Today's Required Reading.

Modernism, sucks.

All of modernism is a pit, into which beauty must be eradicated. Tragedy must not exist. Art is a kind of self-mocking joke. Judgementalism is the only true crime and is not permitted. The moderns are incapable of seeing that to like something is to pass judgement, and requires the disliking of something else. Perfect egalitarianism does not exist in the universe, and is impossible in the art world, in nature, or in human affairs. The galleries will never again discover genius like Leonardo or Breker so long as they contain trouts nailed to walls and televisions playing static. They exist within that vacuum of intellectual nihilism, from which there is no escape. Perpetually pushing invisible boundaries like hamsters on a wheel. If, as I believe, we are not actually doomed to this abstraction as part of a long-suffering demise, as Spengler would have us believe, then a revision of style is possible. There are still those that might break through this obscurity, rediscover beauty and the perfection of idea that comes from the mind of a single man, acting on instinct. Cut away the useless fat of a hundred years and start again from where Art Nouveau and to some degree Art Deco left off. But at this late stage it involves a courageous negation of hubris. Those lone warriors must strive for those ideas that can be retrieved from the perpetual wellspring of true creativity, that flowed about the great minds of antiquity like a raging river. Ideas and work that is not abstract or indefinable, but natural, primordial, and the product of intense labour and a devotion to an orderly æsthetic.

There's No Racist Like A Liberal Racist.

Pat Condell hits it out of the park. Again.

The Bishop's New Clothes.

Real Clear Religion looks at the worst vestments in Christendom today, and - surprise! - The Episcopal Church (tm) sweeps the field. Katherine Jefferts-Schori's famous 'Technicolor Oven Mitt' is number one. My fellow Anglican blogger Christopher Johnson gets a shout-out for his excellent Bad Vestments blog.

Prediction Fail.

March 2013: Hanry Chao, one of the chief IT architects for the ObamaCare the "exchanges": "Let's just make sure it's not a Third-World experience."

October 2013: Yep. It's a Third-World experience.

I guess turning us into is Cuba is the transformative hope and change you millennials were looking for. With Zimbabwe's fiscal policy and Iran's tolerance thrown in for good measure.

The Barack Obama Work Ethic.

Welcome to America, transformed:

Lynd explained the cards weren't showing limits and they called corporate Walmart, whose spokesman said to let the people use the cards anyway. From 7 to 9 p.m., people were loading up their carts, but when the cards began showing limits again around 9, one woman was detained because she rang up a bill of $700.00 and only had .49 on her card. She was held by police until corporate Walmart said they wouldn't press charges if she left the food.

Lynd says at 9 p.m., when the cards came back online and it was announced over the loud speaker, people just left their carts full of food in the aisles and left.

UPDATE: More here.

UPDATE: And more over at The Hayride.

RELATED: Mother of 15 demands: "Somebody, needs to pay for all my children . . . somebody needs to be held accountable, and they need to pay." And by "somebody", of course, she means you and me. The same people who (almost) paid for all those groceries in Mansfield.

Say What You Want About Chris Christie...

...But if you debate the man, he will own you. Own. You. An utterly Reagan-esque response to a petty nipple-tweak:



Sad thing is, I bet Ms. Buono's campaign staff spent hours coming up with that line.

And The Winner Of This Year's Ben Franklin Look-Alike Contest Is...

...Aging hippie and Obama's IRS enforcer, Sarah Hall Ingram:

"A penny saved, is a penny you owe the government"
- Poor Barack's Almanac

Heeeeeeeeeere's... Hypocrisy!

Seems Johnny Carson, who loved to put down gun owners and hunters, "carried a .38 pistol on his hip in a holster."

Once again proving the point that the elite in this country think their lives are worth defending, but ours aren't.

We're not, y'know... important.

Sweet Dreams vs. The Wrecking Ball.

Annie Lennox, who could send adolescent boys (and not a few grown men) to their bunk with just a look and a riding crop back in the 80's, has a few things to say about the about the twerk-a-jerk performances passing for music these days. Sweet Dreams.

Oh, The Irony:

Seems Woody Guthrie wrote the ultimate Obama Shutdown protest song.

So let's all sing along with Woody's son, Arlo, - a fellow Libertarian Republican. You know the words.

Republicans should start singing this outside every closed monument, park, historic house, ocean, etc. And don't forget this stanza:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In 15 Years, This Young Boy Will Clearly Be A Man To Be Reckoned With.

He unashamedly scales the living room wall.

In his underwear.

The best I did was ride my bike in my underwear on a dare. On the 10-point scale of awesomeness, this rates about a 12. Maybe a 12.5.

This Man Has A Bright Future On CBS or CNN.

Want to know why Low-Information Voters tend to vote Democrat? Their deep, learned understanding of the Constitution and the Law. With stellar reasoning like that, you can see why they think Barack Obama is a "constitutional expert."

The Entire Obama Presidency Defined In One Single Picture.

Can a dramatic disaster event that can be blamed on the shut-down - say, a fire in the Reichstag - be far behind?

Sorry, But There Is No Other Way To Put This.

We have been completely and utterly fucked. Looks like that comparison of ObamaCare to the Fugitive Slave Act may be accurate after all.

So it's bloody high time the party of Fredrick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln remember it's roots and become, once again, the party to abolish slavery. Being owned by a government is no different, and no less repugnant, than being owned by another man.