Likelihood of Success

Ron Coleman’s pretty good blog

The second, third, fourth, and 343rd time as farce

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 27, 2009

North Korean threatens blah blah blah:

Clinton said North Korea has made a choice to violate U.N. Security Council resolutions, ignore international warnings and abrogate commitments made during six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

“There are consequences to such actions,” she said, referring to discussions in the United Nations about punishing North Korea for its nuclear and missile tests.

Laugh me out loud.  “Consequences” — yeah, like maybe we won’t start shipping them free grain and rice until almost the third week in January!

She did not provide specifics, saying only that the intent of diplomats was to “try to rein in the North Koreans” and get them to fulfill commitments made in the nuclear talks.

That’s keeping them up all night, I’m sure.  The prospect of diplomats with INTENT!

Clinton said she was pleased by a unified international condemnation of North Korea that included Russia and China, North Korea’s closest major ally and the host of the currently stalled disarmament talks.

Yeah, yeah.  Condemnation — so, so key.  Key to the kingdom in fact.  When you’ve got condemnation, you’ve got it all.

It’s not a Democrat thing.  Something happens when you go to Washington.  You… you get really, really stupid, I guess.

Posted in Past is prologue, Sisyphus, Stragety | 2 Comments »

Why we fight.

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 25, 2009

The greatest ever Memorial Day words were uttered not on the eve of summer, but in November:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

(Originally posted on Memorial Day 2007.)

UPDATE:

Я не читаю или говорю на русском языке. Таким образом я удаляю все российские комментарии как спам. Ничто персонал, но предположение не против Вас.

Если Вы можете прочитать мой blog, Вы можете прокомментировать на английском языке!

Posted in Americana, Heart and spirit, Packing heat | 1 Comment »

I’m ready for my closeup…

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 24, 2009

sunset-boulevardCalifornia is a “Hollywood Starlet Past Her Prime,” says Melissa Clouthier:

California, you’re not rich. The rich can afford special windows, organic food and the time to trudge to the local farmer’s market to “buy local”. The poor have to work from dawn ’til dusk, live in energy inefficient homes and buy cheap food.

You’re poor.

The only thing that scares me, though, is that the over-the-hill starlet just doesn’t do good box office.  California, on the other hand — what if poor California takes us all with it?!

Posted in Americana, Sisyphus | Leave a Comment »

Down time in Seattle

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 21, 2009

Img01093

Posted in Heart and spirit, Metropolis, Narcissus Rex | Leave a Comment »

Gravity works

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 21, 2009

You know how you have a lump in the rug, and you press it down, right?  And then the lump’s “gone”?

And then, guess what, exactly where the pressure from your foot ended, what do you see?  The lump!

The lump will just move all over the rug from that technique.  You can’t get rid of a lump from a bunched up carpet by just squeezing it away.  You have to pull up the carpet and put back down right.

Economics?  Same exact thing.

Posted in Gelt, Sisyphus, Stragety | 2 Comments »

Never having to say you’re sorry

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 20, 2009

Jihad Watch:

Poor Timing Alert: Hamas renews rocket attacks on Israel just as Obama calls for Israelis and Palestinians to live “side by side in peace and security” —

Obama said this during his press conference with Netanyahu yesterday: “I have said before and I will repeat again that it is, I believe, in the interests not only of the Palestinians but also the Israelis and the United States and the international community to achieve a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians are living side by side in peace and security.”  [Count to three, a-a-a-a-nd….]

“Rocket Attack on Sderot Home,” by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu for Israel National News, May 19 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Yes, that would seem to be poor timing — if actions, words or intentions every mattered when judging advocates of genocide against the Jews in the Mideast.  I know Robert Spencer is merely making a point about the timing, and that he’s one person who doesn’t need to be told:  There’s no such thing as poor timing for Palestinians and other Arabs when it comes to attacking Jews and Israel.

The only thing “poor timing” costs the Jihad is one or two news cycles, as a matter of Western good taste.

But there is no long term cost to Arab violence as long as its victims are Jews.  The West, and of course an Administration such as Obama’s that is primed for Palestinian “pragmatism” politics, doesn’t merely have a short memory — no quantum of murderous intent is any greater than any other, or any more morally or even tactically meaningful.  “Pragmatism” is a philosophy that teaches that it is, ultimately, “practical” to “negotiate” with the enemy who has sworn to annihilate you, no matter how obvious it seems to “idealogues” that such oaths are entitled to their plain, murderous meaning.

Poor timing is, in fact, great timing, in other words.  By spitting in the face of pragmatists, and merely counting to three before they demonstrate that they will come back for more, terrorists set the agenda and exercise all the leverage.  This was a lesson well learned and well taught by Yassir Arafat, whose only real strategic error, history may (though we hope it does not) judge, was not living healthfully enough to see the fruition of his long-term formula:  Never apologize, never regret, stash the “aid” money in Switzerland and never, ever, worry about “timing.”

Posted in Orient, Stragety | Leave a Comment »

Left coast

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 19, 2009

After my whirlwind appearance at an awards dinner on Sunday, which kept me no lack of occupied (see me on the bottom right?  in the hat?), I basically rolled right into a cross-continental flight to Seattle to attend the International Trademark Association annual meeting.  I have lots of observations, never before made of course, which we will share presently.  Just not this presently.

But I will say this much:  This West Coast nonsense explains everything.  Now I really understand it.  They wake up four hours behind the 8-ball!  I’m susprised they didn’t get the International Date Line moved to Minneapolis or something so they would be the ones in front of us, but good thing they didn’t.  By the time you shower and get out of the house they’ve already set the agenda and are having a coffee break in New York.

No wonder they invented a fantasy world.

Posted in Americana | 5 Comments »

Ownership of the means of delusion

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 14, 2009

The Bipartisan Rules on the “Democrat-Socialist” nonsense:

Socialcillious

[T]his isn’t about ideas or ideology — it’s about demonization and name-calling. This is the same nonsense that Pelosi, Michael Moore, Daily Kos moonbats and the Dennis Kucinich wing of the Democratic Party spent eight years doing vis-a-vis President Bush during the Republicans’ consolidation of power. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, the Hannity/Ingraham wing of the GOP continues its incomprehensively annoying collective temper tantrum.

The emptiest cans always do seem to make the most noise. . . .

For right- and left-wing moonbats alike, politics can be reduced to, “Here’s why the other guy is a nut.”
The key here is that most voters don’t think the president is a socialist. Even if you genuinely believe that he is, why in the world would you broadcast this outside of an RNC boardroom?

So you’d have politically compatible company as you hurtle down the side of the cliff, maybe?

Ironic, really.  It’s righties acting like “useful idiots” this time around.  Only, “useful” to the other side.

Posted in Politics and Poker, Sisyphus | 1 Comment »

Twitter’s radical reply rework

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 13, 2009

Marshall Kirkpatrick:

It’s not exactly a silent spring, but a change made to Twitter’s settings this afternoon has already greatly reduced the tweets its users are witness to. In what the company called a small settings update, users no longer see public replies sent by friends to people they themselves are not following. Fragmented conversations, they are called. This isn’t a small change at all, it’s big and it’s bad. The new setting eliminates serendipitous social discovery.

Wow.

I don’t have much time for Twitter any more, though it has its focused uses.  This, however, really is a radical change.  And I agree:  It is a bad one.

UPDATE:  Fixed?  Or not?

[T]oday, Twitter relented and gave users the feature back. Only they did so in a way that is hilariously convoluted.

Previously, if you wanted to see another user’s @replies even if they were talking to someone you weren’t following, you had to select that option in the settings. Some people had, and enjoyed it. But the default setting for that was off, so Twitter simply removed the option to turn it on. But some users loved it so Twitter is now turning it back on — kind of. Apparently, soon you will be able to see these @replies again but only when a person is using them when not clicking the “reply” button.

So basically, you can see when someone is replying to someone else but only when they’re not really replying to them. Yeah, this is going to confuse the hell out of people. Remember “Keep It Simple, Stupid“? Yeah, this is the opposite.

I consider myself a pretty savvy Twitter user and I had to read it twice to understand just what the hell Twitter meant. I also just had a hilarious conversation with fellow writer Jason Kincaid, where we debated just what exactly Twitter meant. The fact that we had to have that conversation is not a good sign.

Posted in Social networking | 3 Comments »

Edwards reaffirms. Only not that Edwards.

Posted by Ron Coleman on May 11, 2009

Remember this one?  “Edwards reaffirms key political question.”  And this, its predecessor.

Oh, did I get abused for this.  Even by some pretty slick brains.  How could I be so mean.

Well. And… and… to Her.

And now?  It’s as if I’m the only one left who hasn’t piled on at this point.

But wasn’t that a different issue?   The cancer?  The suffering, saintly wife?

Not at all.   It’s all of a piece.  Two things:

  1. People like this are made for each other.  That doesn’t excuse the humiliation visited on their wives, but it does tell you something about a woman who would be with the likes of such men in the first place.
  2. Anyone who couldn’t see what a cynical, wicked phony John Edwards is — and I don’t mean a mere scamp like Bill Clinton, but an utterly soul-less, ambition driven, demagogue with a potentially unlimited capacity for unprincipled rule — from “go” wasn’t looking.

Silky pony indeed.

UPDATE:  What were my mean old words?  That he was either “a liar or a moral retard.”  Yea-heah.

Posted in Heart and spirit, O Mores! | Leave a Comment »

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