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June 30, 2015
Lawn Chair, Cold Beer, Golf Clap: "Black Lives Matter Protesters Disrupt Gay Pride Parade"
Chicago’s 47th annual gay pride parade was disrupted several times by the usual city disruptions — gang activity, gunshots, and drunks.But by far the biggest disruption was from a large group of “black lives matter” protesters. The group was joined by members of the black queer community of Chicago who announced the disruption on their website. - - Breitbart
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (6)
Gay Americans Today: Made it, Ma! Top of the world!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (3)
The Ultimate Gun Free Zone: The Beach
your average beach goer, even the gun nutty types, aren’t going to take a piece when they head out for some beach time. It seems to me if this type of attack is to be a template, the only viable solution is a stepped up police presence at beaches, with the officers appropriately armed with patrol rifles (for those of you who are gun control advocates, ‘patrol rifles’ are what you people call an ‘assault weapon’) that can handle the kind of range you’ll encounter in a beach environment. | Shall Not Be Questioned
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (6)
In a Just World.....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (2)
When It Comes to Titles It's Kathy Shaidle for the Win
The Orations of Monica Lewinsky:"Having watched, by sheer coincidence, the 1945 production of The Picture of Dorian Gray on TCM last night, I was struck by Monica’s appearance in this TED-like talk. She still wears her hair and makeup the same way she did two decades ago, and appears not to have aged terribly much. But if that’s evidence of some sort of deal with the devil, it clearly hasn’t worked out. She is still unmarried and childless, and now, at 41, her chances of altering her status drop daily."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (2)
The great irony is that the Lovers of Nice are not nice.
They are not nice to the children who will be confused when told in first gradethat a mommy can marry a mommy or the children who will never know their fathers, the men who jacked off in fertility clinics and then left them for good. They’re not nice to the victims of homosexuality who will kill themselves, end up murdered by a not-very-nice partner, die prematurely from a not-nice disease such as anal cancer, bacterial pneumonia or AIDS, or if they are one of the small number of homosexuals who survive into old age, die alone and with no grown children to care for them. The Empire of Nice ｫ The Thinking Housewife
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:29 AM | Your Say (6)
June 29, 2015
To address a scourge such as Islam we must think in terms of extermination.
What if Medina, the burial place of Muhammad was wiped off the face of the planet? What if the Dome Mosque on the Temple site in Jerusalem was blown up? The greatest weakness of Islam is that it is hopelessly tied to sacred cities and buildings. If these cities and buildings were destroyed, Islam would die within a generation as it would be apparent to all that its god could not protect the three holiest sites in Islam. The Achilles Heel of Islam | 5 Pt. Salt
While all is being said, not much is being done. To address a scourge such as Islam we must think in terms of extermination. Think: Dresden; Think: Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Collateral damage? Every time some unfortunate guy gets beheaded and the video goes viral?
Really, collateral damage? You're worried some kids or old people are gonna get killed? When they kill one of ours, we kill one hundred of theirs.
It has been seen and experienced in most every other country in the world, from the "super-powers" to the Third World yocky-dock countries: Islam is not a good thing. It benefits nobody, apparently not even the adherents.
We are all listening to rumors that something bad is gonna happen. Instead of cowering and hoping that it won't happen near us we should be fire-bombing Baghdad and other concentrations of Muslim terrorists. Can't find 'em? Enlarge the target area.
The justification, if one is needed, is that the Muslims are Evil. Whether we are spiritual or worldly, believers or atheists, young, old, gay or straight, male or female, White or Black, or any other combination of the above, the paradigm in which we all repose dictates that some things are good, some bad, and some Evil.
The remedy to the damage and destruction, the murder most foul and the barbaric actions of Muslims can only be met with a force strong enough to overcome once and for all that which threatens all others.
Death sudden, overwhelming, final, no hesitation, and thorough by whatever means will accomplish the end result — elimination of the Evil.
Wait until they break out the nukes. -- Chasmatic at The Top 40: The "Droneiacs" Way of War [Bumped]
[HT: Never Yet Melted]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 PM | Your Say (2)
Let the diminishing number of unaborted children of the Left go fight the Left's wars of choice like Syria.
I am retired US Army officer. I wrote this about three years ago: Let the Left secure the Leftist State it has wrought So my advice to young men and women:Stop joining the US military. Do not talk to recruiters or let them seduce you with sales pitches of job training or education benefits. These now have the main purpose of more deeply tying your personal prosperity, hence your liberty, to government control and largess. Let the diminishing number of unaborted children of the Left go fight the Left's wars of choice like Syria. The Left wants them, let the Left fight them. Let the Left sacrifice its own to protect the State it has wanted for decades and finally got. It is not the country the Founders made. It is not a country that believers in Constitutional liberty can defend with integrity. Comment on The Top 40: I won’t fight for a government
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:53 PM | Your Say (5)
Greece ran out of its own money a long time ago and now,
No country that employs 75% of its citizens in make-work government bureaucracies and produces nothing except spanakopita is going to be – to put it in modern terms – sustainable.Michelle Obama's Mirror
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:52 AM | Your Say (3)
June 28, 2015
The long War Between the Whites that started in the 19th century and continues to this day. [Bumped]
Of course, the flag is not really the issue. That’s why normal people are caught off-guard whenever the Cult starts waving it around and ululating like lunatics.The real issue is the long War Between the Whites that started in the 19th century and continues to this day. We call this the Civil War and that’s a good label, but I prefer my label, as it is more precise. Civil War implies both sides were equal or the same or viewed one another in that way. They never did and they still don’t.
In the 19th century, northern whites of mostly English ancestry used slavery as an excuse to attack and kill as a many Southern whites as possible. Those southern whites were of mostly Scots-Irish ancestry. The northern whites were ready to join their European coevals in the industrial, global age and they did not want those backward agrarian crackers holding them back. Slavery had to go and the people responsible for it had to be punished. The Cult at War | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 PM | Your Say (17)
I can't wait until Granny, on her death bed, marries her favorite granddaughter,
and the IRS watches all that Estate Tax money just drifting away into the sunset - instead of into the IRS coffers.Two same-sex anyones even when not sexually connected can marry and same thing - there goes all that Estate Tax money. Same with SS spousal benefits, health care insurance, military pension spousal benefits, and I'm sure we can all think of other scams that will now become perfectly legal. Oh, the divorce lawyers and the tax lawyers are going to have a field day! || Posted by: SWOhio Gay Marriage: Just Do It! (And Welcome to It)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 PM | Your Say (9)
The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice.
He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting. Orwell, Road to Wigan PierPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 PM | Your Say (0)
Haec dies quam fecit Dominus: exsultemus et laetemur in ea.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 PM | Your Say (0)
Who is the protohomosexual?
the knight of Arthurian legend pledging to serve his lady in trouthe and curtesie as if she were a goddess worthy of adoration. He believes erotic love is a high spiritual experience, the highest experience. Andreas Capellanus’ handbook advises that secrecy and suspense will fan the flame of passion; family obligations and children will stifle it. Lancelot and Guinevere betray King Arthur, Tristan and Iseult break the law, Romeo and Juliet go insane, and in the name of “love” every new fling causes undeserved pain for others. All of this is, of course, the raw material for blockbuster videos and bestselling novels in America today. - - Crisis Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:31 PM | Your Say (4)
I won’t fight for a government
which has spent years importing filth from every recess of the third world to replace the children we never had because our women were too busy serving two buck coffees to pay off their six-figure student debts.
The government sees low maintenance immigrants as the future of this country. Send them to fight for it. I will not fight for the freedom of speech of people who use it to bully, belittle, and demonize Christians. I will not be lectured on the importance of the right to free speech and then in the next breath criticized for my disapproval of the proliferation of gay marriage and the false idols of equality. If freedom of speech is such a fundamental right to these people then they can take up arms and defend it. But we all know they won’t. Coming Home From The War On Terror
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:36 PM | Your Say (3)
Are White Men Gods?
Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry. Differential geometry.Calculus: Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Physical chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. The indeterminacy principle. The wave equation. The Parthenon. The Anabasis. Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Every symphony ever written. Pierre Auguste Renoir. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. The purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio. Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening. Penicillin. Airplanes. Surgery. The mammogram. The Pill. The condom. Polio vaccine. The integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber. Nylon. Roads. Buildings. Elvis. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, that’s nerve gas, and maybe we didn’t really need it.) Silicone. The automobile. Really weird stuff, like clathrates, Buckyballs, and rotaxanes. The Bible. Bug spray. Diffie-Hellman, public-key cryptography, and RSA. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.| HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:56 PM | Your Say (5)
Happy Ramadan everybody! Yes, let's COEXIST in one big happy gay commune!
So, again, while the silly prancers prance and the idiotic dancers dance on the streets of DC, San Francisco, and Seattle,the White House is bathed in the colors of the gay rainbow flag, our President continues to lecture us all on the evils of the Confederacy, and the Rebel flag gets ripped down from monuments across the South, ISIS & Co. continue their march toward an Islamic Caliphate. One in which, please note, gays do not get married, they get thrown from tall buildings or hanged from cranes. While it apparently takes a delusional white guy who shoots up a black church to get our President concerned about the deaths of Christians, or as he once labelled them "bible clingers," ISIS and pals such as Boko Haram have no problem slaughtering hundreds of Christians and bragging about it. As long as they don't fly the Rebel battle flag, I guess it's ok . . . The DiploMad 2.0: Meanwhile, Back in the Real World . . .
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:25 PM | Your Say (1)
Theory: What is happening is that our baby-boomers have gotten wrinkly.
They’ve dedicated their lives to the premise that wisdom comes from the young, and the older generation is just a bunch of doddering old geriatrics standing in the way of progress.Now that’s them, and they don’t know how to react to it. And so they react by proffering a bunch of silly ideas, forgetting to ask themselves obvious, elementary questions that drew frenzied, obsessive contemplation by the older generations of years gone by: How does this make things better? What’s the precedent? What does this do to freedom for those who are not yet born? House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:13 PM | Your Say (5)
Ancient Indian Casinos: Great Salt Lake of Utah gives up its Prehistoric Gambling Secrets from the 13th Century
One die is made from a beaver tooth wrapped in sinew, which is very similar to an artefact found among the Klamath people of the Oregon coast. Another item, a stick carved with spirals, resembles artifacts found among the peoples of British Columbia while the hoop and feathered dart have counterparts among the tribes of the Great Plains and the Colorado Plateau. | Ancient Origins
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:12 PM | Your Say (5)
“Each day it becomes easier to know what we ought to despise: what modern man admires and journalism praises.” – Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:07 PM | Your Say (5)
Progressivism: Beyond Parody
None of the predictions of climate alarmists has come true. We, for example, were supposed to have increasing humber of violent hurricanes in Florida. Instead it's been years since there was a hurricane. We were supposed to have "snow free" winters, instead, of course, we have parts of the country where it is still snowing. The diasppearing sea ice, the vanishing polar bears, and on and on . . . one failed prediction after another--almost as bad as the AIDS alarmists. Since they can't predict anything tangible, the alarmists have settled on "change." Yes, that's their prediction: because of human economic activity, next year might not be the same as this year. In what ways? They can't say. That's it. That's science? - - Progressivism: Beyond Parody
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:07 PM | Your Say (1)
The Serbs were, at least, a warrior people.
The coastal elites are uniquely unsuited to a world where force rules instead of law. The Serbs were, at least, a warrior people.
The soft boys and girls who brought us helicopter parenting, “trigger warnings” and coffee cups with diversity slogans are not. I know the endgame of discarding the rule of law for short-term advantage because I stood in its ruins. Liberals think this free society just sort of happened, that they can poke and tear at its fabric and things will just go on as before. But they won’t. So at the end of the day, if you want a society governed by the rule of force, you better pray that you’re on the side with the guns and those who know how to use them. Liberals May Regret Their New Rules - Kurt Schlichter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:37 PM | Your Say (1)
June 27, 2015
Remember Prometheus
Full of ideas about galvanism and alchemy, the novel was based on a dream which Shelley had after visiting a castle in Germany where a famous alchemist had attempted to create a living being. The ‘science’ in the book is non existent. What we are meant to remember is the presumption of the “modern Prometheus” who created the monster. Giants and heroes | BESTqUEST
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:10 PM | Your Say (2)
The American flag is a symbol of Native American genocide. We need to take it down.
While you’re at it, take down the Union Jack. It symbolizes 700 years of war against Scotland.The Kiss logo has an SS that looks like Hitler’s SS. That’s offensive to all the Holocaust survivors in the audience. The Young Turks is offensive to the 1.5 Armenian Christians they murdered. They need to #ChangeTheName. I’m offended when rednecks call themselves rednecks because the term comes from Scotch-Irish slaves who couldn’t handle the Southern heat. That word should be as illegal as “kaffir” is in South Africa. White people themselves are a symbol of hatred and oppression, which is why I’ve begun a social media campaign called #TakeUsDown where white people post pictures of themselves facedown on the pavement. The U.S. of Shame
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:53 AM | Your Say (3)
Coming Right Up: Gay Divorce Court
As I pointed out above my niece makes a lot of money and her annual income is about ten times what her partner's is. Her partner filed a lawsuit demanding half of my niece's assets because they had been in a domestic and business partnership for 10 years. There were a lot of assets-brand new 8,000 sq ft. house with pool and summer kitchen they had built as a 'wedding present' to themselves, two rental houses and a beach house plus all the other stuff. My niece, needles to say, didn't want to give up half her assets so she went to her attorney. Her attorney told her that seeing as everything they owned (with the exception of my nieces 401k) was owned jointly and they had a joint bank and credit card accounts that basically they were in a business partnership (if nothing else) and, yes, she would have to cough it up. The lawyer said she could try to fight it but all she'd be doing is paying a lot of attorney fees to achieve the same result. The fighting over the money and the houses has been ugly but the end is in sight. Posted by: Nahanni In Gay Marriage: Just Do It!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (3)
June 26, 2015
There is no conservative party. There is a Republican Party.
The purpose of the party and its politicians, much like that of its Democratic counterpart, is to obtain money and privileges for its major donors. That doesn't mean that its members don't have other ideals and agendas, but Republican politicians who rise high enough come from an urban and suburban establishment that is more liberal than its base. Expecting them to care as much about your issues as you do is unrealistic. They will only do the right thing insofar as it helps them A. Get control of money B. Advance their careers C. Become popular And this is a good thing. It means that they're controllable. Sultan Knish: Be the Best Saboteur You Can Be
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:55 PM | Your Say (1)
Scalia Nails It: Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast,
is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves. Never Yet Melted »
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:39 PM | Your Say (2)
"We have not (in my scholarly opinion) reached Peak Public Stupidity yet."
You seem to think our gov't is strong but I say it's weak - pretty much all the gangster gov'ts in the world are wiping their feet on Obama.The gov't is dangerously over extended financially and the lights could easily go out if the bankers get serious about their lending practices. In addition to that nobody seems willing to see and admit the obvious: the white Anglo Saxon male is starting to hate again. When one shot up a church full of black women at bible study the response from our elites was to tear Ol' Dixie down. THAT'LL fix it, right?
Fact is I think there is more a total LACK of planning going on. If the gov't was a car, the wheels would be coming off, oil would be pouring out the bottom of the engine, all the idiot lights on the dash would be in the red - and the driver would be stomping on the gas!
I see a soviet style break up coming for America, and possibly race wars as a result. Bloodshed is almost a certainty. 28 Sherman: Last Week's Social Matter Post Preview for This Week's 5
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:56 PM | Your Say (5)
Diversity + Proximity = War
De facto internal borders are based on race, ethnicity, religion, ideology, and social status, just as hard borders.La Raza is an internal border. The Congressional Black Caucus is an internal border. Journalism is an internal border (80-90% of journalists are registered Democrats). Cosmopolitan elites are an internal border. Schools are an internal border (ever notice how students congregate in a lunchroom cafeteria? How about the quickness with which urban white elites set off for the decidedly less diverse suburbs when the kids reach schooling age?). J-Date is an internal border. NASCAR is an internal border. Libertardian blogs are an internal border. Gay Pride and Puerto Rican Day parades are internal borders. Gerrymandered districts are internal borders. Neighborhoods are internal borders. Of course, one notable group has no recognized internal border at all. And we know what happens to undefended, borderless lands: they get overrun. | Chateau Heartiste
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:43 PM | Your Say (3)
June 25, 2015
The Most Exclusive US College that You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
That it consistently tops Harvard’s yield rate and evades suspicions of being a cult, that it requires its students to engage in 20 hours of manual labor per week and doesn’t let them leave without express permission? Well, this is the true story of Deep Springs College, where there are 26 students total at any given time, all of them male. Despite its constant admissions competition and solid interest, the college remains as committed as ever to its exclusivity and small size. | Messy Nessy Chic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:56 PM | Your Say (1)
Two reruns of I Love Lucy received nearly double the viewers of the Mad Men series finale
This is also why the few minorities allowed to grace the pages of the NY Times bemoan the whiteness of Mad Men and Girls."A show is considered excellent, why aren't we on that show? Quick sound the alarm? We need black bodies and homos STAT!" It is a pathetic weird way of trying to skeeze some credit off the celebrated show; like adding a few blacks to Girls and Mad Men will allow some Afro-Am studies professor to think blacks contribute to high/middle brow culture. For a comical juxtaposition, the children's show Veggie Tales for years was Christian and unapologetically white. It had a Mexican character straight from the '50s Warner Brothers set who often played the antagonist and another Indian stereotype character. The NY Times never noticed because the show was for the rubes and never crossed their radar screen. No worries about anachronistic stereotyping with Veggie Tales. 28 Sherman: The Mad Men Effect
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:34 PM | Your Say (1)
Bedbugs are back from the Past,
and the Past knows how to get rid of them. And your house while you’re at it: “Spread Gun-powder, beaten small, about the crevices of your bedstead; fire it with a match, and keep the smoak in; do this for an hour or more; and keep the room close several hours.” -- The GuardianPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (0)
“Gee, I thought marriage equality was merely a gay rights movement. I didn’t realize that fascism was part of that package.”
A lot of people are scratching their heads today, wondering how life got to be so surreal, so fast in the United States of America.Based on the silencing tactics revealed by the LGBT lobby, many observers are likely now thinking: “Gee, I thought marriage equality was merely a gay rights movement. I didn’t realize that fascism was part of that package.” The Great Unraveling continues at a rapid clip when slipping on a pronoun in these days of transgender rule could cost you your career or earn you massive social media rallies chanting “hater” at you. How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusion
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (0)
American Hippopotamus
But a small and industrious group of thinkers stepped forward with an answer, a bold idea being endorsed by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and The New York Times. Their plan: to import hippopotamuses to the swamps of Louisiana and convince Americans to eat them. -- Kindle Store
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (1)
Death from Above
'Abortion drone' to drop DIY drugs over Poland to women:
A drone carrying medical abortion pills is set to fly to Poland, where abortion is severely restricted for women. The ‘abortion drone’ is being sent by not-for-profit organisation Women on Waves - which provides medical abortion pills around the world - in a bid to help Polish women terminate their pregnancies safely. Normally the company sends the pills by post, after women have placed their orders online, but this is the first time it has used the unorthodox method of delivery by drone.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 AM | Your Say (0)
June 24, 2015
"The Southcake Will Rise Again!"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:58 PM | Your Say (1)
Non-coastal America is dying to elect someone who reminds everybody of their first wife, including women and the never-married.
In the long term, the left is not guaranteed to maintain federal executive power.Conservatives’ best strategy is to nominate someone who might actually get elected and then might actually govern as a conservative – Jeb Bush, I am so not looking at you. Once we do, we can let the liberals solve this problem for us with their bizarre determination to nominate that glass-jawed, email-deleting cuckoldette. Time To Go On The Offense Against Liberalism - Kurt Schlichter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (2)
I commanded a cavalry squadron, so my default tactic is to attack.
As Sun Tzu teaches, “if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.” We need to understand our enemy, so as to beat him. And the first step to doing that is to realize that the progressives are our enemies. Perhaps I would be a bit more charitable if over the last week I had not been barraged with obscenities, death wishes, and threats for daring to opine that being on EBT is something you should be ashamed of. But when progressives invite you to die because you’d prefer not to subsidize lay-about Democrat-voting losers, it clarifies things. Leftists want you dead, or at least enslaved, and you can tell that because they can’t keep themselves from telling you that. - - Kurt Schlichter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 PM | Your Say (4)
Yet Another Hillary Makeover Plus Other Items
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:49 AM | Your Say (0)
"When they came for the Confederate flag, I did not speak out - because I was not a Confederate."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:11 AM | Your Say (1)
Half a Truck and the Chicken Tax
Not at all directly about chickens, it targeted potato starch, brandy, dextrin, and light trucks, and it forced companies importing those items to the United States to pay a whopping 25% tax on said imports.Each of the four products taxed under the Chicken Tax were strategically targeted. For instance, the reason for choosing to include light trucks had to do with a specific manufacturer: Volkswagen. The Volkswagen vans were immensely popular in the United States during the early 1960s, and the U.S. government claimed the import cost of those from West Germany was about equal to the loss of revenue for the poultry industry at not being able to export chicken to West Germany. Practically overnight, the once popular VW van, which fell under the classification of “light truck,” disappeared from car dealerships around the United States as consumers weren’t willing to pay the increased prices directly resulting from the 25% tariff. -- TIFO
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (1)
Michelle Obama's "All this for a damn flag"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (0)
June 23, 2015
A Visit to the Le Creuset Factory
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:00 PM | Your Say (1)
We aren’t giving up our right of free speech or, for that matter, any other rights you leftist schmucks deem inconvenient.
Progressives mutter without conviction about how they can’t support violence, but … but … but, in fact, they do support violence. It’s not just their chilling with bomb-planting guys around the neighborhood and free passes for the looters in Ferguson and Baltimore. They support whatever it takes to silence us. Speak Free or Die - Kurt SchlichterPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (4)
Plenty of leftists understand that without liberalism, modern democratic societies tend to degenerate into civil conflict rather quickly
The destruction of liberal political norms does cause some consternation on both the left and the right.Plenty of leftists understand that without liberalism, modern democratic societies tend to degenerate into civil conflict rather quickly, as the leading party faction proceeds to liquidate all of its rivals. So, they feel uneasy, and tend to complain about violations of liberal norms in areas like privacy and restrictions of speech. These complaints have no force (they’re backed by feelings rather than weapons most of the time), so amplifying those complaints is mostly useless. Complaints about the NSA’s mass spying, for example, are the whimpers of a dying animal — not an expression of authentically vigorous resistance. Leftists Work For the Total State - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:06 AM | Your Say (1)
Trump has always struck me a gold-plated phony.
Uncle Jack had the bluster and the vanity you see with Trump. Uncle Jack always settled for the very best, even when he was broke, which was all of the time. He ended up doing ten years in federal prison. To his credit, he did his time and kept his mouth shut. That’s probably why I never cared for Trump. My uncle Jack was not an evil man. He was just one of those assholes you always regret having met if you hang around him long enough. There are guys you meet who are never on the level. They also have some angle so you can never turn your back on them. Because you can never let your guard down, they wear you out just being in the same room with them. Five Star Trump | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (2)
A very large number of entities have vied to put their points of view into your head for a long time.
The ideas, concepts and facts in your mind were very often put there to benefit others, especially government others, but a very large number of entities have vied to put their points of view into your head for a long time.Education is one example. Public education was always conceived as a way of generating citizens subservient to the state. Consequently, it has greatly changed the meaning of our history taught to students, and critical thinking about anything controversial is suppressed. Relative to the amount of real independent thought any of us have been able to do, our minds are owned by others. - - thinkpatriot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (1)
June 22, 2015
“Fashion victim: rhabdomyolysis and bilateral peroneal and tibial neuropathies”
Then her feet and legs went numb. She tripped, fell, and “spent several hours lying on the ground before she was found,” a detail which really takes this paper and medical case from “silly” to “actually pretty horrible sounding.” She was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where doctors had to cut her skinny jeans off, and put her on an IV. “Her legs were so swollen and weak that she could only rest in bed for the first couple of days,” the study's author, Thomas Kimber, told me via email, “but by the time she left hospital she had improved sufficiently that she could walk unaided.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:24 PM | Your Say (5)
10 Prison Security Techniques Being Implemented on the American People
In federal prisons, cameras are everywhere. The reason, of course, is to help maintain security and keep track of prisoners.
Inmates know that if they break any rules or policies, they can be readily identified if the event occurred in view of a camera. The cameras remind the inmates that they do not have any freedom or privacy, and that they live under total control. Unfortunately, the “free world” is now subject to the widespread use of video surveillance and movement tracking. This goes beyond cameras, which have become virtually ubiquitous now. The federal government has been handing out grants to create sophisticated surveillance grids in cities across the country.- Police State USA
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:37 AM | Your Say (3)
June 21, 2015
Have you asked Hillary about the Arkansas Confederate flag thing? Wait, never mind, nobody asks Hillary anything.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (0)
The Zero-Armed Bandit
If exploded this bomb contains enough TNT to severely damage Harrahs [sic] across the street. This should give you some idea of the amount of TNT contained within this box. It is full of TNT. It is our advice to cordon off a minimum of twelve hundred feet radius and remove all people from that area. • Damn Interesting
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (3)
June 20, 2015
The old crime thinkers who were run out of conservative politics decades ago are being proven correct about the culture war.
Culture trumps everything. The plutocrats living off the financial system will do business with the either party, but they will favor those who share their worldview. Leon Cooperman will give money to Elizabeth Warren over Ted Cruz because Warren is better for the gays.
If you look at how the people who invented Christianity converted Europe, you’ll see it was not a bottom up approach. They went for the top guys, knowing they would compel their people to convert. That’s exactly how Augustine went about converting the Anglo-Saxons. He baptized Æthelberht, the king of Kent, assuming the people would follow. That’s a lesson to consider here. The people in charge of the two political parties are wholly owned by the financial class. That financial class is culturally at odds with the people, but they control the means of public expression, as well as the dominant cultural institutions. History says they win, no matter how many times you vote Republican. - - Wall Street Versus Americans
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:32 PM | Your Say (2)
I think that the thing that no one saw coming is the class awareness of the global elite
For all of human history, the rich and powerful were tied to their country of origin by blood, language and tradition.The rootless cosmopolitan was a fringe character, never to be trusted. The new elite are different in that they are much more like the rootless cosmopolitan, with infinitely more money and, consequently, power. The consequences are becoming apparent to many grassroots Republicans. They rallied to give the GOP majorities in both houses only to see the GOP embrace the Obama agenda with an enthusiasm of a fanatic. If you trundled out to vote in 2010 and 2014 and you don’t feel like a fool right now, you’re not paying attention. Just wait until the court rules against ObamaCare and the GOP rushes a fix through both houses. Maybe then you’ll see. Wall Street Versus Americans | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:29 PM | Your Say (10)
The Democrats Have the Worst Presidential Candidates in America
It doesn’t look like America. Instead it looks like a Marx Brothers take on Cuba. While the Republican field brings fresh ideas and personalities, the Democrats have dusted off a collection of unappealing politicians whom even their own voters can’t get enthusiastic about. Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner despite polling underwater in likability. Even Marylanders don’t want Martin O’Malley to be president. And Bernie Sanders will be lucky to carry Vermont and Berkeley. Sultan Knish
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:35 PM | Your Say (3)
The Lost City of Z and the Mysterious Disappearance of Percy Fawcett
Judging by inscriptions found in many parts of Brazil, the inhabitants used an alphabetical writing allied to many ancient European and Asian scripts. There are rumors, too, of a strange source of light in the buildings, a phenomenon that filled with terror the Indians who claimed to have seen it.
The central place I call “Z” — our main objective — is in a valley surmounted by lofty mountains. The valley is about ten miles wide, and the city is on an eminence in the middle of it, approached by a barreled roadway of stone. The houses are low and windowless, and there is a pyramidal temple. The inhabitants of the place are fairly numerous, they keep domestic animals, and they have well-developed mines in the surrounding hills. Not far away is a second town, but the people living in it are of an inferior order to those of “Z.” Farther to the south is another large city, half buried and completely destroyed.- - Ancient Origins
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:08 PM | Your Say (2)
June 19, 2015
I wonder if some folks actually lack the sensitivity to be moved unless the race and religion of victims and perpetrators are lavished with attention.
Should we have to know what happened 150 years ago in the church? No we should not.People are binding their conspiratorial worldviews to the actions of a maniac and spreading their suspicions upon totems of their fetishes. The Confederate battle flag did not cause this murder. The NRA didn't sanction it. The African Methodist Episcopal Church didn't have it coming to them. Unarmed Christians didn't deserve it. The City of Charleston did not create an environment conducive to it. Their police officers did not conspire to leave the suspect alive, contrary to normal behavior. The reporting of the media by not including the word 'terrorism' is not significant. I would like to think of myself, and so I counsel myself to be a sober judge of events. A sober judge is, after all and in the end, the sort of human being we human beings are most likely to face and heed in the aftermath of tragedy and pursuit of justice. Obligatory Seriousness on Charleston - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 PM | Your Say (3)
Obviously, Kate Upton Should be on The New $10
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (9)
From: Dumb Prick. To: Dumb Prunt -- Blumenthal’s E-Mail to Hillary on Spinning Qaddafi’s Fall
“First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it,” he wrote in the August 22, 2011 memo to Clinton.“When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation house. You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment. The most important phrase is ‘successful strategy.’” | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (3)
Christopher Lee vs Chuck Norris
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (4)
There’s a roller coaster in Kansas that’s not running anymore. It’s OVER, America.
. . . the photographs taken by Lawless tell this larger story in a uniquely poignant way.His work is not just about gawking at individual sites of decaying buildings but rather striving to encapsulate the larger story of America’s rise and fall. That’s why he didn’t just visit one abandoned amusement park for his latest book Bizarro. In the artist’s own words, “This project showcases America’s economic decline that rips into heart and soul of our country.” There’s a roller coaster in Kansas that’s not running anymore. It’s OVER, America. The same photographer managed to find Deep Meaning in dead malls, and gets busted in the comments for being a poseur, self-promoter, and a serial filter abuser, so he’s probably not the Walker Evans of our dreadful times. - - Lileks @ Lunch
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (0)
The Tocci Brothers
Giacomo & Giovanni Battista Tocci were born in Locana, Italy, sometime between 1875 & 1877. Their father was so shocked by the twins' appearance that he was sent to a mental asylum for a month. The boys appeared to be one boy from the waist down, but were 2 full boys from the waist up. And, as doctors all over Europe examined them, their anatomy was pretty much that way. Each twin could feel & control only 1 leg. They never learned to walk upright, but they could crawl. The twins got along with each other most of the time, but would settle their differences by punching each other. After a childhood of exhibition in Europe, the Tocci twins came to America in 1891 and stayed for 5 years. In 1897, after barely reaching adulthood, Giacomo & Giovanni retired to a villa in Venice, becoming recluses from the public for the rest of their lives. Little is known of them afterward. There were rumors that they had married 2 women, but it was never confirmed. They died sometime after 1912, but it is not known exactly when. - - Pinterest
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (0)
Black Bart: Outlaw Outside of the Box
He did not carry a pistol or a rifle. He showed a shotgun which he never fired and which may never even have been loaded. He wore a raffish derby hat and long duster and disguised his face with a flour sack with holes or his eyes. He was unfailingly polite and courteous to drivers and passengers alike and never uttered a profanity. On at least two occasions he left behind short poems celebrating his crimes. Yet he got away with tens of thousands of dollars of Wells Fargo gold and U.S. Mail in his long career."Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout" - Black Bart Pulls First Stagecoach Robbery
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (0)
Chruchill on Obama
"My parents judged that the [circus] spectacle would be too revolting and demoralising for my youthful eyes, [so] I have waited 50 years to see the Boneless Wonder sitting in the [White House]."Advice to President Jello: "To try to be safe everywhere is to be strong nowhere." "Weakness is not treason, though it may be equally disastrous." But why should America be the policeman of the world? "I answer: 'If we left off [policing it] you would soon find out.'" For "The victory of [America] means the welfare of the world." One Cʘsmos: What Would Churchill Say?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:53 AM | Your Say (0)
June 18, 2015
Cobb: "911 is what you call when you have nowhere else to go."
911 is what you call when you are completely helpless to do anything for yourself. 911 is for the crisis.When the pooch has not only been screwed but gang raped and bludgeoned. When your world of talent, ability, luck, discipline, education, know how, can do, get up and go and blessings of the Almighty have completely been exhausted, who do you call? You call the cops.
You call the cops at your wits end, but you still really don't want to. You wonder how the hell you got into the situation and you're mad as hell, confused and scared. Everything has gone wrong in your world and you can't handle it. What could be worse?
Indifference.
Few things piss off people than the image of a fat, sloppy, lazy, bored police captain listening to you puke your guts out in a complete state of panic while he's eating his donuts and coffee, looking for a sharpened pencil for filling out your report. 911 will put you on hold. But nurses in reception do the same thing when your leg is broken and you're bleeding from your eyeballs. Tech support does the same thing when your screen goes black. City Hall does the same thing when your kid gets hit by a car at the intersection where you've been begging for a traffic light. FEMA does the same when your house is flooded with effluent from the river that the Army Corps was supposed to have diked. The White House does the same when your diplomat is shot in the head in Benghazi.
Are you sensing the pattern? The Last Man in the World You Want to Deal With - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 PM | Your Say (3)
When I was a child, we were all "free range."
Our parents allowed us more and more independence the older we got based on how well we handled the responsibility.I was "free range" by the time I was three years old â not exactly my parents' choice, though. The story goes that I wanted to go to school with my brother and escaped from the house when I got the opportunity and walked the two blocks to his elementary school. The front door was dead-bolted, and my mother tried to watch me assiduously. When she turned her back, I was out the door and down to the school. I stopped after a few days â not because my mother could keep me in, but because they wouldn't let me stay at the school and kept having my mother pick me up. My brother did walk me to school the first day of kindergarten, but then my mother realized how ridiculous it was. Articles: When I Was a Kid, We Were All 'Free Range'
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:40 PM | Your Say (2)
You've got questions? Iowahawk has answers.
Answering the age-old question "does the Pope shit in the woods?"
https://t.co/bU1AlJckal
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 18, 2015The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) June 18, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:39 PM | Your Say (5)
America wouldn't make a good Communist country.
Just now there's a story about an NAACP chapter president who is actually white. Last week the news was about Caitlin Jenner. These are people who real Communists once called "useful fools". They're not players. They're cannon fodder. Material like that isn't the farm team for the vanguard of proletariat. It's a farm team for a freak show.
Many of the people in the academic left, perhaps even some who've reached high office, are really Fidel Castro wannabees without the talent. They should face the facts. If they want to be important, they should play the American game and emphasize growth, innovation, invention based on the base motivation of wanting a materially more prosperous life and/or an adherence to a moral code.
If they try to play the Bolshevik game, the Russians and the Chinese are always going to beat them at that. They have even less talent for being religious fanatics like ISIS. In a world of transgenders, transracials and transeverythings, the last thing the world needs is transauthoritarians. It's not only a losing game. It's ridiculous. Five Hundred | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:10 PM | Your Say (2)
Rachel Dolezal is a true inspiration for blackface performers everywhere!
What a survivor! Everything from baboon slave whips in childhoodto racially motivated hate crimes perpetrated by white people (or maybe even one individual white person?) I read, with tears in my eyes, about her sexual assault and domestic violence experiences. A sad reality faced by 8 out of every 3 women and a result of toxic masculinity, rape culture and the patriarchy. This strong independent black woman can put a chip on nearly every box of her oppression BINGO card. Never forget. The Easterner : A Life to be Heard
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (1)
The Republicans have always been the party of business,
traditional Americans and monied interests.Even today there are very liberal Republicans who are pro-abortion and homosexual marriage. Despite the rhetoric, Mitch McConnell has done more in six months to advance Obama’s legislative items than Harry Reid has done in six years. The Inevitable End of Lunacy | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (1)
Death By Dynasties: Jeb, Hillary, and Disaster!
And they’re both doing it in the same way - emphasizing things like ‘experience’ and ‘leadership’ and ‘connections.’ But if the truth be told, one of the major perks of coming from a great house is a facility for shading the truth, the real reason both of them are running is because that’s what Bushs and Clintons do. They run for President. Now, I’m not alone in noting that neither of these mediocre people really seem to want the job, but both of them seem to labor under the burden of unmet expectations. Neither one seems genuine. Neither one seems to have anything new to say. And like I said, neither one seems to be having very much fun at all. You know, they have something else in common, these two - and that’s a scathing contempt for the common person. This is another reason to avoid dynasties like the plague. Both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton use expressions like “my lifelong love of service,” as if this was in fact actual service and not a continuation of the privileged and pampered lifestyles they both have enjoyed for virtually their entire lives. | Bill Whittle - YouTube
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 AM | Your Say (3)
June 17, 2015
"The past week I went internet-dark."
Gave daughter her first driving lesson.Consoled son after first serious heartbreak. Went to the gym everyday, and a 4 mile walk every evening. Worked on genealogy and uncle’s ebook. Hardened my passwords on two dozen sites. Made a will. Sprayed star thistle infestation. Had carpets cleaned. Building a pile of junk to take to the dump. Timing belts replaced on 2 cars. Pruned & weeded. Ordered gravel to line driveway. HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 PM | Your Say (2)
there are never any consequences to failure these days.
In fact, failure has become a weird status symbol in the ruling classes.The bigger the screw up, the more likely it will redound to your favor in the future. It’s as if we have fallen into an alternative universe where all of the normal human structures are upside down and backward. Rambling About the Passive-Authoritarian State | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:20 PM | Your Say (2)
June 16, 2015
Stoner Food: We're Way Beyond Punching A Chocolate Machine
On the firefly platform on sunny Goodge Street
A violent hash-smoker shook a chocolate machine
Involved in an eating scene.
-- Donovan
All from Munchies for 4/20
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:10 PM | Your Say (4)
Works for Me
"Take Deer's Marrow, put it into a sufficient Quantity of Water with Wheat-Flour, and let them settle; then take some Ounces of what subsides to the Bottom and mix it well with a sufficient Quantity of the Whites of Eggs. Plaister your Face with the said Paste when you go to Bed at Night, and wash yourself the next Morning with warm Water. This Method is excellent to prevent Sunburn." -- the Art of Preserving Beauty
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 PM | Your Say (5)
Taxes are, well, taxing.
So we don't need to argue like Republicans or democrats about whether a "tax increase" is good or bad for the economy, or whether a "tax cut" is good or bad for the economy.You don't make an economy go stronger or faster, by increasing taxes. It is a fact. It is nomenclature. Taxes, by their nature, hurt the economy. They labor it. They make it anemic when it would otherwise be strong. This, too, is fact. This, too, is simple nomenclature. -- The Morgan
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:19 AM | Your Say (6)
June 15, 2015
To demonstrate that they matter, young black men kill other young black men in appalling numbers.
Parts of black America appear determined to destroy themselves—black men, that is, rather than black women,who graduate from university at twice the male rate and hold more full-time jobs. Call it genosuicide, the self-willed extinction of a people, and it happens all the time, especially when young men decide that to matter, they must assert themselves violently. There is nothing uniquely “black” about the inner-city catastrophe now unfolding in America, as some historical examples will show.In the reasonable fear of legal persecution, police in America’s inner cities have stepped back from aggressive enforcement of the law, and the result is a sudden surge in homicides that have killed hundreds of people, almost all of them black.Genosuicide and its causes | Spengler
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 PM | Your Say (8)
Subprime People and Intellectual Bubbles
Lenders were under government compulsion to reduce lending standards, safe in the knowledge that government-sponsored coyotes such as Fannie Mae would gobble up their subprime loans like a warren of rabbits.And the GSEs didn't let on that by 2007 over half of all mortgages were subprime (or "non-traditional"), 76% of which on their books (meaning our books, i.e., taxpayers responsible for the left's follies). Thus, if we dig down to the bottom of it all, we find the government forcing lenders to issue subprime loans. But it isn't really the loan that's subprime, rather, the person receiving the loan. In other words, the real problem is subprime people who are more likely to default on their loans. As such, the so-called bubble was filled with subprime people. One Cʘsmos: Subprime People and Intellectual Bubbles
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 PM | Your Say (2)
The Catholic Church: Fractions and Multiples
We have today a fraction of the churches we had before the “liturgical reforms”;a fraction of the seminaries; a fraction of the priests, and a fraction of the religious; a fraction of the baptisms, marriages, funerals. We have huge multiples of the annulments, the contraceptions and abortions. Where three in four Catholics attended Sunday Mass, in the 1950s, it is now less than one in four. And even among those who attend, there has been a terrible lapse in obedience and discipline. Our remaining priests and religious are mostly quite old; their congregations, too, are aging; and within less than one generation at the present pace, the Catholic faith will be, truly, the Church Invisible. What must we do? :David Warren
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 PM | Your Say (2)
Is It Just Me or Does Hillary Talk Like a Robot?
Not only does she pronounce the word “a” slowly and distinctly, like it’s the answer to a multiple-choice question, without linking it to the words before or after, and not only does she sometimes put little pauses between each word (“it’s . . . America’s . . . basic . . . bargain”) or in inappropriate spots (“it’s the same old . . . song”), but she often puts odd stresses on words, seemingly at random: “too many of our kids never learn as they should”; “we see far more opportunities than threats”; “fight back against those who would drive us apart.”45 Times Hillary Clinton Praised the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:55 PM | Your Say (4)
Yes, it is satirical, but who could tell these days?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:28 PM | Your Say (2)
FEEL THE HEAT!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (2)
What if Pearl Harbor happened and nobody noticed?
The U.S. military, even in its current somewhat shrunken state,remains an irresistible force in conventional warfare. But this trove of information is perfect for "fourth-generation warfare," in which conventional strengths are bypassed in favor of targeted attacks on a stronger nation's weaknesses. With this sort of information, China will find it much easier to recruit agents, blackmail decision-makers and — in the event of a straight-up conflict — strike directly at Americans in the government, all without launching a single missile. Glenn Reynolds:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (3)
June 14, 2015
It has been drilled into all of us that we must bow to the lie that we are all “equal”, most especially in terms of intellect,
The second reason that the sense of duty has been suppressed is another post-Christian, post-modern phenomenon, anti-intellectualism.Those of us who are riding the Bell Curve multiple standard deviations forward have been shamed into not just silence, but a suicidal desire to cede our duties of leadership in society to the very people that require our leadership. Did you just cringe when you read the first clause in the last sentence? Did you just cringe when I said, using the first person plural, “Those of us who are riding the Bell Curve multiple standard deviations forward…” I’ll bet most of you did. Why? Because it has been drilled into all of us that we must bow to the lie that we are all “equal”, most especially in terms of intellect, and thus one may NEVER, EVER acknowledge that one is of above-average intelligence, most especially if it is true. Gemitibus Inenarrabilibus | Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:00 PM | Your Say (1)
SAFETY FIRST: We Let Extremists Torch Three US Flags To See Which Brand Was Most Flame Resistant
Well, it turns out that’s a trick question, because the flag that impressed us the most was actually a wool-based U.S. flag manufactured by little-known mom and pop shop Jinteng Flag Company. When compared to the other flags we tested, the unmatched flame-resistance of the wool from the Jinteng flag — coupled with the quality of craftsmanship — gets our highest rating, and we really couldn’t expect any less from the innovative and industrious nature of our friends in Zhejiang, China. -- Duffleblog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 PM | Your Say (5)
A Tale of Two Iraqs
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:18 PM | Your Say (2)
USS Gabrielle Giffords Christened As First Gun-Free Warship
its Evolved SeaRAM 11 cell missile launcher, and its entire cache of small arms, which are typically issued to boarding teams and watch standers. “Having this mighty warship be 100% gun-free not only helps to honor its heroic namesake, Gabby Giffords, but it also helps the Navy to steer clear of promoting a culture of violence,” said Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, who reportedly lobbied hard to get Congress and the Secretary of Defense on board with leaving the Navy’s newest addition to the fleet completely defenseless. --Duffleblog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:46 PM | Your Say (8)
Magazine Cover of the Year: Caitlyn Dolezal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:44 PM | Your Say (1)
As Currency Dies, Zimbabweans Will Get $5 for 175 Quadrillion Local Dollars
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:38 PM | Your Say (5)
De facto internal borders are based on race, ethnicity, religion, ideology, and social status, just as hard borders
La Raza is an internal border. The Congressional Black Caucus is an internal border.Journalism is an internal border (80-90% of journalists are registered Democrats). Cosmopolitan elites are an internal border. Schools are an internal border (ever notice how students congregate in a lunchroom cafeteria? How about the quickness with which urban white elites set off for the decidedly less diverse suburbs when the kids reach schooling age?). J-Date is an internal border. NASCAR is an internal border. Libertardian blogs are an internal border. Gay Pride and Puerto Rican Day parades are internal borders. Diversity Proximity = War | Chateau Heartiste
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:56 AM | Your Say (1)
June 13, 2015
Pathological Altruism
At the same time, whether these authors know it or not, they have provided a strikingly vivid portrait of mental state of anti-racism and of the motives that drive it. In the West, there is nothing that offers more ecstatic self-righteousness than denouncing “racism.” | American Renaissance
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:17 AM | Your Say (3)
Norman Mailer: The White Negro (Fall 1957)
So, when it comes, miscegenation will be a terror, comparable perhaps to the derangement of the American Communists when the icons to Stalin came tumbling down.The average American Communist held to the myth of Stalin for reasons which had little to do with the political evidence and everything to do with their psychic necessities. In this sense it is equally a psychic necessity for the liberal to believe that the Negro and even the reactionary Southern White eventually and fundamentally people like himself, capable of becoming good liberals too if only they can be reached by good liberal reason. What the liberal cannot bear to admit is the hatred beneath the skin of a society so unjust that the amount of collective violence buried in the people is perhaps incapable of being contained, and therefore if one wants a better world one does well to hold one’s breath, for a worse world is bound to come first, and the dilemma may well be this: given such hatred, it must either vent itself nihilistically or become turned into the cold murderous liquidations of the totalitarian state. | Dissent Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:54 AM | Your Say (5)
China’s Spies Hit the Blackmail Jackpot
Whoever has OPM’s records knows an astonishing amount about millions of federal workers, members of the military, and security clearance holders.They can now target those Americans for recruitment or influence. After all, they know their vices, every last one—the gambling habit, the inability to pay bills on time, the spats with former spouses, the taste for something sexual on the side—since all that is recorded in security clearance paperwork. (To get an idea of how detailed this gets, you can see the form, called an SF86, here.) Speaking as a former counterintelligence officer, it really doesn’t get much worse than this.... Why Beijing wants that information isn’t difficult to determine. Armed with lists of Chinese citizens worldwide who are in “close and continuing contact” (to cite security clearance lingo) with American officials, Beijing can now seek to exploit those ties for espionage purposes. And it will. -- The Daily Beast
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (5)
June 12, 2015
Whips and Nooses and Klans, Oh My!
"They would punish us by skin complexion," Dolezal reportedly told the Easterner."According to Dolezal, the object her mother and stepfather used to punish them was called a baboon whip, used to ward baboons away in South Africa. These whips would leave scars behind, 'They were pretty similar to what was used as whips during slavery.' In Idaho, Dolezal took on the role as director of the Human Rights Institute, where North Idaho white supremacy groups burglarized every home she and her son lived in. Dolezal said she believes the white supremacy groups felt threatened by female power. According to Dolezal, they hung nooses in her home, vandalized and stole from her property, directed death threats toward her along with threatening to kidnap [her son] Franklin while he was in the second grade. She reported all of these acts to the police and each was admitted into police records as hate crimes, yet the culprits were never caught." Black like me? - Coeur d'Alene Press: Local News
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:09 PM | Your Say (7)
Tanning Booth Blackness: Little White Lies is the New Black.
a picture was posted earlier this year showing Dolezal and an African-American man. In the post, he's identified as Dolezal's father. KXLY4's Jeff Humphrey asked Dolezal about that claim Wednesday afternoon. "Ma'am, I was wondering if your dad really is an African-American man," Humphrey asked. "I don't understand the question," Dolezal answered. "I did tell you [that man in the picture] is my dad." "Are your parents white?" Humphrey asked. At that point, Dolezal removed the microphone, ended the interview and walked away.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (10)
The KGB, the Chinese Secret Service and Islamist 5th column are running circles around the unionized, politicized federal bureaucracy.
This is not in the least bit surprising. Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have risen through the pitiless school of hard knocks.Xi has managed to imprison, suborn or kill thousands of rival, hard-core bureaucrats on his bloody climb to the summit of China. Putin has done the same. Watching Putin and Xi go up against Barack Obama calls to mind the scene in the movie Knockaround Guys, where a legitimate tough guy walks up to a wannabe in the middle of a barroom floor and starts this monologue.Five hundred. … 500 fights, that’s the number I figured when I was a kid. 500 street fights and you could consider yourself a legitimate tough guy. You need them for experience. To develop leather skin. So I got started. Of course along the way you stop thinking about being tough and all that. It stops being the point. You get past the silliness of it all. But then, after, you realize that’s what you are.Five Hundred | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (3)
June 11, 2015
If you put a dollar sign anywhere on a child there's no hope for you.
Let's all read another 600 words of Marketwatch twaddle about how much it costs to raise a kid to adulthood.Oh, lets! I like to read that sort of thing and point and laugh at the author and everybody that reads it and doesn't point and laugh. If you put a dollar sign anywhere on a child there's no hope for you. What will they put on your gravestone? Trick question, there will be no one that cares if you're alive or dead to buy one for you, but for the sake of argument, what would it say? That guy/girl sure could watch premium cable. Sippican Cottage: King of the World
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 PM | Your Say (2)
"Another Man Done Gone:" The genius behind ‘Headless Body in Topless Bar’ headline dies at 74
He is survived by his wife, Claire, and a daughter, Carly — and will be mourned as well by New York Post employees past and present who were inspired by his professionalism and quirky talent during his Post career from 1970-2011. | New York Post
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:47 PM | Your Say (1)
I wonder if Christ will ever be understood.
For it’s not just the priests and nuns: Christ Himself comes across as nasty, if you read the Script — judgemental, strict, confrontational.And when people dishonour his Father’s house — perfectly nice people for all we know, just trying to make a living — he becomes downright violent. Fashions a whip, turns over their stalls. No table manners at all. Garish talk about body and blood. Nice & nasty : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (5)
June 10, 2015
At the Heart of the Global Warming cult.
“Cult” is the right word at this point, since the people passionate about it have deranged themselves to the point where those outside suspect sinister things about the movement. I have liberal friends who send me thousand word e-mails filled with links and graphs claiming that any day now the tipping point will be reached and we’re doomed. They are so sure that Gaia is angry and ready to punish us, it is axiomatic. The Church of Climate Change | The Z BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 PM | Your Say (4)
I see from my inbox this morning, that Toronto is soon to host a massive public orgy for the disabled,
(It is not yet an official Olympic sport.)In a news report, from a nominally “conservative” newspaper, this is presented as another “barrier” about to fall. An organizer, who is a “disability awareness consultant,” herself bound to a wheelchair as well as to the rubbish “science” of sociology, moans in the usual way about past oppression. Non-disabled people have been guilty of denying accessibility to sex among the disabled, she speculates, owing to the reactionary assumption that they have less libido. All this must change. The ultimate bore : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (2)
Still more proof that the Iranian “leadership” class is unworthy of the Iranians it purports to lead.
"Although such preoccupations may seem risible to some, the people who are caught up in this dragnet are suffering very real and harsh consequences.
"Atena Farghadani is a 28-year-old artist and women’s rights activist. She drew a cartoon depicting some members of Iran’s Majles (Parliament) with animal heads, as a form of protest against bills that are in different stages of moving through the parliamentary process that, in an effort to boost child-bearing, would among other things, restrict access to contraception and establish preferences in hiring for married women over single women.
"We just learned that she has been sentenced to an astonishing twelve years and nine months in prison on spurious charges of “spreading propaganda against the system,” “insulting members of the parliament through paintings” and “insulting the Supreme Leader” because of her cartoon. She is also being charged with “gathering and colluding with deviant groups” because she has met with the families of those killed by government agents in the unrest following the 2009 presidential elections and because of an art exhibition she held which was attended by members of Iran’s persecuted Baha’i community." —Elise Auerbach Quote of the Day â Pejman Yousefzadeh
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 PM | Your Say (5)
in the modern world view in North America and Europe, the fact that needs explaining – I propose for your consideration – is “why are we so rich?”
and the answer we get out of post-Christian secularized guilt is: “We must have done something wrong.”The assumption of a secularized guilt is the underlying assumption. Heart attacks are punishment for overindulgence in highly nutritious food; global warming is punishment for our thoughtless depredations upon Gaia. A future perspective may laugh at the modern human propensity to consider prosperity and health as occasions for guilt, just as we denigrate the Greeks for assuming all things want to burn their way to the empyrean sphere of a geocentric universe. RIP: The great cholesterol scam (1955 - 2015) - Barrel Strength
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 PM | Your Say (1)
The history of Henry Mancini's Moon River
But Hepburn was not a trained singer and initially Paramount film-makers thought they would need to dub somebody else's voice. But the composer Henry Mancini persevered in composing something she could manage. "Henry was at home one night and we were watching Funny Face in which Audrey Hepburn sings How Long Has This Been Going On," recalls Mancini's widow Ginny. "He went to the piano and started playing it, and knew she could sing something in that range. - BBC News
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:25 PM | Your Say (1)
The metric system is sinful
It removes all the benchmarks. Common speech recalls them in antiquated terms: we still do not say, “give him 2.54 centimetres and he will take 1.609 kilometres,” although my subeditors would sometimes make such changes to my copy, in the bad old days, out of their zeal to dehumanize. (Later, they couldn’t care.)
To my mind, it was interesting that long-established and much adored English measures could be easily translated into any other language, ancient or modern; and vice versa. This is because, before metrication, the “concept” of the inch or dactyl; of the palm, foot, cubit, yard, fathom; of the ounce and pound — were truly universal. God made us with feet and arms, hands, fingers, and heads — not only in England. And measures of area and volume developed just where these units intersected — a “pound,” for instance, being the cube of a hand’s breadth, in the weight of water. (And condensed into a stone, “just right” for tossing at a commie.) De-metrification : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:21 PM | Your Say (8)
"Think: Hiroshima and Nagasaki"
While all is being said, not much is being done.To address a scourge such as Islam we must think in terms of extermination. Think: Dresden; Think: Hiroshima and Nagasaki;
Collateral damage? Every time some unfortunate guy gets beheaded and the video goes viral? Really, collateral damage? You're worried some kids or old people are gonna get killed? When they kill one of ours, we kill one hundred of theirs.
It has been seen and experienced in most every other country in the world, from the "super-powers" to the Third World yocky-dock countries: Islam is not a good thing. It benefits nobody, apparently not even the adherents.
We are all listening to rumors that something bad is gonna happen. Instead of cowering and hoping that it won't happen near us we should be fire-bombing Baghdad and other concentrations of Muslim terrorists. Can't find 'em? Enlarge the target area.
The justification, if one is needed, is that the Muslims are Evil. Whether we are spiritual or worldly, believers or atheists, young, old, gay or straight, male or female, White or Black, or any other combination of the above, the paradigm in which we all repose dictates that some things are good, some bad, and some Evil.
The remedy to the damage and destruction, the murder most foul and the barbaric actions of Muslims can only be met with a force strong enough to overcome once and for all that which threatens all others. Death sudden, overwhelming, final, no hesitation, and thorough by whatever means will accomplish the end result — elimination of the Evil. Wait until they break out the nukes.Posted by: chasmatic @ The "Droneiacs" Way of War
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:01 PM | Your Say (4)
“As the King begins the transition from democracy,
however, he sees at once that many Californians – certainly millions – are financial liabilities. These are unproductive citizens. Their place on the balance sheet is on the right.To put it crudely, a ten-cent bullet in the nape of each neck would send California’s market capitalization soaring – often by a cool million per neck….Imagine the garden that a population of ten or twenty million – all the most human of humanity – could make of the earth. Would they miss the six billion? Not a chance. Would the planet seem empty and boring without the favelas of Rio, the projects of Baltimore, the huge human warrens of Lagos? Not a chance. Nor, if your taste runs to Gaia, would the Earth. And if the few can figure out how to preserve the organs of the many, this new nobility can live for millennia! Anyway. I am not actually making this Swiftian proposal. On the contrary! As I’ve said, I oppose it. Nonetheless, it is important to present it, because the attraction is real.”– Moldbug
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (0)
First, we kill all the liberals.
The liberal remnant’s effective position is that they will, even in the face of people determined to eradicate them, never let go of their liberal beliefs and restrictions on their behaviors.
Liberals have tended to be brakes on the excesses of the left, which has a tendency to engulf entire continents in fire & destruction. If you understand leftists as people who are fascinated by the flames — who authentically want to bring about the apocalypse — it starts to make sense as to why they would want to eliminate the liberals first, because of their moderating effects on the rest of the population. They wouldn’t give prizes to photos of rebels chucking molotov cocktails if they didn’t love the fire. Leftists Work For the Total State - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (0)
6 Reasons That Floating Ocean Plastic Cleanup Gizmo
Imagine 24,000 kilometers of boom coated with anti-biofouling coatings leaching biocides into the ocean -- from a project intended to benefit marine life. The most effective biocidal coatings, and the most widely used, are compounds in the tributyltin family, which are known to leach into seawater and pose documented risks to microorganisms and larger marine life. Some governments have moved to phase out tributyltin, but there aren't many economical alternatives. is a Horrible Idea | Plastics | Reduce | KCET
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (1)
Devil’s Rope
At first, telephone companies were laying telephone wire in cities, but they weren’t interested in the rural market. Still, farmers also needed phones, which meant that they needed a network of wires to connect the farms. Barbed wire fences could serve this purpose. The barbed wire couldn’t transmit a signal quite as clearly as a nice insulated copper wire, but for many years, they did the trick. A dozen or so farms might be connected on one system and for about 25 dollars, farmers could buy a kit to rig themselves into the network. In 1907 there were 18,000 independent telephone cooperative serving nearly a million and half people. Because of this, farmers were some of the earliest adopters of telephone technology.- - | 99% Invisible
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (1)
June 9, 2015
The Oldest Trick in the Book
It has been said to date back to Harry and George Wright of the 1869 Red Stockings, but 19th century baseball expert Peter Morris scoffs at the notion of that team resorting to such deceptive ruses. Another source credits National Association utilityman Tom Barlow with the innovation. The earliest HBT I have documented occurred on May 20, 1872, in a Philadelphia–Baltimore NA game; it was described as an “old trick” as early as 1876. In any case, it dates back more than 140 years, and has happened to end games and to complete triple plays. It once resulted in two arrests, another time cost a Hall of Famer a managing job, and it even happened in a World Series. With TV monitors in the clubhouses and professional coaches at the bases, the play was still pulled off twice in 2013. « Our Game
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (3)
Why Iowahawk is the prince of pith.
"The yearly property tax bill on Chelsea Clinton's apartment is twice the cost of Marco Rubio's house." - - David BurgePosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (1)
If there’s another war in the Pacific, this is how it will play out.
If China can take the First Island Chain, it will starve out Japan. The Japanese counterstrategy to China’s is exactly symmetric: control the chain. In Japanese nomenclature, the First and Second Island chains are called the Tokyo-Guam-Taiwan Triangle or TGT. You can see how this works in a map and analysis by the RAND Corporation. First note how the TGT line forms a triangle of undersea mountain ranges which break the Pacific’s surface as island chains. It is widely believed that the TGT is heavily wired with sensors. It is certainly patrolled by ASW assets (in which most of Japan’s naval investments consist) and possibly by UUVs and other wizard devices. It will be instantly clear from the map that if Japan can defend the interior of the TGT, it can do two things at once: 1) prevent Chinese SSNs and aircraft from significantly cutting its lifeline to the Americas and the Middle East (though via the north of Australia) and 2) blockading China into the bargain. The Vast Pacific | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (4)
June 8, 2015
Gives Head As If Dead
By which I mean Sulkowicz gets punched, though she insists in the unhinged copy on her website that everything in the video is consensual. There follows much quivering of flesh and a deeply unsatisfactory blow job. As a queer, I can tell you it is probably the most lazily and messily administered head I have seen in years. If this is the sort of oral sex straight men are getting, can anyone blame them for retreating into pornography and video games?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:54 PM | Your Say (6)
The “Ferguson effect.”
This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.”Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%.Similar “Ferguson effects” are happening across the country as officers scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric. Arrests in Baltimore were down 56% in May compared with 2014. Article | The New Nationwide Crime Wave
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:52 PM | Your Say (7)
Just in time for [Founding] Fathers' Day: "Printed throughout the entire roll and fully functional."
as she has been a horrible Senator and Secretary of State. But, that doesn't mean she is useless. We finally figured out something that Hillary is good at! Introducing our Hillary Toilet Paper. Now you can tell your liberal friends that you proudly hang a picture of Hillary Clinton in your home! Or more specifically, in your bathroom. Printed throughout the entire roll and fully functional.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:20 PM | Your Say (6)
“Pathological altruism” (PA) is a relatively new concept; the term entered the scientific literature only in 1984.
PA is likely when people “falsely believe that they caused the other’s problems, or falsely believe that they have the means to relieve the person of suffering.”Or, it is “the false belief that one’s own success, happiness, or well-being is a source of unhappiness for others.” PA “often involves self-righteousness,” and can result in “impulsive and ineffective efforts to equalize or level the playing field.” Together, these definitions are an almost perfect description of white liberal attitudes towards non-whites, yet none of the contributors seems to be aware of this. Pathological Altruism | American Renaissance
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (4)
June 7, 2015
The home telephone had a good hundred-year run.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:10 PM | Your Say (5)
This Liberal Arts problem of mine concerns the ethics of the virtuous man in the woods of chaos.
How should one engage the man who tattoos his forehead with the mark of the Beast in reaction to the evil he perceives in the world?How much patience should one have with moral laxity? I have little patience with things that are broken, but while people are not things, a person who behaves with only a fraction of his humanity engaged is asking to be abstracted. To what extent is it in my position in society to insist on virtue in the collective? Do I have to assess the whole or just the man within reach? Could I waste my entire fortune in sympathy with the degraded and corrupt? Could I exhaust my tolerance and patience addressing every corruption? What is the appropriate middle ground, or is moderation itself the agent of complacency? I Am - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:55 PM | Your Say (2)
If you want to know what we really think of you, the answer is we don't,
unless you're making yourself unavoidable or we're cleaning up your latest mess. We can safely rely on you to make astonishingly irresponsible choices and blame us for the consequences. And you'll demand we make good on them for you. We won't take a chance on your sincerity ever again. Take it somewhere else, you have no credibility left with us. You're a net liability, predictable to the point of surety. So we attend to our own lives and our own problems. It's as it should be. We recommend it. As for you, frankly my dear, we don't give a damn. -- A Guest Post From Ol' RemusPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:34 PM | Your Say (2)
A time is coming when men will go mad,
and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, "You are mad; you are not like us." — St. Anthony the Great
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:07 PM | Your Say (4)
We heard all sorts of lachrymose tales of how such a requirement suppressed black votes.
It seems, in progressive world, that black Americans are simple poor rural folk who live tens if not hundreds of miles from any place where they might get an id card of any sort. They, in addition, are just too stupid to get these cards. Requiring id means not letting black people vote!
This, of course, is utter rubbish; the real purpose behind doing away with voter id requirements comes across our southern border every day. It is to allow aliens to vote. These aliens will be made wards of the state and of the progressive controlled electoral machines. As blacks decline in demographic importance as voters, they must be replaced. What better than millions of bitterly poor people from Mexico and Central America? These people will not only clog the voter rolls, but keep progressive social workers employed, progressive community organizers active, and fill the schools with students--benefitting the progressive education industry which will demand ever increasing amounts of money to handle the poor poor folks. The DiploMad 2.0: Progressives: The Target is Never What it Seems
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:56 AM | Your Say (7)
"Feo fuerte y formal"
I would like to be remembered, well . . . the Mexicans have a phrase, "Feo fuerte y formal". Which means he was ugly, strong and had dignity. -- John WaynePosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (0)
This is a chumbox.
Each box in the grid’s performance can be tracked both individually and in context of its neighbors. This allows them to be highly optimized; some chum is clearly better than others. As a byproduct of this optimization, an aesthetic has arisen. An effective chumbox clearly plays on reflex and the subconscious. The chumbox aesthetic broadcasts our most basic, libidinal, electrical desires back at us. And gets us to click.
Clicking on a chumlink—even one on the site of a relatively high-class chummer, like nymag.com—is a guaranteed way to find more, weirder, grosser chum. The boxes are daisy-chained together in an increasingly cynical, gross funnel; quickly, the open ocean becomes a sewer of chum. A Complete Taxonomy of Internet Chum - The Awl
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:52 AM | Your Say (1)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (0)
‘I am old and I feel and look old.’
If old people are praised for anything it is usually for being ‘splendid’ in some unspecified way which really means, as Miller points out, that they don’t look or seem truly old. In obituaries of long-lived public figures there is often, she notices, an ominous gap towards the end. After all the achievements, the marriages, the medals and the anecdotes there may be a decade or more unaccounted for before the date of death. Speculating on what might have filled it Miller lists the terrors of old age, the modern four last things that have replaced death, judgment, heaven and hell: ‘boredom, illness, dementia, solitude’. -- Rosemary Hill Crazy Age: Thoughts on Being Old
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (1)
June 6, 2015
What if the world were at war and didn’t know it?
Since the ability to attack without actually triggering a response confers a distinct advantage,
Russia has actually designed a form of warfare to evade the threshold of cultural psychology and avoid the detection of legalistic minds like President Obama’s. The approach is called hybrid warfare. ”Hybrid warfare is a military strategy that blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyberwarfare. … By combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts, the aggressor intends to avoid attribution or retribution.” The War of the Green Men | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 PM | Your Say (5)
June 5, 2015
Welcome to the toilet paper aisle. The decisions you make here will not be easy.
Look here, for example, this pack of 15 mega-rolls, equal to 30 regular rolls, appears to be the best deal, right?But wait, then what about these 10 humungo-rolls, equal to 40 regular rolls? Or these 6 giganti-rolls, equal to 48 regular rolls? Or this 3-pack of super-rolls, weighing in at whopping 54 regular rolls? Each pack costs marginally more than the previous while providing just a bit more paper. So, which will it be? Wait, don’t answer that. We’re not done browsing yet. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Welcome to the Toilet Paper Aisle.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:44 PM | Your Say (7)
How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes
In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before.
The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.
Today, not one home has been built in Campeche. Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood and residents bail out mud and water.
The Red Cross received an outpouring of donations after the quake, nearly half a billion dollars.- - ProPublica
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 AM | Your Say (6)
"All you worshipers of Darwin should maybe wonder what Darwin would have to say about an organism that refuses to defend itself, and won't reproduce."
They definitely don't know that a friar made applesauce of his theories, and the science-is-settled contingent of the last century simply stapled them together and put Darwin on the front like the cover of a TPS Report. Darwin worshipers mistake cowardice, self-absorption, and sloth for wisdom in an uncertain world. I am Spenglerian. Society is an organism, too, if you ask me. All you worshipers of Darwin should maybe wonder what Darwin would have to say about an organism that refuses to defend itself, and won't reproduce. He'd say it deserves everything it gets. Sippican Cottage: Looking for Signs and Wonders
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:38 AM | Your Say (5)
Building fifth-generation fighters is hard, and the Russians so far just aren't up to the challenge.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:47 AM | Your Say (3)
Then civilization’s asphalt and stucco and carpeting are installed and that’s when the real ugliness starts.
Suddenly, all of the jobs have something to do with moving stacks of file folders from this cabinet over here, to that cabinet over there, and explaining to someone over the phone how impossible it is to do something. Yesterday’s thankfulness to God and careful measure-twice-cut-once decision-making, are replaced with today’s snooty condescension, and bloated retirement plans funded at someone else’s expense. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (4)
June 4, 2015
Speaking of privilege, 60% of your college grads — and 20% of all of you — are employed by government.
The intent is to create an artificial middle class of course, hence the trivial positions with imaginative titles and weighty salaries.In the lower reaches it's the quota hires, typically unqualified. It's a great offer. You pretend you're doing something useful and we pretend to believe you. The rest of your grads are largely diversity directors, window dressing, teachers of dubious "studies" and improbable "histories", and similar warehousing schemes for the otherwise unemployable. It's as good as it's ever going to get, except for those on the skinny end of the bell curve—for whom we have genuine, i.e., earned respect. You'd be a fool to leave it on the table, for as long as it lasts. Liberty's Torch: Frankly My Dear: A Guest Post From Ol' Remus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 PM | Your Say (2)
the next person who mentions Saul Alinsky should be pushed up against the wall and shot.
I know those people are, for the most part, on my side of the fight, but I just can’t take the repetition of catch phrases that has become what passes for Conservatism these days. The Mind of the Maniac | The Z BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:09 PM | Your Say (11)
"To some degree the media is producing degeneracy out of market considerations, working in auto-pilot."
I think it’s obvious that say, Obama hasn’t called Vanity Fair and told them to put Bruce Jenner on drag.The media indeed need to make money, this shit makes a lot of money, so to some degree the media is producing degeneracy out of market considerations, working in auto-pilot. Now of course this auto-pilot has built in constraints. Basically political correctness. The fact is before WWT we had WWG, and before that we had feminism. Neither of those were invented by the media, even if they promoted it heavily. WWG was an academic and political movement, and only after it started moving did the media put a gay character in every movie and sitcom. Academics had been writing about how to solve the oppressions of those cross-dressers who really want to use female toilets years before prominent autogynephilics started getting on the news. The cause of absurdity | Bloody shovel
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:04 PM | Your Say (3)
Just in case you didn't have enough reason to vomit on the New York Times...
“We live in a society that considers it normal when half the people make below average wages…”
#NYTReaderComments
— HappyAcres (@HappyHectares) June 3, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (9)
Time to take back the gold medal Caitlyn Jenner won in the men's decathlon at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games
It has recently come to light that gold medalist Bruce Jenner is in fact transgender, and therefore, identifies as a woman.We congratulate Ms. Jenner on these new developments and wish her the best. However, this creates somewhat of a problem as Ms. Jenner (as talented as she is) claims that she has always believed herself to be truly female, and therefore, was in violation of committee rules regarding women competing in men’s sports and vice versa. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that we must ask whether or not it is proper that Ms. Jenner should retain her olympic records in light of this, as we must now either claim that Bruce Jenner and Caitlyn Jenner are two entirely different people (which we know is not true), or that Bruce Jenner was, in fact, a woman participating in a men’s event. My Name is Hannibal | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:50 AM | Your Say (9)
June 3, 2015
Ever notice how some stuff that used to be really hot disappeared after a while?
You almost never see westerns any longer, because the studios and such decided they just don't make enough money.Wish there were more goofy comedies without grossout and sex? Wish someone would make the real Red Harvest instead of knockoffs like Yojimbo and Last Man Standing? Want to see a film made about your favorite comic book? Well crowd funding investments can make that possible. Instead of just asking for money from people willing to donate out of a love of the product and maybe some goodies, now you can start attracting serious investors for serious projects. - - Word Around the Net
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:33 PM | Your Say (2)
Modern feminism is defined by what can only be called an outright mental illness.
The screeching activist with garish hair, a Tumblr account filled with obscenityand a sense of perpetual outrage isn't so much a stereotype as a subculture in its own right. When reading tales of hysterical shrews who claim PTSD from people disagreeing with them on social networking, one can only wonder how these people who constantly boast about their own strength manage to even feed themselves. (And unfortunately, in many cases, manage to feed themselves a little too well.) A Cat Lady Culture â RADIX JOURNAL
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (5)
1 of 5 Reasons Why the U.S. Remains the World’s Only Superpower
Earlier this year the Fury 325 opened up in North Carolina, claiming the title of world’s tallest rollercoaster — until 2016, when the next ‘giga’ coaster is scheduled to open in Orlando, Florida. In the most recent Charities Aid Foundation survey, Americans ranked #1 internationally when it came to helping strangers. These stats may seem disconnected, but together they point to the fact that Americans continue to enjoy a quality of life unmatched by the rest of the world. When you combine this with America’s strength across the board in economics, military, political influence and innovation, it is no wonder that the U.S. enjoys its privileged position in the world today. Superpower indeed. These Are the 5 Reasons Why the U.S. Remains the World’s Only Superpower | TIME
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:06 AM | Your Say (2)
Tricycle helmets for all
At school, teachers ‘street-proof’ children—that is, they teach them that kidnappers and child molesters lurk in every playground. Television excites children with environmentalist fears that the air and water they breathe and drink teem with toxins, that the food they eat is saturated with deadly pesticides, and that the juice bottles they discard will soon cover the entire surface of the earth. What Your Neighborhood List-Serv Tells You About The Demise of America
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (4)
June 2, 2015
"The only solution for the Muslim threat is to kill every last one of them"
The real problem is that civilization has produced vaccines, indoor plumbing, exponential advances in medicine, farming, and industry, and civilization has then seen to it that even a stone age ideology can multiply itself by ten or twenty or one hundred, without ever multiplying it's understanding.And so they have. Not satisfied with that, we then have save the world concerts to send them more food and medicine and they double themselves once again. This problem is at heart a byproduct of civilization which is both thoughtless and grandiose. You may wish to attempt exterminating a billion or so brutes, but it might be more productive to hang a few hundred progressives. For some reason we think it easier to do the former than the latter, and perhaps that is so. The Top 40: Comment Posted by james wilson
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:12 PM | Your Say (1)
0ne in four American women actually are on prescription medication for mental illness.
A Cat Lady Culture — -- Most of these “social justice campaigns,” from foreign aid to Africa to cracking down on the police in Baltimore, actually hurt the very people they are designed to help.
But that’s beside the point to every wide eyed Cat Lady who fancies herself Daenerys Targaryen. Rising rates of crime in the inner city, the support of corruption in the Third World, or economic collapse in communities welfare programs are supposed to be “helping” don’t register any more than rotting kitty carcasses in the living room bother a crazed woman who has devoted her life to animal “rescue.” And just as the neighbors have to live with consequences of a hoarder’s insanity, so Whites generally have to deal with the crime, economic collapse, and societal disintegration caused by the desire of unstable people to feel good about themselves.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:00 PM | Your Say (7)
People can get films made about topics and involving stories that don't fit the narrative.
All those war movies that could be made about the war on terrorism? Those could be made. Films that depict America as a positive force instead of a miserable place of racism and crushing oppression could be made. It basically opens up the entire process to film makers and writers instead of studio stockholders. And it turns the financial side of films over to the public and their desires for films rather than what studios think people desire. Word Around the Net: THIS CHANGES EVERYTHINGPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:35 PM | Your Say (1)
Christians makes special cake to assure gays that they can indeed have their cake and eat it too!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (2)
The West now compulsively creates magical prime movers and explanations rather than deal with reality.
An odd one is blaming the 21st century socioeconomic failures of American blacks on the legacy of slaverywhile conveniently forgetting blacks were doing far better in 1960 a full 50 years closer to the institution of slavery's existence. Even when the West shines, the problems becomes who is doing the great deeds. It's usually those damned straight white men. Remember #BringBackOurGirls and the unstoppable Boko Haram? The men beating them back are old straight white men from South Africa. 28 Sherman: Those Old, Effective, and Competent Racists
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (0)
The San Francisco Bushman
When they approach, he suddenly and vigorously shakes large leafy branches at his victims while simultaneously exclaiming various seemingly primitive words including “arrgh,” and “ugga bugga,” or, sometimes, just growling. [Jokes about woodpiles are not appreciated.] -- TIFO
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (6)
The Conservatory Under a Lake
There, an unwelcoming locked door guards what looks like a bunker built-in to the earth. Behind the door a spiral staircase leads guests down to a 400-foot arched tunnel lit by rows of electric lamps. Today the lamps are no longer, leaving the tunnels dark. In photos flashes and long-exposure photography help create the appearance otherwise. On the other end of the passage is a room originally designed as a conservatory under a lake. The dome reaches nine meters (30 ft.) in height and is walled by more than 100 individual panes of three-inch thick glass. - - Sometimes Interesting
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (0)
The House That Auto Warranty Fraud Bought
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:50 AM | Your Say (1)
A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
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. - - Interview with Theodore Dalrymple
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (1)
"War is peace, freedom is slavery, man is woman."
'Call me Caitlyn, or else': the rise of authoritarian transgender politics -- The worship of Caitlyn, and the hectoring of anyone who refuses to scrape before her icon,has graphically exposed the intolerant edge to trans thinking. The insistence that we not only refer to Bruce/Caitlyn as ‘she’ but also project this backwards – recognising, in the words of the Guardian, that she has ‘always been a woman’ – is borderline Orwellian. It’s a rewriting of history, a memory-holing of old inconvenient facts. Strikingly, the Guardian writer says people like Bruce/Caitlyn have ‘always been women… even when they were “fathering” children’. Notice it’s the ‘fathering’ bit that is in scare quotes, suggesting it wasn’t real, while the description of Bruce as a woman is treated as an incontestable truth. War is peace, freedom is slavery, man is woman.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (2)
"All girls would have to produce an intact hymen before they are allowed to register to vote.
No more screwing around; it's how out founding fathers wanted it.
We need to get back to basics. The NRA will be in charge of gun laws since they at least know how to handle firearms; like our founding fathers. Muslims are allowed but only if they promise to convert to Christianity; all the rest will be deported. And drones are illegal. Flat tax of 11%. IRS abolished. Okay. This is not satire. I mean it.Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (2)
Distraught residents as ever call the cops. And they wait and they wait and they wait. And no one comes.
“ISIS makes most of its money from plunder,” Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, told Business Insider in May.“We’re seeing that over and over again. They go from one town to the next and knock over a bank or several banks and go house to house and extract whatever is of value.” “It’s a racket,” Schanzer said. “And that’s how ISIS continues to survive and thrive.” Maybe Europe hung up its shootin’ irons figuring that the sheriff would always be there. France and Germany went on a holiday from history, and armed with baguettes, struck east. Then one unexpected day, as in Ferguson and Baltimore, trouble ensues and the distraught residents as ever call the cops. And they wait and they wait and they wait. And no one comes. Shapeless Narrative | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (4)
June 1, 2015
430,000-Year-Old Murder Victim?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:31 PM | Your Say (6)
Carly Fiorina on the Republican ticket would devastate Hillary's chances,
which are less than 50-50 going in. Carly beat cancer, rose from secretary to CEO, and doesn't have a slush fund of donations from foreign tyrants.
I don't see where Democrats have much choice.
I also don't see where they have much chance.
But we shall see. Don Surber: Hillary should have run in 2004
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:48 PM | Your Say (3)
What is it about these smug idiots that forever draws them to the Dark Ages?
They demand that we live without electricity, air conditioning, heat, cars, any and all petroleum products, vaccinations and antibiotics, WalMart, fast food, and pretty much any-and-everything else that is convenient, affordable, reliable, plentiful, and workable.Their dull-witted core misanthropy is reliant on their own conviction that they themselves will be subject to none of its vicissitudes. They take everything for granted, and assume that theyâll always enjoy the benefits of modern civilization without ever having to do a damned thing to maintain it, foster it, create it, or defend itâthat it will always exist despite their own continuous tiresome complaints about it, and their never-ending efforts to undermine and weaken it. As always, their arrogance and sense of entitlement is beyond belief. “If your food tastes good, it’s not natural” --» Cold Fury HY: Happy Acres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:57 AM | Your Say (5)
Download the Complete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free
“The best proof we have that life is good is that to each of us, on the day we are born, comes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach,” writes J.M. Coetzee in Diary of a Bad Year. “It comes as a gift, unearned, unmerited, for free.” Details and directions HERE at Open Culture
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (1)
#SomeBlackLivesDontMatter
Let’s be honest: Some black lives really don’t matter.If you are a young black man shot in the head by another young black man, almost certainly no one will know your name. Al Sharpton won’t come rushing to your family’s side with cameras in tow. MSNBC won’t discuss the significance of your death. No one will protest, or even riot, for you. You are a statistic, not a cause. Just another dead black kid in some city somewhere, politically useless to progressives and the media, therefore all but invisible. The same Memorial Day weekend during which there were nearly 30 shootings and nine mostly young people were murdered in Baltimore, demonstrators were out in force, blocking traffic — not to protest the shootings, of course, but the state of Maryland funding a youth jail in a city that rather desperately needs a youth jail. #SomeBlackLivesDontMatter | RealClearPolitics
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (3)