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November 30, 2011

Obama: "I'm going to need another term to finish the job."

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Work, work, work! POTUS Tracker [HT:Scott M]

Because he's just been working so hard all the time, day in and day out, for years with never a moment off during the first term? [Source News from The Associated Press]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 PM | Your Say (2)

"In early industrial England there was plenty of useful work for everyone to do.

That no longer applies. There are now large and swelling segments of the population for whom society has no use. Set down in cold print like that, it looks like a dreadful thing to say. But the very preposterousness of our favored remedies—send them all to college!—betrays an underlying hopelessness. -- Life at the Bottom

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:45 PM | Your Say (0)

"The banner of modernity, on which in letters of purple and tittles of gold, is writ the slogan of the modern mind: we define our own values!"

It is a sentiment worthy of the Pepsi Generation. I am puzzled, and contemptuous,
of those who claim it is progress to return to an intellectual world that is formless and void, as if no human race had ever existed, nor any forefathers ever learned any moral lessons in life, in order to create for oneself, by fiat like a god, a personal cosmos. Are you going to write your own Periodic Table, O Demiurge, after you are done writing your own Ten Commandments? -- On What We Lost | John C. Wright's Journal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 PM | Your Say (1)

Spoiling "Progressive" Forever

One Cʘsmos: Speaking of the Devil: Exorcism through Word Magic

The illiberal left first appropriated that noble word, "liberal," but then proceeded to spoil it, so they had to move on to "progressive." But based upon the uncivilized behavior of the progressive bums, criminals, parasites, and sociopaths of the OWS movement, this word may soon suffer a similar fate. No one will want to be called "progressive," because it will imply an angry, inarticulate, lawless, and lice-ridden loser. In other words, it will have come too close to actually describing reality.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:19 PM | Your Say (0)

Into the Earth, Junior Birdmen!: Air Force Academy adapts to pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans

Officials say an $80,000 Stonehenge-like worship center underscores a commitment to embrace all religions. -- latimes.com [Sigh.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 PM | Your Say (3)

"He looked at me funny, give me some money."

And so we have our completely bizarre moonlight ritual of sexual harassment litigation.
What’s the phrase we wanted to toss into the time capsule? “Non-sexual gesture that made her feel uncomfortable.” There ya go. Somewhere in a Wall Street Journal (may or may not go rummaging in the archives to find it) someone was guessing the break-even point for these things to be around a hundred grand. I’m doubting like the dickens this is an accident. Wherever a community of people rely on a meal ticket, someone in our system of “law” will pop up to inflate that meal ticket by whatever means…and when the break-even point is a hundred large, a “go away” jackpot of fifty is obviously not unreasonable. -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:42 PM | Your Say (1)

What if the Constitution No Longer Applied?

What if the government could write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event, the Constitution be damned? What if the government was the reason we don’t have a Constitution anymore? What if you could love your country but hate what the government has done to it? What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government? What if Jefferson was right? -- by Andrew P. Napolitano

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:35 PM | Your Say (5)

Gov. Chris Christie Says,

“I was angry this weekend, listening to the spin coming out of the administration about the failure of the super committee, and that the president knew it was doomed for failure, so he didn’t get involved. Well, then, what the hell are we paying you for? ‘It’s doomed for failure so I’m not getting involved?’ Well, what have you been doing, exactly?” -- NYPOST.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (1)

Tweet!

"With American Airlines stock at 20 cents, I can't decide between paying for two checked bags or buying half the company." -- Twitter / @badbanana

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (3)

Mark Twain Announces for the Presidency, June 15, 1879

I have pretty much made up my mind to run for President. What the country wants is a candidate who cannot be injured by investigation of his past history so that the enemies of the party will be unable to rake up anything against him that nobody ever heard of before.
If you know the worst about a candidate to begin with, every attempt to spring things on him will be checkmated. Now I am going to enter the field with an open record. I am going to own up in advance to all the wickedness I have done, and if any Congressional committee is disposed to prowl around my biography in the hope of discovering any dark and deadly deed that I have secreted, why–let it prowl. -- (Harper's Magazine)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (0)

Mark Twain: "What is a civilization, rightly considered?"

Morally, it is the evil passions repressed, the level of conduct raised; spiritually, idols cast down, God enthroned;
materially, bread and fair treatment for the greatest number. That is the common formula, the common definition; everybody accepts it and is satisfied with it. Our civilization is wonderful, in certain spectacular and meretricious ways; wonderful in scientific marvels and inventive miracles; wonderful in material inflation, which it calls advancement, progress, and other pet names; wonderful in its spying-out of the deep secrets of Nature and its vanquishment of her stubborn laws; wonderful in its extraordinary financial and commerical achievements; wonderful in its hunger for money, and in its indifference as to how it is acquired; wonderful in the hitherto undreamed-of magnitude of its private fortunes and the prodigal fashion in which they are given away to institutions devoted to the public culture; wonderful in its exhibitions of poverty; wonderful in the surprises which it gets out of that great new birth, Organization, the latest and most potent creation and miracle-worker of the commercialized intellect, as applied in transportation systems, in manufactures, in systems of communication, in news-gathering, book-publishing, journalism; in protecting labor; in oppressing labor; in herding the national parties and keeping the sheep docile and usable; in closing the public service against brains and character; in electing purchasable legislatures, blatherskite Congresses, and city governments which rob the town and sell municipal protection to gamblers, thieves, prostitutes, and professional seducers for cash. It is a civilization which has destroyed the simplicity and repose of life; replaced its contentment, its poetry, its soft romance-dreams and visions with the money-fever, sordid ideals, vulgar ambitions, and the sleep which does not refresh; it has invented a thousand useless luxuries, and turned them into necessities; it has created a thousand vicious appetites and satisfies none of them; it has dethroned God and set up a shekel in His place. - "Papers of the Adam Family" [Mark Twain quotations - Civilization]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 AM | Your Say (0)

November 29, 2011

Better Men

Combine that verbal slurry with a brilliant mind, one wicked sense of humor and complete mastery of his given profession.
Now wrap it all up in a lanky, tall frame nearing eighty years of age. Age spots the size of dimes eclipse armfuls of youthful freckles, a faded head of red hair gone wild copper wire, sharp, pale blue eyes still light up a face carved by the shaky loins of pure west Texas hardscrabble. I suspect he was a handsome catch when the world still moved at a slower pace. -- Jaded Haven

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:24 PM | Your Say (1)

Comment of the Week So Far

True religion -- What does the Lord require of you? To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

False religion -- What does Gaia require of you? To deceive wickedly, to attack your critics ruthlessly, and to walk in the arrogance of settled science.

-- by "mushroom"@ Side-Lines: The Great Global Warming Fizzle

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:18 PM | Your Say (0)

The Great Global Warming Fizzle

The climate religion fades in spasms of anger and twitches of boredom.
It is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit. -- Stephens- WSJ.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:58 PM | Your Say (1)

Laughline

Ed Driscoll: The New York Times sums up its Ideology in a Single Headline:
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:48 PM | Your Say (0)

"Yes Obama wants to win and worse still he's on track to win.

It doesn't matter how low his ratings are, so long as his opponent's ratings are even worse.
This is not a campaign that he has to win by being the better man, he just has to sit there and let the press destroy his opponent. Obama does have one thing in common with some of the pundits predicting his imminent demise, they're both sure that they can't lose. But Obama has grounds for thinking that. Far better grounds than the cheerleaders who insist that anyone the Republicans run will win in a landslide in every state. -- Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:34 PM | Your Say (3)

Governor Christie: What the hell are we paying you for?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:24 PM | Your Say (2)

"Discernment requires mindfulness —

of our abilities and weaknesses, of eternity in our midst, and even of those “gut instincts” by which our angels so often guide us, if we are listening. It also requires a willingness to step apart from the noise of the world in order to hear that still, small voice of the Lord, who will always tell us what He wants us to do, if only we dare to ask." -- God’s Longing for Us Fulfilled in Discernment

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:08 PM | Your Say (0)

"A Bro and a Ho:" The Dems 2012 Dream Ticket?

Obama's overall job approval rating so far has averaged 49 percent. Only three former presidents have had a worse average rating at this stage: Carter, Ford, and Harry S. Truman. Only Truman won re-election in an anti-Congress campaign that Obama's team is using as a model. Obama's troubles have revived talk in Democratic circles that Vice President Joe Biden should be replaced by the politically popular Hillary Clinton. She plans to leave as secretary of state at the end of Obama's term no matter what happens in the re-election. -- Obama's Job Approval Drops Below Carter's - Washington Whispers (usnews.com)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:01 PM | Your Say (0)

"This could be the first EU idea that doesn't suck."

Europe to cut power of vacuum cleaners to save energy - Telegraph [Cut suckage in half, spend twice the time and energy cleaning up. Why there aren't mobs dragging EUcrats out of Belgium and placing them in the guillotine continues to amaze me. Oh well, maybe someday, maybe soon.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (3)

A Smaller, Filthier Life Courtesy of "Green Slime"

It is, in fact, trivial to compile a list of highly inferior products that would never succeed in the marketplace without the diktat of government to cheat them into adoption.
In less than a generation consumers have suddenly been saddled with low-flow shower-heads, "efficient" toilets, phosphorous-free "detergents," cold-water laundry soap even the Germans cannot be convinced to like, OLED displays, energy saving driers, water conserving washing machines, natural deodorant, acetone-free nail polish remover, suctionless vacuum cleaners,5 gag-inducing asthma inhalers,6 and poison-free pesticides. And if ever this pack of smelly, eye-strained, perspiring, make-up caked, wheezing, malaria-ridden, pissed-off consumers were ever to attempt to worm their way into their damp and dingy clothes and head on over to Capitol Hill to ask their elected representative how exactly they are saving 33% of their normal water consumption by spending twice as long in the shower and flushing the toilet six times in the morning, well they would have to stop to fill up two extra times on their way owing to the fact that their ethanol-poisoned gasoline (which is only viable to the extent it enjoys a nearly 50% subsidy) burns less efficiently and actually increases emissions besides. -- | finem respice

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:41 PM | Your Say (2)

Brothers,Bozos, and Hermanos to Make Up the Modern Major Democrats

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All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic. -- The Future of the Obama Coalition - NYTimes.com Illo via Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (0)

Over and over

Over and over the debt ceiling has been raised. Over and over the Federal budget has not been reduced. And of course, the Supercommittee has failed.
So what will break first? Well, the consent of the governed is practically broken. And as soon as the OWS crowd starts chanting 'Taxation Without Representation', they will merge with the Tea Party and real democratic change will become inevitable. I see it. Can you? -- The Conservative Side of OWS - Cobb

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (6)

Stalin's daughter Svetlana dies in Wisconsin

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She was once close to her father, who called her his "little sparrow," the New York Times reported. She was known as Svetlana Alliluyeva and compared to U.S. actress Shirley Temple, with thousands of Russian children named Svetlana after her.
She was 6 years old when her mother died from suicide, though she was told she had been ill. Her brother was killed during the Second World War with Germany when her father refused to exchange him for a German general, the Times reported. She studied history, not her chosen field of art, at her father's direction. He sent her first love, a Jewish filmmaker, to Siberia. In an interview last year with the Wisconsin State Journal, she sought to retract a comment in the film in which she said she regretted coming to the United States and wished she had stayed in a neutral country, like Switzerland. "I am quite happy here," she said. -- TODAY.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (1)

"You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely take care of it for the next generation."

The target demo is not the 1%; the target demo is the Aspirational 14%.
They know they are supposed to like quality and goodness and etiquette and discretion, but no one ever taught them what those things look like, so when someone does point it out to them they will go all in. Hence: anything in Trading Up. And they don't care about the next generation. Not really. They don't want them to be eaten by zombies but anything past 2069 is of no consequence. What they do care about is how a product brands them, what it says about them now, now that time is running out. Can't afford to be subtle, which is the same thing as saying I'm willing to pay $10000 to get the message across. There's a difference between what the brand is and what the brand says about you. You'll pay 10x for the former and 100x for the latter. -- The Last Psychiatrist: Luxury Branding The Future Leaders Of The World

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

November 28, 2011

Barney Franks in Salary Negotiations for Elmer Fudd Role

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NEW YORK – DreamWorks Studios announced today that they are in the final stages of salary negotiations with Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank for their new Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny movie.
Frank is slated to play Elmer Fudd in the five hundred million dollar, two part, six hour movie epic. The Congressman expressed interest in the role when he heard that Bugs Bunny was going to be played by an actor who has expressed conservative political views in the past. We talked with Congressman Frank over brunch in the West Village where he was visiting a friend. “It was wight before our summer wecess,” he recalled, “and Hawwy Weid took me aside and infowmed me that the character of Bugs Bunny was going to be played by a wacially insensitive wight wing wepublican! If it’s twue that Bugs is now a wacist wight wing wepublican wabbitt…if that is twue, then I will be happy to either put him in pwison or woast him alive!” -- The DAILY RASH

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:43 PM | Your Say (3)

Blazing Saddles in Pakistan

If America puts a figurative gun to the head of the Pakistani government
and orders it to extirpate the radical Islamists in the military, two outcomes are possible. One is that Islamabad will succeed. The second is that it will fail, and the country will degenerate into chaos. That is the scenario the American policy is supposed to avoid at all costs, but it is hard to see why America would be worse off. If the elements of Pakistani intelligence that foster terrorism cannot be suppressed, it is clear that they are using resources of the central government to support terrorism. -- Spengler

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (3)

There seems to be a confusion of typing and writing.

On a typical day, I might find an intern bawling in the ladies’ room moments after I have turned back to her the edited version of her copy.
No one has ever told her before that she isn’t perfect. And yet, the recent crops of interns seem to learn less and less from the edited copy turned back to them for perusal. -- What Editors Think of Writers

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (6)

"YOU ARE GOING TO BUY THIS SNOWBLOWER."

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Oh, and since it’s the 21st century, this snow blower comes with an electric starter.
Just plug that sucker in, push the button, and get ready to punch snow in the throat. If you want to experience what life was like in olden days, it comes with a back-up cord you could pull to start it, but forget that. The reason you’re getting this fearsome warrior was for the convenience, so why make it harder on yourself? By this point, you’re probably wondering why I would sell my snowblower since the first snowpocalypse is upon us today. I’ll tell you why: because I heard it was time for you to man up and harness some mighty teeth and claws and chew your way to freedom, that’s why. -- 11HP/29" Snowblower - Moncton Tools & Hardware For Sale - Kijiji Moncton Canada. HT: Tim Blair

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (3)

"Any Democrat these days has to master the art of lip daubing: "

green lipstick for blue pigs.
Blue collar union workers and upper middle class environmentalists and NIMBYs have to be stroked and cajoled. High speed rail is the perfect unicorn transport system. NIMBys like that it uses existing rail lines for the most part, greens love the idea and fantasize about the quiet, guilt-free travel to come, and the unions and construction companies see a gravy train where others just see green. -- Brown Still Wants Magic Unicorn Train | Via Meadia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (0)

November 27, 2011

"This has been the Year of the Vermin."

With the Arab Spring, the black flash mobs, the London riots, and the OWS camper babies,
we’ve had an eyeful of what “the people” really look like. It ain’t pretty. They don’t look nearly as glamorous in real life as they do in the revolutionary paintings. America’s annual post-Thanksgiving Fatso Stampede known as Black Friday was more chaotic and violent than usual this holiday season, which doesn’t speak well for the notion that the nation’s huddled masses are wallowing in abject poverty. These weren’t food riots. They were toy riots. This wasn’t Wall Street. It was Main Street. -- The Black Friday Brawls - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 PM | Your Say (1)

Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock The Global Warming Debate

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Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails:
(1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data. -- - Forbes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:49 PM | Your Say (3)

Sad Tidings from James Joyner of Outside the Beltway

James Joyner: "My wife, Kimberly Webb Joyner, died this morning in her sleep from unknown causes. She was 41. She leaves behind two little girls she loved more than anything, Katie, who turns 3 on New Year’s Eve, and Ellie, who was born June 21. -- Kimberly Webb Joyner, 1970 to 2011

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:42 PM | Your Say (0)

They blow up so fast these days…

"Doctors were left astounded after a gigantic baby set a new record for Germany's heaviest-ever naturally born newborn Friday. The boy was named Jihad." -- Goodnight Europe, It's Been Fun! -- Ed Driscoll

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:10 PM | Your Say (5)

If German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer/Martin Niemöller Had been at Zucotti Park for Occupy Wall Street

When Mayor Bloomberg's police came for the moldy, torn, used books,
I was silent,
For I was not a moldy, torn, used book.

When they came for the filthy, used, fast-food containers,
I was silent,
For I was not a filthy, used, fast-food container.

When they came for the smelly, old boots,
I was silent,
For I was not a smelly, old boot.

When they came for the abandoned tarpaulins,
I was silent,
For I was not an abandoned tarpaulin.

When they came for the leftover leaflets,
I was silent,
For I was not a leftover leaflet.

When they came for me,
There was no more garbage left
That could protest.
-- Nicholas Stix

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (0)

Males without chests

We have all these American Castrati running around, doing their very best to act angry while simultaneously doing their very best to act unmanly. It’s always been surreal, after awhile it began to get funny, then it began to get tedious. --House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (9)

Zombie movies are correct

The most frightening element about zombie movies is that zombies are relentless, hard to kill and they don’t understand why humans object to being eaten. If those last three elements sound like modern unions, it is not an accident. --Pro Commerce:

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

Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?

Are liberals really more discontented with Obama's failure to reverse the Bush tax cuts than the citizen death warrants he is signing?
Is his ham-handed handling of the debt-ceiling really more worthy of mention than the illegal war he waged? Is his willingness to sign deficit reduction that cuts entitlement spending more objectionable than the fact that he outsourced drone strikes to a CIA that often didn't even know the names of the people it was killing? These are the priorities of a perverted liberalism. -- - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics - The Atlantic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (2)

How Some of Your Favorite Dictators Will Be Spending the Holidays

Nandos "Last Dictator Standing" directed by Dean Blumberg - YouTube


Via 22 Words

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (0)

November 26, 2011

Left to Their Own Devices...

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:02 PM | Your Say (4)

Has homeland security prevented something like another 9/11? No.

In fact, no one has tried anything of the sort. Had they done so, nothing homeland security has put in place would have stopped them.
We do not know of any operation planned and manned by professionals, as 9/11 was, that has been stopped. We do know that American society has countless inherent vulnerabilities to terrorism, which no one has taken even a little trouble to exploit. Nothing could ever stop ten people in ten states from throwing flaming gasoline bottles into ten school buses simultaneously, thus shutting down the U.S. school system. But no one has done it. Homeland security created closely packed lines of people in front of airport security checkpoints—the perfect target for explosive-laden carry-on luggage. But no one has attempted that, either, nor committed any of the other outrages so obviously feasible and requiring so little skill and organization. We don't know why not. In short, homeland security has proven irrelevant to terrorism. -- The Claremont Institute - The Lost Decade

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (2)

"Dapper" doesn't begin to define this look

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"Look dapper at the gym and on the campaign trail with our Obama 2012 warm-up jacket." --Barack Obama 2012

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (7)

Pot, Kettle

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Born to Be NSFW

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:07 AM | Your Say (9)

November 25, 2011

"When poets buy guns, tourist season is over."

At least someone is making money in these difficult times.
Arms dealers in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley are making out like, well, bandits as unrest in Syria sends black market gun prices through the roof says this story in Lebanon's Daily Star. Rocket grenade launchers appear to be the hottest investment grade item, with prices more than sextupling from $400 to $2500 in recent months. -- Guns Better Investment Than Gold? | Via Meadia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:02 PM | Your Say (0)

"People buy more crap when they see a woman ordering a man around."

When our current President uses it. Just listen to Him, He does it all the time. Can’t make it all the way through a speech without it, it seems.
Michelle won’t let Me do this, Michelle makes Me do that, better not let Michelle catch me in this…again, we have a “huh, what?” moment. Did this guy just get elected to the presidency because He’s supposed to be “sort of God” or something? What a sloppy, disconnected illusion we have here. Barack Obama is above everybody, we’re all better people because He’s our President and He’s just a little slice of perfection…things become right instantly when Barack Obama says He’s behind them…infinite authority and all…but Michelle Obama tells the deity to jump and He says, how high? -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:41 AM | Your Say (1)

Memo to M. Bachmann from Ann Barnhardt

Okay. You want to be the President of the United States of America, Michelle? You want to be the Commander in Chief? You want to be the leader of the free (?) world?
Um, if you can't see an ambush coming from Jimmy Flipping Fallon, who is a former SNL cast member (after the Phil Hartman era which is when SNL stopped being funny), and thus, by definition, a flaming liberal with no class who is wholly reliant on adolescent gutter humor, do you really think that you're qualified to be the CiC? I'm serious. If you and your staff aren't smart enough or self-aware enough to figure out that you don't go walking into obvious set-ups with slack-jawed TV talk show hosts, then do you REALLY think you are going to be able to go up against Putin or the ChiComs? Hon, if you get rolled by JIMMY FALLON, then you won't stand a chance against Hu Jintao. But then, the very fact that the gateway to the Oval Office is now kept by the likes of undignified flotsam like Jimmy Fallon and these other TV carney hacks is just more proof that this country is officially, totally and irrevocably screwed. My name is Ann Barnhardt, and I'm #OccupyingReality. -- Barnhardt.biz - Commodity Brokerage

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (4)

November 24, 2011

Turkey Drop: "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:48 PM | Your Say (1)

"This week, oil seems to gush everywhere we tread. It is Thanksgiving time once again in America."

We should never forget that the natural abundance that surrounds us is only one of the blessings that has attended our development as a people.
The culture of liberty that formed us, a unique blend of deep faith in God, deep love of liberty, and a respect for a diversity and plurality of faiths, is perhaps the greatest blessing we enjoy. Without deep faith that is widely spread among the population, no people can long be virtuous and patriotic enough to survive the storms of world history and maintain a democratic republican government. == America Has Yet More To Be Thankful For | Via Meadia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (0)

"One of El Marco’s photos of Zucotti Park captures the spirit of putting politics first, last and every time."

The peace which has lasted through 3 generations of men may have led some to believe that it is natural state of events. One day they'll discover that it was an exceptional heritage which through the stupidity, greed, shortsightedness and vanity of present leaders has been cast away without a thought. -- Belmont Club サ Reset
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (4)

November 23, 2011

Climategate 2.0: "A fitting epitaph for anthropogenic global warming."

The CRU team itself understands that empirical confirmation for greenhouse warming is lacking. The atmosphere is not doing what the AGW models predict. "Basic problem is that all models are wrong", writes Phil Jones, bluntly, "€œnot got enough middle and low level clouds."€ -- Armed and Dangerous€

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 PM | Your Say (1)

"Does anyone else find it strange"

how liberals love to claim that conservatives are "inbred", and yet they adore a country where 70% of all marriages are between first cousins?) -- The Fourth Checkraise: Link or swim

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:11 PM | Your Say (1)

"The essential difference between the nuclear power and the coal power..."

"is that if the worst possible disaster takes place in a nuclear plant, it will create about as much pollution as the equal coal plant when it functions normally." --The Fourth Checkraise: Shewing chit

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:49 PM | Your Say (0)

"Incidentally, one of Newt’s observations is obvious:"

any immigrant graduate in any of the hard sciences should automatically be offered permanent residency.
As Governor Perry put it, there ought to be a visa stapled to the degree certificate. I can’t think anyone would object to that. If we are going to implement a strategy of technology to get ourselves out of this mess – and we could do that – we will need smart people to implement that strategy. It is madness to send an MIT computer science graduate go back home to a foreign competitor if there is any chance of getting that graduate to stay and work here. Same goes for medical and most health care graduates. -- Technology, Immigration, and are we a serious nation? « Chaos Manor – Jerry Pournelle

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:38 PM | Your Say (1)

If "Apple" and "Cider" didn't make it through 2011, what hope remains for "Liberty" and "Peace"?

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O takes aim at "Liberty"

The turkey steps up for the turkeys: Obama's latest executive action: Thanksgiving turkey pardon
Two birds will be spared from the holiday dinner table, Liberty and Peace. But Liberty enjoyed the national spotlight during a brief ceremony at the North Portico on Wednesday morning, in which Obama made a priestly gesture over the bird before announcing: "You are hereby pardoned!"

Nice, but let's take a look at what happened to the last birds pardoned:
2010 Turkeys Pardoned By Obama Died This Year

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (1)

Drudge Losing His Edge

Here yesterday at 8 AM. Drudge catches up. Today at 8 AM. Finally.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (4)

Comment of the Day

"Obama DID tell us what he was about, either directly or through his minions. All one had to do was to listen.... Any child who grew up behind the Iron Curtain (as I did) could read Obama's words correctly from the very first." -- Michael J Kubat in Presence of Malice

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:45 AM | Your Say (2)

November 22, 2011

Beyond the Powers of Auditing

GE Filed 57,000-Page Tax Return, Paid No Taxes on $14 Billion in Profits The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 PM | Your Say (4)

Climategate 2.0 Erupts

Breaking news: FOIA 2011 has arrived ! « tallbloke's talkshop Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.
Today'€™s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:22 PM | Your Say (0)

"The climate alarmists are corrupt and contemptible,"

Climategate Two, and government exploitation of pseudo-crises - Maggie's Farm
The climate alarmists are corrupt and contemptible, but we try to be sympathetic to their scam. They need government grants to pay their mortgages, and we also understand why governments like this stuff - it means more tax income for them. Governments will take tax income anywhere and everywhere. They don't care where it comes from so they will get on board with any "crisis," real or imaginary. (With the MSM in the tank with them: See the NYT's "near-poverty crisis." We are all near poverty, for heaven's sake, unless we work. That's life unless you are on the dole or, on the other end of the curve, hit the jackpot.)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:13 PM | Your Say (1)

The Top Five Reasons To Be a Commie Pinko

Reason #1: Free Stuff! Need an apartment? It's free!
Never mind you have to share it with 20 smelly strangers -- because .... wow! You don't have to pay for it! Need food? That's free too! And all of it organically grown (because pesticides were thrown out with the first cost cuts). Need a new pair of shoes? As soon as the shoe factory produces some, you'll get a pair! Who cares how long you have to wait? - PJ Lifestyle »

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (1)

The Sketchbook of Susan Kare, the Artist Who Gave Computing a Human Face

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Kare stayed on at Apple to craft the navigational elements for Mac’s GUI.
Because an application for designing icons on screen hadn’t been coded yet, she went to the University Art supply store in Palo Alto and picked up a $2.50 sketchbook so she could begin playing around with forms and ideas. In the pages of this sketchbook, which hardly anyone but Kare has seen before now*, she created the casual prototypes of a new, radically user-friendly face of computing — each square of graph paper representing a pixel on the screen. -- | NeuroTribes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 AM | Your Say (0)

White Hawk Dive

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I recently had the thrill of watching a white hawk dive again and again, for its prey. -- - Diane Varner - Daily Walks

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:10 AM | Your Say (2)

And speaking of "Barack Obama...."

Wait for it.

Russian media pulling out of the "Hope and Change" conga line. [HT: Neatorama ]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:58 AM | Your Say (9)

November 21, 2011

Obama and Friend

He can pick 'em. Is there a pattern emerging?

ViaCurmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:12 PM | Your Say (1)

"When she was running for Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s seat, "

it was great fun asking Hillary fans what she’s actually managed to accomplish. Uh der, der, she tried, uh, it’s for the children, homina homina homina. The situation’s unchanged, now, a decade later. Is Hillary just a wonderful Secretary of State, one of our best ever? How so, exactly? -- House of Eratosthenes
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There's Something About Hillary

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:54 AM | Your Say (6)

Opening Remarks for the Conference of the National Association of Poverty, Unemployment, Hardship, Hunger, and Homelessness Research

Today, at 12:00 PM, I encourage all of you to join us for a fascinating lunch symposium: “Falling through the Tattered Safety Net into Deep Poverty and Pauperism.”....
The luncheon will feature the Pavilion's renowned seafood extravaganza buffet. Guests who wish to order the Polynesian Bouillabaisse, or any of the seafood or dessert souffle have to notify the restaurant by 11:30. Menus and order forms will be distributed during the pre-lunch plenary session: "Worsening Inequality and Poverty: Which Matters More? 00 McSweeney

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:37 AM | Your Say (3)

November 20, 2011

Elsewhen

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 PM | Your Say (3)

Unclear on the Concept

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:56 PM | Your Say (0)

"Public universities and the larger private institutions have become morally and fiscally bankrupt"

It used to be that one did not dare go to a DeVry or Phoenix for-profit schools for computer certification or accounting,
because one would miss out on the rich undergraduate experience, both social and intellectual -- best exemplified by the core curriculum of some 50-60 units in liberal arts and sciences. But if the university is serially subsidizing panels about global warming, lauds Palestinian activists, and runs workshops on homophobia (all without balance and counter-opinion), and if its GE required courses, whether so titled or not, are too often little more than the melodramatic obsessions of over-specialized, ranting professors, who otherwise would have small audiences, then why spend the money and go through the charade of classically liberal instruction, especially given that the trade school is cheaper and more honestly pragmatic? -- Works and Days サ The Fannie and Freddie University

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:09 PM | Your Say (5)

"The army and police and government will not care and think one second about shooting or killing babies or children."

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"We are living in Orson Wells world and it is even worse.
In 20 years time it will be so bad that your socalled freedom is a thing of the past. Every single movement you make will be controlled and if you do something out of the dictated you will be killed or perhaps just have all your resouces plugged out like debit-figures in the bank and your smartphone key will be blocked to get inside your work and essentially you will be on a nomans land mission and you will dies from starvation eventually." -- James Bond and Darth Vader is in your nabourhood. | OccupyWallSt.orgHT: Surber

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:51 AM | Your Say (4)

"The left is one long permanent protest by useful idiots "

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The history of the left is of childishly naive ideals fought for with ugly tactics and implemented as totalitarian dystopias.
"Everyone should have things and no one should feel bad" quickly morphs into "Off the pigs" and finishes as "Starve the Kulaks" and "Bring on the Gulags". What begins with flowers ends with bombs and bullets, and depending on the outcome, sobs and bitter recollections of how the revolution was crushed, or revisionist history that denies everything that happened since the revolution succeeded. -- Daniel Greenfield

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:16 AM | Your Say (4)

November 19, 2011

" The two parties are not playing the same game. They play different games, under different rules."

What are these different rules?
The Republicans more or less follow the laws and constitutional procedures, the Democrats deliberately and consciously break them. But the Republicans, while they complain incessantly about the Democrats, never identify this underlying fact. Why? Because that would show that the system is no longer legitimate. And the function of the Republicans, as "patriotic, conservative Americans," is to uphold the goodness and legitimacy of the system, a legitimacy which rests on the belief that everyone in American politics shares the same basic principles and loyalties. So the Republicans, as defenders of the system and its presumed basic unity, cannot expose what the Democrats are. If they exposed it, politics would be replaced by open war between two radically incompatible parties and America as we know it would come to an end. -- Kagan's non-recusal and what it means
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 AM | Your Say (6)

November 18, 2011

"Tell you what."

I'm gonna get me about sixteen Dobermans with no judgment.
Then, next time I see one of those chunky talk-show ladies with short hair blowing about what brigands white males are, and how we ought to dethrone them, I'm gonna get the Dobermans to eat her. Then I'll get their stomachs pumped, because I like dogs, and send them on a vacation to the Bahamas. -- Fred On Everything

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:00 PM | Your Say (4)

"Leadership must be based on goodwill."

Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob.
It means obvious and wholehearted commitment to helping followers. We are tired of leaders we fear, tired of leaders we love, and of tired of leaders who let us take liberties with them. What we need for leaders are men of the heart who are so helpful that they, in effect, do away with the need of their jobs. But leaders like that are never out of a job, never out of followers. Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away. — Admiral James B. Stockdale [via Borepatch: Humility]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:05 PM | Your Say (0)

"Romney is non-ideological, post-ideological, non and post everything."

Romney is still the survivor because he is the man of no expectations. No one expects much of him except to swim his way forward. No one ponders his sincerity or looks through his record much.
He is the man that no one really wants, but the one that much of the party feels doomed to settle down with. No one really wants Romney, even his supporters don’t seem to muster the enthusiasm for him, and he knows that and doesn’t care. Romney is non-ideological, post-ideological, non and post everything. The issues don’t matter much to him, the job does. He wants the job because he wants a promotion. He was governor, now he wants to be president. Why? Because it’s a step up. In a passionate race filled with unexpected candidates, Romney is both passionless and shallow, he has been practicing for this and is perfectly qualified to go through the routines to get to the top post. If conservatives were hoping for Ronald Reagan, they are more likely to end up with George H.W. Bush. -- Sultan Knish

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (5)

Comment of the Month (So far): "Inept bumblers or cunning destroyers?"

I believe the latter. Their "audacity" has allowed them to "fundamentally change" America, shred The Constitution, and start a class and race war that threatens the peace of cities across the country.
Their destruction of the bedrock beliefs and institutions that make America exceptional is without parallel in our history. Their open and arrogant pillage of public and private treasure is a felony, an ongoing criminal conspiracy. This fascist crowd has gained power, has a plan to take away individual liberties, and has critically wounded The Republic. The hands of thousands of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrns have guided the Marxist brainwashing of America's children for several decades, making them useful tools for "hope and change". Moral decay has been swallowed as entertainment, and has been used to promote hatred of our nation, our laws, our morality. What passes for news reaches for ever-lower levels of degradation and preaches a mind-warping leftist dogma. The future looks pretty bleak for those who love their freedom, rather than the soft enslavement of a government dependent. Recovery will require fierce, aggressive patriotic Americans with the will, moral certainty, and strength of character to bring The Republic back to health. Those patriots are not to be found in any of the three branches of government. Throw them all out. -- twolaneflash in: Side-Lines: Whatever obloquy may be rained down on the well-tended topknots of the Republican hopefuls,

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (0)

"They paused to scream at the walls of a Citibank branch."

On the way to B of A, they paused at Citi to scream at the walls.
These are college students, acting like 2-year-olds throwing a tantrum. What does that tell you about their critical thinking skills--and about the standards of American higher education? The likes of the New York Times expect us to take such incoherent spasms of rage seriously as a political "movement." What does that tell us about the standards of the liberal media? -- The Brain-Dead Left - WSJ.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (3)

"The people in China who make all our shit must spend a lot of time going, 'What the fuck goes ON over there?' "

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Seen at: STREET BONERS and TV CARNAGE

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

Whatever obloquy may be rained down on the well-tended topknots of the Republican hopefuls,

As long as there is an alternative that can speak and tie up its shoelaces in the morning,
I do not believe that this administration can be reelected. It is so unrelievedly incompetent that its fecklessness is more a matter of sadness and embarrassment than of the rage that engulfed George W. Bush. This, I surmise, is why the liberal establishment, the Times editorial writers and columnists, the Hollywood groupies, the rich fundraisers, don’t detect that the ship is sinking, and still squeal with delight as the Republican challengers fail to generate more than tentative or reluctant enthusiasm. But they are reading the wrong dials; there will be a Republican nominee. The country will not reelect this mockery of an administration, and whoever the Republican is will be elected and inaugurated, even if he has operated an open-air dog kennel on the wings of an airborne aircraft while groping relays of stewardesses. -- Hope for the GOP - National Review Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (6)

The Protest Ritual

During the big campout in New York, endless reams of electrons were wasted by writers (I have already linked to some) eager -- nay, desperate --€“
to ascribe some sort of deep meaning to the actions of the campers. And this is understandable because in reality, there was none apparent. That is why entire new theories had to be developed in September-November 2011 just for this occasion, theories which no doubt 5-15 years from now will form the basis for new substudies in sociology departments on campuses across the USA. Theories about how nowadays the mere act of "occupation" is so laden with such meaningful political significance (&c.) that in our modern, internet-dominated age you don't actually need to make any actual points, arguments, or demands about anything anymore. -- « Rhymes With Cars & Girls

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (0)

Buy Young. Sell Old.

Sense of Events: The long decline is just beginning

The plain fact is that tens of trillions of dollars are going to disappear from the value of the DJIA and other stock indices over the next 20-30 years. And with each year, as the selloff accelerates, the decline in equity-companies' market value will drop even more - because each successive year, boomers will sell more equities than the year before, both as a group and individually, just to stay even. In fact, if the near-term retiring boomers cash out only $1,500 of equities per month, starting with zero retired boomers and adding about 360,000 every month, then in only six months more than $3 trillion of sold-share value will be reached.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:07 AM | Your Say (3)

November 17, 2011

There is no 'Occupy Manifesto'.

There's just a bunch of people who are 'concerned' and 'aware' and 'making their voices heard'.
That and a toddler throwing sand makes you a parent. Billions of those, get in line. All of that free speech is going nowhere but into the microphones and videocameras of a few dozen media affiliates and ultimately into their editing rooms. None of it is coming out coherently as recommendations for appropriate regulatory reform. In short, the Occupiers are outgunned by real policy wonks. #OWS doesn't know where to find a real banking regulations expert and so have decided to use a sleeping bag instead. No matter how you slice it, 'We are the 99%' is not going to be the text of any of the real democratic politics that comes out of Washington to be enforced by the SEC. -- Encampment as Political Free Speech - Cobb

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 PM | Your Say (1)

Ain't A Free Country If...

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 PM | Your Say (0)

Dumbth in Dickland: Headlines That Help to Define Our Decline

Warren Beatty's transgender son brands Chaz Bono a misogynist

[Takes a moment, doesn't it?]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 PM | Your Say (3)

Fun and Games

Shall we play a game? Nuclear War In The East? | Via Meadia Here is a cheery little prediction from those fun-loving Russians: Nuclear War!!!
“Under certain conditions local and regional conflicts may develop into a full-scale war involving nuclear weapons”. So says General Nikolai Makarov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian military.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:28 PM | Your Say (0)

OWS Angst Foretold

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Ilka saw it all coming in the September, 2009 post: The Fourth Checkraise: The dirt bowl
"They imagine that once He is in power, Obama will give them cushy government jobs and grants to bring art, literature, poetry and trendy postmodernism to poor minorities. I think the best example of this was the Salon article "Excuse me while I stick my head in the toilet" where I can imagine the narrator's jubilant elation back when Obama won and how this Useful Idiot actually imagined that her life was going to radically change. (The fields of the two college degrees of the narrator are never specified, but I'd bet good money that at least one of them ends with the word "studies".)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:20 PM | Your Say (0)

Dear Terri, Experts have gone from certain to "unlikely." Sorry about killing you out of hand.

Brain Exam Detects Awareness in 3 ‘Vegetative’ Patients - NYTimes.com

The case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who became unresponsive after her heart stopped and who was removed from life support in 2005, became a political and family controversy. Doctors say it is unlikely that the EEG test would have changed the diagnosis in that case.
NYT throws this factoid in just in case you were concerned about Schiavo. Don't you feel reassured?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (5)

Same Sh*t. Different A**holes

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Obama-Romney’s “Free Rider” | Eric Peters Autos

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:52 AM | Your Say (2)

November 16, 2011

Things that are no longer on my diet

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Fransk Meat-Dog: Sausage stuffed into a hot-dog bun, wrapped with two pounds of meat, some cheese and a delicious bacon-grid.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:07 PM | Your Say (10)

Occupy Meltdown Continues

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:41 PM | Your Say (1)

"Welcome to the minds of the 99 percent."

Whether you take the attitude of contempt, pity or sympathy,
you've got to admit that these guys are bound to have a hard time in life. The individuals in these videos probably have a hard time understanding why the sun rises each morning, let alone comprehend why their life seems as bad as it is. In some sense, the persons depicted on YouTube coverage of Occupy are permanent cripples; the kind of rabble that Maoism gladly uses and dispenses with like toilet paper, once they've served their purpose. They are the kind of crowd that never figures it out, ever. -- Belmont Club » The Lord of the Flies

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:56 PM | Your Say (2)

Study Finds What Study Seeks to Find

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Suddenly the seating choice takes on a different hue. Is she avoiding the black man in the top picture, or is she looking to get penetrated in the second?
BE HONEST LIARS. I will admit that technically the author remains correct, both interpretations are the result of "stereotyping," but one happens to be a negative stereotype and the other happens to be a substantial plot point of every drama on ABC. Here's a revised title for the study: "Clean Stations, Dirty Minds: How Just The Right Conditions Can Make A Woman Go Black. (But She'll Be Back.)" -- The Last Psychiatrist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:22 AM | Your Say (7)

"Contemplating Obama,

... I swore I’d never vote for another black president. After Bush II, I swore I’d never vote for another white one. My options were narrowing.
Now I’m thinking Obama or Herman Cain. Slick Empty in the great White Yurt on Pennsylvania Avenue is still corrupt and invertebrate, but now only starts small wars, as in Uganda. Cain makes pizzas and seems to be a human being. It’s a novel concept but these are trying times. Besides they say he did sexually inappropriate stuff to some gals who want to be on talk-shows and get book contracts. Good for him." -- Filthy – Worthless – Republicans | Eric Peters Autos

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:14 AM | Your Say (0)

Love Truth & Beauty

Love Truth & Beauty "But let one touch the Good and Love, like the saints, the True, like an Aristotle, the Beautiful, like a Dante or a Bach or a Giotto, then contact is made, souls communicate." -- Jacques Maritain

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

Now this, THIS, is an evening dress

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The tubular silhouette of the 1920s allowed for a variety of short, beaded dresses,
perfect for an evening out. This French garment is of the finest quality, complete with highly refined decorations. The combination of gold lamé and variously shaped iridescent sequins create an interesting surface texture, enhanced by the three-dimensional flowerheads applied to the petal panels of the overskirt. A harmonious design, the cascading flowers tone perfectly with the pink hem of the underslip and the V-neck matches the configuration of beadwork on the bust. Overall, this is an exquisite garment, extremely luxurious for this decade of frivolity. -- The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Dress, Evening

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 AM | Your Say (0)

Defending the Oxford Comma

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"The Oxford comma was the original system, [and] gradually it has been disappearing. Take a look at any eighteenth century author, such as David Hume or Dr. Johnson. It's commas all the way down!" -- "E pur si muove!":

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 AM | Your Say (11)

Flare of the Sun

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Sun lets loose fantastic flares
For the past couple of weeks, astronomers have been tracking groups of sunspots as they move across the sun's disk. Those active regions have been shooting off flares and outbursts of electrically charged particles into space — signaling that the sun is ramping up toward the peak of its 11-year activity cycle. Physicists expect that peak, also known as "Solar Max," to come in 2013.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:24 AM | Your Say (1)

Tear of the Sun

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Giant yellow diamond auctioned for over $10.9M:
The Sun-Drop Diamond of South Africa, a giant pear-shaped yellow gem weighing 110.3 carats, has sold for more than $10.9 million at auction Tuesday, beating previous records for a jewel of its type.... Gemologists had rated it as fancy, vivid yellow — the highest possible color grading. Yellow diamonds are created by nitrogen impurities being trapped within carbon molecules and hardening over the course of millions of years.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:16 AM | Your Say (1)

November 15, 2011

Ho Judge Shopping Pays Off

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Have robes. Will suck.

Judge Lucy Billings, who signed Occupy Wall Street order, is an ACLU veteran  - NY Daily News
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lucy Billings signed an early-morning order temporarily barring cops from keeping protesters and tents out of Zuccotti Park. But within hours, she was off the case as court administrators prepared to randomly choose a new judge and excluded Billings name from the list of candidates. Billings biography notes that before she became a judge in 1997, she spent 25 years as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. "I have devoted my career to public service, especially the disadvantaged in desperate circumstances," she wrote in a 2007 pre-election statement.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:00 AM | Your Say (18)

Resolution

Via Rodger

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (3)

“The sky has always been falling.”

If, in the Year of our Lord 2011, you really think things are worse, tell me which of the following items you'd like to give up:
The world's finest health care (our arguments, after all, are really only over how extravagant our care should be)?Your flat-screen tv? Well, how about your Blu-ray player? Or your smart-phone? Your personal computer? E-mail? iPad? Satellite radio? None of the above? How about surrendering a couple of older technologies then? Your microwave? Your air-conditioning? Or even your refrigerator (another post-WWII phenomenon for most working-class families in my world)? And how about downsizing to that company house or tiny tract home your parents or grandparents lived in? In my birth year, working families were lucky to have one car per household. Ready to give up your second or third vehicles? And how about your vacations? Did your ancestors spend a lot of time in Hawaii or Cabo San Lucas? Or Europe? Or even at the nearest beach? How many ski vacations did they take? Oh, I realize that not everyone is traveling first-class even now, but my point is that most of us have privileges unimaginable to the working stiffs not all that far back up the family tree. The closest thing my coal-mining ancestors got to a vacation was Sunday afternoon. -- Living in America's Golden Age

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:02 AM | Your Say (2)

November 14, 2011

Calcium & How the Heart Beats

The key to that action is calcium. During the period in which the cell's membrane is charged
-- the action potential -- calcium enters the cell. The calcium triggers the release of more calcium from tiny bags -- sarcoplasmic reticulum -- filled with the element. Then, the calcium diffuses to the muscle filaments themselves and causes the actual movement. To relax the heart cells, the extra calcium that came across the cell membrane gets pumped out, and the heartbeat ends. Then, the process happens again and again until you die. -- - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (1)

Obvious Innovation

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (4)

Occupying Camp Obama

There's a raping
Every day now
Some are straight and
Some are gay now
Latest outbreak
Dysentery
In the food tent over by the Ben & Jerry's
-- iowahawk: With Apologies to Allan Sherman

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (0)

Never

"Has there ever been a Marxist/totalitarian movement that hasn't expected the women in their group to sexually service the men, willingly or not?" -- Heather Radish Taylor via (28) Ace Of Spades, HQ HT:Morgan

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (1)

99% Sick: Coming Soon to "Occupy Winter" Campsites Everywhere!

“We’re the biggest tourist attraction in New York,”
“And we shake everyone’s hands.”

Dr. Philip M. Tierno Jr., the director of clinical microbiology and immunology at NYU Langone Medical Center,
said the conditions could leave park-dwellers susceptible to respiratory viruses; norovirus, the so-called winter vomiting virus, which can lead to vomiting and diarrhea and which could quickly overwhelm the limited bathroom facilities in the area; and tuberculosis, which is more common in indigent populations and can be spread by coughing. -- For Occupy Wall Street, Health Is a Growing Concern - NYTimes.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 AM | Your Say (6)

Experience, Dedication, Sacrifice, Talent, and the Left's Standing Spirit of Equality of Opportunity for All Land Chelsea Clinton a Job at NBC News

It's only "fair:"Chelsea Clinton to NBC News - MJ Lee - POLITICO.com [Rumors there were reverse-Lewinsky moments involved are mean and even possibly untrue.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:30 AM | Your Say (3)

Creature

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Animals Like You've Never Seen Them Before -- via Brain Pickings

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 AM | Your Say (0)

November 13, 2011

"A voluptuous odor, somewhere between a bakery and a brewery, rises to our nostrils. "

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It’s an unusually warm day in mid-May, and Ken Leavitt is using his hive tool,
a crowbar-cum-scraper suited for burglary or home renovation, to pry the lid off of one of his “deeps,” a capacious wooden box hung with 10 wood-and-beeswax frames seething with thousands of honey bees. The bees, along with the others in his five purple-and-white hives perched on a hillside overlooking the greenhouses of Allandale Farm on the Jamaica Plain-Brookline border, the last working farm in the area, are, as they say, busy. -- Our hives, ourselves | HiLobrow

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:45 PM | Your Say (2)

Thick as a Green Brick

Obscene Green Gold Rush Embarasses the New York Times There may be a dumber mass movement in the country than the fuzzy minded sentimentalists of the great green herd, but it isn’t easy to figure out which mass movement that would be.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (0)

"I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD."

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The LORD hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death.

Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the LORD...

This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. -- The Weekend Word: Rejoice

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:03 AM | Your Say (0)

"The government can’t make you do anything."

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I think that people in this culture actually ENJOY being whipped by the government,
because it allows them to delude themselves into believing that they bear no responsibility for anything beyond not burning the toast and making certain that the TiVo is set to record the big game. Given this truly effeminate and childish psychological orientation, it is little wonder that the following sentence – seven little words – strikes fear in the hearts of men and causes them to lash out in hatred and eventually violence: The government can’t make you do anything. -- Ann Barnhardt - Commodity Brokerage

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:54 AM | Your Say (4)

November 12, 2011

This is the photo op where sensible souls light their hair on fire and run screaming from the scene

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What's-His-Name with Jackie ONo!

Since it was still Veterans Day: Lady M arrived for the big game on the USS Carl Vinson, wearing her “I [heart] the military” sweater, along with her “I [heart] the military too” hubby, wearing his George W Bush bomber jacket. --Michelle Obama's Mirror: A day of do-overs

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:46 AM | Your Say (18)

"“Sustainable Green Energy” is technobabble. "

It is something that is supposed to sound vaguely scientific and impressive.
Equally content-free are words like “Diversity” and “Sensitivity” (good) and “Discrimination” (ungood) and “McCarthyism” (double ungood) and “Fascist” and Racist (double plus ungood). It is the same as saying, “Flooding the deflector array with tachyon particles via the annular confinement beam will quantize the antimatter reactor in the warp core!” --Political Correctness is the Substance of Darkness PART I | John C. Wright's Journal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 AM | Your Say (4)

"Modern PC is one and the same with those radicals,"

back in the day, who in the name of freedom of speech and artistic authenticity
abolished all censorship or public checks on lewd, crude, scatological, blasphemous or prurient language. I hope I am not the only one old enough to remember the campus rioters shouting obscenities at the top amplification of electronic bullhorns in order to provoke the campus officers (or, later, the police) to using force to stop them. That they would then turn on the Conservatives and upbraid us for being uncivil and indelicate in language shows an ability to form airtight compartments in the mind where two mutually exclusive and logically contradictory outlooks on life can be stored until needed, each blissfully unaware of the other, not to mention an unsurpassable degree of shamelessness. -- Political Correctness is the Substance of Darkness PART I | John C. Wright's Journal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (3)

That $35K for an advanced degree in puppetry

It’s not a faculty adviser’s job to dissuade Thierren (the victim of this con) from getting an MFA in puppetry:
the kid’s just following his passion! It’s not an instructor’s job to dissuade Thierren: he’s just one face out of twenty-four in the crafts seminar. It’s not the registrar’s job to dissuade him from taking useless classes: in fact, the registrar will help him get into whatever classes he wants if the seats are available. It’s not the treasurer’s job to dissuade him from signing over a check: they’ve got administrators begging them for more funds every day. And it’s not the loan officer’s job to dissuade the kid either. And so the buck keeps getting passed, thirty-five thousand times. -- this is your payback, moneygrabber | Periscope Depth

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 AM | Your Say (1)

November 11, 2011

The "Occutantrum"

A clique of privileged U.C. Berkeley students, upset
that they're the top 1% of elite students in the state and thus disqualified from participating in the Occupy movement, could no longer contain their frustration on Wednesday and threw an Occutantrum, attempting to "occupy" a few square yards of the 1,200-acre campus. The police dutifully played their roles in the street theater performance, showing up in riot gear and looking scary so the privileged students could shout at them and feel properly revolutionary, as instructed by their professors. -- Zombie [HT: Jewel ]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 PM | Your Say (5)

"Yes, we can! Yes, we can!"

They actually believed that they could while away years of their lives in bong-hits
and yoga meditations and sex with every dumb prick on campus and still march off to Never Land to find a guy named Jack with some magic beans that would make them all rich and fat and happy too. -- PJ Media » The Five Most Infantile Beliefs on Display at the "Occupy" Tantrums

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 PM | Your Say (7)

Seven Bar Jokes Involving Grammar and Punctuation.

6. The bar was walked into by the passive voice.

7. Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave. -- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:28 PM | Your Say (0)

ATTENTION PASSENGERS: THIS TRAIN WILL BE OPERATING AS A METAPHOR.

Please be advised that under new federal regulations, bags may not be placed in the aisles.
Emotional baggage should similarly not be unloaded onto fellow passengers, whose expressionless faces belie deeper internal frustrations that evoke the prevalent disconnect between expectation and reality. Therefore we ask passengers to refrain from playing loud music or noticing how the confining nature of a train can mirror the mental constraints of a mind struggling to break free. -- McSweeney’s

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:37 AM | Your Say (0)

Today is Veterans Day.

Much will be said about giving thanks for the men and women who fought and died for our freedom.
You know, the thought occurs to me: Giving thanks for a gift is pretty easy. Accepting the gift, and making the best use of it possible, is not so easy. Perhaps this grateful nation would do well, this year, to put its attention on both of those things, rather than just one. -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:04 AM | Your Say (2)

R2P: "Foreign policy is hard; good intentions are not enough."

NATO intervened in Libya to stop a predicted but still hypothetical bloodbath
and now can only wring its hands as a real slaughter continues in Syria. The Arab League can't endorse two western invasions of Arab countries in one year; the vote to oust Qaddafi was de facto a vote to let Assad stay in place. The world protests the violence. Assad celebrates his license to kill. The humanitarian hawks in the White House didn't intend to condemn thousands of Syrians to death, but that is what the intervention in Libya has done. -- The Big Bill From Libya | Via Meadia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:37 AM | Your Say (1)

November 10, 2011

Shame? No Shame to Hollywood.

Worst of all is that Hollywood uses these fallacious allegations of homosexuality as a weapon.
The exact people who claim to embrace all aspects of sexuality are the very ones frequently hurling accusations of homosexuality as ridicule. They plead they do so only to unnerve the object of their scorn, yet such proclamations of an “outing” (however false) are hyper-hypocritical. One cannot esteem something one simultaneously uses as a bludgeon. In this, Hollywood ought to be ashamed. --Hoover Was a Homo - Taki's Magazine

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:43 PM | Your Say (0)

The World's Only Twin Jet Engine Motorcycle

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Neatorama notes: "In a lovely design juxtaposition, this custom motorcycle features a pair of jet engines mounted to a frame modeled after a 1929 Harley-Davidson design. It can reach 200 MPH, and in truly Harley fashion, does so loudly. This bike, which the owner claims is the only one in the world powered with two jet engines, is currently for sale on eBay."

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:37 PM | Your Say (2)

Hostile Workplace

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The glass inside was way, way more bulletproof than the bulletproof glass on the outside.
It gave a hint of greenish parallax to the view inside, like everything was under water filled with algae. It was like a window on submarine. You were expected point to what you wanted, pay first, and the item would be placed in the drawer. There was no penetration of any kind, and I knew from blueprints that the glass went all the way to the underside of the roof deck, so you couldn't climb over it. You spoke to the attendants through an intercom only. -- Sippican Cottage:

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:40 AM | Your Say (1)

Ahead, the faint green glow of the aurora borealis....

The aurora borealis is very active tonight.
Overhead, fast moving sheets of green light with interspersed red streaks. My amateurish syntax cannot adequately describe what we see. The night sky is discharging green and red light... Being underneath it in an Electric Jet is, well, simply amazing.... The landing gear is down and locked with three green lights, flaps are FULL, ice shields are UP, speed is under control with glide-slope and localizer centered. As a long gone Captain-of-my-youth was fond of saying, we are cooking on the front burner. -- Flight Level 390: Where is YZP?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 AM | Your Say (2)

Bialek Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test

What Bialek is doing is exactly what Anita Hill did, and that is why she cannot be believed.
Remember Anita Hill? She was put in a “hostile work environment,” to which she reacted by…waiting and waiting and waiting some more, and then after she waited long enough, Clarence Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court and then she bravely stepped forward. With some information that the Senate might be interested in hearing. Just as an oh-by-the-way.... Neither one of these broads acted like this is a real problem. They are acting & did act, on the other hand, exactly like cash- and fame-crazed divas. Well yeah, I guess that’s not very tactful of me, but hey it’s true. Their behavior is perfectly consistent with someone who wants money and attention, and not at all consistent with someone who was the victim of an actual crime. -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 AM | Your Say (5)

What happens if the EU implodes?

It would be a world where America could blunder its way into a new century of dominance while Europe commits economic suicide and the Middle East tears itself apart. That is, if the men in Washington can keep the world itself from going up in smoke. -- An open thread of terrifying possibility at Belmont Club サ If

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:24 AM | Your Say (3)

"Cain also wins greater scrutiny, not exemption, because he is black — or at least a certain sort of black."

In addition to his conservatism, his voice, bearing, grammar, and diction, even his showy black cowboy hat,
bother liberals in much the same way that Joe Frazier was not Muhammad Ali and Clarence Thomas was not Anita Hill. Black authenticity, as defined by Southern mannerisms and darker complexion, amplified by conservatism or traditionalism, earns liberal unease. Rarely has anyone been so candid in confessing just that unease as were Senators Harry Reid and Joe Biden in their backhanded praise of Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. I think Reid (“light-skinned,” “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”) and Biden (“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”) both were trying to say at the time that Barack Obama did not look or sound like someone analogous to Herman Cain. -- Cain Lost in the Labyrinth - National Review Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:50 AM | Your Say (0)

The Google+ Ghost Town

Google What?:" I’ve been surprised by just how dreary the site has become.
Although Google seems determined to keep adding new features, I suspect there’s little it can do to prevent Google from becoming a ghost town. Google might not know it yet, but from the outside, it’s clear that G has started to die—it will hang on for a year, maybe two, but at some point Google will have to put it out of its misery." -- Google had a chance to compete with Facebook. Not anymore. - Slate Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:40 AM | Your Say (3)

November 9, 2011

Follywood

I look at the powers that be in Hollywood and the current mediasphere knowing with growing certainty
that they will not be disintermediated so much as marginalized in the new greater economy of literacy that the internet is providing. Fewer people will care about the Oscars, and more people will see with transparency the hypocrisy of those who pretend to defend the honor and integrity of homosexuals. You will hear that the recusals will be about rights, but they are only about image. -- Free Speech [Not] in Hollywood - Cobb

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:23 PM | Your Say (1)

"Liberals barely glance at the black conservative hanging in the courthouse square. Nothing new to see here."

Black liberal utopians are no better. Harry Belafonte, Samuel L. Jackson, and Morgan Freeman
are all suddenly unaware of the grievous insult to Cain. The NAACP is so quiet you can hear a mouse pee on a cotton ball, content to watch a brotha get a straight-up bully beatdown. Meanwhile, the Congressional Black Caucus stands by, waiting for Cain to lose consciousness from the beating so they can take his wallet, remove his watch and wedding ring, and—“Hey, John Lewis, don’t forget to get Cain’s hat!” --Blame it on Cain - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (12)

Gas vs. Wind

The gas well requires no subsidy – in fact it pays a hefty tax to the government – whereas the wind turbines each cost you a substantial add-on to your electricity bill, part of which goes to the rich landowner whose land they stand on. Wind power costs three times as much as gas-fired power. Make that nine times if the wind farm is offshore. And that’s assuming the cost of decommissioning the wind farm is left to your children – few will last 25 years. -- Al Fin Energy: More Shale Oil than First Believed & Gas That's Cleaner than Wind

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (1)

What we are seeing with the Occupy Wall Street movement is an alternative social contract.

The underworld social contract that seeks to supplant this, operates according to revolution.
It lusts for a glorious day in which it emerges as the top dog, which is an upcoming revolution, and it does all of its smaller things by means of smaller revolutions. If you want something, you immobilize something else until such time as someone is bludgeoned and browbeaten into giving you what you want. Annoyance is the new coin of the realm. If you want a hot dog, you annoy somebody. If you want a place to put up your tent and crash for the night, you annoy somebody. If you want a job, you annoy somebody. If you want to be heard, you annoy somebody. And, lately, it seems…if you have the opportunity to be heard and you’re having trouble figuring out what to say…yes, you annoy people until that problem, too, is solved. -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:08 AM | Your Say (1)

Schwarzenegger on a Bike

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He hauls a bike off the back of the car, hops on, and takes off
down an already busy Ocean Avenue. He wears no bike helmet, runs red lights, and rips past do not enter signs without seeming to notice them and up one-way streets the wrong way. When he wants to cross three lanes of fast traffic he doesn’t so much as glance over his shoulder but just sticks out his hand and follows it, assuming that whatever is behind him will stop. His bike has at least 10 speeds, but he has just 2: zero and pedaling as fast as he can. Inside half a mile he’s moving fast enough that wind-induced tears course down his cheeks. -- California and Bust | Business | Vanity Fair

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 AM | Your Say (3)

The McRib as Arbitrage

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Why doth the McRib come and go?
"We’re marks, novelty-seeking marks, and McDonald’s knows it. Every conspiracy theorist only helps their bottom line. They know the sandwich’s elusiveness makes it interesting in a way that the rest of the fast food industry simply isn’t. It inspires brand engagement, even by those who do everything they can to not engage with the brand." == A Conspiracy of Hogs: | The Awl

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:06 AM | Your Say (4)

November 8, 2011

Rhino Lift

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Rhinos get upside-down helicopter ride to safety
"This new procedure is gentler on the darted rhino because it shortens the time it has to be kept asleep with drugs, the respiration is not as compromised as it can be in a net and it avoids the need for travel in a crate over terrible tracks," he added. "The helicopter translocations usually take less than ten minutes, and the animals suffer no ill effect," he said, noting that the rhinos are transferred to trucks once road conditions are adequate.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 PM | Your Say (5)

Composite Photograph Made from 500 Self-Portraits

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"Tiemen Rapati downloaded 500 of her photos and created this beautiful composite image by finding an average RGB value for each pixel and dividing it by the total number of portraits. I have no idea how this is done, but I bet it involves computers." -- Colossal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:53 PM | Your Say (1)

X-Ray Day

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On this day in 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen (1845-1923) becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific advancement that would ultimately benefit a variety of fields, most of all medicine, by making the invisible visible. -- The Presurfer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:44 PM | Your Say (1)

SeeThrough: Nick Veasey for The Macallan

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A British X-ray photographer turns to whisky for his latest subject -- Coolhunting

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 PM | Your Say (0)

How do you fight back?

I'VE long had a special interest in the topic of false accusations
-- or rather, how to tell false from true, when the only evidence is the word of one party against another. Whether the charge be date rape, recovered memories of childhood molestation at the hands of a relative, sexual harassment, or just raunchy behavior of the type some of his accusers have claimed for Cain; if there's no evidence, what's a person to do? It's one thing to insist that Cain should "confront" the sexual harassment issue and the charges by giving a press conference. It's another to see how it's possible to effectively do so. -- neo-neocon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:45 PM | Your Say (2)

ALERT FOR ALASKA: ALASKA WEST COAST TO BE HIT BY ONE OF THE MOST SEVERE BERING SEA STORMS ON RECORD..

A POWERFUL AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS STORM OF NEAR RECORD OR RECORD MAGNITUDE IS BEARING DOWN ON THE WEST COAST OF ALASKA.
AT 9 AM THIS MORNING THE STORM CENTER WAS LOCATED ABOUT 600 MILES SOUTHWEST OF ST LAWRENCE ISLAND. THE STORM IS FORECAST TO MOVE RAPIDLY NORTHEAST TODAY AND TONIGHT WITH THE CENTER MOVING ACROSS THE CHUKOTSK PENINSULA TONIGHT. ON WEDNESDAY THE STORM WILL TAKE A NORTHWESTWARD TRACK INTO THE CHUKCHI SEA. THE STORM WILL BRING EXTREMELY STRONG WINDS TO ALL OF THE ALASKA WEST COAST BEGINNING THIS AFTERNOON OVER ST LAWRENCE ISLAND AND BEGINNING THIS EVENING OVER THE REMAINDER OF THE WEST COAST...ACCOMPANIED BY WIDESPREAD MAJOR COASTAL FLOODING AND SEVERE BEACH EROSION OVER MANY PARTS OF THE COASTLINE. THE WIND WILL PUSH LARGE AMOUNTS OF WATER INTO NORTON SOUND...RAISING SEA LEVELS TO 7 TO 9 FEET ABOVE NORMAL IN NORTON SOUND AND ALONG THE BERING STRAIT COAST. THE EXTREMELY STRONG WINDS WILL PRODUCE HIGH WAVES WHICH WILL PUSH THE HIGH WATER FARTHER INLAND. -- National Weather Service Watch Warning Advisory Summary

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:34 PM | Your Say (4)

In which Dr. Helen Kicks the Hapless Andrew Klavan's Commodious Ass

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Dr. Helen: Conservatives: Don't Play into Alinsky's Hands What Klavan is advocating is political suicide. Mr. Klavan, telling the right that they have to live up to some impossible standard while excusing the left is laughable. All it will get you is defeated.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (8)

Idolatry

Perhaps God is tired of the idolatry that has snuck into some hearts disguised as patriotism
—where the pledge is nearly equated with prayer and an excellent but earthbound document written by men is treated like the word from on high. Maybe he is tired of the idolatry of the parents whose darlings were over-indulged into stupidity, or the idolatry of the consumer who will stand in line overnight for the latest “must-have/already-obsolete” iToy, or the idolatry of mere ideas that trend and pass and carry off with them our charity and our clarity, leaving us more confused and distanced from God and each other, than we were before. Maybe it is the idolatry of our own earthly “power,” that has brought us to this shaky place. --American Optimism is a Strange God | First Things

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (2)

"I’ll know it when I see it."

That was Jobs’s credo, and until he saw it his perfectionism kept him on edge.
He looked at the title bars—the headers that run across the top of windows and documents—that his team of software developers had designed for the original Macintosh and decided he didn’t like them. He forced the developers to do another version, and then another, about twenty iterations in all, insisting on one tiny tweak after another, and when the developers protested that they had better things to do he shouted, “Can you imagine looking at that every day? It’s not just a little thing. It’s something we have to do right.” -- Steve Jobs’s Real Genius : The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 AM | Your Say (1)

G-20 Summits Still Pointless and Irrelevant

What breathless globaloney journalists and government flacks describe as the world’s most powerful supranational body proved once again
that it is ill-equipped to produce much more than hot air. If world leaders actually cared a fig about carbon emissions, these summits would die a quick and merciful death. Reminder to all students and other persons trying to follow the news in a serious way: G-20 summits are NOT NEWS. They are taxpayer funded campaign ad photo ops for incumbents combined with ego boosts for insecure powers. Via Meadia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (0)

On the doleful mediocrity of so many who pursue careers as teachers nowadays.

The greatest share of the blame for the intellectual impoverishment of K-12 education lies on the political left,
which has made poverty a viable lifestyle choice; politicized curriculums; lowered standards disastrously; defended unions that elevate the welfare of teachers above the success of students; made self-esteem a more important goal than learning; and fought to keep minorities "down, dumb and Democratic." But intellectually serious conservatives too often have turned away, relinquishing the field of education to leftist mush-minds. And when we do engage, it’s to sanitize learning or insist on imposing our religious views in the classroom. Education must be fact-based, demanding and politically neutral. The only agenda should be turning out effective, successful citizens who can sustain our country’s power and greatness. --Failing Schools a Sign of Failing National Character サ Publications サ Family Security Matters

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 AM | Your Say (2)

November 7, 2011

“The place where there’s non-stop singing and dancing”

was Russian slang for the GULAG, per Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn.
It’s strangely appropriate to our times. A little singing and dancing is a pleasant diversion. More than that, it takes on a desperate, frenetic, sinister air. It represents a desire to blank out disturbing thoughts and ideas with something that will fill the mind with emptiness. -- Be A Clown! - Deconstructing Leftism

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:37 PM | Your Say (0)

Those in the media and in politics who are currently up in arms, denouncing income inequalities, seldom mention age as a factor in those inequalities.

The relationship between age and income is not hard to understand.
It usually takes years to acquire the skills and experience that high-paying jobs require, or to build up a clientele for those in business or the professions. -- Of Inequality and Numbers Games | Crisis Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:56 PM | Your Say (2)

The Coward in Chief

I no longer care why Obama's trying to run the country into the ground.
Is it by dumb accident, because he's too ignorant to know better? Is it a deliberately calculated move to bring us down? I don't give a shit anymore. Because it doesn't matter. Regardless of the circumstance or the situation, he is going to make the cowardly move. He's shown it time and again, apologizing to dictators, bowing and scraping before kings, and making his rounds on his Apology Tour. I have fucking had it with this shameless cowardice. -- I am Simon Jester サ Blog Archive サ We Are Dying Many Times Before Our Deaths

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

Pakistan Carts Its Nukes Around In Delivery Vans

The nukes travel “in civilian-style vehicles without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic,”
according to a blockbuster story on the U.S.-Pakistan relationship in The Atlantic. Marc Ambinder and Jeffrey Goldberg write that tactical nuclear weapons travel down the streets in “vans with a modest security profile.” Somewhere on a highway around, say, Karachi, is the world’s most dangerous 1-800-FLOWERS truck. -- | Danger Room | Wired.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (0)

Apply Flame Thrower at Will

Can we torch Time Magazine’s offices now? | The Spectator

In normal circumstances I would deplore the notion that its offices should be firebombed and editors, reporters, critics, subs, secretaries and IT support staff reduced to piles of smouldering ashes, so charred and diminished their next kin would not be able to identify them. But what possible argument can those of us who shudder at the thought of arsonists torching Time, and immolating all who work there, now make in its defence?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (0)

Apply Flame Thrower at Will

Can we torch Time Magazine’s offices now? | The Spectator

In normal circumstances I would deplore the notion that its offices should be firebombed and editors, reporters, critics, subs, secretaries and IT support staff reduced to piles of smouldering ashes, so charred and diminished their next kin would not be able to identify them. But what possible argument can those of us who shudder at the thought of arsonists torching Time, and immolating all who work there, now make in its defence?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (0)

"The common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard"

You know, it's hard to think of a more despicable person than the libertarian of convenience:
the guy who wants the "government out of our bedrooms", but then expects the state to exercise nearly totalitarian control of our living rooms, garages, kitchens, board rooms, classrooms and offices. -- The Fourth Checkraise:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:05 AM | Your Say (3)

Vote Democrat. Sit In the Dark.

Had Enough Therapy?: Blackouts Across the Northeast

Obama's stimulus plan lavished $100 billion on green-energy projects -- nearly 15 times the amount spent replacing and reinforcing power lines, which actually serve customers and keep them out of the dark....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:30 AM | Your Say (0)

The larger vision of the mediaeval University

Before our culture collapses under the critique of postmodernism;
before our politicians descend into complete unprincipled pragmatism; before democracy itself is dismantled by its own inner contradictions – we urgently need the larger vision of the mediaeval University, no doubt in radically new but still holistic forms, to teach a new generation that truth and beauty are more than fantasy, that public policy is more than Machiavellian scheming, and that we are best served when the will of the people is brought, by whatever means, into a dynamic dialogue with the will of God. -- The Great Story, A Sermon to Celebration the 600th anniversary of the foundation of the University of St Andrews HT: 4th Checkraise

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 AM | Your Say (0)

November 6, 2011

Attention: It's Been Done Before

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:52 PM | Your Say (10)

Consider Boy and Girl Scout Jamborees

[Every year] Strangers instantly come together to pool limited resources and help each other out.
Within hours, they can create a physically safe and emotionally supportive ad hoc community while they wait for outside help to arrive. Given all that, just how pathetic is it that the various "Occupy" mobs can't even come close to providing the same level of effective self-organization in their little campground cum shantytowns? Even the most trivial decisions take hours of protracted debate that often end without deciding on an action. The "Occupiers" in many cities have rioted, attacking random individuals and destroying businesses large and small. Almost all of the sites nationwide are plagued  internally by violence and theft. -- Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » It's Time for the Grownups to Send the Children Home HT: 4th Checkraise.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:27 PM | Your Say (5)

Note to Students Still at the Party

Your competition is working hard, damned hard, and is deadly serious about learning.
There's nothing written in the stars that guarantees Americans a higher standard of living than other people. Those of you who spend your college years goofing off in the traditional American way are going to pay a much higher price for this than you think. -- Where Have All the Chemists Gone? | Via Meadia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:58 AM | Your Say (0)

Making a List and Checking It

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Via The Jawa Report: Tea Party Versus #Occupy Checklist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:05 AM | Your Say (2)

Dementia Thickening Among the 99%

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Bring out the cattle prods!

Via Michelle Obama's Mirror: Occupy Wall Street: Now Certified Halal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (16)

We know the central tropes.

Women are kept in line by charges
that a Republican victory will end abortion rights. African-Americans are induced to vote Democrat by charges that Republicans are racists. Jewish-Americans are told to vote Democratic because Republicans are anti-Semites. This year, the MSM is facing an especially difficult challenge. How do you keep Jewish voters in line when the Obama administration has been running a largely anti-Israel policy? -- Had Enough Therapy?: Obama and Clinton vs. Israel

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (2)

The Collapse of Our Corrupt, Predatory, Pathological Financial System Is Necessary and Positive

The only way to clear a zombie economy is to write off
uncollectable debt and liquidate all the assets, loans and hedges. That would collapse our financial system, but since it is the cause of our political and economic dysfunction, that would be the highest possible good and extremely positive. -- charles hugh smith-

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 AM | Your Say (4)

Zuccotti Park

The parcel is now a sliver of madness, rife with sex attacks, robberies and vigilante justice.
It’s a leaderless bazaar that’s been divided into state-like camps -- with tents packed together so densely that the only way to add more would be to stack them. And despite an NYPD watchtower overhead and the entire north side of Zuccotti lined with police vehicles, it is quickly becoming one of the most dangerous places in New York City. -- NYPOST.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:50 AM | Your Say (0)

"Only the criminal class is actually honest about what it is up to."

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"They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life — just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth.
What’s happening in Oakland is a logical exercise in class solidarity: The government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class, and the criminal class in order to stick it to what’s left of the beleaguered productive class. It’s a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. -- Sense of Events: Not standing with the 99 percent - at least not downwind

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 AM | Your Say (1)

The Race Issue Redux

It's not gonna come so easy as it did in 2008, but that'€™s why they plan to ramp it up -- the race issue. 
Look, you got generations of voters in this country who have been hammered with guilt for being white.  Schools, television, movies -- decades of this racism sh*t coming at them from all sides.  White guilt is very real. I've used it-done it myself --  countless times in an election campaign.  And for Barack Obama -- his re-election team -- they are banking on it bringing victory in 2012.  Even if it means the threat of race riots.  They are willing to go that far -- €“ go down that road if need be.  If the Obama team can'€™t guilt enough of White America into voting for them in 2012 -- they are just fine with trying to scare the sh*t out of them to do it.  -- White House Insider: The Obama Plan - The Ulsterman Report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:39 AM | Your Say (0)

Not the evening of November 4, 1980

Now is 2012, and it seems clear that 2012 isn’t going to be another 1980.
The reality seems to be that we’re not going to have a chance to replay that election, with (at least in the hazy glow of retrospect) a compelling conservative leader of long standing but ever youthful, a man who stood tall and spoke for us and for America, riding gracefully to victory over the GOP establishment in the primaries and over decadent liberalism in the general election. Assuming the presidential field stays as it is, 2012 won’t be a repeat of 1980. -- It’s Not 1980 Anymore | The Weekly Standard

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:30 AM | Your Say (1)

The Infection Spreads

When the Occupy protesters in London's St Pauls
assured the public that they did not intend to use the cathedral as a latrine they lied. "We could make a unanimous statement for this entire camp -- that we are not here to defecate on or in St Pauls Cathedral." The disavowal came after church workers had to clean human waste off carpet when someone -- presumably not the Occupy protesters -- used it as a latrine. -- Belmont Club » The 19th Mansion

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:23 AM | Your Say (0)

Cupcakes

Cupcakes are not just a normal baked good,
in fact, by some they are considered infinitely powerful tools. Essentially, they are synonymous with complete Global Domination. Thus, the ability to bake these sweet delicacies is seen as an extremely valuable asset to those wishing to pursue the goal of total global control. [“Fairy cakes” are what the British call cupcakes.] -- Urban Dictionary: cupcakes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:04 AM | Your Say (3)

November 5, 2011

"The Republican Party has historically been rolling over. "

It has retreated for so a long time it does not know how to advance;
and that has created a vacuum in the democratic space. Its weakness set up the present danger. What the Tea Party did is reopen the debate by reviving the space “between the parties”. And that has been infecting the Republicans. But it has also set of alarm bells on the Left. They fear it; and are thus determined to strangle the newborn ideas in the cradle. -- Belmont Club » Just Like the Tea Party

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:25 PM | Your Say (1)

Truth Out! "Two Women Claim Herman Cain Beat Them Senseless with a Frozen Turkey "

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Anonymous Cain victim

WASHINGTON – Yet another Herman Cain scandal has been unearthed by the Politico news organization.
Their website is reporting that two women who ask to remain anonymous have come forward and said that in the late nineties Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain beat them senseless with a frozen turkey after they refused to accompany him to his private residence. Politico reports that the women are terrified to make public statements for fear that Cain will track them down and beat them again with a frozen turkey, possibly even with a canned ham. -- The DAILY RASH

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:39 PM | Your Say (2)

America is seizing up before our eyes:

The decrepit airports, the underwater property market,
the education racket, the hyper-regulated business environment. Yet curiously the best example of this sclerosis is the alleged “revolutionary” movement itself. It’s the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It’s more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing. I don’t mean just the placards with the same old portable quotes by Lenin et al. --Corporate Collaborators - Mark Steyn - National Review Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (0)

This Just In:

Andy Rooney Doesn’t Have To Put Up With Anything Anymore | The Rumford Meteor

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (2)

The .001 Percent

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (2)

Know thou where thou protests

Modesto ain't New York, motherfucker. We don't go for that shit around here.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:18 AM | Your Say (3)

November 4, 2011

"Occupy Oakland" Costs Oakland 100s of Jobs

"We're losing 300 to 400 jobs on people who decided to not renew their leases or not to come here," said Mayor Jean Quan,
who also complained about what she said was the protesters' lack of willingness to talk with city officials about seeking common ground.

Joseph Haraburda, president of Oakland's Chamber of Commerce, blames the city for three deals falling through. Two businesses planning to lease a total of 50,000 square feet of office space and another planning to bring 100 jobs into the city pulled out after Quan allowed protesters to reoccupy to their camp following the police raid cleared them out, Haraburda said. -- Oakland occupiers, officials take stock of costs - Boston.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:00 PM | Your Say (0)

"Black conservatives scare the hell out of the political establishment, both Republican and Democrat."

I suspect that the real reason that Politico, the Washington Post's political opinion and gossip blog, is devoting so much time to this "unnamed people condemn Herman Cain of undescribed sexual harassment; specifications not available" "story" is pure fear. Black conservatives scare the hell out of the political establishment, both Republican and Democrat. They can tolerate uppity blacks with the right academic credentials and came up through the chairs with proper obeisance to the establishment, but Cain didn't do any of that. He is contemptuous of economic theorists (the smart ones who got us into this mess). It doesn't look as if he would "grow" in office if he became politically important. Have no truck with him! Kill! -- €“ Jerry Pournelle

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:49 PM | Your Say (0)

"I believe that Barack Obama owns the Occupy Wall Street movement," Rudy Giuliani

"It would not have happened, it would not have happened but for his class warfare.
And remember, as it gets worse and worse because it's going to get worse and worse, where it came from. Barack Obama. He praised it. He supported it. He agrees with it. He sympathizes with it. And as it gets worse and worse, I believe this will be the millstone around Barack Obama's neck that will take his presidency down." -- RealClearPolitics

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:33 PM | Your Say (5)

Obsessive? Excessive? Recessive?

Politico needs to get a grip: Politico publishes 90 stories on Cain scandal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:30 PM | Your Say (3)

The "You Suck" Headline of the Week

RealClearPolitics - "In Desperation, Obama Turns to Hoover"

Oh, there's gonna be a lot of Hoovering between now and next November. Get in line behind Reggie.

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

"Since those "Occupy" morons tend to believe that national borders are meaningless anachronisms...

that should be eradicated posthaste
(memetic entanglement of logically unrelated concepts is truly an amazing phenomenon), I am surprised that it took this long for anyone else to realize that there is no reason that their beloved redistribution should stop within the meaningless borders of one nation, no matter how wealthy, when there are billions of far hungrier mouths, including little Miguelito, N'Dugu and Ping, out there crying for equality. -- The Fourth Checkraise: El mundo unido jamás será vencido

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:54 AM | Your Say (3)

November 3, 2011

Why We Need Not Envy China

21 million Chinese live below what the Communist party calls the “absolute poverty” line.
That sounds pretty good if you have in mind our poverty line, which is just under $11,000 per year for an individual and roughly $22,000 for a family of four. The absolute poverty rate in China is $90 a year, or $7.50 per month. And 35 million live on less than $125 per year. Hundreds of millions of Chinese live on $1 or $2 a day. -- - Jonah Goldberg - National Review Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 PM | Your Say (0)

Tactical Baby Stroller

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Details: 3-Gun Carts/ Wagons/ Strollers - hauling your gear around at a match

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:12 PM | Your Say (2)

Current Silly Internet Trick

Do this while it's still happening:

1) Go to Goggle.com

2) Type in (no quotes) DO A BARREL ROLL

3) Hit Search

Posted by Vanderleun at 2:02 PM | Your Say (11)

When a Marxist says "power to the people," he isn't talking about actual people.

In fact, so few actual people want what Marxists want them to want
that the emergence of even one or two who fit the category becomes cause for universal acclaim and celebration. That's how so many earnest people, including the entire Nobel Peace Prize award committee, got taken in by the fabricated "memoirs" of Rigoberta Menchu. That's why the pages of Ms. are full of bright pictures of women's collective art projects in Central America and women's collective farming projects in Zimbabwe. It takes no time at all to realize that Marxists and their intellectual offspring have no use for actual people in general, and only one use for "actual people" who do want what they're supposed to want. They treat them like pets. -- The Official Jane Haddam Web Site - Essay - ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE...NOT

Posted by Vanderleun at 1:34 PM | Your Say (1)

Degrees

The graduate with a science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The graduate with an engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The graduate with an accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The graduate with a liberal arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?" -- Jane Haddam

Posted by Vanderleun at 12:05 PM | Your Say (4)

First tragedy. Then farce. Now, incoherent childishness and pathetic exhibitionism.

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it: Anarchists Occupy Wall Street!
People with funny hair, unpleasant tattoos, and bad spelling demand revolution!” In one sense, the sideshow that is Occupy Wall Street has been a gift to copy-hungry publications. It’s always fun to quote the permanent adolescents. As Art Linkletter knew, they say the darndest things. You might be worried about paying the mortgage and junior’s tuition; they get to denounce “corporations,” embrace the “environment,” and declare that “Christopher Columbus was the first Zionist.” Who knew? -- The 99-percent solution - The New Criterion

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (0)

"Internalized Oppression."

The post-Soviet version of "false consciousness" is "internalized oppression."
If you're a woman who opposes abortion, a black with middle class values, or a person with a lousy job who nevertheless believes in hard work, those aren't your real values. You've internalized the values of the white male power elite and allowed yourself to become their tool. You don't really know what you believe. When the enlightened elite want your opinion, they'll tell you what it is. -- Treason of the Intellectuals, Volume 3

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:19 AM | Your Say (5)

Avoid Bisection

Whatever you do, never, ever straddle a towing line, which can carry hundreds of thousands of pounds of tension. -- The Lure of the Tug | gCaptain - Maritime & Offshore

Posted by Vanderleun at 7:50 AM | Your Say (2)

Truth in Packaging

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Posted by Vanderleun at 4:42 AM | Your Say (0)

November 2, 2011

Failed Liberal Ideas

In the following survey, you can rate how badly five liberal ideas have failed based on the threat you think they pose to freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society in America. -- TAKE THE QUIZ HERE @The Heritage Foundation

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:54 AM | Your Say (0)

Why do the journalists and professors so fervently believe in things they cannot possibly verify on their own?

Deep in their heart, many of these pundits or English professors or whatnot realize they don't know much, nor are their skills that valuable.
They are important only as courtiers for the Knowledge Class. Anything that threatens its perceived hegemony is a threat to these hangers-on, even the journalists. And the only way they see to prove their loyalty to their masters in the New Class is to make a rabid defense of its dogmas. So the journalists and others on the low rungs of the Knowledge class defend the dogma. And of course this also goes for the dogma of Keynes, and multiculturalism, and much else. And it goes to self-image too. They see themselves as Obama: a bright, arrogant fellow content to spin words and theories, separated from those (wrinkle nose) facts and people. -- To repeat: another warmist scam

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (1)

When No One is Watching

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

The Coming Draconian Sentencing for White Collar Criminals

The Madoffs: Shamed, Isolated, Disgraced | Via Meadia
This will get worse as other white collar thieves face the music. Public anger at these lowlife types will only grow as awareness of the systemic corruption and fraud on Wall Street mounts. Judges, too may be less lenient in the future, especially as politicians, responding to public anger, push for stiffer restitution laws and higher fines. Though the Madoffs are no longer living the high life, they were allowed to keep enough money to live more modestly for quite a long time, but later fraud families may not do as well. Why shouldn't the families of prominent financial criminals have to look for jobs as store clerks and security guards when millions of honest Americans work at hard jobs for little pay every day of their lives?

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (4)

November 1, 2011

"OWS should be a wake up call that this election will not be a cakewalk."

Obama's original victory was implausible, it took extensive work, planning and money. The idea that it can't happen again should be buried deep right now. It happened once. It can happen again if we let it. The other side is not going to play by any rules, it is not going to run a conventional campaign, it will pull every dirty trick it can think of and change the game as many times as it takes to win. --Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield

Posted by Vanderleun at 11:53 PM | Your Say (6)

Q&A: Edward Luttwak

Personally, from an emotional point of view, myself, as me, I prefer the Zionist Occupied Government explanation above all others.
I love the idea that the Zionists have sufficient power to actually occupy America, and through America to basically run the world. I love the idea of being a member of a secretive and powerful cabal. If you put my name Luttwak together with Perle and Wolfowitz and you search the Internet, you will get this little list of people who run the American government and the world, and I’m on it. I love that. -- Edward Luttwak Talks Israel and Bin Laden – Tablet Magazine

Posted by Vanderleun at 10:09 PM | Your Say (1)

"How do I know Gaddafi was crazy?"

Because he hadn’t FLED THE COUNTRY WITH HIS AMAZON WOMEN and his BILLIONS OF DOLLARS! -- Gaddafi’s Bitter (and Sore) End - Taki's Magazine

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:49 PM | Your Say (0)

The Summing Up

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Via Sense of Events: Remembering not to care

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:22 PM | Your Say (2)

How Much Fuel? : "An Infinite Supply of Hydrocarbons: Coal and Kerogen Beyond the Stars"

There is reason to believe that a significant amount of hydrocarbon was incorporated into the deep planetary structures of the Earth in the earliest stages of planetary formation. Theorists such as Thomas Gold, and Sergey and Alexey Marakushev have maintained that much of the oil & gas that is produced commercially, came from this pre-biotic hydrocarbon. -- Al Fin Energy

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:04 PM | Your Say (1)

"Where in the world could we put 7 billion people?"

"How about Texas? It is the second largest state in the USA with 268,820 sq. miles
which computes to 7,494,271,488,000 square feet (sf) or about 7.5 Trillion sf." A little division and that comes out to about 1,071 sf available per person in Texas alone for all (every single person) seven billion. Imagine that, everyone in Texas and the rest of the world vacant, empty, devoid of mankind. --Riley Driver's Point of View: Seven Billion

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:52 PM | Your Say (3)

"Recessions are for the little people."

From Roll Call: "Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total, according to a Roll Call analysis of Members'€™ financial disclosure forms." --Daily scoreboard « Don Surber

Posted by Vanderleun at 8:42 PM | Your Say (0)

Progressive-Democrat LGBT Announces 2012 Presidential Candidate

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Posted by Vanderleun at 6:03 AM | Your Say (3)