break in the arrest of Khalid Ali Aldawsari for attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction came when a shipping company and a chemical supplier called authorities to report the suspicious attempted purchase of a large quantity of Phenol, a chemical that can be used to make explosives.

Another questing youth, who apparently found focus and purpose in The Jihad. Sudden Jihad Syndrome is not the right term for these people, as they don't appear to be abrupt flipouts. Hope no one else knew what he was up to. I'd be alarmed to think that his friends were all covering for him. Time to rethink George W. Bush's 2006 fast-tracking of Saudi student visas.

Col Allen West takes no guff from CAIR

Oh hell yes, as Atlanta Falcons fans used to say...

Two honor killings in two days

Muslims in Pakistan? No, Hindus in Uttar Pradesh.

Finding out that his granddaughter, Malti (19), a resident of Sarojni Naidu Nagar under Bilhaur police station, was planning to elope with a neighbour belonging to another caste, 65-year-old Babulal Kashyap killed her with an axe on Tuesday and kept her body inside the house. Neighbours, who heard Malti’s cries for mercy, informed the police, who recovered the body and arrested Kashyap. An unrepentant Kashyap told media persons: “Nothing is bigger than family honour, therefore I murdered my granddaughter.” [...]

In the other case, a girl was shot dead allegedly by her brother after she disappeared from home for a few days. Meena (18), a resident of Manauri village, went to Allahabad three days ago with a youth and returned on Monday after which her brothers, Satish and Sanju, quizzed her. She was shot dead, allegedly by Sanju, after she failed to give a satisfactory reply, the police said.

Somebody hurry up and invent a Paxil bomb.

Okay, so what's the explanation for anti-American dictatorships, libs?

Col. Klink's regime has been anti-American since it started in 1969. I'm wondering if it's worth the effort to comb through the comments of some big liberal blogs to read people finding a way to blame his tyranny on the U.S. anyway? Back in the Cold War, the formula was (a) pro-American dictatorships are dictatorships because the U.S. government wants to bleed the people for the benefit of Big Business, and (b) anti-American dictatorships are dictatorships because the U.S. was mean to them. Either way, all the trouble in the world was America's fault. It was a cheap & easy way for carping malcontents here at home to feel brave without merit or risk.

On second thought, here we *don't* go again!

The best way to find out if you have any friends is to go broke. The ones that hang on longest are your friends. I don't mean the ones that hang on forever. There aren't any of those.
-- Raymond Chandler, letter to Carl Brandt, 18 April 1949

Iowa high school wrestler refused to wrestle girl

A remarkable story. Liberals seek to make the sexes equal by making them identical. Thus, they have no room for a gentleman in their mental space. Hence, the stack overflows by some commenters at certain big liberal blogs. The liberal view of relations between the sexes is: anything goes, and nothing matters. Thumbs up to Joel Northup for refusing to accept the prevailing ethos, that his masculinity doesn't matter. (And no hard feelings to Cassy Herkelman.)

"No man knows the genuineness of his convictions until he has sacrificed something for them."
-- E. H. Chapin

An objection to some liberal editorializing I've seen on the Arab world's uprisings...

Lazy anti-Americanism is no guide to current events. Democracy has never flourished in the Arabic world. If not for the example of the United States, they would have little idea of what they are fighting for. And indeed, if not for the investments and contributions of the democratic West over the past century, most of them would have never even been born at all.

2011 is the Arab world's 1848

It could be.

A dating site for adulterers

What Ashley Madison does is legal. It's also illicit, in that it helps users violate their marriage vows and engage in deception and secrecy. This presents enormous branding challenges as well as financial ones: How many fund managers want to go home to their wives and announce, "Honey, I found the perfect investment opportunity!" Some of Avid Life's employees don't publicly admit where they work for fear of jeopardizing their spouses' jobs, provoking family disapproval, or seeing their houses pelted with oranges; Biderman says he sometimes worries about his security. All of this puts him in a unique position: He is running a budding empire built on an activity that most people would say is wrong. Is that the easiest thing in the world or the most difficult?

Poor arid souls...When you've got steak at home, you don't have to sneak out for hamburger.

Here we go again...

"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Racist Obama Post

Some humor site that I've never heard of just posted a racist post about President Obama, about half an hour ago. I found it while looking up something else. Given that liberal voices immediately pinned Congresswoman Giffords' shooting on Sarah Palin in particular and conservatives in general, I'd better get out in front and disassociate myself from this post, even though I have no idea of the political leanings if any of the original poster. It ain't me, libs!

Who will win in Egypt?

We all love the sight of People Power. The ousters of Ferdinand Marcos and Nicolae Ceascescu were joys to behold. But not all dictatorships are so easily seen off. The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon failed, as Hezbollah and Syria merely tightened their grip on the fragile democracy. And the only thing Twitter did for the opposition in Iran was to let us follow their defeat in real time. Here's hoping for a peaceful transfer to a democratic government in the Arab countries currently on the boil. But...

Women in combat

I'll put my head on the block and say that I oppose having women in ground combat. Fire control on an AC-130? Remote piloting a drone? Fine, reading scopes and pushing buttons is not sex specific. But on average (repeat, "on average") women are not as strong as men, which can lead to politically correct compromises in battle readiness. They can't throw a grenade as far as a man? Okay, we'll make the grenades less powerful. They can't keep up in PT and field exercises? Okay, we'll dial those down. They can't carry their end of a stretcher on the double on a battlefield? Okay, we'll require four people instead of two to carry the stretchers. A sailor on a combat cruise got pregnant onboard? Okay, we'll just delay the mission and turn around & go back to port to drop her off. And on and on. Again, I'm entirely supportive & grateful for the women under arms now. But I don't think it does anyone any favors to act as though they are 100% the same as men.

Haiti's post-earthquake rape epidemic

Horrible...this is one reason why Haiti is such a cesspool. You can't have a strong society without strong families, and you can't have strong families with goings-on like this.

Indonesian religious turmoil

This past weekend has been awful for religious liberty in Indonesia, not that it was ever any great shakes in the first place. Over the weekend, a home of minority Ahmadiyya sect Muslims was attacked by majority orthodox Muslims, and three people were beaten to death. (The gruesome video is out there, but it won't go up here.) And then just days later, a mob torched a Christian church. Seems a fellow was convicted for anti-Islamic blasphemy, but was only given five years instead of life. This so outraged the followers of the One True Faith that they brawled with court officers, and then set fire to the church.

Interestingly, Huffington Post is not covering this. NPR has a couple of stories up, but they are buried, only accessible via a keyword search, & hence have no comments on them as of this writing.

We ultimately have Saudi Arabia to thank for this. Indonesia's Muslims used to be a fairly mellow community, so I've read. But the harsh Wahabhist doctrines spread by the Saudi-funded madrassas all over the world have been poisoning people's hearts for the past few decades. Now look at this mess. "The tree is known by its fruit."

An overlooked Obama achievement

You know that wall of text making the rounds, touting Obama's achievements, in answer to conservatives who claim he hasn't done anything? One accomplishment of Obama's that doesn't appear on it is this: Back last summer he signed legislation protecting Americans against "libel tourism".

Libel tourism was most famously used by a Saudi moneybags, who objected to an American writer exposing his funding of terrorist front groups. He successfully sued her in not in American courts, but in British courts, where 20 of her books had been sold by mail order.

So this legislation is welcome, but not so much by the Left, who do not really believe in free speech, nor in the jihadist threat. They bitterly cling to their exploded memes that everyone is the same except for headgear and cuisine, and that everything would be wonderful if they could only kick out and shut up the bad guys and install the good guys--of their choosing, of course.

British City Councillors refuse ovation for decorated war hero

Two councillors were slammed yesterday for refusing to take part in a standing ovation for a Marine who won the George Cross.

Muslims Salma Yaqoob and Mohammed Ishtiaq stayed seated during a ceremony to honour Lance Corporal Matthew Croucher.

Matthew, 27, was awarded the George Cross for throwing himself on a grenade to save comrades during an ambush in Afghanistan.

Miraculously he escaped with a nose bleed because his backpack took the force of the blast. More than 100 Birmingham city councillors rose to acclaim the hero and Matthew, from Solihull, West Mids, said he was “a bit surprised” by the two who snubbed him.

Elsewhere the two councillors trot out some Higher Patriotism rationalizations for their snub, not much different from Jane Kim and her Pledge of Allegiance stunt in San Francisco. The Muslim thing? Incidental, no doubt. Yes, English multi-cultists, incidental. You just keep telling yourself that.

San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim refuses to say pledge of allegiance

Whatever. At this late date, I'm surprised anyone expects a show of patriotism out of San Franciscans anymore anyway. They have a serious image problem.

But, since I asked me, my opinion is that flipping a bird at a national symbol is easy, safe, and for proggs, fun. It's a childish gesture, from someone who wants dissident status without merit or risk. "Dissent is the highest form of self-congratulation" as the saying ought to go. The mark of the progg is to refuse to find any value in the present. Only the future America of their making is worthy of their support, not the present America in all its sins and graces. Full of adolescent outrage at the world's tardiness in re-arranging itself to their liking, they slap the hand that supports them, and congratulate themselves for doing so.

Now go get those potholes filled, Ms. Kim.