Happy New Year, Dark Wraith.

Meet the new year, same as the old year.

Good evening, konagod, and thank you for the good wishes for this new year.

My resolution is to be unapologetically harsh in my published articles and to show the difference between weak, false conservatism and what I consider the authentic, real version. I shall do the same with respect to progressivism, too. Appeasement and accommodation do not work: they allow the imbeciles to flourish, the mendacious to profit, and the good to be hurt.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot my other New Year's resolution: I plan to look younger, be more vivacious, and feel like a million bucks.

The resolution of that last paragraph is not working out as well as that of the paragraph before it.

One out of two isn't so bad, I guess.

The Dark Wraith should know better than to reach beyond his grasp.

There is one potential problem with your letter, certainly not in your reasoning.

Imperial sock puppets can't read the epitaphs of the hand that moves them.

They can't even read the writing on the wall that says the real reason for all their bloodshed is simply to drive up the price of oil.

On the other hand, your points are well taken.

"They can't even read the writing on the wall that says the real reason for all their bloodshed is simply to drive up the price of oil." -- kelley b

As ominous support for this theory, kelley b, you might want to check out Kevin at Cryptogon's post wherein he states: "What really has my attention, however, is the fact that, right now, more oil is being stored on ships at sea than at any point in the last twenty years… Just waiting for higher oil prices.
This situation is begging for a false flag attack or war to help oil prices move higher."

So how bad is your hair, exactly? Was it the cut they
messed up? Inquiring minds want to know...
I liked your letter. What's been going on there is an outrage,
and we're the chumps helping to pay for it. Has anyone
noticed how many zionist-type commenters are appearing
on political blogs everywhere?

Good evening, Anna Van Z.

With respect to trolls, you might want to see the fireworks in comments to the cross-post of this article over at Big Brass Blog. If you've never seen the Dark Wraith go Medieval, this is your chance (quite rare as it is).

The usual assortment of silent trolls and shadows is coming through, today. They come in, look, do their documentation thing if that's what they're into, then slip out.

Of course, this post also got the hate e-mail crowd going about as bad as my article on the USS Liberty incident.

(I would be remiss if I failed to note that the Obamabots did some pretty good hate e-mails to me during the campaign every time I criticized their messiah. They're disappearing now, even as I continue to hammer him for his Right-wing, neo-con, Zionist, and all-around bad appointments (with that monstrosity of an education idiot, Arne Duncan, at the top of my hit parade of rant-inducing Obama appointments right now). Apparently, a number of the Obama cultists are bright enough that they've finally picked up the phone to answer the call from Clueville about the authoritarian they thought was something else. That, or they're just taking a breather to see if they can find any synonyms for 'racist' to hurl at political critics of their hero.)

Anyway, with regard to your other question, you are, of course, referring to my current entry in the side panel feature, "The Art of Grousing," wherein I explain that I got a hair salon gift certificate for Christmas that I couldn't sell to anybody, so I used it for myself.

I think I'll do an open forum tomorrow night, and therein I'll provide a link to before and after pictures and see what readers think. It's quite dramatic, actually, although I cannot say that it is better or worse.

For about ten years, I've worn my hair very long, sometimes all the way down my back, never any shorter than about to my shoulder blades. At its best, my hair looked not so bad, and it covered the ugly enough that it was worth the aggravation that comes with hair that long. You can see my hair at about its best in the Google Video of one of my economics lectures by clicking here. (My upcoming video lectures will be of much higher quality than the ones I've done to date, by the way.)

Unfortunately, my hair was looking worse and worse no matter what I did to try to condition it. I got quite frustrated because I cannot afford expensive conditioners, yet I bought several that did nothing to fix the ragged, frayed look the hair was getting.

Hence, I needed to do something, and I had always gone through cycles every five years or so of big change in my looks, anyway, so I was overdue, I suppose, for an overhaul. I figure that I had been slowly, sort of only semi-consciously, letting myself go to Hell for a few years because of an overall "I give up" mentality about the prospects for making a decent living as a college teacher and the chances that my other endeavors would ever lead to anything worthwhile.

Hence, I decided that it was time to make superficial changes to give myself a good, old-fashioned sense of false hope that will lead to naught but make me nonetheless excited about getting up in the morning.

Like I said, tomorrow night you'll see.

Maybe.

I'm still not sure I should waste the electrons on a post like that, though.

Stay tuned.

The Dark Wraith knows how to build the suspense, yes?

The Dark Wraith does know about the suspense business indeed.

I can commiserate with the feeling of professional hopelessness, being research faculty at medical schools for the past 20 years or so, and teaching medical, dental, and graduate students without being admitted to "teaching" faculty status.

It helps if you realize that most of your professional peers have about the same integrity as professional politicians. Being academia, they are politiicans. You, good Wraith, are something else entirely.

P. of L.T., along with our host, and a handful of others, Cryptogon is a news staple for me.

Isn't that they cannot read the handwriting on the wall, it's that they think it's meant for someone else. IMO

The keyboard brigade of hate-mongers sure crawl out of the woodwork when you hit the right buttons, don't they?

It's rare to ever see the Dark Wraith light off *kaboom* like that, but that idiot at BBB certainly deserved it. Again, IMO.

There is NO ugly to cover, Wraith. Not in my book. For that matter, and from what I've read, in some other books, too. I am not the one you need to please -- that person is you -- but I liked it the way it was. Let it grow back?

*Pout*

But what do I know? I also thought Yul Brynner was sexy as all get out.

(And, just exactly how many times must I remind you --hair or not-- what a truly beautiful person you really are, anyway? Sheesh.)

Greetings, Dark Wraith. I rather regret that it was necessary for you to redact Mikey's comments at BBB. Based on the comment that was left up, he seems to pretty accurately represent the (incorrect) views and opinions of a majority of Americans (e.g. Israel can do no wrong, anything they do is justified). I believe that such views are the joint responsibility of a media that has extreme biases against Arabs and for Israel and of a fundamental misunderstanding by many Christians of their own texts.

I was privileged in the 1990s to have a coworker who was a survivor of the "USS Liberty" attack, and he completely agreed with your description of the attack. I do not name him because he did not, and I presume still does not, want to draw attention to himself.

Only 15 days left to attack Iran on Bush's watch.

Must focus on my spring garden, resist urge to have a self induced stress attack...

Good evening, Mr Wraith.

I would like to make note of an unoften distinguished fact; a true myth-buster; said myth of which is encapsulated here, in nightshift66's comment:

...opinions of a majority of Americans (e.g. Israel can do no wrong, anything they do is justified).

Nuh-uh.

The fact is that Joe Lieberman has voted against the Democratic Party position many times. Lieberman has long held some political views more commonly associated with Republicans, except for when he is Democratic-leaning on some liberal issues such as public education, universal health care, reproductive rights, labor laws and repealing Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

The fact is that Joe Lieberman decided to play suck up to the Bush administration policies and that angered his constituency in CT, mostly due to his strong support of the Iraq War. When he lost the primary there, he formed his own Independent political party, ran an underhanded campaign, and he even went so far as to accuse the Lamont campaign of sabotaging his web site. They didn’t.

“a Federal probe has concluded that Ned Lamont's campaign did not bring down Joe Lieberman's campaign Web site with a hack attack, as the Lieberman camp charged on Election Day 2006.

What really happened was that the Lieberman camp's server failed.”

Now, I didn't say that he lost favor because he was Jewish; I was using him as an example for many of the other Jewish legislators from New England, and he's pretty similar. That is, I was trying to isolate those New England Jews as a faction of the greater Democratic coalition. That group tends to be significantly more centrist than most other factions, though not in the same manner as the DLCers.
That aside, Connecticut is a bit of a special case, and it's not all that unusual there for the party lines to be blurred. There was another instance of a prominent legislator there changing parties, from Republican to Democrat, back in the 80's. I think he was a governor.

Really, I was thinking about how Democratic electoral power is centralized in California and New York; that with those two states as a given, the Democratic candidate then has 1/6 of the total votes; and that the constituencies that make up those two states are significantly different. Thus, the Democratic leadership breaks down into two, the East Coast/West Coast.

Presidential Election 2008 Results Map

Click under "Entire USA" for the House and Senate election results, too.