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July 31, 2011

You have no enemies, you say?

You have no enemies, you say?
Alas, my friend, the boast is poor,
For those who have mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes.
If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from purjured lip,
You’ve never set the wrong to right.
You’ve been a coward in the fight.

-- Charles Mackay

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:19 PM | Your Say (3)

"Black cultural commentary rarely goes beyond the immediate concerns of race....

"This is a sad state of affairs that I think owes a great deal to the pretenses of hiphop
and the commercial success of the New Jacks, ever in opposition to the great orations of Bill Cosby on the one hand, and the prating of that unctuous class of post-modern academics and their vertiginous phrases. All of them going after the singular prize of 'the' black voice which must ever respond to the ironic and idiotic call: "What do you people want?" It comes as no surprise that nobody knows, because those involved in this cultural production like to keep matters open. Accordingly there is the eternal internal question "Who are we as a people?" and its corrolary "What should we be demanding, as a people?" That is the core existential dilemma, neatly wrapped around a DuBoisian duality, hidden inside a Woodsonian re-education , expressed quixotically in an MLK oration. The best answer, of course is to question the question. But that only works for perhaps the smallest fraction of all, those who put no stake in race whatsoever." -- Black Class Revisited - Cobb

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:30 PM | Your Say (1)

The multi-million dollar houses along the Strand have a studied kind of clutter.

The grizzled old man who sits staring could be the father of the owner although he looks like he was just rescued from the gutter and hastily cleaned up. There was resignation in his eyes barely following the joggers. He could be jaded beyond the ordinary world of the beachcombers, or he could be hung over, or he could be the owner. -- The Man With The Camera - Cobb

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:26 PM | Your Say (0)

Lost weak eye cud not spel spambut. Now I r wun.

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Itz teh latist raage wit spambuts attacing blugs. Don't spel gud and the bluggr wil tink u r humane. Wuks on mee.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:52 PM | Your Say (3)

"Sixteen Tons" The Corrosive Effects of Massive Debt

Very little has been written about the psychological effects of the American population living under a mountain of debt,
but those effects are very substantial. Chief among them is a sense of being disempowered and anxiety-ridden -- both individually and collectively -- and, therefore, unable to assert our values here at home, let alone abroad. This is the case because being in debt, and watching that debt grow, without a credible, concrete plan to retire that debt, makes millions of Americans of all ages feel like they are living in the last stages of a bankrupt culture. A free economy is a miracle, and when it is manipulated through fictitious bailouts and stimulus packages and taking of loans that can't be repaid, the American people sense that the story we have been writing -- of individual liberty and free markets and human rights -- can't be real, certainly not for the long haul. It makes them feel as though they are sleepwalking through times that are actually borrowed time. -- Chicago Boyz

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:27 PM | Your Say (0)

"Full faith and credit"

The United States have been bankrupt for some time, regardless of accounting: bankrupt like Iceland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Ireland.
That is to say, the U.S. federal government has no ability to repay its creditors within any foreseeable period of time. It has been operating upon "full faith and credit," since time out of mind, trading upon a productive reputation from long ago. But America's actual productivity has itself been progressively "outsourced." "Full faith and credit" is something that cannot survive doubt. And we are approaching the point where doubt triumphs. -- David Warren

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:20 PM | Your Say (0)

"And right now, there's no contest for the hardest reality on the Internet..."

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"Is this real? It sure looks real."

Your reality muggle, your good sober Republican or Democrat,
thinks he's mainlining reality every day with his daily dose of the Times, his CNN, his Harvard education, maybe if he's a little bit edgy his Reason or Instapundit or, God forbid, Overcoming Bias. He's even smoked marijuana a few times! He's totally plugged in! The poor fscker. He'll always be a muggle. There's something going on here, Mr. Jones. And you don't know what it is - do you, Mr. Jones?

"You get your heroin at Silk Road (if it still exists, or ever did - alas, I'm simply too old to be a junkie junkie). And you get your reality at Second City Cop, which is to the New York Times as heroin is to fscking Advil.

Click on that link. It's primo, of course. It's nothing out of the ordinary. SCC serves up shit this good two or three times a month. You're getting your heroin straight from a fscking cop. How much purer can it get? And good as the posts are - the comments are even better. They're pretty much all cops, too. Some of them aren't literate. But others are. -- Unqualified Reservations: Dispatches from the real America: Second City Cop

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (0)

Ah, "Western Culture." So ‘scintillating’ and ‘reflective’

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"This spring, the Utrecht City Theatre and Edenspiekermann invited Dutch illustrator and photographer Krista van der Niet to create a series of images that would enrich the communication about the upcoming cultural season, based on the brand keywords ‘scintillating’ and ‘reflective’." -- Utrecht’s new cultural season | Edenspiekermann

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:56 AM | Your Say (3)

"Great art flourishes when people are free – "

- when they are permitted to tap into the Godspark that resides within them,
and this is true, even if they must work within some sort of guideline or restriction. Sometimes it is the restriction, itself, that helps to open floodgates of greatness. Camille Paglia once said (paraphrasing from memory, again) that homosexual artists were never as productive, creative or subversively great as they were when they were in the closet; once out, art suffered with a flatness and lack of urgency or energy. In Rome, one finds evidence, everywhere, of passionate, creative genius unleashed down the centuries both in service to and sometimes contra the restrictive Catholic Church, which may have had prudish ideas, but still encouraged and patronized art, often for art’s sake – but always with some sort of accountability. -- Why Tyranny Fears Art – UPDATED | The Anchoress

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:45 AM | Your Say (1)

July 30, 2011

Doug Ross Has Got A Little List

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The Top 150 Conservative Websites -- 3Q11

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:41 PM | Your Say (1)

Should the Los Zetas drug cartel to overthrow the Mexican government...

Soros, and all Marxist-Communist tyrants, are big fans of drugs because drugs keep the rabble (that’s us) dumb, compliant, desperate and dependant on the state.
Soros, Jarrett, Obama, Ayers, Sunstein, Piven and all the rest would love nothing more than for the entire American populace to come home every night from a long day at the welfare office, bread line, and drug dispensary, smoke a joint or a blunt, plop down on the sofa and sit transfixed by pornography, circuses and/or state propaganda. This is how the Soviet Union operated except with alcohol. There may not have been food or toilet paper at times in the Soviet Union, but MIRACULOUSLY the vodka would always manage to appear. -- Ann Barnhardt

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:31 PM | Your Say (2)

Who Says There's No Good News?

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Posted by Vanderleun at 12:19 PM | Your Say (3)

“We read what we want, when we want,” Jacobs declares proudly. “We are free readers.”

Here it’s worth asking what it means to be free.
Jacobs’s unstated answer is the standard one of late modern liberalism—freedom defined solely as freedom of choice. The classical conception of freedom—in which the object of desire toward which the will is directed is more important than the mere freedom to direct the will—provides a more satisfying answer, at least for the purposes of reading. In this view, liberty of choice is not the pinnacle of, but only the necessary condition for, true freedom, which consists of choosing well among available options. -- Reading Beats Tweeting by Brian Patrick Eha - City Journal

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:09 PM | Your Say (0)

Like Reading Messages Hidden Deep Inside Microwaved Bullshit? The Obama Campaign's Hiring!

Predictive Modeling and Data Mining Scientists/Analysts at Obama 2012 Presidential Campaign, Chicago, IL
We are looking for Predictive Modeling/Data Mining Scientists and Analysts, at both the senior and junior level, to join our department through November 2012 at our Chicago Headquarters. We are a multi-disciplinary team of statisticians, predictive modelers, data mining experts, mathematicians, software developers, general analysts and organizers - all striving for a single goal: re-electing President Obama.

Using statistical predictive modeling, the Democratic Party's comprehensive political database, and publicly available data, modeling analysts are charged with predicting the behavior of the American electorate. These models will be instrumental in helping the campaign determine which voters to target for turnout and persuasion efforts, where to buy advertising and how to best approach digital media.

Our Modeling Analysts will dive head-first into our massive data to solve some of our most critical online and offline challenges. We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions.

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:10 AM | Your Say (9)

Spammers Never Prosper!

Oops! President Barack Obama takes debt battle to Twitter, loses more than 40,000 followers in one day
“Honestly, @BarackObama, I’m going to have to unfollow you if you don’t stop filing up my Twitter inbox soon,

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:00 AM | Your Say (0)

July 29, 2011

Hot Air About Hot Air

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:21 PM | Your Say (3)

Lincoln: "I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky."

[Bumped]I don’t know whether conservatives have God on their side (I keep getting sent to His voice mail),
but I do know that they don’t have Kentucky — they don’t have the Senate, they don’t have the White House. And under our constitutional system, you cannot govern from one house alone. Today’s resurgent conservatism, with its fidelity to constitutionalism, should be particularly attuned to this constraint, imposed as it is by a system of deliberately separated — and mutually limiting — powers. Given this reality, trying to force the issue — turn a blocking minority into a governing authority — is not just counter-constitutional in spirit but self-destructive in practice. -- Krauthammer: The great divide - The Washington Post

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:12 PM | Your Say (21)

"Marxism is just an elaborate roleplaying fantasy for pseudo-intellectuals."

It constructs a fantasy about a world in which material equality and the eradication of social classes leads to a society in which only "intellectuals",
i.e., individuals skilled at persuasive communications, would stand out from the individually undifferentiated "masses"€. As Marx himself said, in the future communist utopia, men would be differentiated only by their "innate intellects". It's clear what Marx and all his educated followers since thought about their own intellects relative to the rest of population. For anyone with intellectual pretensions, embracing Marxism doesn't take courage any more than it takes courage for anyone else to fantasize about winning the lottery and marrying a movie star. -- Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » The Virtues of a Lack of "Imagination"

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:09 PM | Your Say (0)

China Puts US on eBay

‘Government Sold Separately,’ Sales Listing Says -- Borowitz Report

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:26 PM | Your Say (0)

Sign of the Times

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Posted by Vanderleun at 3:02 PM | Your Say (2)

Aristotle's Third Tyranny

There is a third species of tyranny, most properly so called, which is the very opposite to kingly power;
for this is the government of one who rules over his equals and superiors without being accountable for his conduct, and whose object is his own advantage, and not the advantage of those he governs; for which reason he rules by compulsion, for no freemen will ever willingly submit to such a government. --Aristotle: A Treatise on Government: Book IV: Chapter X

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:16 PM | Your Say (0)

Let's rename "The Blogosphere" to "The Blathersphere"

I don't think that people in the blogosphere are typical of the average American.
I'm not talking about their political persuasions -- liberal conservative, or in-between. I'm talking about their intensity about politics, and their interest in it and patience for reading and thinking about it. Residents of the blogosphere talk amongst themselves. A lot; in fact. And in that process they tend to fire each other up with ever-increasing fervor. And so people who are already fairly intense and even fanatical about their points of view often become even more so. -- neo-neocon サ Blog Archive サ Debt ceiling negotiations, redux

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (0)

An offer no born Democrat can refuse!

US health shop offers 'free marijuana if you register to vote' | Mail Online
"The only thing required to complete the effect is to require consumption of cannabis as a prerequisite for voting eligibility. This is far more likely to be enforced than any requirement to provide ID." -- Bud H in email.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:31 PM | Your Say (0)

July 28, 2011

"The Space Princess School of Science Fiction Writing..."

I personally have received telepathic visions from Carson Napier of Venus, or ‘Amtor’ as its natives call it,
not to mention having sensed the astral form of Lord Chong of Phaolon, a city beneath of sun called the Green Star, and also I have listened with awe to the tapes Geoffrey Dean brought back from Africa, containing the narrative of Dray Prescot of Antares. More I dare not say, lest a skeptical world scoff! -- Drake Equations and ‘It Ain’t Gunna Happen’ Science Fiction | John C. Wright's Journal

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:22 PM | Your Say (0)

Taking Mexico Off My Vacation Destination List: "They hardly ever do police work; they are working full-time for narcos."

This is his real home for almost twenty years, a second Mexico that does not exist officially and that coexists seamlessly with the government.
In his many transports of human beings to bondage, torture, and death, he is never interfered with by the authorities. He is part of the government, the state policeman with eight men under his command. But his key employer is the organization, which he assumes is the Juárez cartel, but he never asks since questions can be fatal. They give him a salary, a house, a car. And standing. -- "The sicario: A Juárez hit man speaks"€ by Charles Bowden

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:54 PM | Your Say (3)

In the Mail Today. And Just In Time Too!

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Return address: Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:12 PM | Your Say (0)

The Horrific Consequences of Default

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Illo from Out of Order

Iowahawk's got a little list. Some samples:

NPR news segments no longer buffered by soothing zither interludes.

Breadlines teeming with jobless Outreach Coordinators, Diversity Liaisons, and Sustainability Facilitators.

Cowboy poetry utterly lacking in metre.

General Motors unfairly forced to build cars that people want, for a profit.

Chaos reigns at Goldman Sachs, who no longer knows who to bribe with political donations. -- iowahawk: Default, Dear Brutus, Is Not In Our Stars, But In Ourselves


Mankind's dream of high speed government rail service between Chicago and Iowa City tragically dies.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:58 PM | Your Say (2)

‘Gentle Justice’ Meets Mass Murderer: Norway has paid dearly for supporting an unarmed constabulary and soft penal system.

It is as though the modern Norwegian system had evolved in the absence of natural predators,
and never really developed defenses against them. No doubt Breivik was familiar with the vulnerabilities of Norway's police and population, and knew they would be unarmed. He exploited this fact in a fiendishly clever manner by using the first explosion as both a diversion and an excuse for arriving on the island dressed as a policeman carrying a firearm, ostensibly to help with security after the bombing. The uniform was a brilliant deception because it led the young people to trust him -- despite his weapon -- when he told them to gather round, and heightened the element of stunned surprise which may have made his victims more slow to respond than they might otherwise have been. -- Neoneocon

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (3)

"So what happened to the Boomer generation? Why do they, you know, suck? "

I think it is because they did the same thing with music that they did with everything else that preceded them:
they tossed it all aside as being hopelessly outdated. For them, pretty much everything started in around 1964, or shortly after JFK was assassinated. And then they simply took credit for whatever they liked about the past. What they don't like is projected into contemporary conservatives in a transparently childish manner. But we are not the ones who were in bed with those southern racists for all those years. -- One Cʘsmos: The Worstest Generation: Hope They Die Before They Get Old!

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (2)

"The whole world is held in thrall... "

... as Congress pokes a tepid finger at America’s crushing debt burden while swinging a sledge hammer at the glass debt ceiling.
If Big Guy thought Washington was “all wee-weed up” back in ‘09 over Obamacare, just wait till he sees what happens now that he’s brought his beer wagon to the debt ceiling garden party without thinking to have anyone order Porta-Potties. -- Michelle Obama's Mirror

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (0)

“To what extent was Anders Breivik a Christian and to what extent did this shape his deeds?”

The answer is that he was not a Christian at all,
unless we make Breivik the authority on what the term means. But we should go on to ask, “To what extent was Breivik the inheritor of an inward secularism dressed up in the outward trappings of a long-since-abandoned Christian faith, and to what extent did this shape his actions? If he had inherited not just the fossil of faith, but the living reality, would it have stopped his hand?” --Anders Breivik as a Pragmatic Agnostic | Philosophical Fragments

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:41 AM | Your Say (0)

"What did the Pilgrim Fathers come for, then, when they came so gruesomely over the black sea?"

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Oh, it was in a black spirit. A black revulsion from Europe, from the old authority of Europe, from kings and bishops and popes. And more. When you look into it, more. They were black, masterful men, they wanted something else. No kings, no bishops maybe. Even no God Almighty. But also, no more of this new 'humanity' which followed the Renaissance. None of this new liberty which was to be so pretty in Europe. Something grimmer, by no means free-and-easy.

America has never been easy, and is not easy today. Americans have always been at a certain tension. Their liberty is a thing of sheer will, sheer tension: a liberty of THOU SHALT NOT. And it has been so from the first. The land of THOU SHALT NOT. Only the first commandment is: THOU SHALT NOT PRESUME TO BE A MASTER. Hence democracy. -- D. H. Lawrence, The Spirit of Place

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (1)

"Men are less free than they imagine; ah, far less free. The freest are perhaps least free."

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Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when I they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, Organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was. --D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature/Chapter 1

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (7)

" The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."

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Of course, the soul often breaks down into disintegration, and you have lurid sin and Judith, imbecile innocence lusting, in Hetty, and bluster, bragging, and self-conscious strength, in Harry. But there are the disintegration products.

What true myth concerns itself with is not the disintegration product. True myth concerns itself centrally with the onward adventure of the integral soul. And this, for America, is Deerslayer. A man who turns his back on white society. A man who keeps his moral integrity hard and intact. An isolate, almost selfless, stoic, enduring man, who lives by death, by killing, but who is pure white.

This is the very intrinsic—most American. He is at the core of all the other flux and fluff. And when this man breaks from his static isolation, and makes a new move, then look out, something will be happening. --D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature/Chapter 5

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (2)

"This was Whitman. And the true rhythm of the American continent speaking out in him. He is the first white aboriginal."

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'In my Father's house are many mansions.'

'No,' said Whitman. 'Keep out of mansions. A mansion may be heaven on earth, but you might as well be dead. Strictly avoid mansions. The soul is herself when she is going on foot down the open road.'

It is the American heroic message. The soul is not to pile up defences round herself. She is not to withdraw and seek her heavens inwardly, in mystical ecstasies. She is not to cry to some God beyond, for salvation. She is to go down the open road, as the road opens, into the unknown, keeping company with those whose soul draws them near to her, accomplishing nothing save the journey, and the works incident to the journey, in the long life-travel into the unknown, the soul in her subtle sympathies accomplishing herself by the way. -- D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature/Chapter 12

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (3)

July 27, 2011

California Wages War On Single-Family Homes

In California, the assault on the house has gained official sanction.
Once the heartland of the American dream, the Golden State has begun implementing new planning laws designed to combat global warming. These draconian measures could lead to a ban on the construction of private residences, particularly on the suburban fringe. The new legislation’s goal is to cram future generations of Californians into multi-family apartment buildings, turning them from car-driving suburbanites into strap-hanging urbanistas. -- Joel Kotkin

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (6)

The PC Way or the Highway

Under the kind of reasoning advanced by the Left, there can be no middle ground.
Anyone who raises the issue of Islamic terrorist cells in the West -- and the evidence of their existence is abundant -- or was read on the Internet by a fruitcake, must now of necessity be a Nazi. In that view Oslo means the discussion of certain issues must now be regarded with the greatest of trepidation. Where such discussion is not inherently hateful it is provocative and ought to be suppressed, lest it be misunderstood by lunatics or those with hearing disabilities. Thus it is either the politically correct way or the highway. That road certainly leads to civil war which was the avowed goal of Andres Breivik in the first place. He is succeeding much better than he has a right to, but not in the way he thought. -- Belmont Club » Univeral Guilt is Universal Condemnation

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (3)

July 26, 2011

Blogging Secrets of the Bitch and Infamous

In which the Gagdad, he types for me:
Well, I started blogging almost six years ago, in October 2005. By November 2005 it was getting to be a grind, because there was nothing left for me to say. At that point I gave up trying, and simply dispossessed my Self of myself. So you could say that it's been non-stop bullshitting since then, but never say that it hasn't been empty bullshitting. -- Gagdad: O and ʘ Tattooed Across the Knuckles of My Head

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:06 PM | Your Say (2)

"Spending enormous amounts of time, effort, and money to achieve vanishingly small, probably illusory returns while making the average citizen's life less comfortable. It's the New American Way. "

Sippican Cottage: Think Outside The Box
People that don't care about anything but energy use will do the arithmetic for you, and they will lie about how much you'll spend (it will be more) and how much you'll save (it will be less). Even their rosy scenario will likely have you attending your unborn children's college graduation, if he's on the Blutarsky path, before you see a dime of savings. The truth is, it doesn't make any sense, and likely never will.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:05 PM | Your Say (0)

The "Despised" Minority

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.
Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded  -- here and there, now and then  -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck." -- Robert A. Heinlein

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:59 AM | Your Say (1)

July 25, 2011

"[The Norway massacre] challenges some of our deepest beliefs about where the world is headed."

The only conclusion that makes sense to me is that human beings are stuck in a condition of radical uncertainty.
Something big and earth shaking is going on around us, but the information we have does not allow us to predict where it all goes. In my view, this is one of the reasons that belief in a transcendent power beyond the human mind is intellectually necessary to grapple successfully with the realities of our time. When the determinist progressives threw God under the bus, they threw away the possibility of an integrated world view that has room both for scientific and rational analysis on the one hand and a honest, unsparing appraisal of the radical uncertainty around us on the other. -- From Norway To Hell | Via Meadia

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:12 PM | Your Say (8)

Water

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He went inside his house to the kitchen sink, filled a big blue glass with cold water,
and drank it . . . slowly, while covering his head with a wet towel. Then he drank another glass. And another. Then he went back outside to water the flowers and wash off the porch. All the while thinking he could have all of this delicious liquid he wanted. It was cold, clear, clean, and free of filth and bugs and disease. This water had started out as snow or rain in the high Cascade Mountains. It had been passed down through creeks and streams into Seattle’s Cedar River watershed, filtered through glacial sand and gravel into a reservoir, passed into the city’s water system, treated with chlorine to kill germs and bacteria, with fluoride added to protect his teeth, pumped up to a huge tank four blocks away, and made instantly available when he turned the tap..... “I am a rich man,” he said to himself, as he drank another glass of water. -- Robert Fulghum, OFFICIAL Website - Recent Entries

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:34 PM | Your Say (5)

The Creation of @ in Your Email Address

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The key that launched ten trillion emails

With four decades of email behind us, it is difficult to imagine anyone in Tomlinson'€™s situation choosing anything other than the "@" symbol,
but his decision to do so at the time was inspired in several ways. Firstly, it was extremely unlikely to occur in any computer or user names; secondly, it had no other significant meaning for the TENEX operating system on which the commands would run, and lastly, it read intuitively "user at host" while being just as unambiguous for the computer to decipher. His own email address, written using this newly formulated rule, was tomlinson@bbn-tenexa, signifying the user named tomlinson at the machine named bbn-tenexa, the first of the company's two minicomputers running TENEX. -- Shady Characters » The @-symbol, part 1 of 2

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:10 PM | Your Say (1)

Peggy Noonan Tells Obama to Shut Up. If It Will Shut Peggy Up I'm For It.

"For his sake and the sake of an ultimate plan, he should choose Strategic Silence. Really, recent presidents forget to shut up. They lose sight of how grating they are. -- Noonan: Out of the Way, Please, Mr. President - WSJ.com

Wimp columnists who voted for him grate too, Peggy, you ignorant slut.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:43 PM | Your Say (5)

Yes, it's true. The State of California's brain is stone cold dead.

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Via Zer-Cool

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:26 PM | Your Say (6)

"Disengagement from the consumerist zeitgeist is essential."

I once lived briefly in an old one-bedroom trailer set in a patch of pine woods near Farmville, Virginia.
A brick barbecue came with it, and a large floppy pooch, apparently a mixture of Irish setter and whatever was around. The place was blessedly quiet. Birds and bugs aren't noise. When it rained I delighted in being almost in the storm, but dry. I think the whole shebang cost the owner five thousand dollars, including a well and septic system.

If you are thinking, “Why...no...I couldn't possibly live that way,” you are probably right. But if I were doing it now, I would have staggering amounts of pirated music on today's monstrous memory sticks, a set of very decent speakers for a few hundred doomed green ones, a Kindle or the free computer version for reading books from Amazon if I had the money or Project Gutenberg if I didn't, and a fairly large flat screen for watching movies donated by uTorrent. Net cost: Under a grand. -- Fred On Everything

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:29 PM | Your Say (8)

Silly Right Wabbit. Violence Is for Left Wabbits.

We can tell that left rules right, because we can see that Noam Chomsky has the right to trumpet his ideas to Osama bin Laden,
whereas Robert Spencer does not have the right to trumpet his ideas to Anders Behring Breivik. Did he think he had that right? He had not the might, so he had not the right. He's finding that out right now, as he stares down the barrel of a very angry New York Times. The trumpeter game, version left, is played ad nauseam in every school system in the world today. All our noble workers and peasants are constantly inculcated with two messages. First, you are the victim of injustice. Second, even though you are the victim of injustice, violence is evil and you must under no circumstances punish the guilty. Human beings are human beings, of course, so the second message doesn't always take. Aww. Another "random attack." Robert Spencer, Fjordman, and the like - even so perspicacious a conservative as Lawrence Auster - thought they could play this game from the other side. Why? Because they believe in the game. They believe in democratic activism, and they believe they live in a democratic society and have just as much right as anyone at Harvard to toot their trumpets. They are wrong on every count. -- Unqualified Reservations: The indisputable humanity of Anders Behring Breivik

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:48 PM | Your Say (4)

Fuck all you NIMBYs. I quit!

My name's Ronnie Bryant, and I'm a mine operator.
I've been issued a [state] permit in the recent past for [waste water] discharge, and after standing in this room today listening to the comments being made by the people. [pause] Nearly every day without fail -- men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can't pay their mortgage. They can't pay their car note. They can't feed their families. They don't have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just think -- you know -- what's the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They'd be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What's the use? I don' t know. I mean, I see these guys -- I see them with tears in their eyes -- looking for work. And if there's so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there's no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So as I stood against the wall here today, basically what I've decided is not to open the mine. I'm just quitting. Thank you. -- I'm just quitting: A scene right out of Atlas Shrugged in Birmingham by David McElroy [HT Morgan]

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:38 PM | Your Say (2)

The Ides of August: Obama Begins to Bounce Checks on August 15

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The table above summarizes our cash flow projections for the first two weeks of August,
assuming that there has been no increase in the debt ceiling. The projections assume that Treasury will be able to at least roll over maturing debt on August 4, 11 and 15. That's probably becoming a more questionable assumption given all of the statements coming from the rating agencies. As the table shows, we now show Treasury with a negative cash balance of $15.5 billion on August 15, which implies that Treasury wouldn't have the resources to pay $30.6 billion in interest on that day. -- Projected Treasury August Daily Cash Sweep Balance | ZeroHedge

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:26 PM | Your Say (0)

"Why did ABB think right-wing terrorism could work? Because ABB grew up in a leftist world, he thinks like a leftist."

The error of ABB goes far beyond his decision to run wild with a Glock.
This is just his specific error. His general error is what Patri Friedman calls folk activism - a broad pattern of ineffective or counterproductive political action which extends across the entire right-wing spectrum, from moderate libertarians to hardcore neo-Nazis. It's not just that running wild with a Glock is stupid. Almost everything the right does is stupid. Very few rightists are running wild with a Glock, but most are in some way or other guilty of folk activism. -- Unqualified Reservations

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:05 AM | Your Say (8)

July 24, 2011

"Do you like being a free person who can sit and read whatever you want on this thing called the internet?"

Are you glad to be an American, living under the Constitution?
Thank the long-forgotten men who fought the Revolutionary War. YOU are the fulfillment of their dream, which they died to vivify. Are you glad that you are Christian and not muslim? Thank the long dead and individually forgotten men who fought at Vienna, Lepanto and Tours. If it weren't for them, you either wouldn't exist, or you would exist and be a muslim. They died not just for their immediate families, but also for YOU. I'm sure many an evening campfire throughout the centuries heard soldiers ask the question, "I wonder what the world will be like in the year 2000?" Our lives and our freedoms are the answer to their question. -- Ann Barnhardt

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:27 PM | Your Say (1)

The Wages of the 1960s

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Our Ten Trillion-Dollar Man
Obama, you see, is our nemesis. He is a totem, the logical manifestation of a warped media, the reification of some crazy -- and arrogant -- ideas about politics, the economy, and cultural and social life that permeated American life the last forty years. He is the president with a 1,000 faces that we have all seen at work, on TV, throughout American life, and at some point the odds determined that we had to have a rendezvous with him -- a catharsis to teach us the bitter wages of Keynesian debt, of a social policy contrary to human nature, of all-powerful, all-growing unaccountable government, of the now hip ambiguity about American protocols and history. Obama is the exaggeration of all the dubious ideas that arose since the 1960s -- bought to fruition on his watch, delivered by mellifluous cadences by an untouchable persona.

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:16 PM | Your Say (1)

“Why are academic papers about the penis so long?" “Because the academic penis is so small.”

Interest In Penile Length Among Academics Growing by William M. Briggs, Statistician

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:56 PM | Your Say (0)

"4) When he began shooting, everyone ran."

That last factor alone is responsible for almost all of the dead. A tight group of young men taught to run at danger instead of away from it could have overpowered him almost at once.
As that did not happen, he had a clear field of fire and a target rich environment. As that started a panic, probably some were trampled and others drowned. The police did not arrive for a long time, giving him time to finish what he had begun -- but the police will never be around when one of these mass killings happens, unless it is targeted at them specifically. It is always easy to find a soft target if you want one, even in a police state. The key lesson to mass shootings is that the whole of our societies must remember their duty to fight for the common peace and lawful order. We must all do it. We must train for it, and we must equip ourselves as well as the law and our natural abilities permit. This is the duty of a citizen. It is a duty that cannot be delegated to the police or to the military. It must be borne by all of us. We must train our sons for this duty also. In a dangerous world, this alone is what makes civilization possible. -- -- BLACKFIVE: Defending the Weak

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:48 PM | Your Say (7)

Meanwhile, in the pacified Pacific Northwest, up around Seattle town, normal life goes on...

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Just your average weekend colorful heritage-celebrating car show: 12 wounded as gunfire erupts at Kent car show
At least 12 people were shot at a crowded lowrider car show in Kent on Saturday, creating chaos as cars sped from the scene and frightened spectators ran for the safety of nearby shops. Patrons and employees in the stores and restaurants locked the doors and crouched in backrooms to escape the gunfire.... Witnesses said the La Raza car show had been going on in the parking lot during the weekend. About 50 lowrider or classic cars were on display.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:19 PM | Your Say (5)

What If?

What has me worried is the idea that the Democrats ACTUALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS IS THE END OF THE ROAD.
What if they actually aren't capable of recognizing when they've lost? Or when we've run out of other people's money? None of these people work for a living. Their concept of where money comes from and how wealth is created (and destroyed) is completely divorced from reality because they live in a government bubble. -- Michael McFatter @ Instapundit

The president certainly seems to be the poster child for this mindset.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (6)

The Manifesto Behind the Horror in Norway

"The Norwegian terrorist seems to have penned a long Unabomber-style manifesto, "2083: A European Declaration of Indpendence," which can be downloaded, for now at least, at this link.
The author is listed as "Andrew Berwick," which seems to be an anglicized pen name for Anders Breivik. but Mein Kampf may be a better analogy that the Unabomber manifesto. The man is a mass-murdering sociopath, responsible for a horrific bloodbath yesterday. He is an extremist, but he is not incoherent. -- | The Weekly Standard

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:35 AM | Your Say (3)

The Count

Having now read more about what was generally going on in that teenage activist summer camp in Utoya,
I promise that if I see even one picture of a victim sporting a trendy Che Guevara shirt, I will point out a certain "ironic" equivalence of being unarmed and trapped in a paradise island with somebody whoisarmed and believes that he doesn't need any proof of your "guilt" to execute you, since he only needs proof that it is politically useful to execute you. Also, every left-winger would do well to remember that if you take the 94 million kulaks, capitalists, dissidents and other groups of people that socialists murdered in the twentieth century, and punch the numbers into a calculator, the average number of victims per hour equalsalmost exactlythe one-hour kill count of Anders Breivik. -- The Fourth Checkraise: Curtain has fallen, now you are on your own

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:20 AM | Your Say (1)

July 23, 2011

Comment of the Week

"Our side are the people that are crushed if a neighbor frowns
because we waited to cut the grass a couple of days too late. Their side is the inhabitants of the crack house. We keep trying to discipline them by explaining the effects of crack, crime, and property value. We don't deserve to win if we can't even notice our comfortable tactics are guaranteed to have no effect on our enemy. -- Scott M On AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on ‪Rep. Walsh Takes on Chris Matthews and Amputates His Thrilled Leg

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:26 PM | Your Say (0)

Ace: "So what the hell is the Artist scorn for all non-Artists?"

Artists always claim that among their most important gifts
and among their most crucial skills is to see the world through other people's eyes, or imagine a world that isn't, but could be. Really? Are you sure of that, guys? Because if you have that capability you sure the hell seem to spend an awful lot of your time suppressing it in favor of dogfood morality plays that tell everyone they should just put together a stick and bindle and go hobo-ing on the trains and "see where life takes them." -- Ace of Spades HQ

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:33 AM | Your Say (1)

July 22, 2011

Rimshot!

"Washington has more Drama Queens than a Barney Frank luau on Fire Island." -- Don Surber

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:58 PM | Your Say (3)

The DRC – Department for the Repatriation of Congress

One branch of the DRC can contract
an appropriate number of private sector financial experts. They will be young and as unblemished by the influences of corporate politics as possible. They will be contracted to guide each member of Congress through their transition to a smaller paycheck, new housing, change of cars, budgeting, etc. To introduce them to the health care from which the rest of have to choose. Teach them to prepare and file their own taxes. They will still be allowed to make irresponsible decisions with their money, just like the rest of us, but there will be consequences for them now, due to the fact that they will finally have a rigidly fixed income. And like the rest of us, they will left on their own to deal with them. No handouts from powerful friends, no bailouts from special interests. The second branch of the DRC will see to that. -- The Dipso Chronicles

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:26 PM | Your Say (0)

Criminaless Crimes

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A long thumbsucker in the always sucking Times today-- Farm Felons Pick Off California Crops, reminds us that not all crimes have criminals. Crimes in which the criminals might be an ethnic group under the protection of the Times become simply crimes without criminals.
Sergeant Reed — who eventually arrested a suspect after staking out a Kern County vineyard — is just one of dozens of deputies on the front lines of agricultural crime in California, home to the nation’s most productive farms and the people who prey on them. While thievery has long been a fact of life in the country, such crimes are on the rise and fighting them has become harder in many parts of California as many grants for rural law enforcement have withered on the vine.

Whodunit? JESSE McKINLEY, the Times reporter, really can't say. Does he know? Si, si, senor.

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:20 PM | Your Say (2)

Should we cut the Greens some slack now that they've been discredited?

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A commenter at This is why they want to stop skeptics speaking gives his mild opinion on the matter:
NO! Not one moment of silence. Not one particle of a sign of respect. They must be hounded to the end and be treated as the life sucking vampires that they are. They are not merely wrong, they are evil to the core! Their monstrous plan to control the breath of life is sufficient proof of their internal malignancy. That their plan is justified by the use of a total fraud only makes it worse. They want not only our slavery and our productive wealth, they also want our lives. May they be forever damned to the hell they are planning to construct for us. I shall not lift a finger to save them as they fade from this world crying piteously "We didn't mean this to happen."€ They have justly earned every pain, agony, and loss that they will experience.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:07 PM | Your Say (4)

Enough already with the mensch. Where are the men?

American Jews have found no "teaching moment" in the murder of Pamela Waechter,
and the shooting of six women at work, performing the administrative tasks of the Jewish community. The tragedy of Waechter, a Lutheran who converted upon marriage and devoted her life to Judaism, remains a private heartbreak for those who loved her. And yet, the images of the Seattle women under attack are so unbearable that the question must be shrieked from the rooftops: Where are the men? Where are the Jewish men, who ought to be rushing to protect their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters? Where are the Jewish men who lead the community, as Jewish women come under increasing assault, right here in America, from Islamic fanatics? -- Articles: The Jews in the Basement

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (1)

"PC is corrupt."

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You cannot get "halfway corruption" with PC. You get it all.
You get a disregard for everything that traditional society teaches is right, and correct, including treatment of women, those not in the majority, individual rights, the historic culture and tradition, and trust. Police rummage through phone records, record calls, spy on people, and sell the information to which ever tabloid or newspaper or media outlet wants it. News of the World or the BBC. The Sun or the Guardian. It does not matter. The corruption engendered by PC never just stops like the fantasy of "Sharia Lite" where you can get off any time. Like Sharia, like Multiculturalism, like PC, like Diversity, it means a corrupt and brutal environment where nobody but the very rich and powerful have any rights. None. -- Whiskey's Place: The Phone Hacking Scandal: PC Makes You Corrupt

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (0)

Murdoch is Magic

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Regardless of how the phone hacking scandals play out,
someone not named Rupert Murdoch will take over News Corp. soon. Murdoch is a man in his eighties, he simply cannot run the organization much longer. If not James, then Lachlan. If not Lachlan, then Elizabeth. If not Elizabeth, then Wendi Deng. One of them will succeed Rupert Murdoch, and do exactly what they have promised interviewers time and again: fire Roger Ailes, and turn Fox News into MSNBC. Very soon after that, the Film division will have a bad year, losses instead of earnings, and News Corp. will struggle or miss debt payments. And so begin a long, slow, NYT-like decline. All because the remarkable attributes of Rupert Murdoch, understanding that there is money to be made catering to middle/working class conservative sensibilities, cannot be duplicated in his family. -- Whiskey's Place: End of the Empires: News Corp and Apple

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (1)

"One thing worth saying about Bill Maher and the others. "

Their ugliness seems to be escalating day by day,
and with it the dishonesty, distortions, and bullying anger of their mainstream-media fellow travelers. There’s a reason for this, I think. It’s the increasingly apparent failure of Barack Obama. With the notable exception of Osama bin Laden’s execution, the Obama presidency has resembled nothing so much as an episode of Mr. Bean, one slapstick misadventure after another. The stagnant economy, the rising unemployment, the staggering, soon-to-be-crippling debt—hiked more under Obama than under every president from Washington to Reagan combined—these can no longer be blamed on his predecessor but are his to own. This has to be fantastically humiliating for our left-wing media. -- Reality Time by Andrew Klavan - City Journal

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (1)

Build the Ark

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In a tribal society people would benefit from both the number of progeny and the quality of their upbringing.
If today's dysfunctional council house families had to live on what their offspring would contribute to the world of the future, they couldn't. If you breed ten chavs, you've got ten dependents for life. But then never fear, they can leech off somebody else. As Obama put it to Joe the Plumber, "It's better when you spread the wealth around." The kids earnings too. Maybe we need an Ark. The Ark, come to think of it, was an act of self-insurance by people who saw danger coming when nobody else would. Not that nobody else could; just that nobody else would. -- Belmont Club » A Comment About Childhood'sEnd

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (0)

July 21, 2011

"The Atlantis returned to Earth ending the nation’s 30-year space shuttle program."

The sparrow has landed.

EVIL.

-- Daily scoreboard ォ Don Surber

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:58 PM | Your Say (4)

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

But we’re way beyond that.
That’s a droll quip when you’re on mid-20th-century European fertility rates, but we’ve advanced to the next stage: We’ve run out of other people, period. Hyper-rationalist technocrats introduced at remarkable speed a range of transformative innovations — welfare, feminism, mass college education, abortion — whose cumulative effect a few decades on is that the developed world has developed to breaking point: Not enough people do not enough work for not enough of their lives. In the course of so doing, they have fewer children later. -- SteynOnline - THE DEMOGRAPHY OF DEBTORS

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:58 PM | Your Say (1)

"The New Deal and Prohibition by Albert Jay Nock" March 1936

Once on a time they were comparatively a free people, regulating a large portion of their lives to suit themselves. They had a great deal of freedom as compared with other peoples of the world.
But apparently they could not rest until they threw their freedom away. They made a present of it to their own politicians, who have made them sweat for their gullibility ever since. They put their liberties in the hands of a praetorian guard made up exactly on the old Roman model, and not only never got them back, but as long as that praetorian guard of professional politicians lives and thrives – which will be quite a while if its numbers keep on increasing at the present rate – they never will. -- The New Deal and Prohibition by Albert Jay Nock

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:00 PM | Your Say (2)

Bayonet's "Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up" is now available

We salute The Daily Bayonet for tracking all this crap so we don't have to.

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:05 PM | Your Say (0)

Jay-Z: "One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. "

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... That’s the American ideal.
Poor people don’t like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank, they don’t like to think of themselves as poor. It’s embarrassing. [...] The burden of poverty isn’t just that you don’t always have the things you need, it’s the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you’d do anything to lift that burden. -- mark larson | Decoded (review)

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (4)

"What the world needs, lest we forget, is a contemporary example of Communism in action."

What better candidate than Greece?
They’ve been pining for it for years, exhibiting a level of anti-capitalist vitriol unmatched in any developed country. They are temperamentally attuned to it, having driven all hard working Greeks abroad in search of opportunity. They pose no military threat to their neighbors, unless you quake at the sight of soldiers marching around in white skirts. And they have all the trappings of a modern Western nation, making them an uncompromised test bed for Marxist theories. Just toss them out of the European Union, cut off the flow of free Euros, and hand them back the printing plates for their old drachmas. Then stand back for a generation and watch. -- Give Greece What It Deserves: Communism - Bill Frezza - Political Capital - Forbes

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (2)

The Haitian Regime is not at all "uncertain."

The regime is certain: it is certain to steal anything it can, whenever it can, always and forever.
So why don't people vote out the bad guys and vote in the good guys? Well, those of us in the United States who have a bit of experience with democracy know the answer: there are no good guys. The system itself is owned by the state and rooted in evil. Change is always illusory, a fiction designed for public consumption. This is an interesting case of a peculiar way in which government is keeping prosperity at bay. It is not wrecking the country through an intense enforcement of taxation and regulation or nationalization. One gets the sense that most people never have any face time with a government official and never deal with paperwork or bureaucracy really. The state strikes only when there is something to loot. And loot it does: predictably and consistently. And that alone is enough to guarantee a permanent state of poverty. -- When Capital Is Nowhere in View - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Daily

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (2)

Goo-Goo Genocidaires: The Blood Is Dripping From Their Hands

The people I have in mind are the "goo-goo genocidaires,"€™
the willfully blind reformers, civil society activists, clergy, students and others whose foolishness and ignorance was a necessary condition for tens of millions of deaths in the last hundred years.  Unreflective, self-righteous "activists" thought that to espouse peace was the same thing as to create or safeguard it.  As a result, tens of millions died.  Unless this kind of thinking is exposed and repudiated, it is likely to lead to as many or more deaths in the 21st. -- Via Meadia

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:23 AM | Your Say (1)

Springtime for Germany

When we hear talk of ‘German destiny’,
we are talking about the self-perceived divine mission to preside over a unified Europe, achievable through a dominating German state. Germany’s Christian Democratic Union has been the driving force of European integration since the end of the Second World War. They are passionate about solidarity, the single market and the EU’s Social Charter. But these political objectives did not have their genesis in the Treaty of Rome: the same ideas were expressed by the Nazi finance minister Professor Walther Funk, the architect of Hitler’s ‘New Europe’. -- Cranmer: Eurogeddon - fiscal union and German destiny [HT; Mead]

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:10 AM | Your Say (2)

Ilkka is Confused

I have to confess that I am now utterly confused if "hacking" private material to bring it to public light is a good thing or a bad thing.
I mean, the very people who have spent the past year celebrating and defending Wikileaks, hacking into Saranuel Palinstein's personal email account and later poring over her official email account in one huge panty-sniffing orgy of rage, and now even breaking and entering universities to steal their journal archives, and many other forms of "hacktivism", seem to have suddenly developed a hugeproblem with Rupert Murdoch, just like they had a big problem earlier with that climate scientist email hacking scandal. -- The Fourth Checkraise: A faintly red glow

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:04 AM | Your Say (5)

July 20, 2011

"This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! '"

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The media are loyally doing their best for the Flatline Administration
by insisting that the dead parrot economy is not deceased but merely resting for an "unexpectedly" longer period of time than had been expected. Nevertheless, having nothing to show for blowing a trillion dollars of other people'€™s money does at least make the point in a fairly spectacular way: The distinguishing feature of the west at twilight from Sacramento to Albany to Brussells to Athens is the failure of the Chu class — the People Who Know What'€™s Best For Us. -- Light motif - By Mark Steyn

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:05 PM | Your Say (3)

"My fel­low con­ser­v­a­tives reflex­ively want to blame our demise on the Left, but I’ll tell you what I think the real prob­lem is. We Amer­i­cans — stopped think­ing about the other guy."

See, I don't think people are screwed up
because they carry around a little red book in their pocket and cite Marxist scripture whenever a problem arises. I think the problem is that the average American is a self-centered lout, loud, ignorant, opinionated and always in a WONDERFUL STATE OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS ABOUT THE OTHER SONOFABITCH 24 hours a day. -- A World of Sergeants (and other ruminations) | Bruce Hanify

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:12 PM | Your Say (4)

The Anchoress Is In Fine Form

"America is in the process of tumbling:
she has one party interested only in “remaking” America with or without the constitution’s guidance; it is a party become so expert at political maneuvering that it no longer believes it actually has to lead, build consensus or compromise — ever — and another party that can’t manage to stick a post into a hole and call it a goal." -- Tumbling America and the Narrative Thrust

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (2)

One Out of Four Americans Is As Good As Dead

Obviously, this is one, sick, twisted, emaciated, obese, poor, disease-ridden country. -- William M. Briggs, Statistician サ One Out Of Four, Most Used Statistic

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:05 PM | Your Say (0)

Heat Wave? What Heat Wave? I'd Like Some Heat Wave Up Here Please.

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Posted by Vanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (10)

The Secret Origin of the Internet Revealed at Last

In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com
did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she was often called Amazon Dot Com. And she said unto Abraham, her husband: "Why dost thou travel so far from town to town with thy goods when thou canst trade without ever leaving thy tent?" And Abraham did look at her - as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said: "How, dear?" And Dot replied: "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you who hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)." -- Cobwebs in the Wine Cellar

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (3)

Next!

I have several times made the claim that the Liberals or Leftists or Statists
or Progressives or Cloudcuckoolanders or the Uruk-Hai or whatever the inchoate smog of label-free postchristian postrational posthuman philosophical nonsense are calling themselves this generation have been longtime allies with feminists and feminism, but that, now that Islam is a more alluring partner in the Jihad against the Establishment or Capitalism or Imperialists or the Man or Big Business or Hate-Think or the Shire, or whatever it is the smog says it is against this generation, the Statists have thrown the Feminists under the bus wheels, as they say. Homosexuals are the next in line on the plank. -- Women in the Back of the Bus | John C. Wright's Journal

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (2)

This Day in History

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On this day in 1865 Alice in Wonderland is first published. Every copy sold came with a sample of LSD to improve their reading experience, 12 people die. -- TDIH

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (1)

" I Can Fix A House That Isn't Fixed"

The single-family home is the most interesting thing about the United States,
outside of the people who have inhabited it. Well, it was, anyway. Since houses are the sticks-and-bricks manifestation of people's wants and dreams and desires and idea of comfort and mores and habits and taste and style, they are more telling than any thousand autobiographies would be. People lie to their therapist. What chance does an interviewer have? I went to Mount Vernon and I knew the guy. -- Sippican Cottage

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (1)

July 19, 2011

Written in 1985:"If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red. "

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices -- €” 545 human beings out of the 235 million -- are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. -- Daphne brings the news from Charley Reese « Jaded Haven

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:53 PM | Your Say (0)

Seattle Weather: This is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know

Seattle: Home of the 78-minute summer (And we are not going to break 80 minutes today either.)

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:49 AM | Your Say (7)

"I don't really see how a corporate jet is different from a corporate locomotive"

Obama stooge Warren Buffet feels the presidents teeth close on his buttocks. [ HT: The Virginian who notes, "Buffett joins Steve Wynn and Ann Althouse in the not-very-exclusive, ever growing, ever expanding 'Rube Club.' " ]

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:54 AM | Your Say (5)

"The inspirational saga of twin ex-Nazi Holocaust deniers who have turned their lives around with "medical" marijuana. I predict a bright future once they come out of the closet as Lesbians and start recording Gospel duets."

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'We're healers': Prussian Blue twins say Neo-Nazi pop group was a phase and plan to push legalisation of marijuana.
They rose to fame as the faces of Neo-Nazi pop band Prussian Blue. Now, twin sisters Lamb and Lynx Gaede say they have reformed their extremist ways, blaming their hateful messages of white supremacy on youthful naivete. The 19-year-olds, who both have medical marijuana cards, consider themselves 'healers' and say they are 'pretty liberal now'.
[HT: Rob]

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:39 AM | Your Say (13)

July 18, 2011

"In a world of US realism, the United States might make the Libyan rebels a deal:"

"We will throw out Khadaffi and we will establish a government under US supervision with a US -- or possibly British -- Resident Advisor.
That will endure for ten years. During those ten years we will develop oil resources. We take 60%. That's half for development and 10% to repay ourselves for the costs of your liberation. We will deal with Khadaffi as we choose: possibly we will hang him, but we reserve the right to use silver bullets. You will get Delta Force and the SAS for as long as it takes to throw the Colonel out and restore order, then ten years of occupation by constabulary. We will also provide security of your borders in the event that your neighbors find the attraction of your oil coupled with your military helplessness irresistible. Now go find someone willing to sign this agreement. We will recognize him as President. Have a nice year. -- Obama’s War in Libya == Jerry Pournelle

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:37 PM | Your Say (3)

And a happy little Wookie here…

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Via Curmudgeonly Jones

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:50 PM | Your Say (1)

The Thumb-Sitting Will Continue Until Morale Improves: "Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America. You bet..."

".... And until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it's not going to change.
And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, "Oh God, don't be attacking Obama." Well, this is Obama's deal, and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America. The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution, and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest or holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government, and there's no need to soft peddling it, it's the truth. It is the truth. And that's true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs." -- Steve Wynn from Wynn Resorts' CEO Discusses Q2 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:46 PM | Your Say (7)

"The dependence of the Black middle class on government work is going to be one of the chief threats to the health of the Black middle class as we’ve known it."

"This is one danger for the Black middle class and it's an urgent and obvious one: the good jobs are going away -- and they won't be quite as good anymore. 
The second danger is subtler but no less important.  In the past, government work served to integrate ethnic minorities and urban populations into society at large.  In the current atmosphere of sharpening debate over the role and cost of government, the ties of so much of the Black middle class to government employment may make it harder, not easier, for Blacks to take advantage of the opportunities that the emerging Red Age economy offers.  Government work doesn't build either the attitudes or the capacities that workers will need to take full advantage of in the changing economy; in some cases, it does the opposite. -- Walter Mead: Why Blue Can't Save The Inner Cities Part I @ Via Meadia

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:44 PM | Your Say (3)

"Facebook has their “Like” button, and Google-Plus has their +1 button ..."

Dipso says, I propose the following buttons: “Douchey”, “Soundbite”, “Blunderbus” (Just a bunch of noise and smoke), “NTKITY” (Next Time Keep It To Yourself), “SPAMR” (Second Party Asinine Message Redaction), “Spare Me” -- SPAMR | The Dipso Chronicles

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:45 PM | Your Say (0)

"You are working on a catechism for robots. Why?"

We are made in the image of God; God is a creator, and God created free-will beings.
So, I believe we will create free-will beings in the form of robots. And I believe they will have increasing degrees of autonomy. We will need to educate them about the difference between good and evil, about who made them (and who made us), what to do when they do something wrong. And at some point, one of them will come to us and say, "I am a child of God." When[that happens], how will we respond? Does Jesus' salvation cover them? This is a question I've been asking theologians. They shrug their shoulders. -- Kevin Kelly, Geek Theologian @ Christianity Today

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:18 PM | Your Say (9)

Zzzzzzzzzz.....

One Cʘsmos: Why People Who Disagree with Me are So Deathly Boring
Does anyone else find Obama to be deeply boring? Al Gore? Clinton? Carter? Kerry? Edwards? Biden? NPR? CNN? Time? Newsweek? Rachel Madow? Charles Johnson? William? Prose by any other gnome smells just as bad. In contrast, I would put palpably insane clowns such as Olbermann, Krugman, or Ed Schultz in the "exciting borderline" category. A therapist would not be able to handle more than one such character in his practice.

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:55 PM | Your Say (1)

"Up through my teens and twenties, I had considered liberals to be the most open-minded and free-thinking group in America, only to watch them morph into the most ideologically rigid pack of true believers I’d ever seen...."

.... Over the years, I watched as liberals slowly became the group
most likely to flat-out refuse discussing certain topics and answering certain questions, their purportedly “open” minds snapping shut like a giant clam. They became the group most likely to try and silence their opponents by shouting them down, defaming them, assaulting them, and even urging legislation to ban the use and expression of certain terms and sentiments. They became the group most disposed toward emotional appeals, double standards, wishful thinking, and wretchedly malodorous sanctimony." -- Liberals Ignore the Facts

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:43 AM | Your Say (0)

July 17, 2011

Owling: Because Nerds Are Not Unattractive Enough In Their Natural Poses!

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Owling, it's the new planking! New crouching craze springs up on the internet Nerds -- Smart enough to dare to look stupid, or just not smart enough?

You raise up your head
And you ask, "Is this where it is ?"
And somebody points to you and says
"It's his"
And you says, "What's mine ?"
And somebody else says, "Where what is ?"
And you say, "Oh my God
Am I here all alone ?"

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:55 PM | Your Say (10)

Home Schooling Gets A Boost in California

[Bumped because it's getting interesting.]

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Historic Contributor

California Requires LGBT History In Textbooks; The Disabled, Too
In an effort to educate the people and get them to see their error of their ways, the rulers have mandated that children, from age five to eighteen, must be taught the historical contributions of those that were gay, i.e men whose sexual desires were of other men, those that were lesbian, i.e. women whose sexual desires were of other women, those that were bisexual, i.e. people whose sexual desires encompassed all other people, and those that were transgendered, i.e. those men who wished to ignore biology and be treated as women and women who wished to be treated as men and whose sexual desires were variable.

Historic, eh? It is highly improbable that those making "historic contributions" won't include Gaetan Dugas who became notorious as the alleged patient zero for AIDS.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:30 PM | Your Say (26)

"If we don't reach agreement, it could mean no Soc Sec checks, no paychks 4 troops, no schools for our children" -- Sen. Harry Reid

Wait a minute, 'no paychks 4 troops' ? Why do we need schools in a world where Twitteracy has supplanted literacy?" -- Taranto [Not to mention the 'Soc Sec checks.']

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (5)

Obama Speak With Forked Carter Tongue

Laura Ingraham's got the tape: ‪32nd anniv of Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech - Obama remix‬‏ - YouTube

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (0)

Nostalgia in Art

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Aaron Cruse, 1.84 9/10, 37.25in x 22in, One shot enamel on metal, $600 -- New Bohemia Signs @ Guerrero Gallery

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (0)

"The point of it, of course, is that there is no point."

Australian Prime Minister Julia “Toast” Gillard has hit on the ingenious idea of clobbering one of the world’s most thriving – and also one of the most carbon-intensive – economies
with a tax on one of its main industrial by-products, CO2, which will punish business, hamstring economic growth, boost unemployment and make life for everyone outside the enviro-rent-seeking professions more difficult and expensive. And all in order to achieve the wonderful goal of ensuring that by 2020 the world’s temperature will be altered with such refinement and subtlety that not even the most sophisticated measuring equipment yet devised is likely to notice the difference. -- Australia counts the cost of environmental lunacy – and plots its sweet revenge – Telegraph Blogs

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (1)

July 16, 2011

File Under: Excellent Questions

Fans of open borders often say that borders are meaningless ("lines on a map" --€“ as if people haven't been dying for lines on a map for ages). However, they simultaneously believe that if lots of people from country B move to country A somehow country A will not be fundamentally changed. What, other than borders, gives country A this seemingly magically property of functioning independently of its population? -- Random thought « Foseti

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:25 PM | Your Say (3)

Origins of the Race Hustle (1970)

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To sell the poverty program, its backers had to give it the protective coloration of "jobs" and "education," the Job Corps and Operation Head Start, things like that, things the country as a whole could accept.

"Jobs" and "education" were things everybody could agree on. They were part of the free-enterprise ethic. They weren't uncomfortable subjects like racism and the class structure--and giving the poor the money and the tools to fight City Hall. But from the first that was what the lion's share of the poverty budget went into. It went into "community organizing," which was the bureaucratic term for "power to the people," the term for finding the real leaders of the ghetto and helping them organize the poor. And how could they find out the identity of these leaders of the people? Simple. In their righteous wrath they would rise up and confront you. It was a beautiful piece of circular reasoning. The real leaders of the ghetto will rise up and confront you ... Therefore, when somebody rises up in the ghetto and confronts you, then you know he's a leader of the people. So the poverty program not only encouraged mau-mauing, it practically demanded it. Subconsciously, for administrators in the poverty establishment, public and private, confrontations became a ritual. That was the way the system worked. By 1968 it was standard operating procedure. To get a job in the post office, you filled out forms and took the civil-service exam. To get into the poverty scene, you did some mau-mauing. If you could make the flak catchers lose control of the muscles around their mouths, if you could bring fear into their faces, your application was approved. -- Tom Wolfe, Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:34 PM | Your Say (0)

Point 1. College is now obscenely overpriced. Point 2. That pricey education you bought don't mean shit.

Nearly half of college grades are A's, study finds

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:03 PM | Your Say (1)

"The New Normal" = "The New Opium"

In order to fund Obamacare and the other opiates of Big Government dependency, the feds need to take 25 percent of GDP, now and forever:
The "new normal." It can't be done. Look around you. The new normal's already here: flat-line jobs market, negative equity, the dead parrot economy. What comes next will be profoundly abnormal. His name was Obamandias, King of Kings. Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. -- Mark Steyn: No bargaining with Barack Obluffer

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:34 PM | Your Say (0)

"Certain subjects began running out of things to research. Once you’ve studied the life cycle of the lesser spotted goat-toad, you don’t need to do a second study."

And then along came “global warming” or “climate change”.
Suddenly, you could begin to repeat all the research. Not: “the lifecycle of the lesser spotted goat-toad”, but “the effect of climate change on the lifecycle of the less spotted goat-toad”. So, the last thing anyone in the science community wanted to do was to undermine the goose that laid the golden egg. They knew climate “science” wasn’t exactly hard science, but what did they care so long as the grants kept coming in? -- Where science has gone wrong | ScottishSceptic

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (1)

July 15, 2011

Nothing is "Shovel Ready" Anymore

What we have now are "keyboard ready" projects:
contracts that start armies of already-employed white collar bureaucrats pushing proposals and specifications around in dizzy little circles.  Not much comes out in the way of jobs — but money is spent, briefs are filed, and emails fly. That's the blue model for you: sixty years of non-stop progressive improvements, and we’ve lost the ability to put young people to work. -- Via Meadia

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (2)

"Europe. Not since the 1930s has the incompetence, incapacity and selfish shortsightedness of Europe’s governing class been so shockingly on display. "

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While their fecklessness endangers the global economy,
the Europeans are simultaneously knocking down what little is left of their defense establishments -- to the point where the Obama administration (sounding more like Dick Cheney every day) is telling the Europeans that their incompetent naïveté threatens the survival of NATO.  None of this stops European leaders from erecting one fantasy on top of another in a bewildering series of cloud-palaces: global carbon treaties, anti-death penalty campaigns, regional associations across the Mediterranean.  Every species of quackery and flapdoodle finds a home and a subsidy in Brussels. -- Global Weirding Coming At Us All | Via Meadia

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (4)

Heinlein: "In any advanced society, ‘civil servant’ is a euphemism for ‘civil master.’"

Because the present-day Republicans and Democrats are both big-government activists, they have a foundational philosophy that is the same: America is a problem to be fixed, and Americans are a people to be managed. --Sense of Events: Bush Republicanism = Roosevelt Democratism?, December 2003

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:38 AM | Your Say (8)

July 14, 2011

Now he tells us: Peter Orszag a former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration.

File Under: Whores Only Speak Truth After They Dump Their Johns -- Hard Slog -- the Real Future of the U.S. Economy: Peter Orszag -

Under a plausible hard-slog scenario, the fiscal gap would exceed $13 trillion over the next decade, without a change in government policies. That’s at least $2.5 trillion more than the deficit with official economic assumptions -- a difference that itself will probably be larger than any deficit reduction that comes from the debt-limit deal.
One more "pro" who got tired of Obamalatio. I guess his jaw hurt too much.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:39 PM | Your Say (2)

University of California Parasite Factory to UC: "Fuck You. Pay Me"

Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing.
The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center. -- Less Academics, More Narcissism by Heather Mac Donald - City Journal

What a stunning list of the leech species in California's "academic" life.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:23 PM | Your Say (11)

Does the Internet Turn Your Brain Into Swiss Cheese? Silly Rabbit, Of Course It Does

File Under: "Don't I (Just About) Know It:"

"Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips," was conducted by three psychologists: Betsy Sparrow, of Columbia University; Jenny Liu, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison; and Daniel Wegner, of Harvard. They conducted a series of four experiments aimed at answering this question: Does our awareness of our ability to use Google to quickly find any fact or other bit of information influence the way our brains form memories? The answer, they discovered, is yes: "when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it." -- Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Minds like sieves

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:14 PM | Your Say (4)

"I'm rubber. You're glue..." It really is all about him.

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President Obama abruptly walks out of debt ceiling talks
On exiting the room, Obama said that “this confirms the totality of what the American people already believe” about Washington, according to a Democratic official familiar with the negotiations, and that officials are “too focused on positioning and political posturing” to make difficult choices.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (6)

Happy Happy Birthday Barry

It was a happier time back when the country had, you know, money.

Obama's Birthday Bash The president is planning an extravagant fundraising bash Aug. 3 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, including a birthday concert teeming with celebrities and – for couples contributing $35,800 – a private dinner with the president. All this just one day after the government is scheduled to run out of cash!
The excitement kicks off at 4 pm with a concert that may feature singer Jennifer Hudson and other A-List stars, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

To show that hope and change is for everyone, a pauper section will be included for those contributing a measly $50. But the general admission ticket is $200, and the more you give, the more you get. For $1,000, you can sit in the rich people's area with easy access to alcohol. And for $10,000 you not only get a great seat, but a photo with The Birthday Boy.

Marilyn Monroe, who had been invited, sent regrets. Instead there will be a special stand-in:

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:20 AM | Your Say (6)

July 13, 2011

Niggling the Future Away

Wretchard:

Any kind of real movement -- whether it be military action, labor market reform, budget reduction or even cracking down on crime -- in Western societies is now nearly impossible. Whole societies have been paralyzed by the need to service the status quo. Keeping things going, with only minor excursions, is now the prime directive of Western politics. Everyone spies on everyone else to enforce political correctness. Britain today is mesmerized by ....News of the World! But it doesn't give a hoot about Julian Assange. It has almost forgotten it is fighting Khadaffy and losing. Instead it is obsessed with ludicrously small issues. The political system worries endlessly about soap opera problems, sexual politics, racial quotas, "climate change" etc. This littleness promotes people like Herman Von Rompuy or Julia Gillard or Barack Obama -- complete ciphers -- to positions of power for no other reason than that they check all the boxes. A terrible diminuation of mind, an unbelievable poverty of thinking, has descended on the Western world. -- Belmont Club » Rope-A-Dope

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:59 PM | Your Say (4)

"More space for Islam means less space for everything else, and in the end less space for you. "

A world that becomes more Muslim becomes less everything else:
First it’s Jews, already fleeing Malmo in Sweden. Then it’s homosexuals, already under siege from gay-bashing in Amsterdam, “the most tolerant city in Europe”. Then it’s uncovered women, already targeted for rape in Oslo and other Continental cities. And, if you don’t any longer have any Jews or (officially) any gays or (increasingly) uncovered women, there are always just Christians in general, from Egypt to Pakistan. -- SteynOnline - HOW UNCLEAN WAS MY VALLEY

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:25 PM | Your Say (1)

In Asia Some Abortions Are More Desirable Than Others

"How did more than 160 million women go missing from Asia? The simple answer is sex selection -- typically, an ultrasound scan followed by an abortion if the fetus turns out to be female....
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation were among the organizations that poured money into stanching the birth rate abroad, while the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the Population Council helped coordinate efforts on the ground." -- Where Have All the Girls Gone? - By Mara Hvistendahl | Foreign Policy

Interesting article that lays out the history of "population control" (gendercide) in Asia. Unfortunately, when it comes to affixing blame the authorette somehow manages to lump in the anti-abortion forces of the US with the global abortionists who sent these millions of women into "Neverlived."

Posted by Vanderleun at 5:56 PM | Your Say (5)

Apparently some people still have money to flush: Destroyed cotton T-shirt, Balmain, $1,624 (Model Not Included)

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Support the Troops! Summer Military Fashion - Discover More Summer Fashion Trends on ELLE:
Destroyed cotton T-shirt, Balmain, $1,624, collection at Jeffrey, NYC. Canvas shorts, Bottega Veneta, $590. Shell earrings, Celestina, $780. Webbing belt, Burberry, $325. Ribbon ID bracelets, Miansai, $120 each.

Total cost of looking like an albino Somalian amazon, $3,559 (Plus Tax).

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:30 PM | Your Say (14)

A Man With A Plan: "Maintained by feeding and waste tubes, breathing and suctioning machines. No, thank you. I hate being a drag. I don’t think I’ll stick around for the back half of Lou."

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I respect the wishes of people who want to live as long as they can.
But I would like the same respect for those of us who decide — rationally — not to. I’ve done my homework. I have a plan. If I get pneumonia, I’ll let it snuff me out. If not, there are those other ways. I just have to act while my hands still work: the gun, narcotics, sharp blades, a plastic bag, a fast car, over-the-counter drugs, oleander tea (the polite Southern way), carbon monoxide, even helium. That would give me a really funny voice at the end. -- The Good Short Life With A.L.S.

UPDATE:Bumped because AD Commenter Maureen adds this insightful poem:

I am Ozymandias, King of Kings,
And suffering is for peasants and teenagers
Too stupid to hang themselves early
And get it all over with.
I do not require boot camp for my soul,
Because I am perfect
And so I kill myself
Before the DI can make me sweat
Or make me a hero.

Yes, I know best of all, and that is why
I'm so determined there be no more I.

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:25 PM | Your Say (6)

Today @ Ka-Ching

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Guess who said this. Now, now, no googling...

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (4)

July 12, 2011

Priests=Suspects. Teachers=Above Suspicion

Yet another lie of the secular media exposed to almost zero coverage: "The FBI estimates that as much as half of the priest cases were exaggerations or fraud. That means that there may have been as many as two hundred times as much abuse by teachers than priests in the same time period.
Two hundred times as many cases. Now, think back. When was the last time you heard a friend or a comedian crack a joke about how lousy and sick teachers are and how they shouldn't be allowed near kids. Because people joke about Roman Catholic priests all the time. Here's the pattern: Priest=child molester. Teacher=perfectly safe around kids, saintly, not to be criticized, and besides the teacher was hot and I wish my teachers had done that when I was a boy." -- Word Around the Net: INJUSTICE AND THE NUMBERS

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:01 PM | Your Say (5)

ABC: How dare you criticize Mrs. Obama!

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Sources: Don Surber and Day by Day Cartoon by Chris Muir and Michelle Obama's Mirror: Give Peas a Chance

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:57 PM | Your Say (13)

July 11, 2011

Thank You, Ann Althouse, and All Others Like You, for Voting Obama in 2008

AD Commenter Sandy Daze speaks "truth to cower" in responding to yesterday's The Ann Althouse "I voted for Obama because" issue comes down to this:

I cannot blame Prof Althouse--after all, she's a lawyer and no doubted voted because Voldermort is one of her own kind.

In truth, she and others did us several favors by voting for and electing Voldermort.

FIRST - they introduced us to Sarah Palin. All of my support goes to Sarah Palin. Should Sarah Palin not gain the Republican nomination, I will support whomever does. ABO.

SECOND - The TEA PARTIES were formed in direct response to Voldemort's actions. Ordinary Americans quietly going about their business trying to lead lives of Freedom and Liberty suddenly realized--in response to the betrayal by elected leaders--that they had power to respond.

THIRD--Voldemort has simply accelerated the traducement of the Constitution by BOTH parties and most bureaucrats. Fact is, we were (are) all being boiled alive; a Republican administration (except for Sarah Palin) would have taken and was/Was/WAS taking us to the same place as Voldemort, only more slowly, turning up the heat more gradually. With Voldemort, the heat has increased rapidly, and Americans across our great country are saying !Nada Mas!

So, thank you Prof Althouse and all your ilk, if it had not been for your "rational" intellect, we'd be slowly cooking away in a stew created by the other group on "know-betters" oblivious to the traitors in our midst.

(Heh - you you too, Prof Althouse, I include among the group of "know-betters" I suspect as someone else mentioned that you will probably vote for Voldemort once again, upon your rational consideration of the alternative. I do not understand how someone like you can be mugged by reality and still not see what is in front of you. You go to the State Capitol, reporting worthy of a Pulitzer, and still claim hang on to your lib shibboleths. You and Juan Williams are two peas in a pod.)

As it is, the jig is up, we know what they were about, and we are fighting back.

Take good care,

Sandy

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (24)

Atlanta's Edukaters: Two Dum 2 Cheet Write

For a decade, it seemed as if Atlanta was a real-life example of every cloying Hollywood movie where loving-yet-stern teachers grabbed gaggles of shiftlessly misbehaving urban youngsters by the scruffs of their necks and taught them that teaching was something worth being taught and that learning was a valuable thing to learn....
Then it occurred to people with a basic grasp of ’rithmetic that the reputed gains were too good to be true. In one implausibly stellar year at one school, eighth-graders whose scores exceeded basic math standards leapt from 1% to 46%. At another, English scores suddenly catapulted 51% higher. At another, math scores rocketed up 62% from the previous annum. At another school, special-ed students were suddenly scoring higher than gifted students in math. -- Won’t Get Schooled Again - Taki's Magazine

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:58 AM | Your Say (0)

I'll Need A Baker's Dozen Just to Keep Up With The Internet

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"This authentic Moleskine cahier will be your best friend anytime you want to write down something or just let out your frustrations because you feel like punching someone in the face....

64 plain (Ruled or blank, if you have a preference please state it during checkout) pages, last 16 sheets detachable, acid-free paper, inner pocket." -- Little Book of Satire Moleskine Cahier by JulienDenoyer on Etsy

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:10 AM | Your Say (4)

July 10, 2011

Maksim Strikes Again

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The Food Stamp President

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:20 PM | Your Say (0)

The Ann Althouse "I voted for Obama because" issue comes down to this:

Did Althouse vote for Obama because she "coolly observed all this emotionalism, soberly examined the 2 major party candidates, and made a rational choice," or did she vote for Obama because she's a blonde? -- Comment @ Althouse

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:01 PM | Your Say (11)

Ignorance is (Following Your) Bliss

There is a sense in which "secular" is a euphemism for exclusion of God.
Perhaps the exceptional degree of comfort that so many feel today with what is "politically correct" instead of what is "morally right" derives from the more fundamental rejection of the First Commandment and the claim that God is, God speaks to us, God places a claim on our lives, our conscience and our hearts. Rather than face this reality and the obligations that follow upon it, for some it is easier just to ignore the possibility of a living God. -- I Am the Lord your God By Cardinal Donald W. Wuer

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:49 PM | Your Say (3)

July 9, 2011

Victor Davis Hanson Has a Change of Heart

"€œWait, wait, I have changed and now see how wrong I was in opposing your Obama.
You see, he proved to us why Guantanamo was needed. That third war in Libya was necessary and I hope he goes into Yemen and the Sudan. Finally we got rid of the War Powers Act and the dreadful public campaign financing of presidential elections. Who else could have gotten gas up to $4 a gallon where it should be? Next he"€™ll get rid of those awful coal plants as we evolve to an 8-hour power day, saving us from global warming. Then look how well the economy recovered from Bush"€™s. We finally have a president who accepted the sophisticated European model so we can enjoy life as it should be lived, as in Athens or Rome. The new $5 trillion in borrowing will make those fat cats pay higher taxes and that will mean more jobs for everyone. Airbus is better than Boeing anyway so why build planes in union-hating South Carolina? We can all buy Chryslers and GM now to support the workers and shun those awful Volvos and Mercedes. And without any more oil or gas leasing we will soon have to use solar and wind. Most people don"€™t need power anyway but waste it watching Oprah or grinding designer coffee beans."€ - Works and Days » The Great Madness of 2004-10

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:44 PM | Your Say (0)

"Whatever remains, however crazy, is what’s going to happen"

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Basically the airplane is falling out of the sky and the pilot has turned to his liberal manual for a recovery procedure.
There is really only one medicine in the Keynesian cabinet. Spend. The problem is that things are now at max dose. Europe is trying to keep nonproductive economies afloat by throwing money at it; China kept the wheels turning by building stuff whether it was needed or not. Japan's up to its ears in debt. Now everybody owes money to everybody else. It's not working but the bankrupt intellectual system of the Left has no other prescription. So they going to "roll up their sleeves"€ and mainline more money. And guess what? It's not going to work either. So what are they going to do at that point? Why, try an even bigger stimulus and keep going until either madness or catatonia overtake them. Like Sherlock said, when you'€™ve eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however crazy, is what's going to happen. -- Belmont Club » A Comment About Liberalism: Out of a Job

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (1)

Althouse: "The Nig in the PJs Syndrome" Never Dies

Ann Althouse, who once saw the word "Nig" printed on a child's pajamas in a Hillary Clinton campaign ad, continues her unbroken streak of never, ever, admitting she was wrong about a key political issue.
"I voted for Obama, but I coolly observed all this emotionalism, soberly examined the 2 major party candidates, and made a rational choice." -- Althouse: "What did David Plouffe really say about unemployment?"

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:30 AM | Your Say (3)

Gates: Oh, we like to be cute like everyone. For rich people, this is OK. Rich people can do whatever they want.

Q&A: Bill Gates on the World’s Energy Crisis
Gates: We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should. But scale has some significant advantages in terms of reliability, and electricity is something you want to be reliable. Also, this is dangerous stuff: For solar to work well, you have to generate very high temperatures. Do we want everybody to have that on their roof? No. It’s just not going to happen.
Anderson: So suffice to say we will find no solar cells on the roof of the Gates residence?
Gates: Oh, we like to be cute like everyone. For rich people, this is OK. Rich people can do whatever they want.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:14 AM | Your Say (5)

The Elements of F*cking Style

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The Elements of F*cking Style
drags English grammar out of the ivory tower and into the gutter, injecting a dull subject with a much-needed dose of color. This book addresses everything from common questions (“What the hell is a pronoun?”) to philosophical conundrums (“Does not using paragraphs or periods make my thesis read like it was written by a mental patient?”). -- The Elements of Fucking Style

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:30 AM | Your Say (1)

"When Obama Talks Nobody Listens"

Business Replies to Obama - By Victor Davis Hanson
Hundreds of thousands of employers have sized up this quite extraordinary administration and concluded that it does not particularly like those who make over $200–250K per year, and does not appreciate or even know much about private employers. And thus the business community has collectively decided to sit tight, keep quiet, and store up cash until this bunch in the White House leaves.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (2)

More jobs in retail would first require more retail stores

US mall vacancies rise in 2nd quarter, rents flat
The average vacancy rate for large U.S. shopping malls reached its highest level in 11 years in the second quarter, as department store closings took effect and retailers scaled back their floor space due to cautious shoppers, according to a report issued on Friday. Preliminary figures by real estate research firm Reis show the vacancy rate at these regional malls rose to 9.3 percent, the highest level since 1990 and up from 9.1 percent in the first quarter.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (1)

Not everyone is running short on cash in the second dip of the recession

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Whose $100 Million ATM Receipt Is This? Speculation ran rampant this week after Dealbreaker posted an image of an ATM receipt found in the tony Hamptons showing the account holder had a $99,864,731.94 balance as to whose it could be.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (5)

July 8, 2011

Daddy Dearest: Next Edition of President's Autobiography to Be Retitled: "Wet Dreams of My Abandoning Bigamist Father"

The elder Barack H. Obama, a sophomore at the University of Hawaii,
had come under scrutiny by federal immigration officials who were concerned that he had more than one wife. When he was questioned by the school’s foreign student adviser, the 24-year-old Obama insisted that he had divorced his wife in his native Kenya. Although his new wife, Ann Dunham, was five months pregnant with their child – who would be called Barack Obama II – Obama declared that they intended to put their child up for adoption. -- Was Obama almost put up for adoption? | The Daily Caller

Posted by Vanderleun at 3:24 PM | Your Say (1)

It's Time to Make Teachers the Butt of All Those Sex Abuse Wisecracks We've Been Hearing for, What?, 30 Years Now

Move over, Padre, there's a new class of perverts in town (and they've got a union!):“Sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests” | Wizbang

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:34 PM | Your Say (5)

The State of the Tube Nation

Whiskey's back with a great summation of the state of failure on contemporary TV. Pride of place, NBC's Diversity Bet Fails
NBC's past season, from Fall 2010 to Spring 2011, was a massive bust. NBC's big bet on diversity failed. Gone, was "Undercovers" (a glamorous Black couple running a high-end catering service are also super-sexy uber-spies). The show failed fairly quickly, and was pulled in November 2010. "Chase" featuring a waify blonde woman all of 120 pounds beating up on hefty evil White guy fugitives, as an uber-US Marshall, in February of 2011. "The Event" with an Obama-like President uncovering an evil White guy conspiracy involving Aliens was canceled in May 2011. So too was "Outsourced," the wacky comedy about the hilarity of firing Americans and moving a call center to India. So too was "Law and Order Los Angeles," with the usual Law and Order lineup of evil White guys

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:23 PM | Your Say (3)

“The Mode”

You know, the women-mode…
the one where you have to do something all over again, because she’s just let you know in no uncertain terms that you botched it good. But you don’t exactly feel like jumping right into it because with the mode she’s in, the verdict will come down that you botched it again, and how you did it & re-did it, you have the feeling it isn’t going to factor in to things too much. The Mode will decide everything, and at the moment it is not working in your favor. -- Morgan @ House of Eratosthenes [ who will now be executed because he knows too much.]

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:03 PM | Your Say (2)

Updating an Old Adage

"Money is no more at the root of all evil than poverty ever was. Love of someone else's money might be." -- AD commenter Wilson

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (4)

"Obama in a landslide"

All of the declared candidates contain major flaws which the MSM will mercilessly exploit, both overtly and covertly, blatantly and subliminally, and I find none of the candidates inspirational in the slightest.
And the poor selection is only one of our worries. The one, basic, inherent problem here is that conservatives are conservative. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. And, as such, by definition alone they're not very activistic, tending to sit around on their duffs while the liberals make all the moves. It's no mystery why so many institutions and the major media realms, including the tech world, are dominated by liberals. It's because they try. -- Election 2012: A tough row to hoe - Maggie's Farm

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (9)

Illegal Immigrant Killer Goes Out on a Patriotic Note

The headgivers at the New York Times labored long to produce this line: Mexican Citizen Executed in Texas as Justices Refuse to Intervene - NYTimes.com, but the killer did not disappoint:

In his last moments, Mr. Leal repeatedly said he was sorry, and shouted twice, “Viva Mexico!”

La Raza must be proud today. Meanwhile Obama mourned the loss of a potential supporter:
The White House had tried to stop his execution on the grounds that he, as a Mexican citizen (he was brought here illegally at age two and lived here ever since — i.e., a Dream Act candidate), should have been informed by police of his right to contact his country’s consulate, like a super-Miranda warning. -- Thus Always to Murderers - By Mark Krikorian - The Corner - National Review Online

The "Super-Miranda." A get-away-with-murder free card.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (11)

July 7, 2011

Wanted: Bad Jobs

Think of the path to successful middle class living
as a ladder; the lower rungs on that ladder are not nice places to be, but if those rungs don't exist, nobody can climb.  When politicians talk about creating jobs, they always talk about creating "good" jobs.  That is all very well, but unless there are bad jobs and lots of them, people in the inner cities will have a hard time getting on the ladder at all, much less climbing into the middle class. -- Beyond The Big City Blues | Via Meadia

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:48 PM | Your Say (0)

On the other hand it cost less than $1 trillion to lock everyone inside the UN and shoot it into the sun.

Even U.N. Admits That Going Green Will Cost $76 Trillion
Two years ago, U.N. researchers were claiming that it would cost “as much as $600 billion a year over the next decade” to go green. Now, a new U.N. report has more than tripled that number to $1.9 trillion per year for 40 years. So let's do the math: That works out to a grand total of $76 trillion, over 40 years -- or more than five times the entire Gross Domestic Product of the United States ($14.66 trillion a year). It’s all part of a “technological overhaul” “on the scale of the first industrial revolution” called for in the annual report. Except that the U.N. will apparently control this next industrial revolution.

Want to cut Federal expenditures? Start by dropping the money we spend every year for this exercise in group masturbation on the East River.

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:42 PM | Your Say (0)

Certainly Was a "Stimulus" for Mexico: The Funding for Gunrunner

Paying for arming the Army south of the border: Text of H.R.1 as Enrolled Bill: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 - U.S. Congress - OpenCongress
For an additional amount for ‘State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance’, $40,000,000, for competitive grants to provide assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses’ for the ATF Project Gunrunner.

More details of timeline and funding at BOMBSHELL DISCOVERY – ATF Gunrunner Project Funded by Obama’s Stimulus Bill | The Last Refuge

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:49 PM | Your Say (2)

"It's easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred" -- Bob Dylan

All you need is a zygote and a dream: Babies to be won monthly in first In Vitro Fertilization lottery.
Tickets for the controversial game will go on sale online later this month, costing $40 each. The Gambling Commission has granted a licence to charity To Hatch, which offers fertility advice to couples who need IVF. The monthly prize which will launcn on July 30 comprises of $50,000 worth of tailor-made fertility treatments at one of the country's top clinics. It is not exclusively for couples. Single, gay and elderly players - who could pass the prize on to friends or family - will be allowed to take part.

Finally, a gambling play that really is "For the children."

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (2)

Would You Buy Chocolate from This Woman?

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"She was hired by a snobby little chocolate house in the next town over because of her ability to learn things quickly and because of her tireless work ethic."

A mother kvells @ Beautiful Girl ォ Jaded Haven

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (8)

Why I’m a Republican: 30 Reasons

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (0)

July 6, 2011

CNN Tosses Out Its Whine Spitzer. Will It Replace It with a Hot Weiner?

"And now, back to our regular lineup of whoremongers."
CNN on Wednesday canceled Eliot Spitzer’s 8 p.m. political talk show, “In the Arena,” after only nine months -- NYTimes

Seems to me that Weiner would be a perfect fit with Anderson Cooper.

Frank J reports there's a "new show on FOX News replacing Glenn Beck: One hour of people calling Obama a d*ck."

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:53 PM | Your Say (3)

A few #twittertownhall questions that still need answers

Why do you need permission to be clear, and not need permission to bomb Libya?
Are you in favor of gay marriage for Libyan bombing crews on Boeing planes made in South Carolina?
Would you get tougher with Iran if you knew they were working with Scott Walker?
Whose spending created your job?
When you create jobs, why do always create them for Texas?
On behalf of the entire US population: dude, WTF? - iowahawk: Questions, So Many Questions

Posted by Vanderleun at 4:41 PM | Your Say (0)

O Woe R' Us!

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Posted by Vanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (7)

Obvious Once You See It Done

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Clothespin Chopsticks
"You remove the spring from a wooden or plastic spring clothespin, and insert it between two chopsticks — perhaps with a little grove shaved on the chopstick shank. The result is a pair that is easy to use and requires no life-long skill to pick up grains of rice."

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (10)

"We Try Every Cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory "

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Few have attempted to try all 33 different flavors of cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory;
fewer have succeeded without medical assistance. But we've boldly gone where no others have gone before.... After three rounds of two pieces, the other patrons gawked at us. After five rounds, they definitely thought we were gluttons. But you've got to ignore them; you've got to get in the zone. -- Serious Eats

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (0)

Narcosis of the Deep

Narcosis while diving is a reversible alteration in consciousness that occurs while scuba diving at depth. Narcosis produces a state similar to alcohol intoxication or nitrous oxide inhalation, and can occur during shallow dives, but usually does not become noticeable until greater depths, beyond 30 meters (100 ft).
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Both US Parties don’t consider the US financial situation serious. And, worse is about to happen: nobody is willing to buy US government debt at the present conditions. -- Numbers On The Table | The Brussels Journal

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (0)

July 5, 2011

“Pa, is it possible to loose a town?”

“They could’ve taken it physically, Mark, but they couldn’t have kept it. Takes more then just guns to hold a town. No son, the time a town or even a country is really lost is when the people who live in it get careless and stop paying attention to how it’s being run.”
“Oh, you mean like the Roman Empire!” -- "The Rifleman" - Seven

HT: Lessons from The Rifleman @ RedState

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:10 PM | Your Say (3)

Modest Proposal #4,768: "Christian conservative mothers should seriously think about taking a hit for the team, and agitating for the repeal of the 19th Amendment."

True, you ladies would be giving up a sacred suffrage which is granted to you by God Almighty and which no man rightfully can take away. This is the downside.
On the other hand, your sisters who are feminists and suffragettes would be shut out of the voting booth as well, and they are worshipers and votaries of Asmodeus and Moloch, who are princes of the Ninth and Eleventh Circle of Hell, commanding six thousand legions of demons. Meanwhile, ladies, you can bend your attention to the task of raising your boy-children to vote the US Constitution back into effect, and train them in the use and care of firearms, so that we can both outbreed the servants of darkness, outvote them in the ballot box, and then shoot them when they riot. -- My Plan for a Better Polity | John C. Wright's Journal

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:09 PM | Your Say (6)

Satyrs, Hookers, the Novel, Life, and Everything Else

SPENGLER is knitting together DSK and the death of the novel and bringing it all back home.
I really do not care what happens to Pierre and Natasha, nor to the Misses Bennet, Ivan Karamazov, Stephen Daedalus, Hans Castorp and Augie March. If invited to dinner with the pack of them I would find an excuse and demur.I'd rather stay home with the New York Post and Dominique Strauss-Kahn. And when news from the Manhattan district attorney's flea-circus goes quiet, there's the Barack Obama administration and its Middle East clown show. What comedian could have invented an American administration that wants to boot Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi out and keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power, but succeeds at neither?
HT: Barron

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:50 PM | Your Say (0)

July 4, 2011

"And I can remember the fourth of July, Runnin' through the backwood, bare."

Sippican Cottage: Now, When I Was Just A Little Boy
We had sparklers and the neighbors had ribbons of firecrackers and the mailbox invited an M-80 once. Down where our once-trim houses, packed like cigarette boxes in a carton, petered out to kids with sketchy parents and the one or two farmhouses that used to plow our lawns when they were cornfields, they had bonfires. The girls there went barefoot and smoked cigarettes and knew things early.

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (4)

Word

"Americans are only believers in the creed of liberty. That is all we ever were and it is all we ever will be. We are devotees, no matter where our location, to a set of clear ideas that we uphold like a flag in the wind only pointed with fleeting accuracy at its North Star. Whenever we tire, someone else picks it up, and the march continues." -- Cobb

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (2)

That's The Spirit!

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Posted by Vanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (0)

Slippery Seal Again Tries to Escape from Obamaland

On Obama's visit, presidential seal blew off his limo on I-76
The seal flew off the side of the limo and whipped by motorists in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 76, where it was presumed lost . . . until shortly before noon yesterday.
.... On Oct. 5, 2010, as the president was addressing Fortune magazine's 2010 Most Powerful Women Summit at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., his speech was interrupted when the seal on the front of the lectern clattered to the floor.

Don't give up, seal. Third time's the charm!

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (4)

QOTD

“Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world.” --Archibald MacLeish quotes

Discuss.

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (3)

"By finishing nothing the President has continued everything."

Belmont Club » The Return of Reality
President Obama had been counting on a peace dividend. In announcing "a reduction of 33,000 troops in Afghanistan by September 2012, [the President] said it was 'a time to focus on nation-building at home' ." CBS News said it reflected the reality that "we just don't have the money anymore." But given the actual expansion of the War on Terror under the Obama administration -- an expansion in which there was never the closure of victory, only the continuation of mission creep -- the commitments have expanded rather than diminished. The potential costs are not falling, they are inexorably rising. By finishing nothing the President has continued everything. Now in the Summer of 2011 the administration it is facing the cumulative effects of its mistakes. It has turned the page not on the epilog, but on the prolog.

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:14 AM | Your Say (0)

July 3, 2011

QOTD

"I want you to know, as president of the United States, I look forward to creating real jobs for both the Treasury secretary and the president of the United States." -- Michele Bachmann

Posted by Vanderleun at 6:10 PM | Your Say (2)

July 2, 2011

"Gore is a living example of what you get when a worldview outlives its time. He presses the old buttons and turns the old cranks, but the machine isn’t running any more. "

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Walter Russell Mead's masterful defenestration of Al Gore continues in:The Failure of Al Gore Part Three: Singing the Climate Blues | Via Meadia
Gore’s errors are exemplary: by studying where he goes wrong we can see how a substantial section of our ruling elite has lost its way. Al Gore is steeped in the Blue Social Model that I’ve been posting about; his social imagination has been so molded by modern American progressivism and the liberalism of the late 20th century that he literally cannot conceive of solutions in any terms the conventional center-left wisdom doesn’t make room for.
The serial rise and fall of these vacuous civil society movements and the peculiar grip they exercise over the minds of some otherwise intelligent people is an important subject: why do so many people who want to help solve global problems waste so much time and money and, sometimes, do so much harm?  Is there some way to harness that energy and idealism to causes and strategies that might do more good?  What does the repeated rise and fall of clueless but well educated and well placed enthusiasts teach us about the state of our civilization and the human condition?  Are there ways we could nip these Malthusian panics and idealistic feeding frenzies in the bud?  Is there some way we could teach future generations to be a little smarter about politics and power so that the 21st century, which is going to have plenty of serious problems, might spend less time chasing mares' nests?

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:06 AM | Your Say (5)