Patriot Games

Why “Patriot”?

They explain it here.

Because "that’s who they are!" They believe--I quote---"in the greatness of our nation, in our Constitution, in God-given liberty and limited government."

Why “Action”?

Because "that’s what they do!" They have---I quote---"a place in the political debate because they are among the best informed and most engaged citizens in our nation."

I say good for them! These are challenging times, and the nation sure can use all the "best informed" patriots and "most engaged" watchmen groups it can.



Take this, for instance:



Fear not, TRUTHER is on top of it here:



I say, good for the Patriot Action Network for posting this---they are "informed"!

Now, how "engaged" are they gonna be?

I mean:



Let's hear what these good patriots have to say about this. Let's hear it from some of our "best informed and most engaged citizens"---this is exciting folks (holding my breath):



Huh?

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What would Jefferson say?

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Fascismo e libertà

Who is John Galt?

Who is Spartacus?






Sign up today!

And get your toga, while supplies last.


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And one more thing...

LOL

Gotta ♥ that pic.
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Swimming in a fish bowl

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Debbie and Mike suspect something's amiss . . .

But who will believe them?

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These are the people Robert Gibbs warned you about

Now on tour in the U.S. & Canada:



Acid Mothers Temple 2011 Tour Dates:

03/23 – Los Angeles, CA @ Spaceland *
03/24 – San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill *
03/26 – Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge *
03/27 – Bellingham, WA @ The Wild Buffalo *
03/28 – Seattle, WA @ Chop Suey
03/29 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret *
03/31 – Calgary, AB @ Broken City *
04/01 – Missoul, MT @ THe Badlander *
04/02 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge *
04/03 – Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge *
04/04 – Lincoln, NE @ Bourbon Theatre *
04/05 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry *
04/06 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle *
04/07 – Kalamazoo, MI @ The Strutt *
04/08 – Toronto, ON @ El Mocambo *
04/09 – Montreal, QC @ Il Motore *
04/10 – Allston, MA @ Great Scott *
04/12 – Brooklyn, NY @ Knitting Factory *
04/13 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brendas *
04/14 – Washington, DC @ Red Palace *
04/15 – Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar *
04/16 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506 *
04/17 – Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light *
04/18 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl *
04/19 – New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks *
04/20 – Houston, TX @ Fitzgeralds *
04/21 – Dallas, TX @ The Loft *
04/22 – Austin, TX @ Red 7 *
04/24 – Tucson, AZ @ Solar Culture
04/25 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah

* = w/ Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers
* = w/ Shilpa Ray
* = w/ Melting Parasio UFO

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I have been here before

But when or how I cannot tell.



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"Americans overuse medical services because they generally don't have to pay much for them..."

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Presidential Straw Poll

As GOP presidential hopefuls begin to test the waters in preparation for the 2012 election, Townhall and HotAir are conducting a poll to gauge whom conservatives are currently leaning towards.


May the best man candidate win:



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Lord of the Flies

Wow, quite some program there on the Daily Paul. I wonder what the good doctor's position is on any of this, and whether he endorses the site or any of its content.



Oye Oye OYE VAY! What a concept! Yup, Pol Pot himself couldn't have possibly said it any better!

Who would have thought that the Republican Congressman for the 14th congressional district of Texas (and presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in 1988) could have so much in common with the Khmer Rouge of 1975-1979 Kampuchea.

When the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in April 1975, age was reversed as a marker of status, very young children--the only ones considered pure--were indoctrinated to denounce and turn against suspect adults. Elderly, who were previously accorded great respect, were cast aside as useless and unproductive. Traditional norms of respect for elders were suppressed and the "Comrade Child" was praised as being "pure and unsullied by the corrupt past of the adults."
(Ponchaud, 1977, p. 143).

Special spy units, Kang Chhlop, were composed mainly of children and were used to spy on adults. One Cambodian woman recalled the power given to children under the Khmer Rouge:

In the Pol Pot times children could catch an adult if they thought they had done wrong. They could beat the adult. For example, if an adult was caught stealing fruit a child could tell the soldiers: "look they are our enemies". Then the soldiers would set a chair for the child to stand on so that they could beat the adult's head.
(Boyden and Gibbs, 1997, p. 44)



Children rose quickly up the ranks of the Khmer Rouge and it was not unusual for children to be in charge of workcamps at the age of twelve. Camps run by these children became notorious for the extreme and arbitrary violence inflicted on the inmates. Children, even more than adults, appeared particularly cruel. Even after Cambodia was liberated in 1979 by the Vietnamese, there remained a "residual fear of children" in the country (Boyden and Gibbs, 1997, p. 98).
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When doves cry

Maybe I’m just too demanding



Maybe I’m just like my father too bold

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Bravo.

So I'm watching the Rachel Maddow show and as you would expect, it's all about the Japan disaster. One of her guests, the head scientist for a group called the Union of Concerned Scientists or something like that, was saying that at this point the "best-case scenario" for the Nuclear power plant accidents is that it is "merely" a Three Mile Island, not a Chernobyl.

Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer stops a crisis at the plant by falling into a tank and sealing an opening therein with his own body?

Burns: Homer, your bravery and quick thinking have turned a potential Chernobyl into a mere Three Mile Island. Bravo!

To coin a phrase: We are all Springfielders now.
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Is that a rhetorical question?

Uh... No, WH, I don't think the author of the article does---have any shame. I don't think that any one at FSM does.

I mean, seriously, have you taken a good look at what that site looks like?






Disclaimer: the edited Fatherland poster featuring Tom McLaughlin is not an actual feature of FSM, the satirical collage is meant only for humorous effect.
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To be or not to be . . .

That is the question:

Why, obviously, if he says so, that must be it.

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Not a partisan issue

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Caption this photo

You put your left foot in,
You put your left foot out;
You put your right foot in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

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Alors on danse

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A Matter of Semantics - part two

BATTLE:LA
So why are these aliens coming to Earth in the first place?

Jonathan Liebesman explains: "Earth is 70 percent water. The aliens in our movie use water for many different things, so they are here for those natural resources."

Or as Winston Churchill would have put it:



People are accustomed to their birth culture, I guess. There is no way around it: people know what they know. One grows up absorbing the values and behaviors of one's own culture and develops patterns of thought reflecting the culture as normal.

This is, no doubt, one of the things that make it difficult for scriptwriters to imagine behaviors of entities from a different culture from the perspective of what a different culture could possibly be like rather than from their own.

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Who Will Save Us?

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Let's do the time warp again

I wouldn't know, sir.



The idealized heroes of the 40's date back from a time when it was maybe more clear-cut who the bad guys and the good guys were (on the radio and in the comic books, that is). The villains of that era were easily identifiable: they were the one "disturbing the peace."

It is perhaps a sign of our times that today's heroes (or anti-heroes) are more ambivalent: more often than not they are the one "disturbing the peace" now.



Maybe "The peace" had not yet acquired back then the same sinister association with authoritarianism (where ordinary citizens have less significant share in state decision-making), than it does now.

It could be that people have grown more circumspect, or more cynical about the world they live in.

Half a century or so, marked by fascism, totalitarianism, Vietnam, Nixon, Iran-Contra-Gate and whathaveyou, and the invasion of Iraq, will do that to you. Not to mention the recent Global Financial Crisis.

Clearly, "law and order" has come to take a very different meaning whether it is uttered by the Lone Ranger, or Nurse Mildred Ratched (McMurphy's nemesis in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), or the Norsefire party in V for Vendetta.

Possibly, people have become more informed (to a degree) about the robber barons of their times.

Or not.



As Abraham Lincoln famously put it, Yes, you can.

"Fool some of the people all of the time," sir.

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