At the Live Free or Die Café...

... think of all the alternatives.

Take this patriotism test.

First, watch this ad:



Now, here's the question:

At what point did you get chills?
	Within 4 seconds -- the sight of the flag.
	At 7 seconds -- "America is an idea."
	Around 12 seconds -- "Liberty! Freedom!"
	Around 15 seconds -- "Free enterprise!"
	Around 18 seconds, when the flag faded and the boy looked worried.
	Toward the end, on seeing "Romney/Ryan."
	Never.
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Only 23% of likely voters think the killing of Christopher Stevens was a "spontaneous reactions to an anti-Islamic video."

57% say it was "planned in advance." And 85% "believe it is likely that terrorists were involved."

Younger voters are far less convinced than their elders that the protests at U.S. embassies in the Middle East have been planned in advance. Female voters are not as sure of that as male voters are.

I'm guessing that the more you like President Obama, the more you've been influenced by the administration's propaganda about the "Innocence of Muslims" video.

The government last week spent $70,000 in Pakistan to run a television ad featuring President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the video in hopes of limiting protests there.

They don't have to run that ad in the United States, where the mainstream media carries their message free of charge. Here's what they showed in Pakistan:



What's that red flag with the pentagram behind her? It seems kind of Satanic. Is it this:



What's going on there? And, more importantly, should we fly into a rage and take to the streets?

Sorry I kept missing that blood/stripes Drudgtaposition.

"It was too subtle for me even with multiple emails pointing me to it." (Old post updated with screen grab.)

"Amazed nobody at Obama HQ noticed this, especially with all the hand-stuff."

Yes, but... pointing it out...

Too far?

ADDED: I got a few emails this morning pushing me to do a Drudgtaposition post based on the bloody handmark photograph and the Obama flag graphic. But Drudge didn't put up the handprint photograph next to the flag graphic. Not that I saw. He put up that flag graphic with the text "OBAMA SELLS 'OUR STRIPES' FLAG...", linking to the campaign's merchandise page.

ALSO: It seems to be widely believed that the red stripes on the American flag are red to represent blood (the "blood of patriots"). 

UPDATE: I'm sorry. It was too subtle for me even with multiple emails pointing me to it. Drudge did have the handprint next to the flag. Here's the screen grab:

"Here is a lesson in creative writing."

That's the heading for a short bit of text by Kurt Vonnegut in "A Man Without a Country," which I just downloaded in Kindle because we were talking about punctuation in the comments to the "phony balance" post and I half-remembered something he said about semi-colons. The short bit under the heading goes like this:

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.

And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I’m kidding. For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I’m kidding.

We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I’m kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Is he kidding?

Here a list of worst college majors for making a living.  All the art ones are in there. You don't have to work.

Here's where we were talking the other day about the teacherspeak word "creative."

And here's last night's reminder that Theodore Sturgeon said "90% of everything is crud," which (I say) teaches respect for bad art — even/especially when it stirs al Qaeda attacks (in reality or in the minds of flag wavers).

And here's something about what dancing is doing to us right now.

Drudge vs. Obama.

Take a look at Drudge right now. There is some terrible news, damaging to Obama's reelection effort, but Drudge has arranged everything, it seems, for the maximum damaging effect. I'll just extract that top left corner...


... but there's much much more. The main headline is about the attack on the embassy in Libya. Below that, in the left column, there's "OBAMA CONVENTION BOUNCE GONE: O 46% R 45%... DEVELOPING..." and then a picture of Netanyahu, in sharp focus, staring down a blurry, lip-pursing Obama, and this series of teasers:

'WAIT FOR WHAT? WAIT UNTIL WHEN?'
USA and Israel in open feud...
White House declines Netanyahu request to meet with Obama...
'Schedule Full'...
Announces 'Letterman' Appearance...

Also in that column, under a picture of teachers on strike in Chicago, is Bill Clinton in front of 3 American flags. Clinton was — in Drudge-world — urging Floridians "to honor 9/11 — by voting." The American flag theme is continued in the middle column, with a picture of protesters in Cairo ripping down the American flag. Above that pic is a photo of a stern Hillary Clinton. Under it is a photo, presumably from a protest somewhere in Africa, of a burning sheet printed with Obama's smiling face.

That's the way the day looks, for the millions of people who check Drudge for that purpose. It's an important day for the Obama campaign. We shall see how well it's handled. Some people might say the best way to handle it is not to think about the campaign at all but to knuckle down and do the work of President the way it should be done, as if there were no campaign at all. But who can imagine that... I mean other than a politico who thinks that giving that impression would be best for the campaign.

A campus 9/11 remembrance.

"I am not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God...."

Somewhere in America, I stopped to take a photograph of a collection of signs...



I wanted to take a photograph of the café itself, and I needed to ask this man if it was okay if I included his motorcycle in the picture, and he was happy to pose for the picture...



... to display his vest for closeup photography...



... and to tell me he is not ashamed of the gospel.

Here's the website for the Black Sheep, a Christian ministry to bikers.

Somewhere in America.

(Yesterday, lunchtime.)

"We’re making a safe motorcycle."

Is that a motorcycle? 

The C1 is gyroscopically stabilized – sort of along the lines of a Segway – so it can’t tip over.

Do 2 wheels, motorized, make a motorcycle? Isn't there a soul to the thing? A soul that has something to do with exposure — danger... freedom.... Ah! Here's the picture I'm looking for:



I took that picture in Augusta, Kentucky back in 2009.

Memorial Day.

It's dangerous to carry a red flag here in Madison.

These mellower approaches to mediating between cars and pedestrians really don't work too well:

Susan Elias never saw the car coming. And the driver never saw her, even though she was holding a red flag....

“What routinely happens, and what is really scary, is that a car will stop,” Sally Lehner said at the meeting, according to a report in the neighborhood news service Madison Commons. “Someone will be really nice and wave 'go ahead.' And then another commuter will come up behind, have no idea that car is stopping because they're letting me go, and nearly hit us.”...

With the population on the city's west side expanding, causing more and more drivers to look for fast routes from the downtown, [Madison Police Capt. Joe] Balles says, the traffic pressure on Monroe Street isn't likely to abate.

“It's got to go beyond red flags. It's got to go beyond enforcement,” he says. “We've got to really start modifying the environment and make it more pedestrian-friendly down there.”

Modifying the environment? How about stop signs, traffic lights, and expensive tickets for violators? Sorry to be old fashioned, but I don't want to pay for a lot of speed humps and islands. I want to make money. Get out there and ticket drivers. And lose that red flag program. It's a dangerous illusion of safety.

(Personally, I have used the red flags to point at evil drivers in an uncivil effort to shame them for driving through where I'm supposed to have the right of way, but it just cranks up pointless inner anger.)

"Make the pie higher!"

Said George Bush, that one time. I quoted him, with fondness and enthusiasm, when I saw this high pie in the bakery window.



So we got a couple slices of pie and cups of black coffee and went over to the seating area, which looked like this:



Forget it. It's Madison. Enlarge to read. Read and laugh or weep or whatever. The pie wasn't even that good. The decor was flaky but the crust was not. It was rubbery, and the forks were made from super-thin plastic. Not a workable combination.

In a glass case, there was this National Organization for Women display:



"Let's support children who do exist." Oh, that reminds me. The great atheist Richard Dawkins acknowledges that God might exist. In that spirit, shouldn't pro-choice people acknowledge that children in the womb might exist? But the big question, in both cases, is: What are you going to do about it?

ADDED: In the photo with me holding a cup of coffee, the sign right above "Kill the Bill!" says "Info Station/location/West Gallery/2nd Floor/(Behind the Flags)." That's directing you to the display that disrespected the Veterans Memorial, which was the subject of last night's "A year ago today at the Wisconsin protests.". The video at that post begins with the flags referred to on that sign. It continues with a defense from the protesters that because they are using the back of the monument: "If you take a picture of this, you can't tell its a war memorial." But the sign directing folks to the "Info Station" said look for the flags.

James Taranto is "surprised to see @annalthouse sort of defending" Charles Blow.

Taranto's tweeting. Citing 2 of my blog posts — "Mr. Blow may attempt to delete that Tweet..." and "Our reflexive response to 'Everybody Draw Mohammad Day'... was sympathetic/But Althouse prompted us to reconsider" — he wonders whether I think we "should mock religion or not."

Let's get a few things straight:

1. I was not defending Blow's infamous "Stick that in your magic underwear" tweet. My post quotes Jim Geraghty making the usual double-standard criticism about which religions are mockable, then asks — asks! — if you'd like to see the counter-argument, that religion should be vigorously mocked, and links to Crack Emcee. I'm just setting up discussion there, not drawing my own lines about what I think people should be saying about religion.

2. My "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" post is demanding that people look at a double-standard problem, using the hypothetical "Everybody Burn the Flag Day." You need to think about what you're doing when you decide to leverage your protest on deep reverence that other people feel.

3. I've never stated a general rule about mockery and religion. I don't have one. Comedy is a great and dangerous force. Most people aren't too good at using it. It can communicate good fun or extreme contempt. You can be a complete asshole with comedy — which you have a right to be, but if you go too far in that direction, you'd better be good! You're probably not as funny as you think you are, but if you want to go to extremes, you're stupid if you don't know there's a risk. Now, the riskiest stuff is also the funniest stuff. Ask Lenny Bruce. No, you can't. He died. Remember when Michael Richards tried to do that Lenny Bruce thing? His career died.

4. Instead of a pathetic and necessarily futile hope for rules for humor, let's think deeply about what humor is. Here's a classic starting point:

In Freud's view, jokes...  happened when the conscious allowed the expression of thoughts that society usually suppressed or forbade. The superego allowed the ego to generate humor. A benevolent superego allowed a light and comforting type of humor, while a harsh superego created a biting and sarcastic type of humor. A very harsh superego suppressed humor altogether.... Freud followed Herbert Spencer's ideas of energy being conserved, bottled up, and then released like so much steam venting to avoid an explosion.

5. Underpants.

Peace Mom.

A flag... seen at the peace march in Madison last Saturday.

"War Appropriations/The Bottomless Pit."

At yesterday's peace march.

Margie Phelps encounters the police... and Meade.

Another video by Meade — edited by me — showing today's protest by the Westboro Baptist Church folk. Watch for Phelps to tell Meade to "get up out of my grille." And wait for the fellow protester who attempts to lighten things up with a suggestion of song. Interestingly, it's the same song we've heard a hundred times from the anti-Scott Walker protesters downtown. The lyrics are differently tweaked.

If the phrase "up out of my grille" sounds out of place but also oddly familiar, perhaps you remember the oral argument in the Supreme Court case involving the Westboro folks:

At page 40 [of the transcript], Margie Phelps, arguing in favor of the right to express outrageous opinions in the vicinity of a funeral, is quoted as saying:

I think approaching an individual up close and in their grille to berate them gets you out of the zone of protection, and we would never do that.

(Boldface added.) Then, at pages 47-48, she's quoted saying:

Your body of law about captive audience... where they, by the way, specifically said at footnote this isn't about content. You've got to be up -- again, I will uses [sic] the colloquial term -- up in your grill. The term I think the Court used was confrontational.

And page 49:

I do think that you could have a public event where there was not an element of vulnerability in the people going in. You might even let them up in their grill.

(At the linked post, I discuss the spelling issue: Is it "grille" or "grill"? It's grille.)

I like the way the British newspaper has the strongest 4th of July frontpage today.

Here's the article. Don't miss the second photograph, of the adorable little boy with flag painted on his face — held in the arms of the adorable President of the United States. The boy looks as though he's got all the troubles of the world on his mind. The President does not.

Now, why is a British newspaper so enthused over our celebration of beating the British in a war?
	The Brits lack self-esteem and wish they could be us.
	The 4th symbolizes freedom and independence and they like that too.
	The Brits like to be gracious and demonstrate no hard feelings about the old war.
	It's a commercial calculation based on knowing where web traffic comes from.
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Rush Limbaugh presents his new product — bottled tea — as a political argument for entrepreneurship.

"What I wanted to demonstrate was that even with the obstacles that we face, like Obama out there, that jobs can be created and that growth or jobs can be saved, to use his vernacular, and a new product can be brought to market."

The label is political: Check it out.

Did anyone tell Sarah Palin that Limbaugh was going to be exploiting the Paul Revere image? Or did she just happen to step on his roll-out of new merchandise?

What do you think of Rush Limbaugh portraying himself as Paul Revere and putting the American flag on the label?

If I were to drink this, it would most likely be...
	... because it's the best tea at the best price.
	... to tweak and annoy liberals.
	... to horse around and get a little attention.
	... to make an unspoken argument in favor of traditional values.
	... to help Rush prove that private entrepreneurship is the way to save the economy.
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