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July 31, 2012
A Message from NBC About Its Olympics Coverage
Tonight, for those of you who like watching the Olympics without having every moment drained of its entertainment value, we are launching a new premium service called NBCFree: the Olympics without any contributions from NBC whatsoever. For only $29.95 you can watch the Olympics with no spoilers, no maudlin “personal narratives,” and no promos for NBC’s new fall shows like that egregious one with the doctor and the monkey we show like every five minutes. And for $39.95, no Ryan Seacrest. -- : The New Yorker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:30 PM | Your Say (1)
Daisy's Bud Vase
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:56 PM | Your Say (2)
The world is apparently leaving the 70-year old Pax America for more troubled waters.
But the principal danger is that it is led by a political elite that hates "unproven missile defense",dreams of a world without nuclear weapons, hopes to rely on wind power for its energy needs and believes that the highest priority is to keep fast food companies whose owners don't approve of gay marriage out of the restaurant business. That's the bad news. What's the good news? -- Belmont Club » Good news, bad news
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:38 PM | Your Say (2)
Butt for the empty seats, everything’s going well at the games
Butt here’s something funny: I was actually at Mitt’s Olympics in Salt Lake back in 2002! As a spectator, not a participant.Mitt’s games were in the “middle of nowhere” in the middle of a freezing cold winter, with snow and ice all over the mountain roads that connected multiple venues up to 60 miles apart. And you know what? No empty seats!-- Michelle Obama's Mirror
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (1)
True Dat
--after a scintillating synchronized swimming career-- with a Paul Anka-grade addiction to suntanning. Of course, she took the place of a homunculus who likes to run around in a bath towel with his pud in his hand and show it to any passersby in his hotel room, so things are looking up! -- Sippican Cottage: A Demonstration Of The Inner Workings Of The International Monetary Fund, Made Out Of Wood
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (0)
Mayor Bloomberg's Impassioned Crusade for Mandatory Breastfeeding
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:29 AM | Your Say (2)
This Campaign Might Turn Into a Real Barn-Burner
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:13 AM | Your Say (2)
Bigot” is the new “racist” and the “bigot card” is the new “race card.”
Democratic politicians and support groups had to tread carefully in how far their rhetoric and actions went. Once Obama came out in support of gay marriage, Democrats were freed to accuse anyone and everyone who supports the traditional definition of marriage as bigoted and unworthy of a place in their jurisdictions. -- Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 AM | Your Say (0)
"Global Warming" should at least require two things:
1) Warming, and 2) Global effect. -- Chaos ManorPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 AM | Your Say (0)
A pizza guy? No, it's Spain's official Olympics uniform.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:41 AM | Your Say (6)
July 30, 2012
Newsweek’s cover for next week?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 PM | Your Say (2)
What's Important
Now, I may sound like a Bible beater yelling up a revival meeting at a river crossing camp meeting, but that don’t change the truth none. There’s right and there’s wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one and you’re living. You do the other and you may be walking around, but you’re dead as a beaver hat.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:12 PM | Your Say (1)
"If only permit holders could have been armed" is not a tenable position.
Sense of Events: Wrapping up Aurora This post is also a response to many of the comments made resulting from one of my posts being excerpted on American Digest, where a vigorous and (overall) collegial debate ensued. However, since it was obvious to me that some commenters were writing based solely on the excerpt A.D. posted, never having read the entire post, I hope to put everything together HERE - and just drop a link there.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:44 PM | Your Say (6)
Trash Talk
It kind of makes sense, the more people consume (and thus produce to meet demand), the more trash is generated. Look at the end line. Either something very unusual is happening, or we're not getting, shall we say, the whole picture from the Obama administration. Either way, if history is any guide, we're in for a real problem this quarter - which ends in September. -- Word Around the Net: WIERD INDICATORS
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:04 PM | Your Say (1)
[Bumped] "There is nothing in law or custom that obligates armed, private citizen to engage an armed criminal."
There are occasions where an armed private citizen can stop potential lethal violence – see the link above. But Aurora was not one of them. If Second Amendment advocates think the massacre doesn’t support greater gun control laws, then they need also to consider that it doesn’t support relaxing carry laws, either. -- Sense of Events: Public killings and armed citizenry
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:00 PM | Your Say (45)
Mr. Clean
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:54 AM | Your Say (1)
Is This the Best or the Most Evil Parenting Trick Ever?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:42 AM | Your Say (5)
Meet the Man Who Put the '@' in Your E-Mail
“If every person had an ‘@’ sign in their name, it wouldn’t work too well. But they didn’t. They did use commas and slashes and brackets. Of the remaining three or four characters, the ‘@’ sign made the most sense. It denoted where the user was … at. Excuse my English.” -- | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (0)
Gold Assured
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (2)
"This is not a whodunit. ... The only possible defense is insanity."
Under Colorado law, defendants are not legally liable for their acts if their minds are so "diseased"that they cannot distinguish between right and wrong. However, the law warns that "care should be taken not to confuse such mental disease or defect with moral obliquity, mental depravity, or passion growing out of anger, revenge, hatred, or other motives, and kindred evil conditions." -- My Way News - Colo. suspect charged with 24 counts of murder
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:38 AM | Your Say (1)
[Bumped] Condoleezza Rice:
US must recall it is not just any country. We need to reassure our friends across the globe.The rush to court adversaries has overshadowed relations with trusted allies. Our engagement with Europe has been sporadic and sometimes dismissive. Strategic ties with India, Brazil and Turkey have neither strengthened nor deepened in recent years. Hugo Chávez and the Iranians have bitten off the extended hand of friendship. There is no Palestinian state because it will only come through negotiation with a secure Israel that is confident in its relationship with the US. The decision to abandon missile defence sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, to “reset” relations with Russia was pocketed by Vladimir Putin who quickly returned to his anti-American ways. Friends must be able to trust in the consistency of our commitment to them.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (43)
The Virtue Junkie
He experiences the reality that you’re not open to the emotional arguments, and he reacts the way you should’ve expected: He doesn’t. He just recites the same arguments he just got done reciting. He’s tying it off, slamming it into the main vein. Not really discussing anything at all. All the impulses of a wild animal, with none of the comprehension of real objects and real events that all wild animals must acquire and sustain, in order to survive. The worst of both worlds. -- Morgan Freeberg: The Vampire Problem
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (0)
Rahm Emanuel : Chick-fil-A does not represent "Chicago values"
But, before he was mayor, Rahm Emanuel was President Obama's chief of staff. Until the president's recent "evolution," the Obama administration held the same position on gay marriage as Chick-fil-A. Would Alderman Moreno have denied Barack Obama the right to open a chicken restaurant in the First Ward? Did Rahm Emanuel quit the Obama administration on principle? Don't be ridiculous. Mayor Emanuel is a former ballet dancer, and when it's politically necessary he can twirl on a dime. -- Mark Steyn: Don't cross the forces of tolerance
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (1)
If you're a feminist or a gay or any of the other house pets in the Democratic menagerie,
you might want to look at Rahm Emanuel's pirouette, and Menino's coziness with Islamic homophobia.These guys are about power, and right now your cause happens to coincide with their political advantage. But political winds shift. Once upon a time, Massachusetts burned witches. Now it grills chicken-sandwich homophobes. One day it'll be something else. Already in Europe, in previously gay-friendly cities like Amsterdam, demographically surging Muslim populations have muted Leftie politicians' commitment to gay rights, feminism and much else. It's easy to cheer on the thugs when they're thuggish in your name. What happens when Emanuel's political needs change? -- Mark Steyn: Don't cross the forces of tolerance
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (0)
California Dreaming
I walk each night around the farm. What is the weirdest find?A nearby alleyway has become a dumping place for the rotting corpses of fighting dogs. Each evening or so, a dead dog (pit bulls, Queensland terriers) with a rope and plenty of wounds is thrown up on the high bank. The coyotes make short work of the remains. Scattered about are several skeletons with ropes still around their necks. I suppose that at about 2 a.m. the organizers of dog fights drive in and cast out the eveningsâ losers. -- Works and Days » California: The Road Warrior Is Here
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:45 AM | Your Say (1)
July 29, 2012
Holder, Corzine, Obama and all the rest don't give a shit
that any of this is coming out. They are sitting back and LAUGHING at all of it. You know why?Because they know damn good and well that no one is going to actually do ANYTHING about any of this, just like no one did anything about it in Russia under Lenin and Stalin or China under Mao..... You want to see justice? Kiss your wife and kiddies goodbye, gear up, and tell me where the mustering point is. Unless and until that happens, not only will there be no justice, but the crimes will only get exponentially worse until we are the New Vendee and infernal columns of the Free Shit Army are being sent into suburbia to kill every human being in their path in the name of hope, change, "tolerance" and free shit. -- Anne Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:55 PM | Your Say (1)
Collateral Comment Damage
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 AM | Your Say (9)
"People such as Bill O’Reilly—who might be described as a mouthpiece for 'the alternative left' "
It just goes on and on, with ever more intrusive tactics being applied to bring everyone into line. This is not fascism, with due respect to my libertarian friends who insist that it is. Mussolini, for all his rhetoric about the state’s majesty, would never have engaged in the present insane attempt to stand society on its head by placing homosexuals beyond criticism and by pushing the private sector into showering them with jobs. The alternative left does not really object to such arrangements provided they can elect Romney as our next president and get on with important things such as carpet-bombing Iran and filling patronage jobs with party loyalists. -- Chick-fil-A Eats Crow - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (8)
July 28, 2012
Sky-High, as in the Rent Check
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:05 PM | Your Say (3)
On your mark, get set....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (2)
This Just In
Olympic Head Hopes Athletes Inspire A Generation Of Young People To Work For No Pay And Meekly Pee Into A Cup When Ordered To Do So | The Rumford MeteorPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:48 AM | Your Say (1)
Remedial Education in History
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:53 AM | Your Say (12)
Katherine Mathilda “Tilda” Swinton
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:13 AM | Your Say (6)
July 27, 2012
"Lies, after all, are the heart and soul and the sword and shield of the Democrat party. "
So all you have to do to occupy multiple epithets on the Democrats’ enemies list is to insist that they take their hands off yourself,off your wallet, off your property, off your kids, off your diet, off your healthcare, off your household appliances, off your car, off your bank account, off your weapons of self-defense, off your liberty, and off your freedom of speech. Insist on all these good things - and that qualifies you to be spat upon by nasty, mean-spirited scum --- by The Friends of All Mankind --- by a gang of lying, thieving, dope-smoking, pill-popping, coke-snorting, sticky-fingered, bloodsxcking, tax-eating, gun-stealing, predatory humanitarian hoodlums, thugs and gangsters --- by the Democrat party, in other words. No political party in the history of America more profoundly deserves absolute and outright destruction. -- Comment by Osamapajamas inThe Real Reason ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Works -- Daily Intel
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 PM | Your Say (4)
Little eye, big skirt, crocked
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 PM | Your Say (6)
Comment of the Day: "The typical permit holder"
is someone who got a permit not so he could carry at all, but to avoid having to pay the name-check fee each time he wants to buy a gun.The next typical holder is someone who runs out and gets a pistol because of events like Aurora, gets the permit and carries the pistol devotedly - for about three weeks. Then it sits in a drawer and gathers dust. And the owner almost never goes to a range to practice. The former is making a financial decision that it's cheaper to get a permit than to keep paying fees. And the latter is a joke - if he ever screws up and brings his gun to a public, crowded place like the theater and thinks he's Sgt. Rock when the madman starts shooting, God help us. -- From Side-Lines: "There is nothing in law or custom
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:48 PM | Your Say (2)
Graduates
All of them committed crimes using firearms. All of them were highly educated products of the best academic institutions. All of them were, or were training to be health science professionals. -- Belmont Club ｻ Making the Connection
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:28 PM | Your Say (1)
The Best-Selling Greeting Card of All Time
Back when it debuted for Mother’s Day in 1939, kids plunked down a hard-earned nickel for the card as an expression of their love. More than seven decades later, you can still walk into a Hallmark store and buy the Pansy Card for a mere 99 cents. The company didn’t start tracking sales for individual cards until 1942, but in the years since, customers have bought more than 30 million Pansies. -- - Mental Floss
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:37 PM | Your Say (0)
What are some English phrases and terms commonly heard in India but rarely used elsewhere?
My niece is having PG-accommodation only so I will be putting up at the Taj hotel. Although, the staff there acts very pricey.But more better to avoid dicey food and the loose motions, and the gentry there is good only. Their mutton curry is majorly tender. Fresh baby goats. Order with curd. Portion size is too huge so we always order one into two. Plus, never any load-shedding. Cent percent full value. Why take tension? It is bang opposite to the airport. One just has to cross the flyover. Ask anyone for directions if you are having your own conveyance, but the auto-wallahs and taxi-wallahs who ply there are knowing it very well. -- (- Quora
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:27 PM | Your Say (2)
"Why a SoHo banker on a weekend jaunt to Eataly is dressed the same as an African famine victim"
You may think that when you get tired of that glitter-glued blouse, a poorer person will benefit from looking stylish.You dutifully bring the garment over to the Salvation Army, feeling virtuous. Well, the Salvation Army intake center for Brooklyn and Queens takes in five tons of the stuff you don’t want to wear any more every day. Most of it doesn’t go to the secondhand store. It’s baled like yesterday’s paper and sold by the pound to salvage shops. These modern-day rag-and-bone dealers sort and sell last season’s dress to rag-makers, mattress-fillers, and the African wholesale market. -- Rag Drag by Nicole Gelinas - City Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:23 PM | Your Say (0)
And sometimes a crass idiot -- say, Barack Obama --
will reach the pinnacle of success. But do I believe we need to tear down and reform the whole systemjust because this dimwit makes more money than I do? No, not at all. Thanks to this feature of the system, it gives hope to every moron that they too can make it in America. Imagine the despair if this weren't the case? -- One Cʘsmos: The Order of Obama's Disordered Mind
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:25 PM | Your Say (0)
"Y'all didn't build dat no way!:" The 'Yowsa Boss' Defense
Jonathan Chait straps on the full drool cup for: The Real Reason ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Works -- Daily Intel "The key thing is that Obama is angry, and he’s talking not in his normal voice but in a “black dialect.” This strikes at the core of Obama’s entire political identity: a soft-spoken, reasonable African-American with a Kansas accent."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (1)
The Unfortunate Product Placement Awards -- Category: Magazines
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (0)
July 26, 2012
"Rush, it's changing. More and more blacks are tired of the Democrat Party. It's changing."
And every year I've been hearing a transformation's taking place, and yet the percentages stay the same.And I've looked at it intellectually, 50 years, the 24 that I've been doing the program, chronicle the decay, the destruction, the breakup of the black family, and it's all brought about by big government policies. It's all brought about by the Democrat Party, and yet they keep getting the votes. -- Why Democrats Get the Black Vote - The Rush Limbaugh Show
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:13 PM | Your Say (3)
Hot War' Erupting With Iran, Top Terror-Watchers Warn
“The Iranians have considered this a shooting war for some time.”There have been acts of sabotage, assassinations, explosions, and cyberattack. But the increasingly violent shadow war between the U.S., Israel, Iran, and its allies haven’t hit targets on American soil — yet. That could change before too long. ~~ ' | Danger Room | Wired.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:35 PM | Your Say (0)
First and Last Words on Chick-Fil-A.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:57 PM | Your Say (1)
Just Fix the Roads!
When we just paved the roads and didn't worry too much about what was going on in all the sheds, America ran wild economically.It wasn't until we fixed everything in advance that it all got broken. You can't micromanage dynamism. Look at the explosion of commerce that happened in China when they took the communist boot off the average person's face, and improved it to an autocratic slipper on their neck. Russia may be a gangster state now, but a gangster is better than a commissar. -- Sippican Cottage: Dynamism
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:44 PM | Your Say (3)
Want. Now Please.
Google's Crazy 1000Mbps Fiber Internet Connection Is Out Today In addition to the blazing broader than broadband internet, Google's also got a new TV service called Google Fiber Television.The service is a lot like Google TV, but cleaner, and it can record up to 500 hours of HD programs. There will be remote apps for iOS and Android, both of which will have voice control, and at some point they'll get video streaming as well. The TV package will have all broadcast networks, along with hundreds of "Fiber channels". Oh, and the default remote? A Nexus 7. Which you get for free when you sign up for a TV package.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 AM | Your Say (2)
Knock, Knock...
Upgraded 30,000-lb Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb ready to destroy deeply buried bunkers in Iran, Syria etc. « The bunker buster bomb can be used to destroy nuclear facilities (as those in Iran -- those for which the weapon was improved) as well as bunkers that protect chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (as those in Syria).Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (3)
"Due to a semantic confusion"
introduced over the past several decades, there has been a reversal of what the words "liberal" and "conservative" signify.As a result, it is conservatives who are champions of change and progress (especially via the free market), liberals who wish to resist change by imposing a static, top-down order on the rest of us. -- One Cʘsmos: Obama and the Authoritarian Enlightenment
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:11 AM | Your Say (0)
Because American Education Just Wasn't Special-Ed Enough
Obama creating African-American education officePosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (6)
Vacant Ambitions of the Faintly Famous
I also wanted to be a makeup artist." The American Idol runner-up went the extra mile for a big red-carpet appearance. "It took me 3 1/2 hours to get ready for the American Music Awards." ~~ Katharine McPhee
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (6)
Tough Cookies: The Treats That Fueled a Century of Girl Scouts
the first documented cookie sale was held by a troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma. These girls sold baked goods made in their own home kitchens, and used their funds to purchase handkerchiefs for soldiers serving in World War I. ~~ Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:52 AM | Your Say (0)
Outside of an airport there is no such place as a global village.
International travel hasn't flattened the world. It may be possible to fly to a remote location in twelve hours,disembark into a luxurious modern terminal designed by British architects and constructed by slave labor, but it can take you another twelve hours just to make your way through a city that may be ornamented with the occasional noveau riche skyscraper but is still built on a plan designed to defend desert tribes from nomadic raids. ~~ Daniel Greenfield
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:44 AM | Your Say (1)
July 25, 2012
Who Says There's No Good News?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:25 PM | Your Say (10)
I didn't say what I now say I said but who's listening?
Note also that in this ad, Obama claims that in his original speech on small business, "What I said was that we need to stand behind them, as American always has." Note also that he doesn't show a clip of himself saying that, and that's because there isn't one; he never said those words. -- neo-neocon » Obama's looking more and more like deer in the headlightsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:52 PM | Your Say (3)
Orwell, Guthrie, and No Sleep: How Wikipedia's MVP Got to One Million Edits
"What's your full time job?" Justin Knapp: "I'm doing pizza delivery and all kinds of odd jobs (tutoring, baby-sitting, medical studies, etc.)" -- Gizmodo User:koavf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia My entire world view is based on the assertion that God exists, and created humanity in His image. I'm radically liberal politically and religiously, but conservative and prudish in my personal temperament.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:23 PM | Your Say (1)
"The media are the enemy"
They are vermin, dangerous beasts, parasites and maggots.They must be abolished, hounded by the public square, harassed by the law, scourged by the intolerance of the righteous, driven into the fringes of society, exiled. We trusted them; they betrayed us. They betrayed the truth, and betray the nation, and betray humanity itself. They must be broken. The media are the enemy. -- Breitbart Is Right | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:32 AM | Your Say (2)
[Free] Book of the Month
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:18 AM | Your Say (3)
Girl on a Path
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (0)
Liberals believe that a male conspiracy prevents women from excelling in mathematics and the hard sciences.
A Short Guide to Leftist Conspiracy Theories: The reason that no womanin all of human history has invented the transistor radio or the C compiler (we can blame a chick for COBOL) is attributed to sexist conspiracies. The fact that there are fewer lady physicists than man physicists is attributed to sexism by people with Ph.D.s in physics. People who are presumably familiar with the concept of standard deviation and mean can’t understand why a sample population with a larger observed standard deviation in intelligence has more outliers.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (7)
"The failure of central planning and state-managed economies is one of the big themes of the 20th century. But Obama’s handlers have yet to tell him."
Why would they? They don't know it either (the tenured? Of all people!), plus he'd refuse to believe them anyway,just as is true of at least half the citizenry. And anyone with a financial interest in the status quo will be impervious as well -- the millions of state employees, bureaucrats, public school teachers, state college administrators, and other assorted dependents and rent seekers; and more generally that half of the population that is able to tax the other half for what it imagines is a lifetime of free lunches. Even so, these people are motivated as much by creed as they are by greed. -- One Cʘsmos: Penetrating to the Core of Leftist Rot: Rules for Ridicule
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 AM | Your Say (0)
"The monetary Politburo of the Western world"
Alex:A twelve-person Open Market Committee determining the future of our economy by manipulating rates. Sounds like central planning to me.David Stockman:
It is. They are monetary central planners who are attempting to use the crude instrument of interest-rate pegging and yield-curve manipulation and essentially buying debt that no one else would buy, in order to keep this whole system afloat. It's Ponzi economics. Anybody who had financial training before 1970 would instantly recognize this as Ponzi economics. -- David Stockman: "The Capital Markets Are Simply A Branch Casino Of The Central Bank" | ZeroHedge HT: Maggies
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:41 AM | Your Say (0)
Look away from the fact
that Mexico has stricter gun laws than the US and a higher gun-homicide rate.Ignore the fact that Switzerland has some of the world’s highest gun-ownership rates and a negligible gun-homicide rate. And don’t even try to compare gun-related murder rates in urban areas that have restrictive gun laws alongside low gun-homicide rates in rural areas where firearms ownership tends to be highest. And blot from your memory banks the fact that there are likely millions of privately owned AR-15 “assault weapons” in America that have never been used to commit mass murder. -- The Joker’s Razor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:36 AM | Your Say (0)
July 24, 2012
Mitt Romney:
"This is very simple: if you do not want America to be the strongest nation on earth, I am not your President. You have that President today." -- Power LinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 PM | Your Say (4)
The Hardy Tree: An Early Work of a Great Novelist
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 PM | Your Say (0)
It's Everything Evil in Food. I Must Have It!
They start with housemade foie gras sausages made with a mixture of chicken breast, foie gras, and pork fat back, added to a lamb casing. Critchley takes the sausages and dunks them in his corn dog batter (made with white cornmeal, flour, baking powder, soda and buttermilk) and deep-fries them, serving the finished dogs with a cornichon relish, housemade cognac mustard, and espelette pepper.HT: Neatorama
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (2)
"Police Trying To Determine If Anyone That’s Not A Heavily Armed Homicidal Maniac Is Still Going To See The Batman Movie"
PORTLAND— A Biddeford man who was pulled over Sunday on the Maine Turnpike with an AK-47 assault rifle,several semi-automatic handguns, ammunition and news clippings about the Colorado theater shootings in his car remained in jail Monday on $50,000 cash bail. Timothy Courtois, 49, told investigators he was speeding to New Hampshire to shoot a former employer. -- | The Rumford Meteor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (1)
Nothing to See Here. Move Along. Keep Cutting Defense.
China’s DF-21D Missile Is a One-Shot Aircraft Carrier KillerPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (13)
When you get those pre-approved letters in the mail
for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and junk like that, most of them come with postage paid return envelopes, right?Well, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little envelopes! Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express, or a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them their application back... blank! -- Dark Roasted Blend: Telemarketer's Doomsday Manual
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (7)
The Splayd: Can We All Agree on Just One Thing?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:04 AM | Your Say (0)
FUN? NUN.
Preliminary hamster: "Everyone of the nuns have enjoyed a surprisingly life."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 AM | Your Say (3)
The Man With A Gun
That is where the illusion of control breaks down. The system can promise to stop gun violence, but it can't stop a man with a gun.All it can do is exploit the tragedy for more power. Only individuals can stop individuals. The only control we can possibly have comes from living in a society where the people do the right thing... and are empowered to do the right thing.
But that is not the society that the gun-controllers and police-staters want to create. The society they want is a place where everyone sits quietly, offers no resistance, contacts the authorities and waits for the accredited branches of the government to do something. A place where everyone knows that if they do something, they may be arrested or sued by the criminal afterward. A place where people are expected to be willing to die, but not fight back. -- Daniel Greenfield
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:28 AM | Your Say (0)
July 23, 2012
Sally Ride, Trailblazing Astronaut, Dies at 61
“In fact, I’m sure it was the most fun I’ll ever have in my life.” Dr. Ride told interviewers that what drove her was not the desire to become famous or to make history as the first woman in space. All she wanted to do was fly, she said, to soar into space, float around weightless inside the shuttle, look out at the heavens and gaze back at Earth. In photographs of her afloat in the spaceship, she was grinning, as if she had at long last reached the place she was meant to be. -- - NYTimes.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 PM | Your Say (1)
The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread: A Brief History of Sliced Bread
We owe sliced bread as we know it to Otto Rohwedder, who built the first commercial loaf-at-a-time bread-slicing machine.As Paul Wenske recounts in The Kansas City Star, Rohwedder spent 13 years perfecting the technology and struggled to kindle interest in the enterprise; "many bakers rejected the invention, saying the bread would fall apart and grow stale too fast. They contended consumers didn't care whether their bread loaves were sliced." They were wrong. -- - Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg - The Atlantic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 PM | Your Say (1)
Let's Not Make It 11 and Chicago, OK?
10 Civilizations That Disappeared Under Mysterious Circumstances:
Cahokia-- Long before Europeans made it to North America, the so-called Mississippians had build a great city surrounded by huge earthen pyramids and a Stonehenge-like structure made of wood to track the movements of the stars. Called Cahokia today, you can still see its remains in Illinois.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:00 PM | Your Say (0)
So much held in a heart in a lifetime.
When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child,that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the wordsI have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children. -- The American Scholar: Joyas Volardores - Brian Doyle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:30 PM | Your Say (3)
The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale.
It weighs more than seven tons. It's as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers.A child could walk around it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. The valves are as big as the swinging doors in a saloon. This house of a heart drives a creature a hundred feet long. When this creature is born it is twenty feet long and weighs four tons. It is waaaaay bigger than your car. It drinks a hundred gallons of milk from its mama every day and gains two hundred pounds a day, and when it is seven or eight years old it endures an unimaginable puberty and then it essentially disappears from human ken, for next to nothing is known of the the mating habits, travel patterns, diet, social life, language, social structure, diseases, spirituality, wars, stories, despairs and arts of the blue whale. There are perhaps ten thousand blue whales in the world, living in every ocean on earth, and of the largest animal who ever lived we know nearly nothing. But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles. -- The American Scholar: Joyas Volardores - Brian Doyle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:26 PM | Your Say (0)
Hummingbirds,
have incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms. To drive those metabolisms they have race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate.Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteriesare stiffer and more taut. They have more mitochondria in their heart muscles -- anything to gulp more oxygen. Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature. It's expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine. Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old. -- The American Scholar: Joyas Volardores - Brian Doyle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:24 PM | Your Say (2)
Obama to American Jewry: 'Vote for me (again) and this time I'll go. And the check is in the mail. And I won't ....
Obama will visit Israel if reelected | "President Barack Obama, who hasn't set foot in Israel since a pre-election trip in 2008, would go there if he wins in November, an aide said Monday."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:08 PM | Your Say (1)
His biggest asset is being black.
Obama perfectly fits the personal profile of the Culture Machine that runs so much of the American elite nowadays.
The Machine is run by PORGIs, who are just like Obama: post-religious, globalist, intellectuals or at least intellectualizers (who talk and act like intellectuals even if they don’t quite qualify themselves). And his being black, with an African father, an African name (icing on the cake) and a childhood spent in a Muslim nation (the cherry on top!) makes him beyond perfect–makes him nearly divine. We’re unlikely to hear anyone say so during this campaign as frankly as Evan Thomas of Newsweek did in 2009: reviewing the president’s recent speech in Cairo, Thomas explained to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above—above the world, he’s sort of God.” But we all get the idea. -- David Gelernter: What keeps this failed president above water? | Power Line
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:45 PM | Your Say (0)
USA's Sacred Cow Among India's Sacred Cows
You still eat with your hands? Oprah’s magical mystery tour of India | FirstpostPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:15 PM | Your Say (1)
Promises, Promises
and for me it was going to the Moon. I was influenced by an early Dr. Seuss Beginner’s Book called You Will Go to The Moon. Vintage Illustrated Children's Space Books | Artifact Collectors
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:50 PM | Your Say (2)
Cloudy with a chance of shoes...
A weather report on television always seemed like it was by, and for, lunatics.Watching a borrowed-hair farmer in an off-the-rack suit wave his little stick-arms at a green screen depiction of the alleged weather happening somewhere else is for people with onions on their belt. Only people that have nothing to do with the outdoors watch the weather on TV. -- Sippican Cottage: Climate Change In The Land Of The Midnight Sun
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (0)
Why Pretend with the Mixers Any Longer?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 PM | Your Say (1)
Busted Skull
to protect all of humanity from the looming 2012 apocalypse when the precious artifact somehow fell to the floor. The skull, which is now missing part of its chin, isn’t just a 1,000-year-old treasure with magical powers. It also once belonged to SS overlord Heinrich Himmler, a leading member of the Nazi Party. Reports say no one involved in the incident is sure whether the skull was dropped or fell on its own. If you were the guy who dropped it, you’d probably keep it quiet, too. After all, who wants to take the blame when the world ends in December? -- 5 Scientist Screw-Ups to Remember Next Time You Bungle Something - Mental Floss
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:57 AM | Your Say (2)
Degreed and in Need
The U.S. now has 115,000 janitors with college degrees, along with 83,000 bartenders, 80,000 heavy-duty truck drivers, and 323,000 waiters and waitresses. -- John Leo- The Daily BeastPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (5)
Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (1)
Deja Vu All Over Again: “We are returning again to dominate territories we used to dominate, as well as more.”
Iraq Insurgents Kill Nearly 100 After Declaring New Offensive - NYTimes.comPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 AM | Your Say (2)
USA's War On Poverty Begun Under General Johnson (D) Ends in Defeat Under Corporal Obama (D)
US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s - Yahoo! News The War on Poverty: $15 Trillion and Nothing to Show for ItTaxpayers have been the big losers in the war. Federal welfare spending has risen 375 percent (in constant 2011 dollars) since 1965. Total welfare spending has climbed almost as much: Governments are now disbursing $908 billion a year to alleviate poverty, up from $256 billion (also in constant dollars) in 1965. Moreover, notes Tanner: Over the last decade the increase has been even more rapid. Federal welfare spending increased significantly under the Bush administration, but President Obama has thrown money at anti-poverty programs at an unprecedented rate. Since taking office, the Obama administration has increased spending on welfare programs by more than $193 billion.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:29 AM | Your Say (2)
Scroll On. Nothing to See Here.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:18 AM | Your Say (0)
July 22, 2012
"It's perhaps slightly comforting to know that Neil Armstrong"
"will be remembered thousands of years after America is no more. Probably not very comforting for him." -- Fletcher Christian's Comment on Man walks on moon 43 years ago todayPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:01 PM | Your Say (1)
You're Welcome
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:43 PM | Your Say (4)
"Enough about the usual idiots; let’s talk about “Gun-free zones”.
We’re told the movie theater had a sign up announcing its “gun-free” policy. Yeah, and how well did that work out for ya?Try as I might, I am unable to comprehend the thinking of people who put “gun-free zone” signs in theaters, or on homes, or anywhere. How do they not get that criminals and madmen will read this as “Get your tasty defenseless victims, right here?” For myself, from now on I plan to willfully violate every “gun-free zone” policy I run across. If enough sane people do likewise, perhaps the next massacre can be prevented. -- Gun-free fantasy zones
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:39 PM | Your Say (7)
Obvious Innovation #14: Rip Cord Packaging Tape with Easy-Open Pull String
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:26 PM | Your Say (2)
Next Summer's "Must Miss" Superhero Saga
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (3)
"Many of you reading this both smoked weed and looked at porn when you were younger."
"The difference now, and why you were able to maybe "get away" with those sins back in the '60, '70s and '80s is becausethis landmass was still consecrated ground back then. God was still shedding His grace on us, and we were very much supernaturally protected from the demonic. Even when people would do things like get high on drugs or look at porn, thus throwing open the doors of their hearts to evil, full-on demonic possesion almost never happened because we were being defended. Not so any longer. This nation and culture has officially told God to get the hell out, and ever the Gentleman, He has indeed withdrawn His overarching, aggregate protection. -- Ann Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 AM | Your Say (9)
History. Erased.
Last night I stayed up late to watch Ann 'Barnburner' Barnhardt give a speech on the 1793 War against the Vendee. 4 parts. Bloody brilliant.You learn a lot from clearing out 'useless history' and getting some better history. The kind of wiping of history going on now has happened before, and it's amazing that in this age of archiving everything electronically, that there still exists a 'history eraser' button.
It would be convenient for some enterprising earth worshiper to say, "Now that we have archived every important document of the West, we can just churn these books of old into cement and build prisons with it!" And then, mysteriously, all your books on Kindle will somehow...'vanish'.
History. Erased. -- Jewel: Comment on Clear History
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (1)
"Civilization is more fragile than most believe.
"Note that a true dark age comes not when we lose the ability to do something, but forget that we ever had that ability:as for instance no university Department of Education seems aware that in the 1930's to the end of World War II, essentially the only adult illiterates in the United States were people who had never been to school to begin with (see the Army's tests of conscripts)...Anyway, that's what we mean by a Dark Age. As with the 5th Century peasant in France who gets a yield of perhaps 3 bushels a year on land that under Roman civilization yielded 12 -- and has not only forgotten how to get such yields, but has no idea that such yields have ever been possible." -- Jerry Pournelle / Via Mike James
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:03 AM | Your Say (2)
Enough with "Like" Already
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (0)
Oh, and about those WMDs belong to Saddam in Iraq, well....
Paula DeSutter, who served as assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation between 2002 and 2009...DeSutter also said she would want the U.S. and international community to secure any remaining nuclear-related equipment from the al-Kibar reactor destroyed in 2007 by Israeli jets. Also unclear is what, if anything, Iraq transferred to Syria before the 2003 U.S. invasion. “That is the wild card,” said DeSutter. -- Syria’s Next Act - The Daily Beast
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:42 AM | Your Say (0)
Firearms Regulations in Aurora, Colorado
4. Unlawful to carry concealed "dangerous weapon" 5. Unlawful to discharge firearms, unless by law enforcement on duty or on shooting range. 6. Unlawful to possess firearm while under the influence of intoxicant 7. Unlawful to have loaded firearm in motor vehicle. 8. Unlawful for a juvenile to possess a firearm. -- Firearms Regulations in the 20 Largest Colorado MunicipalitiesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (4)
Obama isn't just a politician; he is a Walmart of useless crap.
You can read Obama at the beach, stick him on your toddler, your dog and your cat. You can cover your car, your house and your barn with his stickers. And, if you are truly lucky, you may even win a chance to spend 72 seconds in his presence before you are firmly ushered out to go back to your Obama 2012 car and drive back to your Obama 2012 yard sign where your dog is barking for food in his "Obama Best Friend" collar and then sit down to read through the Help Wanted ads in the paper while wearing an Obama Hope Lapel Pin. -- Daniel Greenfield
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:51 AM | Your Say (2)
There is a lunatic asylum in Bolivar, Tennessee.
Because as a culture we have decided it is more humane to let the lunatics roam amongst us. To institutionalize them is cruel, as they might miss their fucking Friday cupcake. Better to let them be free, so that random mass murders might exhibit themselves, and allow us to politicize it, and finger our opponents. Much better than locking up the lunatics. -- Velociworld: The Looney Bin
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:49 AM | Your Say (2)
July 21, 2012
Readings from the Book of Barack
14 On the fourth day Govt said,"Let Us make the economy in Our image, according to Our likeness; let it have dominion over the cars of the road, over the appliances of the supercenters, and over the pet groomers of the strip malls, over all the clickthroughs of Amazon and over every creepy thing of the Dollar Stores." 15 So Govt created the economy in His own image; services and wholesale and retail He created them. 16 Then Govt blessed them, and Govt said to them, "Be fruitful and use the multiplier effect; fill the land with jobs; thou have dominion over thy realm, within limits, as long and thou remember to get thy permits and tithe thy taxes, for they are good. Hope to see you at the fundraiser." -- iowahawk: You Didn't Build That
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:29 PM | Your Say (1)
"He has a demon, and is mad."
that "there is no one who does good, no not one," except now and then, here and again, but almost never as a habit. Virtue, said Aristotle, is excellence made habitual, which is exactly why virtue is so rare: the habits of man are rarely excellent and left to themselves, without rigorous moral training or an externality of constraint to the good, will always become corrupted.-- Don Sensing @ Sense of Events
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:54 AM | Your Say (0)
2012: The Year the World "Hit the Rotors"
This is a reference to birds hitting wind power generators, in response to a news story of Sea Eagles being minced. He figures this should be used instead of terms like "hit the skids" or "went belly up." I think its a good replacement for "jumped the shark" which I've never liked to begin with. --Word Around the Net: WORD AROUND THE NET
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (0)
Less Than Great Moments in History
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (0)
" My Sincere and Heartfelt Apology to ABC's Brian Ross"
operation of a rolling methamphetamine lab; lighting kittens on fire; trafficking in child pornography; using a rusty axe to amputate the pinkies of debtors; performing necrophilia with roadkill; pushing a nun in front of the E train; arranging and betting on dog fights; gross abuse of squirrels; decapitation of baby seals during devil worship; and placement of non-recyclable material in the recycle-only container. -- Doug Ross @ Journal:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (4)
"I would like to propose that anyone and everyone who writes anything"
about the massacre in Colorado save their work and, when the next mass killing occurs, simply republish the article, plugging in the new names, dates, and places where appropriate.This will not only save time and effort, but since weâve already read what pundits have to say, and we know all the arguments by heart, we wonât have to read it again. Thus, the news-consuming public will be spared the angst-ridden diatribes against guns, or immorality, or our broken mental health system, or violence in the media, or how itâs the leftâs fault or the rightâs fault â even articles like this one that complain about pundits writing about the same subjects every time a mass shooting occurs. -- The PJ Tatler » The Predictable Banality of the After-Massacre Media
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 AM | Your Say (0)
July 20, 2012
The Golden Worms of Tibet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:57 PM | Your Say (0)
People often say that the government created the Internet. This is not true.
Government Didn’t Create the InternetThe Internet is a trillion dollars of fiber optic cables laid in the ground and under our oceans. Fiber optic technology was developed by corporations, such as Corning Glasworks, not the government. The trillion dollars in capital that was used to pay for laying cable came from Wall Street, not the government.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:03 PM | Your Say (0)
James Holmes
The proximate cause of the Batman massacre identified, with almost 100 percent certainty.
Holmes was identified long ago as a dangerous crazy man, that everybody did everything they could, but that in our present insane relativism everything equals nothing, so nothing was what in fact was done. Even his mother, when first told about the massacre, had the reaction: “I was afraid it was him.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:27 PM | Your Say (3)
The Ugliest Designs of the Past Decade
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:08 PM | Your Say (0)
Let's take Obama's "You didn't make that happen" message at face value.
If nothing truly happens without the gov making it happen, then the full responsibility for the bad economy,the lack of jobs and poor business rate stops with the White House. If people don't make businesses happen, only governments make businesses happen and business isn't happening... then Obama is responsible for not making it happen. -- Daniel Greenfield
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:47 PM | Your Say (0)
"Doc, I'll pay you $1000 cash to complete my form for me."
The current fad for easy Disability and food stamps - anybody can get these things right nowand I receive calls daily asking me whether I do Disability forms - is a whole new arena for free stuff, but a different topic. No, I do not do Disability forms on principle because I believe everybody is capable of dignity and self-respect. Speaking of cash, I have been offered good hard cash to fill them out for people in the last couple of years. On the phone "Doc, I'll pay you $1000 cash to complete my form for me." -- Welfare and Trust Fund Mentalities @ Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:08 PM | Your Say (0)
Outside the Frame: Children on 9/11, Marines 10 years later
"I was in fifth grade at the time, I remember we were in class when they told us about it. I was pretty young back then, but it was still a shock to everyone, and I had some buddies that had, their brother was a firefighter, I remember that, and he was killed in that." Billedeaux, on why he joined the Marines: "It's just something I've always wanted to do. I've had family history in the military. Both my great-grandpas were in World War II, one was a machine-gunner, and one was a navigator. My uncle was in Desert Storm as a Marine, so a little bit of family going back in the military." -- - PhotoBlog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (2)
Thieves and Cowards
Among the various ways that modern leftism benefits from its systematic promotion of infantilism is that perpetual children lack the basic courage that is essential to the maintenance of liberty. A courageous adult will not trade his freedom, let alone that of others, for a "social safety net."Thus, leftists are deeply invested in cowardice, although naturally, as clever propagandists, they use alternative names in their promotional materials.... The gradual expansion of "social assistance" in modern democracies, from its modest beginnings to today's socialist behemoths, betokens more than merely a quantitative change in government expenditures. There has been a fundamental shift in the meaning of such assistance. What used to be called "public charity" is now "entitlement programs." The difference is much more than semantics. -- Articles: Infantilizing Leftist Morality
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 AM | Your Say (0)
No Such Thing as Overarmed [Bumped]
This young man knows that when it counts nothing beats guns and ammo.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (29)
So Ugly They're Beautiful
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (0)
In 1909, you could fake-murder your friends in a wax bullet duel
when the availability of wax bullets (and Parisian innovation) allowed duelists to delight in mock fatal standoffs. -- Danger Room
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (0)
Rain
The rain is heavy this morning, and big. The drops looking like a badminton birdie when they hit the street. I like it like this, and it's full of memories.The Army, walking in it for hours, finally getting to bungee cord the corners of a poncho to the trees for a hooch. It may seem like small solace to take cover from the rain when you are already soaked through with no way of getting dry, but it is a symbol of improved conditions. Exhaustion needs its symbols, lest it go unpunctuated. -- The Dipso Chronicles
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 AM | Your Say (0)
Obama: "It's less a tax or a penalty than it is a principle--which is you can't be a freeloader on other folks when it comes to your health care, if you can afford it."
The only people who pay the ObamaCare mandate tax
are people who make a living. Actual freeloaders are exempt. What Obama calls a freeloader is someone who makes his own money and pays his taxes but does not spend his money in the government-approved way. -- You Didn't Sweat, He Did - WSJ.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (0)
Anyone who believes in something for nothing
is already half on the road to being swindled.Today millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people have reached such a pitch of education that they can believe what Oh's wife in her simplicity could never credit; that there exists something for nothing. Sure there is. How many people you know are convinced that free government health care, free government cheese, permanent government jobs are only a vote away? -- Belmont Club ｻ The Story of Oh
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (1)
Abraham Lincoln Bandages
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:26 AM | Your Say (0)
July 19, 2012
"If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that." -- B.S. Obama
It's as if President Obama climbed into a tank, put on his helmet, talked about how his foray into Cambodia was seared in his memory, looked at his watch, misspelled "potato" and pardoned Richard Nixon all in the same day. -- Pat Sajak: Defining Moments - Ricochet.comPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 PM | Your Say (0)
Modern America worships celebrities, it is our new religion as a nation.
And President Obama has tapped into that celebrity thread.He's become not president of the United States but the black guy who is in a reality series in the White House. Sure, he's lousy at it and things keep going wrong. Tune in to see what happens next week! The same reason people love conflict and argument - even if it has to be faked - on reality shows is why they shrug at the president's failings. He's a celebrity, and everyone can watch. And look I got an email from the white house! He's sending tweets! -- Word Around the Net: THE KARDASHIAN PRESIDENCY
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:57 PM | Your Say (2)
"And you say that I am supposed to kiss it?"
in honour of the Prince's support to conservation and environmental campaigns. -- - Yahoo! News
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (7)
Oops... Mistaeks Were Made
Corrections for the ages from the New York Times: Editors' Note: July 18, 2012 regarding How to Enjoy Turntables Without Obsessing Over Them - NYTimes.comAn earlier version of this article included quotations from Ryan Holiday of New Orleans discussing why he preferred vinyl records. The reporter reached Mr. Holiday through a Web site that connects reporters to sources on various topics. Mr. Holiday, who has written a book about media manipulation, subsequently acknowledged that he lied to the Times reporter and to other journalists on a variety of subjects, fabricating responses to their online queries. (He says he does not own a turntable.)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (2)
The political infant
He who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil,but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant. -- Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation" (1946: 122-123)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (2)
What Space Smells Like
The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space." -- -- The Atlantic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:46 AM | Your Say (0)
Corrections Are Being Issued Hourly
Which is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (0)
"The metaphor of “decline” presumes
that the American people will sit by passively as their standard of living and international status erode year by year.That is unlikely to occur: Americans will do everything in their power to reverse any such process of national decline. Thus, what the United States is now facing is not a gradual decline but a political upheaval that will reshape its politics, policies, and institutions for a generation or two to come. -- Future tense, X: The fourth revolution by James Piereson - The New Criterion
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (2)
Foggy Windshield?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (2)
What are the optimal siege tactics for taking Magic Kingdom's Cinderella Castle?
The "It's a Small World" ride will be within our reach. Our secondary objective is to eliminate the ride with extreme prejudice. This isn't a capture mission like the castle, but one of complete annihilation. Expect heavy casualties as their adorable repetitiveness burns into your skulls like white phosphorous in the jungle. Our sacrifices will be great, but our suffering is in the name of protecting others. -- (8) Military Strategy: - Quora-- The real key
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:47 AM | Your Say (1)
Dylan Parody of the Decade: "A Tard's Reign's A-Gonna Fall"
And what have you seem my loyal young one
I've seen one trillion bucks disappear in a rathole
I saw an American Chief bow down like a butler
I saw an old vet protest and they called him a Nazi
I saw American AKs in the hands of drug dealers
I saw 90,000 in debt put on the backs of our children
I saw a shovel ready project where no one was digging
I saw Congress and White house defy the will of the people
And it's a tard's; it's a tard's; it's a tard's it's a tard's
It's a tard's reign's a-gonna fall."
Posted by: Callmelennie in Where Have You Been, My Blue Eyed Son? @ AMERICAN DIGEST
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 AM | Your Say (3)
President Obama Makes Surprise Appearance on The Jerry Springer Show
When the host saw President Obama his jaw dropped and the audience became euphoric. The large lesbians embraced Obama along with the three other guests on stage – a 77 year-old woman and her 22 year-old lover/grandson and Lynn, a neo-Nazi hermaphrodite.... "Jerry, you’ve made a damn good living all these years exploiting the fringe of society. You’ve taken advantage of their stupidity and callously mocked their inability to live life with any semblance of class, respectability or dignity. I’m here today to tap into some of that." -- The Daily Rash
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:30 AM | Your Say (0)
"Certain key words live in a state of existential diminishment."
Consider the word “Gentleman.” It was not so long ago that it named a critical moral-social-cultural aspiration.What happened to the phenomenon it named? Or think of the word “respectable.” It too has become what the philosopher David Stove called a “smile word,” that is, a word that names a forgotten or neglected or out-of-fashion social virtue that we might remember but no longer publicly practice. -- Future tense, XI: The lessons of culture
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:19 AM | Your Say (2)
July 18, 2012
Sigmund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Recording of His Voice, 1938
I started my professional activity as a neurologist trying to bring relief to my neurotic patients. Under the influence of an older friend and by my own efforts, I discovered some important new facts about the unconscious in psychic life, the role of instinctual urges, and so on. Out of these findings grew a new science, psychoanalysis, a part of psychology, and a new method of treatment of the neuroses. I had to pay heavily for this bit of good luck. People did not believe in my facts and thought my theories unsavory. Resistance was strong and unrelenting. In the end I succeeded in acquiring pupils and building up an International Psychoanalytic Association. But the struggle is not yet over. -- Sigmund Freud. -- | Open Culture
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:08 PM | Your Say (0)
“Dear Fish, I wonder if you could do a drawing for me of an explosive slab of chocolate."
'Death by chocolate' plot to kill Sir Winston Churchill - TelegraphPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:02 PM | Your Say (0)
"Hamburger-eating cyborg assaulted in France"
that I had just purchased at this McDonald's. He angrily grabbed my eyeglass, and tried to pull it off my head. The eyeglass is permanently attached and does not come off my skull without special tools. -- Steve Mann: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass [Title by Nick Carr]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:39 PM | Your Say (1)
Through the demand of nonjudgmentalism
the authorities of Western Civilization have taken away your sources of morale:God, true religion, objective morality, knowledge of philosophically first things, beauty, higher culture, family, nation, honor, and so on. Because the existence of any of these goods requires one to make a judgment that some things are better than others, these goods are not allowed. Our leaders have therefore taken all these goods from you, and replaced them with the false god of nondiscrimination. -- Why You are Demoralized and What You Must do About it ｫ The Orthosphere
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:04 PM | Your Say (0)
"The government men coming from City Hall. One was tall and beefy. The other was wiry. They wanted steaks."
We didn't eat red steaks at home or yellow bananas. We took home the brown bananas and the brown steaks because we couldn't sell them.But the government men liked the big, red steaks, the fat rib-eyes two to a shrink-wrapped package. You could put 20 or so in a shopping bag. "Thanks, Greek," they'd say. That was government. -- Who else, Mr. President? - chicagotribune.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:50 PM | Your Say (1)
It’s a form of Red Dot Science,
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:36 PM | Your Say (0)
You didn't build that: A Tumblr
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:14 PM | Your Say (3)
What was that again?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:01 PM | Your Say (0)
"Ever notice how no one on Earth seems more race-obsessed than so-called anti-racists?"
It must be exhausting to constantly have to stamp out all these fires that seem to keep lighting themselves.Unless an ocean of compelling evidence convinces me otherwise, I think the reason “we” can’t “get past” what’s known as “racism” is because tribalism is an evolutionary instinct. -- Goad on The Nagging Persistence of Tribalism
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:33 PM | Your Say (0)
You've come a long way, baby
Mohammad Qayoumi, now the president of San Jose State University,recently published some photographs from the Afghanistan he grew up in: The girls in high heels and pencil skirts in the Kabul record stores of the 1960s aren’t quite up to Carnaby Street cool, but they’d fit in in any HMV store in provincial England. Half a century later, it was forbidden by law for women to feel sunlight on their face, or leave the home without male permission. -- Islamist Generation - Mark Steyn
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (1)
The doctor says there's a lot of it going around.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (0)
When the Law's An Ass
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (1)
"It is all the same old serpent."
"They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden.That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge [i.e., Stephen Douglas] is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent …." -- Abraham Lincoln quoted in “You didn’t build that”: A footnote | Power Line
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (0)
Because nothing says "Slut!" like
"Condoms sealed in high quality clear vinyl. Open only in cases of emergency. No Pockets. Great purse for the day's events... Use it as a laptop bag."Or a lapdance bag.
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (0)
Hana Tsun Nose Straightener
After slipping this clip gently into your nostrils, the supports on either side will help balance and push up the bones and contours of your nose, so it has an overall sharper, straighter shape, less round and more graceful. -- Gadget | Gear
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:04 AM | Your Say (0)
"PC or not PC:" When not discovering news ways to bring you more junk mail
A week out from issue, the Postal Service has 1.5 million preorders of a four-stamp series of Hall of Fame sluggers Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Cleveland Indian Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League and Pittsburgh Pirate Willie Stargell. The Postal Service has held an online pennant race, known as Stamps Batted In, since April to stir interest in the stamps. So far, Joe DiMaggio is leading with 421,266 votes against 417,066 for Williams, 340,646 for Stargell 332,566 for Doby.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:37 AM | Your Say (2)
July 15, 2012
Recently, I watched Restrepo, a documentary about soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.
There was this scene in it where the Americans had to negotiate with local tribal elders.The elders were a bunch of dead serious-looking old dudes and their long beards were dyed bright red with henna. Our tribal "allies" in the graveyard of empires have their problems. They shit in their hands and rape little boys. Their customs leave room for improvement.
However, as I watched their grave eyes, I wondered if any of these men had spent much time wondering, "Am I hot, or not?"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 PM | Your Say (3)
There Is a Money Saving Tip Hidden InThis Image
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (9)
July 13, 2012
This Futuristic iPhone Concept Is A Bizarre New Take On Wearable Technology
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:03 PM | Your Say (4)
July 12, 2012
"Sex is the most fun for amateurs"
It was homosexual men who pioneered the bonobo lifestyle en masse.Before today's PUAs were in pre-school, homos were doing it for the numbers, looking for validation, basing their self-worth on how many and how hot. Homosexual men rejected traditional male roles and expectations, and channeled all of their masculine aggression into sex for the sake of sex. Their idea of masculinity became masturbatory -- a pumped up Tom of Finland caricature of masculine form without function or honor or virtue. Homosexual men, because they were men, set the cultural stage for objectifying men the way that men have always objectified women. --Everyone a Harlot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:31 PM | Your Say (10)
Jefferson On Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgement until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. == Thomas Jefferson: Radical and Racist - 96.10Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (3)
July 11, 2012
SMILEYS, 1881
Retronaut posted images of an 1881 issue of Puck magazine depicting proto-smileys
constructed from parentheses, stops and other typographic marks, just like their modern counterparts. I find "Melancholy" to be almost ineffably sad, though the perky can-do attitude of "Joy" acts as a fortunate counterweight. -- Shady Characters » Miscellany â 12
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 PM | Your Say (2)
Jefferson: "A little rebellion now and then"
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. -- Letter to James Madison - January 30, 1787
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:37 AM | Your Say (4)
Jefferson, Tree of Liberty Letter
What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to timethat their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure. -- Atlantic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:31 AM | Your Say (6)
July 10, 2012
The less truth there is in people’s lives, the more “wonderful” their lives must be.
Beneath liberals' self-celebration, the despair of nihilism: For the liberals, there’s no truth, no God, no inherent male or female nature, our country is a swamp of irredeemable guilt and deserves to go out of existence—but everything is “wonderful”: the latest “wonderful” movie, the latest “wonderful” vacation, the latest “wonderful” presidential candidate … This “wonderfulness,” in the absence of truth, is the very definition of relativism, which is really another word for nihilism. And nihilism produces despair, regardless of how much people are enjoying their latest vacation.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (4)
The Kilogram Is Losing Weight
In Le Grand K’s case, it’s been losing weight. At its most recent weigh-in in 1988, it was found to be 0.05 milligrams—about the weight of a grain of sand—lighter than its underling replicas. Experts aren’t sure where this weight went, but some theorize that the replicas have been handled more often, which could subtly add weight. Others postulate Le Grand K’s alloy is “outgassing,” which means air is gradually escaping the metal.Women all over the world want to know if the weight loss will be passed along.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (6)
First photo of the shadow of a single atom:
"We have reached the extreme limit of microscopy;
you can not see anything smaller than an atom using visible light," Professor Dave Kielpinski of Griffith University's Centre for Quantum Dynamics in Brisbane, Australia. "We wanted to investigate how few atoms are required to cast a shadow and we proved it takes just one." --bookofjoe
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (2)
How long before the PC as we knew it is dead?
About five years I reckon, or 1.5 PC hardware replacement cycles. Nearly all of us are on our next-to-last PC. Microsoft knows this on some level. Their reptilian corporate brain is beginning to comprehend what could be the end. -- Life after the personal computer - I, CringelyPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (6)
July 9, 2012
"As pilot bonobos, the homos..."
discovered the downsides of harlotry. An experienced player was bound to acquire a handful of STDs,and AIDS practically wiped out an entire generation of "sexually liberated" men. For many, there are also psychological costs. Being desired is a drug, and it's addictive. When it's your highest value, it becomes your identity. One of the problems -- and this has always been a curse to women -- is that sexual attractiveness is linked to the mating instinct, and it peaks in the young. Men mature more flatteringly than women, but most men who trade on their sex appeal won't relax into the confident, secure, middle-aged manhood of their forefathers. Like homos and movie stars, I wonder how many of today's players will chase steroids and sex drugs and eventually convince themselves that maybe that Kenny Rogers face lift will look better on them than it does on him. -- Everyone a Harlot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:32 PM | Your Say (2)
Secret Service Training Mission
Three American commandos were killed in an April 20 incident when their car skidded off the road and into the Niger River in Bamoko, the capital of Mali....The Special Operations Command (which has seen its budget and manpower increase significantly in recent years), have been coy about what exactly the three men were doing in Mali, and why they were with three Moroccan prostitutes when they died. -- The Global War on Terror Is Over? | Via Meadia
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:07 PM | Your Say (0)
Mandate/Tax/Penalty?
The new federal takeover of health care requires a mandate, a tax, or a penalty, but the architects of the plan cannot agree on which-- not a surprising postmodern turn when Justice Roberts reportedly wrote much of both the majority-confirming and the minority-dissenting opinions. It is unpopular now, but supposedly wonât be when it is enacted (or read for the first time) -- and that is why over 2,000 insiders obtained exemption from such popular legislation. -- Works and Days » Tuning Out a President
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:43 PM | Your Say (3)
Ad Hominem is the strongest form of argument! Only an idiot would say otherwise!
if a man says that an opponent argues that price fixing causes rationing, or that politicians cannot be trustedto make decisions over your baby’s health, that man spreads his opponent’s message, even while denouncing it; but if that man denounces the opponent, saying he is a tool of moneyed power, or is a member of an ‘astroturf’ movement rather than a grassroots opposition, then no one who hears that man hears the message. All they know is that they opponent is a man of bad character.
It is simple, simplistic, and effective. -- John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:29 PM | Your Say (1)
"Vanidy" "Vanidy" All Is "Vanidy" [Bumped]
When the Harvard Crimson first reported the story, it erred in referring to Vanidy Bailey as a female. The designation was apparently incorrect. Thus, it felt obliged to offer the following correction: An earlier version of this article used the pronoun “she” to refer to Vanidy “Van” Bailey, the newly appointed director of bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer student life. In fact, Bailey prefers not to be referred to by any gendered pronoun.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 AM | Your Say (41)
Of Wet Cherries, Helicopters, and Blow Jobs
They are not taking triumphant joy rides over their ripening red crop, or conducting aerial surveillance of their picking force. Instead, they are paying $600 a day for the helicopter to blow dry their cherries.... In fact, the next cherry you enjoy might have been dried four times or more, while pickers climb up and down 10-foot ladders, “visiting and revisiting the trees a minimum of three to five times to pick each cherry as it comes to maximum size and ripeness.” -- Edible Geography - Wet Cherries
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 AM | Your Say (5)
July 8, 2012
Blame the Truth
If it weren't for the truth, we'd be in Eden still. But it has unfortunately emerged that people's home values were inflated; unions and other persons discovered their pensions were undervalued. We thought we were rich according to the record, but the truth came in the door and told us we were broke. The record was lying.
It turns out that in reality there are more claims on wealth than there is value to satisfy them. This is a classic bankruptcy resolution scenario. There's X dollars and there are NX claims where N > 1. The problem is who gets paid. That is another way of asking: how do the records get merged? And the answer unfortunately is that it usually depends on who is holding the revolver -- on who's doing the merging. -- Belmont Club » Double Or Nothing
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 PM | Your Say (1)
"Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report"
Broken Record, Broken Promises Today, the Obama Administration told Americans “not to read too much into” monthly jobs reports. As it turns out, they’ve been encouraging Americans to do that for years. But after 41 straight months of unemployment over 8%, you don’t have to read between the lines to see the truth. -- Mitt Romney Press | July 6, 2012Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:51 PM | Your Say (0)
"We are not children, nor are we stupid:"
and we are all as smart - if not as articulate BSers - as they are. We know there is no life on earth without problems, difficulties, and challenges. That's plain reality. What we do not need is our governments making it all more difficult. We can handle it, most of it. In America today, the greatest threat to individual and local freedom is our own Federal government. Our external threats are relatively trivial, given our power. -- America is too big for Big Government - Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 AM | Your Say (2)
DNC Scientists Disprove Existence of Roberts' Taxon
The landmark experiment in Quantum Rhetoric began early this week after legal particle cosmologist John Roberts published a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Tortured Logic that solved the long-debated Pelosi's Paradox in Universal Health Care Theory. -- iowahawkPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:57 AM | Your Say (0)
July 7, 2012
Religion Without the Religion.
Combining a First World economy in a country of hundreds of millions with a police state is tricky at best.Building a social consensus on guilt and virtue, and the virtue of guilt, is much more effective. It's religion without the religion. It's the faith of social justice that has been embedded in the country for over a century and a half. The long march of progress. -- - Daniel Greenfield
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:50 PM | Your Say (2)
The Defibrillator Goes On Before the Burger Goes In
the 3-location chain is debuting The 'merica burger' a patty made of 100% ground bacon topped with a slice of thick cut bacon, a sunny side up egg, a new "bacon island" dressing and a heavy slice of bacon cheddar cheese.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (22)
July 6, 2012
Personal Preference Kit
It was his Personal Preference Kit, so named because all astronauts were permitted one small bag for personal or small items of significance they wished to carry into space. Among the items carried by Michael Collins were three flags; the US Flag, the flag of the District of Columbia, and the flag of the US Air Force. -- Love Truth & Beauty:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 PM | Your Say (1)
Serfs of Virtue
If there is not enough from the peasantry this year, the feudal Lords and their retainers will borrow it from future years. You get what is left over. They also expect that you will work the entire year, so the place will not fall apart. Unlike the Medieval days, you are not required to practice for war after the harvest is in. The Lords have plenty of retainers who will do what they're told. You are enslaved by your own virtue. They have you convinced there is no way out of this place, without betrayal of your own virtue. -- Posted by: John A. Fleming on What Is Required Is Political Compromise
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:11 PM | Your Say (9)
iPhone Can’t Stand the Heat, Gives Up
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:31 PM | Your Say (0)
"First World Problems"
The phrase refers to things which are meaningless to most people and occur only in industrialized nations.
The ennui of life leading to kids not bothering to change a channel even though they have the ability to click a button. The disappointment of a latte, after realizing you really wanted a cappuccino. It's a phrase usually used in a snarky fashion, but it can have meaning in a larger sense. After the Derecho that passed through Ohio and some Mid-Atlantic states, I once again uttered the line as we cleared my father's property of fallen trees and branches in stifling heat. First World Problems are things which never occur to a Papuan jungle tribe member or even a denizen of Rio's "City of God". In fact, trying to explain these things could yield quizzical looks and questions about what we view to be important in our lives. -- - Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 AM | Your Say (3)
Here's Why Your Geek Squad Appointment Has Been Delayed Until Half Past Never
The company on Tuesday began implementing a "restructuring plan," which is PR-speak for massive layoffs and the reason your Geek Squad appointment has been indefinitely delayed. .... Best Buy is reportedly down so many bodies that the tech support you were expecting might not get to you until September. -- GizmodoPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:04 AM | Your Say (0)
Abraham Lincoln Bandages
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:26 AM | Your Say (0)
Cat wearing glasses in a bowl. [Updated with "Hannah Montana Coon Repellant"]
Yup, it's come to this. It's all I got.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:39 AM | Your Say (1)
Love Boats: The Delightfully Sinful History of Canoes
In the early 1900s, canoes offeredrandy young guys and gals a means of escape to a semi-private setting, away from the prying eyes of their pious Victorian chaperones. -- Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:14 AM | Your Say (2)
July 5, 2012
As the last wave of fireworks die out,
the shooting stars sinking to earth and vanishing into the darkness, the light of Independence Day fades and the crowds slowly trudge away from the brief spectacle,past the lines of police barricades, through narrow streets, past government buildings, back to their co-dependent lives in a co-dependent nation where the will of the people and the rights of the individual matter less than the latest proposal to solve the problems of their independence by making the country a more dependent place. -- Daniel Greenfield
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:12 PM | Your Say (0)
The Bonobo Masturbation Society
devoted to pleasure and organized primarily to serve the interests of females. More and more men are raised by single mothers, and males are discouraged from organizing without female supervision. Sex is social, and the majority of the hard, dangerous work that men used to do is either done by machines, idiot-proofed, or outsourced to countries where life is cheap. Women and dishonorable men micromanage male aggression with endless laws and lawsuits, and bad boys who can't pay big lawyers are drop-kicked into a multi-billion dollar prison industry that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:04 PM | Your Say (0)
What Is Required Is Political Compromise
All we have in politics today is a slave auction.The Democrats want me to slave for government for 150 days a year. The Republicans say that is mean and excessive and offer me a compromise of 140 days this year and only 150 next. They believe in smaller government. -- Classical Values
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:50 PM | Your Say (18)
Death Takes a Wife
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:27 PM | Your Say (2)
The Precious One by Stephen Gjertson
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (2)
"You saw Drudge, but you didn't see Drudge."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:43 AM | Your Say (3)
Corn Shucking Made Simple
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (6)
File Under: Making Excuses For Litter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (1)
Obvious Innovation #13: Do the Garlic Twist
Remove the outer layer and toss them in the garlic twist. Slip the lid on and twist the top and bottom in opposite directions. Stop twisting when the garlic is the desired consistency. It works equally well with a single clove or a handful.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (4)
Cosmo for Men, Korea. Our honored ancestors weep.
The Average Cosmopolitan Subscriber: The average Cosmopolitan subscriber dots all her “i’s” with smiley-faces and draws all her “u’s” in shape of vulvas. The average Cosmopolitan subscriber thinks straight men actually read Cosmo for Men.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (4)
Some Trees
Some trees matter more than others. They've stood sentry over people's comings and goings long enough to earn a kind of affection. Some trees are worth saving from the saw. Some trees have a story to tell. -- Sippican Cottage: Worth Doin'Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (0)
July 4, 2012
The Passive-Aggressive Vegetarian
Just one of the sacrifices I make every day. Yeah, I saw the bean salad, I’m going to pile that up on my plate right now, but never actually eat it even though you made it just for me. I’ll just sit here looking glum and occasionally whisper something to the guy who brought me here while I poke at the beans disapprovingly. --The 8 Worst People at Your Barbecue
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (10)
My patriotism is never affected by any politician’s failures,
or any shortcoming of some government policy, or any slump in the economy or stock market.I never cease to get that “rush” that comes from watching Old Glory flapping in the breeze, no matter how far today’s generations have departed from the original meaning of those stars and stripes. No outcome of any election, no matter how adverse, makes me feel any less devoted to the ideals our Founders put to pen in 1776. Indeed, as life’s experiences mount, the wisdom of what giants like Jefferson and Madison bestowed on us becomes ever more apparent to me. I get more fired up than ever to help others come to appreciate the same things. -- Lawrence W. Reed, The True Meaning of Patriotism
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (2)
The poet repeats the injunction “Say!” and changes the question.
-- does that flag "yet wave/O'er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?" The second question refers not only to the battle at hand, but to the destiny of the country. The question is not only whether the flag of freedom still flies over America but also whether America itself is still brave and free. -- Spengler » A National Anthem that Begins and Ends With a Question
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (0)
"The banner isn’t what really matters, it’s the American people’s devotion to liberty that is so vital."
Our Constitution was written in an attempt to create a government designed to do just that. It's an exemplary document, but that piece of paper and the institutions it establishes are only as good as the people's devotion to liberty. That was the critical factor in 1776, and it remains so today. --neo-neoconPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (0)
July 3, 2012
Occupy Wall Street has gone east, one block east.
It no longer occupies Wall Street, instead it has transformed into Occupy Trinity Church.The media, which served as the unofficial PR corps for OWS, is not too enthusiastic about reporting that a movement which they hailed is busy trying to seize land from a historic Episcopalian church that dates back to 1697, in whose cemetery lie several signers of the Declaration of Independence and several delegates to the Continental Congress, not to mention several Revolutionary War generals and a fellow by the name of Alexander Hamilton. -- Daniel Greenfield
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 PM | Your Say (2)
The Declaration of Independence, Fixed
We hold these views to be consistent with the evolving cultural consensus,that all humans are equally obliged to the performance of certain Duties, that among these are the Participation in the Struggle against Racism, Economic Injustice, Genetically Modified Organisms, Homophobia, Nationalism and the Excessive Emission of Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gasses. That to secure the performance of these Duties, Governments are instituted among humans, deriving their just powers from the considered Opinions of the Educated Classes... -- | Via Meadia
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:08 PM | Your Say (1)
Sloths Exposed! Not just lazy but rude too.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:32 PM | Your Say (1)
Best Comment Regarding the Out Anderson Cooper
"So, AC 360 is really DC 24/7. Think they'll change the name of the show?" -- Posted by: Bill JonesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:23 PM | Your Say (0)
Obvious Innovation #12: Electric Heated Butter Knife
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:33 PM | Your Say (8)
Conservatives on Facebook and Twitter look like “marks” of the worst kind:
the know-nothing know-it-all who’s convinced he can outmatch the carny and win a rigged game.As the sun goes down, right-wingers shuffle off the social-media fairground pissed off and their pockets empty. But when the Internet circus comes back to town next summer, they’ll line up to buy tickets again. That’s the safest bet you’ll ever make. --The Tyrannical Twerps of Twitter - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:27 AM | Your Say (0)
Meet one Russell Barth,
a Canadian leftist whose self-penned Twitter profile is impossible to improve upon:Medical Marijuana License Holder, multi-disciplinary artist, writer, activist, public speaker. Fibromyalgia, PTSD, wife with epilepsy. Need social justice. (If you’re thinking, “I bet I can guess exactly what this guy looks like,” you win.) -- The Tyrannical Twerps of Twitter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:24 AM | Your Say (2)
Happy Canada is a racist shithole day
Happy Day! Look at all the life time parasites that you will continue to subsidize to your dying day!The Never Workers, and their talented cousins, the Idiots, the Dolts, and the Crack pates! The Idiots, Dolts, and Crack pates will be coming to a work place near you: your boss better hire them; if you are a boss, you better find a slot or two for these ones who piss in the kitchen sink, who keep the propane by the stove, and generally do dumb shit that could get you killed, mutilated, sick, or just driven to bankruptcy. The Statists cannot have all the fun. You better hire some useless meat, just to make things fair. -- Mitchieville Blog Archive
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (0)
Pride Hangover
"I get called names when I call a third trimester abortion evil. I do not talk about it any more. I just act. I boycott those enterprises that support politics I despise.I embrace the black market: it is very third world, and it keeps taxes away from the incompetents who just got their positions, pensions, and parking spots from rimming* leftist doctrine. Let them find their own taxpayers: let them go walk in the ghettos they have encouraged and find taxpayers in there. I hope they die. The retention of my own confiscated income has become a cottage industry amongst my silent, but active, fellow members of the working class. My neighbors have been force fed Pride for too many years; they are hungover; they have headache, barfy stomach, and running bowels. They are silent in the Statist province of Ontario, so they only talk with people they trust, and they plot of an overthrow of the state and the purge of the agents of confiscation. People laugh when I mention the Guillotine. It is a good idea, a cure for hangover. --I, Fenris Badwulf, wrote this. I care.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (0)
The Worst Gun Ever
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 AM | Your Say (10)
The Design Margin
The Design Margin is rooted in the notion that life is uncertain;that since things have often collapsed in the past and may collapse again we actually need to have more reserves than we think. Asteroid strikes, wars and natural calamities happen â and with far more frequency than the space alien invasions that Paul Krugman suggests we prepare against. Bad times are frequent events. The idea that the office on the corner will always be able to dispense Government Cheese does not reflect the normal historical experience. Rather it reflects that peculiar period of stability and prosperity which followed the end of the Second World War: the Pax Americana, which the Left hates. Our civilizational attitudes have been formed on the basis of the exception, not the rule. -- Belmont Club » You Canât Take It With You
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (0)
The Big Life: Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld
leaping from the back of the truck carrying him to his doom, and dodging the bullets fired by his two guards. Sprinting through the empty streets, he found himself in front of the Gestapo’s headquarters, where a chauffeur was pacing near a limousine bearing the swastika flag. Spotting the key in the ignition, La Rochefoucauld jumped in and roared off, following the Route Nationale past the prison he had left an hour earlier. He smashed through a roadblock before dumping the car and circling back towards Auxerre on foot under cover of night. -- Obit: Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld - Telegraph
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (7)
Fred Confesses to Racism
I have been against all discrimination by race or sex,against affirmative action, racial set-asides, special treatment for women, quotas, and favoritism by the government and the media. Oh the guilt I feel! I have been a beast, worse even than the Grand Flagon of the Invisible Umpire of the Ku Klux Klan. There is still more. I have read, and believed, and steeped myself in the pernicious theories of known racists, such as Martin Luther King.... -- Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (0)
July 2, 2012
BREAKING! STOP THE PRESSES! SCOOP OF THE CENTURY!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 PM | Your Say (18)
New York Blues
New York has some of the bluest laws and policies around.But the net result isn’t a city that becomes more and more prosperously and stably blue. The result is a city from which the middle class is steadily exiled. The bluer you are, the more likely you are to turn into a wealth-polarized dystopia of tycoons and hotel maids. -- Time to Vacate Wall Street | Via Meadia
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 PM | Your Say (0)
Aren't You Glad You Don't Have Electric Cars
RUSH: If you're in the DC area, are you happy you don't have an electric car? Yeah, with the power outages, are you happy you don't have an electric car?Because two million, five million, three schmillion, whatever. Aren't you glad you don't have an electric car? By the way, how are those windmills working out for you? How are the windmills and solar panels working out? Are they running your air-conditioning for you? As you sit there and sweat away, how are things doing in the nation's capital? All those windmills are really working out, huh? Solar panels, yeah, man, that's the future. There you are, sitting there, sweating, stinking like a stuck pig for three days, and it's gonna be this way for another week. It's a good thing you don't have an electric car or you couldn't get around, you couldn't escape. -- - The Rush Limbaugh Show
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:20 PM | Your Say (12)
Your Brain Too Small to Box With God
and corrupts the spirit of the successful meritocrat needs to be checked and humbled. Being constantly reminded on the one hand of the infinite gap between ones own limited talents and vision and the perspective of Almighty God, and on the other of the radical equality with which God judges and loves the human race is a healthy counterweight to the flattery of the world and the smugness that comes with success.... God actually judges the gifted and the successful by a tougher standard than he uses with the “ordinary” and the poor. -- Is Meritocracy A Sham? | Via Meadia
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:38 PM | Your Say (0)
No progress in the War on Poverty and none expected
If poverty is defined as roughly the lowest 15% of income then, obviously, it will persist whether they have cars, air conditioners, iPhones, TVs, etc. -- Maggie's FarmPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:08 PM | Your Say (4)
Germans Holocaust Themselves
Spengler: [Attention Huns ] Banning circumcision is dangerous to your healthYour Honors: Your decision last week to criminalize the religious rite of circumcision presents a threat to the survival of the German people. Germans are failing of the desire to live. At your present fertility rate of 1.3 children per female, there will be virtually no German speakers left to celebrate Goethe's quadricentennial. Not even the Nazis thought of banning circumcision as a way of uprooting Jewish life in Germany. If your decree withstands a constitutional challenge, Germany once again will be Judenrein. The difference today is that you need us more than we need you.... I submit that the Germans are in danger of extinction because they have ceased to tolerate life.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (7)
BREAKING! The BSBFB Has Found Its Theme Song
We yield to the greatness of Trust Me, I'm an Engineer -- the new, unofficial Official Theme Song of The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (2)
Parmesan Reggiano
My experiences with Goudas and the clothbound cheddar helped put this task off. I say task, not in a negative way, but a healthy confrontation with a visually complex puzzle of a surface. The surface honors us with what we know and love of a great Parmesan, that crystallized, craggy and dramatic terrain. -- Mike Geno, Cheese Portraits
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (0)
God Is Not Mocked
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:19 AM | Your Say (5)
"How did those 2010 elections work out for you? Boy, that really put the brakes on the Obama regime, huh? Wake the hell up. "
Obama just declared by executive fiat de facto amnesty. What have your precious little Tea Party freshmen done to counter that? Nothing.Obama has by executive fiat declared same-sex marriage the “law of the land.” What have your precious little pants-pissing Tea Party congressmen done to counter that? Nothing. Obama has started wars and entered the United States military into new combat theaters with ZERO congressional approval, and has told the congress through Leon Panetta that congress will no longer even be CONSULTED OR INFORMED of new wars. No. Obama MIGHT notify them, after he has consulted the U.N., if he has the time and feels like it. What have your mighty, mighty Tea Party freshmen done to counter that? Exactly nothing. -- Anne Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 AM | Your Say (15)
July 1, 2012
The Future. Are We There Yet?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (5)
The Long Weekend
A so-called "leap second" will be added to the world's atomic clocks as they undergo a rare adjustment to keep them in step with the slowing rotation of the Earth. To achieve the adjustment, on Saturday night atomic clocks will read 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds before moving on to midnight Greenwich Mean Time. -- Guardian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (5)
"You, sitting right there in your chair,"
watching these words move across your screen, are the problem. A problem 311,591,917 human souls strong.You eat too much or you don't pay enough taxes, you drive your car too often, you haven't bought solar panels for your roof, you browse extremist websites when you should be browsing government informational sites for tips on how to do or not do all of the above. But most of all... you still don't understand what a great problem you are for the people running this country into the ground between the Atlantic and the Pacific. They keep trying to solve you, but you don't go away. -- by Daniel Greenfield
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (1)
Weaponized Pork
When confronting rioting Islamic fundamentalists, pork is perfect.The beauty of pork-based riot control is its incredible flexibility. For all-purpose crowd dispersal, shotgun shells could be loaded up with bacon bits. Such “pigshot” could quickly break up rowdy demonstrators without harming a flea, let alone damaging the environment. Tanks could be modified into mobile Chinese field kitchens, complete with a traditional large exterior ventilating circular fan. When the enemy is within range and the wind conditions are right, pork strips would be cooked in giant woks. With the scent of freshly cooked pork everywhere, demonstrators will be traumatized. Many of those pork-smelling fanatics will be barred from their own homes, cafes, and other public places. -- Swine Control - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:49 AM | Your Say (7)
Congressional Missed Connections
Getting our shoes shined together and I was coveting your tawny Fratellis. Wanted to talk about redistricting but you said that's for behind closed doors. Can't stop thinking about that. ** Me: Dashing salt-and-pepper Rep. yelling at an aide in the hallway. You: Ravishing housewife on a tour of the chamber last Tuesday. I'm not really that scary. Send a pic so I know it's you. -- FlavorwirePosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:09 AM | Your Say (0)
The Hot Dog: A Condiment Delivery Vehicle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:39 AM | Your Say (10)