June 30, 2013

They came and they went

Couple having sex on window fall, die The lovebirds from Wuhan, central China, were having sex against a glass pane when the poorly constructed window broke under the weight of their passion.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 PM | Your Say (0)

Surprise. Surprise.

Jackson paid $35 MILLION buying silence of at least 2 DOZEN young boys he abused

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 PM | Your Say (7)

Gay Marriage = More AIDS? Surely You Jest.

Porn Industry Connects Gay Marriage To Condom Law The adult film industry is citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage in an effort to muzzle its main opponent in the legal battle to keep condoms off of its actors. Porn industry attorneys filed a motion Wednesday in U.S. District Court asking that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation be removed from the industry’s legal battle to repeal the condom requirement that Los Angeles County voters approved last year.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 PM | Your Say (3)

Jock Saps

"Thatcher and Reagan, at best, were just blips in downward trends. The fact that the only British Prime Minister to 'man up' in t

he last fifty years or so was Thatcher illustrates the author's point perfectly. This country is no better. I suspect that's why so many so-called Conservative men jump around and bathe in the testosterone spray of athletes and similar. It is a real revelation to see the average corporate drone clap its hands and squeal like a little girl when some gorilla ex-pro football player with a room temperature IQ shows up for a corporate publicity initiative." -- Posted by: Lorne at June 30, Side-Lines: "A Decline in Courage

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (1)

Picture If You Will

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (3)

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell,"

much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked:

his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. -- Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (10)

Western Maine is emptying out

There are few people and no children. Fewer people and no children has been a dream of many in my lifetime. It was never mine. If you saw what it looked like, it might change even the most hardened heart about the concept. -- Sippican Cottage: I Rode A Bicycle Today

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (3)

America's political elites... believe that outright tyranny is tacky.

They don't run over people with tanks, they run them over with laws. But if the day comes when tanks are necessary

in defense of gun control, gay marriage, mandatory abortions, national health insurance or some other liberal cause, there is no real doubt that they will do it. For now they admire their own sophisticated ability to get their way with empty speeches, media bias and social nudges. It hasn't crossed their minds yet that the day will come when that will not be enough. -- Sultan Knish: A Season for Treason

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (2)

Our civil servants have become untenable monsters.

When I read the U.S. Park Police had "lost track" of 1,400 guns I initially wrote it off as more bad government. But screw that. They didn't lose track of those guns. They sold them to criminals. You know they did. The federal government has become completely unglued. It is an ongoing criminal syndicate. -- Velociworld: To the Lamp Post

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:17 AM | Your Say (2)

The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

One of the grim comedies of the twentieth century was the fate of miserable victims of communist regimes who climbed walls, swam rivers, dodged bullets, and found other desperate ways to achieve liberty in the West at the same time as intellectuals in the West sentimentally proclaimed that these very regimes were the wave of the future. A similar tragicomedy is being played out in our century: as the victims of despotism and backwardness from third world nations pour into Western states, the same ivory tower intellectuals assert that Western life is a nightmare of inequality and oppression. -- Kenneth Minogue (1930-2013)| Encounter Books

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:54 AM | Your Say (1)

June 29, 2013

Quote of the Month

If Rachel Jeantel is typical of black teens in that neighborhood, no freakin' wonder George Zimmerman was doing his Neighborhood Watch with a Glock. The Phantom Soapbox: Court of the media: Rachel Jeantel is innocent! Kill Zimmerman! [HT: SDA]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:39 PM | Your Say (10)

"A Decline in Courage

"A Decline in Courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. ... Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?" -- Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:14 PM | Your Say (10)

It's Not Easy Being Green

Birdwatchers flock to see rare bird, then watch it killed by wind turbine | “It’s tragic. More than 80 people had already arrived on the island and others were coming from all over the country. But it just flew into the turbine. It was killed instantly."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:08 PM | Your Say (6)

June 28, 2013

And it was all downhill from there....

This Day In History: Archduke Ferdinand assassinated — — 6/28/1914

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

Glenn Beck? Oh, he so crazy! Right? Right!

Forbes: Glenn Beck earned more than Oprah last year: $90 million vs. $77 million.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:34 PM | Your Say (6)

"Ready for Hillary"

Sultan Knish: Ready for Hillary Bill Clinton's infidelity got her to the Senate, but then she was stuck again and fell while jumping for the White House.

That got her stuck as Secretary of State and she hopes that presiding over the Arab Spring and Benghazi will do more to get her over the top than being First Lady or the Sinecure Senator from New York did. The common thread is that Hillary never does the job she has. Instead she neglects it while planning to use it to go somewhere higher up.... Hillary would like to run on being Secretary of State, but she doesn't have a thing to show for her time in the State Department. Nothing good at any rate.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:34 PM | Your Say (10)

The Mars500 Expedition: Five Hundred and Twenty Days of Solitude

On June 3, 2010, six men filed through the weedy, Soviet-era campus of the Institute of Biomedical Problems, in Moscow.

They made their way past friends, family, scientists, well-wishers and a bronze-toned, gigantic statue of the astronaut Yuri Gagarin before entering a vaulted hall that contained a mock-up of the type of spacecraft that could one day ferry humans to Mars. The men climbed aboard. Behind them, the hatch sealed shut. They didn’t come out for a year and a half. -- The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:01 PM | Your Say (1)

The Errors of Edward Snowden and His Global Hypocrisy Tour

Would Snowden have been outraged that the United States was intercepting Japanese data at a time when the countries were not at war?

It took years to crack the Purple code—would Snowden think the United States should have waited until after Pearl Harbor to tap into Japanese communication lines, and only then begin the arduous effort to break the code? And if not, then what is his point in turning over these kinds of secrets to the Chinese? -- | Vanity Fair

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:24 AM | Your Say (4)

Life in a Nation Governed by 15-Year-Old Girls

If indulgence in vice makes you special and gives you status and privileges, why are only sodomites being so favored?

Alcoholism is commonly considered to be an inheritable infirmity. Like the homosexual, the boozehound has no choice about his inclinations. Clearly, Anthony Kennedy ought to sit down and find some appellate case to which he can arrange cert, and start drafting his opinion that rumdums are equal, too, and cannot be denied their rights to employment or to driving vehicles. -- Never Yet Melted

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (1)

Who says there's no good news?

Salon.com's $3.9 million loss for year pushes deficit to $116 million - San Francisco Business Times

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (2)

June 27, 2013

The Berkeley Pit

Over the active lifespan of the Berkeley, approximately 320 million tons of ore and over 700 million tons of waste rock were mined from the Pit. Put another way, "The Richest Hill on Earth" produced enough copper to pave a four-lane highway four inches thick from Butte to Salt Lake City and 30 miles beyond. PitWatch Site in Butte, Montana

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 PM | Your Say (0)

In Passing #72

Sultan Knish: Bike Lanes to Nowhere The streets of Manhattan are full of smiling white yuppies riding their Citibank bikes, blue lights flashing as they sail through midtown traffic. But the great rack of bike share bikes planted next to a housing project is filled with its cargo of blue vehicles. No one is checking them out here. Instead black kids sit on the locked bikes, occasionally fitfully pedaling them, going nowhere.

Microwave Corn On The Cob - Blur Brain

Government Became Unstoppable Yesterday I for one welcome our….Ah. Skip it.

Papilloma virus may explain the "jackalope" legend

The Cold Civil War Grinds On by John Derbyshire To keep non-elite blacks happy in clientage, their Designated Victim status has to be affirmed from time to time.

LILEKS (James) and “The Distant City:” "I have, for years, been working on a site in the comics section called “The Distant City,” and I never get around to making it happen. The name alone, combined with this image, should tell you everything you need to know about the foundational concept."

“If you kill somebody in Texas, we kill you back!” #500 Buh-Bye!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:06 PM | Your Say (0)

Thoughtful Americans React to Gays and Lesbians Getting Married

"Those poor souls. Haven't they suffered enough?"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (14)

Rudy Giuliani: Obama vs. Putin not fair fight

“Who would you give greater odds would catch a fugitive, a former KGB agent or a former community organizer? .... Obama doesn’t know how to play this game. This is why, I wasn’t kidding, this is an experienced manipulator of intelligence, of world power, against a man who has extremely not very well-developed views and no experience doing this,” Giuliani said. “This is the price we pay for voting for an inexperience president. … This is incompetence because we elected a president who was never prepared to be president, and he hasn’t figured the job out yet.” - Tal Kopan - POLITICO.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (6)

"It takes real cheek for today’s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, "

"that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here —

when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority’s moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress’s hateful moral judgment against it. I promise you this: The only thing that will “confine” the Court’s holding is its sense of what it can get away with." -- Scalia's scathing dissent of DOMA ruling

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (3)

June 26, 2013

Any Questions? [Bumped]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:14 PM | Your Say (22)

Questions that make you go "Hummmmmm?"

Doug Ross @ Journal: How can illegal aliens be in "the shadows" when each one receives thousands of dollars in benefits each year?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:53 PM | Your Say (2)

"Ready for Hillary"

Sultan Knish: Ready for Hillary

Why vote for Hillary? Because Hillary wants you to vote for her. Because she expects you to vote for her. There is that cloud of unmet expectations that she carries with her everywhere she goes, drifting through the frosty smiles that shift into the overenthusiastic mannerisms of a woman who has never gotten comfortable with audiences because she really doesn't like people very much.

There is no actual reason to vote for Hillary except that she's running. Obama could at least cobble together some stage-managed charisma, a few lifted quotes from African-American writers and a pinch of skeptical leftism into the persona of a political machine. Hillary never even had that. All the charisma is on Bill's side of the family. Hillary delivers speeches with determination, but no heart. Like everything that involves dealing with people, you can tell that she's just trying to get through it

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (0)

Welcome to the world of gender parity.

In one sense, the rising rates of alcohol consumption by women are a sign of parity.

But this is one arena in which equal treatment yields unequal outcomes. Women are more vulnerable than men to alcohol's toxic effects. Their bodies have more fat, which retains alcohol, and less water, which dilutes it, so women drinking the same amount as men their size and weight become intoxicated more quickly. Males also have more of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol before it enters the bloodstream. This may be one reason why alcohol-related liver and brain damage appear more quickly in heavy-drinking women than men. -- Had Enough Therapy?: Female Alcohol Syndrome

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (2)

June 25, 2013

"I once enraged the husband of my cousin, a devout Obama voter who grew up in the Soviet Union,

"by asking him what the Russian translation of "progressive" was.

Of course he knew perfectly well that the Soviet ogre had uttered this word continuously from 1917 to 1989. Indeed, "progressive" has been exclusively a euphemism for "communist," on both sides of the Atlantic, since the mid-30s or so. And yet, his response would be: Stalin was not a true progressive, but a demon pretending to be a true progressive. In fact, this is the standard position of today's neo-communist on the USSR: fascist deviationism, not true communism. Did the experiment fail? Au contraire, mon frere - it has never been tried! -- Unqualified Reservations: Civil liberties and the single reactionary

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 PM | Your Say (0)

Low Information Voters: The Early Years

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:11 PM | Your Say (1)

Both Sides Now

The sign "The Buck Stops Here" that was on President Truman's desk in his White House office was made in the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma. Fred M. Canfil, then United States Marshal for the Western District of Missouri and a friend of Mr. Truman, saw a similar sign while visiting the Reformatory and asked the Warden if a sign like it could be made for President Truman. The sign was made and mailed to the President on October 2, 1945. Approximately 2-1/2" x 13" in size and mounted on walnut base, the painted glass sign has the words "I'm From Missouri" [The "Show Me" state] on the reverse side. Truman: The Buck Stops Here

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:23 PM | Your Say (7)

June 24, 2013

Imagine

If a generation that grew up on Happy Days and the Love Boat could produce the aggressively degenerate government we have now, imagine what “Jersey Shore” and “Pregnant & Dating” will spawn. -- Moonbattery » Cultural Lowlights

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 PM | Your Say (3)

Every actual journalist at NBC should spit every time David Gregory walks by.

This was a career defining moment. It's rare that someone reveals himself quite as clearly as the Dancin' Master does in that little by-play.

He will "debate" who is or is not a journalist, and the rest of us can wait under the balcony and wait for scraps. The clearly batty Peggy Noonan is a journalist, but Glenn Greenwald may not be. Journalism has sickened itself with respectability, debilitated itself with manners, crippled itself with politesse, and David Gregory may well be Patient Zero for all of this. Glenn Greenwald On Meet The Press - What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days? - Esquire

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 PM | Your Say (0)

"Knock. Knock," said defense attorney Don West.

"Who's there?"

"George Zimmerman."

"George Zimmerman who?"

"Congratulations! You're on the jury."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 PM | Your Say (1)

"Y'know, I remember a time when things were a lot more Fun around here When good was good, and evil was evil Before things got so.........fuzzy"

It was a pretty big year for predators 
The marketplace was on a roll 
And the land of opportunity 
Spawned a whole new breed of men without souls 
This year, notoriety got all confused with fame 
And the devil is downhearted 
Because there's nothing left for him to claim 
He said "It's just like home 
It's so low-down, I can't stand it 
I guess my work around here has all been done"

-- The Garden Of Allah - Don Henley

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:21 PM | Your Say (3)

And Coming In At Number 99 Is..... [Bumped because I'm in love with the number 99!]

Doug Ross @ Journal: The Top 150 Conservative Websites, June 2013

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:26 PM | Your Say (15)

Euclid Alone

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

The Stone City

aaano_man_has_reached_the_core._the_crossworlds_sun_grows_dim.jpg

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (4)

You've Come A Long Way Baby

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (7)

Q: What should Edward Snowden expect now?

Binney: Well, first of all, I think he should expect to be treated just like Bradley Manning (an Army private now being court-martialed for leaking documents to WikiLeaks). The U.S. government gets ahold of him, that's exactly the way he will be treated.

Q: He'll be prosecuted?

Binney: First tortured, then maybe even rendered and tortured and then incarcerated and then tried and incarcerated or even executed. -- 3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 AM | Your Say (6)

Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer.

A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows,

always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.
From the chapter entitled "Ordinary Men and Women", p. 112-113 William S. Burroughs

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:03 AM | Your Say (1)

June 23, 2013

Just What Does the Left Really Want?

The left wants: The government to explode; to pay everyone; to hire everyone;

they believe that money grows on trees; the earth is flat; the industrial age, factory-style government is a cool new thing; debts don't have to be repaid; people of faith are ignorant and uneducated; unborn babies don't matter; pornography is fine; traditional marriage is discriminatory; 32 oz. sodas are evil; red meat should be rationed; rich people are evil unless they are from Hollywood or are liberal Democrats; the Israelis are unreasonable; trans-fat must be stopped; kids trapped in failing schools should be patient; wild weather is a new thing; moral standards are passé; government run health care is high quality; the IRS should violate our constitutional rights; reporters should be spied on; Benghazi was handled well; the Second Amendment is outdated; and the First one has some problems too. -- Gov. Bobby Jindal

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

Every government flavored with democracy is irredeemably foul,

but broadly the 20th-century pseudo-democratic regimes can be separated into two broad categories: oligarchical (communist, impersonal) and despotic (fascist, personal). Your preference depends on whether you prefer to be ruled by an omnipotent politician or a faceless machine. There is no difficulty in classifying the USG, or any other major modern government - they are all oligarchies. Unqualified Reservations: Civil liberties and the single reactionary

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 PM | Your Say (0)

The only free people in cities are eccentrics and criminals.

Eccentricity is a necessary performance art in the face of anonymity. And criminality is often the only way to get things done.

Everyone breaks some laws because there are too many laws and many of them are unreasonable or unlivable. In their own way, every urbanite is an eccentric and a criminal. It is only a matter of scale. The best eccentrics have features written about them in newspapers. Less successful eccentrics occasion only shrugs. The best criminals become legends. The rest just spend their senior years bemoaning the new thugs who don't seem to care about honor and are only out for themselves. Sultan Knish: The Urban Tyranny

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 PM | Your Say (1)

Chesterton

“Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.” G. K. Chesterton

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 PM | Your Say (1)

Tougher Borders? Just try and collect.

Nothing this Congress does, remember, can prevent future Congresses from reneging on the back end of this “legalize first” deal. Budget considerations alone will mean the advertised ”surge” won’t be sustained–as Obama’s earlier 1,500 man National Guard surge wasn’t sustained. Future lawmakers will be looking around for “offsetting” spending cuts and that bloated 40,000 man border patrol will stick out like a nail that wants to be hammered.... There will be little to stop these forces–the ones that have blocked enforcement until now–except some Republican pols saying “But … but you pwomised!” -- One More Metaphor for the Gang of 8 | The Daily Caller

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:42 PM | Your Say (4)

Environmentalism rages at humanity.

Behind its colorful drawings and its dolphin key chains is the vision of a world in which humanity and its fire sticks are the original sin.

That primal rage has been channeled and diluted into a million businesses, into countless regulations and profitable ventures. The new environmentalists are regulatory robber barons like Al Gore, green rent seeking tycoons looking to use cap and trade, and a thousand mandatory revenue streams to fleece both the faithful and the unfaithful. There is no further way to corrupt environmentalism, its existence is already an abiding corruption. Sultan Knish: The End of the World

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:56 PM | Your Say (2)

Obama to Announce Sweeping New Powers on Tuesday – Will Regulate Power Plants to Save Country from ‘Global Warming’

Why not cut off power to the federal government first? Heat, a/c, and electric. That would show real leadership.

Pres. Lincoln managed fine without electricity, central heating, or a/c, and he rode around town on a low-emission horse powered by biofuel. First, the gummint should cut the power to the NSA and the IRS. Then, the White House. Then Congress. Our moral and intellectual superiors should show us the way. -- A cooling consensus - Maggie's Farm

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:15 PM | Your Say (4)

Into the Graveyard of Syria

Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,

For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,

And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East." - - Rudyard Kipling: The Naulahka

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (0)

Bloombergism: Where Obama-era liberalism overlaps with the views of Davos-goers and the Wall Street 1 percent

Step outside those circles, though, and the timing of their elevation looks at best peculiar, at worst perverse.

The president decided to make gun control legislation a major second-term priority ... with firearm homicides at a 30-year low. Congress is pursuing a sharp increase in low-skilled immigration ... when the foreign-born share of the American population is already headed for historical highs. The administration is drawing up major new carbon regulations ... when actual existing global warming has been well below projections for 15 years and counting. Russ Douthat, The Great Disconnect - NYTimes.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:31 AM | Your Say (1)

June 22, 2013

Perigee's Full Moon

A big, bright, beautiful Full Moon will rise at sunset on Sunday. Its exact full phase (June 23, 11:32 UT) will occur shortly before it reaches perigee, the closest point to Earth in the Moon's orbit, and make it the largest Full Moon of 2013.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 PM | Your Say (0)

Right after his global warming hoax talk next Tuesday, Obama will be flying to Africa with hundreds of Secret Service agents and 56 support vehicles including 14 limousines and three trucks

Tom Nelson: Fighter jets will fly in shifts giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 PM | Your Say (5)

Let's not lose our heads

Revelation 20:4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:39 PM | Your Say (12)

Ah yes, the hopeless politics of change

Obama Surveillance Defies Campaign Civil Liberty Pledge

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

Cargo Karma

Container Ship Carrying Weapons for Syrian Rebels Splits in Half/Sinks ‘A large fleet named “Mol Comfort” carrying Arms for FSA from the U.S. has crashed in the Indian Ocean as it made its way from Singapore to Jeddah, on board were 4,500 containers loaded with arms for the Syrian rebels’ ‘MOL Comfort sank due to yet unclear reasons, sailing from Singapore to Jeddah....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:36 PM | Your Say (9)

The scariest piece on cars you'll ever read

Abstract — Modern automobiles are no longer mere mechanical devices; they are pervasively monitored and controlled by dozens of digital computers coordinated via internal vehicular networks.

While this transformation has driven major advancements in efﬁciency and safety, it has also introduced a range of new potential risks. In this paper we experimentally evaluate these issues on a modern automobile and demonstrate the fragility of the underlying system structure. We demonstrate that an attacker who is able to inﬁltrate virtually any Electronic Control Unit (ECU) can leverage this ability to completely circumvent a broad array of safety-critical systems. Over a range of experiments, both in the lab and in road tests, we demonstrate the ability to adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input— including disabling the brakes, selectively braking individual wheels on demand, stopping the engine, and so on. We ﬁnd that it is possible to bypass rudimentary network security protections within the car, such as maliciously bridging between our car’s two internal subnets. We also present composite attacks that leverage individual weaknesses, including an attack that embeds malicious code in a car’s telematics unit and that will completely erase any evidence of its presence after a crash. Looking forward, we discuss the complex challenges in addressing these vulnerabilities while considering the existing automotive ecosystem. [ Full document HERE ] HT: Bill Jones

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:10 PM | Your Say (1)

"What the fuck are you doing to combat global warming!?..."

Burning tires in my back yard! I get paid two bucks for every tire I get rid of. I’ve already made eight thousand dollars this month. Plus I’ve got ten more tractor trailer loads coming. See I’m getting ride of all of those bad tires so you don’t have to see them. -- The Forward Observer • foxnewsofficial

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:04 PM | Your Say (3)

Saint Thomas More

“But if you live the time that no man will give you good counsel, nor no man will give you good example, when you shall see virtue punished and vice rewarded, if you will then stand fast and firmly stick to God, upon pain of my life, though you be but half good, God will allow you for whole good.” —Saint Thomas More - Feast Day, June 22

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (4)

As the North Rests on Its Laurels, the South Is Rising Fast

The South’s advantages come in no small part from decisions that many Northern liberals detest—lack of unions, lower wages, and less stringent environment laws. But for many Southerners, particularly in rural areas, a job at the Toyota plant with a $15-an-hour starting salary, and full medical benefits, is a vast improvement over a minimum-wage job at Wal-Mart, much less your father’s fate chopping cotton on a tenant farm. - Joel Kotkin

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (0)

Once Again "Honest" Is On the Wrong Side of Federal Law

IRS Sent $46,378,040 in Refunds to 23,994 ‘Unauthorized’ Aliens at 1 Atlanta Address

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (2)

"All that remains is hate"

A looming battle with Syria for no sane reason, surrender of America to invaders without any fight whatsoever,

the apparent fact few people care that their corrupt government monitors their phone calls and then financially persecutes those who offer even meager dissent—it is enough to make any thinking person throw up his hands and submit to the coming depredations. All that remains is hate, which has kept many a man alive through much worse than what is now or is coming next. -- The Importance of Hatred

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 AM | Your Say (0)

FUCK YOURSELF, NABISCO! JUST GO FUCK YOURSELF!

WTF Nabisco?: Watermelon Oreos Somebody over at Nabisco must have lost their damn mind. Annnnd maybe even their job. Look, I don't wish that on anyone (except the barista who wrote my name down as Fartney on my latte), but somebody's responsible for this mess. Actually irresponsible, if you think about it. I mean, how hard is it to f*** up an Oreo? Well for one, leave it in the milk too long. For two, add wallermeloms to it.

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

Low Wages and Kabab Restaurants

If I had to guess, the domestic spying programs are unnecessary and probably ineffective for “preventing terrorism.”

If these programs are necessary to avoid a daily fare of fire and blood, we need better ideas. An obvious one is properly functioning border controls. One of the reasons the NSA “needs” all that data on US citizens is the simple fact that there are so many foreigners living here, legally and otherwise. If we were to stop invading the world while inviting the world to move here, there would be fewer potential dangerous foreigners within the “homeland” to worry about. Giving up our civil liberties in return for lower wages and more kebab restaurants seems a poor bargain. Turned by the Spooks - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (0)

Fartful Dodger

When your job is just one long blowjob: White House's Jay Carney dodges questions more than 9,000 times

I don’t have the answer (1905 times)
I would refer you to someone else (1383 times)
You already know the answer (1125 times)
I’m not going to tell you (939 times)
Not that I know of (927 times)
I don’t want to (588 times)
I’m not sure (549 times)
I won’t speculate (525 times)
No comment (429 times)
I’ll get back to you (387 times)
It’s a good question (381 times)
See yesterday’s non-response (231 times)
The president won’t tell me (117 times)

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

There’s only one person that could get away this. And that person is Steven Segal

The Shirk Report @ TwistedSifter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (4)

June 21, 2013

While the civil-liberties geek of 2013 is a pathetic and even hilarious figure, it's not at all true that his passion has never gone requited.

Actually, in its bureaucratic form, "civil liberties" helps keep the streets of San Francisco covered with turds and shambling zombies - two phenomena which constantly challenge and entertain my delightful precocious toddlers. "Why? Why, Pop?" Alas, though precocious, my offspring are nowhere near precocious enough to absorb the concept of the ACLU. Unqualified Reservations: Civil liberties and the single reactionary

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 PM | Your Say (2)

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Doughnut Shop....

We are now in the golden age of the doughnut bun. And these Chocolate-Dipped Coffee Ice Cream Glazed Doughnut Sandwiches are the Flauberts of the form. No one really wants a burger between two glazed doughnuts--what we want is ice cream. And not just any ice cream, but coffee ice cream (the best kind of ice cream). And we don't want to just eat that doughnut-ice cream sandwich as is. We want half of it dipped in chocolate. -- Tastespotting: BA Daily

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:38 PM | Your Say (4)

White Falcon by Giuseppe Castiglione

In 1715, Castiglione went to China as a missionary. While in China, Castiglione took the name Lang Shining (郎世寧). His skill as an artist was appreciated by the Emperor Qianlong and Castiglione spent many years in the court painting various subjects, including the portraits of the Emperor and Empress. Giuseppe Castiglione (Jesuit) @ LA WIK

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:28 PM | Your Say (0)

"The Constitution is great, but Nature has laws as well.

"One is that the fickle are generally not left in charge of armies, battleships or nuclear weapons. If the Constitution declares that the fickle shall rule, too bad for the Constitution. By contradicting Nature, the Constitution has contradicted itself. And it shall not rule. And that, dear Americans, is when you finally settled in under your new communist oligarchy. Whether you knew it or not. Not, mostly - but that's what it is to be a chump." -- Unqualified Reservations: Civil liberties and the single reactionary

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (0)

It could have been worse. It could have been "Prostratetors"

An instant collectible courtesy of NYT @ JIMROMENESKO.COM

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:40 AM | Your Say (0)

Too Little Journolist and Too Late...

Here Is the Archive of the Famous Liberal Media 'Journolist'

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:37 AM | Your Say (0)

Benghazi is a lesson in failings of probity writ small and large.

Our policy, relentlessly pursued by the president, is to disarm. As China and Russia invigorate their defense industrial bases, we diminish ours. We are stripping our nuclear deterrent to and beyond the point where it will encourage proliferation among opportunistic states, endow China with parity, and make a first strike against us feasible. Mark Helprin: Benghazi's Portent and the Decline of U.S. Military Strength

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:10 AM | Your Say (0)

Dear President Bozo: Too Silly! New Sketch!

The question of whether Barack Obama’s second term will be a failure was answered in the affirmative before his Berlin debacle, which has recast the question, which now is: Will this term be silly, even scary in its detachment from reality? ....

Obama’s vanity is a wonder of the world that never loses its power to astonish, but really: Is everyone in his orbit too lost in raptures of admiration to warn him against delivering a speech soggy with banalities and bromides in a city that remembers John Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” and Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall”? George F. Will: Obama hits a wall in Berlin

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (1)

June 20, 2013

The 'Night Scenes' by Hasegawa

Koho SHODA's "Shrine Gate at Miyajima" "Nishinomiya Publisher"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 PM | Your Say (1)

"The power of the machine is always increasing.

Few in the Reagan era could have imagined that in the lives of their grown children, most Americans would come to regard gay marriage as an essential civil right.

Why did this happen? Because the ruling class is sovereign not just politically, but also intellectually. What it believes, everyone comes to believe - and is horrified that previous generations somehow failed to believe." -- Unqualified Reservations: Civil liberties and the single reactionary

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 PM | Your Say (2)

The Artisanal Tinfoil Haberdashery. It's not paranoid - it's paraperfection.

Artisanal Tinfoil Haberdashery Do recent revelations about the American Government's wholesale data mining

of internet and phone providers have you feeling like a lot more eyes are on you than usual - and that you have to look your best for them? Welcome to the Artisanal Tinfoil Haberdashery, and to our exclusive line of handcrafted headgear. We offer a distinctive line of aluminum-leaf-based caps for discerning men and women of all ages. Designs include trilbies, baseball caps, bicornes, tricorns, top hats, berets, cloches, and more.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 PM | Your Say (0)

Comment: Civilization Damages Liberty

"Liberty and civilization are incompatible. That the more comforts, ease, and safety you get from civilization, the more liberty you must surrender. That the first casualty of civilization are the virtues that enabled the civilization to build and prosper to begin with. That the social contract moves too far into the shared benefits and safety and too far away from the liberty all men are born to, as time goes on.

"A hundred years ago you might have been shot for suggesting you couldn't build a campfire on the beach. Now people are surprised you can even attempt it. A hundred years ago all you needed to start a business up was the ambition and cash to do so, now you can't even begin to plan it without consulting the government for permission, licensing, and tribute paid to the proper authorities.

"We've become so steeped in this life, we don't even notice what would have caused John Adams to go berserk. -- Christopher Taylor on The Limits of "Control:"

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

Gandolfini: "It's time for you to start to seriously consider salads."

As the seasons passed, Gandolfini gained weight at an alarming pace. His death, at the age of fifty-one, in Italy, does not come entirely as a shock. But that makes it no less a loss. Gandolfini was not a fantastically varied actor. He played within a certain range. Like Jackie Gleason, he’ll be remembered for a particular role, and a particular kind of role, but there is no underestimating his devotion to the part of a lifetime that was given to him. In the dozens of hours he had on the screen, he made Tony Soprano—lovable, repulsive, cunning, ignorant, brutal—more ruthlessly alive than any character we’ve ever encountered in television. -- Postscript: James Gandolfini, 1961-2013 : The New Yorker

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

When it comes to climate change, we have to trust our scientists, because they know lots of big scary words

I asked Stephen Belcher, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, whether the recent extended winter was related to global warming. Shaking his famous “ghost stick”, and fingering his trademark necklace of sharks’ teeth and mammoth bones, the loin-clothed Belcher blew smoke into a conch, and replied,

“Here come de heap big warmy. Bigtime warmy warmy. Is big big hot. Plenty big warm burny hot. Hot! Hot hot! But now not hot. Not hot now. De hot come go, come go. Now Is Coldy Coldy. Is ice. Hot den cold. Frreeeezy ice til hot again. Den de rain. It faaaalllll. Make pasty.” –-Telegraph Blogs

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:42 AM | Your Say (0)

California Schools: Money to Burn

EVERY school child in Los Angeles to get an iPad after state strikes $30m deal with Apple Supt. John Deasy said that the tablet project would be paid for using school construction bonds that are repaid over decades.... Mr Deasy and another board member did not take part in the vote on the iPads because each has stock in Apple.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (5)

June 19, 2013

Note to Self: Give Thanks to the Lord for the Important Things

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:45 PM | Your Say (6)

Mercedes. Ass. Bang!

Famed Non-Automotive Journalist Michael Hastings Turns A Mercedes C250 Into A “Bomb” “The fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal”, died in a single-car accident in Los Angeles yesterday morning. This in and of itself is not unusual, but the circumstances of the crash and its aftermath won’t do anything to quiet the conspiracy theorists who are already claiming that the military-industrial complex found a way to cap the guy.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:34 PM | Your Say (9)

I was swallowed by a hippo

Blood rose from my body in clouds, and a sense of resignation overwhelmed me. I've no idea how long we stayed under â time passes very slowly when you're in a hippo's mouth. Experience: Life and style | The Guardian

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (2)

The Ice Mine Under the Outhouse

The Loo With a Surprise @ English Russia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 AM | Your Say (0)

The 50 Albums Everyone Needs to Own, 1963-2013

1966 brought an embarrassment of riches: The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, The Beatles’ Revolver, debut albums from The 13th Floor Elevators and The Mothers of Invention, Otis Redding’s Soul Album, The Monks’ proto-garage classic Black Monk Time, and plenty more. There are cases to be made for all of these, but Blonde on Blonde wins out because it’s 2013 (thus far): Standish/Carlyon — Deleted Scenes

2013: Ex-Devastations duo Standish/Carlyon’s just-released Deleted Scenes, which layers futurist melodies over some of the densest dub-influenced low-end sounds you’ll ever hear. (Your correspondent wrote about it for The Quietus here.)arguably Dylan’s best record.

-- – Run the whole list @ Flavorwire

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

Backside to the Future

In Venezuela, savvy shoppers are hunting down scarce supplies of toilet paper with a smartphone app.

The smartphones, compact packages of electronics, are several generations more advanced than the white square, but they are available when the toilet paper isn't, because unlike the toilet paper they aren't subsidized and price controlled. -- Sultan Knish, Savages of Socialism

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:32 AM | Your Say (0)

"If you’re a legal immigrant or native citizen,"

Congress has nothing to say to you right now. Not all of the floor speeches are being delivered in English.

Democrats want their new imported Big Government-friendly voters. Republicans are terrified of alienating the Hispanic constituency in general. Business interests want the cheap labor. The media likes to tell simple stories about compassionate activists versus heartless racists. The permanent bureaucracy absolutely does not want to address a concrete problem like border security â the sort of endeavor at which it could be judged an objective failure. -- Ruling-class concerns | RedState

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:24 AM | Your Say (0)

Sleight

"Sleight of hand" is one tricky phrase. "Sleight" is often miswritten as "slight" and for good reason. Not only does the expression convey an image of light, nimble fingers, which fits well with the smallness implied by "slight," but an alternate expression for the concept is "legerdemain," from the French l'er de main," literally, "light of hand." "Sleight" comes from a different source, a Middle English word meaning "cunning" or "trickery." It's a wily little word that lives up to its name. 12 old words that survived

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:31 AM | Your Say (1)

In Passing #72

The World's Only Known White Gorilla Was The Result Of Incest

The 15 Deadliest Blood Feuds in United States History

Why Men Aren't Really Men Anymore | Elite Daily Women are becoming accustomed to such boys and believing that these pansies are all that is left of our sex. Some great women are settling for these fools and then finding that they themselves have no choice but to wear the pants in the family because their “man” is PMSing.

Higashimokoto Flower Park - The Breathtaking Flower Hill of Hokkaido

MSNBC Anchor: ‘I Don’t Want to Get Bogged Down’ with Whether Babies Feel Pain During Abortion

Steve Sailer: iSteve: Women's basketball and The Narrative.

Reenacting the Past - In Focus - The Atlantic

Belmont Club » Facing the Syrian Dilemma "Kicking the can down the road" sounds a lot better. And that's what makes Syria so hard to sell either way. After saying the war's over; after proclaiming a new dawn with the Muslim world; after promising grand bargains with Iran; after touting the glories of the Arab spring and a reset button to Russia then how come Syria? It reminds one of the old Soviet Union where everything steadily got better until it finally collapsed.

Nag on the Lake: Inside Japan's Most Insanely Expensive Fruit Parlor

Common Sweetener Could Help Treat Parkinson's Disease | Popular Science

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

June 18, 2013

Rotting, Decaying And Bankrupt – If You Want To See The Future Of America Just Look At Detroit

Detroit is a perfect example of what the future of America is going to look like. We live in a nation that is rotting, decaying, drowning in debt and racing toward insolvency. Already there are dozens of other cities across the nation that are poverty-ridden, crime-infested hellholes just like Detroit is, and hundreds of other communities are rapidly heading in that direction. So don't look down on Detroit. They just got there before the rest of us. -- Zero Hedge

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

Do not follow the cloth

“Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations.

If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep the conflicts under operation since they hope to profit from the situation. To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth.” -- W. S. Burroughs [HT Charles]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:56 PM | Your Say (1)

Who farted? Call for votes. [Bumped]

aapb-130617-obama-putin-meeting.photoblog900.jpg

"Are we having fun yet?" Chilly body language on display as Presidents Obama and Putin meet at the G-8

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:57 PM | Your Say (19)

The Machine

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! FSM: Mario Savio's Speech before the FSM Sit-in - December 3, 1964, Berkeley, California

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (1)

Racist muppet for the children of low-information voters.

Alex is blue-haired and green-nosed and he wears a hoodie. -- J is for Jail: Sesame Street Muppet with Dad in Jail - Neatorama

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:21 PM | Your Say (5)

Sometimes When Things Get Really Stressful, I Close My Eyes, Sit Back, And Pretend I’m Back In Kenya By Barack Obama, 44th President Of The United States

Looking back, it’s kind of ironic, because being chief of the Luo tribe was not something that I ever dreamed about or even wanted to do.

I liked hunting and skinning the beasts of prey, and I thought I’d get a healthy wife and a beautiful family that way, but I always believed that Wanyanga would be responsible for making all the important decisions in my life. - - America's Finest News Source

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:58 AM | Your Say (1)

Out of Space and Out of Time

"There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it." -- William S. Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night (1981)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (1)

"Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace."

US to begin direct peace talks with Taliban 'within days'

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (2)

Only the beginning folks. Only the beginning. 5

Weiner wife Abedin being probed over employment status

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (2)

In Passing #71

Dog in a gas mask took out the $20,000 prize for Melbourne artist Peter Wegner today

Dog grooming competition Is that an ewok? Because, quite frankly, if that is meant to be Chewbacca then something has gone badly wrong.

The Ongoing Story: Twitter and Writing : The New Yorker “If an action is not recorded on a smartphone, does it, did it, exist?”

DEPENDS ON THE PERVERT China 'Hair Stockings' May Help Scare Off 'Perverts'

The last telegram ever is about to be sent

Spengler: Syria and Egypt can't be fixed Equalizing the military position of the two sides will merely increase the body count.

Mick Jagger’s Hair Up For Auction “I’ve got the perfect spot for it next to Jerry Garcia’s finger.”

Is the momentum for gay marriage real, or just media hype?

A Suit Of Armor For Your Guinea Pig Warrior

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (2)

The only solid finding in social science is denied by social scientists

Stereotype Inaccuracy? Why do so many psychologists emphasize stereotype inaccuracy when the evidence so clearly provides evidence of such high accuracy?

Why is there this Extraordinary Scientific Delusion? There may be many explanations, but one that fits well is the leftward lean of most psychologists.... as Jon Haidt has repeatedly shown, ideology blinds people to facts that are right under their noses.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:30 AM | Your Say (3)

Shrift

We might not know what a shrift is anymore, but we know we don't want to get a short one. "Shrift" was a word for a confession, something it seems we might want to keep short, or a penance imposed by a priest, something we would definitely want to keep short. But the phrase "short shrift" came from the practice of allowing a little time for the condemned to make a confession before being executed. So in that context, shorter was not better. 12 old words that survived

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

June 17, 2013

Left Loses Big in Citizenship-Verification Supreme Court Case

Election-integrity advocates are batting .800; left wing groups, .200. And the most insignificant issue of the five is the one issue the Left won. Justice Scalia foiled 4 of 5 of their goals, and the 4 biggest ones. How does it work? The decision today uncorks state power. The Left wanted state power stripped and they lost.

First, Arizona can simply push the state forms in all state offices and online, and keep those federal forms in the back room gathering dust. When you submit a state form, you have to prove citizenship. Thanks to Justice Scalia, that option is perfectly acceptable. Loss for the Left. Victory for election integrity. -- Rule of Law ｻ

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

On Syria: Comment of the Week by John Fleming [Bumped]

Can anyone name even one constitutional purpose

of American foreign policy that is being satisfied by an intervention into the Syrian pesthole? Did We the People grant our Powers and wealth to our government so that they could succor the grinding misery that foreigners, hoisted by their own deluded petard, have put themselves into? We never did. The powers We the People granted to our government were to be used for the benefit of Us, only us, and not some Levantines forever in thrall to both secular and religious tyranny.

Syria can live, can die, be glassed, anything, and it won't make one single bit of difference to the United States. i'm sorry all you Syrian people, but in the calculus of the United States your value is zero; and to even mess with you brings nothing but your misery and delusion to our shores. Be off with you, and save yourselves!

If the Usurper does this, and our Armed Forces professional officers do not resist this to the last man, then I will know we are well and truly f'ed. Who will be left to defend us against our enemies foreign and domestic? If the Usurper does this, It will be clear, that his aim is to destroy our Armed Forces. May God have mercy on us, because we don't have His Blessings anymore." Commenting on There's A Storm Coming: Syria. Because Afghanistan Just Isn't Enough @ AMERICAN DIGEST

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:45 PM | Your Say (15)

The logic of libertarian amnesty

The logic of libertarian amnesty would fill the voting rolls full of supporters of big government and the welfare state in the name of economic freedom.

It's not the worst illustration of how ideologies commit suicide through following the siren song of their logic to the farthest north. It's not even the worst such example involving immigration. That honor belongs to the European left whose immigration policies have doomed the survival of every value it claims to care for. But it is typical of the destruction wrought by dismissing people and their nations as interchangeable cogs in a machine of ideas. Sultan Knish: Coming to America

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:35 PM | Your Say (1)

We also know who in the media is not a target.

Not the CBS or ABC News presidents who have siblings working in the White House.

Not ABC's Good Morning America, given that one of its stalwarts is married to Press Secretary Jay Carney. Instead, there are two sorts of suspicious reporters that are considered hostile to the administration and worthy of having their communications monitored. One group are those journalists who leak information that the administration wished to preempt and leak first or who refuse to only leak favorable classified information -- the bin Laden trove, the cyber war against Iran, the drone targeting protocol -- that makes the president look as if he were a competent commander in chief. The other target, of course, is Fox News, whose staff, in a variety of ways and on a number of occasions, the Obama administration has previously attacked as in some way illegitimate. Works and Days » The New American Enemies List

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:52 PM | Your Say (0)

[Updated with more low-info] Low Information Beauty Queen[s]

For the easily distracted among you, she says: "I think we can relate this back to education and how we are continuing to try to strive to (pause) figure out how to create jobs right now. That is the biggest problem and I think, especially the men, are um, seen as the leaders of this and so we need to try and figure out how to create education better so we can solve this problem."

Rob De Witt: "And for a stunning example of the best in American public school education, I give you Miss Alabama:"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:33 PM | Your Say (12)

The new “inner-city” stereotype

America’s underclass has by definition always been poor, but they used to be somewhat culturally different from one another.

But now the hillbillies are dying out, and in the proletarian interracial culture wars, black urban culture has won. All the poor whites—or at least the “youths” and a surfeit of middle-aged (or perhaps prematurely aged) white welfare mothers—now seem to act black. And dress black. And talk black. Scenes From a Nashville Convenience Store - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (10)

The Middle East can be a mysterious place.

Dave Barry's: REPORT FROM ISRAEL

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:22 AM | Your Say (3)

Even in the wake of a four-figure death toll,

with the burial pit still smoking, the formal, visible state could not be honest about the very particular threat it faced, and so in the shadows the unseen state grew remorselessly, the blades of the harvester whirring endlessly but, don’t worry, only for “metadata.” Big Politically Correct Brother | National Review Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 AM | Your Say (0)

Japan. Nuked Too Much or Not Enough?

Takoyaki is a Japanese variety of battered and fried octopus. There's a soda that tastes just like it. Octopus-Flavored Soda - Neatorama

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:00 AM | Your Say (3)

Lost

"What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890?

Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants." Robert Hughes, in the Shock of the New

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:41 AM | Your Say (0)

In Passing #70

NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls | Politics and Law - CNET News NSA Director Keith Alexander says his agency's analysts, which until recently included Edward Snowden among their ranks, take protecting "civil liberties and privacy and the security of this nation to their heart every day."

MEANWHILE, IN GUN-FREE CHICAGO: 7 Dead, 30 Wounded So Far This Weekend

Democratic Congressman: 'Not Fair' To Subject Congress To Obamacare Just Like Everyone Else - Forbes Can somebody please strangle him with his own entrails? Thanking you in advance.

1,200-year-old lost city found in Cambodia

Street Legal Bumper Car 1984 Dodge Colt 1.6L Turbo

Derelict Northern Ireland shops get facelift ahead of G8 summit aka Phony Shit for Real Shitholes

Atget's corners Photographer Eugene Atget had a thing for the architectural promontory, as do I for that matter, and this photo of a street corner in the rue de Seine, Paris, has always been a favourite.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:40 AM | Your Say (3)

June 16, 2013

Weiner the Wanker

anthony-weiner-high-school-photo-3609-1300988849-10-249x300.jpg

I despise Anthony Weiner, and not just because he is protected by pals at The New York Times. All one has to do is look at this hideous freak and suddenly all the world’s lasciviousness seems brought into stark relief. - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 PM | Your Say (2)

Performance Enhancement

The game started and a mist started, a misty rain. So all during the game was a little mist.

The opposing team and my teammates, they knew I was high, but they didn’t know what I was high on. They had no idea what LSD was other than what they see on TV with the hippies. It was easier to pitch with the LSD because I was so used to medicating myself. That’s the way I was dealing with the fear of failure, the fear of losing, the fear of winning. It was part of the game, you know. You get to the Major Leagues, and you say, “I got to stay here, what do I need?” Dock Ellis, from an interview. Ellis finished the 1970 season fourth in the National League for shutouts—with four—and the following season he went 19-9, pitching thirty-one games, eleven of them completely.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:25 PM | Your Say (0)

Palin: "Really?"

“They have this skit where they do this fake newscast, and they read this completely absurd news report and finish it with an incredulous ‘Really?’.... As in, our government spied on every single one of your phone calls but it couldn’t find two pot-smoking, deadbeat Bostonians with a hotline to Terrorist Central in Chechnya. Really?"

“The IRS says it can’t figure out how it managed to spend more than $4 million on training conferences because it didn’t keep its receipts. Really?” --Sarah Palin lampoons D.C. at Faith and Freedom Coalition conference

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (4)

Be Prepared

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:57 AM | Your Say (5)

June 15, 2013

In Passing #69

White House cancels Obama's African safari after plans are revealed to include SWAT team SNIPERS with high-powered rifles

Mayor Bloomberg's Impassioned Crusade for Mandatory Breastfeeding BLOOMBERG: Surprisingly I’ve been able to restrict lots of personal freedoms without the slightest resistance. So the other day when I was really bored I decided it was a good time to force New York women to breastfeed their babies.

The wedding industrial complex: Last year the average American wedding, including the requisite reception, cost $28,427.

This is how a lone rock rolls on Mars: "That looks like the same rock from the video of the fake moon landing."

Why is Carlos Slim the world's richest man? Besides Slim's near monopoly within Mexico, he sets extraordinarily high rates on calls between America and Mexico, giving him vast profits off illegal immigrants.

The Singularity of Stupidity -- Jeb Bush: U.S. economy needs immigrants because they're 'more fertile.'

A Brief History of the US Government Spying on Its Citizens

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (2)

Memories may be beautiful and yet....

Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were.

-- Via the oh-so HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:05 AM | Your Say (5)

June 14, 2013

The First Morning of Summer

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer. Dandelion Wine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:35 PM | Your Say (6)

Classified Ads We Never Answered

Lodger Required in Brighton Rooms to Rent | Gumtree.com "I have, over the last few months, been constructing a realistic walrus costume,

which should fit most people of average proportions, and allow for full and easy movement in character. To take on the position as my lodger you must be prepared to wear the walrus suit for approximately two hours each day (in practice, this is not two hours every day - I merely state it here so you are able to have a clear idea of the workload). Whilst in the walrus costume you must be a walrus - there must be no speaking in a human voice, and any communication must entail making utterances in the voice of a walrus - I believe there aer recordings available on the web - to me, the voice is the most natural thing I have ever heard. Other duties will involve catching and eating the fish and crabs that I will occasionally throw to you...."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:11 PM | Your Say (6)

The University of California @ Davis 2013

Yet another argument for domestic drone attacks.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:02 PM | Your Say (9)

"The hole in the boat: "

America is losing its historic literacy. Recently some 556 seniors surveyed at 55 of the nation’s top colleges

-- only 60 percent placed the American Civil War in the correct half of the 19th century. Only 34 percent identified George Washington as the American general at the Battle of Yorktown. Thirty-four percent thought it was Ulysses S. Grant. At 78 percent of the institutions polled, no history whatsoever was required in the undergraduate program. Historian David McCullough said, “We are raising a generation of young Americans who are historically illiterate.” Doug Ross @ Journal: TRANSCRIPT: Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes' Complete Speech After Accepting the Bradley Prize

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:08 PM | Your Say (6)

In Passing #68

Secret Museum: The Treasures they don't Display A space suit dirtied in moon dust, Van Gogh’s personal sketchbooks, a piece of Isaac Newton’s apple...

Dark Roasted Blend: Extreme Small Boats & Yachts: Retro Coolness

Steve Sailer: iSteve: The culture that is Mexico, Part II

Doug Ross @ Journal: TRANSCRIPT: Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes' Complete Speech After Accepting the Bradley Prize

iOwnTheWorld.com ｻ Blog Archive ｻ No one wants to be Hillary

Steve Sailer: iSteve: Mexico v. America: Which has better real estate?

Picture of the Day: The Temple Cave of Batu ｫTwistedSifter

The First Known Fluorescent Vertebrate Is An Animal You've Probably Eaten Before | Popular Science

The Virginian: If Sarah Palin Had Become President....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:17 AM | Your Say (0)

June 13, 2013

The bad news is that it's a round trip

President Obama will travel to sub-Saharan Africa and the price tag for the trip clocks in between $60 million to $100 million.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:52 PM | Your Say (0)

That Extinction Event Asteroid CANNOT Strike Too Soon

“Ball ironing”: Hot new trend in “scrotum rejuvenation”

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

Pre-Approved for the Young Mind

(via Biden Launches New Imaginary Gun Buyback Initiative)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:39 PM | Your Say (0)

Just when you thought it was safe not to shoot Arnold Schwarzenegger on sight....

Arnold Schwarzenegger will star in Terminator 5, and more...

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:05 PM | Your Say (1)

Lower than a Snake's Belly in a Wagon Rut

Limbo Lower Now. How Low Can You Go?: At zero feet, the sagging Phantom blew swamp water, mudbugs* and sea grass out from behind as she staggered upward in the humid air and climbed for the heavens. > Vintage Wings of Canada

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:21 PM | Your Say (2)

Of Such a Dish as Powdered Wife

Nay, so great was our famine that a savage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and ate him,

and so did diverse one another boiled and stewed with roots and herbs. And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her, and had eaten part of her before it was known, for which he was executed, as he well deserved; now whether she was better roasted, boiled, or carbonadoed, I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard. -- [ General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, which fell from the press in 1624.] Lapham’s Quarterly

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:10 PM | Your Say (1)

Anne Coulter comes around to my way of thinking

Ann Coulter - June 12, 2013 - IF THE GOP IS THIS STUPID, IT DESERVES TO DIE "Hispanic voters are a small portion of the electorate.

"They don't want amnesty, and they're hopeless Democrats. So Republicans have decided the path to victory is to flood the country with lots more of them! It's as if Republicans convinced Democrats to fixate on banning birth control to win more pro-life voters."

Constant readers will be familiar with this expression, seen here since time immemorial:

"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, morons without end, always."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (15)

In Passing #67

Love and Madness in the Jungle: The Tale of John and Ann Bender and Their Quest for Paradise A brilliant American financier and his exotic wife build a lavish mansion in the jungles of Costa Rica, set up a wildlife preserve, and appear to slowly, steadily lose their minds. A spiral of handguns, angry locals, armed guards, uncut diamonds, abduction plots, and a bedroom blazing with 550 Tiffany lamps ends with a body and a compelling mystery: Did John Felix Bender die by his own hand? Or did Ann Bender kill him to escape their crumbling dream?

ISS Cupola: The Window to the World ｫTwistedSifter

A Photo History of the NSA, from Its Once-Secret Archives | Motherboard

If the NSA Can Track Anyone Anywhere, Why Can't We Find 10 to 11 Million Illegals Living in the Shadows? - The Rush Limbaugh Show

Steve Sailer: iSteve: Google neuters Google Gaydar

North Maine Woods Dispatch: Libby Camps | A Continuous Lean.

World’s Smallest Museum Finds the Wonder in Everyday Objects | Collectors Weekly

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 AM | Your Say (3)

June 12, 2013

The Land without Muslims

Japanese companies seeking foreign workers specifically note that they are not interested in Muslim workers.

And any Muslim who does manage to enter Japan will find it very difficult to rent an apartment. Anywhere a Muslim lives, the neighbors become uneasy. Japan forbids the establishment of Islamic organizations, so setting up Islamic institutions such as mosques and schools is almost impossible. In Tokyo there is only one imam. -- The Jewish Press

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 PM | Your Say (12)

The Unlikely Evolution Of The @ Symbol

@

In 1971, however, a keyboard with a vestigial @ symbol inherited from its typewriter ancestors found itself hooked up to an ARPANET terminal manned by Ray Tomlinson, who was working on a little program he’d come up with in his goofing-off time to send messages from computer to computer. Tomlinson ended up using the @ symbol as the fulcrum of the lever that ultimately ended up lifting the world into the digital age: email. Co.Design: business innovation design

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:38 PM | Your Say (0)

The Optimist

Via Uncouth Reflections

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:10 PM | Your Say (3)

Andy Griffith on Snooping

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:22 PM | Your Say (4)

In Passing #66

Pin-Up Queens: Three Female Artists Who Shaped the American Dream Girl “He said, ‘What’s a cute, little thing like you doing in the calendar-art business?’”

A nation mourns: Jim Carrey's Acting Career Crashes And Burns - Blur Brain

The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism | ZDNet

So Are We Living in 1984? : The New Yorker

The gun control movement has seen better days - The Week

The Unfiltered History of Rolling Papers, Plus Tommy Chong’s Big Fat Jamaican Vacation | Collectors Weekly

Why the NSA Prism Program Could Kill U.S. Tech Companies - Popular Mechanics

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

Hairy Philtrums

Apart from the brain, and the calf area of the leg between knee and ankle, there is the upper lip.

There is this amazing consistency in liberal women over age 35, in how they look between the mouth and the nose. They all have that same Barbra-Streisand look, with this overly pronounced fold in the center. It’s called a “philtrum.” A disproportionate number of middle aged liberal females all have the same size & shape of philtrum. And the peach fuzz that goes over it. House of Eratosthenes

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

"And what of the ubiquitous multiracial gaggle of friends?" [Bumped]

Although I have never witnessed any such group eating at McDonald’s I have often watched them hawking hamburgers. That isn’t to say I haven’t seen, or been a part of, meals with black or Asian friends. Elusive to me is the one black, one Asian, one white, and one “other” band of brothers stopping in for McNuggets. Yet to judge by television I am the only person in America whose friends are predominantly one color or another. Hopefully that doesn’t make me racist, but it evidently makes me unique. Unreality TV - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:18 AM | Your Say (13)

And you thought it couldn't get worse....

Our elected leaders have not been elected to lead. They’ve been elected to be mean and nasty.

To bring injury to the “right” people, and to conceal things. In the case of Hillary and Michelle, they have something else in common: The irony of standing as an icon for womens’ strength, capability, sense of independence — and nastiness — after having achieved everything in life by way of marrying the right fella. -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (2)

Schumer: 'Illegal Immigration Will Be a Thing of the Past'

"Hel-lo, Suckers!"

Schumer complained in an impassioned and lengthy speech on the Senate floor that opponents saying the bill does not have border security “is not fair.”

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

Golem

For generations now you have collectively built and nurtured a massive, living, metabolizing creature.

From the inanimate, intellectual detritus of "progressivism" and your unending and increasingly all-consuming narcissism you have kneaded it into a shapeless husk, pouring in rank mud like "Save the Planet," "Global Warming," "The American Dream of Home Ownership," "The War on Drugs", "Mothers Against Drunk Driving", "The War On Terror", "Speculators", "Too Big To Fail", "The 1%", and of course the essence and spark of its life, "…if it saves just one child." In conjunction with (but far more so than the other buckets of intellectual mud) "…if it saves just one child" has created the Golem of Government. It Is Past Time To Kill "Just One Child" (But It Is Probably Too Late and You Don't Have The Guts) | finem respice

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

Slithering Across the Rubicon

Why is Rubio destroying himself over [the Immigration Bill]? He was the Golden Boy for 2016.

The only possible conclusion I can infer from these disparate creatures all rallying and hallooing like hysterical witchburners around a staked young lass is the corrupting influence of Mexican cartel money. The average politician's principles can fall rather quickly by the wayside with a nice sudden influx of untraceable cash. An incorruptible politician can likewise be persuaded when an envelope of photos of beheaded Mexicans, along with photos of his family, mysteriously appears in his briefcase. Let's face it: how hard is it, really, to extort 60 United States Senators? Especially if 50 are already on your side? -- Velociworld

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 AM | Your Say (4)

"Tinker to Evers to Chance"

These are the saddest of possible words:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double –
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."

Baseball's Sad Lexicon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:30 AM | Your Say (0)

June 11, 2013

"Somehow there remains on the Left the belief"

that the process of expanding government power can continue indefinitely -- for good causes like regulating 16 ounce softdrinks and ensuring that none but bureaucrats can possess firearms, to be sure -- without ever getting to the point where it can seize telephone records, wiretap news agencies or use the IRS to crackdown on political opponents. It can't. Power corrupts. And what is more it usurps. Belmont Club » Toward a More Perfect Tyranny

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:45 PM | Your Say (1)

The Smoking Gun in Plain Sight

Very few people are aware of this, but there is no document -- not one -- linking Adolf Hitler to the Holocaust.

Why not? Because Hitler didn't need to sign a document ordering the slaughter of six million Jews. All he needed to do was to demonize his enemy in speeches at the Reichstag, on the radio, and from one end of Germany to the other -- then hire thugs like Herman Goering, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, and Josef Goebbels. They knew what der Fuhrer wanted, and der Fuhrer knew he could trust his henchman to get the job done -- no matter how, no matter what may be the law -- and to not bother him with the gory details. -- American Thinker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 PM | Your Say (0)

Gay Divorce Starts to Kick In

“We ask for privacy” =

“The ugly details of our relationship, from our disastrously misguided decision to get together, to the acrimonious circumstances of our bitter divorce, are so embarrassingly lurid that, should it all become public, many young women would probably abandon all hope for future happiness as lesbians and instead decide to sell themselves as mail-order brides to Arabs. Therefore, in the interests of The Movement, we ask that our friends please help us by ignoring the vicious accusations that will dribble out as affidavits and discovery documents in forthcoming lawsuits. Also, please join me in hoping my ex-wife dies of cancer, and soon, that bitch.” Happily Never After : The Other McCain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:16 PM | Your Say (0)

The Beast that is The State has not been this vulnerable since 1812.

As Saul Alinsky would advise, identify the target, isolate it, and destroy it.

I personally would start with the IRS. Only because of its horrible power. Then the NSA and Homeland Security. Only then are gutted the chickenshit organizations like EPA, Interior, Agriculture, Education. The ones that spend billions accomplishing nothing. Those latter, of course, are mere ticks on the ass of the body politic. We have years to get them. We need to neuter the shock troops first. Velociworld: The Moral Equivalent of War

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:16 PM | Your Say (5)

It's Summer and Even the Black Holes Are Slacking Off

Black hole naps amidst stellar chaos

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:57 AM | Your Say (9)

"Perhaps the least attractive thing about the administration"

is that it isn't content with collecting the public's taxes; or with just governing. It wants to be in charge of our collective dreams;

as if there were a deep, almost unhealthy desire to control the narrative, so that by controlling belief it could control the waking world. This takes the form of a constant attack on the national myths. It doesn't know how to govern, but it knows how to campaign. Whether the issue is guns, marriage, abortion, culture, religion or the actual factuality of events, the administration is tireless in its efforts to explain what we should think; to accompany us in our dreams. Almost as indefatigable as Freddy Kruger. Belmont Club ｻ See You In My Dreams

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:50 AM | Your Say (0)

Only the beginning folks. Only the beginning. 4

The New York Times ~~takes down~~ [goes down on] Weiner story - Mackenzie Weinger - POLITICO.com Comment: "Must've figured the story was weak and would just peter out on its own."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 AM | Your Say (1)

Sorry Florida

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (5)

The Cat in the Hats

Dr. Seuss had a unique remedy for writer’s block.

When the late author, the alter ego of Theodor Seuss Geisel, was penning his beloved Beginner Books for Random House in the 1960s, he’d have his editor in chief, Michael Frith, over to his house, where they’d work until the wee hours. And when they’d get stuck, according to “Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel” by Judith and Neil Morgan, Geisel would open a secret door to a closet filled with hundreds of hats. Then, he and Frith would each pick a different hat, perhaps a fez, or a sombrero, or maybe an authentic Baroque Czech helmet or a plastic toy viking helmet with horns. They’d sit on the floor and stare at each other in these until the right words came to them. Dr. Seuss, the Mad Hatter: A Peek Inside His Secret Closet | Collectors Weekly

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (0)

New Facebook Privacy Options

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 AM | Your Say (0)

"Grandpa, is it really true that in American anyone can grow up to be president?"

"Yes it is, Johnny. And Barack Obama proves it."

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

It Is Past Time To Kill "Just One Child"

If you live in the United States it may finally be dawning on you that you have something a problem in the government to which you are now a Subject.

In fact, the details of the [NSA Snooping|Verizon Metadata|IRS Political Targeting|Bankruptcy Preference|Fast and Furious|State Department Coverup|Libyan Ambassador|George Takei Facebook Ghostwriting] scandal are meaningless. You are already far too late. It will get worse before it gets better, it may never get better again, and, frankly, finem respice has not a shred of sympathy for your plight or that of your countrymen/women. In fact, given the manner you have quashed the opportunity- almost unique in the history of the species- created by an impossibly rare coexistence of liberty, private property, free markets, the rise of scientific method, and freedom of expression (to name just a few) there is more than a passing argument to be made that your society has squandered one of the greatest intellectual and individualistic fortunes in history. -- It Is Past Time To Kill "Just One Child" (But It Is Probably Too Late and You Don't Have The Guts) | finem respice

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:13 AM | Your Say (0)

June 10, 2013

New Study Finds It Is Impossible To Lose Weight, No One Has Ever Done It, And Those Who Are Trying Should Give Up

“Our findings indicate that if you’re trying to lose weight, you will fail

— and that’s because you can’t, no one has, and you need to stop trying because it will never happen,” said Dr. Rena Wing, lead author of the report. “You could work out every day and eat nothing, and you still wouldn’t lose an ounce. And the sooner you throw up your hands and make peace with that fact, the better off you’ll be.” -- America's Finest News Source

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 PM | Your Say (1)

In contrast, women-respecting Swedes seldom make talented pimps

Muslim male-chauvinist cultures that treat females like dirt tend to nurture males who have a knack for living off women’s earnings.

Thus, Albanian pimps have come to dominate the European sex-slave trade. And the various Chechen layabouts who have been in the news in America since the Boston bombing have displayed a remarkable gift for getting attractive women to throw their lives away on them. The Real Threat to British Elites - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:51 PM | Your Say (0)

Noted in 1985

I live in the future. As a graduate student in Artificial Intelligence at Yale University, I am now using computer equipment that will be commonplace five years from now.

I have a powerful workstation on my desk, connected in a high-speed network to more than one hundred other such machines, and, through other networks, to thousands of other computers and their users. I use these machines not only for research, but to keep my schedule, to write letters and articles, to read nationwide electronic “bulletin boards,” to send electronic mail, and sometimes just to play games. I make constant use of fancy graphics, text formatters, laser printers — you name it. My gadgets are both my desk and my window on the world. I’m quite lucky to have access to all these machines. Predictions for Privacy in the Age of Facebook (from 1985!) | Paleofuture

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:07 PM | Your Say (2)

"No gurlz aloud:" Men with a gram of self-control would never click this link.

But you're not one of them. Are you? The Man With The 100lb Testicle

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

"Do these people not realize what we just learned in the last three weeks?"

We got the IRS starting in 2010 taking action to suppress the political involvement and ultimately votes of Tea Party people and conservative Republicans.

This regime, this government, on the orders of the highest level. In fact, that investigation is ongoing. We have Fast and Furious. We have Obamacare. The evidence of the totalitarian nature or the authoritarian nature of this administration is on display undeniably every day and yet in the midst of this, "Well, don't go off half cocked on this, Rush. Be very levelheaded. Nothing really to see," as though there's no context here. America in the Midst of a Coup d'Etat - The Rush Limbaugh Show

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (3)

All Your Metadata Are Belong to US

Using only the metadata, the government knows where everyone

with a cellular telephone is when they communicate with others, whom they are communicating with, and what their social networks are. Apologists have pointed out that, well, so do the telephone companies. But telephone companies don’t have armies, secret police, or engage in blackmail; they have marketing departments. They also don’t have all the data; they only have the data they have gathered. The NSA has all the companies’ data. Hiding in Plain Sight - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:35 PM | Your Say (0)

“The question is not whether we will have a surveillance state in the years to come, but what sort of state we will have.”

A surveillance state is one that uses bulk information and data techniques to monitor its citizens

and draw inferences about their potential behavior in the service of carrying out the responsibilities that it sets out for itself. Like other parts of the state (welfare, national security), the surveillance state provides a type of security for its citizens through the manipulation of knowledge and resources. And like other parts of the state, the surveillance state fights against democratic efforts to provide accountability and transparency. Is a democratic surveillance state possible?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (0)

Wine tasting is bullshit.

If you think you can consistently rate the "quality" of wine, it means two things: 1: No. You can't. 2. Wine-tasting is bullshit. Here's why.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (11)

In Passing #65

What is PalTalk, and why is the NSA spying on it?

One Cʘsmos: God is the Superglue

Benghazi No, We Will Not Let It Go! Who Gave the Order to Stand Down?

More Details On PRISM Revealed; Twitter Deserves Kudos For Refusing To Give In

Pull my finger: Jihad-martyrdom suicide bomber hides bomb in his rectum

California Cool: How the Wetsuit Became the Surfer’s Second Skin

The Unlikely Evolution Of The @ Symbol

Study suggests tattoo really IS a 'tramp stamp': Men more likely to try and chat up a painted lady because they think is she is promiscuous

Lost Egyptian City Found Underwater After 1200 Years

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (1)

"Scrotum-faced Director of National Intelligence James Clapper"

0720-adin-intelligence-chief-james-clapper_full_600.jpg

deemed the PRISM leak to be “reprehensible,” claiming the program was designed to “protect our nation from a wide variety of threats,” which presumably doesn’t include the threat of the federal government using technology to track its own citizens like a psychopathic stalker. Jeremy Bash, chief of staff to former CIA Director Leon Panetta, defended the program’s breadth thusly: “If you’re looking for a needle in the haystack, you need a haystack.” We are left to assume that so-called “terrorists” are needles, while everyone else is merely hay. The Week That Perished - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (0)

And today's most emailed news story from husbands to wives is....

Valentina Tereshkova: First woman to go into space offers to set out on one-way trip to Mars at the age of 76

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (3)

Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois asks the attorney general if he’s spying on members of Congress and thereby giving the executive branch leverage over the legislative branch.

Eric Holder answers: “With all due respect, senator, I don’t think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss that issue.”

Senator Kirk responded that “the correct answer would be, ‘No, we stayed within our lane and I’m assuring you we did not spy on members of Congress.’” For some reason, the attorney general felt unable to say that. So I think we all know what the answer to the original question really is. The All-Seeing State | National Review Online

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

Revelations of the Rot Continue

State Department memo reveals possible cover-ups, halted investigations - CBS News The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut "engaged in sexual assaults" on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's security detail "engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries" -- a problem the report says was "endemic."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 AM | Your Say (0)

You Do Too Have Something To Hide

No man is innocent in the eyes of his enemy. A zealous prosecutor can take the most harmless of circumstance

and through innuendo, contrivance, and brazen lie turn it into at least dark suspicion if not “proof” of heinous crime.... Could the IRS target groups which it perceives as its enemies? Could sealed divorce records be publicly aired? Could a zealous prosecutor who cares only of her public image and is a stranger to truth convict the innocent? Could a government libel and slander a man in order to bamboozle a judge into issuing a warrant against this man? -- William M. Briggs

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:44 AM | Your Say (2)

Welcome to the future. Just make sure you don’t have anything to hide.

It is at least possible to participate in online culture while limiting this horizontal, peer-to-peer exposure.

But it is practically impossible to protect your privacy vertically — from the service providers and social media networks and now security agencies that have access to your every click and text and e-mail. Even the powerful can’t cover their tracks, as David Petraeus discovered. In the surveillance state, everybody knows you’re a dog. Your Smartphone Is Watching You - NYTimes.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:11 AM | Your Say (0)

Mustache Rides Anyone?

“Holder is shakier than a jackhammer operator playing Jenga on his lunch break. And what about Jay Carney over there? He’s got a worse bluff than Marty Feldman holding pocket aces. That cat blows more smoke than a Rastafarian’s death rattle. Couple more weeks like this and Obama’s gonna be claimin’ he’s Kenyan" --Dennis Miller Doug Ross @ Journal: Top 10 Political Jokes of the Month

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:39 AM | Your Say (0)

June 9, 2013

"The ferocity of the counter-attack took us all by surprise."

Dennis had always assumed that the combined might of our armed federal agents and their SWAT Teams,

reinforced with local police and, if necessary, the National Guard or even the Army, could crush any conceivable right-wing reaction to his plan. But social network analysis couldn’t find snipers who were not part of any network. That’s when we began to hear of “The Militia of One.” In the end there were too many rifles, and too many willing shooters. A number that was constantly heard was twenty million. That was the number of Americans who supposedly went deer hunting every year, against less than 200,000 armed federal agents. --Bracken: What I Saw At The Coup

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 PM | Your Say (5)

When everything is a crime, government data mining matters

The issue goes beyond the NSA programs. Obamacare is a form of data mining.

Obamacare will put into the hands of the IRS medical and health information of an unprecedented level. As bad as leaks as to which websites you visit would be, the threat of leakage of your medical information could be equally devastating to freedom of speech and the political process. It would take a mere nod and a wink to convince someone that participation in the political process was not worth it if the result was the exposure of sensitive medical issues. You can’t separate the data mining, the culture of intimidation, and criminalization of daily life. -- Legal Insurrection

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 PM | Your Say (0)

MARCHING MORON WATCH [Bumped]

Woman subsisting on only light might actually be a plant: Naveena Shine is a 65-year-old Seattle woman who is undertaking a very extreme mission: living on sunlight and air.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:36 PM | Your Say (13)

Unclear on the American Idiom

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:32 AM | Your Say (4)

On whistleblowers and government threats of investigation

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

This dynamic - the hallmark of a healthy and free society - has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. -- Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 AM | Your Say (2)

The X Factor in Human History

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (1)

Fools rush in where fools have been before.

Man, I feel like a sap for buying online storage when the NSA was doing it for free. David Burge (iowahawkblog)

Come in and meet my little 'Boundless Informant,' the NSA's Secret Tool for Tracking Global Surveillance Data - Megan Garber @ The Atlantic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (0)

How You Know Obama is Lying

He has a "tell": He forces air through his lungs, making his larynx vibrate, then uses his lips, teeth, and tongue to form words. Jim Treacher (jtLOL)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (6)

Presidential Wind-Breaking Watch

How private donors in uber-rich Palo Alto can stand to sit smiling in the stench is beyond me: “It turns out we’re pretty common-sense folks,” Mr. Obama said at a fundraiser at a private home in Palo Alto, Calif. “We believe in the free market [and] a light touch when it comes to regulations.” Had Enough Therapy?: Regulation Nation

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:00 AM | Your Say (1)

Yahoo! Setting the Record Straight

Yahoo! has not joined any program in which we volunteer to share user data with the U.S. government.

We do not voluntarily disclose user information. The only disclosures that occur are in response to specific demands. And, when the government does request user data from Yahoo!, we protect our users. We demand that such requests be made through lawful means and for lawful purposes. We fight any requests that we deem unclear, improper, overbroad, or unlawful. We carefully scrutinize each request, respond only when required to do so, and provide the least amount of data possible consistent with the law. By Ron Bell, General Counsel, Yahoo!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:30 AM | Your Say (7)

June 8, 2013

Road Food

In Tracy, I stopped for breakfast — it wasn’t seven yet — marveling at the eggs, over easy, white and pink and gold, the trim pancakes and the smiling syrup, all for a few dollars.

There is such vitality in the American road breakfast; it comes so swiftly and so lyrically, whereas at home I would curse and stumble over making the same meal—break the eggs, burn the coffee, and produce ignominious pancakes. Here, and at a million places on the road, the breakfast is as pretty as the girl at the counter in a Hawks movie—some girl he’d spotted and sought to keep around, like Dorothy Malone at the bookstore. from issue #2: ‘The Getaway’ by David Thomson (excerpt) | Contrappasso Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (3)

The New N-Word Begins with "A"

If there's anything that ought to be equated with the N Word, it's not the IRS; it’s Amnesty.

Amnesty is the code for the economic and political disenfranchisement of African-Americans across the country. But it's also a code word that can't be spoken. The IRS can be decoded to reveal the abstract inner racism of its critics, but a bill that would put millions of black people out of work is being passed off as the greatest civil rights achievement in a generation. Sultan Knish: Government is the New Race

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

Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.

All nine companies have now denied, to one degree or another, participating in PRISM. The language in their denials seems carefully chosen, and rather similar.

Zuckerberg and Page, for example, both say their companies don’t give the government “direct access” to servers. Both note that they hadn’t heard of a program called PRISM before yesterday. That last point isn’t particularly exculpatory — there’s no reason to think the NSA would share the name of its internal tools with corporate outsiders, whatever the relationship. But it seems to be a popular talking point among the nine. -- Zuckerberg, Page: NSA Has No 'Direct Access' to Facebook or Google Servers | Threat Level | Wired.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (4)

Goodbye to All That

Binney left the NSA in late 2001, shortly after the agency launched its warrantless-wiretapping program. “They violated the Constitution setting it up,” he says bluntly.

“But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn’t stay.” ... Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA’s recorders. “Anybody you want, route to a recorder,” Binney says. “If your number’s in there? Routed and gets recorded.” -- The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) @ Wired.com

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

June 7, 2013

Comment of the Day: "I don't even care if anyone is reading or listening in."

"I know how it works, they have a system that flags specific words and phrases to be examined, then if it looks problematic, the entire call/email/whatever is analyzed. 99.99999% of the stuff goes through without even being noticed, and the stuff that is almost none of it gets to an analyst, I get it.

The problem is that they're doing it to begin with, and that problem is insanely increased by an executive branch which has so completely and repeatedly demonstrated they are willing to use their power to punish political enemies for no other reason than disagreeing with them.

I mean, its one thing to have government scanning emails for phrases like "kill the president," its another to have them looking for "small government" and "overtaxed." -- Christopher Taylor Comment on Side-Lines: Oh, really? Well, okay then

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:53 PM | Your Say (15)

No More Matinee Getaways for Mayor Bloomberg

'Used' giant morgue refrigerator from Manhattan psych ward being sold on eBay.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (0)

And to nobody's surprise....

France's first online election was extremely easy to rig

Journalists from Metronews in France found that, contrary to claims that the new system was secure, anyone with a credit card could register to vote multiple times at €3 a pop for the election, a primary for Paris's mayor. One reporter even registered as former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Only self-proclaimed intellectuals like the French could be so stupid.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 PM | Your Say (2)

Oh, really? Well, okay then. Thanks, Putz. We are all feeling so much better now. Putz.

Children, please! Obama: 'Nobody Is Listening to Your Telephone Calls' **

Meanwhile at the New York Times of all places: President Obama’s Dragnet - NYTimes.com

"Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility ~~on this issue~~. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it."

Meanwhile, in the basement at the NSA:

** Lawyer speak "Nobody is listening to your calls". Correct! It is a building full of Cray computers listening to your calls, looking for key words and phrases and faithfully reporting to whomever programmed it. iOwnTheWorld.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (5)

A Brother? Yeah, the Brother from Another Planet

JAY LENO: See, when I was growing up, we were always afraid of Big Brother watching us. And now with Obama, we actually have a brother watching us.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (0)

"Today? Today is my Kwanza!"

Donut Day USA - For the love of donuts

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (3)

Answers to Questions You Never Asked

Why the rest of the world is hankering for America’s bull semen - Quartz

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

Questions You Never Wanted to Ask.

Why Did the Chicken Lose Its Penis?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (2)

June 6, 2013

Recent Marketing Campaign Takes On Whole New Meaning

You can't BUY publicity like this!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:15 PM | Your Say (1)

Shockingly Realistic Sculpture Portrays Abraham Lincoln

Developed by Hollywood special effects artist Kazuhiro Tsuj -- My Modern Metropolis

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (8)

In Passing #64

Revealing Portraits of Beautiful Models and Their Mothers - My Modern Metropolis

This invisibility cloak creates a hole in time - The Week

Pareidolia: Why we see faces in hills, the Moon and toasties

We're Making Less Effective Drugs Now Than 40 Years Ago | Popular Science

4 Year Recovery Watch Remains On High Alert - Small Dead Animals

Obama’s Christmas Tree Tax is Back

Farm Bill Introduces New “Rock Tax”

Woman in sumo wrestler suit assaults ex-girlfriend who waved at man dressed as Snickers bar | News.com.au

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 AM | Your Say (0)

Taxed Beyond Endurance

So that there was daily plundered from good men and honourable, great substance of goods, to be lavished among unthrifts so extravagantly that Fifteenths sufficed not, nor any usual names of known taxes; but under the easy name of “benevolences and goodwill,” the commissioners of every man so much took, as no man with his good will would have given. As though the name of benevolence had signified that every man should pay, not what himself of his good will was pleased to grant, but what the King of his good will was pleased to take." -- Sir Thomas More’s History of Richard III

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:08 AM | Your Say (2)

June 5, 2013

A judge orders her put on the adult list,

because, you know, her family was quite convincing, and we all sort of Voted and decided that she should be put on the list. We all had a say, and we all voted this way. This may sound good. Except for the guy now condemned to death. But we'll ignore that part of this. Sarah Murnaghan Will Almost Certainly Get Her Lung Transplant, And That's A Problem

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

Greg Gutfeld: Tea Party is Cool and Everybody Should Join

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

In Passing #63

Anthony May’s 27,000 word, 65-page, never-before-published interview series with legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard.

Science: The Sun Will Not Set on the British Empire for At Least Thousands of Years - Neatorama

Velociworld: A Redress of Grievances That was, and is, the crime of the Tea Party groups.

FYI: How Do Mosquitoes Survive Rainstorms? | Popular Science Raindrops are to mosquitoes what falling VW Beetles would be to humans.

The 16 Best Western Movies | The Art of Manliness

Sultan Knish: Kerry and the Peace Idiots Ride Again

Red liquid that could be blood drawn from mammoth

The Presurfer: What Pangea Looks Like Mapped With Modern Political Borders

Giant 'lizard king' that roamed the Earth 40 million years ago has been named after The Doors' frontman Jim Morrison | Mail Online

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

Obama Must Be Getting Busy With This Chick

Or vice versa. iOwnTheWorld.com: "It's the Peter Principle at is best. Double entendre intended."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:06 AM | Your Say (6)

Giving the People What They Want

The real IRS argument: A great many Americans do agree with what President Obama has been doing. They want big government, and they want the big government they already have to silence anyone who doesn't want big government.

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

"Japan. Nuked Too Much or Not Enough?"

Pair of Melons Sells for $17,500 in Japan - Neatorama [Item not about Pamela Anderson]

Plus: Experience Space Travel in the Back of a Japanese Bus - Collecting Oddities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (2)

June 4, 2013

John E. Holden, alias Jack, took the Deep Six, Monday, May 27, 2013

at the Willow Valley Retirement Community after a life filled with endless

laughter and debauchery. While flying his beloved Corsair as a Marine Fighter Pilot during WWII, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his combat activities, the Air Medal for action in Okinawa in 1945 and the Distinguished Fleeing Cross for avoiding numerous women who were seeking child support under unproven circumstances. -- John E. Holden - Obituaries

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 PM | Your Say (3)

Prancercise Gets Its First Celebrity Endorsement

-- The Looking Spoon

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

"Ecologism is the philosophy of twilight, of the pale and wan. "

Will genetic engineering soon allow us to develop a mosquito that can sterilize the anopheles mosquitos that spread malaria? That would be a prodigious invention capable of eradicating one of the worst scourges of our time. Immediately the censors throw fits, associations mobilize: no genetically modified organisms! --About Those Non-Flatulent Cows

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (1)

"Japan. Nuked Too Much or Not Enough?"

Crazy, bizarre Japan in 40 photos @ theCHIVE: We report. You deride.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 AM | Your Say (8)

"If the stitches holding that smile together ever let go, it'll be a danger to anyone within 10 yards!"

"Amazing, no scars, no prism glasses, what an amazing recovery from the head injury that allegedly kept her from testifying at the Benghazi hearings where her responsibility for the deaths of 4 Americans was supposed to have been determined." -- Hillary Clinton Project Pantsuit

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:50 AM | Your Say (6)

"Once upon a time we used to make things. Now we make people miserable."

The modern engineers of societies think that they are wiser because their nanny states take into account the micro.

They tinker with the size of Tylenol containers and think that this means that they are better prepared for the challenges of a rigidly controlled totalitarian state than Lenin and Mao were. They aren't. If anything they are less prepared. Lenin and Mao had the cruel cynical contempt for people so common to Communist dictators. Their idiot stepchildren, part IBM, part George Herbert Mead, all Google, treat people with contempt, but don't even pay enough attention to people to be aware of the contempt that they have for them. Their contempt is as autistically mechanistic as their solutions. -- Sultan Knish: The Crash of Socialism 2.0

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (0)

The Obama Effect

File under: You don't say? Really? Who knew? FBI -- Crime rate goes up in 2012

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (1)

June 3, 2013

In Passing

Ironing Man - Neatorama

Democrats' New Argument: It's A Good Thing That Obamacare Doubles Individual Health Insurance Premiums

Landays: Poetry of Afghan Women I call. You’re stone. / One day you’ll look and find I’m gone.

Chang Kong Cliff Road: Tourist trek thousands of feet up Chinese mountain along 700-year-old wooden boards

Researcher decodes prairie dog language, discovers they've been talking about us

Playful Books with Arms Spring to Life

Steve Sailer: Schumer v. Rubio: Which one looks smarter?

'Moss men' join Corpus Christi procession in Spain

Atheist Ira Glass Believes Christians Get the Short End of the Media Stick

The Best Vegetable Peeler

Zombie - Karl Marx Was a Tea Partier

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:51 PM | Your Say (1)

"NBC proudly employs this mumble-moufed maggot."

"Al Sharpton is scum slime. And it’s not because he’s black. It’s because he is scum slime. I would actually enjoy seeing him tumble off an embankment, and the world would be better off without him. Black people would be better off without him."The NY Times and The Daily Beast Are Finally Ashamed of Al Sharpton

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:09 PM | Your Say (2)

Breaking!

Angelina Jolie Stuns In First Rollerblading Competition Since Double Mastectomy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:03 PM | Your Say (0)

Say "Auf Wiedersehen" to ....

"Rindfleischetikettierung
süberwachungsaufgabenü
bertragungsgesetz"

Germany drops its longest word

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:17 PM | Your Say (10)

"The medium has no opinion."

YouTube probably wouldn't care if everyone watched Levon Helm instructional videos instead of Kardashian shimmy updates. You've got to save yourself, brothers and sisters. Can I get an #Amen? -- Sippican Cottage: Drum Lessons With Levon Helm:

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

Bloomberg's Anti-Gun Ads & Strict New York City Gun Laws Having Their Predictable Effect

Mayhem in the city: 25 people shot in 48 hours Three killed Sunday after three were killed Saturday. One of the wounded includes an 11-year-old girl who will never walk again.

"All around, people looking half dead. Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head!"

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

"Nevermind the appeasers--the IRS scandal IS a big deal."

It’s such a big deal, it could ruin the agency forever, and take a few others down with it. And sure, it’s a lot of fun on the right to be clamoring for scalps -- like, who should be fired and how many. But pink slips are small potatoes. The end game is way, way bigger than that stuff. What we are witnessing is a collapse of trust in big government, which ultimately -- to our benefit as small-government types -- leads to a permanent undermining of the whole system. -- The Grounding of Big Government

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (2)

“Trust us,” say the geeks. “We have noble motives.”

The reality is more mundane. Self-interest, rather than virtue, guides the growing clout of these “Big Data” companies in Washington.

The same is often true of Mr Obama. Big data’s agenda is not confined to immigration reform. Among other areas, it has a deep interest in shaping what Washington does on privacy, online education, the school system, the internet, corporate tax reform, cyber security and even cyber warfare. Obama’s faith in the geek elite who have your secrets - FT.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (0)

Scandalpalooza - Is Team O trying to tire us out?

That might work, if you think of scandals as things that, like Watergate, knock out a presidency.

But most don’t. The proliferation of scandal in most administrations — think George W. Bush or Bill Clinton — is more like acid rain. There’s no knockout, just an erosion of popularity and clout. -- Glenn Reynolds

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (2)

To dream the impossible dream....

"I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that we've got Nancy Pelosi back in the speakership," Obama said last week at a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago. In Mr. Obama's case, "everything" is unlikely to be enough. -- The Decline of the Obama Presidency - Fred Barnes: WSJ.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:02 AM | Your Say (0)

June 2, 2013

GIF Tutorial: How to Cook a Steak

No more gray, lifeless meat —Atera sous chef Zach Hunter shows us how to sear and finish steak like a pro. -- FirstWeFeast.com Yumm!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:27 PM | Your Say (10)

Obama Is Not Nixon

For one thing, Nixon, whatever his flaws, was a great president. No creditable witness is saying that about Barack Obama. (As one wag put it, comparing Obama to Nixon is an insult . . . to Nixon.) -- Roger's Rules

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

The Irresistible Attraction of Self Storage

The hidden realm of the storage unit releases inhibitions and encourages crazed flights of fantasy.

It can be a site of marital double-cross and revenge (Self Storage), alien-on-the-rampage sci-fi hokum (Storage 24), or visceral horror, as in the forthcoming Self Storage — tag line: “Safe. Secure. Psychotic” — starring Eric Roberts. If the trend is going to continue, they clearly need some better titles. -- Observatory: Design Observer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:47 PM | Your Say (2)

June 1, 2013

"The low-information types at least have the excuse of being what they are."

"But what excuse do the intelligent have? .... The fundamental problem with Syria is that Obama cannot afford to win. That having started the process of upheaval in the Arab World using jihadis, the administration is now almost as afraid of victory as defeat. The reason why Benghazi must never be discussed is that it is a preview of all that we are about to receive." Belmont Club ｻ Back To The Future

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 PM | Your Say (5)

Same Old Stories

Milwaukee high school teacher busted for student sex twice in one week - NY Daily News Witnesses say they spotted a car outside Destiny High School that had its windows steamed up, rocking from side to side.
Sense of Events: Oh, that carbon dioxide global warming thing? Never mind.
Former IRS Chief's Wife Works for Leftist Campaign Finance Reform Group
Deadly Tornadoes, Heavy Flooding Terrorize Central Oklahoma
It’s Still Illegal For Maine Doctors To Prescribe Pills To End Grandma’s Life, But I Hear Bed, Bath & Beyond Is Still Selling Pillows. Just Sayin’
Illegal Alien Baby Machine Has Been on Welfare for 20 Years
The Best Way to Win an Argument? Shout Louder Than Everyone Else and People Will Assume You're Right - Neatorama

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (7)

Attorney General Holder says he’ll protect journalists’ rights

The 90-minute meeting was attended by a small group of journalists after several news organizations objected to the Justice Department’s insistence that it be held off the record.

The participants, however, reached an agreement with the Justice Department under which they could describe what occurred during the meeting in general terms. -- The Washington Post

Question with a followup: "Are we allowed to know in what order the attending "journalists" fellated Holder? Was the Post first in line as it has been for some time or did it have to take seconds?"

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

The Parking Regulations Have Been Revised

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (0)

Jesse Ventura Confirms He is a Tower of Slime

Former MN Gov. Ventura wants to add widow to suit against Navy SEAL Chris Kyle | StarTribune.com

I’m having a bit of a time coming up with a thought that could be crazier than “I shall protect my reputation by expanding my lawsuit to include Chris Kyle’s widow.” What else would be less sane than that? “I will restore that new-car smell in my BMW by taking a crap in the back seat,” maybe? House of Eratosthenes

Maybe somebody could start a "Jesse Ventura Lethal Accident Project" at Kickstarter.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (2)

The Top 40

June 30, 2013

They came and they went

Surprise. Surprise.

Gay Marriage = More AIDS? Surely You Jest.

Jock Saps

Picture If You Will

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell,"

Western Maine is emptying out

America's political elites... believe that outright tyranny is tacky.

Our civil servants have become untenable monsters.

The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

June 29, 2013

Quote of the Month

"A Decline in Courage

It's Not Easy Being Green

June 28, 2013

And it was all downhill from there....

Glenn Beck? Oh, he so crazy! Right? Right!

"Ready for Hillary"

The Mars500 Expedition: Five Hundred and Twenty Days of Solitude

The Errors of Edward Snowden and His Global Hypocrisy Tour

Life in a Nation Governed by 15-Year-Old Girls

Who says there's no good news?

June 27, 2013

The Berkeley Pit

In Passing #72

Thoughtful Americans React to Gays and Lesbians Getting Married

Rudy Giuliani: Obama vs. Putin not fair fight

"It takes real cheek for today’s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, "

June 26, 2013

Any Questions? [Bumped]

Questions that make you go "Hummmmmm?"

"Ready for Hillary"

Welcome to the world of gender parity.

June 25, 2013

"I once enraged the husband of my cousin, a devout Obama voter who grew up in the Soviet Union,

Low Information Voters: The Early Years

Both Sides Now

June 24, 2013

Imagine

Every actual journalist at NBC should spit every time David Gregory walks by.

"Knock. Knock," said defense attorney Don West.

"Y'know, I remember a time when things were a lot more Fun around here When good was good, and evil was evil Before things got so.........fuzzy"

And Coming In At Number 99 Is..... [Bumped because I'm in love with the number 99!]

Euclid Alone

The Stone City

You've Come A Long Way Baby

Q: What should Edward Snowden expect now?

Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer.

June 23, 2013

Just What Does the Left Really Want?

Every government flavored with democracy is irredeemably foul,

The only free people in cities are eccentrics and criminals.

Chesterton

Tougher Borders? Just try and collect.

Environmentalism rages at humanity.

Obama to Announce Sweeping New Powers on Tuesday – Will Regulate Power Plants to Save Country from ‘Global Warming’

Into the Graveyard of Syria

Bloombergism: Where Obama-era liberalism overlaps with the views of Davos-goers and the Wall Street 1 percent

June 22, 2013

Perigee's Full Moon

Right after his global warming hoax talk next Tuesday, Obama will be flying to Africa with hundreds of Secret Service agents and 56 support vehicles including 14 limousines and three trucks

Let's not lose our heads

Ah yes, the hopeless politics of change

Cargo Karma

The scariest piece on cars you'll ever read

"What the fuck are you doing to combat global warming!?..."

Saint Thomas More

As the North Rests on Its Laurels, the South Is Rising Fast

Once Again "Honest" Is On the Wrong Side of Federal Law

"All that remains is hate"

FUCK YOURSELF, NABISCO! JUST GO FUCK YOURSELF!

Low Wages and Kabab Restaurants

Fartful Dodger

There’s only one person that could get away this. And that person is Steven Segal

June 21, 2013

While the civil-liberties geek of 2013 is a pathetic and even hilarious figure, it's not at all true that his passion has never gone requited.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Doughnut Shop....

White Falcon by Giuseppe Castiglione