Archive Listing
October 15, 2007 - October 8, 2007
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
WARNING. No. We're not going there. NOT. Try this instead. Log off the usual crap. Forget Michellle Malkin's guilt-ridden 'Come home to Mama and vote Republican' schtick. Get away from Glenn Reynolds's misdirection and sly shilling for Harold Ford and a Dem Congress. GET THE WEDGE OUT OF YOUR BAG and start focusing. HERE. Your life depends on it.
Okay, then. Feel better now? Good.
Monday, October 30, 2006
This message comes to you from the InstaPunk Emergency Broadcast System. Please turn off your television sets, radios, and computers, and do not read any newspapers, magazines, or other periodicals until further notice. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Exposure to mass media in any form for the next week is likely to cause severe damage to the brain and nervous system. All Civil Defense Monitoring Systems are registering the highest levels of toxic political propaganda ever recorded. REPEAT: THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
To keep you and your family safe during the present mental health crisis, we recommend the following specific measures:
1. If you live in a rural area, go outdoors and take private walks, being careful to stay away from neighbors (who may be politically radioactive), your front door and the mailbox (both of which are likely to be contaminated with political fliers), but do not venture out to your place of employment, where the risk of political contagion is exceptionally hazardous.
2. If you live in the city or suburbs, remain indoors at all times. The danger of exposure to toxic political signage is highest in these areas.
3. Do not answer the telephone. There is a high risk that callers may be pollsters, "Get Out the Vote" cyborgs, or other infectious political agents.
4. If you must read, confine your reading to books written prior to the twentieth century. Any content which may cause you to recollect current political issues or topics may aggravate existing low-level infections to dangerous levels.
5. It is urgently recommended that you refrain from turning on the television at all, but if you are an addict, confine your watching to the Home & Garden Channel, the Food Channel, and QVC. For the present all entertainment shows, news programming, and even sports commentary are likely to be laced with insane political commentary, and all commercial broadcasting will be interleaved with potentially fatal political advertising.
6. Spend all available free time drinking heavily and doing as many drugs as possible. You have reached a safe level of intoxication when you cannot remember how to turn on the radio.
7. If you must turn on your computer to catch up with online news services or blogs of any description (even those you normally agree with), shoot yourself in the head first, with the largest caliber bullet available. Right now, they are ALL insane.
8. Wait for the All Clear, which should be broadcast universally sometime after Wednesday, November 8, though perhaps much later than that if contemporary trends continue.
9. If you must leave your domicile to vote, you're on your own.
END OF MESSAGE FROM THE INSTAPUNK EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
PSAYINGS.5S.9-11. Yes, we haven't been posting as much lately, but have you considered why? It's because so much of the news and newsmakers are superficial, repetitive, and late. An awful lot of screaming headlines are screaming about things InstaPunk already wrote about months or weeks ago. For example, the mass media, including blogs, have been obsessing recently about the prospects for Bush's impeachment by a hostile Democrat congress. Should we weigh in? Well, as one commenter at another blog's discussion of the topic pointed out last week, we already did. Seven months ago.
For another example, Newsweek Magazine is currently trying to wriggle out from under its own history of shilling dire (and wrong) climate change predictions. Here's a quote from the latest issue referencing their unfortunate reportage of an imminent ice age in the 1970s (No, you don't have to read it word for word; it's the usual MSM weaseling):
Even by the time it appeared, a decades-long trend toward slightly cooler temperatures in the Northern hemisphere had already begun to reverse itself—although that wouldn't be apparent in the data for a few years yet—leading to today's widespread consensus among scientists that the real threat is actually human-caused global warming. In fact, as Inhofe pointed out, for more than 100 years journalists have quoted scientists predicting the destruction of civilization by, in alternation, either runaway heat or a new Ice Age. The implication he draws is that if you're not worried about being trampled by a stampede of woolly mammoths through downtown Chicago, you don't have to believe what the media is saying about global warming, either.
But
is that the right lesson to draw? How did NEWSWEEK—or for that
matter, Time magazine, which also ran a story on the subject in the
mid-1970s—get things so wrong? In fact, the story wasn't "wrong" in the
journalistic sense of "inaccurate." Some scientists indeed thought the
Earth might be cooling in the 1970s, and some laymen—even one as
sophisticated and well-educated as Isaac Asimov—saw potentially dire
implications for climate and food production. After all, Ice Ages were
common in Earth's history; if anything, the warm "interglacial" period
in which human civilization evolved, and still exists, is the
exception. The cause of these periodic climatic shifts is still being
studied and debated, but many scientists believe they are influenced by
small changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun (including its
"eccentricity," or the extent to which it deviates from a perfect
circle) and the tilt of its rotation.
Newsweek's purpose in falling on the sword in
this fashion is, of course, to buttress their contention that they are
right this time even if they
weren't last time. Should InstaPunk join the fray to point out just how
tenuous the "consensus" and all the theorizing underlying it really is?
No. We already did. Back in September.
And in January.
And even all the way back in January
2004 ("The Drexelite Consensus"). Our position has remained
consistent. Nobody really knows, and because of that undeniable fact,
it's not worth wrecking the global economy with a bunch of misguided
authoritarian measures by the world's worst decision makers, scientists.
We could go on. On matters great and small --
from the dangers of worldwide "moderate" Islam to New Jersey politics
-- we've said our little say early on and are generally proven correct
by later events. So it's our policy to wait patiently for the world to
catch up with InstaPunk, which it sometimes does. The exception we make
is when people catch up too vociferously with InstaPunk and somehow
miss the spirit of humor that infects even our most solemn
pronouncements. That's why we want to comment today on the state of the
Philadelphia Eagles, which is at least as important as the nuclear
firecracker North Korea is clutching to its pigeon chest. Five
weeks ago (an eternity in NFL time) we had this to say about the
team coached by Andy Reid:
Here's the big
picture for the long-suffering, oh-so-patient and oh-so-deluded Eagles
fans. The Eagles are a mediocre team, Reid is a loser of a coach,
McNabb will NEVER win or even play in another Super Bowl..
We specifically called out the weaknesses that
would doom the Eagles' 2006 campaign -- poor time management, lack of
discipline, dumb play calling by Andy Reid, and the team's utter
inability to play a full 60 minutes of football in any game. We said at
the time, "The Philadelphia Eagles ended their 2006 season today in
their second game of the year."
We were right about all of it. But as we check
in on Sport Talk Radio in Philly, we're concerned about just how
anguished the fans are becoming. They shouldn't allow themselves to
suffer so. The Eagles have been mediocre for darn near half a century,
since they last won an NFL title in 1960, before there was even a Super
Bowl. Worse, they have through most of that time been a boring team, consigned to plod from
first down to first down to punt while other teams dazzled the crowds
with big plays and spectacular individual efforts.
Remember when the "Beagles" wore this helmet? [Snore]
The Eagles of Donovan McNabb and Brian
Westbrook are NOT boring. In fact, they are spectacularly exciting.
They can score seemingly at will from any part of the field on a single
play. No other Eagle team in memory has had this thrilling quality. No
matter how maddening they are in their seeming determination to snatch
defeat from the jaws of victory, they are nevertheless more fun to
watch than any other team in the NFL today. That's well worth cheering
about, and we urge Eagles fans to remember that, even if the team
fetches up with a disappointing 8-8 season, because the peaks and
valleys of the roller-coaster that gets them there will be higher and
steeper than anyone else's.
Even the Dallas Cowboys with Terry Owens and a
bona fide quarterback controversy aren't as fascinating to watch as the
Eagles in one of their patented meltdowns. Last night's MNF game was a
case in point. Terry did her best, making some brilliant receptions and
some equally impressive theatrics on the sidelines while her team was
figuring out inventive new ways to lose the game for the NFL's most
over-praised coach, but compared to the Eagles' Sunday loss to Tampa
Bay, it was a snooze.
(No, you can't blame it on the MNF announcing
crew. No, you can't. They're
a constant. Granted, the plain vanilla hum of the play-by-play guy
[Zzzz], the fingernails-on-blackboard logorrhea of Joe Theisman [puke],
and the Cosell-in-his-own-mind pretentiousness of the worst color
announcer in history, Tony Cornheiser [double-puke], are fully capable
of ruining an otherwise excellent football game, but that's not why the
Cowboys aren't as riveting as the Eagles. Terry can emote all she
wants, but she can't hope to compete with Donovan McNabb's Mona Lisa
smile, which retains its mystery throughout all the ups and downs of
play.)
Okay? Okay.
