Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for October 2009

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Green and dirty

In order to “save the earth” apparently we must all give up basic sanitation.

Last year it was the Manhattan couple that stopped using toilet paper. Ugh.

This year it’s the fool feeling guilty about taking hot showers. After deluging us with statistics about how wasteful it is to run hot water, she advises us to “take a shower if you need it.”

Listen to me, and listen to me carefully:

Take a shower.
You need it.

As you have noticed, I’ve taken up tango recently, and there is nothing more unpleasant than to come in close contact with someone who has not showered. I even suggested that one of the organizers post one of those signs they have by public swimming pools that say “SHOWER BEFORE YOU ENTER.” You can offer people mints and gum for bad breath, but when you’re on the dance floor you can’t pull a soapy washcloth out of thin air and wash down someone who hasn’t showered. Worse yet, after you’re done dancing with that person, your nostrils hang on to the odor.

We live in the most technologically advanced society in the history of mankind. I urge you to please avail yourself of the most efficient water heater you can afford, and by all means, take a nice hot shower.

shower

Of course this trend towards skimping on basic sanitation goes well with people who think Cuba is a paradise. After all, there is no toilet paper in Cuba (h/t Babalu), and the average person does not have the financial means to own and maintain an efficient water heater. The chronic power shortages don’t help, either.

Living in green misery and living in a totalitarian society might go hand-in-hand. Take advantage and enjoy the benefits of a free capitalist society while you can, and shower on.

Your dance partner will thank you.

Now if you will excuse me I’ll go try to get some relief from this cold that’s making me miserable and take a hot shower.

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Swiss skincare cream uses aborted fetal tissue

Of all the perverse things in today’s world this one ought to make it to the top-ten list:
Gateway Pundit has the story from Christian News Wire,

Children of God for Life announced today that Neocutis, a bio-pharmaceutical company focused on dermatology and skin care is using aborted fetal cell lines to produce several of their anti-aging skin creams.

The Neocutis website verifies this:

A small biopsy of fetal skin was donated following a one-time medical termination and a dedicated cell bank was established for developing new skin treatments.

It came from a male baby,

Neocutis’ key ingredient known as “Processed Skin Proteins” was developed at the University of Luasanne from the skin tissue of a 14-week gestation electively-aborted male baby donated by the University Hospital in Switzerland. Subsequently, a working cell bank was established, containing several billion cultured skin cells to produce the human growth factor needed to restore aging skin. The list of products using the cell line include: Bio-Gel, Journee, Bio-Serum, Prevedem, Bio Restorative Skin Cream and Lumiere. But Vinnedge is calling for a full boycott of all Neocutis products, regardless of their source.

We’re talking layers of depravity here: the people at Neocutis, at the University of Luasanne, and at the University Hospital, all participated in this despicable act.

Ah, Switzerland, the hot spot for suicide tourism. The Swiss have a penchant for how highly they regard human life, don’t they?

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The World Series post, for mom

My mom suggested I do a post on the World Series. Since I don’t know a thing about baseball and it’s best to listen to one’s mom, here’s a Power Line analysis of the series.

Living in Princeton, we are geographically halfway between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. I’ve been to Yankee games (which I treated as a social ocasion), but never to a Phillies game and have no preference. Good luck to both teams.

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Lifestyles of the rich and famous Communists

douglasdk271001

Not that I’m fond of class struggle, but isn’t it ironic that Hollywood millionaire Sean Penn is visiting Caracas with Hugo Chavez, and Michael Douglas is touring Old Havana after visiting with Raul Castro.

Sean was in Cuba at the expense of Vanity Fair and the Huffington Post, who apparently had him interview Fidel Castro.

Liberals must have irony-poor blood.

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The mark of a has-been

You know a has-been is trying to get back in the publicity loop when they do one or more of the following:
1. get their photo taken while stoned/drunk out of their minds as they leave a night club.
2. has one of their homemade porno videos “stolen” and released on the internet.
3. attack religion in their show/movie/interview.

Larry David went for door #3, and micturated on a picture of Jesus in his show:
‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’: Larry David Urinates on Picture of Jesus

The set-up is the show’s star and producer Larry David is taking some medication that is making him urinate quite forcefully.

It’s so powerful that while urinating in his assistant’s bathroom, he accidentally splashed some of it on a picture of Jesus Christ hanging on a nearby wall.

As a Big Hollywood commenter pointed out,

Of course, the hypocrisy is that Mr. David would never exhibit such gross contempt for any other religion, especially Islam.

HBO does seem to love picking on Catholicsm, but at least for now let’s hope David doesn’t have any homemade videos he’ll have “stolen” and released on the internet when his ratings continue to slip.

UPDATE
Would he piss on an image of Obama?

—————————

I’m both getting over a cold and on a deadline, so blogging will be light.

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Thomas Sowell writes on the dismantling of America

Dismantling America

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many “czars” appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another “czar” would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers– that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called “experts” deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.

The bottom line:

How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets.

This is only the beginning, folks.

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Stern has a cow

t2_cow_605554a

Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

Especially if you’re downwind from the cows. But,

Hold on. If we eat less beef, pork and poultry, we’ll be eating a lot more beans, broccoli and cabbage, and producing a heck of a lot more methane ourselves.

Which would make taking public transportation even more unpleasant for Lord Stern (and everybody else) – if he takes public transportation, that is.

Stern wants to raise the price of meat to a point where we all turn vegetarians:

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

Here in the US the Cap and Trade legislation will kill jobs.

And then there’s the redistribution of wealth from rich countries to poor ones: Lord Stern

warned that British taxpayers would need to contribute about £3 billion a year by 2015 to help poor countries to cope with the inevitable impact of climate change.

If you think your soy diet will save you from Stern’s scheme, think again:

UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy.

The basic idea is that people and animals are “bad for the planet.” Malthus is back in fashion, after all.

But things are not bad enough for Stern to give up his meat: He said

said that he was not a strict vegetarian himself

Useful word, “strict.”

UPDATE, Thursday 29 Oct.
Don’t miss Hoi Pollutants?

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