Bad times deserve bad jokes
Bookworm on Jul 17 2009 at 3:25 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
With the news being unrelentingly depressing (especially news, not of things as they are, but as the Dems plan them to be), I thought this would be a good joke:
Four little old Jewish ladies are sitting around the table.
“Oy,” sighs the first.
“Oy, vey,” moans the second.
“Oy, vey ist mir,” wails the third.
“Now, now, ladies,” says the fourth. “We agreed before we met that we wouldn’t talk about our children.”
Substitute “economy” or “national security” or “Obama” or “Congress” or any similar noun for the word “children,” and you’ve pretty much filled in how I feel about the rest of this afternoon. I’m shutting down shop for the day. All of you, though, should feel free to consider this an open thread.
Related posts:
- The London Times calls out the New York Times for double standards
- There’s nothing like crisis to bring out the good jokes
- Shredding the NY Times
Email This Post To A Friend
10 Responses to “Bad times deserve bad jokes”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Great article from Cliff Asness on health care reform myths and lies at:
http://www.stumblingontruth.com/main.aspx
Devastating arguments. Spread the word!
Also from the Washington Examiner, a lament for the loss of honest liberals:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Where-did-all-the-liberals-go_-7975186-50849257.html
Also, Book, I am encouraged by the resistance I see against Obama’s coup. The CBO’s devastating analysis of Obama’s health care. The sight of Senator McCaskill’s office calling the cops on peaceful protestors! Charlie Rangel spending almost a million dollars in lawyer’s fees last year. The failure of the stimulus. All of the nomenklatura’s smelly little orthodoxies are coming to light.
Yes, it’s all horrible for the country, BUT Obama owns it now. And people are getting energized to fight. Better to defeat these unfreedoms if can, but fight we must.
A while back I was singing the praises of Amazon’s Kindle, irrespective of which platform (the Kindle reader or iphone app). Now I have to recant. While I love the experience and convenience, it’s turning out to be Orwellian. Not worth it, unless you regard books as disposable. I don’t.
From the NY Times tech blog by David Pogue, excerpt:
“This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for — thought they owned.
But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price….
You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?
The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.” …”
End of quote.
Excellent discussion at instapundit, and the Volokh Conspiracy
http://volokh.com/posts/1247864701.shtml
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2009/07/control-at-distance.html
Don’t tell me that! My Kindle is due to arrive any day.
Interestingly, I’ve also discovered that Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is also not available on Kindle.
Still, for me it has the virtue that enough books that I want are available that I’m going to be happy with it, no matter what!
You’re right–still worth getting if you have a clear idea of how you are going to use it. As I said, I love the convenience and portability of kindle on my iPod touch. And as you noted, there are plenty of free and/or available books, not to mention alternative e-readers like stanza or ereader. Plus google books.
You could call it falling out of infatuation: I was just disappointed at the very blurry concept of property rights that was exposed at Amazon–instead of caveat emptor, how do you say “renter” beware? Perhaps this incident will prompt Amazon to clarify the issue and establish consumer safeguards.
It is still fantastic to have at one’s disposal a portable copy of the Constitution, or Federalist Papers to reference while reading an online newspaper during the never-ending trips ferrying the kids to and fro. It’s great for the latest potboiler too.
That said, I’ve decided to change my buying habits on kindle. Given the insecurity of property rights, I won’t buy any book that I deem of permanent value; instead, I’m more apt to spend $9.99 for good topical books that I can pick up and put down on the go, e.g. “Lords of Finance” (joint bios of central bankers during the great depression), that seem too expensive at $25 and might go guiltily unread amidst the piles. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
That’s how I think of it, gpc31. I already use the Kindle interface on my iPhone, but can’t deal with the small screen or, for this use, the short battery life. For me, this is a way to get bestsellers and junk novels. The latter are cheap, and the former, occasionally, I like to have when I go on vacation (rather than putting my name for weeks or months on the library waiting list).
Another bureaucracy arising for the self-satisfaction of the control freaks.
Yes, it’s all horrible for the country, BUT Obama owns it now.
Of course he owns it. He’s the CEO of GM now, not to mention the future and current additions in the works.
*snorts*
Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
Whoops, well…
One more oy to the chorus of oys ‘oy gevalt’.
No matter which way I turn to read….
Local: (Vince Fumo received only 55 months for a 139 count indictment – a real genuine thief).
National: everything I read including the $750,000 SSA event in Arizona and the irony, my son, who has been looking for work since last November scored near 100 for the SSA test and yet they had no money to hire him.
Global: where to begin, how about a 9 year old in Brazil raped and impregnated by her stepfather with twins and the Pope excommunicated her mother, doctors, etc. for having a very necessary abortion.
I wish that I could agree with gpc31 and that there is some light at the end of this tunnel. I know that even if things turned around sometime in the future, the damage is done. Any corrections would take a master tailor to mend the seams.