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August 31, 2013

Isaiah 3

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9 The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.

10 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.

11 Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.

12 As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3 For, behold, the Lord

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 PM | Your Say (1)

What could you do with pastry sprinkles, dill pickles, shower curtains, honeycomb and $2700?

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Michelle Obama's Mirror:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 PM | Your Say (15)

This Just [About] In: WASHINGTON, D.C.-Sept. 11, 2013.

President Obama's request for authorization to carry out air strikes against Syria failed to be approved in the Congress today.

In a short statement following the 275-260 vote to deny his request, President Obama said, "The vote will not stop the necessity of punishing the Assad regime for using chemical weapons to slaughter its own people. As I said in the Rose Garden on August 31, I have the authority to carry out this military action without Congressional authorization. I am therefore ordering US forces to proceed with the attacks." Sense of Events: Is Obama setting up two-prong Constitutional crisis?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:05 PM | Your Say (3)

Global Flabbing: The Science is Settled!

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We’re getting fatter all the time. Oh, you already knew that?
Well, I’m not talking about just Americans. Or about people in general. Or even about just their pets and zoo animals. This refers to animals under many other conditions, too, such as lab rats, who are taking in the same amount of food as before and yet getting heavier. neo-neocon

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

Obama in Hoc

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It's either Post hoc ergo propter hoc, or cum hoc ergo propter hoc: Dent Barack Obama says he has decided that the United States
should take military action against Syria in response to a deadly chemical weapons attack. But Putz says he will seek congressional authorization for the use of force. He says congressional leadership plans to hold a debate and a vote as soon as Congress comes back in September. [Constitutional scholar and serial prevaricator ] says he has the authority to act on his own, but believes it is important for the country to have a debate. News from The Associated Press

Thus it would seem that the DemProgs are still stuck in the endless theater of the absurd loop called "Waiting for Bartlett"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:10 AM | Your Say (9)

KMART: For all your segregated black to school needs.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (6)

A Burning Question of the European Scene

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:37 AM | Your Say (8)

Favorite Coffee Mug

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:14 AM | Your Say (1)

August 30, 2013

Obama: Syria Strike Will Have No Objective at All - The New Yorker

“Let me be clear,” he said in an interview on CNN. “Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.” - -Sense of Events:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 PM | Your Say (0)

Prunts on Parade

The Audacity of the Haughty - The Rush Limbaugh Show

These were the people who were the smartest people in the world. These were the people who could speak French and therefore had the ability to relate to Europeans. These were the people who, in fact, were Europeans in their roots! These were the people, the chosen ones! These were the best and the brightest. These are the people that said, "George W. Bush better get a coalition, he better go to the UN, he better go to Congress!"

These are the people that are not going to the UN, they can't put together a coalition, and are purposely ignoring Congress.

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

Rush Limbaugh: Conservatives Are 'Nowhere in the Pop Culture'

How do elections happen the way they do? We own books; we own talk radio; we own cable news.

Well, the answer is, "We're nowhere in the pop culture. We are nowhere in movies. We're nowhere in television shows. We are nowhere in music. Nowhere!" On the fiction side of books, we're nowhere, in terms of what conservatism is, being cool and plot lines and that kind of thing. We're not in the classroom, we're not in academia, we're not the professors and the presidents of universities. We are not school superintendents. Those are very crucial because they get people when they're young, young skulls full of mush. They get to make and form those brains and basically propagandize them and indoctrinate them however they wish. - - Breitbart

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 PM | Your Say (6)

Obama the Origami Tiger

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Prime Minister David Cameron lost a preliminary vote in Parliament late Thursday on intervention in Syria....

This followed the rejection in the UN Security Council of a resolution authorizing the use of force in Syria....

The United States is no longer pursuing a United Nations or NATO stamp of approval....

Neither has Obama secured the consent of Congress for his planned operation....

Whichever way it goes, Obama’s plan for a “limited but decisive” attack on Assad is probably over....

The bigger question is whether Obama himself is now over....

The most disturbing aspect of the Syria episode was that it wasn’t Boehner’s token resistance but the cumulative refusal of other sovereigns to go along that derailed the plan. Washington left to its own devices would have failed; it would have walked off the cliff. - -Belmont Club Crow

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

“For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can’t afford the meal?" Obama said.

Scrape off the euphemisms, doubletalk, and adolescent demagoguery about “Wall Street greed” and what is left can be translated into this: Blacks should have as much money as whites, regardless of whether they earn it. Since freedom results in differing rewards for differing performances, only a rigidly coercive application of oligarchical collectivism — i.e., communism — can ensure “racial injustice.”Moonbattery » Another Veiled Call for Communism From Obama

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

President Obama _ Black America’s Best Friend or Worst Enemy? | Asylum Watch

The only thing that I can see that our first black president has done for black Americans is to feed them a constant stream of convenient lies so that the grossly under educated black Americans can blame someone other than themselves for their lot in life.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:29 PM | Your Say (0)

For the record....

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- - Clash Daily

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:50 PM | Your Say (1)

"The tool and hoe can be found in the shed."

Couple Arrested For Shacking Up At Home Depot: Duo had sex in display shed at South Carolina store.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:05 PM | Your Say (7)

Hope Springs Eternal

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:27 AM | Your Say (4)

Everyday in Every Way the World Blows My Diet to Smithereens

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"Pancake Fried Bacon! is really just regular Pancakes & Bacon taken to the next level!" Oh thanks. I feel a whole lot better now.

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

"For years, I’ve covered the political fringe for two basic reasons:"

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1. It’s fun — The daily grind of mainstream politics gets dull. American politics is proverbially a football game played between the 40-yard-lines, where flamboyant rhetoric about fundamental differences in policies and principles are usually just carnival-barker ballyhoo, an attempt to arouse the voting public from their typical apathy.....

2. The future always begins on the fringe — Until the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, the same-sex marriage movement was just a lot of angry noise from crazy gay people.... - - Squeaky Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, Lee Harvey Oswald and the Radical Impulse : The Other McCain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (2)

Feds and Heads and Dope Distribution

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Special Delivery

Obama administration will not block state marijuana laws, if distribution is regulated - The Washington Post

Man shoots arrow wrapped with marijuana at Whatcom County Jail - The Bellingham Herald

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

August 29, 2013

Grave of the Hundred Head

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:45 PM | Your Say (2)

President Obamlet

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To strike, or not to strike: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous Assad,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To attack: to dither
No more; and by attack to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That Syria is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.

-- neo-neocon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:10 PM | Your Say (2)

There goes the diet. Again.

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (4)

"Excellent Horse-Like Lady:" Number One with a Bullet [UPDATED]

Music criticism in North Korea: Kim Jong-un's ex-lover 'executed by firing squad' Hyon's band was responsible for a string of patriotic hits in North Korea,
including "Footsteps of Soldiers," "I Love Pyongyang," "She is a Discharged Soldier" and "We are Troops of the Party." Her popularity reportedly peaked in 2005 with the song "Excellent Horse-Like Lady." The 12 who were executed were singers, musicians or dancers with the Hyon's band,, the Unhasu Orchestra or the Wanghaesan Light Music Band and were accused of making videos of themselves performing sex acts and then selling the recordings..... “They were executed with machine guns while the key members of the Unhasu Orchestra, Wangjaesan Light Band and Moranbong Band as well as the families of the victims looked on,” said a Chinese source reported in the newspaper.

UPDATE: THEN AGAIN.... Why You Shouldn't Necessarily Trust Those Reports Of Kim Jong-un Executing His Ex-Girlfriend

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (6)

Beauty Pageant? "Rather rich coming from the head of the Democratic party."

DNC Chief Wasserman Schultz: GOP Running “Beauty Pageant of Extremism”…
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 AM | Your Say (10)

Buffalo Bill Cody

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Buffalo Bill 's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

- - ee cummings

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

You don't say?

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Obama's Affordable Care Act Looking a Bit Unaffordable

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (0)

In Syria, Urkel and Lurch Plan to Wage a ‘Cojones Campaign’

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Barack Obama is hiking up his mom jeans, adjusting his bicycle helmet, and preparing to act all macho
in order to get America to view him as something other than what he is: President Urkel. And to assist in the effort, Urkel is asking Secretary of State John ‘Lurch’ Kerry to assist him. In fact, the Syrian situation has become so dire that to address the crisis, Secretary of State John Kerry has actually been forced to put down his Heinz ketchup and cancel his windsurfing plans. - - Clash

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:18 AM | Your Say (3)

August 28, 2013

The Week to Come in One Sentence

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At some point in the next few hours or days,
it is likely that the deeply damaged collection of moral cretins known as "Western leaders" will sit down behind the gargantuan phalanxes of heavily armed security that keeps their well-wadded rumps safe and cozy and give the nod to some close-cropped flunky laden with medals for mendacious time-serving and relentless butt-covering to launch the airstrikes that will kill a large number of human beings who had absolutely nothing to do with the alleged chemical weapon attacks allegedly carried out by Syrian government forces. Moloch's Minions: Preparing More Slaughter in Syria

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 PM | Your Say (0)

The Legend of the Anti-War Liberal [Bumped]

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A long, long, long time ago — way back in 2003 — there were these people called “Anti-War Liberals.”
They were called “anti-war” because they were really, really, super-duper opposed to war. They believed in peace, you see? They didn’t think any country should be runnin’ around shootin’ and killin’ all willy nilly-like. These Anti-War Liberal folks knew that we had no right to be invadin’ another nation just to take its resources, or put a military base on its soil. They said we should mind our own got-danged business and stop interferin’ in them international type affairs. - -| The Matt Walsh Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:24 PM | Your Say (16)

"WINNING!"

MSNBC Programs Lose Close to 50% of Viewers in One Year

The Rachel Maddow Show in August garnered all-time low ratings in total and demo viewers. She was down 43 percent and 47 percent respectively.

The Last Word also hit a low in total viewers losing 40 percent of that audience and 42 percent in the demo.

In the 8PM slot, Chris Hayes's All In dropped 48 percent of the total viewers The Ed Show had a year ago and 42 percent in the demo.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (8)

The Obama Jokes Just Write Themselves

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No surprise that Golf Channel quickly deleted this tweet.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (1)

August 27, 2013

"Fries with That" No Longer "Optional"

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Burger King's French Fry Burger For $1 The sandwich is a classic burger with four french fries on top.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (5)

The Impossible Cool

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:48 AM | Your Say (7)

The tree falling with nobody to hear it option

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The other thing to do is simply never again acknowledge that there is a Middle East. Replace maps and globes with Ocean. Nobody will ever know, or care. We have as much oil in the ground as they do, so screw'em. Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:42 AM | Your Say (1)

August 26, 2013

Brangelina Manning

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Attentionwhore progressives have begun the process of formally canonizing this treasonous tranny;
the process will likely be fast-tracked due to his trendy sexual issues. In fact, a super-duper brave Icelandic dyke has gone so far as to nominate PFC Tuck-dick for a Nobel Peace Prize. Buffalo Bill Manning Offers Us A Glimpse Into The Decline | The Right Stuff

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:21 PM | Your Say (4)

Inflation Is Back Big Time

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

"Darwin’s Origin of Species became the foundational document for the new scientistic faith — its replacement for Genesis."

Evangelical religion was not so much abandoned, as transformed.
By the more talented of Bloomsbury it was turned into aestheticism & “art for art’s sake.” The moral earnestness continued with polarities reversed. The old obsessions over sexual vice, for instance, flipped into sexual experimentation. Meanwhile, the science types assembled their New Inquisition, hunting down & eliminating from the possibility of employment those who strayed from Darwinian orthodoxy in the academic worlds they increasingly controlled. - - David Warren, Descension : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:42 AM | Your Say (4)

August 25, 2013

"Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."

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Behold, a sower went forth to sow;

4 And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:

5 Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:

6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

7 And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:

8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

- - Matthew 13 KJV

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

"A Whitewash of Failure:" Chastened Obama-voter Walter Russell Mead surveys the Middle East in today’s Wall Street Journal [Bumped]

How did someone as intelligent and capable as Walter Russell Mead get fooled into thinking that Obama could conduct foreign policy successfully? After all, Mead holds a chair in foreign affairs at Bard College. Or better, once you have so thoroughly misjudged a presidential candidate how do you save some face? Mead does so by saying that the Obama administration based its policies on reasonable assumptions and good intentions. He says that administration strategy was: “well intentioned, carefully crafted and consistently pursued.”

It is not quite a whitewash of failure, but it removes the charge that the administration was incompetent and inept. If Obama was not up to the job, those who voted for him could and should have known it. Had Enough Therapy?: What Went Wrong in the Middle East? Walter Russell Mead Explains.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:32 PM | Your Say (26)

"Identity politics is pride in victimization."

It gains its entire identity from embracing dysfunction and refusing to change. But despite all the pride parades, the assertions of identity, the "Born this way" torch songs, the underlying dysfunction remains. Bradley Manning betrayed his country for the same reason that he put on a blond wig; because he is mentally ill. Sultan Knish: Insane This Way

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 AM | Your Say (0)

"Truly a woman ahead of her time." ..... Still.

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 AM | Your Say (8)

August 24, 2013

Notes on Education

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:21 PM | Your Say (5)

A School in Arkansas

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (9)

"Mad Jack" Churchill

was a British soldier who fought throughout the Second World War armed with a longbow, and a Scottish broadsword.
He is known for the motto "any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly armed." In May 1940 Churchill and his unit, the Manchester Regiment, ambushed a German patrol near L'Epinette, France. Churchill gave the signal to attack by cutting down the enemy Feldwebel (sergeant) with a barbed arrow, becoming the only British soldier known to have felled an enemy with a longbow in WWII. Jack Churchill @ LaWik
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Jack Churchill (far right) leads a training exercise, sword in hand

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (4)

Fashion That Makes You Go, "Hummmmmmmm....." [Bumped]

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Oprah introduces the wearable Rorschach test: What’s it look like? : The Powers That Be

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 AM | Your Say (27)

"Communists are that part of mankind which has recovered the power to live or die—to bear witness—for its faith."

It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:
“Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God… Whittiker Chambers, What does it mean to be a Communist? | The Right Stuff

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (1)

Let's Shop!

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If you said to me, go and design a Diabetes store, I would just take you to the supermarket. The World Is Fucking Insane — Health & The Future — Medium

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (4)

That West Kid, North

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"Kanye West made a rare interview appearance on girlfriend Kim Kardashian's mother's talk show on Friday, and he gave the world its first look at the couple's 2-month-old daughter, North West." Grandma has scheduled the girl's first sex-tape for shooting in 2032. Don Surber: Weekend Scoreboard: August 23-25, 2013

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:00 AM | Your Say (0)

Why Is the Golden Age of Television So Dark?

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We watch so many crime dramas because there are no big stakes in middle-class American life. The criminal underworld is one place where decisions actually matter -- and can be shown to matter, dramatically. Megan McArdle - Bloomberg

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 AM | Your Say (1)

"We are witnessing the strange death of the middle class."

It isn’t just being squeezed — it is actually shrinking and sinking.
This is the most disturbing social change of our age and will probably dominate your children’s lives. The lifestyle that the average earner had half a century ago — reasonably sized house, dependable healthcare, a decent education for the children and a reliable pension — is becoming the preserve of the rich. The Spectator

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:23 AM | Your Say (4)

The culture of poverty is many things.

Too many of the underclass enjoy the culture of poverty. They would feel horribly out of place in a tony subdivision
where they would have to work to make a house and car payment, instead of drinking beer all day on the stoop ― they don’t even have stoops in the suburbs. They would have to cut their lawns and keep the trash and noise to a minimum. What fun is that? In the inner-city you can do whatever the hell you want. You can even shoot somebody, and chances are no one will rat you out, because that is the code of the inner-city streets, and people there hate the cops more than they hate the drug dealers. The American Spectator : In Another Country

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

August 23, 2013

How reality caught up with paranoid delusions

Schizophrenics used to see demons and spirits. Now they talk about actors and hidden cameras – and make a lot of sense – Mike Jay – Aeon

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

"Orson Scott Card is calling for people to tolerate his ideas on the topic of homosexual 'marriage' "

and he's attacked by people who think he should tolerate the behavior of homosexuality. This is a pretty typical flaw with modern comprehension of tolerance. Orson Scott Card likely has no problem with people thinking homosexual marriage is a fine thing, he has a problem with the carrying out of this idea. -- Word Around the Net: REBOOTING HATE

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

Frowned Uponers

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Michelle Obama's Mirror: Fundamentally Transforming America, Hip Hop Style

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:44 PM | Your Say (6)

Fort Hood gunman unanimously guilty on all charges

Nailgun him to asphalt at the site of his killings. Drench him with gasoline. Ignite. Stream video. "Allahu Akbar!" Details @ Dallas News | myFOXdfw.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (15)

William G. Wood Funeral Notice

"If you want to know more about my WW II father, email me @ bwtomasino@gmail.com because he would have rolled over in his grave over the exorbitant price of this obituary." William G. Wood Obituary Orlando Sentinel [$800.00]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (1)

Increasingly, lots of statements of fact are bigotry.

IQ varies by race. This is an obvious fact and it’s bigotry (see Jason Richwine).
Propensity to commit crime varies by race. Women have different abilities than men. (It may even be bigoted to consider women as independent moral agents). It’s probably best not to notice what percentage of transgenders in the military leak massive amounts of information, and if you do be careful how you do it or you’ll offend the thought and language police. Bigot or liar, pick one | Foseti

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

Q: Why does a church need security?

A: It’s one of the absurdities of the job.
People’s general reaction is always that it sounds like an unnecessary thing, but a church is essentially a hospital. People go there when they’re in need or hurting. Everyone there is at some level of emotional health or wellness. Some people are stable, but we also have people who aren’t as stable. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Interviews With People Who Have Interesting or Unusual Jobs: Mega Church Rent-a-Cop.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (5)

Last Law and Order Strangled by Scriptwriters: Next Episode "Redneck rodeo clown assasinates president."

Time to bury this decomposed fornication festival: Cybill Shepherd playing George Zimmerman character in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit story based on Trayvon Martin case
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Show stars Raul "Short Round" Esparza and Mariska "Honeydew" Hargitay were both in full costume as filming commenced

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (9)

Transgender SEAL Team 6er Issues Scathing Response To 'Chelsea' Manning'

Kristen Beck spent 20 years in the Navy — many years as a SEAL — and also spent all 20 as a woman in a man's body.
" What you wear, what color you are, your religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity has no basis on whether you are a CRIMINAL or NOT. For this person, whether male or female to use gender identity to act "BADLY" is a slap in the face to me and everyone who does not fit the "Binary Gender Norm." It is not an excuse for anything illegal or unjust." (30) Kristin Beck - The "Manning debacle"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:57 AM | Your Say (0)

Thug Kitchen

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Spread some of this goodness on your next sandwich. It’s fucking delicious. And it lets you double up on your protein sources and cut down on the fat. Shit, don’t limit yourself to just sammies. This is a choice dip so grab some carrots and cucumbers. Afternoon snack: FUCKING DONE. Thug Kitchen

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 AM | Your Say (9)

August 22, 2013

No ideas but in

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—Say it, no ideas but in things—

nothing but the blank faces of the houses

and cylindrical trees

bent, forked by preconception and accident—

split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained—

secret—into the body of the light!

From Book I, Paterson, a poem by William Carlos Williams.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 PM | Your Say (0)

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

Have you ever seen a genius at a water park? He’s miserable. The only time people with an IQ over 120 are really happy is when they’re at work. They’re basically our slaves. Dumb people ride ATVs with their sons, go bungee jumping, and laugh their heads off when somebody farts. Many of them are also rich. A Nation of Working-Class Dropouts - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:47 PM | Your Say (1)

Nailed It

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:31 PM | Your Say (1)

I'm sorry. Whose "southern border?" Mexico's?

Yes, they really are world class prunts: Obama Administration Considers Plan to Bolster Mexico’s Southern Border The plan would be funded in part through the Merida Initiative, a U.S.-led anti-drug trafficking program that has involved nearly $2 billion in U.S. funds. HT: Homchick

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:44 PM | Your Say (3)

“I am Chelsea Manning. I am female,” [Bumped]

“I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name
and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility),” he continued in the statement. “I look forward to receiving letters from supporters and having the opportunity to write back.” Bradley Manning: I want to live as a woman  - TODAY.com

[Should be out just in time to serve in Chelsea Clinton's cabinet.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:41 PM | Your Say (14)

“Let the other dumb sumbitch spend hisself into the dirt, and then tear his throat out, or just buy him."

And that´s the story of our whole military shebang: gaudy but mostly irrelevant.

North Korea does something that upsets Washington´s digestion, so we send the aircraft carriers. These float fiercely offshore, doing nothing, because there is nothing they can do. They either (a) attack, risking all-out war on the Peninsula, not a particularly bright idea since Pyongyang has all the artillery in the world within range of Seoul, or (b) float in puzzlement and circles while North Korea ignores them. See? Wrong tool. Washington hasn´t figured this out, so it always sends the bathtub toys. China, he no fight. Sell stuff. Fred On Everything

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (5)

Today's Retro Moment Is Brought to You By "Lileks, James"

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Just so we’re clear: Gay Federal Mermaid Toilet... at Lint

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (0)

Isaiah

For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water. 2 The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, 3The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. 4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. -- Isaiah 3 KJV

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 AM | Your Say (1)

"Our liberals continue to act as if Obama is normal"

The president of the United States is actually psychologically disturbed. He does not react in a normal manner.
I know that’s a vicious and importunate thing to say, but the reaction to Egypt (and to Benghazi, for that matter) is not one of a psychologically healthy human being. It’s more than the narcissism of which he is often accused, as bad as that is. It’s a form of extreme neurotic attraction to (notably Islamic) religious fascism. Obama is not a Muslim, but he has these deep feelings about it (some of them related to imperialism, others to his absent father, no doubt) that allow him to overlook, or rationalize, all that hideous misogyny, homophobia, and jihadist fanaticism, that loathing of democracy and freedom, even when it could not be more obvious. To Obama, those abhorrent — monumentally illiberal — behaviors and ideologies almost seem irrelevant. But they are the most relevant of all. Roger L. Simon

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

Flesh-Colored Christ That Glows In the Dark

I have long contended that man is a fundamentally religious animal -- and I don't necessarily mean that in a good way -- and that many people who consider themselves above religion are actually quite beneath it. ... So here is noted paranoid and homoerotic political theorist Chris Matthews now speculating that people refer to "Obama" as "Obama" and not "President Obama" for the same reason that non-Christians might call Jesus "Jesus" and not "the Christ Jesus." "I'm Not Paranoid," Insists Noted Paranoid

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (2)

Future presidents may no longer need a “new Pearl Harbor”

as grounds to invade offensive countries. Perhaps in the future, the-powers-that-be may only need to campaign human rights abuses on social media

until they can receive a critical mass of affirmation such as millions of belligerent liberal tweets across millions of Twitter feeds reposted to Facebook upvoted on reddit and filtered out across the cultural landscape. Text 99223 for Yes to invade Saudi Arabia on Human Rights violations!! Subscribe and Like U.S. Army on Youtube, video feed of drone bombings of civil rights violators forthcoming! - - Winter of Hate

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

August 21, 2013

Day of Future Past

You might think some things are still to come. You'd be wrong.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 PM | Your Say (1)

Most Frightening Email Header in History

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 PM | Your Say (0)

What would happen if you sped up Bruce Springsteen’s I’m on Fire and played the LP at 45 RPM?

The end result… Dolly Parton.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:13 PM | Your Say (3)

"Once the Gulf thieves made their unholy alliance with radical Islam, up sprang the Arab Spring."

Western media fools called it a democratic expression of Arab millions. It was, partly.
Millions were swept away by false promises until reality set in, especially in Egypt. Now the genie is out and there’s hell to pay, but the West’s leaders, like Captain Smith onboard the Titanic and just as oblivious to the dangers ahead, are speeding up their calls for democracy in lands where the “D” word is as alien as dictatorship is in Massachusetts. Democracy’s Dhimmis and Dummies

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (0)

The Butler: "A pious quasi-historical mishmash about the Civil Rights era: a sort of Ken Burns’s Django Unchained."

Although Allen told the Washington Post that he had enjoyed a happy childhood in Virginia,
the film opens with a scene of violence implausible enough to give even Quentin Tarantino pause. The movie opens with a nine-year-old future butler watching the cotton-plantation scion raping his mom (Mariah Carey, in the first of many instances of random casting of Daniels’s celebrity friends), then shooting his father dead in front of dozens of black witnesses. The rapist’s grandmother, Vanessa Redgrave (and why not?), immediately hires the little orphan to be a house servant, presumably so he can more conveniently put rat poison in their mint juleps. This is a wholly made-up scene, but it’s the kind that everybody nowadays believes must have been a fixture of daily life in the Jim Crow South. Butler Unchained - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:27 PM | Your Say (0)

"A more ideological media will probably also be a more conservative media,"

because there are a lot more conservatives in the donor class, and in the audience, than there are in the media. Which means that this [Democrat media] edge will probably slip.

How far it will slip is impossible to say. For starters, we don’t even have a reliable estimate of the edge Democratic politicians get from having most of the media and the entertainment industry in their ideological camp. It's safe to say that right now this does give Democrats an edge, and that that edge will probably get smaller in the future, unless conservative donors simply refuse to fund journalism for “their side.” How Democrats May Lose Their Media Edge - Bloomberg

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

Notable Quotables

"Hillary and Obama had a real knock-down drag-out in the summer of ’08 about who would lead the party ticket. To those who don’t understand the democrats’ obsession with “Who is most likely to get away with shit?” this was inexplicable and surreal, since Hillary and Obama’s positions on the issues were practically indistinguishable. "House of Eratosthenes

"For the left, it is "always Selma" -- even in a high-end handbag boutique in Switzerland. Note that they don't just freeze history, but freeze a delusion about history -- like the global warmists who don't know the warming stopped seventeen years ago.".One Cʘsmos: Ideological "Reality" and the Immortalizing Process

"Absent parents. The gang control of thought. The scourge of drugs. These have created a catastrophe for the black community. That is an immense part of the youth of this nation. Occasionally the flood jumps its bounds, goes over the river banks, and kills a white person — and then it’s new — but we blame it on guns. Our media and our leaders just cannot tell the truth." The American Spectator : The Oklahoma Story

"Tomatoes are magnificent in pizza and spaghetti, edible as soup, fatal as a juice. Black beans are an impenetrable mystery. Sometimes they’re perfect, but sometimes they’re a pile of repulsive goop, and there’s no way to explain why to a layman." Never Yet Melted サ Picky Eater

"Whenever collapse is mentioned you guys go into this weird mode that ranges from “in preparation, I’m learning to chip flint” to “I am training to kill squirrels with my bare hands and cook them over a camping fire.”" Galt’s Network | According To Hoyt

"Mr. Debieu says his peers who underbake their bread are delusional. 'The customer doesn't know what's best…It's the baker's job to educate him.' "France's Famously Crusty Baguette Goes Soft - WSJ.com

"One officer in the Police Department's skeleton animal-control unit recalled a pack splashing away in a basement that flooded when thieves ripped out water pipes. “The dogs were having a pool party,” said Lapez Moore, 30. “We went in and fished them out.' "Abandoned Dogs Roam Detroit in Packs as Humans Dwindle - Bloomberg Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:52 AM | Your Say (2)

"When I was young I was taught by a dead society that dignity was internal;"

that a man that filleted salmon for a living could be noble by dint of his effort, comportment, and his value to his fellow man;

that all men were created equal, but that their worth could (and should) be judged by how they behaved in this world, especially when they thought no one was looking. I was not taught that goldbricking and featherbedding and tossing a sabot in the gears was a road to dignity. I was not taught that lording over disposable underlings was a path to greatness. But I'm talking to a wall. And there's nothing but writing on it. Sippican Cottage: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (0)

"It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton is our party’s best chance."

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Prunt of the Month: Maybe booze will get her.

She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished — beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband?
She’s certainly busy, busy and ever on the move — with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts.... As far as I’m concerned, Hillary disqualified herself for the presidency in that fist-pounding moment at a congressional hearing when she said, “What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator?” Democrats have got to shake off the Clinton albatross and find new blood. Camille Paglia- Salon.com

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

5 Spot

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How Do We Look for Life on Other Planets?

Word Around the Net: COMMON KNOWLEDGE, The Columbine Killings

Aspects of E. M. Forster’s 'Aspects of the Novel'

Camille Paglia: "Two words: Anthony Weiner. Your thoughts?" " Two words: pathetic dork."

Allen West on 'bored' teen murderers ‘Who will President Obama identify with in this case?’

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (1)

Another Blow to the Patriarchy

Giant 12-metre screaming vagina installed in women’s prison: “By creating this vagina which you walk into, it contains you as the viewer, but also screams and laughs, almost like a battle cry which revolts against the prison.” -- via davidthompson:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (3)

August 20, 2013

The Best Elmore Leonard Movie Adaptations

Leonard’s 1953 story “Three-Ten to Yuma,” first published in the perfectly titled Dime Western Magazine, was adapted to the screen not once, but twice. In 1957, Delmer Daves told Leonard’s story of a desperate rancher (Van Heflin) who forms a peculiar bond with the criminal (Glenn Ford) he’s escorting to the title train. - – Flavorwire

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:24 PM | Your Say (3)

Looking Back on the Life of Barack Obama

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He Taught us to Laugh, He Made Us Believe, and then He Took All Our Money
He was the first black President of the United States, and he also became its last President when in 2019, after his term in office had been extended indefinitely by HR:0666 or "The Hope and Faith in Obama's Everlasting Presidency Act" (Holo-Link), he was forced to leave office because the government had run out of money to pay for itself.... Born in a hospital in some still undetermined part of the world, Barack learned to use multiple names and identities at an early age. Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:42 PM | Your Say (2)

Congresswomen's Voicemail: Where's My Bribe?

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton [D] left a voicemail for a lobbyist in which she brazenly begs for a "contribution." It's a not-so-subtle reminder of how legalized bribery is the standard operating procedure in Washington.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:44 PM | Your Say (5)

Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

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Dragnet portrayed cops differently than any show before it.
Most radio shows had cops as idiots (for the detectives to outshine) thugs and brutes, or super heroes who did no wrong. Dragnet instead showed them as a variety of human beings doing a job. Scenes were underplayed rather than dramatized, to make each seem more real ("as real as a guy pouring a cup of coffee" is how Webb put it). Word Around the Net: OLD TIME RADIO: DRAGNET

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:42 PM | Your Say (2)

"Bill Clinton's foundation has spent more than $50 million on travel expenses since 2003, an analysis of the non-profit's tax forms reveal."

Businessman and Republican New York City mayoral candidate "John Catsimatitis has lent aircraft to Clinton and to the foundation multiple times for travel, including Clinton's recent trip to Africa along with daughter, Chelsea. "Clinton sometimes uses Catsimatitis' Boeing 727, opting on other flights to use a smaller Gulfstream jet." There's all kinds of people's jets that Clinton uses, and they've all got women on 'em, and they've all got a bar on 'em. But, anyway, the expose of the Clintons continues. How much flying and what kinds of hotel bills do you need to amass or rack up $50 million in bills? NY Times: Clinton Foundation is Running a Deficit, But Raising Money, While Bill and Hillary are Getting Rich - The Rush Limbaugh Show

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (9)

"When you get into a debate with an infanticide advocate."

I’ve always said that trying to converse with these people is like smoking crack, stumbling into a dark room and falling into a vat of cow manure. It’s bizarre, confusing, disturbing, gross, and a really poor way to spend your free time. You always come out of it with a horrible head ache and the lingering stench of bull sh*t in your nostrils. An impressive email from an abortion advocate | The Matt Walsh Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (1)

Novelist Elmore Leonard, 'Dickens of Detroit,' has died

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Surrounded by family, Leonard died at 7:15 a.m. Tuesday at his Bloomfield Village home from complications of a stroke. Leonard was working hard on his 46th novel, “Blue Dreams,” at the time he was stricken. “He was pretty excited about it,” Peter Leonard said. “ He came over three times for dinner the week before the stroke, he was telling me about the story: how he had changed it, how he was going to bring the character Raylan Givens (from the Leonard-derived TV series “Justified”) into it. We would tell each other what we’d worked on that day. I will miss that, and him.” | The Detroit News
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (3)

DORITOSLOCOS taco MASTER LOCKED shut (Key Sold Separately)

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Not organic, sorry! This item creature is of may respects and will bring value to your immediate collecting interest. Via Etsy @ by BSTJ

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:28 AM | Your Say (2)

Anthony Weiner on a roll --

marketer, meat company introduce Carlos Danger Weiners
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:47 AM | Your Say (11)

August 19, 2013

"Er... I plead 'Guilty with an explanation...." [Bumped]

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Manning emailed his military therapist the photo with a letter titled, 'My problem'

Transgendering made s/he do it: Army releases photo of Bradley Manning dressed as a woman that he emailed to his therapist - as the private takes stand to apologize for leaking documents to WikiLeaks
On the same day that Bradley Manning finally took to the stand and apologized for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks - the army he betrayed released a picture of the troubled soldier wearing a blond wig, makeup and lipstick. He addressed the court after a day of testimony about his troubled childhood in Oklahoma and the extreme psychological pressure that experts said he felt in the 'hyper-masculine' military because of his gender-identity disorder — his feeling that he was a woman trapped in a man's body.

Why Manning was let within a country mile of classified material continues to be the biggest mystery of this tragi-comic case.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 PM | Your Say (22)

The Waffle House Index

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No power? Waffle House has generators and a special gas-only menu. No water? Waffle House will make coffee with bottled water.
Waffle House is so well known for its resiliency that the US government’s disaster relief organization, FEMA, uses the chain as a sensor network to make post-disaster damage assessments. After disasters, like the recent devastating tornado in Oklahoma, FEMA officials will use the so-called “Waffle House Index,” calling every Waffle House location in the area to gather two pieces of data: Are they open? Are they serving a limited menu? Based on this information, they color-code each diner: red for closed, yellow for open but with a limited menu, and green for open. By mapping the data, responders can quickly establish the location and extent of the damage. Data, Resiliency, and Waffles Ushahidi

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:50 PM | Your Say (7)

KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov gives you

the KGB's definition of "ideological subversion":
"To change the perception of reality, of every American, to such an extent that despite the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their countrymen." Barnhardt.biz - Commodity Brokerage

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:37 PM | Your Say (6)

All Species Shall Live Forever (Except Us)

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Why do we care about the giant panda birth rate? Why do we want them to reproduce?
What does it matter if they go extinct? Well, because they’re cute, I guess. And they inspire mediocre animated DreamWorks films. And because — whether it’s pandas or seals or sloths — we never want to see any species fade out of existence. Any species except our own, of course. For all our efforts to increase the Earth’s supply of furry woodland creatures and adorable arctic mammals, we still continue to view our own human fertility as an unfortunate medical condition that requires regular treatment, if not corrective surgery.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:10 PM | Your Say (4)

Muslim Brotherhood Warning:

This morning, the Muslim Brotherhood warned the United States that if the United States continued meddling in Egypt, Libya, and other potential hot spots in the Middle East, they intend to cut off America's supply of 7-11 and Motel 6 managers.  

If this action does not yield sufficient results, cab drivers will be next, followed by Dell, AT&T, and AOL customer service reps.  

Finally, if all else fails, they have threatened to not send us any more presidents.  

It's gonna get ugly, people. 

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:29 PM | Your Say (2)

Employees Industry Secrets

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"I work on a farm. When they say you should wash your produce thoroughly at home, they're not joking."

"Fine dining cook here. 30% of your meal is butter. That's why it's so good." - Business Insider

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 AM | Your Say (6)

Oh, but we do, Dr. Hanson, we do.... (And I bet you do to.)

"No one begrudges Obama his Martha’s Vineyard annual getaway, or his incessant golfing in his yuppyish get-up, or sending his family by separate plane to Aspen, Vail, or Costa del Sol." Victor Hanson, Obama Bets Against Human Nature — and Usually Loses

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 AM | Your Say (2)

"Clueless – one can only hope -"

Our own malevolent naïf's membership in the Choom Gang and his two drop-in senatorial gigs
appear to have been an inadequate preparation for the business of conducting serious statecraft as president of what was hitherto considered to be a country to be reckoned with. Clueless – one can only hope – as to the basics of economic growth and fiscal sanity, Mr. Obama has also rushed to intervene in every pestilential backwater south of Sicily and east of Cyprus. He has embraced the hateful Muslim Brotherhood and championed the interests of millions of third-world illegal immigrants over those of his own people. There simply are NO federal policies today that are not remarkable for the absurdity of their goals, the destructiveness of their effects, or the malevolence of their formulation. Liberty's Torch: The ongoing farce.

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

August 18, 2013

"I don't claim to be a detective or anything, but if you find a body floating offshore with a mermaid tattoo and one that says "I am what I am", you might want to question Bluto"

Monroe County Sheriff's officials said the man was between 35 and 45-years-old with short brown hair and no facial hair.
He was approximately 5-feet, 9-inches tall and about 170 pounds. He had a number of tattoos, including a mermaid on his stomach, a sun and moon tattoo on his right side and on the underside of his upper arm a tattoo that said "I am what I am". Man's body found floating in Fla. Keys - Sarasota News

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 PM | Your Say (7)

The Truth About Egypt

“Moderate” is an even less accurate word in describing the [Muslim] Brotherhood.

It’s designed to weed out moderates during the recruitment process. The process of becoming a Muslim Brother is a five to eight year ordeal where potential Muslim Brothers are vetted through five tiers of membership that tests their commitment to the cause and their willingness to take orders. Anyone who has second thoughts about the organization, the ideology, or their willingness to blindly do what they’re told, is out. | World Affairs Journal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:05 PM | Your Say (1)

"We are fascinated with the powerful. How did they get it? What do they want it for? And how do they use it?"

All politically aware people have fantasies of what they would do if they had power.
And theories of what power is for and why people seek it. But then you look around. And you see Jeff Bezos giving money to a sodomy promotion group. You see Finland’s government paying to have Somalis living the 60th parallel. You see George Soros buying shares of Herbalife. -- Clausewitz, Lenin, Robin Dunbar | Bloody shovel

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:23 PM | Your Say (3)

These 2 Paragraphs From The New York Times' Jeff Bezos Profile Perfectly Sum Up How Secretive Amazon Is

“Every story you ever see about Amazon, it has that sentence: ‘An Amazon spokesman declined to comment,’ “ Mr. Marcus said.

Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, declined to comment. Amazon Secrecy - Business Insider

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

False Choice

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The State Department should have realized that walking down the aisle with the Muslim Brotherhood to the altar of democracy
was like handcuffing yourself to an anvil and trying to swim the English channel. They were bound to drag Obama down and they did. One of President Obama’s favorite phrases is “false choice”. He once said “we Reject the False Choice Between Our Security and Our Ideals”. On another occasion he thundered against the false choice between privacy and security in discussing the NSA scandal. What are we now to make about the choice offered to the Egyptian people between the ideological descendants of Stalin and Hitler?  Belmont Club » The Revenge of the "False Choice"€

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

"Honestly, I feel a profound pity for these poor souls." [Bumped]

You guys should be more angry at him than I am. He’s simply been everything I knew he’d be, you all are the ones he used and betrayed. I knew he’d be a nightmare, but you folks thought he’d be your dream come true.
Now, was this your dream? THIS? Really? Look around you. Look through the haze of your partisan passions and see reality for what it is. Ok, you all have always been pretty enthusiastic about abortion and Obama certainly carries your mantle in that respect, I’ll give him that much. He’s your man when it comes to funding and supporting the murder of babies, but beyond infanticide he’s been precisely the opposite of everything you once claimed to be. Hey progressives, let me explain why you should detest Obama |Matt Walsh

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:29 PM | Your Say (4)

This is what a 37-year-old Twinkie looks like

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This one is a school project started by science teacher Roger Bennatti in 1976. It sat on top of the intercom box in a Maine classroom for 28 years, until Bennatti retired — at which point he put the Twinkie in a ceremonial case and passed it along to another teacher at the school. The Twinkie’s new caretaker, Libby Rosemeier, has a long history with the Twinkie; she was a student in the 1976 class that first doomed the Twinkie to eternal deathlessness. -- | Grist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (0)

The Eternal Undead

Oh, God, they're digging up this poor woman yet again. Stop it! Just stop it!Scotland Yard examines new information on death of Diana, Princess of Wales - Telegraph

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (2)

And today's award for Dubious Achievement In Photography goes to

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Carra Sykes for her ‘Mother + Daughter’

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (0)

Race to the Bottom

The reset button didn’t work.
The Arab Street’s aflame.
ObamaCare is off its rails.
The jobless rate’s the same.
.
The Peeping Toms of government
Are snooping through our mail.
Michelle is pushing little kids
To feed on sprouts and kale.
.
The IRS and FEC
Are playing off the sheet.
Our consulates and embassies
Are forced into retreat.
.
But if you deign to criticize,
The mammoth mess we’re in,
Your motive must be based upon
The color of his skin.
.
For only willful prejudice
And bigotry of mind,
Prevents embrace of presidents
Who lead us from behind.

the Bard of Murdock | Asylum Watch

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (0)

"Hillary Clinton has all of the fakery, and none of the charm, of her husband."

From her comical pandering to the black community, to her cover-ups at the State Department, she has done little of substance to redeem her duplicity. The Clintons' Legacy of Lies

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (3)

"Wait a minute! If health insurance is a right…don’t I have a right to choose?"

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Michelle Obama's Mirror: Just Another Day in Paradise

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:31 AM | Your Say (1)

August 17, 2013

"He who said that all Conservatives are stupid did not know them."

"Stupid Conservatives there may be,—and there certainly are very stupid Radicals. The well-educated, widely-read Conservative, who is well assured that all good things are gradually being brought to an end by the voice of the people, is generally the pleasantest man to be met." - Anthony Trollope (in The Eustace Diamonds) Foseti

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 PM | Your Say (0)

Day of Rage for the Man from Nantucket

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Where's Jaws when he's needed?

It's just work, work, work.... Exclusive Pics: Egypt Meltdown Doesn’t Deter John Kerry’s Kiteboarding Adventure!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:15 PM | Your Say (0)

Why Violence Works

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People say that problems cannot be solved by the use of force, that violence, as the saying goes, is not the answer.
That adage appeals to our moral sensibilities. But whether or not violence is the answer depends on the question being asked. For better or worse, violence usually provides the most definitive answers to three major questions of political life: statehood, territoriality, and power. Violent struggle—war, revolution, terrorism—more than any other immediate factor, determines what nations will exist and their relative power, what territories they occupy, and which groups will exercise power within them. - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:42 PM | Your Say (0)

When Google went down on me all I could do was moan.

Google Outage: Internet Traffic Plunges 40% The tech company said all of its services from Google Search to Gmail to YouTube to Google Drive went down for between one and five minutes last night. The reason for the outage is not yet known, and Google refused to provide any further information

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

Facebook In 90's

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:52 PM | Your Say (0)

Floaters in the Bowl See Floater in the Rio Grande

Floating Corpse Greets Congressional Delegation at Mexican Border A body believed to be that of a Honduran national killed by Mexican drug cartel violence was seen floating in the Rio Grande river as a congressional delegation focused on border security matters visited the Texas/Mexico border.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:05 PM | Your Say (0)

America has imploded:

Its leaders have no grasp of its national interests, never mind any sense of how to achieve them. The assumption that we are in the early stages of “the post-American world” is now shared by everyone from General Sisi to Vladimir Putin. General Sisi, I should add, is Egypt’s new strongman, not Putin’s characterization of Obama. Meanwhile, in contrast to its accelerating irrelevance overseas, at home Washington’s big bloated blundering bureaucratic security state expands daily. It’s easier to crack down on 47 Elm Street than Benghazi. Steyn, Idiot Big Brother

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

"American weakness abroad and the establishment’s attempt at omnipotence at home"

are two slices of a single pie; complementary aspects of the breakdown of American democracy. Consider what they mean taken together. They raise the prospect of foreign rulers buying influence over America — and Americans — while their minions put the whole of the nation at the disposal of the highest bidder through the magnificent tech instruments Americans themselves have built. What’s going to stop them? The scruples of politicians in Washington? No. But maybe something else.... Belmont Club » The Narrative Implodes

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

‘To hell with them’

Over the preceding two decades, America had sent troops into harm’s way five times to liberate Muslim people
— in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq — and yet America’s reputation generally worsened..... If real friends were threatened, the American people would support coming to their aid. It’s just that there’s a growing — or deepening — sense that we don’t have real friends in the Muslim world. - NYPOST.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (1)

Doomed, I tell you. DOOMED!

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Duyen: What do you think of those beauties?

FWP: Jesus H. Christ and His All-Girl Orchestra! Please tell me you didn’t just buy a pair of those.

Duyen: Relax, Flashy. I haven’t completely lost my mind. I just thought you’d get a giggle out of them. Only $114.99 per pair at Heels.com.

FWP: What imaginable outfit would go with those?

Duyen: No idea. But this is what passes for innovation in fashion today.

FWP: We’re doomed, aren’t we?

Duyen: Looks that way. Liberty's Torch: You Can't Make This Stuff Up Dept.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (1)

Important Questions You Never Thought to Ask #1,784

Can Living With Chickens Protect Against Face-Eating Bacteria?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (0)

Placebos for the Gun Free Zones

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Teacher use a bulletproof whiteboard in this promotional image

University of Maryland Eastern Shore professors to get bulletproof whiteboards Calling "campus violence a reality" to prepare for,
the University of Maryland Eastern Shore announced plans Thursday to spend $60,000 on the Clark Kent of teacher supplies: an innocuous-looking white board that can stop bullets. The high-tech tablet — which hangs on a hook, measures 18 by 20 inches and comes in pink, blue and green — can be used as a personal shield for professors under attack, according to the company that makes it, and a portable writing pad in quieter times.

"Humm, let's rush that guy with the Tec-9 with our white board. That should do the trick."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (0)

Helpless people want everyone else to be helpless.

And it could be said that conservatives aspire to be what people tend to think an iPhone is — a cool, smart gadget loaded up with software applications and all kinds of wonderful capabilities — whereas liberals aspire to be what the gadget really is, which is merely a token engaging the network, which is the real product being sold. The network has the capabilities, and all that money paid for the fancy phone is actually a subscription to the services that maintain the network. The smartphone actually does very little. In fact maybe, for that analogy to work, I should say the conservatives aspire to be the Leatherman. Liberals are more like a GPS receiver. House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (0)

August 16, 2013

Washington Amazon Post: “Obama Rodeo Clown Incident Illustrates Nation’s Continued Racial Divide”

That’s not an Onion headline. That’s a Washington Amazon Post headline. It doesn’t even appear to be an op-ed. The liberal media cannot be parodied, because like the USSR’s Pravda, it overshoots all parody with unintentional self-parody. | FrontPage Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:00 PM | Your Say (0)

Lincoln Looks Back to Look Forward

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At the Pebble Beach Concours: Design Observer The Lincolns at Pebble Beach range from the ultra-conservative 1930 Lincoln Model L Judkins Coupe, a true “horseless carriage” with upright cabin walls and running boards the size of steamer trunks, to the very bold and sporty 1955 Lincoln Indianapolis Boano, a bright orange concept car that evokes the meeting of Hollywood glamor and space age enthusiasm.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:00 PM | Your Say (0)

Martin Manley: My Life and Death Born 8-15-53, Died 8-15-13 , Age 60

"Today is August 15, 2013. Today is my 60th birthday. Today is the last day of my life. Today, I committed suicide. Today, is the first day this site is active, but it will be here for years to come." Martin Manley Life and Death - Home [Mirror site HERE]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:46 PM | Your Say (3)

Our Generation Was Stupid Beyond Measure, But The Next Generation Is Worse

I don’t want to see another Lego.

I don’t want to see another celebrity.

I don’t want to see another dark, misunderstood artist.

I don’t want to see any tattoos or body mutilation.

I don’t want to see a kiddie movie franchise treated as a religious icon.

Thanking you in advance,

HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:31 PM | Your Say (0)

Lib Outrage Flashback, Gas Prices Edition

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The Powers That Be

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 AM | Your Say (5)

We’re lucky to have him

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Treasure these moments. Thank our lucky stars. Fortune will never smile on us like this again. Surely he’s preferable to his anointed successorette, the first woman this and that, and don’t you dare think she’s not a shoo-in in 2016. Say what you will, but no one expects to see her on the LPGA tour. True, she’s currently the only thing that stands between us and a Biden presidency, and we can’t have that. Like our president, we can’t remember Mrs. Biden’s first name either, even though she’d be the first “Dr.” to have an office in the White House since Dr. Kissinger served our nation during the Nixon glory. If we’ve overlooked Dr. Rice, sorry. The American Spectator : Back in Business

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (0)

Facial Profiling

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'Duck Dynasty' Star Jase Robertson Kicked Out Of NYC Hotel "You know, the first thing that happened to me at the hotel was I got escorted out," Jase said. "I think it was a facial profiling deal. ...
I asked where the bathroom was and he said, 'Right this way sir.' He was very nice. We walked outside, he pointed down the road and said, 'Good luck. Have a good day.'" Robertson took it in stride and didn’t blame the employee for the incident. Robertson continued to stay at the hotel despite the incident.
Oprah: compare and contrast. HT: MCinVAN

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (0)

Matthew 5:9

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Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (0)

Diet for a Long Life

Is Carmelo Flores Laura the world's oldest man? Bolivian herder's records show he's 123 years old: 'We would only eat what we could find growing wild. We ate mostly skunk meat. I still go on long walks every day.'

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (0)

N.B.

“All fathers essentially dress in the clothing style of the last good year of their lives.”

"Marriage is a bit of a chess game, except the board is made of flowing water and the pieces are made of smoke."Jerry Seinfeld

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:47 AM | Your Say (0)

Good Question

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How did a show about a 'redneck' family who make duck calls become the most watched cable show EVER? Season premiere of Duck Dynasty shatters records 11.8 million people watched the August 15 season 4 premiere | Mail Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:56 AM | Your Say (0)

Gravity Is A Harsh Mistress

But Fair. Cruel, but fair. But harsh. Fairly harsh. Only a little cruel, but entirely fair. Entirely fairly harshly cruel. The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:01 AM | Your Say (0)

What is it with these school teachers and boys? [Bumped]

Maybe we should just issue new teachers with their own official boy, a box of condoms, and be done with it.
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Details of the case HERE. The young boy's name has been withheld, but it is said that he is currently referred to by his fellow students as "That lucky son of a bitch!"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:58 AM | Your Say (22)

August 15, 2013

Duuude!

Police to hand out Doritos at Seattle Hempfest
Think you're going to get the munchies while at Seattle's Hempfest this weekend? Perhaps seek out a Seattle Police officer. SPD officers are going to be at the annual festival, but instead of cracking down on pot smokers, they'll be handing out 1,000 bags of Doritos.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 PM | Your Say (0)

Well, that's enough news for today. Night Night. Sweet dreams.

Doug Ross @ Journal: China aggressively testing advanced nukes that can hit mainland U.S. as Obama slashes missile defense

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

Ann Coulter "At this rate, liberals will be claiming that peanut butter sandwiches are racist"

Heads up to Ann Coulter: Alas, liberals already think peanut butter sandwiches are racist Gutierrez, principal of Harvey Scott K-8 School, was being interviewed
about the school district’s equity training program designed to narrow the achievement gap. The newspaper said she “picks up on the subtle language of racism every day” and used the peanut butter sandwich to illustrate her point. “Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ let them tell you,” she told the newspaper. “Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”

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

There is no mealymouthed advice the world can give

The Egyptian military did what it had to do. They told the Brotherhood to remove their camps from the middle of Cairo, or have them removed.

The regime acted exactly as it threatened to act, when the Brotherhood did not move. It should continue to act, with resolution. There is no mealymouthed advice the world can give, to which the officers should listen; none to which the Israelis should listen. They, not we, take the consequences of irresolution. In Egypt, we should note that the fate of ten million Christians is on the line. Either the Muslim Brotherhood will be uprooted, or the Christians will be uprooted. There is no “third way,” & those who speak & act as if there were have effectively taken sides, with evil. Chronicles of “peace, peace” : Essays in Idleness

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

Up, Up, and Away.....

Your Cost Of Living Is About To Go Up: You Can Thank President Obama, flying under the radar as he often does with the help of the MSM,
is taking steps to raise your cell phone cost and steps to insure your costs for food and fuel will skyrocket. (Remember that food and fuel costsare not included in the governments calculation of inflation.) And, as is his penchant, he will do this with no input from Congress.
Nancy and the ObamaDroids Celebrating the Obama Economy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (0)

John Kerry is tied up with the latest vanity,

using what’s left of American clout in the region
to force unwilling Israelis “back to the bargaining table” with unwilling Palestinians. The Israelis were pushed into releasing more bloody murderers from their gaols, as a “sweetener” to lure Mahmoud Abbas to the table. The first of these have now returned to the standard heroes’ welcome in Gaza & West Bank — where every Jew-killer is a hero. Chronicles of “peace, peace” : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (0)

"Pogroms are intrinsic to the Islamist conception of Shariah: religious minorities are to be exiled, enslaved, or exterminated. "

Most people in the West know the score by now. We’d rather pretend that we did not know, but we know.
All Egyptians most certainly know it. The great majority are reasonably decent people. Only the usual minority of thugs, who exist as a proportion in every society, join in the rampages. For the rest, as for the Germans under Hitler, the best thing is to look the other way. Why intervene, & thereby make yourself a target? Perhaps, make your whole family a target? And when it is all over, & the shame descends for what was done, & the truth begins to rise from the ashes, there is nothing else for it but, “We never knew!” Chronicles of “peace, peace” - David Warren

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 AM | Your Say (1)

Inbreeding? What could possibly go wrong?

Danish Psychologist: “Serious consequences of Muslim inbreeding” In spite of the lower percentage of consanguineous marriages among Muslims living in the West,

at least 55 percent of Pakistanis living in the United Kingdom are married to a first cousin. This is thought to explain why British Pakistani families are at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders – often resulting in serious genetic diseases.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 AM | Your Say (0)

Getty Throws Open the Image Bank

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Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come | The Getty Iris The initial focus of the Open Content Program is to make available all images of public domain artworks in the Getty’s collections.
Today we’ve taken a first step toward this goal by making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose. These are high-resolution, reproduction-quality images with embedded metadata, some over 100 megabytes in size. You can browse all available images here.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (0)

"Zippy is speaking right now about the disaster in progress in Egypt."

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BREAKING: - he strongly condemns the violence!!! - he offers his condolences!!! - he has asked his team to investigate!!! Film at 11.

Imagine Headline Accuracy In Reporting Obama’s Foreign Policy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 AM | Your Say (0)

"The creative guys who make big-budget movies aren’t necessarily on the same page politically as the nice liberal dweebs who write about them."

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Blomkamp, a gun-loving Afrikaner whose movies are based around his fear that the rapid breeding of Third Worlders threatens to bring down civilization, says Elysium originated in a disastrous visit to Mexico in 2005. While shooting a Nike commercial in lovely San Diego, the Boer crossed the border one evening to see Tijuana, where he was abducted by corrupt Mexican cops who shook him down for $900 in return for not killing him. Elysium: Neill Blomkamp Fools the Critics Again - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (0)

August 14, 2013

"Cutting your dreadlocks off after committing a crime is a great way to try and evade police detection. But the face and neck tattoos kind of defeat the purpose"

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Police: man flees on scooter, cuts hair trying to trick police | After he stole a laptop, a wedding ring and a digital camera, the suspect made his getaway — for a time, police say — on a small, red scooter.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:31 PM | Your Say (0)

But no matter how bad it gets....

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▶ The Story of Keep Calm and Carry On

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:59 PM | Your Say (0)

Special Education

The "€œWell educated"€ are in fact indoctrinated, taught communist propaganda and syllogisms until they'€™re UNABLE to think. 
We now have an administration composed of people like this, who are unable to connect to reality.  They might be our first Marxist administration, but they suffer from third generation blight, not having come to their opinions from their own mind, but having been browbeaten into them.  They are the good kids, trapped in an illusion from which they can'€™t break out. Occupied! | According To Hoyt

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

"Left is left and right is right.....

"And the right here should be very very wary of cooperating with the Obama administration (especially on amnesty) with the thought that it will gain them a single vote. On the contrary—it will guarantee that the Republican Party will turn into a decomposing, dead elephant." neo-neocon Mugabe gives a lesson in how it’s done

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (0)

An apology letter to Mr. Obama

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Mr. Obama, IF you WERE actually guilty of being a deceitful despot who murders, conspires, and steals, then obviously all true Americans would have no choice but to giggle with glee at the sight of your likeness being gouged by an angry bull. Fortunately, that isn’t the case, which is why I’d like to apologize on for the entire state of Missouri, for everyone who has ever attended a state fair, and for everyone in the rodeo clown community. You are still special, and I still love you. | The Matt Walsh Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 AM | Your Say (0)

Your Wurst Nightmare

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (0)

Egypt Explodes

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Few will notice it, so it needs to be said repeatedly,
but the Obama administration decision to favor the Muslim Brotherhood has directly led to this catastrophe. I am sure that the scenes of today's violence will look good on Hillary Clinton’s resume. Had Enough Therapy?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (2)

Not just found in the White House any longer....

Bone-eating worms thrive in the Antarctic
The females of these unusual animals are typically found living on sunken whale carcasses, where they feed by growing rootlike structures (the animals lack a digestive tract). The much smaller males live attached to the bodies of the females, acting as sperm banks.

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

Boobs and Guns and Ethos

Re: "Hot Shots Calendar 2014 - Behind The Scenes" -- if you don't mind,

I'm going to watch the video with the boobs and guns and a bit of bumbie one more time. There's got to be something wrong with it, and I'm going to find it no matter how many times I have to watch it. I'm Pretty Sure I Can Close Up Shop Now @ The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (0)

Petition: "Eliminate armed guards for the President, Vice-President, and their families, and establish Gun Free Zones around them"

"Gun Free Zones are supposed to protect our children, and some politicians wish to strip us of our right to keep and bear arms. Those same politicians and their families are currently under the protection of armed Secret Service agents. If Gun Free Zones are sufficient protection for our children, then Gun Free Zones should be good enough for politicians." Liberty's Torch: The Hacienda On The Hill

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (0)

"She Smokes. She Smooches. She Dances in Bell Bottoms."

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File Under: "Once seen cannot be unseen."
How can I possibly keep my $10 in my pocket when I have the chance to see The Oprah™ dance in bell bottoms? Bell Bottoms, people! azlibertarian in Tales of Old Racist Bags

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 AM | Your Say (0)

Which is more valuable: The White House or one single Apple store?

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It's almost a tie. Apple sells an annual average of $4,709 worth of merchandise per square foot in its hundreds of stores across the world. Meanwhile, the presidential mansion in Washington is valued at $4,752 per square foot, according to real estate website Zillow. Money CNN

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:44 AM | Your Say (0)

August 13, 2013

Finding the Masculine Massengill: Going Balls Out for Science

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A tough job and a dirty job, but.... Preventing Swamp Crotch: 10 Products “Scientifically” Tested
It’s a problem that has plagued men ever since Western society decided the male of our species had to wear pants instead of breezy togas or kilts. I’m talking about swamp crotch: an uncomfortably moist nether region in which irritating chafing and stickage become commonplace and a distinct vinegar odor permeates from your groin.

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

Tawana Oprah (Al) Sharpton Brawley "I'm a liar? Oh. Nevermind."

Race Hoax? Oprah Downplays Swiss Mess After Accused Racist Calls Her a Liar What is Oprah's reaction to being called a liar by a racist?
Well, it certainly isn't the reaction of someone who was the victim of racism and then called a liar by the racist. No, when confronted with the shop girl's charge, Oprah issued a non-apology apology saying she was "sorry" the incident "got blown up."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:11 PM | Your Say (0)

What if they gave an Obama Climate Change rally and nobody came?

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Moe Lane #OfA’s rather embarrassing Climate Change spluttering, in three tweets.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:26 PM | Your Say (0)

Misteakz Wur Maid

Associated Press retracts bogus North Pole lake photo | Rare Full AP retraction
Editors, photo editors, and photo librarians – please eliminate AP photo NY109 that was sent on Saturday, July 27, 2013. The caption inaccurately stated that “the shallow metlwater lake is occuring due to an unusually warm period.” In fact, the water accumulates in this way every summer. In addition, the images do not necessarily show conditions at the North Pole, because the weather buoy carrying the camera used by the North Pole Environmental Observatory has drifted hundreds of miles from its original position, which was a few dozen miles from the North Pole.

You see, such “lakes” are really small melt ponds that form naturally every year on Arctic ice floes during the summertime. They’re not due to global warming at all. Second, the research station in question isn’t even at the North Pole. In fact, the ice floe it’s mounted to has drifted — again naturally — hundreds of miles south.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (0)

"Kurbonmamadov found a sample of horse intestine, but it was a disappointment."

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Oh, yum-yum-yum!
Nor does the modern state smile upon social traditions associated with Central Asian butchery, like Pamiris hanging slaughtered livestock outdoors in the winter for two to three months, or Kazakh steppe nomads ritualistically flagellating sick men with the lungs of a fresh-slaughtered sheep, swung about using the trachea as a handle like a flail. Butchery and other Fine Arts of Central Asian Cuisine | Roads & Kingdoms

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

"The oppression/privilege dynamic and systemic racism."

The narrative goes like this: Whites are guilty of an Original Sin of Racism, which according to many pundits, is simply hardwired into us at an unconscious level.
This satisfies the white need for a Catholic form of guilt and gives us all a veritable “cross” to carry. (Gasoline and matches optional.) With this burden of the intrinsic Sin of Racism, we whites have girded our loins with the comforting, self validating notion that we are all equally guilty of a unique crime that no one else can experience. Blacks cannot be racist, since racism is privilege and power, and they have neither. Only us tragically flawed whites are capable of such a travesty. The trivial hobbies of bored white people | The Right Stuff

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

Aphorisms for Our Time

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"Glad they found a way to keep joe from licking his balls. Now if they could get him to stop licking everyone else’s." -- Carlos The Jackal

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

Ronald McDonald, Slave Driver

A worker who truly deserves higher pay creates a résumé, not a ruckus. Instead of leaving Burger King for an hour, why not leave for good if you deserve more money? Surely someone besides yourself, preferably an employer and not your mother, will similarly assess your true value. If that fails, by all means, strike. The American Spectator

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

They Will Eat You Last

The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet: Most of the largest Internet companies provide information to the NSA, betraying their users.

Some, as we've learned, fight and lose. Others cooperate, either out of patriotism or because they believe it's easier that way. I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight. Do you remember those old spy movies, when the higher ups in government decide that the mission is more important than the spy's life? It's going to be the same way with you.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (0)

"I’m seeing another myth fall neatly into place."

It’s called the “This is bad, but ten years ago was much worse.” It’s not being said out loud yet, but it’s whispered.
That way in another two or three years, as collective memory fades, it can be brought out as “everyone knows” and you’ll remember the whispers… And it will seem plausible. If I sound like I’m crazy because I think someone is coordinating this, remember Journolist. Of course someone is. A lot of someone’s. And it doesn’t need to be a central directive, just the human drive to make us look good to ourselves and a faulty memory. If these people supported the most economically disastrous regime this country has ever seen, they’d be ashamed. Fortunately they don’t need to be. They can tell themselves “it was worse before.” Rewriting History | According To Hoyt

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:08 AM | Your Say (0)

Drum Bum

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Michelle Obama's Mirror: Obama: Marching to a Different Drummer In Martin Luther King’s day, being a drum major required a good deal more than bellowing a few commands.
It required that you also be a teacher, a leader, a conductor and a decision maker. A good drum major facilitated a group’s optimal performance. Which is, of course, precisely what Dr. King did. That was then, this is now; let’s just say being a drum major isn’t what it used to be.

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

Dotage Notes

My camera's 30GB Sandisk suddenly became "Write Protected." I spent two fricking hours on this only to discover (I know, you knew about it) that there is a Write protection tab on that little bitty, size of my fingernail, drive! I had to put on reading glasses and take it to sunlight to see the slide. So this is where dotage has led me. Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 AM | Your Say (0)

August 12, 2013

What About Benghazi? It's Simple. Obama Let Them Die.

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The American military takes incredible risks to come to the aid of its own beleaguered.
When it does not — consider Wake Island in World War II — a national scandal erupts. For now, we know that those under assault requested aid; that sending such help was imminently feasible; and that no one yet can explain why such succor was not sent. .... “Leading From Behind” has led to “Leaving Them Behind.” Victor Hanson, The Mother of All Scandals

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 PM | Your Say (0)

Katy Bar the Door

Oh, Katy bar the door.
And Katy dim the light.
Al-Qaeda has a plan.
Al-Qaeda wants a fight.

Oh, Katy get the kids.
And Katy start the car.
Al-Qaeda may be close.
We don’t know where they are.

Oh, Katy we must run,
And Katy do it now!
Al-Qaeda will attack;
We know not where or how.

And when we reach a place
Beyond al-Qaeda’s reach,
Oh, Katy build a wall
Al-Qaeda cannot breach.

And then we will be safe.
And then we will be free.
Behind a higher wall,
And happy as can be.

-- The Bard Of Murdock

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

Ole! "A conspiracy of boredom."

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Let me point out the peculiar aspect of white flight from increasingly Mexicanized things: it's seldom talked about as much as white flight from black things.
The media is constantly full of discussions of whether or not whites are listening to enough black music or giving blacks enough Academy Awards. This kind of thing strikes white people as fun to argue over. In contrast, white people's declining interest in all things Mexican or even Mexican-influenced is almost never mentioned. It's not a conspiracy of silence, however. It's a conspiracy of boredom. Why Is TV Cooler Than Movies These Days? Because Of The Mexicanization Of The American Audience.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:31 PM | Your Say (0)

Fat, Whack, and Lying is No Way to Go Through Life, Oprah

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Oprah Winfrey at Tina Turner and Erwin Bach's wedding celebrations in Zurich, Switzerland

Is Oprah lying in this latest of her many whining whimpers? Of course she is. It's what she does. Oprah Winfrey branded 'a liar' by Swiss sales assistant in racist handbag row
The saleslady has hit back, stating: 'I wasn't sure what I should present to her when she came in on the afternoon of Saturday July 20 so I showed her some bags from the Jennifer Aniston collection 'I simply told her that it was like the one I held in my hand, only much more expensive, and that I could show her similar bags. 'It is absolutely not true that I declined to show her the bag on racist grounds. I even asked her if she wanted to look at the bag.

Comment elsewhere; "Isn't it funny how just as Oprah comes out in a new movie about race and Obama is presenting her with the Medal of Freedom she is suddenly discriminated against? "

See also:Oprah: A victim of Shopping While Black or of Shopping While Fat?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:02 PM | Your Say (3)

Impressive!

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President Obama’s policy reset with Russia is working out as well as his economic stimulus, Guantanamo closing,
spending cutbacks, green energy investments, debt discipline, Benghazi investigation, Egyptian fallout, midterm campaigning, Syrian dictator-ousting, Bush-blaming, Libya-calming, Iran-isolating, job approval, budget-passing, Kim Jong-un-taming, ObamaCare implementation and Muslim-outreaching. It’s Not That He’s Liberal, And It’s Certainly Not That He’s Black. It’s That Obama Just Really Sucks At Being President | The Natural Truth

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:28 PM | Your Say (1)

Weiner: It Gets Wurst

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Instant collectible

Confirmed: Anthony Weiner is the most unpopular politician ever: Fully 80 percent of New York voters have an unfavorable opinion of Weiner, according to a Siena College poll out Monday. That's the worst showing Siena has ever found for any politician, topping the 79 percent unfavorable mark New York City comptroller candidate and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) posted in 2008 following his resignation amid a prostitution scandal.

Weiner be limbo, Weiner be quick
Weiner go unda limbo stick
All around the limbo clock
Hey, let's do the limbo rock

Limbo lower now
Limbo lower now
How low can Weiner go?

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

United We Fall: Our Egregious E Pluribus Unum

The Obama years have given us an America that looks something like a bad Kurt Russell movie from the 80s:
a weird, garish dystopia, where the president runs a death squad out of the White House, wages robot wars in foreign lands, operates a techno-panopticon sucking up every message, musing and secret desire of the populace, and lets tens of millions of citizens sink into poverty and despair in their gutted communities and crumbling infrastructure while he doles out trillions of dollars to rapacious elites gleefully bleeding the country dry. Actually, if you tried to run this scenario past a few coked-up studio execs in those halcyon years, they would have rejected it out of hand as too unrealistic, even for a bad Kurt Russell movie. Yet this is our reality. United We Fall: Our Egregious E Pluribus Unum

HT: Bill Jones

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 AM | Your Say (0)

Today @ KA-CHING!: 14,000 POSTS

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KA-CHING! Things That Go Boing in the Brain

And, as long as we are going to the count, SideLines has currently some 11,682 entries and American Digest, 7,971.

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

Facebook Memories

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

Chief Bone Necklace

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Chief Bone Necklace of the Lakota People, making up the great Sioux Nation, ca. 1899

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (0)

That all rich people are equal, but some are more equal than others,

is an unspoken axiom of American politics. It has created all sorts of confused and sloppy reporting of which the Bezos story is only the most recent and high profile example.
And it has led reporters and editors to overlook one of the most important stories of our time: The connection between the liberal ideology of the global financial elite and the social pathologies — inequality, communal dissolution, family breakdown — that plague liberal society. Inward looking and self-obsessed, status seeking and conniving, the press is all too eager to ask what the sale of the Washington Post means for its industry, and all too complacent about what the deal says about power in America. -- The Silicon Valley oligarchy comes to Washington
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (1)

"In our modern age, things no longer exist to perform their function."

Washing machines aren't designed to clean clothes, but to save water and energy.
Food isn't there to be eaten, but not eaten. And armies aren't there to win wars, but to be moral. And the truly moral army never fights a war. When it must fight a war, then it fights it as proportionately as possible, slowing down when it's winning so that the enemy has a chance to catch up and inflict a completely proportional number of casualties on them. Sultan Knish: Winning the Peace

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (0)

Thomas Jefferson takes note

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Thomas Jefferson’s pocket notebooks, composed of erasable ivory plates on which he would write
scientific observations and memoranda before copying them into notebooks in the evening. At Monticello. Jefferson made use of a practice that was a thousand years old: replace the ivory with parchment scraps (leftovers) and you end up with the medieval version of this handy “fan” notebook. Erik Kwakkel • appendixjournal: ...

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (0)

"Yes, I have missed conference calls."

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For the last two decades, I have spent 83% of my waking hours enjoying the freedom of not owning a cellphone, 5% feeling smug about it,
2% in situations in which a phone would have been awfully convenient and 10% fielding incredulous questions. The first is always: How do you do your job? (I'm not the junior blacksmith at the Renaissance Faire; I'm a managing director at a private-equity firm.) I explain that my colleagues are very tolerant, the firm provides me with all of the latest communication tools (computer, telephone, Post-its) right at my desk, and accomplishing my daily tasks without a smartphone is not beyond human capability. Indeed, people lived this way back at the Dawn of Civilization, circa 1992. Confessions of a Cellphone Holdout - WSJ.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:45 AM | Your Say (1)

Weiner Raising Less

Weiner raising much less cash since the scandal: Weiner raised an average of $16,434 per day in the first 50 days of his campaign, according to the New York Daily News, totaling more than $820,000.
But between the day his latest scandal broke on July 23 and August 5, Weiner raised only $1,897 per day, for a total of just more than $24,000. Weiner’s beleaguered wife Huma Abedin raised almost $150,000 for her husband in the first 50 days of his candidacy, but stopped raising money for Weiner completely after the scandal.

Is it just me or does his nose look like it is getting longer with each passing day?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 AM | Your Say (5)

August 11, 2013

Obamas to Marine Corps: "Fetch!"

First dog Bo is airlifted to Obama holiday home Bo, the president's Portuguese Water Dog, arrived separately on one of two MV-22 Ospreys, a hybrid aircraft which takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane. (Cost? $110 million each.)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 PM | Your Say (8)

HOW HILLARY MADE THAT $100K IN CATTLE FUTURES

Old Man Tyson wanted to buy off the Clintons, and so a money laundering scheme was hatched.
A futures account would be opened with a broker named Red Bone (no joke) in HILLARY'S NAME. Red Bone cleared through a company called Refco, which would later become MF Global. That company through its entire history and iterations has always been a hive of villainy. Anyway, the account was opened in Hillary's name and Hillary made an opening deposit of $1000. Every day at the opening bell Red Bone, per Old Man Tyson's instructions, would put in two orders: Buy 50 contracts of live cattle futures AND sell 50 contracts of live cattle futures. (I'm just using 50 as a round number, I don't know exactly what the quantites were.) .... Barnhardt.biz - Commodity Brokerage : No permalinks. Scroll.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:23 PM | Your Say (2)

Did ya ever notice?

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Doug Ross @ Journal: Things According to Randy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 PM | Your Say (4)

Another rube wakes up

Daily Kos: I'm about to pay $8665 a year for crappy high deductible insurance in NYS. Sense of Events:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:09 PM | Your Say (7)

As for the next civil war,

suffice it to say that it will be American patriots vs “everyone else”. By everyone else I mean the entire world. Both those inside American borders and without. -- Comment on neo-neocon Sherman on kinder, gentler war

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:24 AM | Your Say (2)

The Doctrine of Liberal Privilege

“Liberal Privilege is an invisible package of unearned assets which liberals can count on cashing in each day, but about which they are ‘meant’ to remain oblivious.
Liberal Privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.” When understood in this fashion, understanding the “invisible weightless knapsack” concept, the essence of everything from the liberal media to academia, mainline Protestant churches, the bureaucracies of Washington, DC, the NAACP, La Raza, the AFL-CIO, and so much more comes into 20/20 focus. Everyone involved, social, cultural, and political liberals one and all, has the requisite “maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks” of Liberal Privilege. The American Spectator : The Washington Post and Liberal Privilege

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (1)

August 10, 2013

“If I’ve only one life, let me live it as a blonde!”

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Most people, historically, have not lived their lives as if thinking, “I have only one life to live.”
Instead they have lived as if they are living their ancestors’ lives and their offspring’s lives and perhaps their neighbors’ lives as well. They have seen themselves as inseparable from the great tide of chromosomes of which they are created and which they pass on. The mere fact that you were only going to be here a short time and would be dead soon enough did not give you the license to try to climb out of the stream and change the natural order of things. Tom Wolfe's 'Me Generation' | HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:39 PM | Your Say (1)

Judge Not Lest....

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:05 PM | Your Say (10)

Q. How many angry, America-hating muslims does it take to close down multiple US Embassies?

A. Just one, if he's president.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:01 PM | Your Say (9)

If Obama were on the list the project could be fully funded on Kickstarter in about and hour

More than 100,000 want to go to Mars and not return, project says - CNN.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (0)

A Cents of Wunder

I'm wondering if the bartender is rinsing out the really dirty glasses by pouring liquor in them and letting drunks slosh it around until they're clean enough for a sober person. I wonder if naugahyde comes sticky from the factory, or do they install it aftermarket. I wonder why a deaf man loads the jukebox. Sippican Cottage: I Get These Interesting Notions

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (15)

A Brief History of Ice Cream Truck Music

When you hear an ice cream truck playing “Little Brown Jug,” you’re hearing an updated version of a 30-year-old digital unit that replicated the sound of a 55-year-old electronic unit, based on a 65-year-old mechanical unit, which was based on the music box, which was invented more than 200 years ago. And they’ve been using the same song for 70 years, and that song was written 75 years before that. - - Neatorama

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (4)

There is the nuclear question.

Does anyone possess the gall to destroy an entire nation? To destroy Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv would be to destroy Israel, and perhaps Shiva only comes in twins as the Fat Man follows the Little Boy.
But it would take a great deal more to kill America, or Russia or the planet. So how much holocaust can we stand? How must we be reorganized so that we might be able to stand when the fanatics finally get their Bomb on? At some point we are going to have to recognize the ultimate fragility of super-duper-high-level organizations. How can anything function practically four management layers higher than the Mayor of Chicago, considering that nothing much exceeds the University of Chicago? How long can we stand people's artificial loyalties when their feet don't hit their natives lands? Somewhere around a city, is what I think the limit is. We all should be at least that superstitious. We all have to go to ground. The Last New Generation - Cobb

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (3)

If Obama had an outdoor meat market it would look like Detroit.

Estimates vary, but groups place the number of strays in the city at anywhere between 20,000 and 50,000.
The latter number, which would mean 350 strays per square mile, seems quite inflated; still, there's no question the dogs are a serious problem. City of Strays

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:37 AM | Your Say (2)

Arcosanti

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It was a planned community estimated to sustain roughly 5,000 citizens at first -- but with room to grow!
Now, after nearly 40 years of architectural perfection, Arcosanti is still going strong, a measly 4,900 citizens short of its initial projected goal. We're guessing it has something to do with building a fantastic city in the middle of nowhere in an area where the average salary is minimum wage. 6 Carefully Planned 'Utopias' That Went Spectacularly Insane | Cracked.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:07 AM | Your Say (3)

1# The world doesn’t need me to “save” it

Some of history’s greatest villains were convinced they were “making the world a better place.”
When I was on the Left, I was driven more by my own personal neuroses and demons than by real concern about “the human race.” I know my comrades were, too. Looking back, I see what a bunch of screwed up individuals we were, and can’t believe we thought we knew what was best for the planet. I hope the kids wasting their time at Media Matters or handing out leaflets for the Socialist Workers’ Party come to their senses sooner than I did. 8 Things I Wish I’d Known (or Remembered) When I Was a Leftist | NewsReal Blog

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

Otokichi’s Long Trip Home

In the autumn of 1832, for instance, a cargo-ship known as the Hojunmaru was transporting rice and porcelain to Edo (now Tokyo) when it ran into a storm and was blown off-course.
The 15-metre-long ship was left far from shore without a rudder or a mast, meaning that there was no way to steer it. All that the crew could do was let their vessel drift on the ocean until they happened upon either another ship or a useful bit of land. For one of them in particular – 14-year-old Yamamoto Otokichi – this would prove to be only the beginning of a decades-long accidental circumnavigation of the globe. • Damn Interesting

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:50 AM | Your Say (0)

August 9, 2013

An angel visited me

"I've never done anything like this before, but I felt had to. Are you (my name)? "Yes, I am. Who are you?" She gave her name to me. I was pleasant, she was too.... -= Maggie's Farm

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

Somebody needs to point out, and keep pointing out, that

the pro- Amnesty/ Immigration Surge coalition includes Communists, Socialists, Cultural Marxists, sexual perverts, predatory plutocrats and crony capitalists, Reconquistas and other ethnic agenda mongers,

to say nothing of Democratic political hacks flagrantly plotting to elect a new people so as to keep their own snouts sunk in the trough. But there is, in fact, language to counter to the charge of “racism.” There is a word that has the same incantatory power—and, unlike the charge of “racism,” it happens to be accurate. That word is “Treason.” Thinking About The King Kerfuffle: The Answer To False Charges Of "Racism" Is The Truthful Charge Of Treason

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 PM | Your Say (3)

Wikipedia's Worst Case Scenario

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Alert the galaxy! Because Here Comes Honey Boo Boo - Wikipedia

In the course of the deliberations of the Wikipedia Data Preservation Taskforce, it was realized that although many catastrophes would be survivable, the possibility had to be faced that an extinction level event was possible, albeit unlikely, and plans should be initiated to preserve the encyclopedia in a non-terrestrial environment.
To this end, Wikimedia has come to arrangements with many of the world's scientific institutions for the provision of access to the vast majority of the world's radio telescopes. It is already the practice of the encyclopedia to create a database dump, a record of the data from the Wikipedia database, on a regular basis. This data is compressed using the highly efficient Honda-Beech data compression method, which compresses the data by a ratio of up to 1,000,000:1. If it is deemed to be probable that an extinction level event will occur shortly, this data shall be transmitted from the world's radio telescopes to the 300 nearest stars and to the centre of the galaxy for as long as possible.... The message will be accompanied by a short video message by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and images required for the re-creation of fundraiser banners.Wikipedia:Terminal Event Management Policy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:23 AM | Your Say (3)

Gov. Christie and Other Politicians Are Against the .50 Caliber Rifles

Christie Signs 10 New Gun Bills Into Law
"Another bans .50 caliber rifles, although .50 cals are never used in crime and are so cost prohibitive that only wealthier Americans can afford them."
Really? Not used in crime? Too expensive? Why, oh why, would politicians bother? After all, the only place weapons like that would come into play would be in an active war zone. Sometimes legislation like this is just a mystery to me.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (11)

August 8, 2013

Why Russia is recoiling from America

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“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” -- Osama bin Laden
With the death of its Marxist-Leninist ideology, Russia is moving back toward its religious and Orthodox roots.
Secretly baptized at birth by his mother, Putin has embraced this. Increasingly, religious Russians look on America, with our Hollywood values and celebrations of homosexuality, as a sick society, a focus of cultural and moral evil in the world. Do We Really Want a Cold War II?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 PM | Your Say (5)

"Suckered away from self-service."

I hate the fact that automobilies have become too complex for people to fix themselves.
That computing devices are becoming more opaque. That shoes can no longer be repaired, nor clothing nor houses. We seem to be riding a technological wave of opaquely obsolescent product, and that not only accellerates a wasteful consumerism, but it poisons what's good about *any* consumerism. Suckered Away - Cobb

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 PM | Your Say (7)

Oh gag me with a Cuisinart

Now we’ve learned that Adrian Fenty is dating Laurene Powell Jobs,
the billionaire widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The two met at a Houston education conference in 2011 and bonded over a shared passion for school reform. Steve Sailer, Fenty takes pole position to be Silicon Valley's own Tame Black President

"Shared passion for school reform..." Be still my beating heart! You know, just when you think you've seen the summit of the American bullshit mountain, someone flies by and drops another 16 tons on top.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:13 PM | Your Say (5)

GOP: Gerbil Out Party

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It's like I say about gerbils. Gerbils will always get out of their cages because all they do is plot 14 hours per day how to get out of the cage.
They have no other thoughts. They have no other goals. You cannot control something that is plotting every waking hour to escape the cage. The Republican Gerbils want [amnesty], they will never stop wanting it, they will never stop, period. I'm tired of fighting with them. At some point, you just accept that the Gerbil wants to be free to be eaten by the cat. And you let him go. Because you have better things to do with your time than minding a Gerbil all day long. -- Ace of Spades HQ

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:01 PM | Your Say (0)

Why College At All?

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Colleges and Universities love the Howard Zinn approach to history,
where you put some factual events in by year then find the worst aspects of America, even if you have to invent them. This kind of education then splits everyone into interest groups and looks at what these events mean to these groups rather than just what they meant. Word Around the Net: WHY COLLEGE AT ALL?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:13 PM | Your Say (1)

The Incredible Shrinking Workweek

ObamaCare Spurs Shift From 30- To 34-Hour Workweek To Sub-30 Hour Week - Investors.com In the second quarter, the number of workers putting in 30 to 34 hours at their primary job fell by a monthly average of 146,500, or 1.4%, from a year earlier. By comparison, the number working 25-29 hours per week in their primary job rose by 119,000, or 2.7%.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:43 PM | Your Say (0)

Perhaps It Would Be Better If We All Just Lived Our Lives According to Tampons

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:35 PM | Your Say (7)

Obama: Like Math, Economics and the Constitution This Dent Finds Geography Just Too Hard

Dent Obama: "The Panama [Canal] is being widened so that these big supertankers can come in.
Now, that will be finished in 2015. If we don't deepen our ports all along the Gulf--places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida--if we don't do that, those ships are going to go someplace else." There are major ports along the Gulf of Mexico, most notably the Port of South Louisiana and the Port of Houston. But Charleston, Savannah and Jacksonville are all on the Atlantic coast. Best of the Web Today: Great Orator Gaffes Again - WSJ.com

Ah yes, the president with "special needs."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (16)

12 Exercises to Improve Your Concentration from 1918

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Make two marks on your mirror on a level with your eyes, and think of them as two human eyes looking into yours.
Your eyes will probably blink a little at first. Do not move your head, but stand erect. Concentrate all your thoughts on keeping your head perfectly still. Do not let another thought come into your mind. Then, still keeping the head, eyes and body still, think that you look like a reliable man or woman should; like a person that anyone would have confidence in… | The Art of Manliness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (3)

Most Revolting Food Item of the Day / Week / Month / Year / Decade

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File Under: "Japan, Nuked Too Much or Not Enough?:"
What should we call it? A fish dog? A hot fish? Either way, in Japan, you can buy an ayu fish served in a long bun. You're supposed to eat the entire thing from head to tail. Care for a Fish Hot Dog? - Neatorama

That Waffle Taco from yesterday [Below] is looking better and better, isn't it?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (13)

Obamacare Full Frontal: Of 953,000 Jobs Created In 2013, 77%, Or 731,000 Are Part-Time

When the payroll report was released last month, the world finally noticed
what we had been saying for nearly three years: that the US was slowly being converted to a part-time worker society. This slow conversion accelerated drastically in the last few months, and especially in June, when part time jobs exploded higher by 360K while full time jobs dropped by 240K. | Zero Hedge

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 AM | Your Say (5)

Party Time

One of our big political parties somehow manages to market itself as the party of the Little Guy

while owning the allegiance of all the Big Guys in town. (The biggest of them all is second-largest shareholder in the party’s main propaganda organ.) The other party is heavily favored by non-Hispanic white voters yet is in financial thrall to donors and interest groups determined to drown that voter segment in a sea of cheaper immigrants. When asked, voters show strong preferences for policies that neither major party will touch with a ten-foot pole. Is Democracy’s Sun Setting? | Derbyshire

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:47 AM | Your Say (2)

August 7, 2013

"The envy of the trolls is constantly at work,"

cutting down the achievements of higher civilization.
But while it is true they annoy me, I am much more grieved by the sacrifice of freedom, my own in particular. There is this “game” of politics that we are forced to play, under troll rules. I don’t want to play it. I don’t want to have to defend everything I already have & enjoy from these appropriating People’s Committees. I should rather they get on with their miserable little lives, & find their own desperate little pleasures. Come the revolution | David Warren

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

The propaganda of the State relies on a selection of cant terms

— “democracy,” “equality,” “freedom,” “human rights,” “reform,” “progress” —
each an unqualified abstract conceptual designed to prey upon human credulity. As all sophistical language, such words are intended to make what is evil appear to be good, & what is good appear to be evil; to bait the trap, & oil the machinery for the Big Lie. They are for grinding down persons into a mulch called “The People,” & evaporating their human souls. Come the revolution : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:04 PM | Your Say (0)

Why They Can't Break Out of Porn

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93 Adult Film Stars Before and After They've Applied Make-up - Refined Guy Safe for work if not safe for your fantasy life or retinas.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:23 PM | Your Say (8)

Where's a domestic drone strike when you really need one?

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Spencer Tunick to Stage Large-Scale Nude Installation on August 30 at Burning Man 2013. Festival goers interested in participating in the installation can find instructions on how to apply here.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:07 PM | Your Say (5)

‘Invisible sex’ frightens teachers

Chief Sinadambwe of the Tonga-speaking people confirmed this yesterday.
“The male teachers complained that they have been having sex with women they cannot see. This has been happening to them for about three weeks,” he said. | Zambia Daily Mail

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:47 PM | Your Say (7)

Unleash the Waffle Taco! Because We Just Don't Have Enough Food Yet

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Taco Bell expanding test of waffle taco: Taco Bell says it's expanding its small test of waffle tacos, as it prepares to take its breakfast menu national sometime next year. The fast-food chain says the waffle taco, which includes scrambled eggs, sausage and a side of syrup, was the top seller during breakfast hours at the five Southern California restaurants where they were tested earlier this year.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:07 PM | Your Say (3)

"Meanwhile, in democracies, the bureaucracy grows & grows.

"This is absolutely inevitable: for the people will always vote to collect more, from programmes to be paid for with other people’s money. Peace may prevail, in the absence of actual bloodshed, but knot by knot the entire population binds itself in the cat’s cradle of tax & regulation, & freedom is lost from sheer aversion to risk. In a fully-fledged democracy, no one can hope to be let alone by the authorities. Whereas, that is the only freedom a government can confer." Arab autumn? : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:57 AM | Your Say (0)

The Lost World of the London Coffeehouse

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The earliest known image of a coffeehouse dated to 1674

Until the mid-seventeenth century, most people in England were either slightly — or very — drunk all of the time.
Drink London’s fetid river water at your own peril; most people wisely favoured watered-down ale or beer (“small beer”). The arrival of coffee, then, triggered a dawn of sobriety that laid the foundations for truly spectacular economic growth in the decades that followed as people thought clearly for the first time. | The Public Domain Review

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (0)

BO On TV

BO honored Jay by using his show as the springboard for addressing the American people on the most current terrorist warnings issued by his State Department. If you were able to stay up and watch, you would have seen Big Guy advise us that the current al Qaeda threats that required the closing of embassies around the globe are just a reminder of his success: "It's a reminder that for all the progress we've made ... this radical, violent extremism is still out there. We've got to stay on top of it."

Good idea! Why didn’t somebody think of that before we left Ambassador Stevens and his associates defenseless in Benghazi? Oh that’s right: because what difference, at this point, does it make?
Michelle Obama's Mirror: Closing the Curtain On the Cold War

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (1)

Missed Connection - m4w

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For months we sat on the train saying nothing to each other.
We survived on bags of skittles sold to us by kids raising money for their basketball teams. We must have heard a million mariachi bands, had our faces nearly kicked in by a hundred thousand break dancers. I gave money to the beggars until I ran out of singles. When the train went above ground I'd get text messages and voicemails ("Where are you? What happened? Are you okay?") until my phone ran out of battery. Craigslist Posting

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:47 AM | Your Say (1)

"The best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas"

History tends to get rewritten by big successes, so that in retrospect it seems obvious
they were going to make it big. For that reason one of my most valuable memories is how lame Facebook sounded to me when I first heard about it. A site for college students to waste time? It seemed the perfect bad idea: a site (1) for a niche market (2) with no money (3) to do something that didn't matter. Black Swan Farming

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (1)

"Mao Tse-Tung was right about power."

Those with the guns have it. Those without do not. The trick is to manoeuvre into possession of the guns, & then a peaceful transition follows.
Those who think the world is governed by ideas cannot know much about it. Nor is it ruled by guns, to be clear: but by the people who hold & are willing to use them — & for as long as the rest of us think they’re still awake. I’m sure that sounds cynical. But power itself is a cynical thing, & we must look to the psychotic dimension of human behaviour for the appeal of holding it. Arab autumn? : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:52 AM | Your Say (0)

Trader Joe’s, circa 1877

No, sir, no hatchets. Nope, no pickaxes either.
OK, listen, people, this isn’t really that kind of place. It’s always the same complaint: "Joe, you don’t have any of the essential items that every other trading post has. Why don’t you have saddles? Or gunpowder? Or basic tools?” Because I have soy chorizo, that’s why! Because I have chocolate-covered peanut-butter-filled pretzels! Because I have parsnip chips! Try to find parsnip chips at any other trading post! Just try! McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:25 AM | Your Say (1)

There's Only One Right Answer: Al Sharpton Asks George Zimmerman: 'Do You Want to Shoot Me?'

AL SHARPTON [Host of the MSNBC Show "Yes, Virginia, There Really Is a Bell Curve"]: George Zimmerman, you are my exclusive interview that I will conduct tonight. Under normal circumcisions I would expose a gracious welcome on my show to your presence, but I cannot do that because I’m an African American.

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: OK

AL SHARPTON: Since you coldly murdered one of my own in blood, I must resist to adhere to social edifice. In sincerity I will not apologize.

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: OK

AL SHARPTON: Millions of people expect me to ask the tough questions. To get to the heart in the batter so the almighty truth can be set free.

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: OK

AL SHARPTON: Since I am an African American with my own news show I’m under more scoopiny than a white news man, but that’s the way it is in America for people of color. -- Daily Rash

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

Mummy Dearest

10-year-old finds mummy in grandmother's atticAlexander Kettler was playing in his grandmother’s attic in Diepholz, a city in the northern German province of Lower Saxony, when he found one large and two small wooden cases stashed behind some shingles. He told his father and grandmother and neither of them had any idea where the boxes had come from or what was inside of them. When they opened up the biggest case, they found a sarcophagus holding a linen-wrapped humaniform figure that looks like Boris Karloff in The Mummy.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 AM | Your Say (2)

August 6, 2013

The Reparations Will Continue Until You Cheer Up

Documents: Attorney General Eric Holder billed taxpayers for more than $4 MILLION in travel in less than 4 years

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 PM | Your Say (5)

Misteakz Wur Maid [Bumped]

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He should have changed his name from "Don" to "Gone".- Grizzley

ABC newsman who switched genders wants to switch back:
ABC News editor Don Ennis strolled into the newsroom in May wearing a little black dress and an auburn wig and announced he was transgender and splitting from his wife. He wanted to be called Dawn. But now he says he suffered from a two-day bout of amnesia that has made him realize he wants to live his life again as Don.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 PM | Your Say (25)

Well? Is It?

“The grand question before us is really this:
is life worth living? Are men and women to live as human persons, formed in God’s image, with minds and hearts and individuality of spiritual beings, or are they to become creatures less than human, herded by the masters of the total state, debauched by the indulgence of every appetite, deprived of the consolation of religion and tradition and learning and the sense of continuity, drenched in propaganda, aimless amusements, and the flood of sensual triviality?” -- Russell Kirk Via HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 PM | Your Say (0)

This Just In: Paul Allen, 53rd Richest Man in the World, Releases Rock Song That Does Not Suck

Paul Allen and the Underthinkers Featuring Joe Walsh, 'Six Strings from Hell'

Granted it's not "Like a Rolling Stone," but what is?

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

How would we know?

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Surely only silly paranoids would believe such a thing. Surely.Via HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:06 PM | Your Say (8)

Can We Please Just Cut Straight to the Public and Televised Hanging? Thank you.

Fort Hood Shooter HASAN: 'The Evidence Will Clearly Show That I Am The Shooter'
"We the Mujahideen are imperfect Muslims trying to establish the perfect religion in the land of the supreme god." Hasan said "the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter. The dead bodies will show that war is an ugly thing." It was not clear how the 42-year-old Hasan plans to fashion his stance into a defense.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:18 PM | Your Say (13)

Timely and True: This just turned up on my automated quote bar.

"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant, and the crazy, crazier." - H.L.Mencken AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:59 PM | Your Say (1)

Korean Woman's 10 Second Driving Test

My brother once told me that members of the California Highway Patrol had a secret code for their tickets: "DWO" ("Driving While Oriental") but that was probably just a baseless, racist rumor with no facts to back it up.

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

A Newspaper or a New Penthouse: What $250 Million Buys These Days

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$250 Million Monaco Mansion - The World's Most Expensive Penthouse Nestled atop a 49-story building in Monaco, this multi-level penthouse spans a whopping 33,000 square feet,
and includes 6 bedrooms, a water slide from the second balcony taking you right into the infinity pool overlooking the ocean. As of right now the Tour Odeon penthouse is still under construction, and is slated to hit the market in 2014. If everything goes according to plan, this will in fact be the most expensive penthouse ever listed with a projected asking price of more than $250 million.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (2)

For some, college not worth the debt

While some college students make friends, and memories, for a lifetime,
others are lonely, depressed and uncertain, drifting from major to major until eventually they graduate with whatever degree is easiest, and a lot of debt. Or, sometimes, they don't graduate at all, but still have a lot of debt. For some, college is the beginning of problems with drugs, or drinking, or sex that will cloud their adulthood for years, or even a lifetime. Glenn Reynolds: Column

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (6)

"When I think of the tenured,"

"I think of pomposity and vacuity; or pretentiousness and absurdity. Nor am I alone in so thinking. For example, Nicolás Gómez Dávila -- AKA Don Colacho -- aphirms that "There is an illiteracy of the soul which no diploma cures." One Cosmos: Trained Beasts and the Modern Multiversity

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (0)

If Obama has a son who had a "fashion-line" it would look like this lackluster rag bag.

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Mishka's Fall 2013 Collection Mishka has been running streetwear for the past ten years.
It’s become a staple brand for miscreants of all stripes—from skate punks and comics nerds to hip-hop heads and ghetto-goth kids. Which is probably why it’s impossible to walk the streets of New York City without catching a glimpse of the Brooklyn-based brand’s iconic bloodshot “Keep Watch” eyeball.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (5)

"Jay Carney is unperturbed;

he argues that while the situation in the Middle East may appear to be deteriorating, that is not the case. The “core” of al-Qaeda remains dead. The snake’s head in Pakistan/Afghanistan has been crushed, even though it’s distant tail may be twitching in post-mortem spasms:

As al-Qaeda’s core has been diminished through the efforts of the United States and our allies, affiliate organizations, including in particular, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, have strengthened. We have here in Washington have identified AQAP in particular as the dangerous threat. Belmont Club » The Triumph of Self-Deception

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (0)

It Seems Like Only Yesterday.... Wait, It Was Yesterday!

The left was just celebrating the demise of Rush Limbaugh, which isn't going to happen, and suddenly we watch the fall of biased partisan, liberal iconic fish-wrap like the Washington Post, Newsweek, the the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times.  Still celebrating? Bob Woodward Saddened by "Washington Post" Sale to Jeff Bezos

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (4)

August 5, 2013

A-Rod and His Band of Brothers

Rangers outfielder Nelson Cruz, Tigers shortstop Jhonny Peralta, Phillies reliever Antonio Bastardo,
Mets outfielder Jordany Valdespin, Padres shortstop Everth Cabrera, free-agent pitcher Jordan Norberto, Yankees catcher Francisco Cervelli, Mariners catcher Jesus Montero, Mets outfielder Cesar Puello, Astros pitcher Sergio Escalona, Padres pitcher Fautino De Los Santos and Yankees outfielder Fernando Martinez have accepted their punishments handed out by Major League Baseball .... A-Rod calls last 7 months a 'nightmare' after MLB lowers boom on him, 12 others | Fox News

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 PM | Your Say (7)

"You provide the prose poems I'll provide the war."

Can Jeff Bezos save The Washington Post? Bezos, with his $25.2 billion personal fortune, certainly has the resources to invest in his new acquisition. How he chooses to do so will be an interesting experiment not only for the Post, but for the news industry as a whole.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:02 PM | Your Say (8)

Instagram Is Apparently Worth Four Washington Posts

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This isn't about how the Post was undervalued, either—it's been desiccating for years now.
It's about how overvalued those bloated toast-of-the-town social media sites are, and how we're so easily fooled by the appearance of platforms that transmit our information. There's just no way that the information that the Washington Post and the Boston Globe generates combined is worth just one third of an app that tints your iPhone pics. But that's just how things are right now. | Motherboard

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:49 PM | Your Say (2)

Pay-up time for Brawley: '87 rape-hoaxer finally shells out for slander

’87 rape hoaxer Tawana Brawley begins paying defamation damages 25 years later - Just $431,000 to go....

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

To resign in order to spend more time with his family

Sheriff's deputy arrested for pistol-whipping his father when he caught him having sex with his wife in their son's bedroom

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (6)

Five Lessons from Egypt and the Arab Spring

Sultan Knish explains all five to you in detail:

1. Don't Believe Anything You Hear

2. It's Not Democracy, It's Permanent Chaos

3. Everyone Will Always Hate America

4. Fanatics and Democracy Don't Mix

5. The Muslim World Has No New Ideas

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 AM | Your Say (6)

What’s Happening Between Russia And The Church?

Item World leaders should unite to end anti-Christian persecution, Vladimir Putin says.
“Putin praised the growth of cooperation between the Orthodox Churches and the Russian state, saying, ‘We act as genuine partners and colleagues to solve the most pressing domestic and international tasks, to implement joint initiatives for the benefit of our country and people.’” | William M. Briggs

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

"Why don’t I keep politics out of this blog?"

Because I found it impossible. If I’m going to talk about things about which I care deeply, I will impinge on the political.
Not because as it was common in the seventies “The personal is political” but because the side of the equation that views every facet of human life as likely to be improved by government regulation also tends to consider anything political. Over the years I’ve found that saying something like “I believe that public schools are doing a serious disservice to children” is political – even though it’s very personal and I experienced it. Or “I believe men get the wrong end of the stick in law and society these days” – political. Or “I like the old fashioned incandescent lightbulbs best” – political. Or “Low flush toilets are really multiple flush toilets” – political. Or “Animals are cute and tasty with mustard” – political. Or… The Political Is Personal | According To Hoyt

Video Update

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:27 AM | Your Say (5)

Duck and Cower in Obama's America

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American world now under military curfew, "sheltering in place" like all of Boston in April. 21 embassies shut for a week. The West Wing's Sunday -- The Dent plays golf for seven hours.

The West Wing in Dream - President Bartlet: "Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the Earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words civis Romanus -- I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens."

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

Placebo Buttons [Bumped]

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Final fears confirmed:
"Computers and timers now control the lights at many intersections, but at one time little buttons at crosswalks allowed people to trigger the signal change. Those buttons are mostly all disabled now, but the task of replacing or removing all of them was so great most cities just left them up. ォ You Are Not So Smart

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (12)

"Of the mass media that made -- and makes -- Obama possible,"

Voegelin wrote in 1956 of "communication as intoxicant":
"The spread of media mass communication... can be used as an essential indicator of the destruction of the personality. For only people whose personality is already deeply corroded will use these media as regular intoxicants.... "For me, the worst damage of mass media is not the impairment of 'morality' but the destruction of personality through intellectual confusion and vulgarization. One Cʘsmos: TV and College: Shielding the Soul from Reality for 60 Years

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (0)

"The beauty of military dictatorship."

If we must have a republic, I recommend the “banana” variety.
Generals, in the main, are men of little imagination, & simple tastes. They love order, to be sure, but in the balance of public vices, a little order is seldom a bad thing. They are not easily infected by ideology, or any other form of intellectual ambition; even those who acquire some may lose it after a while. They don’t much care what one is doing, so long as it will not threaten the peace, or otherwise interfere with their breakfast. Should the general be smart enough to fully understand his need to avoid free elections, he will become unobtrusive. He won’t go out of his way to antagonize anyone. He may line his own pockets, & those of his friends — for as Valéry said, “Power without abuse loses its charm.” But the odd billion into a Swiss bank account is a small price to pay for freedom.David Warren -- Arab autumn?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:59 AM | Your Say (3)

August 4, 2013

The Eye of Sauron Is Watching YOU!

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Tolkien’s most potent and intimidating image of centralized surveillance, the Eye of Sauron atop a tower,
taking in the whole world, has resonated with those who are paranoid about government monitoring. But it’s Sauron’s vulnerability that has the most relevance for America today. Consider the basic premise of Tolkien’s trilogy: a small group of dedicated subversives willing to sacrifice their lives slips in under the surveillance system of a great power, blends in with an alien population, and delivers a devastating blow to the heart of its empire, leaving its security forces in disarray and its populace terrified. Even a tower or two crumbles to dust. Far from being covert, much of this operation is conducted in plain sight, with the great power aware of its enemies’ existence, if not their intent. Given its prescience about modern-day terrorism, Tolkien’s vision offers at least three lessons for present-day America. Tolkien v. Orwell: Who understood modern surveillance best? - Slate Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 PM | Your Say (1)

The "Fatberg" vs Thames Water

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" congealed cooking oil and wet wipes"

This Just In [Or Out, As The Case May Be]:
"While we’ve removed greater volumes of fat from under central London in the past, we’ve never seen a single, congealed lump of lard this big clogging our sewers before. The sewer was almost completely clogged with over 15 tonnes of fat. If we hadn’t discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston." Sewer Watch

In the future, more fiber. But for now, more on Fatbergs and the Head Flusher of London.

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

It's Just a Phase

The Obama administration is in an interesting phase,
one in which things are under control but falling apart, where they are winning but they’re losing, when the economy is booming but real unemployment is unexpectedly high. It’s a time when Obamacare is just around the corner but just postponed. Belmont Club サ Partly Truth and Partly Fiction

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:54 AM | Your Say (0)

On Closed Embassies, the Worldwide Travel Alert, and Wimpitude

It'll be a happy day when American embassies are again built in busy downtown intersections out of normal materials

- and not, as they are now, bunkers located in distant lots surrounded by high fences. Such a change will only be possible when the safety of Americans depends not on walls, metal detectors and Marine guards, but on the deterrence established by years of terrible retribution against anyone who so much as harms a single American citizen. :: Daniel Pipes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (6)

It is not the design of the organ, but the background silence that interests me here.

Perhaps I should explain : Essays in Idleness

What was the consequence of giving that up? What has been the effect on men’s souls of surrounding their ears, minute by minute, day & night, with the throb & clatter, fracas & din of our vile mechanical devices? We shut this out to remain sane, but even in small towns, even on the modern, industrialized farms, open your ears to apparent quiet & you will only become conscious of background irritations in a lower decibel range. To which bird-slaughtering wind turbines are now being added.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 AM | Your Say (0)

“We have two positions I called, for shorthand, ‘capitalist’ & ‘socialist’ — both worshipping false gods.

Ends & means : Essays in Idleness

“We stand today at a crossroads. One path leads to despair & utter hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (0)

"There’s plenty of money, it’s just the government doesn’t have it,”

Thus sayeth Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) Ellison continued, “
The government has a right, the government and the people of the United States have a right to run the programs of the United States. Health, welfare, housing – all these things.” The ‘Inclusive Prosperity Act’ would levy a sales tax on the trading of stocks, bonds and derivatives.

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

"The term that stabs is 'equal opportunity.' "

The rich & poor had always lived together, everywhere else in the world.
One might argue that America’s chief export has been “the gated community,” at the crown of a system of segregation or “apartness”; of by-laws enforcing neighborhood by class. It works with retailing by market stratum, & “lifestyle” advertising to postal location; everyone within a given neighborhood having tastes & wants much the same. By increments we have become a continent gerrymandered for “democracy” — for the purposes of mass marketing, & mass politics, also much the same. David Warren, The dead motor

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:55 AM | Your Say (2)

First World Protests

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:15 AM | Your Say (2)

A Man of Combined Fields

The Costanza Effect: "An article last Sunday about Caroline Kennedy and her nomination to be the ambassador to Japan described incorrectly the professional credentials of her husband, Edwin Schlossberg. He is an expert in interactive design and an artist, with a Ph.D. in the combined fields of English, physics and American literature; he is not an architect." Corrections - August 4, 2013 - NYTimes.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:10 AM | Your Say (1)

August 3, 2013

Who Says There's No Good News?

New York Times sells Boston Globe at 93 percent loss, returns to advising America how economy should be run

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

Five Years of Stories Free

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To celebrate our fifth birthday, Tor.com assembled the last five years of our award-winning original fiction into downloadable ebook files! So many folks are still discovering and downloading the anthology that we’re going to keep the offer going for another week! Download Extended! | Tor.com

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

Old Dead Futures

In “Old Dead Futures,” a young boy’s ability to change the future makes him valuable to the government.
But that same ability keeps him trapped in a wheelchair and at the mercy of those who would use him. When our present is fixed, how can we see a different future? .... "There are so many futures that there are many that will do what the men want. Many futures, all with tiny differences. " by Tina Connolly | Tor.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:17 PM | Your Say (0)

Seattle to city workers: 'Citizen', 'brown bag' not to be used in official docs [Bumped]

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Bronstein is "passionate" about: "Bicycling, literature, and race and social justice. Note the alphabetical order. I guess my idea of a perfect moment would be riding my bike while reading Ralph Ellison. Until I run into a parked car." [Soon please.]

Elliot Bronstein wins the Bronzed Drool Cup of the Day Award:
"Luckily," Elliott Bronstein wrote, "we've got options." "For 'citizens,' how about 'residents?'" she wrote. Bronstein also told KOMO the term "brown bag" has a sordid history with racial undertones. "It used to be a way people could judge skin color," she said. "For a lot of particularly African-American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home," she added. - National Policy & Issues | Examiner.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:49 PM | Your Say (33)

When I think of the Three Stooges and Hope & Crosby,

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I think of the millions of American men who would be drastically affected by WW2.
Not very bright men, but men with patriotic courage and faith, with grit and determination over a narrow range of endeavors. Men who make for good soldiering, given the proper equipment. And those men came out victorious behind Monty, Ike and Bradley, despite never having to go to Russia. And we pulled it off, and the world breathed a sigh - Allies triumphant. And those men came home, created a Baby Boom and went to college on the GI bill, moved to brand new suburbs and started driving brand new Cadillacs. In the 1950s we invented a brand new American Way. 1953 was worlds apart from 1933. Spite for the Baby Boom - Cobb

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (1)

There's Just Nothing Global Warming Can't Do!

North Pole Sees Unprecedented July Cold – Arctic Sees Shortest Summer On Record — ‘Normally the high Arctic has about 90 days above freezing. This year there was less than half that’ | Climate Depot

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (5)

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles. And Death.

Riding with an uncertain driver — feeling the bulk of an enormous machine lurch beneath their sweating palms,
hearing them gasp when someone merges in front of them on the freeway, watching as they swerve uncertainly into the fast lane to escape—it pops into the center of your consciousness that cars, these fast-moving, two-ton metal boxes bunched tightly on the road, are death traps. It’s just their familiarity erases this from our workaday minds. - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (0)

The Eaters of Government Cheese

It seemed to me, from talking to many of my patients, that that was the kind of journey upon which they were embarked.
They had been relieved of the requirement to take an interest in their surroundings that the often painful necessity to wrest a subsistence from them conferred, for their subsistence was assured; on the other hand, they had not been encouraged to develop or had not attained the mental attitudes to find the world of inexhaustible interest. The result was a kind of ontological boredom: they were bored with being, with existence itself. To this boredom there were two possible responses: the first was a listlessness, conducive to the grossest overeating and chronic hypnosis by television, and the second was an attempt to overcome boredom by the introduction of drama, no matter how destructive, into life, which was thereby turned into a soap opera. Better pain and misery than waking anaesthesia. Butterfly Minds > Theodore Dalrymple

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

Alas and Alack

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (4)

August 2, 2013

"Racist" is the New "Heretic"

Public support for race-based Affirmative-Action now stands at a record low. A Gallup poll just released in July found that two-thirds of Americans—and fully three-quarters of Whites—disapprove of racial preference schemes aimed at engineering more “Diversity” on college campuses.

Make no mistake, the high priests of PC orthodoxy still control academia, government, and establishment media. They will continue to militantly push their agenda through the institutions they control, even as they lose their grip on the minds of Whites.

But the point is that they are losing control. They have revealed themselves to be moral dogmatists who push pre-Darwinian views of human evolution. The "Racism" Bubble

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

Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger!

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Introducing The Cheese & Burger Society: 30 top of the line cheeseburgers complete with "Make the Burger" and "Meet the Cheese." You will be hungry.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (5)

Happy 25th to Rush Limbaugh, Greatest Conservative Since Reagan

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"Rush Limbaugh is reviled less for what he says than because

he shot the first shot the first shot of the New Media war over twenty years ago when he turned AM into the meeting place for America’s massive conservative underground. Because of Rush there are countless imitators influencing large amounts of people across America in a billion-dollar talk-radio industry that didn’t exist a generation ago,” Andrew Breitbart -- The Conversation

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (16)

Zimmerman's Packing a Gun. Wouldn't You?

George Zimmerman Stopped for Speeding, Has Gun - ABC News
Police in Texas have pulled over George Zimmerman for speeding and then the man acquitted in one of America's most controversial trials in years alerted the officer that he had a gun in his glove compartment.

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

August 1, 2013

Dozens of CIA operatives on the ground during Benghazi attack

Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night,
and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret. Exclusive: – The Lead with Jake Tapper - CNN.com Blogs

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:39 PM | Your Say (9)

Absence of Like

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The Like button, in actuality, provides us with a binary choice: one may click the button, or one may leave the button unlicked.
The choice is not between Like and Dislike but rather between Like and Absence of Like, the latter being a catch-all category of non-affiliation encompassing not only Dislike but also Not Sure and No Opinion and Don’t Care and Ambivalent and Can’t Be Bothered and Not in the Mood to Deal with This at the Moment and I Hate Facebook — the whole panoply, in other words, of states of non-affiliation with particular things or beings. --| ROUGH TYPE

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:17 PM | Your Say (1)

The “New Electorate Project” is going to flop.

Yes, the “legalization” will be huge on paper, but I doubt most of those people intend to live here – they just want to file for social security/disability. This of course means those systems crash fast. (They’re already on the verge of crashing.) Part of the “importing a new electorate” project assumes that the blue model goes on forever, and that payments are secure and unlimited. It ain’t so. Get Away From That Ledge III | According To Hoyt

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

Seattle High Times: "Record-setting joint planned for Hempfest" [Bumped]

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A marijuana purveyor hopes to build a 2 pound joint during Hempfest, the first time
the annual pot celebration will be held since marijuana possession was decriminalized in Washington. In a statement Tuesday, Prohibition Brands President Brian Laoruangroch said the company hopes to build a 1 kilogram joint during Hempfest. The monster doob would be the largest on record, according toLaoruangroch. - seattlepi.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:03 PM | Your Say (18)

This Is the World's First TV Ad

The first TV commercial — the first legal one, at any rate — aired in the U.S. on July 1, 1941. It was a shaky, 10-second spot for Bulova, a watch and jewelry company that had been founded in New York 66 years before. The spot cost Bulova all of $9: $4 for airtime and $5 for "station charges," according to American Heritage magazine. (Presumably its agency, Biow Company, took a slice of those "station charges.") The commercial only reached, at best, a few thousand people: Only 4,000 TV sets had been installed in New York at that time.... U.S. advertisers are expected to increase their spending on TV this year by nearly $2 billion to $66.35 billion. Mashable

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (0)

How Hollywood Helped Hitler [BUMPED]

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Soon every studio started making deep concessions to the German government, and when Hitler came to power in January 1933,
they dealt with his representatives directly. The most important German representative in the whole arrangement was a diplomat named Georg Gyssling, who had been a Nazi since 1931. He became the German consul in Los Angeles in 1933, and he consciously set out to police the American film industry. How Hollywood Helped Hitler (Exclusive)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 AM | Your Say (14)

I speak now of the youths, the poor, and the terminally liberal.

The American camels, the scimitar cats, that voted for Obama. You voted for a drink of cool water from a dangerous pit of despair.
The water hole other animals eschewed. It was convenient, it smelled tasty. You could not resist. Some animals were drinking! Yes, they were. The dumb ones. The short-faced bears and bison. Now the tar has grabbed you. What concerns me is not that the terminally retarded get trapped by the tar. Hell, that happens. What's troubling is the doubling down, that the beast that is buggering you is going to save you. Hell, he probably nudged you in, idiot. You are not his friend. You are his dinner. Velociworld: The Tar Pits

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (2)

Why coverage of Obama is so boring.

Republicans are evil, Obama is weak--what a dull narrative that is, and how unsatisfying except as an object of mockery.
If only those who sympathize with Obama were willing to acknowledge his flaws--his intellectual superficiality, moral hubris, susceptibility to flattery and political immaturity among them--they might be able to develop a narrative of his presidency that would be interesting and enlightening. Obama might make a compelling tragic hero if today's journalists had any storytelling ability. Best of the Web Today: Losing the Plot - WSJ.com

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

The Environmental Apocalypse

The liberal billionaire who clamors about sustainability likes progress.
What he dislikes is the middle class with its mass produced cars and homes, cheap restaurants full of fatty foods and television sets and daily deliveries of cardboard boxes full of stuff and shopping malls. He thinks, in all sincerity, that they would be happier and more spiritually fulfilled as peasants. It's not an original idea. Sultan Knish:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (1)

From Little Fanny to Fluffy Ruffles: The Scrappy History of Paper Dolls

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What cut-ups they were! | Collectors Weekly

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

Amnesty would never be seriously discussed in China or Russia,

because neither allow any ambiguity about their national existence.
The notion of borders does not confuse their political elites. But they confuse our addled Post-American politicians who don't seem to grasp the relevance of the concept of citizenship in an age when anyone with enough money can just get on a plane and go places. Sultan Knish: A Season for Treason

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (0)

44 Facts About The Death Of The Middle Class

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The middle class in America is being absolutely shredded and the ranks of the poor are steadily growing. The following are 44 facts about the death of the middle class that every American should know...

1. According to one recent survey, "four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives". 2. The growth rate of real disposable personal income is the lowest that it has been in decades. 3. Median household income (adjusted for inflation) has fallen by 7.8 percent since the year 2000. 4. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before. 5. The home ownership rate in the United States is the lowest that it has been in 18 years. 6. It is more expensive to rent a home in America than ever before. In fact, median asking rent for vacant rental units just hit a brand new all-time record high. | Zero Hedge

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (0)