Tim Blair

Whoa, Tim, you gotta stop!!! That Topanga Christmas list is really funny. It almost makes me wish I had a lefty friend, as the perfect, affordable gift would be within my reach. Well, now I gotta go clean the coffee off my screen.

“We may have given people two hours of false hope, Dow has given them 20 years of suffering.”

So that's all right then

Tim, that is very generous of you to urge readers to vote for your competition! Definite give-away clue for being a right-wing wacko...generosity! ;-)

Wow, Tim, you're not likely to get anything by that DangeyT dude. He's like up on all the characteristics of all you...um.. right wing wackos. You see, Tim, because he has none of the better impulses of the human race, he, of course, has reached the reasoned, brilliant deduction that no one else has any either. Typical L3 logic!

No, I think the most puzzling bumper sticker in Texas was the one I just saw on a truck this morning:

Silly Cowboy, Trucks are for Girls

I know it's a play on the Trix cereal slogan... but it makes no sense. Trucks? Only for girls? Get real!

Not sure what you Aussies mean by "pokies" (although I have an idea), but here in Texas the slogan "No Pokies n Coober Pedy" probably means someone doesn't want a state penitentiary built there.

Behold the single most puzzling bumper sticker in Texan history

I am pleased to take on noble causes all over the world! Please help support the downtrodden gamblers of the Outback. For more info on "No Pokies" I refer you to The Coober Pedy News.

Thanks, R C Dean, for the ``Coober Pedy'' translation. Now can someone decipher a bumper sticker I saw a couple of years ago? It said GUN CONTROL=RACISM, and damned if I can figure that one out.

Annalucia:

Gun Control = Racism is an allusion to the idea that one of the first of the gun grabbers movements was the one aimed at disarming Blacks to make it easier for the Klan et al to oppress them.

In a Constitutional Law class back in 1969 I wrote a paper on the 2nd amendment that stuck up for the rights of the Black Panthers to have guns.

I detested the Panthers and all that they stood for but it was (and still is) my opinion that a armed populace is the gaurantor of a polite Government. It's very hard to oppress 100 million armed people.

What would be the point of pokies in Coober Pedy? Is it just for the locals, or do they think people will drive from Oodnadatta to gamble-away their hard-earned money?

I must note that I spent two days in Coober Pedy a couple years ago. It was really cool. No, wait, it was not cool, since it was near Christmas, and the place is in a damned desert. I believe it hit 40C while we were there. But it was really interesting.

Angie, the Pokies, are mostly used by the locals....the problem they have with them is that since they are government sponsored a good deal of the money leaves the town. Gary at the paper there, tells me they've always had some spirited games of chance around town [or under it!] but the money was recirculated within Coober.

Wow, a conservative blogger exposed the Yes Men? How on earth did she do that? They were so, like, subtle!

Robert, don't be an ass.

Annalucia -- One of the NRA's current officers is a gentleman of color, who points out that gungrabbers always rationalize their confiscations by taking the "cheap, readily available guns" off the streets, while blithely ignoring a) that this means taking away mostly the guns poorer working-class people (often as not people of a whole variety of non-pink colors) can buy for their protection, while b) the pallid prosperous races (and the gang-bangers) can afford the more upscale ordnance. So the paranoid rich bastards waiting for the brown hordes to come for their plasma-screen TV and the homies fighting for crack-selling turf stay armed, while the vast majority of victims cannot afford to.

Just as a note on the above, here in LA the Daily News puts gun ads in the sporting section, while the upmarket LA Times puts in the business section (see paranoid rich bastards, above).

Stein had a good column about being a Republican, in La-La Land. An excerpt:

"This is the way it is here. We meet in smoky places. We give the high sign, we nod knowingly. We are like members of the Maquis in Occupied France. Or early Christians emerging from the catacombs in Caligula's Rome. We are the GOP in Hollywood, and on the West Side of L.A. The culture here is so dominantly left-wing, PC, vegan, hate-America that many of us feel we have to behave as if we were underground."

I'm an Independent. I've been at odds over issues with people on the Left and Right. By far the Left is far more intolerant than the Right, in my experience.

Alan and Richard, thanks for the explanations of GUN CONTROL=RACISM. Sounds like the original meaning is long obsolete, though. For the record I am a pallid person, reasonably prosperous, though not a gun owner since I'm in Chicago where (in theory) nobody is allowed to own a handgun, though the real-life situation is pretty much as Richard describes it.

And being in Chicago, I can sympathize with Ben Stein. When you're surrounded by intemperate Democrats you tend to keep quiet and communicate with fellow refuseniks discreetly. One woman in our neighborhood had a Kerry sign on her lawn - not because she intended to vote for the guy, but as camouflage. Think Sam and Frodo wearing Orc armor in Mordor.