probabilityfields

Taken from http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/002789.html.

Poker With Dick Cheney

Transcript of The Editors’ regular Saturday-night poker game with Dick Cheney, 6/19/04. Start tape at 12:32 AM.

The Editors: We’ll take three cards.

Dick Cheney: Give me one.

Sounds of cards being placed down, dealt, retrieved, and rearranged in hand. Non-committal noises, puffing of cigars.

TE: Fifty bucks.

DC: I’m in. Show ‘em.

TE: Two pair, sevens and fives.

DC: Not good enough.

TE: What do you have?

DC: Better than that, that’s for sure. Pay up.

TE: Can you show us your cards?

DC: Sure. One of them’s a six.

TE: You need to show all your cards. That’s the way the game is played.

Colin Powell: Ladies and gentlemen. We have accumulated overwhelming evidence that Mr. Cheney’s poker hand is far, far better than two pair. Note this satellite photo, taken three minutes ago when The Editors went to get more chips. In it we clearly see the back sides of five playing cards, arranged in a poker hand. Defector reports have assured us that Mr. Cheney’s hand was already well advanced at this stage. Later, Mr. Cheney drew only one card. Why only one card? Would a man without a strong hand choose only one card? We are absolutely convinced that Mr. Cheney has at least a full house.

Tim Russert: Wow. Colin Powell really hit a homerun for the Administration right there. A very powerful performance. My dad played a lot of poker in World War 2, and he taught me many things about life. Read my book.

TE: He’s extremely good at Power Point. But we would like to see the cards, or else we can’t really be sure he has anything to beat two pair. We don’t think he would lie to us, but … well, it is a very rich pot.

Jonah Goldberg: Liberal critics of Mr. Cheney’s poker hand contend that “he doesn’t have anything”. Oh, really, liberal critics? Cheney has already showed them the six of clubs, and yet these liberals persist in saying he has “nothing”. Why do liberals consider the six of clubs to be “nothing”? Is it because the six of clubs is black?

Matt Drudge: ****DRUDGE REPORT EXCLUSIVE**** *****MUST CREDIT THE DRUDGE REPORT***** The Drudge Report has learned that Dick Cheney has a royal flush, hearts. Developing …

TE: Perhaps if you could just show us a subset of your cards which beat 2 pair? Or tell us exactly what your hand is?

DC: We will show you our cards after we have collected the pot. It is important that things be done in this order, otherwise the foundation of our entire poker game will be destroyed.

TE: We aren’t sure …

DC: Very good. And here are my cards. A straight flush.

Judith Miller: Dick Cheney has revealed a straight flush, confirming his pre-collection claims about beating two pair.

TE: Those cards are of different suits. It’s not a flush.

Mark Steyn: When will it end? Now liberal critics complain that Dick Cheney’s cards are not all the same suit. Naturally, these are the same liberals who are always whining about a lack of diversity in higher education. It seems like segregation is OK with these liberals, as long as it damages Republicans.

MD: ****DRUDGE REPORT EXCLUSIVE**** *****MUST CREDIT THE DRUDGE REPORT***** A witness has come forward claiming that The Editors engage in racial profiling in blog-linking. Developing …

TE: Wait! It’s not even a straight! You’ve got a eight and ten of hearts, a six of clubs, and the seven and five of diamonds. You have a ten high. That’s nothing.

Sean Hannity: Well, well, well. In another sign of liberal desperation, liberals now complain that a ten high is “nothing”. Does ten equal zero in liberal mathematics? That would explain a lot.

Robert Novak: It’s a perfectly valid poker hand. Apparently, liberals have never heard of a “skip straight”. It’s a kind of straight, just with one card missing. But if you skip around the missing nine, it’s a straight.

Alan Colmes: Mother says I mustn’t play poker.

TE: There is no such thing as a “skip straight”.

Brit Hume: It seems like some people are still playing poker like it’s September 10th. Back then, you needed to have all your cards in order to claim a straight. But, as we learned on that day, sometimes you won’t have perfect knowledge. Sometimes you have to learn to connect the dots, and see the patterns which are not visible to superficial analysis of the type favored by the CIA and the State Department. Dick Cheney’s skip straight is a winning poker hand for the post-9/11 world.

Rush Limbaugh: Do The Editors have two pairs, or a pair of twos? First they say one thing, then another. What are they hiding?

Andrew Sullivan: Dick Cheney never said he had a straight. He was very careful about this. His cards can form many different hands. None of these hands alone can beat a pair of twos; but, taken together, the combination of all possible hands presents a more compelling case for taking the pot than simply screaming “Pair of twos! Pair of twos!” as unprincipled liberal critics of the Vice President so often do.

MD: ****DRUDGE REPORT EXCLUSIVE**** *****MUST CREDIT THE DRUDGE REPORT***** Did The Editors claim to have “a pair of Jews”? Are they anti-Semites as well as racists? Developing …

Zell Miller: As a lifelong liberal Democrat, I believe Dick Cheney, and I hate liberals and Democrats.

William Safire: Why are liberals so obsessed by Dick Cheney’s poker hand? The pot has been taken, the deal is done. If liberals are upset that we are no longer playing by the Marquis of Queensbury patty-cake poker rules, they clearly lack the stomach to play poker in the post-September 11th environment. And why do they never complain about Saddam Hussein’s poker playing, which was a thousand times worse?

Christopher Hitchens: The Left won’t be happy until the pot is divided up equally between Yassar Arafat, Osama bin Laden, and Hitler. Orwell would have seen this.

Ann Coulter: Why do liberals object so strenuously to the idea of conservatives having a “straight”? Perhaps because it doesn’t fit in with the radical homosexual/Islamist agenda they hold so dear?

Report of the Bipartisan Commission on Poker Hands: There is no such thing as a “skip straight”.

DC: I have access to poker rules that the Commission doesn’t, and so I know for a fact that the cards in my hand are all intimately connected.

George W. Bush: Dick Cheney is telling the truth. I’m a nice man who would drink a beer with you.

Vladimir Putin: I dealt Dick Cheney three aces and two kings.

DC: My deal.

i installed mt-blacklist (thanks jeff!) and successfully removed the comment spam so i guess i am now a real blogger. in other news i’ve been really busy with school lately so the posts will be slow for a while i think, then again, blogging is great procrastination! i’ll probably post a bit about the whole Ward Churchill scandal as i wrote a paper about it’s coverage in the media vis-?-vis Noam Chomsky.

the comments on the last two articles rule! people get paid to do that shit. hilarious! it’s kind of like grafiti advertising. oh, well, i’m gonna delete them. get those hardcore porn links while you can!

I bought an iPod, so I’m offically a valid human being. But I’ve already justified this purchase enough already…

So far I’ve filled it up more than halfway with music and audiobooks. Speaking of, I recommend any and all David Sedaris recordings, those stories have made driving for 4 hours to go home a good thing. Which leads to the next topic…I was talking to a friend who writes short stories and I think I’m going to record him reading the stories. When I do I’ll post some of them here for your enjoyment.

So it’s hit the news in recent days that a former “friend” of Dubya recorded many of their conversations during the 2000 campaign. The biggest fuss about all this seems to be the part where Bush implies that he had smoked marijuana before. Of course he has, it just must not have worked on him or something…

These tapes may have confirmed my worst fear though, something I’ve thought but never knew for sure: Bush is real. That is, he truly believes what he says, i.e. he wouldn’t have admitted to smoking marijuana because “I don’t want some kid doing what I tried.”

He’s no actor like Ronald Reagan, though Ronnie may have been a dumb puppet as well. But the “Bush is dumb” thing might have gotten out of hand too. The guy must have some smarts in there, just not as much as a president should.

I think it might be important for people to try to understand the way this administration works rather than just say “he’s dumb” or “he’s lying”, it may be more complex than that.

Devotchka are a band I heard about on NPR a few days ago. I downloaded some of their stuff and they kick ass. Kind of a latin rhythm, multi-instrumental, Russian folk, wedding band from Colorado. It’s as if I’ve been waiting for a band to make music like this and then suddenly they came along. Check out the NPR review of their new album How It Ends.

On a slightly related note, I think I’m going to breakdown and buy an iPod. It doesn’t suit well with my rants against commodity fetishism (especially since most people seem to actually have a sexual connection with these things), but like my guitars, my computer, and my books, I’ll consider an iPod as only a tool that aids in my edification and expression(–don’t misunderstant that).

Update:For a 37 minute Devotchka radio show click here.

Okay, I don’t like to buy into this celebrity bullshit, but this is just funny. Apparently someone hacked into Paris Hilton’s T-Mobile account and found 1) all her phone camera pics including a few scandalous photos and 2) all her contacts phone numbers and email addresses, including the likes of Ashlee Simpson, Lindsey Lohan, Luke Wilson, Fred Durst, and many more. Apparently people have called these and are having a good time with it. It’s a good joke to play on someone like Paris Hilton, but I’ve got a better one, how about we all IGNORE HER.

another one of the cool guys. he invented a new style of fucked-up journalism and exposed america to its own decadence and debauchery. here’s some memorable quotes:

“America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

“A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums.”

“Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas … with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.”

What the fuck is up with people refusing to listen to someone else who is obviously more knowledgable? And I don’t mean myself here, but myself as a medium between say, philosophy and whoever I might be talking to.

I try my best to tell anyone on the business end of such a transaction that I don’t even understand all of it and that I am in no way an authority. They accept that and don’t question me there, but instead they come up with either a flawed logic such as “this is the way things are and will be, we can’t change it,” or just plain “that doesn’t matter to me, the ‘average person’.” Usually both.

Why can’t people just fucking listen and say, “hmm…that’s interesting, but I’ll have to give it some thought before accepting it”?

I think there is something pre-programmed into us idiots that makes us immediately reject anything that goes against “responsible capitalism” or adherence to some predetermined rules. We like to think that there’s some secret to success out there and so we create these rules to follow and believe whole-heartedly that strict obedience will one day lead us to the promise land. (Hence the success of all these self-help idiots, i.e. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.)

The overtly-religious language was deliberate, it is a new religion. A deeply personal but at the same time deeply mediated religion. It’s insanity, lack of logic, no reason, a sickness.

But the cure is consciousness, not some absolute truth, but consciousness, and your resistance to it is fucking stupid.

Demian (CavedIn.net) was searching for pics of meatloaf last night and came across a site called ourfamilycookbook.com. He found this:

and

So we spent the next half hour browsing their recipes which included:

Breakfast:

Dinner:

Supper:

and a midnight snack:

And sadly not pictured, for desert, chocolate mayonaise cake.

Notice how everything is burnt and how these people think it’s okay to serve up a slice of onion as though it were an acceptable side dish. I’d kill my family if they cooked like this.