The LLama Butchers

Llama Weekend Contest

Count the pores.

If your answer is correct, you could qualify to win a new mountain bike. Good luck!

This one's going to leave a mark

Here it is, folks, the most viciously effective go-for-the-jugular political ad in American history.

I had to play it three times to let it sink in.

Swift Boat Ad # 5 is going to scuttle Kerry.

Meanwhile, what type of return is George Soros getting on his $12,600,000 million donated to left/socialist 527s? What about Peter Lewis, and his $14,230,000 to the same groups? Stephen Bing's $8,086,273? Or Andrew and Deborah Rappaport's $2,910,000? Or John and Lawrie Harris's $1,714,000? Or anyone else in the overwhelmingly liberal top 23 donors to 527s?

What's it like to get their shorts eaten by a group whose raised a paltry in comparison?

Or are the liberal 527s some sort of pyramid scheme?

More Sappy 20th Century British Composer Blogging

The local classical station is finishing off its afternoon with Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

I really don't much care for 20th Century music, although I like a few bits and scraps of a few composers like Walton and Holst. Of this lot, the largest pile of scraps probably belongs to Vaughan Williams. I rather enjoy his Fantasy on Greensleeves, his English Folksong Suite and his Overture to The Wasps. (As I'm sure the O.F. is thinking even now, these pieces are for the most part derivative of other forms, not pure composition, so are not really good examples of the period. Well, that's right. But I still like them.)

The Tallis Fantasy is my favorite though, in large part for sentimental reasons. I may have mentioned before that when I was in law school I played Lysander in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream at my wife's (all girl) college. The design was all Maxfield Parish fantasy and the music was mostly Vaughan Williams and Holst.

They played the Tallis Fantasy at intermission and I used to sneak out into the wings behind the curtain and just sit and listen to it. The stage was mostly dark at that point, with dim blue lighting and all the columns and whatnot picked out in silhouette. Just to show you I'm not all cold, hard logic and reason, I always thought there was a certain magic to all of it. (It might have had something to do with how much I enjoyed being in the production too. I can readily see how people get bitten by the acting bug.) At any rate, whenever I hear it now, I get taken back to those days.

As I say, pure mush. But even we Llamas unbend sometimes.

I'd Rather Not Be Dan

Wow. Ken Summers at It Comes In Pints? has got the single biggest link-dump I've seen for CBS snarkiness. Go on over and wallow! (And thanks for adding us, Ken!)

This is an Issue?

CNN: Less Talent, More Skin At Pagent

[I can see Steve-O shaking his head that I ever figured out how to upload pictures. Just wait till I get my hands on Photoshop, Boy-chick!]

Iraq, The Numbers

By order of Special Llama Decree 9/17/04/01, no blogger shall henceforth offer any opinion on the situation in Iraq - pro or con - without first having read and digested Wretchard's information over at The Belmont Club. Part 1 is here. Part 1.1 is here. Part 2 is here.

That is all.

UPDATE: Are you done? Then go read Ralph Peters in the Post. Also, if you can get a dead-tree copy, read today's lead editorial in the WSJ.

The primary "mistake" we have made in Iraq in the past year has been playing softball in the Sunni Triangle, hoping that we could use a little more carrot and a little less stick. Contra the spittle-flying ranting of Andrew Sullivan and others, this was a calculated gamble, not the product of Pollyanna-ish blindness in the White House. Nonetheless, recent events would suggest it has not worked. Frankly, I always believed that we should have dropped the hammer from Day One. As the links demonstrate, we can still do so, and I think we are going to soon, but it is going to be all the messier for that.

Unfortunately, with an election coming up, there is no way to separate the policy from the politics. So what does the Iraq issue mean politically? A slim majority of people say they support the war effort to date. I believe the majority of these people, like me, may quibble with some of the White House's strategic and tactical decisions, but overall believe that Dubya is serious about winning. To the extent they vote based on the war effort, they're probably going to go with Bush. I think the White House is holding off on a major offense at least in part because it doesn't want battle raging just before the election. But if the recent string of bombings keeps up with no apparent sign of our fighting back, support may fall off anyway. The worst thing Dubya can do is make people think he's no longer serious about winning.

On the other hand, a sizeable minority say they don't support the President's handling of the war. However, no poll that I've ever seen goes on to break down that figure into people who think we aren't doing enough and people who think we simply shouldn't have gone in the first place. My guess is that it's a pretty even split. Poor J. Francois Kerry is put in the difficult position of trying to woo both of these groups at the same time, which may go a long way towards explaining why he is all over the place on the issue. My guess is that he is going to go with the MoveOn.Org crowd and embrace the old McGovernite isolationism line once and for all. The alternative, that he tries to out-hawk Bush, is a risible non-starter. But as Steve-O notes in a post below, embracing the Dark Side is not going to help Kerry either.

IMHO, the bottom line is that the White House should get on with fighting the war the right way, doing the things that need to be done. Voters will understand that. As for Kerry, well, sorry kid, can't help you.

MORE: Read Mom's Favorite Columnist, the superb Charles Krauthammer, on Kerry's Iraqi flip-flopping. (Registration required. Don't worry - it won't bite.)

STILL MORE: Via Drudge, Kerry is accusing Bush of a stealth troop buildup. Now if I were one of those people who doesn't think we're doing enough, my first reaction would be "Kick ass! About time, too!" My second reaction would be "Nice going, John. You suppose the Bad Guys ever read the papers?" As I said above, this sort of thing will appeal to the MoveOn crowd. But it isn't going to excite voters who want to see some definite action.

Llama Market Research

Bumper stickers and/or Tee-shirts.

"Meaty. Woolly. Snippy."

Suitable Llamas-in-Shades Logo.

Yes? No? Maybe?

Adventures in Symbiosis

The ever-delightful Meghan Cox Gurdon manages to seemlessly blend two of our favorite themes 'round here: Dan Rather-Bashing and Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM). Go check it out!

Lies! Lies! Nasty, Wicked, Tricksy, False!

I honestly don't know why I even look at these things since it's very bad for my blood pressure, but here is a run down of additional scenes from the upcoming extended version of The Return of the King. (Please, don't read it if you want to be surprised.)

Just from glancing over this, I can see that the movie - in keeping with tradition - bolloxes both the end of Saruman and Aragorn's trip on the Paths of the Dead.

We hates it! We haaaates it! We hates it forever!

Yipsssss! to Jeff.

'zactly

Victor David Hanson provides the long view of Iraq. Go. Read.

Automated Snarkiness

Introducing the Snark-O-Tron 8300. This is a wee bit too much like the Orgasmitron for my taste, but when you're feeling lazy, it's handy to have by.

Just for laughs, I punched in "James Carville" and got this:

What's lamer: Hitler, a pus-filled sore, or James Carville?

Gotta say. I prefer to go natural, but isn't technology amazing?

I'm sure Steve-O will be playing with this thing all day......

Yips! to Sheila.

Hmph. Satisfied Am I With These Results

Yips! to John of TexasBestGrok, who is hatin' life right now.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that John is running a new weekly Sci-Fi Babe Poll. This week - the Ladies of Lost In Space. Go vote. Nobody will find out.

YIPS from Steve: All I can say, in the immortal words of that great Stoic philosopher Nelson Muntz, "Ha HA!"

Read it and weep, monkey boy:

Of course, to truly be Kirk, you have to cheat, go through to the end, find the Kirk code and cut and paste. Just like the Kirbiasha Moru (or however the heck it's spelled)

Uh, Huh

Aw, what an adorable picture of J. Francois revealing his inner child.

But then we get this:

Kerry Supporters attack Little Girl.

Nice. Nice.

SPECIAL BONUS UPDATE: Attaturk over at Rising Hegemon ID's the dad in the photo as a serial gadfly. Fair enough, from what I see. The guy seems to be something of a wingnut, although it doesn't excuse people from going for him. But Attaturk also suggests that the dude in the black shirt is, in fact, one of the guy's sons and also is the one who ripped away the sign, thereby making the whole thing a fake incident. Not enough information from the article to make that call, I'm afraid. Be sure and read the comment thread too. I find the rightious suggestion that libs don't use small children as political props to be particularly amusing.

Yips! to Jonah.

MORE: The IUPAT apologizes. Freeper conspiracy plots notwithstanding and bearing in mind that talk is cheap, this is the right thing to do.

STILL MORE: Michelle Malkin sticks her stiletto in Attaturk's theory of deep-cover Freeping.

Heh. Indeed.

Gordon the Cranky Neo-Con has an exclusive interview with INDC Bill who, with Dan Rather's scalp dangling from his belt, is the O-fficial Rising Young Turk (TM) of the Blogsphere. Go read it.

[Insert sound of malicious sniggering.]

American legal history, pimp-style

I'm copying all my work files off the laptop onto CDs to transfer to the new desktop at work.

So while I'm waiting for the disks to copy, I decided to return to the Pimp Name Generator of earlier today and run through the names of the current U.S. Supreme Court.

Here goes:

William Rehnquist.....................Silicon Slick Rehnquist Skillz
Sandra Day O'Connor...............Professor Truth Sandra Day Flayva
John Paul Stevens....................Sheik John Paul Smoove
Antonin Scalia..........................Pimp Daddy A. Tickle
Anthony Kennedy.....................Sticky Fingers Anthony Shizzle
Clarence Thomas.....................Funk Master Thomas Dogg
David Souter...........................Professor Truth D. Slimmm
Stephen Breyer.......................Sugartastic Stephen Shizzle

and, of course,

Ruth Bader Ginsberg................Snake Eyes Ruth Bader Beautiful.

And in case you were wondering,

Oliver Wendell Holmes.............Golden Brown Oliver Wendell Rockefeller
Woodrow Wilson......................Deacon Dr. Wilson Slither
Theodore Roosevelt.................Treacherous Roosevelt Schmoove
James Madison........................Macktastic James Beautiful
William Jefferson Clinton...........Pimptastic William Jefferson Dazzle
William Howard Taft.................G. Digital Taft Slither
Warren Harding........................Shiek Warren Rock
Calvin Coolidge........................Calvin Coolidge (that's already about as macked up as you can get!)

and, of course:

Richard Milhous Nixon...............Pimp Daddy Milhous Dogg

The authors of the Federalist Papers? Funk Master Alexander Gates, Macktastic James Beautiful, and Vicious D.Jay Glide.

And let us not forget the famous 1804 duel between former vice president Deacon Dr. Burr Kicks and former Secretary of the Treasury Funk Master Alexander Gates, nor that on July 4th, 1826, fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, in Massachusetts, Big Playah Adams Schizzle spoke his last words, "The 4th, and yet Tricktickler J. Valentine still lives." Alas, Tricktickler J. Valentine had died at Dopetastic Monticello Quick earlier that same day.

The Wonkette-ization of the Llamas is paying off!

Someone visited our site after searching for "college whores"

Sorry, Liz, I'll buy you a new monitor....as I'm sure you just put a full cup of Hot chai through your nostrils all over the screen....