Moe Lane

Here we go again*.  From James Taranto’s Best of the Web:

Yesterday we received an email from a loyal reader who nonetheless seems to disagree with everything we write–a type of reader for whom we have a special, if slightly perverse, affection. Our correspondent included a quote that he attributed to Aristotle:

If we believe men have any personal rights at all, then they must have an absolute moral right to such a measure of good health as society can provide.

Could an ancient philosopher, a man who lived and died many centuries before the advent of either socialism or modern medicine, really have been in favor of socialized medicine? We were skeptical, to say the least, and decided to do a bit of Web sleuthing.

Said sleuthing indicated that if the quote exists in what we have left of Aristotle’s works, interested researchers have not been able to find it.  It’s also revealed an interesting point about the quote: while it’s been reported that RFK had used it during his 1968 Presidential campaign (examples here and here**), the earliest reference from it so far is from 1979.

Moe Lane

*Possibly slightly unfair to bring up the Julius Caesar / Barbra Streisand thing – but then, life isn’t fair.

**The sourcing from Thurston Clarke’s (who, by the way, passive-aggressively accused THAT WOMAN of trying to get the President assassinated) The Last Campaign is as follows:

186 when he spoke at the University of Indiana Medical School: [John] Nolan interview; JFKLOH [Oral Histories, John F. Kennedy Library], Nolan; JSOH [Oral Histories compiled by Jean Stein and George Plimpton, John F. Kennedy Library], Quinn, pp. 37-42 (Quinn made a tape of the event and played it during his interview with Jean Stein); [Jules] Witcover, 85 Days, pp. 165-66; NYT, April 23, 1968; RFKCS [RFK: Collected Speeches], pp. 342-44; Indianapolis Star, April 27, 1968

Another visit to the library is in order; fortunately, RFKCS is available at my local one. I’d be very interested to peruse the oral history records, but I don’t have the research budget to fly to Boston.  At any rate, it should be reasonably easy to verify that RFK actually used the quote; it’ll either be part of the speech transcript, or on the available recordings (the only one that isn’t would be the one from Jean Stein’s collection, but it’d be very odd if that was the only place that this showed up).

Crossposted to RedState.

Ah, nostalgia.

Yes, I know: you still consider yourself to be a liberal.  It doesn’t matter in the slightest. Warren Ballantine signed you up with us last Thursday night, and since you’re adamantly refusing to learn your place (via Hot Air Headlines)…

…it’s only going to be a matter of time.

Trust me on this.

Moe Lane

PS: There is one way to return to the fold: you just have to crawl to your accusers, show them your belly, and enthusiastically recant everything that they tell you to recant.  Easy as pie, really.

Crossposted to RedState.

It makes you wonder what the AP has, to make this admission by HOPE-and-paste ripoff artist Shepard Fairey look like the preferable option:

In a strange twist to an already complicated legal situation, artist Shepard Fairey admitted today to legal wrongdoing in his ongoing battle with the Associated Press.

Fairey said in a statement issued late Friday that he knowingly submitted false images and deleted others in the legal proceedings, in an attempt to conceal the fact that the AP had correctly identified the photo that Fairey had used as a reference for his “Hope” poster of then-Sen. Barack Obama.

Via Deceiver.com, which also links to this report that at least some of Fairey’s attorneys are pulling out of the lawsuit. Which is actually a pity, as the most proper response to this situation is to root for injuries…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Mercedes Benz, Janis Joplin

This was hard to find, when I was half the age that I am now. Then again: everything was, really.

And… yes. Yes, it really is better this way.

Damn you, George Lucas.

http://www.amazon.com/

Because, remember:

Easily the best one that you’ll read all week.  The context: nobody can pronounce the Congressman’s last name properly – up to and including the President (this isn’t a slam: I was getting it wrong, too).  So Joseph decided to set the record straight with a press release:

My last name – Cao – is actually pronounced (drum-roll please…) “Gow.” It starts with a “G” and rhymes (as Amanda Carpenter quipped in the Washington Post) with “Pow.”

I can understand your reluctance to accept such an absurd variation – surely no “C,” in the history of language, has ever been pronounced as a “G.” And yet, through no fault of my own, my native Southern Vietnamese dialect evolved such that this absurd mockery of consonants is, in fact, reality.

The whole thing is worth your time; it’s good from start to finish.  All in all, I’d like to keep Joseph in Congress for a while: how about you?  Thanks to his position as a Republican legislator in a heavily Democratic district, he’s currently under a good deal of pressure to break ranks on health care rationing (he’s already taken hits from the Democrats for not budging for the ‘stimulus’ or cap-and-trade bills): he frankly needs all the help that he can get.

Moe Lane

PS: I keep calling him ‘Joseph’ because he said that we all could.

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Fark Geek) Some people have all the luck.

A lump of metal which smashed through the roof of a house is believed to have come from space, the RAF has said.

The 4lb object was investigated by the RAF Flight Safety Branch after it landed in the loft of Peter and Mair Welton’s home in Forester Way, Hull, in July this year.

Then again, this is how a lot of zombie flicks start, so if you start to hear of ravenous walking corpses rampaging through… it looks like central-East England… you’ll at least now know which locale to futilely nuke.

Moe Lane

Does your family have a zombie infestation plan?

This video provoked, more or less, by this stupid flip by the President.

The GOP is no longer to get out of the way; no, no, now we will be graciously permitted to clean up the Democrats’ mess for them. While taking the blame for it, of course. This is known as ‘bipartisanship;’ and objecting to that is known as ‘obstructionism.’ Also, ‘racism.’

The President does understand that we have video software and cameras and memories, yes? Does he really think that we haven’t noticed that his poll numbers are seriously down from the point where he could tell conservatives to get out of the way? And does he really think that his vaunted charisma works on people who aren’t inclined to go along with him anyway?

Because it doesn’t.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Well, not exactly, but it uses Pulp Fiction to make the point.

Now I just have to figure out how to score an invite.

Moe Lane

Or at least be allowed to enjoy whatever recreational chemical that he ingested before getting dragged into an impromptu interview about health care.  Big Hollywood zeroed in on the bit at the beginning – which is good – but it’s the bit at the end that made this such a fascinating article.

Is there hope behind the heartbreak?
The melody is the hope. The lyrics are the heartbreak, the melody is the hope. If you have the lyrics being the heartbreak and the music as the heartbreak, your editor made you ask stupid fucking questions! You’re standing in front of me acting as if these questions are fair, but now we’re talking about something real. So there was stuff I wanted to put on the record that just didn’t fit the concept. So the next record will have that concept.

What concept?
More political things, worldly things.

Such as?
Nothing rhymed with public option.

You don’t always have to rhyme, though.
I’m going to forcefully sodomize your editor.

Moe Lane

PS: For the record, I do not support forceful sodomy as a corrective for anything.

It is a measure of the deep, deep respect that I have for a certain corporation’s legal department that I am refraining from reproducing the image associated with this article:

The x-rated advertisement, for Jamieson’s Raspberry Ale, depicts the fairytale heroine blowing smoke rings while lying in bed with seven semi-clad dwarves.

In this Disney dystopia, Snow White has been renamed “Ho White”, while the loveable dwarves Sleepy, Happy and Doc are rebranded Filthy, Smarmy and Randy – supposedly to represent different types of drinkers.

I recognize that it takes a certain amount of suicidal bravery to live in Australia – the native fauna Just Doesn’t Like the rest of the global ecosphere – but this is impressive, even for them.

Via Drudge – and he didn’t put up the image, either.

Moe Lane

…so here’s a moment of Zen.  I don’t know why this is so fraught with meaning.

It just is.