The pseudo-psychopathology of the self-hating Jew

‘Nuff said

 

Taking the fight to Fox news

On one level I’m very pleased that the White House is calling Fox news out, but I’m not sure it is the right course of action to take. I wish it was the right course of action, but that doesn’t make it so. For a flavour of the  debate raging, on the pro side we have Weisberg, and on the con side we have Parker. So from a purely pragmatic point of view, what is the right course of action for the White House?

 

My new approach to comic reading

So in the past I would rush straight to the the comic store on Thursday afternoon to collect whatever my order was for the week.Thursday was just the capstone to a week of anticipation as i would consult the various websites to see what was going to be in store,

As there were an increasing number of weeks where there was nothing coming in I found the ritual of being disappointed that nothing was coming in to be depressing. So I have adopted a new approach. I’m skipping weeks where there is nothing or very little coming in in order to have a BIG week once a month.

Now this doesn’t mean I’m reading a month of comics all at once! This strategy has to be coupled with a careful rationing of the incoming comics to take account of the “dry weeks”. So I’m sort of limiting myself to reading two issues of a trade a night. In buoyant times this means I can reward myself with an extra issue here and there if I’m eager to see how an arc finishes (like last night with Captain Britain and MI:13 Volume 2).

(As an aside, this is obviously tied to my fear of being bored and running out of TV/Comics/Books etc and my anxiety on Xmas and Good Friday when the super markets are closed and I’m scared of starving to death.)

So today is my super, bumper Thursday with no less than seven trades waiting for me! It is very satisfying having a big pile next to my bed!

 

Calling out Fox

The White House goes on the attack.

 

Dying for your beliefs

I’ll give her that much. I wonder if she would feel so strongly about the second amendment now that her kids are orphans.

 

Makes me wonder whether it is worth reading at all …

So Paul Kelly has finally unveiled his ponderous tome detailing the Keating and Howard years with the thesis that they were both part of the same economic  reform agenda.

Yeah, but … it kinda misses the point. This was more elegantly characterised by Denis Glover in the Australian, “In the long run, of course, we’re all part of a single historical continuum, but in history pointing out continuities often misrepresents the intentions of the major actors.”

 

Somebody had to do it

The Dan Brown Sequel Generator.

 

An answer to why Americans don’t believe in evolution?

A fascinating article provides an explanation as to why Americans are deeply religious and have a corresponding scepticism when it comes to evolutionary theory.

According to Gregory Paul “once a nation’s population becomes prosperous and secure, for example through economic security and universal health care, much of the population looses interest in seeking the aid and protection of supernatural entities.”

The paper continues, “National level statistics suggest that strong mass religiosity is invariably associated with high levels of stress and anxiety, which are created by impoverishment, inequality, or economic security, related to high levels of societal dysfunction. These relationships are largely consistent when the United States, an outlier amongst advanced democracies in the high level of both religious belief and social decay, is removed from the comparison.”

Wow.

Religion really is a symptom of how fucked up a society is.

 

Demands a comment

Wizard has published their take on what are the ‘best‘ Transformers comic collections. Of the six collections, only one of them is classic (The War Within Omnibus’) while the other five are at best mediocre but mostly the dregs of  Transformer stories.

Megatron Origin? Really, it was so single noted. Dreamwave’s Generation One? The story and art were awful. The best that could be said about it was that it was the first Transformers comic in nearly a decade. All Hail Megatron Vol 1? The intelligent, sprawling plot of Furman’s IDW stories is thrown out the window in favour of watching Decepticons act like Godzilla. Perfectly adequate but doesn’t really have anywhere to go.

I’ve been re-reading the Best of UK Omnibus and Furman’s work on the original Marvel series and it is an blast. Sure a lot of it has dated, but there is an energy and dynamism that the above stories don’t even come close to.

 

Yet another conservative myth crumbles

I’ve never been enough of an expert on the history of the cold war to assess the claims that the triumvirate of Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher brought down the USSR through their moral certitude and unwavering opposition to communism. Here for an example.

Nonetheless I can smell conservative bullshit and that claim absolutely reeked.

I mean you have to be pretty damn sure of yourself to oust democratically elected left wing governments to insert right wing juntas that would go on to slaughter their political opponents by the thousands and then with a straight face defend your record as standing up for democracy.

But let us not forget that Reagan and Thatcher for conservative parasites who loved power a lot more than their ideals (How did small Government work out for old Reagan?). Well surprise, surprise, it turns out Thatcher’s unwavering opposition was a little wonky after all.