There was a time when propaganda was a real art form. People used to really work at it and you had to have a sharp eye to detect it. Its just not what it used to be.

What does something like that even mean?? Seriously. What does it mean? Its just nonsense. I’m right and you’re wrong? Okay. So?

And these ….

It seems that any one with a paint shop pro program thinks that can slap a few copy/pastes on a paper and write some phrase on it and that’s propaganda. Used to people had to spend hours and hours doing a good propaganda piece. They were true pieces are art.

What has happened to the leftists of the world? Have they gotten fat and lazy or are they too busy gaming to take the time to produce quality propaganda anymore? What’s with THAT?

They have to use images from previous propaganda pieces. Take the cover of Time that used the image of the Marines at Iwo Jima to make a statement about the environment. Instead of coming up with something unique and new, they take a classic image and run it through a photo program and manipulate it to make a statement about whatever cause they are trying to promote at any given moment. Its just pathetic.

I know what the problem is actually. The problem is there’s not enough angst in the artistic left. You have to have angst to create great art. The great poetry that made the great music of the 1960s came out of a deep sense of angst on the part of the a generation embroiled in a war and a major social revolution. Hemingway and the lost generation came from the social upheaval of the Great War. Then in social revolutions and the uncertainty and changes brought about by World War II had the same effect. Great works of art inspired by a sense of change, sacrifice, uncertainty … angst.

This generation doesn’t have that edge. Instead they have iPods, trust funds and wii. There’s a war, but they aren’t involved in it. Its ‘over there’ and its really not affecting life here. There’s not a draft, so they don’t have to worry about it at all. It doesn’t stop them from their school activities or weekend parties. Its someone else’s problem.

That’s why the propaganda the left is trying to put out is mostly updated copies of propaganda that was created in times of true angst. The words are just put on newer pictures or newer words are put on the older pictures. The creativity isn’t there, because the angst isn’t there.

Its a sad state of affairs when the idealists and artists of the left can’t create any decent propaganda.

My husband is a Survivorman fan so that means I’ve watched Les Stroud mark his territory more than once myself. You know how it is, we women watch what our men watch. Its just a fact of life, men control the remote.

Interestingly, there is a story in the news right now about a guy who survived because of watching Survivorman. Twenty-four year old Christopher Traverse spent five days lost in the snowy wilderness and credits Survivorman with his survival. Seriously!

Mr. Traverse said he credits his survival to knowledge gleaned from an unlikely source.

“I watch a show called Survivorman,” he said.

Survivorman is a reality-based show whose protagonist, Les Stroud, ventures out into the wilderness for a week at a time, with nothing but his wits to survive on.

It’s from the show that Mr. Traverse said he learned how to eat snow to fend off dehydration, and how to make a shelter from the twigs and branches.

“I wanted that experience — I got it and then some,” Mr. Traverse said with a laugh.

Traverse had been on a fishing trip in the wilderness of northern Manitoba when he got lost on the way back to his uncles house. Fresh snow had covered up his tracks and while trying to find it way without having the tracks to follow his snowmobile ran out of gas.

He used the survival skills he learned from watching Survivorman and managed to not only survive in the frigid weather for five days but to eventually make his way to town and walk into a store to call his family.

Searchers are looking for his snowmobile, but he said his family won’t let him go along to look for it. Ha!

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Shadowscope, DragonLady’s World, Leaning Straight Up, A Newt One-punking the global warming cult, Pursuing Holiness, Adeline and Hazel, D equals S, Chuck’s Place, Woman Honor Thyself, Pirate’s Cove, A Newt One- Coverage of Vets on the hill!, The Pink Flamingo, Celebrity Smack, Dumb Ox Daily News, A Newt One- Don’t miss this show!, Rant it Up, Right Voices, A Blog For All, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, Maggie’s Notebook, The Christian Nationalist, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Nuke Gingrich, Allie is Wired, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Oblogatory Anecdotes - Photoshop Montage/Open Trackbacks, Wolf Pangloss, Beagle Scout, Tilting At Windmill Farms, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Reuters is reporting that its been the coldest winter in more than a decade. Not to worry though. Spring starts tomorrow and surely Global Warming will return in due order.

Icy start, but 2008 may be in top 10 warmest years

“So far 2008, for the globe, has been quite cold, only just above the 1961-90 average,” said Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia which supplies global temperature data to the United Nations.

“This is just January and February, so two coolish months comparable to what happened in 1994 and 1996,” he told Reuters.

The northern spring formally begins on March 20 this year.

And an underlying warming trend, blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel on human use of fossil fuels, is likely to reassert itself after the end of a La Nina cooling of the Pacific in the coming months.

I’m more than willing to accept any money you want to send me to offset your carbon footprints. I’ll plant a tree to ensure you can still drive your SUV. Just put the funds in my paypal account

Yeah, I know this guy just wanted to get on the news for this and me posting it is helping that effort, but still, its just so stupid it has to be noted! This guy is billed as a comedian although no one has ever heard of him. He gets the chance to be on Fox News for a national audience and uses that opportunity to slam Fox News in a pretty pathetic way. I’m hoping he wasn’t trying to do his comedy act! If so that would really be pitiful!

Here’s a clue ….. if a network lets you criticize them on their own network then they aren’t tyrants and involved in propaganda. That’s not how propaganda works. If you want to find out about having your free speech restricted you might try going to Cuba or Iran and then you will understand the meaning of having your free speech denied.

So what do you think? Do you think guns decorated with Hello Kitty logos or painted pink are a good idea or is it outrageous and dangerous marketing?

I have to say that I read this article a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t parody. I thought maybe I had missed the punch line since I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.

It seems that the environmental movement continues to creep its way into the lives of the guilt stricken well-to-do. It has now morphed into being expressed through the tears, anxieties and check books of the well-heeled dilettantes of Berkeley California and other destinations of the learjet liberal with too much money and time on their hands.

EcoMoms is a new fade movement. These women of means drive their SUVs to meet at each others 10,000 square foot homes to discuss how to reduce their carbon footprints while consuming fine wine and hors d’oeuvres. Its really quite lovely.

From the New York Times

Move over, Tupperware. The EcoMom party has arrived, with its ever-expanding “to do” list that includes preparing waste-free school lunches; lobbying for green building codes; transforming oneself into a “locovore,” eating locally grown food; and remembering not to idle the car when picking up children from school (if one must drive). Here, the small talk is about the volatile compounds emitted by dry-erase markers at school.

Perhaps not since the days of “dishpan hands” has the household been so all-consuming. But instead of gleaming floors and sparkling dishes, the obsession is on installing compact fluorescent light bulbs, buying in bulk and using “smart” power strips that shut off electricity to the espresso machine, microwave, X Box, VCR, coffee grinder, television and laptop when not in use.

“It’s like eating too many brownies one day and then jogging extra the next,” said Kimberly Danek Pinkson, 38, the founder of the EcoMom Alliance, speaking to the group of efforts to curb eco-guilt through carbon offsets for air travel.

Okay, so the founder says, using the brownie analogy, that its okay to use all these resources for the television in every room, DVD player, coffee grinder, laptops, etc as long as you pay out to offset that in some way.

“I used to feel anxiety,” said Kathy Miller, 49, an alliance member, recalling life before she started investigating weather-sensitive irrigation controls for her garden with nine growing zones. “Now I feel I’m doing something.”

The notion of “ecoanxiety” has crept into the culture here. It was the subject of a recent cover story in San Francisco magazine that quotes a Berkeley mother so stressed out about the extravagance of her nightly baths that she started to reuse her daughter’s bath water. Where there is ecoanxiety, of course, there are ecotherapists.

Its BERKELEY - does anything else need to be said? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Of course there are people who are more than willing to make money off the guilt these po’ lil’ dilettantes are feeling. I mean, there’s the King of the How - to - Make - Money - off - Wealthy - Guilt -Consumed - Suburban - Wives, Al Gore.

“Activism can help counteract depression,” Ms. Buzzell added. “But if we get caught up in trying to save the world single-handedly, we’re just going to burn out.”

Ms Buzzell is a therapist who will help you with your anxiety and depression. I’m sure she’s quite good at it. Just bring your checkbook and/or gold card.

Seriously, think of the children of these high strung freaked out women!

The matter of toys is particularly thorny. At the EcoMom party in San Rafael, women traded ideas about recycled toys for birthday presents and children’s clothing swaps. Then there is the issue of the materials used in imported toys. “It’s ‘Mom, these come from China,’ ” Pam Nessi, 35, said of her daughters’ recent inspection of two of their dolls. “It can be overwhelming. You don’t want them to freak out.”

At last year’s Step It Up rallies, a day of environmental demonstrations across the country, the largest group of organizers were “mothers concerned about the disintegrating environment for their children,” said Bill McKibben, a founder of the event and author of “The End of Nature.”

The woman doesn’t want her CHILDREN to freak out? Then she needs to quit being freaky. Common sense doesn’t even seem to seep into this equation at any level. BTW, its not the end of ‘nature’. It’ll be the end of mankind. Nature and the earth will take care of themselves.

This is one of those control issues in which people want to think they are powerful enough to actually have an impact on mother nature. If you’ve ever been in a tornado than you know that you are just a little ant in the big scheme of the universe. You have absolutely no control over the forces of nature.

BUT - if it makes you feel better to spend money in hopes of buying some protection against hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes and whatever else scares you - by all means - make a donation and I’ll plant a tree in the woods behind my house, put your name under it and let the Lord of All Things Environmental know that its there to offset 10 acres of YOUR carbon footprint.

I’ll make it very simple and no trees will be killed through an electronic transaction through my paypal account. NO ANIMALS WILL BE HARMED IN THIS PROCESS! It is formaldehyde, plastic and chemical -free! Completely environmentally friendly.

Donations made through this paypal account will go directly towards offsetting your impact on the destruction of the universe due to driving an SUV and using a computer. The more you donate, the better you’ll feel.
Trust me

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Related:

• The Real Cause of Global Warming
• Global Warming Today: Those CFL’s Are Great. And Required
• Global Warming Today: Huh? It Stopped?
• Not Enough Parking for Private Jets at UN Climate Conference
• Worshiping the Gore God of Global Warming
• Eco-Friendly Bombs from Russia with Love for the Environment
• New Weapon Against Global Warming
• Al Gore’s Convenient Oscar
• Guilt-Free Consumption for Hollywood Stars

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, A Blog For All, Right Truth, Shadowscope, Leaning Straight Up, Big Dog’s Weblog, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, third world county, Allie is Wired, Faultline USA, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, A Newt One, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Associated Press

COOS BAY, Ore. - A police survey says panhandlers outside Wal-Mart in Coos Bay can make $300 a day. Inside, it takes a clerk a week to make that much.

Police say people who have a problem with that needn’t look to the law - asking for money is considered protected free speech.

Coos Bay authorities say most panhandlers are not criminals.

Coos Bay Police Captain Rodger Craddock says most have lived in the city a long time and they actually have homes. Craddock says, “This is just their chosen profession.”

He says most are docile, and that people should report those who are not.

Bob More, director of housing and emergency services at South Coast Community Action, says many panhandlers are there for the money - to feed their addictions.

He suggested a voucher system involving tickets people could give that are good for a meal or bed in a shelter.

I’m obviously in the wrong business. At $300 a day, these guys are making over $109,000 per year. Now I’m wondering if I can pull that off. I’d have to dress differently and blacken out a few teeth. Maybe if I made myself up so that no one would recognize me. Nawww, I guess I’d have a hard time doing that. But it does give you something to think about the next time you see someone begging outside of Wal-Mart (or anywhere else for that matter).

I’ve got a mission for you ….
To find Chuck Norris ….
These are your instructions ….
Should you choose to accept this mission ….

• Go to www.google.com
• Type in ‘find chuck norris’ but don’t include the quotes
• Click on the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button
• See what happens

Go on … do it now ….

I actually like Ann Arbor Michigan, but you have to admit they rival Berkley California for liberal craziness. Just think of your tax and tuition dollars going to the study of ‘How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation‘.

ENGLISH 317. Literature and Culture.

Section 002 — How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation.

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Instructor(s): David M Halperin (halperin@umich.edu)

Course Description:

Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn’t mean that you don’t have to learn how to become one. Gay men do some of that learning on their own, but often we learn how to be gay from others, either because we look to them for instruction or because they simply tell us what they think we need to know, whether we ask for their advice or not.

~*~*~*~*~

In particular, we will examine a number of cultural artifacts and activities that seem to play a prominent role in learning how to be gay: Hollywood movies, grand opera, Broadway musicals, and other works of classical and popular music, as well as camp, diva-worship, drag, muscle culture, taste, style, and political activism. Are there a number of classically ‘gay’ works such that, despite changing tastes and generations, all gay men, of whatever class, race, or ethnicity, need to know them, in order to be gay? What is there about gay identity that explains the gay appropriation of these works? What do we learn about gay male identity by asking not who gay men are but what it is that gay men do or like? One aim of exploring these questions is to approach gay identity from the perspective of social practices and cultural identifications rather than from the perspective of gay sexuality itself. What can such an approach tell us about the sentimental, affective, or subjective dimensions of gay identity, including gay sexuality, that an exclusive focus on gay sexuality cannot?

At the core of gay experience there is not only identification but disidentification. Almost as soon as I learn how to be gay, or perhaps even before, I also learn how not to be gay. I say to myself, ‘Well, I may be gay, but at least I’m not like that!’ Rather than attempting to promote one version of gay identity at the expense of others, this course will investigate the stakes in gay identifications and disidentifications, seeking ultimately to create the basis for a wider acceptance of the plurality of ways in which people determine how to be gay.

Additional note. This course is not a basic introduction to gay male culture, but an exploration of certain issues arising from it. It assumes some background knowledge. Students wishing to inform themselves about gay men and gay culture in a preliminary way should enroll in an introductory course in lesbian/gay studies.

This is not satire. Its for real. I wonder if its a required course.

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Big Dog’s Weblog, Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Pirate’s Cove, Celebrity Smack, The Pink Flamingo, Wake Up America, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I admit that I like to play Nintendo, Xbox or Playstation. When my kids were home and played I got hooked on playing with them and still like to play. I like the Bond-type games. I can slap do the bad guys in. I don’t have a Wii, but have seriously been thinking about getting one. I haven’t because my kids aren’t home and I can’t use them as an excuse anymore. I just really have not met many women my age who like to play those games!!

All that to say, this story made me feel a lot better. No, I’m not a ’senior’ and I’m not a kid either. Still, if these senior communities are getting into Wii then why can’t a whippersnapper like me get one and play! That works for me!

According to MyWiiNews these are all the rage in senior-living communities. The benefits are pretty obvious. It gets people up and active both physically and mentally. It also tends to draw the kids around. So when grandpa heats up the ol’ Wii, he’s likely to have the grandkids coming around to challenge him to a game. Those are all good things for both the young and the old.

Okay, now I’m talking myself into it!

I am speechless! Lynn Spears was considered a proper author for a parenting book by a so-called Christian publisher.

NEW YORK - Lynne Spears’ book about parenting has been delayed indefinitely, her publisher said Wednesday.

Lindsey Nobles, a spokeswoman for Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson Inc., said Wednesday that the memoir by the mother of Britney Spears was put on hold last week. She declined to comment on whether the delay was connected to the revelation that Spears’ 16-year-old daughter, Jamie Lynn, is pregnant.

“I can tell you that we are standing behind Lynne and supporting her decision to be with her family at this time,” Nobles told The Associated Press.

“Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World” was initially scheduled for release May 11, Mother’s Day. Spears, the mother of three children with ex-husband Jamie Spears, had been working with a Michigan-based freelancer since March on the memoir chronicling Spears’ experiences raising a family in the public eye.

Jamie Lynn Spears, star of Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101″ and sister of Britney, told OK! magazine in its new issue that she’s expecting her first child and the father is boyfriend Casey Aldridge.

Nobles and representatives for Britney Spears said they did not know how Lynne Spears could be reached for comment about the status of her book.

C/P from Conservative Thoughts

First…this is not Beth. Tis me, Jo, solely responsible for my own opinions. If you’re offended, direct your anger at me, not Beth. Please and thank you. That said, here goes.

Whenever there is an abuse story involving a child, it seems everyone and their Granny has an opinion on it. Or an excuse for it. It gets emailed, bulletined and talked half to death. The questions are many, the blame shifts constantly ( is it the parents or Child protection Services ? ) and the answers are few, and often get lost in the melee of defending one or the other.

Last night, after reading through a lot of different posts , then visiting *My Space* blogs, I asked myself how did we come to this…blaming agencies for their failure to do x,y,z and absolving parent’s, returning abused children to them time and time again, and when the child ends up dead they receive most of the blame and the abusive parents role is minimized.

Yes, Child Protective Services in most states need an overhaul , as does our welfare system, our schools and our judicial system. My question is why ? Why do we even need a CPS ?
It seems to me if parents behaved the way God meant them to, there would be no need for CPS to be involved. Animals take better care of and do more nurturing than people do these days, so of course we need the proper agencies to intervene. BECAUSE the parents are not being “parental”.

Our young folks today are in dire need of guidance and education…because their own parents failed them. We, as law abiding citizens need to quit making excuses for them, see them for what they are and deal with it.

This whole unmarried parents epidemic annoys me no end. Who said it was a good, moral and responsible thing to do ? Actually, I can answer that. It was the womens’ movement that sent us on this path straight to hell.

What was ever wrong with being a wife and mother ? NOTHING. However, the feminists demeaned and bullied the average woman to the point that they lost the ability to think for themselves. Almost every female fell in step behind the Libbers. Ever notice how when one person does something wrong and we let it slide, it isn’t long before someone else thinks it’s ok ? And it grows and grows until it is perceived as normal.

Women used to be taught to have respect for themselves, for their bodies and reputation. Not so much the last couple of decades. Look how far we have fallen, how much we have lost…all in the name of “equal rights”.

We need to get back to basics. Seriously. We need to make commitment/marriage a preferred option for our youth. Morals should be a priority but those only come with self respect.

We absolutely have to stop this abuse cycle. I never thought I would live to see the day where I said ” I think we need to test potential parents “, but I do. Is their right to procreate greater than a child’s right to live, unharmed ? I think not.

We as a society, need to relearn how to say the word NO, and mean it. I think we should encourage our young folks to go back to school and make parenting classes mandatory. We need to volunteer our help, where and when it’s needed.

We need our kids today to understand their value, their worth. We need our young women to understand they do not need a male as an accessory. We need to teach them is there is no reason, or excuse, for abuse toward any living creature. We need to convince them that we do know truths that are NOT yet evident to them yet, i.e., if he hits you once, he will again. Teach them to think for themselves, not follow the lemmings. Maybe they need to know what happened to the lemmings.

If you doubt our youth are becoming lemmings, just check out My Space. The majority are young folks, very few married, many have children. They friend each other, get advice from strangers and donate to scams they want to believe in….because humans are inherently good. Just terribly misguided.

We need sanity, scruples and ethics restored in our culture. We need to get off our collective fannies and do something. We can start by putting the blame on the people at fault…the “parents”, mostly the “mom” who is ignorant, desperate and has no idea she doesn’t have to stay that way.

Jo/ Southern Sass