COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, August 23, 2008

A Quiet Saturday Night at the EB

Slade said:
You know, there's already two alpha dogs, a rottweiler, two pitbulls, a chihuahua, a bassett hound, a mixed breed, a (serious) shi'tzu, a standard French poodle, and moi, the Heinz 57 mutt; oh, and an Australian multilingual sheepdog.
Of course, Sam's the sheepdog but who are the others? I think I know who the Bassett is, but...
While you're all thinking about that, here's a little lesson on the law of unintended consequences.


Align Center


82 comments:

  1. I'd be happy to be called by the noble name of Dingo

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  2. Ah, that's a Silly Picture. Everyone knows that Bulldogs don't drink Whiskey, and Play Poker.

    They drink Beer, and Play Poker!

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  3. I always wanted to be a Dalmation. Just get all spiffy, and ride around on the engine all day.

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  4. Of course, Sam's the sheepdog but who are the others?

    I don't know much about dog breeds. Which one is this?

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  5. From the previous thread:
    rufus said...

    I see Whit as a Bulldog. Easy going, unassuming, defeats Bulls for a living.



    Oh, that explains my drooling problem.

    I know Deuce has been bulldogging Obama pretty good lately...

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  6. T is incorrigible.

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  7. We're all wet dogs in my part of the woods. 22 inches of rain since Friday morning. Sometimes at the rate of 3-5 inches per hour. Some flooding in the area. One tornado. One Electrical lineman killed when a tree fell on him.

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  8. Nah, that ain't Francis.

    THIS is Francis.

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  9. My Gawd, Rat! Don't do that to T!

    or, me either

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  10. He's homely, loud, can smell dinner from a mile away, (and, you can smell Him from a mile away) and licks his balls because he can:

    It's RUFUS!

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  11. Rufus, I was looking for a St. Bernard with a brandy barrel around it's neck for you, but that bloodhound is just as good:)

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  12. WiO,
    I was thinking you and Mattie are the two bulldogs in the picture.

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  13. ROOF,ROOF, ROOOFUS.

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  14. No bob, Miss T told you which one she is.

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  15. That keg looks mighty light around his neck, don't it Bob?

    You s'pose somebody done drunk some of it?

    That'll teach'em to send a Bigger Keg next time.

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  16. Me a BULLDOG?

    I am a lovable, pooch...

    dont pee on the carpet..

    will bite the ass off of a stranger and I hate people who hate dogs (take note my bastard cousins)

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  17. Another Saturday Night and he ain't got nobody.

    Because he changed his name to Yusuf, I do believe.
    Fell of that Peace Train

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  18. Another Saturday Night and he ain't got nobody. Because he changed his name to Yusuf, I do believe.

    My love advice to Cat Stevens, then, is "You can always play with Yusuf."

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  19. The Doberman is an elegant, medium-to-large sized dog with a compact and square body, suggestive of power, courage and stamina.

    Trish

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  20. It was love at first sight for Cat Stevens--

    He turned to his mother to help him decide the best candidate to wed, and thus, in an arranged marriage, took his vows with Fauzia Mubarak Ali, eventually producing five living children from the union.

    Cat is 1/2 Swede, believe it or not.

    And the Swede part evidently didn't take, converting to islam as he did, and settling for an arranged marriage.

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  21. Cat Stevens has the honor of being the ONLY artist banned from being played in my office/warehouse...

    He is not permitted to be played. PERIOD

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  22. Bessie Smith St Louie Blues

    Like you ain't never heard it.

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  23. Lou Rawls and Sam Cooke

    Bringing it on Home

    If this don't give you goose bumps you done quit breathing.

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  24. If you couldn't get her to "go all the way" you weren't playing this. Top down, summer night (then you gotta put the Top Up. Remember?

    You Send Me

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  25. A world away from here, amigo.
    Dis one for all the pirates that never were ...

    Back to the tropics, amigos mio

    Legends in our own minds

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  26. Are you nominating Sam Cooke's - "A Change Is Gonna Come" as an alternative Obama theme song, rufus?

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  27. Nope, I'm afraid that last song was Obama's. :)

    Sam Cooke, I think, wrote A Change is Gonna Come as an answer to Blowin in the Wind.

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  28. Here's another answer to that question about gettin' some boots, duece.

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  29. Not meaning to intrude on the party, but Here's a good article from American Thinker on why life in islamic lands is always so screwed up. Not that we don't know this already.

    As you were....

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  30. Feds plan more raids on fugitive migrants
    Voluntary-deportation program's poor results prompt crackdown

    by Daniel González - Aug. 23, 2008 12:00 AM
    The Arizona Republic

    Federal authorities say they will step up raids on illegal immigrants' homes after only eight immigrants, including one in Phoenix, stepped forward to take an offer of planned deportation.

    The lack of participation in Operation Scheduled Departure, a pilot program, showed that the only way to solve the problem of immigrants staying in the U.S. after being ordered to leave is through enforcement, Jim Hayes of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a conference call Friday with reporters.

    The 3-week-old program in five cities is being canceled. The only immigrant who stepped forward for voluntary deportation in Phoenix was from Estonia.
    "This program proves that the most effective way is the way we have been doing it, through fugitive operations," said Hayes, who is acting director of ICE's detention-and-removal operations.


    Thousands apprehended

    Over the past two years, fugitive-operation teams in Phoenix and other U.S. cities have nabbed tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants, most at their homes but also at job sites. The teams work daily to identify, locate and arrest immigrants who have previously been ordered to leave the U.S. but remained.

    The majority are immigrants who applied for legal residency but were denied. Others were ordered deported after committing crimes. The teams have arrested 29,000 fugitive immigrants this fiscal year and are on pace to surpass the 30,000 arrested last year, Hayes said.

    Nine more teams will be operating soon, bringing to 104 the total number assigned to hunt down deportation absconders full time, Hayes said.

    In Phoenix, the ICE fugitive-operation team arrested 452 people through the first nine months of this fiscal year, compared with 472 all of last year, ICE spokesman Vincent Picard said. Of the 452 arrested in the current fiscal year, 255 were fugitives. The other 197 were undocumented immigrants that ICE officers came across while looking for fugitives, Picard said.

    Immigrant advocates have criticized the operations, saying they break up families and terrorize immigrant communities. In response, the government launched the experimental scheduled-departure program on Aug. 5. It gave non-criminal fugitives the chance to turn themselves in and arrange for their departure within 90 days. In exchange, participants would not have to worry about agents unexpectedly showing up at the crack of dawn and removing them without a chance to settle their affairs.

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  31. Bob, I'll call your Hound dog, and raise you Jail House Rock

    Man, it didn't take much to entertain us in those days, did it?

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  32. Cowboy in the jungle was my theme song, especially after I discovered Porto Bello and Isla Grande...

    This is just a easy cover of the song. Recite it around the campfire, durng the poetry sessions from memory.

    Use this one and some of Kiplings's work. Sets a mood.

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  33. dr: desert rat said...
    A world away from here, amigo.
    Dis one for all the pirates that never were ...

    so I sees there are a bunch of us parrot heads in the room...

    just add in a little Jerry jeff walker and we have a party

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  34. Charlie Dunn @
    Sat Aug 23, 11:03:00 PM EDT

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  35. Ever been down this road? I have.

    500 Miles Bobby Bare

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  36. T, your Duffy link reminded me of these two Mariah, and Aretha - Chain of Fools

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  37. Turn the lights up, Barkeep!

    Damn! They all done left!

    uh, . . . did anyone get the check?

    That's what I thought. Sheesh.

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  38. Obama's 1/2 Brother

    grrnite Rufus, don't worry about the bill, I'll pay it, er, later...


    And, yeah, we were easily entertained in the old days.

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  39. bobal said...
    Not meaning to intrude on the party, but Here's a good article from American Thinker on why life in islamic lands is always so screwed up. Not that we don't know this already

    the article was dead on, ignore most of the comments except logic thinker.

    thanks

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  40. Dave said,

    Doug:
    Thanks for the link to the passing of “Excessively Vertical” with “Serpentine Fecal Matter” visiting his bedside.

    My screen started getting blurry reading it,
    must be dust getting in my eyes.

    No, I was not at LZ X-Ray. Did have some interesting times in that general vicinity though shortly thereafter.

    So Let Bacchus Sons Be Not Dismayed,
    Join With Me Each Jovial Blade
    And Drink and Sing and Help Me With The Chorus:

    Instead of Spa, We’ll Drink Brown Ale
    And Pay the Debt Upon the Nail
    And Not A Man Shall Go to Gaol
    From Garry Owen In Gloria.

    Don’t worry about Too Tall. He is in good company.

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  41. Shut up and speak.

    A paradox of accents is that in England where people from a common heritage have been living together in a small area for thousands of years, there is still a huge variety of accents, whereas in America, where people from a great mix of backgrounds have been living together in a vast area for a relatively short period, people speak with just a few voices. As Simeon Potter puts it, "It would be no exaggeration to say that greater differences in pronunciation are discernible in the north of England between Trent and Tweed(a distance of about a hundred miles) than in the whole of North America." Surely we should expect it to be the other way around. In England, the prolonged proximity of people ought to militate against differences in accent, while in America the relative isolation of many people ought to encourage regional accents. And yet people as far apart as New York State and Oregon speak with largely identical voices. According to some estimates almost two thirds of the American population, living on some 80 percent of the land area, speak with the same accent--a quit remarkable degree of homogeneity.

    "The Mother Tongue" Bill Bryson

    An intersting book, showing how illogical much of English really is.

    If you have a morbid fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, there is a word for it: arachibutyrophobia. There is a word to describe the state of being a woman: muliebrity. And there's a word for describing the sudden breaking off of thought: aposiopesis. If you harbor an urge to look through the windows of the homes you pass, there is a word for this condition: crytoscopophilia. When you are just dropping off to sleep and you experience that sudden sensation of falling, there is a word for it: myoclonic jerk. If you want to say that a word has a circumflex on its penultimate syllable, without saying flat out that it has a circumflex there, there is a word for it: properispomenon. There is even a word for a figure of speech in which two connotative words linked by a conjunction express a complex notion that would normally be conveyed by an adjective and a substantive working together. It is a hendiadys. (But of course.) In English, in short, there are words for almost anything.

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  42. That's seems like a heck of a jump for Ms. Palin, Doug, kind of like from the Little League to the Majors. On the other hand, politicians, even the President, don't really do a hell of a lot. If a President makes one or two good calls in the term, count it a success.

    And, a President who doesn't do anything is often better than one who does.

    McCain might not finish his first term, you never know.

    Heck of a jump, but, she might be up to it.

    If looks count for anything, we win going away.

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  43. Wifey has 7 Bryson Books

    ---

    I'd like Jindal.

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  44. Hawaii glowing over Clay's Olympic gold

    Kane'ohe's Bryan Clay easily won gold in the Olympic decathlon.

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  45. Biden doesn't know Iran from Arabia--

    Obama-Biden: 'A bigger gamble for the Jewish Community' (updated)
    Rick Moran

    As Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition explains, the addition of Joe Biden to the Democratic ticket should worry those who are concerned about American policy towards Iran:


    "With the selection of Senator Joe Biden as Senator Obama's vice president, the Democrat's ticket has now become an even greater gamble for the Jewish community. Throughout his career, Senator Biden has consistently been wrong on Iran and his voting record on Israel has been inconsistent. Like Obama, Biden fundamentally misunderstands the threat posed by an Iran determined to obtain nuclear weapons. Biden has continuously demonstrated poor judgment on Iran. He has voted against significant legislation that would pressure Iran to stop pursuing nuclear weapons. Biden has failed to recognize the serious threat that Iran poses to Israel and the US and its allies in the Middle East," said RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks.

    Brooks points out that Biden was only one of 4 senators to vote against the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act, a bill that punished foreign companies or other entities that sent Iran sensitive missile technology or expertise. He also voted against designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist group.

    And Biden has also demonstrated a lack of understanding of some of the issues between Iran and their Arab neighbors. Powerline points to this New Republic article on Biden where the Delaware senator made a fundamental error in how Arabs view Iran:


    Crowley's TNR profile concludes with a striking example of Biden's foreign policy sophistication. In the wake of 9/11, in a meeting with his staff, Biden experienced an epiphany.
    Biden launches into a stream-of-consciousness monologue about what his [Senate Foreign Relations] committee should be doing, before he finally admits the obvious: "I'm groping here." Then he hits on an idea: America needs to show the Arab world that we're not bent on its destruction. "Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran," Biden declares. He surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face.

    Ed Lasky explains:

    Iran is not an Arab nation; the Arab nations fear and loathe Iran. This would have not just been unwise but would have alienated the Arab world-the exact opposite of what Biden intended.

    Amil Imani points us to this article on Biden's ties to Pro-Iran lobbyists.

    Indeed, any rapproachment with Iran would have to be done very carefully lest we raise the hackles of our Arab friends in the region. Let's hope both Obama and Biden understand that if they have the opportunity to deal with the Iranians.

    Hat Tip: Ed Lasky

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  46. Thanks for my 15 minutes Whit. I coulda been a contenda - was looking forward to some fun - but had VISTA-related problems with images.

    Couldn't move those little suckers anywhere. Had some good ones too.

    Another time.


    That Jindal exorcism story is very peculiar but I guess we've all had our Shirley MacClain Moments.

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  47. Sun Tzu's Rule of War 215:

    Kill 'em with humor.



    If it barks like a dog ...

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