« October 2014 | Main | December 2014 »
November 30, 2014
The most basic human instrument of terror is the thug.
The thug rarely works, unless it’s as a pimp, a smuggler, or a general-purpose wiseguy.
Turned into a political instrument, the thug has an explicit party membership. He may collect a stipend and hold a title, which he can augment with his sidelines and his position of legal authority. Part of what makes the thug useful is that he is disposable if he causes problems.Instruments of the Terror | Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (5)
November 29, 2014
This will always be my favorite meme ever.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:00 PM | Your Say (5)
Shoppers Loot Candle Store For Being Closed On Thanksgiving
Best Buy employee Tom Hitchins witnessed the destruction:
“It was crazy. First one person started started smashing windows, then a second, then a third. before I knew it, hundreds of people were running around the parking lot with candles over their head like they had just won the lottery.- - The Daily Currant
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:17 AM | Your Say (3)
November 28, 2014
Reading Obits
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 AM | Your Say (8)
"I got a million miles of highway under my ass"
This whole train of thought vibes: fear. People tend to forget that Americans are the most resourceful, resilient, capable citizens in still the smartest and strongest country on the planet.
We have been through tough times before - wars, depressions, civil and natural catastrophes. Maybe there will be violence and bloodshed (brother against brother comes to mind) and maybe some will starve or be packed off to gulags. So what? I don't know about you, folks, but I am a winner. I put my trust in God and do the best I can every day to look after me and mine. I am willing - and not afraid - to die for my beliefs. There's a whole lot in life I don't worry about; I am pretty well centered in my own spirituality and the older I get I allow that there's probably about 23 different ways to get into Heaven. "Everybody's got their own way to butter their bread" as my father would say, "don't trust the priests, son, all they got a key to is the shithouse". And besides, as I get older I pay more attention to the evidence and less to the arguments. It's like being in Caligula's Rome. A half breed faggot of dubious provenance on the throne and toadying grifters running the place. You think I will let them get the better of me? When I see some of these folks running their game I want to say “Kid, I ran with bikers, shot junk, robbed banks; my hands have taken lives and saved lives; I worked with the Billy Graham Crusade; I got a million miles of highway under my ass, slept with dogs, danced with angels, I got screwdrivers older than you … what ya gonna show me, uh?” But I don’t. Nowadays I just kinda watch it all going down.- Comment Posted by: chasmatic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:45 AM | Your Say (4)
Meanwhile Arnold Schwarzenegger's Life Is Unfolding According to Plan
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 AM | Your Say (1)
"Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?"
20 And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;
21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.
22 And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord.
23 And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?
24 Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?
25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
26 And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
Genesis 18 - And the LORD appeared unto him in the - Bible Gateway
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:28 AM | Your Say (1)
It is time that higher education paid the same corporate income taxes that every other industry in America pays.
I would force Harvard to liquidate that $35 billion Harvard sits on in endowment funds.
And I would tax donations to every college in the United States. These are not charities. They are huge corporations run by six-figure corporate executives. Nor are these institutions exempt from civil rights law. I want to see someone punished for passing off Ward Churchill and Elizabeth Warren as Indians to meet some affirmative action quota. Perhaps the next president can RICO the Ivy League and even do a thorough antitrust investigation of higher education.Don Surber: Ivy League's Yellow Peril
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:17 AM | Your Say (6)
With fire they could project their reach far beyond their immediate grasp,
Landscapes that already had fire could be taken over and redirected by anthropogenic burning. Landscapes that lacked routine fire could acquire it. If its firepower allowed humanity to expand, so too humanity became the vector by which fire could propagate into new realms. The two became co-extensive. Humanity carried fire to Antarctica. Fire lofted humanity into space.Moved by Fire: History’s Promethean Moment—Vol. 2, No. 4—The Appendix
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:40 AM | Your Say (1)
Those with memories beyond a garden slug
will come to be dumbfounded by the number of heretofore sacred liberal positions that liberals will eventually jettison.
First the white working class was traded out out for their hardly working black counterparts. The white middle class shortly followed. Anti-corporatism has quietly been evacuated. And very soon baby boomer SS and Medicare recipients will learn that the ubiquitous slur “old white people” is simply a rhetorical prelude to transitioning funds to more vibrant welfare and Medicaid beneficiaries. All their prior votes for democrats soon to be long forgotten–none were so easily manipulated.Environment, We Hardly Knew Ye | The Kakistocracy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:44 AM | Your Say (1)
“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets,
it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.” Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:17 AM | Your Say (0)
Just as Christianity’s pews now often lie fallow, so challenged will be liberalism.
faith is easy when it’s easy. When the only costs of conspicuous moral vanity are high taxes and the search for “good schools.”
But man’s relationship with his diverse God is tested in adversity. When those fewer good schools begin to orbit out of financial reach and weeping public school children greet a man’s arrival home from a salary-pressured job Americans used to do. When crime and societal dysfunction seep into your own declining property value neighborhood. When a random youth robbery gone wrong impacts a loved one. When the go areas eventually become smaller than the no-gos. There is where faith will be tested. Many will fail.
There are over seven billion souls on Earth. Only a tiny decreasing fraction of whom are white liberals. The notion that their religious worldview and its precious pieties sits firmly entrenched upon The Right Side of History is perhaps one of the most sadly comical misapprehensions of modernity. Liberalism is dying. The only question is whether it can complete its final grim chore. And to think, not even a virgin awaits.A God from the Machine | The Kakistocracy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:05 AM | Your Say (1)
November 27, 2014
Audubon’s wild turkeys
“…the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”And of the bald eagle:
“He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk [osprey]; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him.”| Lines and Colors :: a blog about drawing, painting, illustration, comics, concept art and other visual arts
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 PM | Your Say (0)
The media doesn’t want to avoid another Ferguson.
They love the Ferguson story, the Trayvon Martin story, and the Rodney King story of yore.
If such stories don’t emerge naturally, the media will create them, not avoid them. The media errors that Tracinski lists in his article are not really errors at all, they are purposeful propaganda techniques and rabble-rousing, combined with a not-immoderate degree of MSM self-puffery.neo-neocon ｻ Blog Archive ｻ Excellent advice to the media on how to avoid another Ferguson
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 PM | Your Say (0)
An EMP attack is not one from which America could recover as we did after Pearl Harbor.
Such an attack might mean the end of the United States and most likely the Free World. It is of the highest priority to have a president and policy makers not merely acknowledge the problem, but also make comprehensive missile defense a reality as soon as possible. What a Single Nuclear Warhead Could Do - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:19 PM | Your Say (0)
It was, in retrospect, almost inevitable that North America
would quickly become the wealthiest place in the world by the 17th century.
Why? Because those seditionists, fanatics, and gamblers were impossible to rule. While we are counting our blessings this Thanksgiving, let’s not forget to count that one: Our ancestors did not much like being told what to do, and we — and the world — are immeasurably richer and happier for that.Those Ungovernable Colonists | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:24 PM | Your Say (1)
With my frightening horse-sized hypodermic needle, I am injecting cider into the birds this year.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:57 AM | Your Say (2)
The Colonized Minds
“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.” – William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 AM | Your Say (0)
I ask everybody with a keyboard and an opinion, "Who is your Leviathan".
Everybody on the internet thinks they can say something, wish something, vote something into being if their meme is virulent enough. I call bullshit on that.
I look at what it actually takes to pull levers, cut steel, lay bricks, stop bad guys, put out fires, pour cement, fly planes, set broken bones, grow crops, tend herds. That's a very different business than retweeting, posting, coding, voting, critiquing cultural productions, socializing concepts, raising awareness, supporting causes. Hard physical skills vs soft verbal skills. Whether or not democratic institutions fail, the former are more important than the latter.Ferguson Burning - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:34 AM | Your Say (0)
Ferguson burning is a good thing.
I say that anger and frustration are just like farts in the wind. Nothing political really matters until people are ready to burn things down. It makes for good dividing lines. The Ferguson mob is a lynch mob, there's no question about that. If they could get their hands on The Man, they would stone him. That's good news. It has clarity. It shows that people actually have the courage of their convictions, they are putting their money where their mouths are. We, at long last, have a proper mob.Ferguson Burning - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:29 AM | Your Say (7)
The great phase change came when people exhausted the firepower
offered by Earth’s living biota and turned to its fossil varieties.
They converted from open burning to closed combustion, from landscape fires and hearths to coal-fired furnaces, gasoline-powered cars, and natural gas-driven dynamos. For industrial societies fire as a presence disappeared. It vanished from houses, from factories, from fields, and continues to do so. It survives when the social order collapses due to wars, famines, or natural disasters. People no longer burned their lawns. Laws banned bonfires. Student dorms banned even candles. Barbecues abandoned wood and charcoal for propane. Free-burning fire existed in lawless zones and, as though it were an endangered species, in nature preserves. The only fires that people living in an industrial society typically see are those on screens. Fire has become virtual.Moved by Fire: History’s Promethean Moment—Vol. 2, No. 4—The Appendix
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:42 AM | Your Say (0)
Perhaps most poignantly, there is the great fauna of that continent.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:39 AM | Your Say (1)
November 26, 2014
Into the air junior birdmen!
and besides this photo and a brief mention of the vehicle in a newspaper clipping from Andalusia, Alabama, it might as well have not existed at all. According to the story, the photo above is of Jess Dixon; it was supposedly taken sometime around 1940. Although it’s considered a flying car by aviation history buffs, the machine is actually closer to a “roadable helicopter,” due to the two overhead blades spinning in opposite directions. In other words, it’s a gyrocopter that can also roll.9 Of The Most Unusual And Unique Flying Cars | Unusual Corner
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 PM | Your Say (5)
I was going to write a lengthy article describing how the media has distorted the facts of the Brown/Wilson case
But I was overcome with a vast sense of weariness.
I feel as though I’m in an ocean liner that’s taken on enough water to sink, and I’m equipped with only a teaspoon to bail it out while the entire crew is hard at work punching more holes in the hull. That may be a poor analogy, but I think you get the idea. Suffice to say that the entire MSM, the administration, the professional racemongers, and the left in all its glorious manifestations (including the preening, self-righteous Hollywood crowd, scrambling to outdo themselves in showing their allegiance with the Brown forces) were determined to make Michael Brown into the post-Trayvon martyr du jour. No matter what the facts would reveal. Facts are for the little people.neo-neocon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:00 PM | Your Say (2)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:50 PM | Your Say (4)
"We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty." - G.K. Chesterton
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:06 AM | Your Say (7)
Where One Bull + "Flammable Balls" = Festival!
Toro de Jubilo, a Fire Bull festival, is an ancient tradition held annually at midnight in the Spanish town of Medinaceli. The event starts when flammable balls attached to a bull's horns are set alight. The animal is then untied and revelers dodge it until the flammable material is consumed. The bull is covered with a thick layer of mud on the back and face to protect it from burns.Fire Bull Festival - In Focus - The Atlantic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:50 AM | Your Say (5)
Caveman Liberalism
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Robert Stacy McCain Summation of Liberal Values:
Women, good; men, bad.
Youth, good; adults, bad.
Atheists, good; Christians, bad.
Hedonism, good; responsibility, bad.
Abortion, good; motherhood, bad.
Sodomy, good; normal sex, bad.
Wilderness, good; carbon energy, bad.
Labor unions, good; entrepreneurs, bad.
Government, good; corporations, bad.
Foreigners, good; Americans, bad.
Democrats, good; Republicans, bad.
Via Don Surber who adds: My modifications to his list would be:
Wilderness, good; carbon energy, civilization bad.
Labor unions, good; entrepreneurs, workers, bad.
My one addition would be:
Enemy, good; our military, bad.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:37 AM | Your Say (4)
The 51st State
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:36 AM | Your Say (2)
Regin can be thought of as the B-2 bomber of cyberware.
It was a vehicle for different kinds of payloads which dropped software components in the target systems.
These components constituted a secret library which could later be invoked by some signal or event, or which routinely interacted with other components in ways that are as yet poorly understood. Regin came to public attention when researchers at Symantec realized that one of the ‘viruses’ they were cataloging was only the tip of a shadowy iceberg.Belmont Club » The Wizards At War
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:32 AM | Your Say (1)
Neither Cause Nor Effect
Worse than Mere Madness (1) start with a reasonable and obvious good, say, the moral good of charity to the poor, or equality between the races, as a major premise.
(2) Without drawing attention to it, slip in a doubtful but not insane minor premise, say, the economists think inflating the currency will create demand which in turn creates meatpies falling from clouds, or that concerned and thoughtful people have concluded a strong central government armed with the power to read men’s hearts will abolish race hatred. (3) Derive an utterly Lovecraftian noneuclidean shrieking horror of insanity conclusion from it, such as that the you must surrender your liberty and dignity to achieve this obvious good in the first case, or, in the second case, that you must surrender your liberty and dignity to achieve this obvious good. In fact, in all cases, the conclusion is always the same: you are being asked to surrender your liberty and dignity, to adopt absurdities of speech and behavior, and invite halfwitted bureaucrats or perverted or crapulent politicians to pester, belittle, and rob you, in order to achieve some obvious good which has no possible cause and effect relationship to the liberties and dignities you are surrendering.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 AM | Your Say (1)
When Congress is on vacation....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:06 AM | Your Say (0)
Fire history is Big History:
it’s the story of what makes the Earth what it is.
Our planet is built to burn. Life in the oceans fluffed the atmosphere with oxygen, life on land stuffed surfaces with combustibles. Combustion takes apart what photosynthesis brings together. The chemistry of life is a chemistry of combustion. It’s what makes the animate world move. Earth has been burning continuously for 420 million years. Fire is older than insects, trees, and Pangaea.Moved by Fire: History’s Promethean Moment—Vol. 2, No. 4—The Appendix
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:59 AM | Your Say (0)
Tailgate Decals Are Getting Problematic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:51 AM | Your Say (0)
"I've looked at riot from both sides now.... From win and lose and still somehow..."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:50 AM | Your Say (3)
The contradictory messages put out by the open borders crowd are staggeringly brazen.
We shouldn't callously enforce our sovereign laws because it'll break up immigrant families, but these illegal immigrants are willing to send unaccompanied minors by the tends of thousands across the border through rugged and often dangerous terrain. The US is full of unwelcoming racists and bigots, yet millions upon millions of aspiring immigrants risk imprisonment (and hundreds of millions more would like to do so if they were able to) and even life and limb to come and live in this unwelcoming, racist land of ours. These illegal immigrants are hard-working, entrepreneurial types who create lots of value here in the US, but we need to act with magnanimity in our hearts as we offer charity to the desperately poor, huddled masses that seek refuge in America. The multicultural vibrancy that illegal immigrants bring is a welcome addition to the American cultural mosaic, yet the societies they come from are so dysfunctional that the only humane thing for us to do is allow them unadulterated access into the US.The Audacious Epigone: Executive's executive order on immigration
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 AM | Your Say (1)
November 25, 2014
“You’re damned right that’s who we are.”
We are not a nation of peaceniks no matter how many pinch faced liberals claim that we are.
We are a nation born of revolution. We are boiled down from the genetic stock of the misfits of Europe; the people who would not bow down or submit and risk fortune, life and family to be free. Americans always have been, and hopefully always will be, different from Europeans. Instead of submission to religious or royal tyranny our ancestors chose harsh and dangerous freedom. When that tyranny reached across the ocean we chose revolution, a dangerous and deadly gambit.Submit peasants ! | Eatgrueldog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:30 PM | Your Say (1)
Circling the earth aboard Friendship 7 in 1962, John Glenn had an odd encounter:
"The strangest sight of all came with the very first ray of sunrise as I was crossing the Pacific toward the U.S.
I was checking the instrument panel and when I looked back out the window I thought for a minute that I must have tumbled upside-down and was looking up at a new field of stars. I checked my instruments to make sure I was right-side-up. Then I looked again. There, spread as far as I could see, were literally thousands of tiny luminous objects that glowed in the black sky like fireflies. I was riding slowly through them, and the sensation was like walking backwards through a pasture where someone had waved a wand and made all the fireflies stop right where they were and glow steadily. They were greenish yellow in color, and they appeared to be about six to 10 feet apart. I seemed to be passing through them at a speed of from three to five miles an hour. They were all around me, and those nearest the capsule would occasionally move across the window as if I had slightly interrupted their flow. On the next pass I turned the capsule around so that I was looking right into the flow, and though I could see far fewer of them in the light of the rising sun, they were still there. Watching them come toward me, I felt certain they were not caused by anything emanating from the capsule. I thought perhaps I’d stumbled into the lost batch of needles the Air Force had tried to set up in orbit for communications purposes. But I could think of no reason why needles should glow like fireflies, nor did they look like needles. As far as I know, the true identity of these particles is still a mystery.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:44 PM | Your Say (1)
Just Another Member of the Obamaite Inner Circle
What's not to like? Good Times. Good People.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:50 PM | Your Say (1)
The Inner Workings of Antique Calculators
Twomey highlights the glory of antiquated technology by dramatically photographing the insides of old calculators. The project originally came about when Mark Glusker, a mechanical engineer and collector of old calculators, asked Twomey to photograph his collection. “The stripping of the external shell of the calculators was not the original concept for shooting these machines,” Twomey tells us, “but when Mark removed the covers to show the complex internal working of the calculators, I immediately knew that this was the heart of the project.”Dramatically Photographed by Kevin Twomey | Colossal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:45 PM | Your Say (0)
The Democratic Party has a notoriously masochistic relationship with its voting base.
It beats them up and then it gaslights them
by hugging them and telling them that it was really the mean Republicans who punched them in the face. When African-American unemployment rates rise, the workers who can’t find jobs because of all the brand new DREAMERs won’t blame the White House, they’ll blame the evil Republicans for income inequality, assuming Sharpton manages to read the term correctly from his MSNBC teleprompter.Sultan Knish: Amnesty for Unamerica
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:20 PM | Your Say (4)
"I am a United States Army general, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism,"
The trouble, Bolger explains, is that majority rule in Iraq meant permanent war:
"The stark facts on the ground still sat there, oozing pus and bile. With Saddam gone, any voting would install a Shiite majority. The Sunni wouldn't run Iraq again. That, at the bottom, caused the insurgency. Absent the genocide of Sunni Arabs, it would keep it going."Asia Times Online :: Dumbing it away
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (1)
Why the New York Daily News Needs to Be Burned to the Ground
... it's ashes scattered and the earth where it stood salted and plowed.
Mark Levin on Ferguson Ferguson burns and violence has been unleashed thanks to the reckless liberal media, the lawless administration (especially Eric Holder)
exploiting the shooting to smear police departments across the nation, phony civil rights demagogues, race-baiting politicians, and radical hate groups. The lies about why and how Officer Darrin Wilson shot Michael Brown started on day one and never ended. The indisputable facts are that Brown was shot because he assaulted a police officer, attempted to take the officer's pistol resulting in two close range gun shots in the police cruiser, and then turned around and charged the officer as he was being pursued. The entire event was precipitated by Brown earlier stealing cigars from a local store and assaulting the owner. What we are witnessing now is the left's war on the civil society.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:30 AM | Your Say (2)
Unfortunate Automated Ad Placement of the Day
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (0)
Your Inner Feather
But in their skin, they develop lots of tiny blobs of cells known as placodes in which cells are switching on genes in a distinctive pattern. At first, the cells in the placodes multiply quickly. Then they start grow into shafts, which then split open to form feathers. Depending on the bird, and on the spot on the bird’s body where it grows, the feather may split into a downy plume, or into a paddle-shaped flight feather, or into an ornamental tail feather.– Phenomena: The Loom
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (1)
Conservatives are the loyal running-dogs of the left
Among conservatives, it’s often common to find the most passionate advocates for the work done by the left only 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago.
Almost no one on the contemporary left, apart from schoolteachers in nowhesville, bother to mention figures like Martin Luther King. Among American conservatives, praising the radical socialist preacher is nearly obligatory. This is the way that the outer party – inner party democratic system works. The outer party performs clean-up duty, and the inner party attempts to break new ground. The outer party consolidates gains, and the inner party attempts to innovate upon its platform of disintegration.The Unconventional Conservatism of the Left - Social Matter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (3)
SNews (n.):
News that is produced for the benefit of the producer of the news, or some third-party who has entered into some transaction with the producer of the news, rather than for the benefit of the consumer of the news. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (0)
The decline of Google
Google had an elaborate system of metrics to try to measure how their people and their teams performed, and these metrics showed that the women were no good. Therefore the metrics were sexist, since they had disparate impact. ｫ Jim's Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:47 AM | Your Say (2)
Playgoat: The Magazine for Arab Terrorists
My blood runs cold,
My memory has just been sold
Angel is a centerfold
-- Goats and Sheep by Kevin Horan | Colossal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:07 AM | Your Say (1)
Seeking Martyrdom?
Think of enemies dismayed,
Creeping in penance, frightened of a shade;
Think of pilgrims, standing in line
Before the glittering jewelled shrine,
From generation to generation
Bending the knee in supplication.
-- Eliot, Murder In the Cathedral
But that is all He would be, another Jimmy Carter. This clip makes me want to re-think that. I’m not so sure we’re done with Him. He thinks He’s doing the right thing here, but doesn’t want future presidents to follow suit. Just like the little kid who’s too young and too undisciplined to play Chess or Monopoly, making up new moves on the spot, coming up with new moves for the pieces, and new conditions whereby the opposition can’t build hotels or collect $200 for passing Go. So why would He step down, just because the rules say so?House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 AM | Your Say (0)
"He couldn't have made it with a prayer book in both hands.
He slid down to the floor and trembled for a moment and then flattened out like a leaf in a pool of water.
Just before he died, he grabbed his side, as if he didn't like the way it hurt, and then he didn't care. I rolled him on his back and let him look at the ceiling. His eyes were open, and he looked surprised, like a guy who didn't figure on a change in the weather. There was a scar that ran across his forehead and dug deep into his hairline. And he was lying there with a bunch of pink gum showing, as if he was trying to pick up a few bucks with a toothpaste ad."Word Around the Net: PAT NOVAK FUN
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:36 AM | Your Say (0)
“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets,
it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.” Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951 HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:16 AM | Your Say (0)
November 24, 2014
Life Lessons
"Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and give her a house." - Lewis Grizzard [Top 40 Item #1 from April, 12, 2004]
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:52 PM | Your Say (2) | TrackBack
Hey, Honey!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:06 PM | Your Say (1)
The View from 1946
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:06 PM | Your Say (0)
The Revolution of 2019 began, curiously enough,
Her mother Janey Lou, a political reactionary, took one look and began screaming. “Goddamit! Goddamit! I’m not going to take it anymore!” She grabbed the shotgun, a nice Remington 870 loaded with double-ought buck, and headed for the school. Historians would debate just what led the surrounding population spontaneously to join her.Rebellion : Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:14 PM | Your Say (4)
#Fergusontouristslogans
Visit Ferguson: Where Neighborhood Means Neighbor Hood. #Fergusontouristslogans - - Twitter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (1)
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:02 AM | Your Say (0)
Sounds like a policy for pedophiles on work release.
“Yes” means yes; “No” means no; and “Maybe” means no.
Please accept no for an answer for any request or activity. You are encouraged to ask for unequivocal consent for all activities during the conference. No touching other people without asking. This includes hands on knees, backs, shoulders—and hugs (ask first!). There are people who do not like to be touched and will respect and like you more if you respect their personal space.ZapMePlease comments on Anyone hitting up Skepticon 7 this year
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:26 AM | Your Say (3)
November 21, 2014
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (6)
From the Pen of Theodore Dalrymple:
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
Quote of the Day | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:53 AM | Your Say (6)
November 20, 2014
Ye Olde....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (5)
Each Victimocrat victory is “a significant step forward” but there is always “more work to be done.”
And like all lust for power, the work never ends.
The oppressed want more. The oppressors make do with less. The protectors of the oppressed, who actually run the Victimocracy, announce that more speech must be censored, more wealth redistributed and more must be made unequal to achieve equality. A better world is around the corner, but first the one we have must be destroyed.Sultan Knish: Life Under the Victimocracy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:15 AM | Your Say (4)
November 19, 2014
The self-elected spokeswomen for feminism certainly do seem to pop up over and over again
– they must take up a good few cards in the average main-stream media reporter’s Golden Rolodex.
If it’s to do with reproductive rights, the harpies of professional feminism will be there, center stage and hogging the microphone. For a particular palette of similar issues, they will also be there, likely wearing vagina costumes, tampon earrings, and screeching about the patriarchy.Chicago Boyz Feminists - Doing It Wrong
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 PM | Your Say (5)
Earliest Known Officially Licensed 1963 Batmobile.
was conceived and customized starting in 1960 by 23-year-old Forrest Robinson. After finishing the design, Robinson and a young friend, Len Perham, begun building the car in the Robinson family barn. Robinson completed the car in 1963-two years before the George Barris customization of the TV Batmobile was started. The "'63 Batmobile" is the earliest known car in existence that was sanctioned by a DC Comics licensee.- -| Heritage Auctions
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:43 PM | Your Say (1)
"Enough of blood and tears! Enough!"
But the blood and tears had only begun, as a PLO on its last legs was revived and built its terrorist infrastructure inside Israel's borders.
By 1993, the year of the infamous Rose Garden handshake, 45 Israelis had been killed and 34 injured in Muslim terrorist attacks. A year after the handshake, the toll stood at 109 Israelis dead and 456 wounded. By 2002, the year that Israel's patience finally broke and Sharon sent forces storming into Arafat's compound, the numbers for that year were a horrifying 451 dead and 2,348 wounded.Sultan Knish: Tears Don't Protect Against Murder
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:09 PM | Your Say (0)
Liberals love blacks but they love them like a fantasy football team,
not like human beings.
Black poverty is the crux of the leftist argument. The ethos goes: if you’re a Democrat, you want to help the impoverished African-Americans. If you’re a Republican, you want them to be attacked by German shepherds. As far as actual black culture goes, liberals are disappointed that they aren’t all wearing corduroy blazers with elbow patches and listening to NPR.10 Black Things Liberals Just Don’t Understand
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (5)
“If there is any one proof of a man’s incompetence,
it is the stagnant mentality of a worker (or a professor) who doing some small, routine job in a vast undertaking,
does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine (or the lectern of a classroom), does not choose to know how the machine (or the classroom) got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unnecessary. Managerial work—the organization and integration of human effort into purposeful, large-scale, long-range activities—is, in the realm of action, what man’s conceptual faculty is in the realm of cognition. It is beyond the grasp and, therefore, is the first target of the self-arrested, sensory-perceptual mentality.” — Ayn Rand
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (0)
Tears don't protect against murder. Bullets do.
Sultan Knish: Tears Don't Protect Against Murder Tears did not stop the operation of a single gas chamber.
They did not save the life of a single Jewish refugee. They did not stop a single dollar from going to the PLO or Fatah or Black September or the Palestinian Authority or any of the other masks that the gang of Soviet-trained killers wore. They will not stop Iran from developing and detonating a nuclear weapon over Tel Aviv.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 AM | Your Say (0)
November 18, 2014
I, for one, welcome out lightbringing overlords!
Residents in the Sverdlovsk region of Russia witnessed a huge fiery flash in the sky on 14 November 2014 around 6:39 pm local time.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 PM | Your Say (4)
Don't you love how the Dems are squirming under the Gruber magnifying glass?
I really love how they're denying he was a big player in the Obamacare disaster.
Just for fun, before it gets erased, go to www.whitehouse.govand enter the words "Jonathan Gruber" in the SEARCH box. Go ahead.The DiploMad 2.0
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 PM | Your Say (2)
On Obama and the Nature of Failed Presidencies
Failure extends to domestic policy as well.
The Republican-controlled legislature can pass whatever legislation it likes, but the president retains veto power, and two-thirds of both houses must vote to override. The problem is that given the president's lack of popularity -- and the fact that the presidency, all of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate will be up for re-election in two years -- the president's allies in Congress are not as willing to be held responsible for upholding his vetoes. Just as few Democrats wanted Obama campaigning for them, so too do few want to join the president in vetoing majority legislation. What broke Truman, Johnson and Nixon was the moment it became clear that their party's leaders in Congress wanted them gone.| Stratfor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (5)
A people that cannot chop is rootless and doomed.
ONE OF the relatively recent innovations in supermarkets, at least in my area, is pre-chopped and pre-peeled and pre-washed vegetables.
Our supermarkets don’t have the room for produce from local farmers, but they do have the room for hundreds of packaged “fresh” vegetables and fruits that are all ready to cook or eat without any prep work. They even have pre-sliced onions and brussels sprouts. I realize these chopped vegetables are a great convenience for certain segments of the population, such as old people who live by themselves, but is it possible that so many people don’t have the time to wash their own carrots?The Thinking Housewife - The Decline of Chopping
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:47 PM | Your Say (4)
Great Expectations
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:22 PM | Your Say (2)
My Gruber Research Bears Fruit
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:34 PM | Your Say (1)
Good Dog.
jumps on the back of an ambulance to ride on the bumper after his 85-year-old owner is taken to hospital. The ambulance had been driving for about 20 miles before another motorist flagged down the driver to say there was a dog on the side step.Daily Mail Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (3)
The Coming Murder of the US Constitution
That President Obama is dissolving the Constitution
for a faster influx of non-white voters so he can dissolve the current declining white majority polity shows a deep love of power, and a deep hatred of any past or current American cultural institutions, that gets in the way of his power. This isn’t new. Leftists in America have been heading down this road since before the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union started in the 1940’s.Chicago Boyz
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (1)
The oppressed oppress the oppressors. And everyone including the oppressors agrees that this is only fair because the oppressors deserve to be oppressed.
They deserve to have the money they earn taken away.
They deserve to be sent to the back of the line when applying to a college or looking for a job. They deserve to be beaten, robbed, raped, and taunted with slurs that would lead to national outrage if it were directed at the oppressed. But they’re the oppressors. They deserve it.Sultan Knish: Life Under the Victimocracy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (1)
About Woodpile Report
It's a static display, Woodpile Report is no more. The first Woodpile Report appeared in January of 2004, George Bush was president, Facebook was launched, the first Moslem beheading video was posted, the first "same sex couple" pretended to be married—Massachusetts went along with the gag, and the year fearless Islamic warriors torture-murdered 334 little kids and their teachers at a Russian school. Things have not improved since 2004.ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:29 AM | Your Say (4)
The Myth Of AI
You'll have a figure say, "The computers will take over the Earth, but that's a good thing, because people had their chance and now we should give it to the machines." Then you'll have other people say, "Oh, that's horrible, we must stop these computers." Most recently, some of the most beloved and respected figures in the tech and science world, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have taken that position of: "Oh my God, these things are an existential threat. They must be stopped."| Edge.org
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:00 AM | Your Say (1)
Bringing Back Buttercup
But will they have the gall? “Buttercup,” the mammoth in question, was found in Siberia last year, impeccably preserved in snow and ice. Excavators extracted vials of liquid blood from the carcass and now researchers at the South Korean biotech company SOOAM are testing it for a complete set of DNA. If a complete set can’t be found, scientists could map specific mammoth traits—like their tusks and hair—onto an existing elephant genome.- - Quartz
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:51 AM | Your Say (1)
Nothin' But Lines:
The Digital Designs of Patrick Seymour
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:56 AM | Your Say (1)
Yet another argument in favor of the death penalty.
Mass murderer Charles Manson plans to marry a 26-year-old woman
who left her Midwestern home and spent the past nine years trying to help exonerate him. Afton Elaine Burton, the raven-haired bride-to-be, said she loves the man convicted in the notorious murders of seven people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate.... Manson can have a wedding at the prison and invite an officiant from outside the prison to perform the ceremony. Manson and his prospective spouse also would be allowed to invite 10 guests who are not inmates.Associated Press
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:40 AM | Your Say (2)
You name the vice, and it's there in the DNC's platform:
class envy, homosexual lust, racial pride, slothful welfare dependency, greedy public employee unions, feminist wrath, and a fantastically gluttonous state -- not to mention violations of virtually every commandment, e.g., idolatry, atheism, theft, dishonoring the centrality of mother and father, and the main subject of this post, lying. One Cʘsmos: The Spiritual Unthropology of the Left
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:18 AM | Your Say (1)
November 17, 2014
File Under: "That's Going to Leave a Mark" -- Mary Landrieu Gets Grubered
And it's one more Senate seat going... going.... going...
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:15 PM | Your Say (2)
Dialogue
Women: I want to be in your club. I want to be in your club. I want to be in your club. Men: Welcome to the club. Women: I don't want to be in this club. Here's what you need to change.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:53 PM | Your Say (4)
In their own write
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:47 PM | Your Say (5)
Brumal, Hibernal, & Hiemal
brumal
adj. wintry
hibernal
adj. of, pertaining to, or proper to winter
hiemal
adj. of or belonging to winter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (0)
“Gasp! You can’t sell Mom’s wedding ring!"
"Mom and Dad’s marriage is physically embodied in that diamond! A diamond is FOREVER!” It’s a pure con. Brilliant, and scary in how effective it has been, but a pure con. On Diamonds, Princes, Foxes and Lutes | Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 AM | Your Say (3)
Girly Men Have Found Their King! "Enjoy. I try to. Here’s me riding a polar bear."
Embrace the grey and the blurred and the things that intersect. See everything as complex as it needs to be. I had nowhere else to put this without sounding douchey so I put this here. Under a picture of me riding a polar bear. Where it feels somewhat appropriate. The rest of this text not so much. I needed somewhere to put it. It just feels appropriate under the bear.About Me | reckless red rebel HT: davidthompson
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:17 AM | Your Say (2)
The issue is this:
Scientist Lands a Probe On a Speeding Comet and Feminists Shriek About His Shirt: The termagants, bullies, and harridan harpies who vexed this weakling to the point of tears,
on the day which was his triumphant crowning achievement and should have been the happiest of his life, they are not modest Christian women objecting to a tasteless shirt, nor are they scientists worried that their profession create a dignified public appearance. The harpies crap on the feast. That is their role. That is who they are. They are filth, pure and simple. Don’t give them any cover or concealment by making their madness sound sane.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 AM | Your Say (4)
I must know the events that precipitated this new policy!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (3)
After Tuesday, I don’t know that I can call myself a liberal anymore.
It’s not that I don’t want to call myself a liberal.
After all, as I understand liberal ideals, I still believe in most of them, if not all of them. No, I guess I’m not a liberal anymore because Bustle, The Verge, Salon, Polygon, Kotaku, Gamasutra, The Mary Sue, The NY Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and others spent the last 2 months telling me I’m no longer wanted as an unashamed, voting liberal. They did this based on my primary hobby and the Y chromosome I was born with. They did this after some of them told me I was dead or needed to die for the crime of holding my primary hobby as a part of my identity. They did this because some people I don’t know made threats against people I’d never heard of before; subsequently, I was told I needed to die because of my Y chromosome and my hobby.GamerGate: How the Media Gave Away America - TechRaptor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (4)
"Made it, Ma. Top of the World!"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (5)
They Write the Songs
Not that songs necessarily do anything, but in the modern world ‘doing something’ is no longer the point.
Spin, news cycles, narratives — that is the object of this frenzy. The manipulation of symbols, often for their own sake, has become an end in itself. Maybe if there was less talk and more reflection, if there fewer words and a greater emphasis on work something intelligent might actually be achieved. But that presumes the world is real. As the psychologists noted the correlation between reality and subjective well-being is very weak.Belmont Club ｻ I Write The Songs
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (0)
"And all the news just repeats itself / Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (1)
"Who are the brain police?"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (1)
In cities, especially large ones like New York and Tokyo, the moon is mostly irrelevant.
Appearing small and weak behind skyscrapers, it fails to capture the imaginations of urban children and parents alike.
They may wonder at the wastefulness of the moon, which sits in the sky contributing nothing when it could very well be used as a site for low-income housing or made into a screen on which the time and the weather are perpetually displayed.On the Study of Physics in Preschool Classrooms: Pedagogy and Lesson Planning - Ecotone | Articles
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (1)
November 16, 2014
Yes, it is legal to own a copy of Marilyn Monroe’s 1954 chest X-ray. This one sold for $4,687.
The antiques world had become an out-of-date feminized zone where everyone is a little too fussy about furnishings and china sets. Pickers and pawners injected the field with new life when they strode onto the scene, unafraid to hit the road and get their hands dirty digging through rusty junk. Thus, these guys are inspiring new mantiques shops across the United States, boasting items suitable for a man cave—a space where a man in a traditional marriage puts his guy stuff when his wife, expected to keep their home up to social standards, banishes it from the main house.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:26 AM | Your Say (10)
Evidently "Conversion" Will Not Save You If Allah Needs Your Head for "The Conversation"
ISIS Beheads Another American After Report "Jihadi John" Injured In Air Strike; As the WSJ further reports,
"the 26-year-old Indiana native was kidnapped in October 2013 as he delivered aid to eastern Deir Ezzour province. During the past year, he converted to Islam and took on the name Abdul Rahman, Arabic for “servant of the merciful.” He prayed devoutly and fasted during the holy month of Ramadan, according to other Western captives who were freed by Islamic State after their governments paid ransoms to the group."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:25 AM | Your Say (2)
The list of people who have been “Grubered” is growing by the hour.
soon included stupid journalists who were mis-misinformed about the math, and then stupid politicians like Max Baucus, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. And then yesterday Big Guy himself added his name to the list of the âgruberedâ when he said he was shocked about the controversy involving âsome advisor, not even on staffâ and claimed again that ObamaCare was 110% transparent. Alas, as Clarice points out, Jonny was not as insignificant as many would have him: "But you cannot pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars, cite him in your speeches and on your websites and in your briefs as an authority and then credibly pretend you don't know him."Michelle Obama's Mirror: Post-Obamacare Syndrome Gruber Therapy®
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 AM | Your Say (6)
Super-Amnesty Will Turn Every City into Detroit
The United States of America does not have a shortage of workers.
It has a shortage of jobs. The irresponsible immigration policy has created a surplus of workers. Illegal alien amnesty will make that surplus much worse. Legalize twelve million illegal aliens and another twelve million will come. Those who can’t find jobs, will find gangs. Those who lose jobs to them will also find gangs.Sultan Knish:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:03 AM | Your Say (4)
The rabbits are all about show.
They seem to have no idea that real force exists on the continuum of actions they engage in.
Nor do they grasp that their enemies often do not even engage them, not because of weakness, but because of boredom. Why engage if they are not to be utterly destroyed once and for all, and removed from our world forever? What is the point in socially demeaning someone, if they can go on with their lives afterward? That we view the consequences of social demeaning as so unworthy of our time reveals both, how little it affects us, and what will happen if conditions ever reach the point that we view action as worth our time.Sweden is Burning -
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:49 AM | Your Say (0)
November 15, 2014
Islam does not play well with other religions.
That’s a fact backed by 1400 years of evidence. The savage is also doing what the Left has always done in America. That is, equate a microscopic minority with the vast majority. There are very few Muslims in America, but they demand equal footing with Jews and Christians, who are orders of magnitude more populous. Again, we see the similarities between Islam and Liberalism. The Muslim Veto at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (3)
This Is What A Comet Sounds Like
Before the battery died onboard the European Space Agency's comet-bound spacecraft Philae and threatened its mission, the "sound" coming from the comet was recorded and sent back to scientists. | Truth RevoltPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 PM | Your Say (3)
The primary ingredient for betrayal is trust. The most dangerous traitors are the people who are above suspicion.
Heinrich Himmler, for example, approached the OSS in 1943 to explore the possibility of staging a coup against Hitler
and making a separate peace with the Western allies. John Waller writing at the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence says that further exploratory talks begun in Sweden were vetoed by Wild Bill Donovan, the State Department and finally Franklin Roosevelt himself out of the fear that any such talks would shatter the Grand Alliance. Stalin would find out, Roosevelt’s advisers argued, if he were to deal with Himmer. And indeed he would have, because the Soviet union had agents working at the highest levels in the Western alliance.Belmont Club ｻ Promises, Promises
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:23 PM | Your Say (3)
The Invention of Sliced Bread
which, at five feet wide by three feet high, was perceived to be too bulky and too complex for everyday bread production. On a last-resort whim, Rohwedder asked his friend Frank Bench, a baker on the brink of bankruptcy, if he’d give the slicer a shot. Though it was a substantial investment, Bench reluctantly agreed. "When no one else in the world would give my father's machine a try,” Rohwedder’s son told the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune years later, “Frank Bench did.”-- Priceonomics
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:00 PM | Your Say (2)
(Hint, people who aren’t brain damaged degenerates find accounts of childhood sexual abuse revolting.)
that social shaming could strike one of their own, and rallied the troops to mount a fevered, uncoordinated, and thoroughly illogical defense of their pasty white child rapist cohort. Dunham’s own poor victimized sister opined that it’s not really molestation if you spin the story “narrate your own experience” in a startling display of ad hoc rationalization and subtexted admission of wrong-doing that would be described anywhere else as textbook Stockholm Syndrome.Leave Lena Dunham Alone! | The Right Stuff
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (1)
Asking Students to "Show Their Work" Is Not Just Racist But Risky
'LaShamanda has a heterozygous big bootie, the dominant trait. Her man Fontavius has a small bootie which is recessive. They get married and have a baby named LaPrincess.' After asking students to show their workings, two questions were asked: 'What is the probability that LaPrincess will inherit her mam's big bootie?' 'If LaShamanda and Fontavius have another child, what is the probability that it will have a big bootie?' [HT: DeWitt]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (5)
The Dindu Nuffin Myth in One Paragraph
Dindu Nuffins Murdered by Racist Ferguson CopsOn Saturday, August 9th, promising young black activist Michael Brown was ruthlessly assassinated by a white supremacist Ferguson policeman as the officer drove to his monthly Klan rally. According to reports, Brown was sitting on a park bench reading Michael Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” to a group of street orphans when the cop parked alongside the curb, shouted “Niggers ain’t supposed to be readin’ boy!” and fatally shot Brown as he vainly attempted to shield himself from the deadly hail of gunfire behind his Noam Chomsky filled bookbag. As the youth lay gasping for breath, his last words were “Weep not for me, but for the future of our people.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:46 AM | Your Say (4)
Hillary has already had two minor amygdala hijacks recently, that we know of.
Just as the Benghazi hearings heated up, Hillary supposedly “fainted,” due to “ill health,” and hit her head..... Often we have seen leftists, and especially feminists, saying, “I was going to black out,” due to an amygdala hijack. We tend to dismiss it as yet another leftist exaggeration – a part of their normal leftist histrionics, but that is not hyperbole. They are not just saying that. Trigger their amygdala enough and they will hyperventilate, throw up, black out, and even attempt suicide. That is how dramatic the effect is.Abashed the Devil Stood, and Felt How Awful Goodness Is -
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (4)
Give Beauty Back: Hillary Antidote and Eyewash
Sorry about that thing just above. Here's something to soothe your singed corneas.
There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth's air.
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
One. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matched face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever-lastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Hopkins, "Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (2)
"Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:55 AM | Your Say (0)
Toshiba’s high-tech grow rooms are churning out lettuce that never needs washing
- QuartzThe obvious answer: Because it’s clean. Everything is tightly controlled, including air pressure, temperature, lighting, bacteria, and dust. The result is a crop that doesn’t need pesticides, doesn’t have bugs, and doesn’t need washing. Toshiba, by the way, isn’t the only Japanese company moving into this field, so to speak: Fujitsu grows lettuce in a semiconductor plant elsewhere in Japan, and Sharp is growing strawberries in Dubai.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 AM | Your Say (1)
November 14, 2014
Free!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 PM | Your Say (3)
“I’m not having intercourse with these women when there’s no chance of pregnancy,” he said.
Meet the Men Having Sex With Strangers to Help Them Have Babies: Joe, a married man with three teenage children, asked "20/20" to hide his identity because of the double life he said he leads online as a "natural" sperm donor. He said his wife doesn't know about his extracurricular activities, but he has written a book about his experiences entitled, “Get Pregnant for Free on the Internet with a Private Sperm Donor.”Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:18 PM | Your Say (2)
Terrifying Fluffy Bunnies and The Little Albert Experiment
during which he once again present Albert with a fluffy white lab rat. As Watson expected, Albert reached out to pet his new fuzzy companion, at which point Watson used a hammer to strike a concealed four foot long, 3/4 inch in diameter steel bar directly behind the baby causing a loud ringing noise, which resulted in Albert crying. Watson repeated this experiment multiple times until eventually just the sight of the rat caused Albert to (seemingly) become frightened and try to crawl away.-- today I found
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:05 PM | Your Say (1)
TA-NEHISI COATES
is a nice fusion of what Sowell and Barkely are saying. The Atlantic is decorating its site with Coates. They don’t really care what he has to say, how could they?
His arguments are juvenile and incoherent. I thought after his embarrassing long essay on reparations that got so much attention, he would have been ushered off and replaced. His sudden “sabbatical” looked like a polite way of brooming the guy, but here he is. Now, it very well may be that he is simply too dumb to realize he is an ornament. He’s certainly too dumb to know he is who Barkley had in mind when he talked about stupid blacks trying to tear down successful blacks. Of course, this could not happen if the white people running the Atlantic viewed blacks as something other than wrapping paper.Charles Barkley Is Right at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:50 PM | Your Say (1)
“In a word, the education of old was a kind of propagation — men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.” -- C.S. LewisPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (0)
Our Direction is Misdirection
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:47 AM | Your Say (4)
‘Bullshit” is American English’s assertion, maximally succinct and vigorous, that a contention is factually preposterous or logically absurd.
As the political project that exists to vindicate the axiom that all sorts of government program X’s can solve an endless list of social problem Y’s,
liberalism is always at risk of descending into prescriptive bullshit. Liberal compassion lends itself to bullshit by subordinating the putative concern with efficacy to the dominant but unannounced imperative of moral validation and exhibitionism. I, the empathizer, am interested in the sufferer for love of myself, Rousseau contended. Accordingly, an ineffectual program may serve the compassionate purposes of its designers and defenders as well as or better than a successful one.Liberal Bullshit | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (5)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 AM | Your Say (2)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:55 AM | Your Say (3)
November 13, 2014
Every year on the first of May, families flock to the beach at Piémanson in the south of France.
For a week, they’ll be busy building cozy wooden cabins on the sand, sleeping in their cars to ensure everything is set for the summer ahead. How can they get away with this? It turns out that Piémanson, located in the Camargue coastland, is France’s last remaining “wild beach.”Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 PM | Your Say (1)
Ezra Pound: Winter is icumen in,
Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham
Damm you; Sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm,
So ’gainst the winter’s balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:55 PM | Your Say (1)
For Reasons Listed I Walked out of Walmart Twice in the Last Month -- GV
.... and I was only in the store four times! Don Surber: Wal-Mart's CEO should read the commentsIn this case, Wal-Mart's CEO should read the comments posted at Yahoo to a Drudge-linked story, "Wal-Mart 'urgent' memo urges improvement at U.S. stores: NYT."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:09 PM | Your Say (3)
Start Handing Out the 2016 Air-Sickness Bags
Media's Clinton kiss-up begins: Couric calls Chelsea Clinton 'Mom of the Year' | “It must be so flattering to be added to that list,” Katie Couric opened, adding with a wide smile, “A woman of the year, and I think it’s safe to say, probably a ‘Mom of the Year.’ ”Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:09 PM | Your Say (4)
Legends
who was impressed enough by her prowess that he dubbed her “Watanya Cicilla,” or “Little Sure Shot.” She carried this nickname with her when she joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West in 1885, where she performed for the better part of the next 17 years. Oakley knew how to dazzle her audience – she could shoot a cork out of a bottle from 90 feet away and snuff out candle flames – just for starters; between her skill and charisma, she had no problem packing them in year after year.- Annie Oakley and Her Guns
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:01 PM | Your Say (12)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (1)
A Cagey Ad Placement
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 AM | Your Say (1)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (1)
November 12, 2014
Time to Learn Your ABZ's
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (6)
Yet Another "Smartest Man in the Room"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (6)
Equality kills quality
You can put a fork in Silicon Valley.They are done. Jesse “King of Beers” Jackson has his talons in their tills and they have maybe, at best, 10 more years in which they will be a positive and innovative source of American technological advance. He informs us that ”Hi-tech giants have a moral and economic duty to promote inclusivity in their workforces.” This is how the worm infests the apple.ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 AM | Your Say (4)
Secret of a Happy Marriage
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (6)
After a shooting spree,
they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military. William S. BurroughsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (4)
And what about the millions of dead Americans
who immigrated to the United States to find freedom; what do they think of the country now? They came believing that if they minded their own business, they would be left alone to do what they wanted. But now, every pettifogging Pecksniff with a government service (GS) rating is on their grandchildren’s case. -- Will Bonner "Empire of Debt"Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (4)
Foolish Feeling of the Leftoids
The feeling that the cupboards are going to be full for awhile, there are no natural predators, and a functional tethering to reality has become optional.The thing that therefore has to be done is for each individual to demonstrate to the collective, his worthiness for receiving his due allocation from the common store. Don’t ostracize me; ostracize that other guy instead. In this way and so many others, whether they’re consciously aware of it or not, they are the opposite of what they claim to be. As Ludwig Von Mises put it, The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.-- House of Eratosthenes [Which, I note, is ten years old just about now.]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:23 AM | Your Say (0)
"All men are negligent of their souls..."
How incredible was the general apathy!They were all eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the awful morning dawned. There was not one wise individual upon earth outside of the ark. Folly duped the whole race: folly as to self-preservation, the most fooling of all follies. Folly in doubting the most true God: the most malignant foolishness. Is it not strange, my soul? All men are negligent of their souls until grace gives them reason; then they leave their madness and act like rational beings, but not until then. ~Alistair Begg. 1 November 2014 email note/daily devotional entitled "Folly of Doubt"[True North: malignant foolishness]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 AM | Your Say (2)
November 11, 2014
Veterans Day Is For Dorothy
Then I sit next to the worst of them, mummies still alive, lost to sight and sound. There is nothing to do but put my hand on their arm. Sippican Cottage:Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:36 AM | Your Say (3)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:23 AM | Your Say (1)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:21 AM | Your Say (4)
"This shellacking goes all the way down to dogcatcher...."
Look at what they had. They had Kay Hagan in North Carolina, $26 million spent on her. All of the free media time the Democrats always get, whatever that ends up being. They had 99% of the media with them, they have Hollywood with them, they have the pop culture with them, and look what happened to them. They lost 70 seats in Congress. And you add it up over the two years -- well, 2010 and 2014, and it is dramatic what they've lost. They've lost governorships. They've lost state legislatures. Twenty-three states now have Republican governors and Republican legislatures. The Democrats have five. The rest are divided or mixed. But, I mean, this shellacking goes all the way down to dogcatcher, and it was a repudiation. It was a rejection, an in-your-face rejection of everything they stand for.-- Obama Has Destroyed His Party - Rush Limbaugh
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:46 AM | Your Say (14)
Welsh-speaking Native Americans
In 1792 John Evans, a 22-year-old farmhand and weaver from the village of Waunfawr in the mountains of Snowdonia, Wales,responded to a plea from the great Welsh cultural mischief-maker Iolo Morganwg to settle, for once and for all time, the quandary of whether there was indeed a tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans still walking the Great Plains, descendants of Prince Madog, who was widely believed (especially by Welsh historical revisionists) to have discovered America in 1170. With the aid of a loan from a gullible friend, Evans set sail to Baltimore to begin the greatest of adventures, whereupon he set off on foot and disappeared into the Allegheny Mountains with one dollar and seventy-five cents to his name, in search of the lost tribe.American Interior | Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:30 AM | Your Say (3)
November 10, 2014
Take Down
Take down just a handful of enablers and the rest will crawl back into the cracks and ratholes they came from. It doesn't take but a few bullet riddled, yet acceptable losses and the very basic instinct of survival will kick in. Then remain vigilant, because they will creep out of their lairs from time to time to test the intelligence of the people.Dumbplumber on Oblivious and Reckless @ AMERICAN DIGEST
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:39 PM | Your Say (2)
"A crowd stoned to death a young man in northeast Congo on Friday before burning and eating his corpse, witnesses said, in apparent revenge for a series of attacks by Ugandan rebels.”"
Here we have (I now see) a case not of grotesque animalism, as I once would have said, but of cultural versatility.Moslems eat beef but not pork, Hindus eat pork but not beef, but Africans eat both, and each other. They are simply freer spirits, not constrained by dour Eurocentric conventionality. This dietary quirk may be an evolutionary adaption to life in a region afflicted by famine. There is nothing wrong with cannibalism. In it we simply see another way of looking at things. I concede that my tendency to regard anthropophagy as barbaric was reprehensible Euro-supremacist bigotry. I recognize now that Congolese culture is as admirable as any other, such as Swiss.Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:17 PM | Your Say (7)
Quote/Unquote
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (1)
You see, Obama doesn’t want to self-correct,
because in his mind he’s not done a thing wrong. He’s not just saying it’s not his fault, he really believes it’s not his fault. In fact, nothing bad is his fault. And everything good is to his credit.neo-neocon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (3)
Modern Dementia Illustrated
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (3)
Only One Month Until The Al Gore Ice-Free Arctic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (2)
Hooray for sexual liberation! Now I can die lonely and poor
I am a feminist, I really am (I’ve never let a man pay for anything), but feel the current generation of women in their 60s, the first to abandon the way of life of their mothers, which meant they pursued careers, married and had children late, had affairs then got divorced, all in the name of liberation, are now imprisoned in debt, alcohol abuse and loneliness, wishing they could die, and do it soon. LIZ JONES -- Daily Mail OnlinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (11)
The Little List That Could
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:39 AM | Your Say (4)
Saturday Mornings with Click and Clack
I soon realized that my problem was nowhere near entertaining enough for “Car Talk.”I was competing with the guy in Brooklyn who parked on the street in a car that drove only in reverse. And the woman in Colorado who was looking for a used stretch limousine so that she could roll up the window between the driver and the passengers and not have to listen to her grandchildren bickering.- The New Yorker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:15 AM | Your Say (2)
In the wake of his party’s thrashing, Barack Obama on Saturday announced that he’d chosen a replacement for the repellent Eric Holder
to fill the office of US Attorney General—a black woman named Loretta Lynch.We will make only passing notion that her name is so similar to the greatest female country singer of all time and focus instead on the fact that a black woman named “Lynch” has been nominated to head the US Department of Justice, which at this point might as well be called the US Department of Revenge.The Week That Perished - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:06 AM | Your Say (1)
November 9, 2014
The fact that they wish to ban things that are not smoking
in order to keep people from smoking is lost on these people.
Tobacco and anything related to it is bad because the Cult associates it with the type of white people who shop at Walmart and make fun of men who wear dresses. Weed is cool because it's what young people like and you can now buy it at those quaint boutiques near that ski resort you went to in Colorado. Tobacco is what the guy fixing the lifts uses.Bad Religion at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:03 PM | Your Say (12)
"Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:07 PM | Your Say (3)
That Was the Week That Was
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:06 AM | Your Say (0)
The Democratic Party’s Civil War is Here
The old Dems have no ideas and no agenda.
The progressives want to get as much of their agenda done even if it’s by executive order and even if it makes them even more unpopular than they are now. The old Dems have realized that they are the ones who will pay a political price for progressive radicalism. And waiting in the wings is the 2016 election.Sultan Knish
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (5)
Most of the trouble in the world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business,
because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.Now your virus is an obligate cellular parasite and my contention is that evil is quite literally a virus parasite occupying a certain brain area which we may term the RIGHT center. The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right. And right here we must make a distinction between the hard-core virus-occupied shit and a plain, ordinary, mean no-good son of a bitch. Some of these sons of bitches don't cause any trouble at all, just want to be left alone and are only dangerous when molested, like the Brown Recluse.William S. Burroughs - Wikiquote
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (1)
Wow the SEALs are out of control!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (3)
November 8, 2014
Asian Grading Scale
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:57 PM | Your Say (5)
On the Other Hand... [Bumped]
You can tell me about how the United States is “turning it around” when abortion is a capital offense and sodomy is recriminalized.You can tell me all about how the U.S. is on the road to recovery when there are people in the streets weeping and sobbing on their knees begging the Triune Godhead for His mercy and forgiveness for spending the last fifty years proverbially kicking God in the crotch non-stop. You can tell me about how there is hope for America when there are dead bodies of these oligarchs hanging from the lampposts after their trials and executions for crimes against humanity with full due process in accord with the Rule of Law.- - Ann Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:50 AM | Your Say (37)
Surprise, Surprise!
What's in a name? An Attorney General who is female, African-American, named Lynch? I love the smell of irony in the morning.
— Gerard Vanderleun (@Van_der_Leun) November 8, 2014So, kind of a parody of an Obama AG nomination: an upper crust black woman (Obama isn’t comfortable around blacks who didn’t go to Harvard), but with experience working with Rev. Al to fight the Greatest Problem of Our Time, the White Racist War on Black Babies’ Bodies.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:57 AM | Your Say (15)
From the Always Excellent "Memo for File" Series
When’s the last time liberals had a truly new idea about how an economy should work? Been awhile, hasn’t it? Something about how, the system is rigged to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and we need a revolution to really turn things around? There’s a century of dust on that one. These aren’t literal “liberals,” these are people stuck in a time warp, in the vicinity of 1917. Memo For File CXC # House of EratosthenesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 AM | Your Say (2)
Wasting Time on the Internet? Now You Can Waste It All!
emulated in JSMAME, part of the JSMESS software package. Containing hundreds of games ranging through many different genres and styles, the Arcade provides research, comparison, and entertainment in the realm of the Video Game Arcade.
The game collection ranges from early "bronze-age" videogames, with black and white screens and simple sounds, through to large-scale games containing digitized voices, images and music. Most games are playable in s ome form, although some are useful more for verification of behavior or programming due to the intensity and requirements of their systems.Internet Arcade : Free
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:21 AM | Your Say (0)
Where Not to Stay In London
(we were sleeping on top of the covers) we heard strange noises coming from the cupboard like a banging sound. We ignored it at first just thinking it was the dilapidated state of the place but it was keeping us awake. So I walked over and peered inside the cupboard door. To my horror, there was a dirty looking midget hiding inside in his underwear.- - TripAdvisor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:01 AM | Your Say (2)
November 7, 2014
New Management Advises President They Are Closing Harry’s Roach Motel
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:57 PM | Your Say (3)
Tom Steyer and the Death of 'Climate Change' As a Serious Political Issue
- the Solyndra-style crony capitalism, the war on free markets, small business and cheap energy, the hypocrisy, the injustice, the dogged pursuit of suicidal leftist causes - then liberal billionaire Tom Steyer is your man. And this is what is so good about the US mid-term results. Not only did they personally cost Steyer many millions of dollars in wasted campaign expenditure - nearly $75 million of the funding for his Nextgen Climate superPAC came out of his own pocket: think how many tartan ties you could buy with that! - but they represented the US electorate's comprehensive repudiation of the notion that "climate change" is the most pressing political issue of our age.U.S. Mid-Terms,
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:52 PM | Your Say (3)
The French confidence man who took credit for what one nineteenth-century paper called “the most gigantic swindle of our time.”
In the century to come, many would think of it as a cheap substitute for butter. Margarine’s evolution in public consciousness is so great that, rather than concealing the deception, by the later twentieth-century marketers took it as a point of pride that consumers could be tricked—they couldn’t believe it’s not butter. Yet in the decades after its invention in 1869, it would be cast instead as “the most gigantic swindle of our time.”- - The Appearance of Being Earnest
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:23 PM | Your Say (13)
[Bumped] So here are the new rules of our non-functioning democracy:
you get a voice if you cast a ballot, butt you get a LOUDER voice if you don’t bother to vote.“To everyone that voted, I want you to know that I heard you,” Obama began. “To two-thirds of voters that chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too.” Odd he would choose to channel an old dead white guy – the only other sitting President who listened to the vast silent majority. Although in Nixon’s case they became far less silent over time.Michelle Obama's Mirror: “I stand with those who sat on the sidelines and did not vote.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (13)
China just wants to make money. Nothing to see here. Move along.
China is expected to launch submarines carrying fully armed nuclear missiles this year These boomers’ missileshave the range to hit Hawaii and Alaska from East Asia and the continental U.S. from the mid-Pacific, the ONI says. “This is a trump card that makes our motherland proud and our adversaries terrified,” China’s navy chief, Adm. Wu Shengli, wrote of the country’s missile-sub fleet in a Communist Party magazine in December. “It is a strategic force symbolizing great-power status and supporting national security.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (0)
The Wife-Carrying Championship
or you may have found her further afield; she must, however, be over 17 years of age. The minimum weight of the wife to be carried is 49 kilograms. If she weighs less than 49 kg, she will be burdened with a rucksack containing additional weight to bring the total load to be carried up to 49 kg. If a contestant drops the wife, he has to lift her on to his back or in his arms and continue carrying.in Finland | WOE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (1)
The Dreaded GoPro Tanks
Civilian life appears to be equally worthless, if not more so.Consequently, the residents of Jobar have apparently fled, leaving not even a dog in the street. The concept of collateral damage simply doesn’t exist. Other videos, depicting cities like Daryya, have a Grozny-like, or Berlin 1945 quality about them. They are completely smashed. Gates are flung into the street, steel grills are twisted like spaghetti, buildings are pockmarked with the measles of small arms fire, roofs are blown in. Every now and again a building spontaneously collapses. Nobody notices.
Unlike the videos provided by the Syrian rebels, the dreaded GoPro tank videos are not punctuated by Allah Akbar! x 20. When the tanks return to base, the crew wearily climb out of the tank, remove the steel cables, wires and pieces of roofing that have festooned themselves on the armored vehicle; they dust off the dreaded GoPro and stumble away, presumably to some meal of flat bread and hummus, if that. Or perhaps some vodka with the Russian.Belmont Club ｻ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (1)
Convince Oregon Measure 88 to run for president.
Measure 88 won more votes than anything else on the Oregon ballot. More votes than pot legalization. More than the incumbent governor, the incumbent senator or any of the six other ballot measures. The widely popular, landslide vote on Measure 88 prohibits illegal immigrants from getting drivers licenses. COULTER: A Tough Night At MSNBC
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:27 AM | Your Say (1)
Little Owl by Russell Savory
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (1)
Where Did Soul-Sucking Office-Speak Come From?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (1)
Why Lena Dunham Triggers the American Right
And thus we get closer to the real reason conservatives of all stripes hate–yes hate–Lena Dunham. (Or, as leftists would say, find her “threatening.”)Everything about her existence is a representation of decadence in human form, wrapped in a cloak of victimhood. The current insistence that parading her childhood pervasions should be celebrated is only the latest example. Dunham is the crystallized essence of the leftist commentariat demanding we accept obvious untruths: that 2 2=5, that ugly must be called beautiful, and that writing out the equivalent of scrawling dirty words on a bathroom stall is cause for tribute and celebration.— RADIX JOURNAL
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 AM | Your Say (2)
If voters really wanted people
who would work closely with Obama and other Democrats to “get things done,”they would have just voted for more Democrats. After all, virtually every elected Democrat has “worked with” Obama (in the sense of doing exactly everything he asked) for the last six solid years. Say what you want about the information level of the average voter, but absolutely no one was confused into thinking that they were replacing a Democrat with a Republican in the hopes that the Republican would be more friendly to the Democrat agenda.House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:21 AM | Your Say (1)
November 5, 2014
For the first time in our history we have a purely ideological party.
If you run as a Democrat, you are a Liberal.There’s no party to give the Cult cover because the party is the Cult and the Cult is the party. If the people are turning on Liberals, it will bring down the Democratic Party, unless they shed the Cult, which is unlikely. Maps like this one and the fact that the Democrats control very few state houses now, suggest the Democrats are about to become a fringe party, based in a few coastal cities.Takeaways From The Election at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 PM | Your Say (5)
What's that you say?
You see, the inability to hear on a daily basisduring normal simple everyday things like ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks or going through a drive-through to order food to take home to my family were challenges that I often failed, and it made me frustrated and angry all the time. This affected people around me and especially the people I hold most dear; my own family. Now all of that is gone and I’m like an entirely new person because of this transformation.How I got my life back – my hearing has been restored to near-normal | Watts Up With That?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 PM | Your Say (3)
Obama Mocked on Front Page of New York Post
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:26 PM | Your Say (2)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (6)
"Battling my demons "
It was demons who held down that actress/pop singer/reality TV starand rammed four kilos of charlie up her left nostril leaving her with the IQ of an aspidistra and, alas, sans septum. It was demons who injected Philip Seymour Hoffman with skag. The same creatures regularly waylay the former footballer Paul Gascoigne and siphon several litres of vodka down his throat. And it was demons, a whole bunch of them, who grappled with Brooks Newmark’s penis and ensured it was transmitted digitally to the fictitious woman of his choice. This was my original Fatuous Phrase of the Week, an utterly ubiquitous cliché which serves only to absolve people from responsibility.- - Rod Liddle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:51 AM | Your Say (2)
Got a Whole Lotta Love!
With that win, Love becomes the first black woman Republican elected to Congress.Guess that GOP "War on Wimmin" isn't winning.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:17 AM | Your Say (2)
The Clear Message
I see democrats and their apparatchiks are hard at work spreading a meme of “the clear message from the American People is that both sides need to work together.” Such a silly thing to say. I suppose there’s difficulty in the psychological layer somewhere, interpreting a “clear message” that you suck and you have to get the hell off the stage. House of EratosthenesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:56 AM | Your Say (7)
"Verit Ass"
Harvard University workshop to teach students how to have anal sex Harvard University’s annual Sex Week observance,which launched Sunday, includes a workshop called “What What in the Butt: Anal Sex 101″
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:12 AM | Your Say (5)
November 4, 2014
The liberal system will collapse of its own weight:
debt, over-centralization, anti-natalism, all the perverse incentives it creates. As our old sources of national strength quietly dry up, the regime is distracted with exotic trivia like gay marriage and the search for new forms of discrimination to combat. Competition from China alone is going to put an end to this ideological navel-gazing in the not-too-distant future. We must position ourselves to present the public with a credible alternative when the crisis hits. The Decline of Western Man (and Woman) | American RenaissancePosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:41 PM | Your Say (3)
As temperatures fall, the goat heads have manifested in Prospect Park
above the intersection of 5th Avenue and 9th Street, where they dangled like old sneakers. These goat heads were notable not just for their proud location but for their presentation: hanging in a pair, fresh and skinless.Best comment: "Looks like someone's trying to get out the goat today."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:00 PM | Your Say (1)
It's your right to be stupid but that doesn't make stupid right.
There will be a lot of arguments for not voting today.The single most popular is "I'm going to stand on my principles." I'm not alone in saying, "Fine, stand on your principles but by doing so you have just forfeited your prerogative to bitch about the country going to hell in a handbasket. Further, you are the reason the country is going to hell in said handbasket. If you want to stand on your self-righteous principles why don't you at least wait until the GOP's midterms AFTER they are running the table? Just wait until you can vote a conservative over a RINO. If you don't vote today, you have given your tacit approval of a statist/marxist/socialist/communist/power-grubbing, power-mad, leftist who stands with The Won who wants to take down America." So, go ahead, fool, stand on your principles.Posted by: AbigailAdams to One of One Hundred Reasons to Vote
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (6)
So, one man's hope is another man's hell.
Which, of course, is playing out all over the country today.If only the people who were deluded into voting for Obama in 2008 could exercise a little self-awareness, and appreciate that we are now living in the reality that in 2008 was only a "hope." This is it. This is what happens when Christian -- or at least American -- hope is displaced by Marxist resentment.One Cʘsmos: Hope and Change, AKA Resentment and Coercion
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:49 PM | Your Say (5)
Ridin' into the sunset, Canto The Second
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (2)
"Q: What are the second three funniest things in the world? A: Tits and a clown."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 AM | Your Say (5)
If We Believed in Omens
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 AM | Your Say (0)
November 3, 2014
It is not that my vote counts or that I really care who wins.
That’s not my fault. Forces beyond my control have made my citizenship worthless.What I can control is how I discharge my duties and obligations. That means I’ll probably stop at my polling place in the morning and cast my ballot. The choices may be awful and I may hate having to vote for any of them, but at least I will have done my duty. My country may not care much for me and citizenship may mean nothing, but I still can be a good citizen. At least I’ll have that.Ivy Day in the Committee Room at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 PM | Your Say (11)
For although Jobar seems empty, it is apparently full of eyes.
From other GoPro videos the YouTube historian will seethat the high rise ruins and ground level structures are really honeycombed with sniper hides and mobile squads of infantry belonging to both sides, The holes in buildings become firing ports, from which ATGM teams and roving bands of infantrymen with RPGs working on both sides of the fight shoot. There are few apparent fortifications. Very little will stop a 125 mm or a Russian 12.7 mm bullet so the rebels shoot and scoot.Belmont Club ｻ The Dreaded GoPro Tanks
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 PM | Your Say (0)
4-Acre Spider Web Engulfs Building
“We were unprepared for the sheer scale of the spider populationand the extraordinary masses of both three dimensional and sheet-like webbing that blanketed much of the facility’s cavernous interior. Far greater in magnitude than any previously recorded aggregation of orb-weavers, the visual impact of the spectacle was was nothing less than astonishing. In places where the plant workers had swept aside the webbing to access equipment, the silk lay piled on the floor in rope-like clumps as thick as a fire hose.”| WIRED
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:10 PM | Your Say (1)
Sad News About the Best Show on NPR
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (12)
Democrats openly—and without a hint of apparent irony or self-awareness of their hypocrisy—
appeal to nonwhite voters and women.At the same time, their default criticism of Republicans—who shake in their boots at the very idea of appealing directly to whites lest they be forever damned as bigots—is that the GOP’s strategy is no less overt than the KKK’s. And otherwise intelligent people eagerly slurp up this line of bullshit like it’s a pipin’-hot spoonful of delicious chicken gumbo.The Week That Perished
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (2)
The Democrats have committed themselves to flushing generations of progress on race down the toilet.
That is, flushing the progress whites willingly made toward perceiving and treating all persons as equals. It’s not so clear that any other groups even got the memo that equality and peaceful coexistence were the supposed goals of racial “justice”. Indeed, one now wonders if we got different memos entirely. -- Race and ReactionPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (1)
Probably Means Nothing
Russia Conducts Full "Nuclear Triad" Drill, Launches Topol-M ICBMWhile east Ukraine, aka the Donetsk Republic, was voting over the weekend in what the west pre-emptively classified as another sham vote as its outcome would merely push east Ukraine even closer to the Kremlin, Russia was busy conducting its most comprehensive Nuclear preparedness drill in recent history, one involving the entire "nuclear triad" consisting of strategic bombers; submarines and an the ICBM shown below on Saturday morning.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 AM | Your Say (3)
3rd Generation Kennedy Fears End of Prohibition Might Lead to People Making Lots of Money
A recidivist drug and alcohol abuser(who has miraculously avoided jail time despite committing crimes while under the influence that would send lesser mortals to prison on felony convictions) arguing for the continued imprisonment of adults choosing to responsibly consume a substance is rich in its own right. But for a third-generation Kennedy to argue against ending marijuana prohibition because major profits will be made off of it is head-exploding irony and hypocrisy.- Hit & Run : Reason.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (1)
Clintonia: Where No Young Girl is Safe
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:57 AM | Your Say (6)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:54 AM | Your Say (0)
Global Warming Marches On!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:41 AM | Your Say (3)
An Election About Everything
Not only is this election not about nothing, it is being fought over exactly the kinds of things that ought to determine our elections.It’s about the size and scope of government. It’s about the rule of law. It’s about the security of the citizenry. It’s about competence. It’s about integrity. It’s about honor. It’s about a government that makes promises to those who have defended the country and then fails those veterans, again and again and again. It’s about a president who offers soothing reassurances on his sweeping health care reforms and shrugs his shoulders when consumers learn those assurances were fraudulent. It’s about government websites that cost billions but don’t function and about “smart power” that isn’t very smart. It’s about an administration that cares more about ending wars than winning them, and that claims to have decimated an enemy one day only to find that that enemy is still prosecuting its war against us the next. It’s about shifting red lines and failed resets.| The Weekly Standard
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:25 AM | Your Say (3)
November 2, 2014
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:50 PM | Your Say (10)
I. Don't. Care.
I don’t care what happens to everyone, everywhere.I don’t care what happens to strangers. It’s an admission that sounds barbaric and unspeakably taboo. It’s like saying, “I’m a racist” or “I’m a sexist.” It’s taboo because people have been conned into believing that they are supposed to do something they can NEVER do--care equally about everyone, all around the world.— RADIX JOURNAL
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 PM | Your Say (22)
The Democrat Party,
How ****ing stupid does a person have to be to vote for any Democrat in 2014 -- at any level of government Anyone who votes on Tuesday for any Democrat is supporting a group of religious fanatics whose vile and unswerving goal is nothing less than the destruction of this country.Doug Ross @ Journal: Democrat Religious Fanatics
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 PM | Your Say (4)
THE FAR WEST
The other “second-generation” nation, the Far West occupies the one part of the continent shaped more by environmental factors than ethnographic ones.High, dry, and remote, the Far West stopped migrating easterners in their tracks, and most of it could be made habitable only with the deployment of vast industrial resources: railroads, heavy mining equipment, ore smelters, dams, and irrigation systems. As a result, settlement was largely directed by corporations headquartered in distant New York, Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco, or by the federal government, which controlled much of the land. The Far West’s people are often resentful of their dependent status, feeling that they have been exploited as an internal colony for the benefit of the seaboard nations. Their senators led the fight against trusts in the mid-twentieth century. Of late, Far Westerners have focused their anger on the federal government, rather than their corporate masters.- - Up in Arms Tufts Magazine / fall 2013
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 PM | Your Say (0)
The top 10 most fatuous phrases in the English language
6. Wrong side of historyIf someone says you’re on the wrong side of history, it is their smug and stupid way of telling you that you are wrong and they are right, no more. Conservatism is always on the wrong side of history because it is innately opposed to profound social change. Social change is always good, you see, even when it is utterly calamitous or pointless or unnecessary.7. Bravely fighting cancer
An odious phrase, patronising and meaningless. All people with cancer are bravely fighting the vile disease. All people with cancer who have decided not to fight it, but instead to acquiesce, are also brave — perhaps even more brave. In truth, ‘bravery’ and ‘fighting’ have nothing to do with it.Rod Liddle:The Spectator
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:50 PM | Your Say (10)
"This is what a feminist who exploits women looks like"
Good for her. She wants people to know what feminism looks like (spoiler alert: breasts). The women in the bottom photo make a buck-an-hour (62 pence) making those T-shirts, which sell for ($75), the London Daily Mail reported.Don Surber:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:36 PM | Your Say (5)
Right Resume is Hired on the Spot, But the Exit Interview Will Be a Bitch
ISIS advertising for skilled professionals to man its failing oil fields: Wanted - experienced oil plant manager, pay $250,000 p.a....send CV to ISIS: Jihadists advertising for skilled professionals to man its failing oil fields after string of fatal accidentsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (0)
The Era of “You Can’t Tell Me What to Do”
“I do what I want, and you can’t tell me what to do.”It isn’t just the chicks, it’s dudes too. We’ve got a lot of people walking around among us who seem to have perceived there is some sort of Great Separation coming, a wedge about to be driven through & amongst us all, dividing those who are immune from being told what to do, from those who can & must constantly be told what to do. And they want to make sure they’re on the immune side of the wedge.House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (2)
Xi Jinping
Xi also apparently believes that Confucius can bolster his own standing in the country.Confucius’ ideal government was topped by a “sage-king” — a person who was so learned, benevolent and upright that his virtuous rule would bring peace and order to society and uplift the Chinese masses both spiritually and materially. Confucius made little progress in achieving this vision during his own lifetime. But Xi seems to be resurrecting the idea. Since becoming President, he has been whittling away at the government by committee that had prevailed for two decades, in the process centralizing more power in his hands than any communist leader since Mao.Had Enough Therapy?: The Age of Xi Jinping
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 AM | Your Say (0)
When I got older, I realized how easy it is to attack the status quo if the status won't defend itself.
Finding fault with the quo is easy.Ridicule isn't particularly difficult. Nelson the thug on the Simpsons just points and laughs. He offers nothing but derision. That's the joke with him. Really witty derision is like putting termites into a foundation when everyone's asleep. You can derive a kind of evil glee from it, but it's not really constructive. The Pythons sensed that the society that they were born into was weakened, and they could attack it at will without repercussion. Hell, everyone they made fun of gave them an award for doing so.Sippican Cottage: Beckenbauer a Bit of a Surprise, There
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 AM | Your Say (0)
November 1, 2014
Obviously a Seattle Democrat En Route to the Polls
Police: Man armed with finger gun makes for ineffective robber SEATTLE --A man making a finger gun with one hand while holding his pants up with the other didn't make for a super-effective robber Monday morning in downtown Seattle, according to the Seattle Police Department. According to the police report for the incident, the victim was walking on Third Avenue near Pine Street around 6:40 a.m. when the suspect stepped in front of him. The suspect said, "Give me your wallet or my buddy will beat you up," but the victim didn't see anyone else with him.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 PM | Your Say (5)
My Obama-narcolepsy is interfering with my Obama-schadenfreude.
Jonathan Alter starts telling me how misunderstood the president is,and suddenly orange traffic cones are bouncing off my truck’s grill as I somnolently drift into a highway work zone. You could fill a cereal bowl with broken glass and barbed-wire shards drenched in hot sauce right below my face. All it would take for me to use it as a pillow is a 30-second loop of Obama saying “Let me be clear.” His speeches are like whale sounds, but with less substance. I’d say they’re all white noise, but I don’t want to get called a racist.Never Yet Melted » Obama's "Speeches Are Like Whale Sounds, But With Less Substance"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 PM | Your Say (1)
“Hagel devises new mission for Army: Coastal defense force.” As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.
In the real world, the first question facing any proposal for “defense” is, what is it supposed to defend us against? Before an enemy could land in strength on our shores, it would have to defeat the U.S. Navy. Exactly who is in a position to do that is not clear. Neither Russia or China qualify. The Royal Navy just isn’t what it used to be. The French are dastardly enough to try anything, but how much threat is posed by landing the French Army is not clear. If it met our Army on the field of battle, the question would be, which is the better French Army? Do we fear a flotilla of a million sampans coming from China? A million dhows from the Persian gulf? --The View From OlympusPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:34 PM | Your Say (6)
Well has Afghanistan earned its title, “Graveyard of Empires.”
Without US air power, garrison troops and large numbers of “civilian contractors” and old-fashioned mercenaries the Kabul puppet regimewould soon be swept away. Afghanistan’s government army is likely to collapse as quickly as Iraq’s did before ISIS. Most of southern Afghanistan would declare for Taliban which, however harsh, is the nation’s only authentic political movement apart from the Tajik and Uzbek Communists in the north. The US garrison in Kabul will continue to make Afghanistan safe for opium, which is the base for heroin.- - The Unz Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:08 PM | Your Say (7)
Global Warming Marches On!
Just in from South Carolina:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:45 AM | Your Say (6)