Whiskey Fire

Hooray!

An incomprehensible wingnut squawk! SHITZAM!

Uh, let's get into the spirit of the thing.

"Buggrit! Millenial hand and shrimp!"

Does that help...?

Laughter Guns

So why, again, does anyone legitimately need, for home use, semi-automatic firepower sufficient to murder a full score of schoolchildren?

We have already examined the fascinating answer to this question as provided by Glenn Reynolds. Other right-wing blog luminaries have also weighed in, however. The following appears at Townhall, so you know it is... special:

While the use of pistols in the home are helpful, they’re not the best weapons to use when it comes to protecting property. This is why people need a semi-automatic rifle which yes, can come in the form of an AR-15.

We shall charitably consider this something written in English. More specifically, Crazy English. The author wishes us to understand that everyone in America ought to have a semi-automatic rifle because of, first, the riots in Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict.

Business owners in LA’s Koreatown knew what was coming their way, so they armed themselves with shotguns and semi-automatic rifles in order to defend their property. They stood on their rooftops as they watched black smoke pour down the street. The cops weren't there to help them.

All right. Accept this, arguendo, but then wonder upon the second historical incident herein cited:

Then of course, there was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. New Orleans became a place of complete anarchy in a matter of hours. In addition to property owners being forced to stave off mobs of people roaming for food, water and shelter to survive as the government failed to provide emergency services, they had to protect themselves against dangerous looters. But not only were New Orleans residents forced to defend themselves against immediate threats to their person and property, residents also had to protect themselves from the government.

As the water started to recede, leaving New Orleans a chaotic wasteland, police officers began going door to door confiscating weapons. Who did they take them from? Mostly poor black residents in New Orleans' 9th Ward.

Oh, OK. So the lesson we're supposed to learn here is that in the event of a temporary, catastrophic, unusual breakdown in times of extraordinary crisis, everybody ought to immediately grab a semi-automatic rifle, because everyone else is trying to kill you and rob you, even the cops.

How... sensible.

Say what you like about the tenets of gun-nuttery, at least it's an ethos.

And then there is Saint Red State and the blather.

It does go on, so to sum up: a meth-addled woman walked into a guy's house where his kids were, and then she walked away and the cops arrested her. The guy then went to NYC after 9/11 and saw National Guard troopers carrying modern combat weapons. He decided he needed one of these weapons himself, because if someone breaks into your house they will only laugh at you if you have a .38 because nobody is scared of handguns or, I don't fucking know, shotguns, which only shoot daisies and marshmallows.

Do I shit thee? I shit thee not.

In conclusion, everyone needs an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, preferably with a compass in the stock, and then they need to write An Internet Theme about it, and everyone will read it and rapturously exclaim, "Oh! The theme I've been waiting for all my life. Listen to this sentence: 'An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.' Poetry. Sheer poetry!"

For the love of fuck.

Annnnyway, rifles.

MAS. Oh, have fun in the comments over in both links. They are top-notch, top-notch.

MUCHO MAS. One thing that pisses me off is the constant nattering about what anyone "needs for home defense." You NEED a phone that connects to 911. Pretty much, period. And odds are, unless you are poor enough to be stuck in a really bad place, you will never even need that in regards to "home defense." You definitely don't fucking "need" a semi-automatic rifle.

 

Hoarding Coins in the Competition Zone

Until now, I have not weighed in on the Great Platinum Koin Konspiracy of One-Thirteen, so I quite forgive you for not as yet having made up your minds regarding the wisdom of the ploy. Allow me therefore to present Dispositive Evidence as to why the president should immediately get on the phone to the Treasury and say, "mint me that coin right fucking now." And hang up.

Creating the platinum coin would piss off Megan McArdle. Ergo, minting the coin would be empirically correct.

McArdle's post is shouty gibberish of the "everyone is wrong except Megan McArdle" class, and need not detain us. All one ought to consider is that lazy hacks are not even right once an ever.

Which brings us by inevitable vicus of regurgitation back to Ann Althouse and environs. Althouse fondly imagines that she has slain K'Thruglu through an ingenious combined attack consisting of pig-ignorance, preening allodoxia, and willful idiocy. Which is to say, the usual horseshit.

Paul Krugman responds to the pushback he's received on "the trillion-dollar-coin thing":

There seem to be two kinds of objections. One is that it would be undignified. Here’s how to think about that....

The professor is about to teach us how to think. Get ready!

... we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to walk into a crowded room and threaten to blow up a bomb he’s holding. 

Okay. A hypothetical. I'm up for hypotheticals. And it's an analogy, because the trillion-dollar-coin thing isn't promoted as a solution to terrorism. But terrorism is something that you can picture quite concretely and you understand it as very real and scary — unlike the debt ceiling problem which is awfully abstract. (Even to say "ceiling" is to resort to metaphor.)

Well, she concedes, or senses, that Krugman is using a metaphor and not advocating literal clown-based law enforcement, which is for Althouse a major achievement. However, "the debt celiling problem" is only "awfully abstract" if you are either genuinely or disingenuously sufficiently cretinous to take the several minutes it requires to understand it.

Which is why Althouse doesn't, or can't (who cares) acknowledge why the extended clown metaphor Krugman uses works. If a gang of utterly absurd cretins manages to engineer a ridiculously dangerous situation, what can you do but send in the clowns? It takes a joker to catch a fool.

I mean, look -- in 20-thousand-10 a lawless bunch came riding into town; they reached for their guns with their tiny little hands and they shot the sherriff down. They terrorized the citizens, they caused a saloon brawl, and no one would stand up to them, even though they were so small. 

So the platinum coin would come to right a wrong.

(Yes, yes, that is an obscure joke. Permit me my small joys, redsnouts. At any rate comparing The Tea Party to The Terror of Tiny Town is in every respect thoroughly cringe-worthily apposite.)

Nothing Althouse says equates to a "point"; she doesn't understand the actual issue, and on that basis crowns herself Queen Honeytwit of the Dipshits.

Like I said, same as it ever was.

 

The Times, They Are A-Wanking

I am given to understand that shits must be provided concerning Senator "Chuck" Hagel becoming enthrowningly coronated as Lord High Mega-Duke of the Pentagon. Sir Andrew is lathering waxy about it all.

Unlike so many of the lemmings and partisans of Washington DC, Hagel actually called out the catastrophe of the Iraq War as it happened.

Except for the "voting for it in the first place" bit, this is unexceptionable.

I may on a rare occasion forgive, but I only forget when it comes to the location of my car keys, or the location of my children, who are at least as elusive as Robert Denby. As regards politics, I'm still pissed off about that whole Treaty of Limerick fiasco.

Which means that I am regarding the Chuck Hagel nomination sideshow in the light in which it deserves to be regarded, as yet another instantiation of the doxa of the American governing class, namely, "we are only arguing about what exactly constitutes a stupid war, not whether or not America should be allowed to wage one whenever it likes."

I bet the GOP nominates Benjamin Netanyahu in 2016. And I bet the Democrats run Chuck Hagel.

Rifle Games for 7-Year-Olds, What a Drag

A woman in Georgia used a revolver to shoot an intruder, much to the delight of the internet's great big fans of the bang-bang-stick. Glenn Reynolds, however, laments that the woman lacked a bang-bang-stick of sufficient heft to satisfy his love of great big bang-bang-sticks.

See, this is where one of those “assault weapons” might have come in handy.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “When some politician starts pontificating that no one needs more than a 10 round clip capacity (or 5, or 3) this is the story that should be shoved in their faces. She fired 6 shots, put 5 in the attacker and he was still kicking. What if there had been multiple attackers. Then that 30 round clip suddenly seems appropriate.”

Well, since she could have purchased one those great big bang-bang-sticks, and didn't, relying on a measly little .38, she was just basically asking for whatever the crowbar-carrying attacker had in mind for her, I suppose.

But why stop at quote-unquote "assault rifles"? After all, as another of Reynolds' inestimable correspondents points out,

I also read on another blog the comments by a western rancher who explained that he always carries a .223 semi-auto rifle when working his own property. Why? Because of wolves. Six charged him one day and it took far more than 10 rounds from his “assault” rifle to drop two of them, after which the other four fled.

What if this woman had not simply faced one intruder with a crowbar, but multiple attackers who were armed with wolves?

Well, her tiny little puny toy bang-bang-stick would have done her about as much good as a tuna-fish sandwich! Stupid "politicians." You can barely hurt anyone with a .38. Even a .40 wouldn't hurt a fly, even at close range, which is why thoughtful gun owners keep lots more weapons lying around the house for emergencies.

Clearly, though, following Reynolds' logic and that of his freedom-loving audience, in a more ideal, paradisical society, this woman would have had the following:

• 14 handguns;
• 43 semi-automatic weapons;
• 9 bazookas;
• Two or three Handy Home Howitzers;
• 15 armed guards on the porch;
• An electrified fence around her property;
• A moat filled with alligators, each equipped with a flamethrower;
• 5 grizzly bears with hand grenades (to repel the wolves).

More responsible "politicians" would subsidize each of these thoroughly necessary items of domestic defense, instead of leaving the suburban-propertied-classes helpless before the wolf-lugging hordes. Likewise, the Airforce needs to be privatized, so that for a nominal annual fee, in a pinch, homeowners can at least call in a drone strike.

Then the Reynoldsian vision for America will at last come to fruition. (Also we will all be immortal robots. The proper sort of "we," anyhow.)

And if anecdotal evidence such as that he cites here proves insufficient to prove his case that all homeowners truly ought to possess firepower of the sort capable of efficiently shooting up elementary schools, the free market provides a solution. People like Reynolds should be permitted to rent out invaders of the variety referenced in the news story above (and I know you know what I mean), so they might finally live out what is obviously their most devoutly-wished personal fantasy.

At a minimum they ought to be able to blow up farm-raised wolves with rocket launchers. I mean, do we or do we not live in a civilized, 21st century nation?

 

 

Add Up the Numbers

Someone conventionally unemployable has something stupid to say at Big Dumb Offal.

According to the FBI annual crime statistics, the number of murders committed annually with hammers and clubs far outnumbers the number of murders committed with a rifle.

Right. "A rifle."

2011: Total murder victims -- 12,664

Total firearms: 8, 583

Please.

It is just too goddamn easy in this country for lunatics to acquire firepower.

But also congratulations to Big Dumb Offal for the most cartoonish misuse of statistics maybe ever.

Knockout Punches for the Freaks; Or, Trahison des Chucks

Oh hello there, Chuck Norris. Say something amusing.

Resolve to Conquer or Die

I promise! I mean, since you asked so nicely.

When President Barack Obama was re-elected, the winds waned behind many patriots' ships' sails. My wife, Gena, and I felt that sock in the gut for our country and posterity, too. But instead of cowering in defeat, I believe we need to discard conventional (unsuccessful) strategies and advance in new directions.

Oh, just cower in defeat already. Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

The future of our country is going to hinge not upon the Republican Party's reinvention (as so many think) but upon each of us patriots asking what isn't working about our approach and modifying our attacks for greater impact in the culture and political wars. You don't fight and win unconventional wars with conventional weapons; that's why we lost in November.

Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

The majority voted to continue to be pelted from within the U.S. by the Obama administration and from without by the United Nations' rogue usurpation of Americans' rights. In the past six months alone, the Obama administration has teamed up with the U.N. to enforce Internet intrusions, clamp down on gun rights, further regulate the airline industry, utilize billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to expand U.N. global warming control and expand global abortion. And who can forget the proliferation of Agenda 21 and growth of Interpol to enforce its new international law?

THE UN HAS NUKES AND EXTENDS GLOBAL ABORTION AT NUKEPOINT. IF YOU DON'T ABORT THAT FETUS, IOWA VIRGIN WOMAN WITH YOUR URERUS FULL OF JESUS, THE UN WILL ATTACK YOU WITH NUCLEAR MISSILES.

Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

Will the next four years of Obama intensify the secular progressive assault against our republic and your freedoms? Without a doubt!

Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

The big question is: Will the next four years result in the fundamental transformation of the U.S.? The answer to that is: Only if we let it. Freedom is lost not by a single election but by surrendering to everyday assaults on our liberties.

Nobody likes you except for angry old white people.

What Washington wrote to the Continental Army before the Battle of Long Island should be inscribed on every patriot's wall now, given November's defeat: "The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed. ... The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army. ... We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die."

November's defeat ...?

Losing a democratically conducted election -- what Washington was supposedly fighting for, recall, was the right to have democratically conducted elections -- means there is a necessity for armed insurrection?

Chuck Norris is a traitor.

Or he would be, if he were smart enough to understand what he's saying, which he isn't.

And that's why nobody likes him except for angry old white people. Fuck them.

 

Ann Althouse Is an Absolute Shit

Ann Althouse is a shit.

And, by the way, I've gotten some pushback in email and on the web, saying that it was "shameful" and "appalling" for me to tie Clinton's health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I've been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming.

It actually is shameful to pop off with nonsense in the absence of evidence, and that is why Ann Althouse is a despicable person.

And yes, I know exactly how long Ann Althouse has been a despicable shit on the internet.

ADDED: Here's something I would dearly love to do with this blog: I want to make it so that emotive, intimidating outrage like that backfires. I want people to learn that they can't get away with empty assertions like "I am aghast" or "You are despicable." You have to give reasons for what you think. Even if you really feel those feelings. And, of course, many of these hack writers don't actually feel the feelings they scribble about. They just don't want to have to talk about the actual issue. They want to make it something that everyone feels they'd better not talk about. But that should be a loud signal: We need to talk about it!

Ann Althouse once called GWPDA a sexist.

I have a suggestion for something I would dearly like to see Ann Althouse do with her blog.

More to come.

MAS. Do you know, I am sort of thinking that I might like to go long-form on Ann Althouse, with all the apparatus. And all the nine years.

If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

 

Learning to Hunt for You

Apparently there is some class of shouty budget nonsense currently occurring involving people paying close attention to the opinions of Eric Cantor.

The metric ass tonnage of the shits I refuse to give remains incalculable.

MAS. In a similar vein, Kathy Griffin performed mock-fellatio on Anderson Cooper, a collection of words that means little to me but very much upsets right-wing clodhoppers. Such as our lifetime companion, Noel Sheppard.

No matter what vulgar things Kathy Griffin does on CNN's live New Year's Eve broadcasts, the folks at the supposedly most trusted name in news continue to invite her back.

On Monday night's program, after first telling co-host Anderson Cooper "I'm going to tickle your sack," she shortly after midnight actually kissed his crotch (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary)

Golly.

Well, good for Kathy Griffin. I only know her peripherally, but so what? Anyone who gets a rise out of these idiots, I like.

 

Burning Flag Birthday Suit

I've never much hidden my overall dislike of the US constitution.

As a general rule, large groups of upper class Englishmen are incapable of producing anything except a bunch of crap you can never clean up properly, and the Founding Fathers were nothing if not upper class Englishmen, and hence, hateful twerps.

That an allegedly free people cannot stop unironically using puerile, self-abasing terms like "the Founding Fathers" speaks to our to our perdurable national mania for tongue-bathing obvious moral degenerates as long as they have some type of "patriotic" pedigree. That an allegedly free people cannot put a stake through the rotten heart of such vampiric malignancies as the Electoral College, the Senate, and (shudder) New Jersey speaks to the undeniably ossifying effect of our continued braindead, onanistic adoration of a shoddy, slapdash, cloddishly compromise document written by a gang of wig-wearing, fractious, syphilitic, slaveowning dickheads.

So much is clear, uncontroversial, and refreshingly devoid of hyperbole.

Hence I found this op-ed in the NYT more than a little surprising, yet quite welcome.

AS the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

Shit yes!

To quibble, "evil" is useless as an analytical criterion, so I'd pinch-hit "undemocratic" for "downright evil." But the rest is unexceptionable.

Not kidding here, either. There is an intense censorship effect in Our Free Society against the idea that it is at all fair game to, of all things, think critically about the US constitution. This to me is the most interesting part of Seidman's piece:

Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse. Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago.

As someone who has taught constitutional law for almost 40 years, I am ashamed it took me so long to see how bizarre all this is.

Bold mine.

You're just not supposed to think of the constitution as something certain people thought of and put into practice in specific historical circumstances. Even though that is all that it is. It is not Holy Writ, and to think of it as such is one of the following: childish, wicked, or dickish.

Childish.

I like liberty and the Constitution is its bulwark.

Wicked.

And if the Constitution is this obsolete and “evil,” then maybe secession isn’t off the table after all? . . . .

Dickish.

I big strong go boom-boom. (Paraphrasing)

Because democracy demands that if you wonder why Wyoming has the exact same Senate representation as a state where people live voluntarily, you've just peed on Jefferson's grave.

I would cheerfully pee on Jefferson's grave. And on Wyoming.

MAS. PowerTools provides the definitive case for why you can't entrust the defense of a stupid church to its halfwit clergy.

But the Founders built well, knowing that the Constitution—the documentary embodiment of the Rule of Law replacing the Rule of Man (or Rule of the King, as practical matters had it in the 1780s)—would work only if it became an object of reverence in place of a monarch among the people.

As a matter of history, this is fanciful garbage. As a matter of exemplifying modern "conservatism" as nothing more, or less, than dickless, vaginaless, mindless, conformist idolatry... well done, PowerLine!

I mean...

Hence most constitutional law professors treat the Constitution as a plaything from which to extract whatever outcome they want.

Because, you'll never catch out a "conservative" jurist ever doing anything of the sort.

These fuckers, they snort what they sell, and then they tell you, like butter wouldn't melt, that their powdery nostrils and red-rimmed crazy eyes simply prove that they so very dearly love the Jelly Doughnuts of Freedom.

 

 

This I Believe

If you look at the current state of the economy and conclude that old people have too much to eat, you're an asshole.

Classic Dumb

One of the most enduring yet stupidest bits of fake-argument garbage is "the government politician workers get paid too much dagnabit." Hello Weekly Standard! Joe Biden gets a "cool" 6K a year raise, that is communism.

And the timing isn't great either: Just as President Obama and Congress try to avert going over the "fiscal cliff," he doles out pay increases to federal workers.

Yeah, that sucks ass. Federal workers should be paid by getting routinely kicked in the crotch. Just like private workers!

Public employees, federal, state, and local, should be getting pay raises, and we should have hired tons more of that. If we'd done that a few years ago, depression over.

But we can't do that because bullshit.

The Point!

Here is the entire extent of the wingnut grasp on Civility:

"Here are thoroughly random individuals on the Other Side saying Bad Things. This scores us many Civility Points. Hence, we are right about the Estate Tax, excuse us, Death Tax."

Nuts.

Tweety: Liberal Hero!

The things you learn. Apparently, Chris Matthews is a Liberal Icon.

Matthews symbolized MSNBC's growing comfort in being a liberal alternative to Fox News Channel. He engaged in an uncomfortable on-air confrontation with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, seemed nearly apoplectic when President Barack Obama flubbed his first debate and had to apologize for appearing grateful that Hurricane Sandy might have helped Obama's re-election effort.

With Keith Olbermann out of sight, Matthews essentially replaced him as the commentator that most annoyed conservative viewers.

Chris Matthews is the liberal alternative to, well, anything? How surprising. I personally have always considered Matthews a shouty shithead.

Though of course in the carnival world that is cable news, Matthews is a "liberal statesman," and the opposite of"conservative statesman" Sean Hannity.

Hooray!

It's all very depressing. Get a load of this:

"During the run-up to the Iraq War, he just became really, really partisan and became even more so when MSNBC decided to become the anti-Fox," said Geoff Dickens, who used to watch Matthews as a fan and now monitors him regularly as part of his job with the conservative Media Research Center.

"During the run-up to the Iraq war," and during that bullshit,  Matthews was a cheerleader for that stupid war. I was there! Here, Mission Accomplished.

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?

Like, what a tit.

And then the misogyny.

Let the record show that Chris Matthews is a fucking imbecile, never mind the dingbats.

Certain Web-Sites Are As the Knocks of Beggarmen

And ought not be minded.

Shocking Political News That Will Shock You

Shockingly, to win statewide office in New York, it turns out that a candidate need to be against the idea that one ought to be able to readily purchase a machine capable of the bulk elimination of schoolchildren.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand vigorously championed Americans’ right to carry high-powered guns — before she turned against them.

Since the Newtown massacre, the senator has been at the forefront of the national campaign demanding stricter gun-control laws — including her own legislation to prevent gun trafficking....

“I think gun owners probably view her in ways they view Mitt Romney. How do you trust someone when they change their stance and politics?” said Richard Feldman, head of the Independent Firearms Owners Association.

Truth. I confidently predict that this flip-flop has completely destroyed any hope Gillibrand may have nursed of winning the 2016 Republican primaries.

Merry Birdmas!

Pileated Woodpecker:



Carolina Wren:


White-breasted Nuthatches:


And a Happy Orb Year!




(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)
~

THE FUCKING QUAKERS HAVE BAZOOKAS

HOLY SHIT

The NBC host would go on the rest of the segment to suggest that armed guards might not be effective in preventing mass murders at school. Which is perhaps an interesting theoretical argument.

But when it comes to Gregory's own kids, however, they are secured every school day by armed guards.

The Gregory children go to school with the children of President Barack Obama, according to the Washington Post. That school is the co-ed Quaker school Sidwell Friends.

According to a scan of the school's online faculty-staff directory, Sidwell has a security department made up of at least 11 people. Many of those are police officers, who are presumably armed.

Moreover, with the Obama kids in attendance, there is a secret service presence at the institution, as well.

WE SHOULD ALL FUCKING DO THAT

ALL THE QUAKER TEACHERS SHOULD HAVE FUCKING BAZOOKAS = THAT IS FUCKING SAFE!!!!!!

Smutty Limericks and Socialism: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

Breaking News: Erik Loomis continues to not be fired. This has been reported by one "Oliver Darcy," pictured.

But of course there are even greater threats than Loomis out there. For reals. Believe it. There is, for instance, Alessandro Porco of UNC-Wilmington, who has published poetry. Or even worse: poetry verse.

The University of North Carolina-Wilmington has hired an English literature professor whose pornographic poetry verse include fantasies of sexual relations with freshmen female students, an education watchdog reported this week.

In Prof. Alessandro Porco’s poem “Hot Girl-Girl Action University” the fictional university president Jill Kelly offers a welcome to the freshman class.

“Who would say No to a gang-bang?
Who would say No to Prof. Poon-Tang?
Who would say No to my scholarly toungin’?
Thank you fathers for your daughters.”

That poem is part The Jill Kelly Poems, ranked 3,963,932 on Amazon, which chronicles the life of a porn star through poetry.

In an interview on PopMatters.com, Porco describes it as “my book-length ode to the adult-film star affectionately referred to as ‘the anal queen.”

Another of Porco's sexually explicit pieces included in The Jill Kelly Poems is “Ars Poetica.”

“Breakfast in bed & down on all fours;
You’re eggs-over-easy, muchin’ for more.
Vegans protest & brand it obscene;
But there’s no starving my anal queen.”

In another collection, Augustine in Carthage, Porco included what he describes as the “21 of the filthiest limericks I could think to write.”

Jay Shalin, of the watchdog group the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy pointed out the controversial hiring in an opinion piece earlier this week and argued that parents should be wary of placing their young adults in the classroom with Porco.

Indizzle. Likewise,

J. Joyce rakes hell, and the sewers, for dirt to throw at the fair face of life, and for poison to make beauty shrivel and die.... and Dr. Yeats undertakes that no citizen of Dublin shall fail to know his name. In season or out of season he has proclaimed him a genius... But there have been geniuses who have wallowed in the mire before, though any quite equally foul-minded, who shall say?

1. I have never heard of Porco until these idiots trying to get him fired brought him up. Now I'll buy one of his books. If it's good, I have read good poems. If it sucks, I have pissed off a dink. I win.

2. I don't know if Porco is as good as Joyce or Yeats; probably not, but who knows? Saying "you can't go there" and actually making it stick has not as of yet worked as far as discovering genius goes. Quite the opposite.

3. The "taxpayer" argument is ridiculous. I pay my taxes and consider dropping bombs on foreigners for obscure and probably counterproductive purposes "obscene." You have your priorities, I have mine. Yay America!

4. Also, Yeats got Joyce a modest payment from the Civil List; in the long run, totting it all up, that worked out to a tidy long-term public profit that is still paying dividends and is likely to do so for centuries to come.

5. It is inane and offensive for anyone to say that Porco is unfit to teach because of what he writes. He freely and openly produces poetry. Lots of folks, in the public and private sectors, consume pornography. And what he does isn't even pornographic -- you'd have to go to court there to prove strictly prurient intent, and good luck with that. (St. Augustine? Even in this decadent age... people masturbate to poetry among all available options? Really? Really?)

6. My "impressionable offspring" will, when they are of the age to encounter Mr. Porco, be old enough to handle college. If they aren't, I won't send them there, and I will likely also deny them the use of forks without corks affixed to the tines.

7. That said, I personally deplore foulmouthed limericks.

Life Is Short ...

...times are hardHere's your fucking Christmas card Wishing all a 2013 better (or at least no worse) than 2012 M. Bouffant