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July 31, 2015
The people who in the Planned Parenthood videos merrily describe the prices they can obtain for this or that body part
may one day be old and as helpless as the infants they have dismembered. Then they will be in the care of men like themselves. And on that far day these young — then old — may want water. On what grounds will they demand it? On what basis will they ask for care, love or compassion? Guilt as Power | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:10 PM | Your Say (2)
Marion Zimmer Bradley: “Children are brainwashed into believing they don’t want sex.”
Sex early will make people willing to have sex with everyone, which will bring about the utopia while eliminating homophobia and helping people become "who they really are." It will also destroy the hated nuclear family with its paternalism, sexism, ageism (yes, for pedophiles, that is a thing) and all other "isms." If enough children are sexualized young enough, gayness will suddenly be "normal" and accepted by everyone, and the old fashioned notions about fidelity will vanish. As sex is integrated as a natural part of every single relationship, the barriers between people will vanish, and the utopia will appear, as "straight culture" goes the way of the dinosaur. As my mother used to say: "Children are brainwashed into believing they don't want sex."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 PM | Your Say (4)
The word of the week is “cuckservative,” and boy, is it overdue.
It’s about the fake, phony conservatives who enjoy watching the real fighters on the right get sodomized while they gleefully gawk. They crave respectability over power and the limelight over influence. Seldom paid for their performances on Fox News or MSNBC, they repeat conventional wisdom after getting gussied up—but you can’t polish a soul. Refugee From Cuckservatism
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:30 PM | Your Say (2)
In the end, we'll have one of two possibilities. Saints or The Tyrant
The first, and much less likely - unlikely to the point of absurdity - is that the home schoolers, the traditionalists, the older Christians, and the people who haven't given up on all of it will rebuild and take the reins.The second, and almost certain, is that a tyrant will arise, promising to save everyone by giving them all the things they want, if only everyone gives up their worthless freedom. All he will ask is that they kneel. And in a collapsing society with out structure or meaning, far too many will hit their knees grateful for some sort of order. God save us from this future, a future that has played out all too often in the past and was predicted as long ago as 400 BC by Socrates. Word Around the Net: JUST BECAUSE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:11 PM | Your Say (0)
Conservatives have principles, but human nature is a powerful thing, and human nature favors payback.
And then liberals would be well advised to ask themselves who will be willing to fight and die to preserve their power and policies.In contrast, there are an awful lot of people willing to fight and die for their religion and our Constitution. And let’s be blunt – these are the people with most of the guns and the training to use them. That’s the reality of the rule of force. I’ve seen it. Liberals May Regret Their New Rules
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (2)
Donald Trump Would Be the Real First Black President
And surely he’s right when he says that Obama’s presidency has been both racially divisive and horribly underwhelming for black Americans, who do, as he “notoriously” once put it, seem to lack spirit?You have to worry for black neighbourhoods when Hispanics, who have no lingering slavery guilt to worry about, are the ethnic majority in America. Trump also gets away with honesty that others don’t because he has such an affinity for aspirational mainstream black culture. Trump lives precisely the same life of ostentatious and unashamed wealth as do superstar rappers. Wouldn’t Jay Z have his name emblazoned in gold on skyscrapers if he could afford it? == Breitbart
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (0)
The guilty party in the Planned Parenthood horrors aren’t a few liberal elitists, but humanity:
those of us who guessed, deduced or knew in some way or fashion, but preferred not to look at what we knew was there.
The “secret knowledge” was in fact Planned Parenthood’s best defense, for it bound many to silence out of guilt or shame. We could not bear to look; we still cannot bear to look.
Now that the cat is out of the bag the objections to looking the issue straight in the face, without eupemism, must vanish. Even those who, like Geraldo Rivera, argue that the end justifies the means can have no further reason for refusing to tell us “what end in exchange for these means?”. And in that matter, handwaving will not suffice. If Geraldo’s so proud of “medical research”, surely our admiration for it can only grow after all 300 hours of undercover video have been broadcast. Guilt as Power | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (1)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (1)
The Left Must Bleed
The left are not going to go away or desist. Debating them hasn’t worked. They are not going to change their behaviour unless they are compelled to.They need to face the consequences of their actions. They need to be physically removed from our society. The left will not stop until there are clear, painful, real world consequences for their actions. They have gotten away with their evil crimes against us for far too long. When people are trying to disempower you, disarm you, abandon our children to gangs of predatory immigrants and destroy your community you do not debate them; you hurt them. The left must bleed. And if we can show people that the left can bleed, then they will believe that it can be killed. - The Iron Legion
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:52 AM | Your Say (10)
July 30, 2015
Regarding that "Clump of Cells:" 7 Things Babies Do in the Womb That'll Blow Your Mind.
1. They develop tastes for certain foods. 2. They react to stress. 3. They practice facial expressions. 4. They cry. Silently. 5. They recognize nursery rhymes. 6. They also recognize songs. 7. They anticipate touch. In other words, they live. | The StirPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:51 AM | Your Say (3)
Bruce Jenner Castration Watch
Speaking of the Colosseum and bloodsports and all that, it occurred to me that we are seeing something in human culture that is so evil and so debased that it may be an entirely new phenomenon.We are now seeing people humiliate, embarrass and now even physically mutiliate themselves VOLUNTARILY. This is what Bruce Jenner is doing. I anticipate that Bruce Jenner will have his penis and testicles cut off, and this will be done as part of a ratings-getting ploy, no doubt timed to sweeps. After Jenner has cut off his own genitals, there probably won’t be anything more he can do to cause further spectacle, the entertainment complex will lose interest, and Jenner will probably commit suicide. Effusum Est In Terra Jecur Meum | Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (7)
July 29, 2015
Cat Pianos, Sound-Houses, and Other Imaginary Musical Instruments
The earliest known image of a set of cats arrayed as sound-producing elements to be activated by the fingers dates to the late sixteenth century, that is, over a hundred years before the invention of the piano, at a time when it would more properly be called a cat harpsichord or clavichord. | The Public Domain Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 PM | Your Say (1)
The Spamela Anderson Burger
Sandwiched between a sun-kissed pineapple upside down cake, sits a beef patty ground with spam, crispy jalapeno rubbed bacon, and a gorgeous sharp cheddar riesling sauce. Playboy, call me. PornBurger | Burger Perverts Welcome
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:42 PM | Your Say (2)
Full Retard Communism Achieved! Venezuelan farmers ordered to hand over produce to state.
Meanwhile, a word about toilet paper.The capitalist propaganda machine outside of the Bolivarist Paradise has been telling people that toilet paper is now largely unavailable for purchase in the country. But, does man really require toilet paper to be happy? A few centuries ago there was no toilet paper at all â indeed, mankind survived for most its history without toilet paper. The desire for toilet paper is simply a form of manufactured desire created by capitalist marketing and advertising â the production of a want in people for a product they donât actually have a real use for. The creation of toilet paper despoils forests and the landscape, is unsustainable, and it is only to the good that Venezuela now leads the world in eliminating this scourge from our midst. No one could have seen this coming « Samizdata
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (5)
July 28, 2015
This new system judges everything by a childish oppressor/victim worldview,
The system is like Islam in that it is total: it covers religion, economics, culture, entertainment, education, law, and all other aspects of life in a complete package.The tremors you're feeling in culture right now is the imposition of this new system from above while from below people still cling to the shreds of the old. Homosexual "marriage" wasn't so much about the less-than-1% of the population that wants to marry. Demanding everyone celebrate and admire Bruce Jenner's self-mangling "sex change" isn't about the 30,000 or so transgenders in the USA. This is all just about replacing the old with the new and demolishing all the ideals and beliefs of the past. Word Around the Net: JUST BECAUSE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:05 PM | Your Say (1)
"Find some truly hard people": Time the Right learned about Lenin's Hanging Order.The Left's used it for 96 years.
Lenin's Hanging Order "Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers. Publish their names. Seize all their grain from them. Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram. Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: "they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks". Telegraph receipt and implementation. Yours, Lenin. Find some truly hard people."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 AM | Your Say (1)
July 27, 2015
Notes On Your Novel.
I’m flattered you asked me for notes on your new novel All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy. The cover letter you included with the manuscript — “HELP ME,” scrawled in red crayon over an old-timey photo of yourself in 1920s formal wear — was quite evocative. So never fear, I certainly intend to help you… become a better writer! -- McSweeney’sPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 PM | Your Say (1)
On this day in 1890 Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in a wheat field outside Auvers-sur-Oise, in France;
boundless as a sea, delicate yellow, delicate soft green, the delicate violet of a dug-up and weeded piece of soil, checkered at regular intervals with the green of flowering potato plants, everything under a sky of delicate blue, white, pink, violet tones. I am in a mood of almost too much calmness, in the mood to paint this. Vincent Van Gogh - Van Gogh's Last
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 PM | Your Say (3)
The peace the administration wins is the peace of appearances
Drones, rendition, “no-fly-zones”, proxy warfare (not to be called mercenaries by the way) under a “responsibility to protect” are the politically preferred way of war — pardon -- kinetic military action.The peace the administration wins is the peace of appearances. Polite society doesn’t want to know the real deal any more than it wants to see ultrasounds of doomed babies that form the factual basis for “choice”. It can’t handle the truth, any more than it can handle what Planned Parenthood really does. Fiction at all costs. Honor is Whatever You Can Still Betray | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 PM | Your Say (1)
"Nostoc" or "Star Jelly"
“meat which looked like beef began to fall all around her. The sky was perfectly clear at the time.” Falling like large snowflakes and settling all around the 5000 square foot yard, pieces of flesh ranging in size from about two inches square to four, dotted the ground and were even stuck on the fences. The Mystery of the Kentucky Meat Shower
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 AM | Your Say (5)
On July 27, 1940, a legendary, world-renowned rabbit was born in Brooklyn, New York.
it was simply a common expression in his home state of Texas at the time. But when the short aired, the sight of Bugs nonchalantly chomping on his carrot and inquiring, “What’s up Doc?” was so far removed from the audience’s expectations of what a rabbit would do when confronted by a hunter that it brought the proverbial house down. And so, the gag stayed, and was a part of virtually every Bugs Bunny cartoon thereafter. -- A Wild Hare
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:37 AM | Your Say (1)
July 26, 2015
A womanized culture is soft. Its reaction to anything bad is to weep, hold hands, put up memorials of flowers and teddy bears and generally dissolve in a puddle of tears.
An America with a masculine culture would have replied to this and other incidents with what 4GW theory calls the “Hama model”.The President would have gone on television within a matter of hours to say to the nation, “As I am speaking, hundreds of American bombers are wiping the city of Raqqa off the map and killing every living thing in it. I warn all civilians in any other territory under the control of ISIS to flee. The same thing can happen to you.” Not only would this have hit ISIS hard physically, it would have deprived it of its base, a much more serious injury. If no civilians would remain in any area controlled by ISIS, ISIS could not function. The View From Olympus: Chattanooga | traditionalRIGHT
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 PM | Your Say (6)
Trump; "Admit It: You People Want To See How Far This Goes, Don’t You?"
Jeb Bush; Chris Christie; me. Of course, they’ll put me in the middle because I’m ahead in the polls—far ahead at the moment. You already know how I answer even the most basic inquiries, so just picture me staring down the barrel of a question about foreign affairs or agriculture policy or something like that. You think you won’t sit there with bated breath while I try to tackle a question about using military force, or about food stamps, or about how my faith influences my decision-making? I guarantee you that my answers will be worth watching. And we both know you wouldn’t miss them for the world. It’d be the biggest, most-watched primary debate in history, courtesy of all of you. - - America's Finest News Source
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (1)
Donald Trump's Top 30 Insults
Mitt Romney — “Why would anybody listen to @MittRomney? He lost an election that should have easily been won against Obama. By the way,so did John McCain!” Trump tweeted of the 2012 Republican nominee on July 18. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said at a rally on July 18. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” This followed a July 16 tweet saying, “@SenJohnMcCain should be defeated in the primaries. Graduated last in his class at Annapolis--dummy!” The insults came after McCain said Trump had "fired up the crazies" on immigration. Macy’s — Trump called for a boycott after the department store dropped his men’s clothing line. "I hope the boycott of @Macys continues forever. So many people are cutting up their cards. Macy's stores suck and they are bad for U.S.A.,” he tweeted on July 16. “Boycott @Macys, no guts, no glory. Besides, there are far better stores!” he tweeted later. | Zero HedgePosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (1)
July 25, 2015
Here are the important facts we know about dark matter:
- It’s dark. Doesn’t interact with electromagnetism, at least not with anywhere near the strength that ordinary charged particles do.
- It’s cold. Individual dark matter particles are moving slowly and have been for a while, otherwise they would have damped perturbations in the early universe.
- There’s a goodly amount of it. About 25% of the energy density of the current universe, compared to only about 5% in the form of ordinary matter.
- It’s stable, or nearly so. The dark matter particle has to be long-lived, or it would have decayed away a long time ago.
- It’s dissipationless, or nearly so. Ordinary matter settles down to make galaxies because it can lose energy through collisions and radiation; dark matter doesn’t seem to do that, giving rise to puffy halos rather than thin galactic disks.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:48 PM | Your Say (6)
Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It
Next the radio switched to the local hip hop station and began blaring Skee-lo at full volume. I spun the control knob left and hit the power button, to no avail. Then the windshield wipers turned on, and wiper fluid blurred the glass.... As the two hackers remotely toyed with the air-conditioning, radio, and windshield wipers, I mentally congratulated myself on my courage under pressure. That’s when they cut the transmission. Immediately my accelerator stopped working. | WIRED
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (4)
Company Coming? Nothing Easier: Whole Roasted Suckling Pig
Line a 32-gallon garbage bag with 2 more 32-gallon garbage bags. Place water, salt, and sugar in the tripled-up garbage bags and stir to dissolve, taking care not to puncture the bags. Place pig in the bags, remove excess air, and tie tightly. Place in a 15-quart container in the refrigerator and brine 12 to 24 hours, turning once. Recipe - CHOW.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (1)
July 24, 2015
Friday Listicle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:40 AM | Your Say (1)
So, I passed the United States.
The United States was driving fifteen miles an hour in the breakdown lane with the flashers on. The Baby on Board suction cup had gone south and the laminated placard flopped on the rear deck like a fish on the beach. The back seat was full of unread newspapers and bees and sticky empties with no deposits. Three tires were bald and the fourth was a solid rubber tricycle wheel and half as effective. Sippican Cottage: This Dream's In SightPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (0)
Dear Alberta Human Rights Commission,
Stupid as a stone that the other stones make fun of. So stupid that you have traveled far beyond stupid as we know it and into a new dimension of stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid cubed. Trans-stupid stupid. Stupid collapsed to a singularity where even the stupons have collapsed into stuponium. Stupid so dense that no intelligence can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot midday sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one minute than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. It cannot be possible that anything in our universe can really be this stupid. This is a primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. A pure extract of stupid with absolute stupid purity. Stupid beyond the laws of nature. - Small Dead Animals
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (5)
James Turrell’s Roden Crater
--you can see images of the sun and moon on the surface of a large basalt stone called the “image stone.” Leading up from that stone is an approximately 900 foot tunnel that leads to a portal—an opening to the sky. The 900 foot tunnel acts as a giant refractor telescope and contains a very large lens at the center to focus the light. | Amusing Planet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:06 AM | Your Say (0)
understanding Trump’s campaign
He’s also nearing the end so he can afford to piss off other famous rich people, unlike regular candidates that have to suck up to the rich. Trump also has a way of connecting with the common people. He’s been doing improvisational television for a long time and he is good at it. Those are the assets he has to leverage. The opportunities he is exploiting are immigration, the media culture, discontent with the Republican establishment and widespread angst about the culture and economy. My guess is he never had strong views on any of these things. - - The Leverage Candidate
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 AM | Your Say (6)
July 23, 2015
The Trump White House
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:27 PM | Your Say (4)
"An airplane is my bedroom,"
The privilege of reclining in this personal suite costs around $15,000. Schlappig typically makes this trip when he's bored on the weekend. He pays for it like he pays for everything: with a sliver of his gargantuan cache of frequent-flyer miles that grows only bigger by the day. Up in the Air: Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free | Rolling Stone
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (0)
Why are we hung up on babies? They can’t even read!
Take, Dr. Kermit Gosnell: All he did was birth live babies, hold them upside-down in his hand and use scissors to cut their spinal cords. Those weren’t “real” babies; they didn’t even get to wear swaddling clothes.
Why are we hung up on babies? They can’t even read! I see no wrong-doing in my investigation. If you can explain to me the difference between a Late-Term abortion vs. a crazy chick with a ball-peen hammer, smashing a newborn’s skull as he slides out of your womb—I’ll give you a cookie. If not? Case closed. Otherwise, you’re just waging a #WarOnWomen…. - - STREET CARNAGE UNPLANNED PARENTHOOD: SVU
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (3)
Who exactly is going to prosecute prosecutors?
Despite numerous cases where prosecutors have committed willful misconduct, costing innocent defendants decades of their lives, I am aware of only two who have been criminally prosecuted for it; they spent a total of six days behind bars. - - Word Around the NetPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (0)
July 22, 2015
This Day in History: July 22nd- Katharine Bates and Her Little Poem
"One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak.
We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse."When she got back to her room at Antlers Hotel, she scribbled down the first draft of a poem which she originally titled “Pikes Peak.,” and which would become....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 PM | Your Say (2)
[Bumped] And, then, too, points for John McCain’s Vietnam prisoner-of-war sufferings eventually run out.
McCain used them up extravagantly over the years by being the US Senate's leading Republican sell-out and by betraying Conservatism and the GOP again and again and again in every major legislative confrontation. Personally, I'm pretty much out of gratitude for John McCain's Vietnam services. Never Yet MeltedPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (22)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:51 AM | Your Say (1)
July 21, 2015
From working in the media, I have seen such set-ups many times:
all the cameras flashing on cue.Tricks of editing and camera angle are used to enhance the “teachable moment”; to condense the narrative into a hard rock of emotion, aimed directly at the boogeyperson’s head. For the media people are pros, too. They know how to adjust the “optics.” Pretty young woman crying: that will sway everyone except the tiny minority who know something about the subject. And they are now tarred with the same brush. Authority : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 PM | Your Say (1)
Everything’s fine, but we seem just a step from disaster,
trapped in a web of our own deceit, the prisoners of our own wishful thinking.It’s as if our present civilization were engaged in a battle of wits against itself, in a kind of parody of the scene from the Princess Bride. We poisoned a cup thinking to exterminate our enemies, now we can’t remember which cup it is. Worlds Lost and Found | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 PM | Your Say (3)
July 20, 2015
Indeed, if it were not for ribbons, I would be totally unaware of lots of things only a victim of massive brain hemorrhage could be unaware of.
How could we possibly remember that gender violence, suicide, prostate cancer, slavery, sex trafficking, autism, child abuse, lupus, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, stomach cancer, racism, diabetes, brain cancer, sexual assault, childhood cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and congenital cytomegaloviruses are bad without ribbons to remind us? Our Culture's Sacred StoriesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 PM | Your Say (2)
I realized something about Bruce Jenner the other day.
This 64 (65?)-year-old male is dressing and acting like what he THINKS a woman is.What other 64 year old woman (or any other woman) dresses like that? Boobs up to here, luxurious and long hair, too much make-up, strange and ugly trannie dresses...And after all, who could blame him for being confused about what a real woman is, having married into the clownish and dysfunctional Kardashian clan? He doesn't identify as a female, he fantasizes about some weird, twisted caricature of a woman. -- Posted by: Flyover Pilgrim This Just In
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 PM | Your Say (6)
I keep wondering when we will run out of Nazi to chase.
By my math, the youngest people that anyone could reasonable hold accountable for crimes in WW2 are 85 and that assumes it is reasonable to hold 15 year-old people responsible for war crimes. The Danes are now being asked to arrest a 90-year old guy for being at a camp in Belarus. More Nazis | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:46 PM | Your Say (7)
Shut up about breast cancer awareness. We are so frickin aware I’m gonna vomit.
People are always “raising awareness” about things everybody knows about.It is the activism of cowards. Especially women, who are so desperate for safety and approval. When I got lupus there was this big pull to “get involved” with what I call the “bourgeois disease complex”: the annual “months” and ribbons and in the case of lupus, really corny mascots like butterflies. I think I willed myself into remission just to avoid it. It was all so… female. Ugh. Five Feet of Fury – Kathy Shaidle – Me three.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:18 PM | Your Say (5)
Why is the Universe So Damn Big?
The universe is big on human scales, but that doesn’t mean very much.It’s not surprising that humans are small compared to the universe, but big compared to atoms. That feature does have an obvious anthropic explanation — complex structures can only form on in-between scales, not at the very largest or very smallest sizes. Given that living organisms are going to be complex, it’s no surprise that we find ourselves at an in-between size compared to the universe and compared to elementary particles. What is arguably more interesting is that the universe is so big compared to particle-physics scales. | Sean Carroll
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:02 PM | Your Say (2)
The 3-Billion-Year-Old Klerksdorp Spheres of Ottosdal
These dark reddish brown, somewhat flattened spheres range in size from less than a centimeter to ten centimeters across, and some of them have three parallel grooves running around the equator. The most striking examples have the uncanny appearance of being something manufactured. But here is the kicker â these metallic objects have been dated to 3 billion years old, a time when the Earth was too young to host intelligent life capable of creating these spheres. | Amusing Planet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (7)
It’s time to quit worrying and learn to love the battle axe.
There is substantial evidence to support the notion that violence has always been a part of human life. Every day, archeologists unearth another primitive skull with damage from weapons or blunt force trauma. The very first legal codes were shockingly grisly. If we feel less threatened today, if we feel as though we live in a non–violent society, it is only because we have ceded so much power over our daily lives to the state. Some call this reason, but we might just as well call it laziness. A dangerous laziness, it would seem, given how little most people say they trust politicians.Violence doesn’t come from movies or video games or music.
Violence comes from people. It’s about time people woke up from their 1960s haze and started being honest about violence again. People are violent, and that’s OK. You can’t legislate it away or talk your way around it. Based on the available evidence, there’s no reason to believe that world peace will ever be achieved, or that violence can ever be “stopped.”It’s time to quit worrying and learn to love the battle axe.
History teaches us that if we don’t, someone else will. Violence is Golden - Jack Donovan
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:08 AM | Your Say (9)
July 19, 2015
This Just In
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 PM | Your Say (11)
There are 2.5 million stars in my pocket
Nine hundred and forty North American bird species and their songs are included with iBird Pro Guide to Birds. I have nearly unlimited access to music; I can audio record my entire day; I can record high definition video and send it wirelessly. There are over 40,000 messages in my Gmail inbox. The world’s major newspapers are continually updated by the minute. Thanks to my mobile web browser, I have access to more words than were contained in the National Library of Ireland on June 16, 1904. Stars in My Pocket Like Bits of Data
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (3)
It Would Seem the Fine Wine BS Virus Has Infected the Growers of Weed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:09 PM | Your Say (4)
July 18, 2015
I'm afraid the makeshift memorials of flags and other patriotic memorabilia that have sprung up on the edge of the police tape depress the hell out of me.
A no doubt sincere veneration for the military apparently can only express itself with a feeble passivity that is a large part of the problem.This isn't a time for the bumper-sticker bromides of "We salute our heroes/Thank you for your service/We support our troops". Among the dead are men who waged a bloody and hard-fought battle to retake Fallujah ...only to come home and die unarmed in a crappy shopping mall at the hands of a halfwit fanatic whose family had been under the leisurely money-no-object scrutiny of the bloated security apparatus for years. Senselessness and Sensibility :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:06 AM | Your Say (4)
Should be copied and pasted up underneath every "Gun Free Zone" sign in the nation.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:41 AM | Your Say (2)
The African avalanche is inevitable.
As the population grows, survival will mean only one thing: emigration. The bright lights of Europe and North America–and of South Africa for those who cannot manage to leave the continent–will exert a hypnotic attraction. Many Africans will buy plane tickets financed by their relatives already overseas, or by Western aid money, and those who cannot afford to fly will pile into rickety ships to cross the Mediterranean. The African avalanche is inevitable. The rush to Europe will be so massive and relentless that it will not be possible to stop it without direct military force. - - An African Planet?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (6)
Conservatives are useless, cowardly failures.
That’s all they had to do, and they have failed utterly. They have crumbled in the face of every enemy advance and abandoned one principle after another. Instead of taking a corrective, reactionary course of action to reverse the leftist advance they have gradually assumed the policies of the left as their own in order to remain popular and electable. They have failed to limit the abuse of the bloated welfare state and the breakdown of morality. They have failed to conserve anything of value or beauty. They’ve been out-debated and out-manoeuvred by sexually deviant disease vectors that comprise only 2% of the population. They have failed to reverse, stop or exert any sort of control over immigration and the crime-wave it has caused. I Was A Conservative Once - The Iron Legion
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (4)
July 17, 2015
Let There Be Light Bulbs: How Incandescents Became the Icons of Innovation
The desire for incandescent lighting resulted in the creation of America’s electric grid, which improved communication, health care, manufacturing, transportation, and education. Accessible electricity also made every subsequent tech boom possible, paving the way for computers and the Internet. The lowly light bulb’s profound impact turned it into the universal symbol for innovation—yet despite the bulb’s storied legacy and Thomas Edison’s near-mythical status, for most people, that leap from fickle flame to unwavering electric light is vague at best. Even as antique-style Edison bulbs proliferate in trendy bars and restaurants, most of us know next to nothing about this revolutionary little lamp, the details of its delicate design hidden in shadow. | Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:27 PM | Your Say (8)
Give up on the half-way house of “dialogue” and “dialectic”: Christ is all or nothing.
Outside, the whole world is our dar al-harb.Every parish church is in mission territory, and stays in mission territory, fighting an uphill battle against its own parishioners, often including the priests — who are reverting to paganism twenty times a day, and can only be retrieved through the faith, communicated chiefly through the Sacraments. My own special pleading for the devolution of government, on the subsidiary principle, is not based on any utopian hope that people with be “nice.” There will always be wars: I would prefer them to be smaller. There will always be tyrants: I’d prefer them to contained. Little governments will fail as big governments do: I’d prefer smaller failures. The world could be made quieter, but it will always be a mess. - - David Warren Towards wisdom : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:35 PM | Your Say (3)
You try to picture Bernie Sanders in office and you can’t, because it’s a place he won’t be
Sander’s base is kids. Usually white, usually urban. Usually art school students. So, essentially, too many people who can vote in democratic primaries. Yet I can picture a black guy voting for Sanders about as easily as I can one voting for Romney. I was at the Republican National Convention in 2008, and I saw more blacks than at any Sanders rally. The appeal to millennials is mainly that they have just, for the first time, realized what any sane person knows, that Clinton likes Israel and killer robots, and is largely backed by those people that kids naturally hate, corporations. STREET CARNAGE CALLOW YOUTHFUL SOCIALIST CROWD - STREET CARNAGE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:03 PM | Your Say (7)
I think we live in an atmosphere where the post-modern eclipses the modern, and it will be to devastating effect.
If more people were living in the modern world, rather than the post-modern world, such characters as Cosby would not become general purpose heroes.They would be actors. They would be musicians. They would be comics. And if some part of their lives were obtusely faulty, we could perhaps overlook their failures. That is, if they weren't crimes. But many of us are living in a post-modern world in which the symbolic greatness of individuals become industries in and of themselves. One's job is not just a job at a company, the company becomes 'family', the job becomes a 'mission', dedication becomes 'a passion'. In the post-modern world, you can buy shoes and it means you are 'relieving hunger in Africa'. You can buy a car and you are 'saving the planet'. For Cosby it meant you could write a book on fatherhood and become 'America's Dad'. Judging Cosby - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:54 AM | Your Say (3)
Let the Pant Sh**ting Hysterics Commence!
File under: Innovations that fill politicians and bureaucrats with fear.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (4)
Chattanooga Murders: Progressives Get the Credit
Make no mistake about it. The progressives who run our institutions own this mass murderas much as they do the murder in San Francisco and the daily toll of murders in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, East Los Angeles, etc. They own it from their encouragement of Muslim immigration all the way to the "gun free zones" in which our military are forced to operate unarmed despite mounting evidence that they are targets of terror. We have highly trained Marines forced to "duck and cover" and run for their lives instead of doing what they do better than anybody else: send terrorists off to their appointment with seventy-two virgins or raisins or whatever the idiocy is. The DiploMad 2.0
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (0)
The ghosts are peeling off the page; they won’t obey the Narrative any more. They are oozing past the edges of the pentagram. What to do?
Even so, they now seem haunted by the little things. Corners that they won’t glance into any more. Issues they won’t address. They refuse to speak about creaky noises that won’t go away. Are there empty letters from Mr and Mrs Karma in the mailbox? Ignore. We don’t know them. They’re here. The TV people. Daddy, can’t you see them? Like the movie said, we’re in some dim place lost because you’re afraid of the light. We won’t get back home until we forthrightly come out of the darkness. If we can’t admit there’s something disturbing about selling aborted babies for parts or understand you can’t lose an entire classified database to the Chinese without consequences; until people remember that a lie is a lie no matter who utters it, then we are doomed. It will finally come down to this: lose the Narrative or lose the light. The Noises in the Basement | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 AM | Your Say (1)
Donald Trump is a great salesman. His Republican rivals aren't.
Some are talented lawyers. They understand policy and political tactics. But they couldn't sell a discounted heater to Eskimos.His entry into the race may be an important wake up call. If the genuine conservatives can't outsell Trump, they're not going to be able to outsell bland corporate brands like Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. It won't matter who is left standing because no one will be left standing. Sultan Knish: Why Trump is Winning
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:31 AM | Your Say (0)
July 16, 2015
Sure, some Muslim-Americans are "moderate," but who gives a damn anymore?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:34 PM | Your Say (10)
A Quick Pessimistic Note on the Selling of the Baby Parts
As you sit there reading this right now, there are females from sea to shining sea screwing to get pregnant with the plan of carrying the baby to six or seven months, and then presenting themselves at Planned Parenthood – looking for a cut of the action on the body parts for a five-figure payday. Because now they know. - - Ann Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:13 PM | Your Say (4)
Leaves one nostalgic for one’s Southern childhood even if one never had a Southern childhood:
She wondered why she had never thought her country beautiful. . . . The train clacketed through pine forests and honked derisively at a gaily-painted bell funneled museum piece sidetracked in a clearing. It bore the sign of a lumber concern, and the Crescent Limited could have swallowed it whole with room to spare. Greenville, Evergreen, Maycomb Junction.She had told the conductor not to forget to let her off, and because the conductor was an elderly man, she anticipated his joke. . . . Trains changed; conductors never did. Being funny at flag stops with young ladies was a mark of the profession, and Atticus, who could predict the actions of every conductor from New Orleans to Cincinnati, would be awaiting accordingly not six steps away from her point of debarkation. Harper Lee's Failed Novel About Race - The New Yorker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (1)
The long quiet has reached its end. Be prudent. Stay away from crowds.
its decisions preferably validated by over-the-top simulated contrition bullied from its prey. But the larger part of the citizenry is not about to accept serial humiliation at the hands of self-declared lords, nor shall they accept alleged illegitimacy in their own homeland, nor are they to be deflected by DC's choking off avenues of redress for all but their loyal cadre. This is a 'space station view' of America today. Liberty's Torch: Rules: A Guest Post From Ol' Remus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (2)
Buckminster Fuller: Blood simple or with an easier way to wipe out San Francisco?
It would have been assembled from modules, starting with a floating “neighborhood” of 5,000 residents, with an elementary school, a supermarket and a few specialty shops. Three to six neighborhoods would form a town, and three to seven towns would form a city. At each stage the corresponding infrastructure would be added: schools, civic facilities, government offices, and industry. A full-sized city might accommodate 100,000 people in a single building. He envisioned an even larger tetrahedron, with a million citizens, for Tokyo Bay. Foursquare - Futility ClosetFutility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (1)
The Most Beautiful Car You’ll See Today: The 1938 Adler Trumpf Rennlimousine
Its shape wasn’t built to be pretty, it was designed to produce on the racing circuit. That’s what makes this vehicle so remarkable. The pursuit of functional performance yielded a truly incredible visual design. It is a breathtaking vehicle, one whose curves are almost intoxicating, but its style is purely substantive. Under the hood, the 1938 Adler Trumpf Rennlimousine is powered by a 56 horsepower inline four-cylinder engine. That was a competitive powerhouse in the 1930s. At the time, it presented a great power-to-weight ratio and sported one of the best aerodynamic designs on the road. This made it a beast to be reckoned with, albeit for a very short time.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (2)
July 15, 2015
Just remember – never, ever get on the government bus to the “emergency shelter/evacuation camp”.
Once you do, you are irretrievably finished. Heaven help us all. - - WRSAPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 PM | Your Say (4)
How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?
Scott Walker: The Left's Keyser Söze The union thugs knew Walker was tough, not to be trifled with, so they let him know they meant business.Then he showed these men of will what will really was. After dissolving the union, he lets the last member go. He waits until the recall is over and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He fires their kids, he fires their wives, he fires their parents and their parentsâ friends. He forecloses the houses they live in and the offices they work in, he fires people that owe them money. And like that he was gone. Underground. Nobody has ever seen him since. He becomes a myth, a spook story that Democrats tell their kids at night. "Rat on your shop steward, and Scott Walker will get you."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:49 PM | Your Say (2)
To the pro-abortion crowd: I know you aren’t all gone.
You still have a soul. You have your humanity. You have a mind. I know you do. And I know when you hear about things like this, your first reaction, deep down in your gut, is to cringe.And it’s only for a moment, I know. It’s a flinch. It’s a brief relapse back to the days when you were the kind of person who knew it was wrong to kill people and hawk their body parts for profit. You knew that once. Maybe when you were very little, before the liberal propagandists got to you, but you knew it. So, listen, just live in that cringe for a while longer. That instinctual repulsion you experienced — let it simmer in your head. Don’t push it back down as quickly as you usually do, drowning your conscience with vapid slogans about a “right to choose” and “my body, my choice” and all the rest of it. There’s plenty of time for that, but all I’m asking is that you watch the video of the woman eating her salad while she describes crushing a child carefully so as to preserve his internal organs for resale on the black market, and meditate. View the footage, and when that voice in your head says, “ew, this is horrifying,” listen to it. Hear it out.Matt Walsh: Planned Parenthood Sells Dead Baby Parts | TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:45 PM | Your Say (4)
The Enduring Appeal of Ostentatious Loafers.
From a sartorial standpoint, the shoe sat dormant for a decade plus (although to be fair, it never did lose it’s ironclad influence on unwavering preppy hotbeds like the UES, Palm Beach, and the Cape) before it was embraced by neo-trads who were infatuated by anything that once graced the pages of Take Ivy. While today the Gucci bit loafer is not as ubiquitous as it once was, it still remains a favorite of those men that could argue for hours about their favorite Whit Stilman movie, and are forever in search of a girlfriend named Muffy. | A Continuous Lean.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (3)
First High Resolution Photo of Pluto Raises Concern
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:11 AM | Your Say (2)
I don't know why some say it is too early to start shooting them.
Oregon launches program to tax drivers by the mile: 'I haven't been paying my fair share' Oregon is using an experimental program to become the first state to tax drivers based on the miles they travel on state roads rather than the gas they purchase. The voluntary program, called OReGo, is designed to capture taxes from hybrid and electric car drivers who have been able to skirt gas taxes. Oregon's Department of Transportation is hoping to get 5,000 people to volunteer to install a small device under their steering wheels that will track their mileage and charge drivers' credit cards one and a half pennies for each mile driven.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (2)
July 14, 2015
We are now living through a great period of extinction, through an epoch of idea-death.
Life is, if it is nothing else, the chance to try something new. Death is blindly following "city policy."We are now living through a great period of extinction, through an epoch of idea-death. Christianity, the nuclear family, individual initiative, the notion of country, the very idea of gender, even the primacy of survival are in the process being declared surplus to requirements. A thousand ideas, the bloom of the forest, are being bulldozed into the soil by those all too certain of themselves. Sandbox | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 AM | Your Say (2)
“Am going to cross the Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? Reply at once.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (3)
Our children are our days of future past.
I hope they get their chance to fall in love and be possessed of the idiot excitement of simply seeing their beloved.I want them to be married and have children and raise them up and get a bad back from piggybacks. I want them to watch their geraniums wilting in their windowboxes. I want them to trip over a roller skate in the walk. I want the paint to peel on their rancher. I want them to roll down the windows and go for a drive. I want them to sleep on the floor next to the crib because their infant has a cold. I want them to tend to a brown patch of grass in front of the house. I want them to name their many children with more care than the family dog. Sippican Cottage: Oh Boy!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 AM | Your Say (2)
July 13, 2015
Goldie Hawn eating a hamburger in 1964
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 PM | Your Say (4)
The holes in doughnuts were first noted in print in 1861,
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 PM | Your Say (1)
The EEG flatlined as the subject weakly choked out, "So... nearly... free..."
He ran the length of the chamber repeatedly yelling at the top of his lungs for 3 hours straight, he continued attempting to scream but was only able to produce occasional squeaks. The researchers postulated that he had physically torn his vocal cords. The most surprising thing about this behavior is how the other captives reacted to it... or rather didn't react to it. They continued whispering to the microphones until the second of the captives started to scream. The Russian Sleep Experiment
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:16 PM | Your Say (6)
How to Deodorize, 1605
and how nearer that the stench is to the nose, so much the lothsomer is it. This stench is augmented through great labour at hot times, through want of shifting and alteration of clothes, through great incontinencie, and through some corrupted humors of the body. Then for to remedie this stench, it is needful (according to the quality of the person) that all such are to be purged and let bloud, and that they afterwards do bath in these odoriferous herbes, as Mints, Melilot, Lauander, Ireos, and such like... Marmalade with spices doth also expel all stench." Christoph Wirsung, The General Practise of Physicke
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:47 PM | Your Say (2)
Scott Walker declares himself a candidate:
Now the criticism will resume at a new pace—including from the right.I like Walker. He’s one of my favored candidates, and has been for a long time. He combines conservatism with the ability to win in a blue state. He’s a bit bland, but he’s got that midwestern affability that I think will come across quite well, especially when combined with his record of accomplishment in an executive role neo-neocon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:29 PM | Your Say (3)
Causes of Gay Divorce: Report #1
A Florida womanis facing a domestic battery charge after allegedly using a dildo to batter her female domestic partner during a fight in the couple’s residence, police allege. After the women tussled over possession of a dress, Officer Eric Blomgren directed Kielhurn not to touch the 47-year-old Capaner-Ridley. However, “Shortly afterwards the defendant intentionally shoved a ‘dildo’ in the victim’s face and grabbed her right arm while arguing whose it belonged to,” Blomgren reported. In related news: Taxpayers Spend $3.5 Million to Find Out Why Lesbians Are Fat
The study, “Sexual Orientation and Obesity: A Test of a Gendered Biopsychosocial Model,” seeks to determine why there is a disparity in the obesity rates between straight women and lesbian women and straight men and gay men. According to the study, “It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic, with nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians overweight or obese, compared to half of heterosexual women. In stark contrast, among men, heterosexual males have nearly double the risk of obesity compared to gay males.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (6)
There was the kind of future kids once signed up for: with rocket ships, wonder machines, planets, stars, evil monsters, pretty girls.
Instead of that future we got political correctness, Islamic extremism,Western bankruptcy and Donald Trump.
Nobody wants the future any more. It’s the eight century everybody likes. Maybe we’re getting what we deserve. Steven Miller argues that the imagery surrounding Trump is like the mirror of our minds; it reflects our true likeness. Donald functions like a civilizational portrait of Dorian Gray, recording who we are instead of how we wish to appear. Trump exists precisely because modern civilization, including his so-called critics, need him to exist. Poets For Pluto | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (0)
July 12, 2015
The hermit set out of camp at midnight,
Not a boot print left behind. It was cold and nearly moonless, a fine night for a raid, so he hiked about an hour to the Pine Tree summer camp, a few dozen cabins spread along the shoreline of North Pond in central Maine. With an expert twist of a screwdriver, he popped open a door of the dining hall and slipped inside, scanning the pantry shelves with his penlight. Candy! Always good. Ten rolls of Smarties, stuffed in a pocket. Then, into his backpack, a bag of marshmallows, two tubs of ground coffee, some Humpty Dumpty potato chips. Burgers and bacon were in the locked freezer.... The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit | GQ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:08 PM | Your Say (3)
The real wrong side of history
The arrogant leftist notion that the arc of the universe bends towards justice (i.e. what they want) is predicated on the belief that Western liberalism will remain hegemonic.However, I suspect that this dominant liberal narrative will erode as China and other Asian nations continue to rise. We already know that Asian countries have no use for the kind of bizarre identity politics running amok in the West. In fact, given how pervasive intense nationalism is in Asia, I suspect that Asia’s ascendancy – combined with the West’s demise – will alter the way we view history. Such a paradigm shift will not be kind to the likes of John Oliver. Future Asian historians will be nonplussed upon learning that Americans placed a higher premium on transsexual rights than nationalism or a strong economy. Alternative Right
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (4)
Whatever your air travel misery is right now, just keep in mind it’ll get worse.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (5)
"A secession of the heart"
The coming era of civil disobedienceA secession of the heart has already taken place in America, and a secession, not of states, but of people from one another, caused by divisions on social, moral, cultural and political views and values, is taking place. America is disuniting, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote 25 years ago. And for those who, when young, rejected the views, values and laws of Eisenhower’s America, what makes them think that dissenting Americans in this post-Christian and anti-Christian era will accept their laws, beliefs, values? Why should they?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (3)
Maximum [Mexican] Security
Its opening was only 20 inches by 20 inches, starting at the former prisoner’s shower and ending in the nondescript Santa Juanita neighborhood that was full of construction sites. Guzman was last seen around 8 p.m., when he reported for medicine. Then he headed off to the showers. After a time, when he never reappeared, the alert was sounded and he couldn’t be found. The tunnel was equipped with lighting, ventilation and rails for a motorcycle, Rubido said. Various tools and oxygen tanks were found along the way, he added.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (10)
For the third time in a century, Europe has embarked on a mission of self-destruction, and will not turn back.
The correct response, to my humble mind, would have been on two fronts.First, to acknowledge that Greece can’t pay, and therefore write off the debts. Let them start again from scratch, according to their lights, providing whatever humanitarian aid can be afforded, but making clear it is a gift, and therefore delivering it through visibly European (and North American) agencies. Never let anyone think he is receiving gifts by right, and thus confuse gifts with payment. But don’t kick Greece out of anything; they have as much right to use euros while unwinding as the Argentines had to use U.S. dollars through their last bankruptcy. In defiance of post-modern sentimentalism, I would say it is possible to be both charitable, and firm. The avian gourmand : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:19 AM | Your Say (4)
July 10, 2015
The internet is now too much of a good thing. It is the Krell machine for the American subconscious.
It needs to be that for a while, and then it needs to be shaken down and deflated. That's what I want, a deflated internet. One that doesn't have time for foolishness. Of course, I'll be disappointed for the rest of my life.<>In the meantime, I can remind people about Cliff Stoll's book, Silicon Snake Oil. I cannot recall it well enough to know how prophetic it was or not, but I cannot help but notice that there is a distinct disjoint between largeness and largesse. We are getting the former. The Computer Snob - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:23 PM | Your Say (1)
Paranoia about tyranny is the motivation behind the entire United States Constitution
The U.S. government has handed over $4 billion worth of military equipment to its domestic law-enforcement agencies in the past two decades, and it was only after serious protest last month that President Obama proscribed the possession of tracked vehicles (including tanks), grenade launchers, and heavy machine guns by the local police.So yes, in an ideal world, guns wouldn’t get into the hands of the criminal or the crazed, just as one hopes the intoxicated or intemperate won’t get behind the wheel, but they do. Trusting your government to license automobiles simply makes sense; trusting them to license one of the few checks and balances on their authority that the political establishment itself doesn’t control—well, that has begun to seem to me like another matter altogether. On Second Thought, Stick to Your Guns
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (2)
Stalin’s Department of Culture and Propaganda, Otdel Kultury i Propagandy. Hence “the Kultprop."
Foreign travelers in the U.S.S.R. were assigned a Party minder to make sure that everything they saw and heard was explained to them in terms of the approved narrative.(I had the same deal in post-Mao China. Hi there, Wang Yue!) These minders were employees of Stalin’s Department of Culture and Propaganda, Otdel Kultury i Propagandy. Hence “the Kultprop.” Seems to me this term is due for revival. What are the diversity and inclusion consultants hired by all our big corporations, if not Kultprops? What else are the resident assistants at our universities, tasked with indoctrinating freshmen with the correct campus ethos of hypersensitivity toward every kind of human difference? What else are the social justice warriors who hounded a harmless young woman from her job for an injudicious tweet? Kultprops, all of them. Quarterly Potpourri - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (1)
Do you want to know what a truly international house of pancakes looks like?
No, it lives up to its name by taking a spring breaker’s tour through Europe, picking up Irish boxty and French socca as souvenirs. But it doesn’t stop there—it gains a worldly air by spending a semester in Asia, learning the ways of Korean jeon, Japanese okonomiyaki, and Chinese bing. Feeling a little homesick, it brings it back to the States, spending the weekends seeking out under-the-radar specialties like Rhode Island’s johnnycakes and the German-American Dutch baby. That, my friends, is what a well-traveled, fully globalized house of pancakes is. 13 Pancake Recipes from Around the World
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (3)
In 2012 Romney Noted the Chinese Hacking. Herewith Some of the Cavalcade of Idiots
Seriously, what exactly is Romney referencing when he says China is hacking our computers. I really want to know.
— Vincent Wanjala (@VincentWanjala1) October 23, 2012Romney on China: "They’re stealing our intellectual property, our patents, our designs, our technology, hacking...counterfeiting our goods."
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) October 23, 2012Romney ramps up China threats in debate http://t.co/Ou42qN9s #hacking
— Secure Cyber (@Sec_Cyber) October 23, 2012More romney china hacking until:2012-12-05 - Twitter Search
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:12 AM | Your Say (4)
Approaching Pluto
some two billion miles away on the other side of our Sun. It is approaching Pluto at an extraordinary speed, on a trajectory that will this coming Tuesday pass over the planet by less than eight thousand miles, before spinning off farther into the Kuiper belt. Aboard, it has equipment including cameras to gather more than one thousand times the data Mariner IV could assimilate during the first planetary fly-past, of Mars fifty years ago.... Clyde Tombaugh Visiting Pluto : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:02 AM | Your Say (0)
July 9, 2015
Let's Review How Easy It Is to Find WMD Sites
The vast weapons facility was uncovered last week near the town of St. Georgen an der Gusen by a team led by Austrian documentary- maker Andreas Sulzer, who said it was âlikely the biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich.â The 75-acre industrial complex is located close to a second subterranean factory, the B8 Bergkristall facility where the Messerschmitt Me 262, the worldâs first operational jet-powered fighter, was produced toward the end of World War II, London's Sunday Times reported. The existence of the facility was mentioned in the diaries of an Austrian physicist who worked for the Nazis, and Sulzer used ground-penetrating radar technology to pinpoint its location. His team cut away layers of earth and granite slabs with which the Nazis had sealed the entrance shaft.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 PM | Your Say (2)
It appears that the world is having an outbreak of stupidity.
For example it is distracted right now by the problem of hauling down a 150 year old flag from a defeated government from several state capitols. Someone said on Twitter that when he boarded an airplane in Paris everyone was preoccupied with the Greek exit, but when he alighted in Atlanta everyone was talking about Donald Trump. This lack of focus may allow the others to pull ahead in the race to the bottom. God Help Us All | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 PM | Your Say (2)
"And for my next act, I set myself on fire."
His No. 3 Bass Pro Shops Chevy was hit during a final lap green-white-checkered final run to the checkered flag and launched upward over two lines of cars and into the catch-fence in front of the frontstretch grandstands.After hitting the fencing, Dillon's car repelled back on track upside down and was hit again by the spinning car of BradKeselowski. Dillon's car finally came to rest on a paved portion of the infield track between the end of pit road and the frontstretch; its still-smoking engine landed 20 yards or so away from the crumpled car. Austin Dillon on Daytona wreck, 'You feel like Superman'
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 PM | Your Say (3)
The idea that you are broke, and vote for no more austerity, is so “democratic.”
No to austerity; no to paying debts; and no to the rich not giving us more money. I hope you Germans hear that: No, No, No!Shades of Arab Spring; shades of Orange Revolution; shades of Venezuela. I have noticed, everything that gets the crowds out in political euphoria, ends badly. - - Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 PM | Your Say (3)
How Gay Is Elton John?
After years of battling for the title of gayest dude ever, Sir Elton John must finally be dealing with the repercussions. I don’t even know if there’s ever really been any battle over the title. I think he’s always had a firm hold on it. I’m not talking about gay as in being a homosexual either, although he’s probably had that title sealed up for a while too. I’m talking about gay in terms of being lame as shit.
Elton John has been fruity as fuck for a long time. He hasn’t just been kind of light in the loafers for a while. He’s been balls to the wall gay forever. David Bowie gave him a good run for his money, a while back but he just couldn’t keep up. He knew the price he would have to pay. All the other brave souls, who tried to go the distance, eventually succumbed to AIDS. That’s what happens, when you act like a fucking poof all the time. It doesn’t matter if you’re sucking a million dicks for breakfast every morning, or not. If you act as gay as he’s acted for that long, AIDS will just materialize in your body. - STREET CARNAGE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:40 PM | Your Say (3)
Everybody wondering if it’s okay to change profile back now
Millions of people added rainbow stripes to their profile image over the weekend, to show their support for LGBT rights in a way that did not require them to get up from their computers. Sales manager Mary Fisher said: “Of course I support equality, but my old picture used a very flattering Instagram filter. This one makes me look simultaneously seasick, jaundiced and sunburned. “I can’t change it back though in case everybody thinks I’ve suddenly become a massive homophobe. I might as well put up a selfie with Vladimir Putin.” - - The Daily Mash
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 AM | Your Say (5)
July 7, 2015
How will we explain this to future generations?
Protesting against the weather with apocalyptic prophesies. Treating the charade of men “marrying” men as a moral imperative. Today, people cut off their genitals to the applause of crowds. With a century of collectivist death camps and terror still in living memory, we place our hopes in…collectivism! Intent to destroy the traditional family and church, the only bulwarks that keep the lives of ordinary people together. And whites, benefactors of all mankind, begging forgiveness for creating the bountiful, civilized modern world that allows everyone else to live at all. I have no explanation but “Satan” afoot HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (4)
The search for James T. Hammes, 53-year-old accountant accused of embezzling $8.7 million had come to an end.
The amount of money he is accused of taking could unleash a man from most things that hold him in place.The world bows to that amount of money. You could pay the toll on any of life’s roads. You could step through any of life’s doors. What would you do with that freedom? Sip cool drinks in the shade on a beach in Mexico and feel small before the Pacific Ocean? Pay a plastic surgeon to change your appearance, plant a young and willing blonde on your elbow and drive a Bugatti across Europe? Or find a quiet spot and live an unassuming and comfortable life off the stash? James T. Hammes, aka Bismarck, apparently did none of those things. James T. Hammes went hiking. On the Appalachian Trail. For six years. -- A Long Walk's End
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:11 AM | Your Say (2)
Once inside a cliché, it can be difficult to leave, because the doors lock from the outside.
Today, for example, it is fashionable to think it courageous for a sick man to convince himself he is a woman,or to direct animus toward the one race that has, for whatever reason, contributed so disproportionately to the welfare and betterment of mankind. Modesty and good breeding forbid a gentleman from crowing about such an unmerited blessing, but what is the alternative when these barbarians insist you are a devil instead of a benefactor to all? One Cʘsmos: Life and its Alternative Uses
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (1)
On the morning after a financial collapse things will look almost exactly as when you went to sleep.
Nothing in the external world changes in the immediate aftermath of a crash.What changes are the claims on that physical world. The iron rule is: the players never lose a seat, but you may lose yours. It’s the rest who suddenly awaken to stores that are not theirs, jobs that no longer exist, and sales orders that have been canceled. They go from employed to being unemployed; from solvent to broke. While You Were Sleeping | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (1)
The nation of Greece said sorry to the European Union with a present of an enormous wooden horse.
A gift tag attached to the horse, which is surprisingly light for its size and has small holes along the length of its body, suggested that it should be placed in the bank’s vaults overnight to avoid it being targeted by thieves. - - Never Yet Melted
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 AM | Your Say (2)
July 6, 2015
After careful consideration, I can only conclude that these signs are pathetic, self-defeating crap.
Yes, today’s warriors have fought some hard fights (Fallujah, Najaf and Sangin come to mind). But in terms of scale, casualties and intensity our wars have been different than many before. We haven’t endured three or four thousand KIAs in a single day like at Normandy and Antietam, or two thousand in 76 hours as at Tarawa. Yet the men who crossed sabers on Civil War battlefields or waded through surf, blood and dead comrades to a beach swept with machinegun bullets and shellfire somehow endured fireworks displays without putting signs in their yards. Signs, Of Veteran Entitlement | chrishernandezauthor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:24 PM | Your Say (8)
Joan Baez - Diamonds and Rust
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:49 PM | Your Say (6)
The primary problem with the post-American populace
is a near-unanimous unwillingness to defend itself against tyranny, and thus even contemplate or discuss the formation of a replacement government.As long as the Mickey-D's is still slinging burgers and Cokes, and they can still watch all of their favorite agit-porn teevee shows and gaze upon this year's popular and oh-so-lovable psychopath characters and their wacky, psychopathic hijinks, the very notion of rocking the boat, much less laying down one's life, will engender nothing but contempt and hatred of the Jeremiahs by even the so-called "conservative right". Believe me, I know. Creative Minority Report: Ann Barnhardt Part 3- How Do we Resist?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (5)
"Better Run Through the Jungle" Heaven in Post Apartheid South Africa
are fighting a battle they thought consigned to history: keeping the lights on. National power company Eskom Holdings Ltd. is reeling from years of underinvestment and poor management, surrendering to power outages that frequently plunge Soweto’s 1.3 million residents into darkness. Nonayona Mkeshana and her neighbors have resorted to cooking over open fires and singing and dancing in the street now that television sets have gone dark.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:04 PM | Your Say (3)
The Original Hamburger: "Give me two cheese works, a salad and a birch"
. One day in 1900, a gentleman hurriedly walked into Louis' Lunch and told proprietor Louis Lassen he was in a rush and wanted something he could eat on the run. In an instant, Louis placed his own blend of ground steak trimmings between two slices of toast and sent the gentleman on his way. And so, the most recognizable American sandwich was born.... Burgers are made fresh daily; hand-rolled from a proprietary blend of five meat varieties and cooked to order in the original cast-iron grills dating back to 1898. The Lassen family hold firm on their desire not to offer any condiments. The Louis Lunch experience is about the taste and simplicity of a fresh burger grilled to perfection. Cheese, tomato, and onion are the only acceptable garnish.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (3)
The light at the end of the tunnel is the oncoming train!
Conservatives shouldn’t feel too bad about the Supreme Court’s decisions.It’s the liberals who are living a house of cards. If liberals were rational they would making alliances with conservative Christians, Third World Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and that favorite sector, the moderate Muslims to fight godless Communism and radical Islam. To paraphrase Casablanca, “I wouldn’t bring up transgendersism and gay marriage in Tunisia, where hotel workers tried to defend their guests with ashtrays and bottles against the ISIS gunman, if I were you. It’s poor salesmanship.” Who's In Charge of the Oncoming Train | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (0)
The Bay Area defense for allowing a killer to run loose is compulsion, citing “city policy”.
In an interview Friday with NBC Bay Area, she said the city and county of San Francisco are sanctuaries for immigrants,and they do not turn over undocumented people – if they don’t have active warrants out for them – simply because immigration officials want them to…. Sanchez, who law enforcement say is either 45 or 46 and has about a dozen aliases, was taken into custody after witnesses described him to police. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he is an undocumented immigrant with a long criminal history who has previously been deported to Mexico five times, the last time in 2008. “It’s a tragedy,” Horne said. “We all recognize that. But we followed city policy.” Sandbox | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 AM | Your Say (2)
July 5, 2015
Taylor Swift working a gas grill at a vegan cookout. How do you cram this much annoying shit in one picture?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:46 PM | Your Say (10)
July 4, 2015
An entire 4th of July picnic, packed between two buns.
The American Pastime 2.0 aka Uncle Sam’s Meat Sweats. IPA Sesame Seed Bun BBQ Baked Bean Hummus with Blackstrap Molasses 9 oz 80/20 Beef Patty Pimento EZ Chz Mac Salad Budweiser Battered Ketchup Hickory Smoked Heirloom Tomato Bomb Pop Kool-Aid Pickled Onions Iceberg with Texas Pete’s Ranch
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (8)
July 3, 2015
Kaboom! 10 Facts About Firecrackers That Will Blow You Away
“Interestingly, firecrackers were reported to have been part of Fourth of July celebrations only after the holiday’s 11th year,” Dotz says. “The norm before then was ‘illuminations’—where people placed candles in their windows—as well as bonfires, bells, musket fire, and loud parades.”
Also, the earliest Fourth of July celebrations involved using explosives to send anvils into the air. According to Firecrackers, “A blacksmith’s anvil was placed on the ground and a bag of gunpowder with a fuse was placed on top of it. Finally, another anvil was placed upside down on top of the bag, the fuse was lit, and everybody scattered. This was to avoid being crushed like a cartoon character, because the top anvil was propelled into the air before returning heavily to the ground. It was said you could hear the sound of a good anvil shoot for miles in all directions.” | Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 PM | Your Say (4)
The basic tenets of the liberal narrative include:
Women are thriving in the workforce since being freed from the prison sentence that is the housewife’s life.Southerners are stupid, racist rednecks who are proud of slavery. Undocumented workers are hardworking people who love their families and are just coming here for a better life. Islam is a religion of peace; the extremists are only acting like that because we made them that way. Gender is a construct. Gays are madly in love and can’t wait to devote themselves to the bliss of matrimony. Blacks are struggling a little, yes, but that’s because “systemic” racism is “alive and well” today and cops are out to get them. The only problem with America these days is white men. - - The Reality Disconnect
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:51 PM | Your Say (3)
"For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it,
the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is stll time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armstead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago…. – William Faulkner The Other McCain
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:28 PM | Your Say (1)
Going the Distance: Till death us do part....
.Several weeks ago, Mr Toczko suffered a broken hip in a fall and was left bed-bound. A local hospice delivered a special bed to his home, which staff pushed up next to his beloved wife's bed. As Mr Toczko's condition quickly declined, Mrs Toczko's own health took a turn for the worse. The couple had always said they wished to die 'in their own bed, holding hands, in each other's arms'. And in scenes reminiscent of the 2004 film The Notebook, they passed away while clutching hands earlier this month: Mr Toczko on June 17, as he lay beside his wife; and Mrs Toczko, the next day. The couple's daughter, Aimee Toczko-Cushman, described the moment she told her mother she had lost her husband, who kept a photo of Mrs Toczko at her Holy Communion in his wallet. 'I told my mother he was gone,' she told 10 News. 'She hugged him and she said, "See this is what you wanted. You died in my arms and I love you. I love you, wait for me, I'll be there soon".' The dying embrace of husband and wife who were married for 75 years and died just hours apart as they held hands in bed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:04 PM | Your Say (3)
"Don't pea in my dip and call it guacamole." -- Iowahawk
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (2)
The Treasure of the Santa Fe Mountains
Fenn tinkered with its contents constantly, aiming to create a stash that would dazzle anyone who opened it: gold coins, Ceylon sapphires, ancient Chinese carved-jade faces, Alaskan gold nuggets the size of chicken eggs â some of these items coming from his own private collection, others acquired just to add to the hoard. For the next 20 years, Fenn kept the chest in a vault in his Santa Fe home, covered with a red bandanna.... Then, sometime around 2010, Fenn did it. Without even telling his wife, Peggy, he slipped out and squirreled away his chest — to which he’d added a miniature autobiography, sealed with wax in an olive jar — somewhere in the wilds of the Rockies. It took him two trips from his car to get all of the treasure to the hiding spot, because it weighed 42 pounds and he was in the neighborhood of his 80th birthday by then. For a while, Fenn kept what he’d done secret. His own daughters didn’t find out about it until he self-published his memoir, The Thrill of the Chase, complete with the poem he’d spent years refining. - - The Everlasting Forrest Fenn HT: Never Yet Melted
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (0)
July 2, 2015
How to Improve Your Brain, 1596
To eate Sage, but not overmuch, To drinke Wine measurablie, To keepe the Head warme, To washe your Hands often, To heare litle noise of Musicke or Singers, To eate Mustarde & Pepper, To smell the sauour of Red-roses, & to washe the Temples of your Heade often with Rose-Water. These Thinges are ill for the Braine. All manner of Braines, Drunkennes, To stand much bare-headed, Overmuch Watching, Overmuch Bathing, Cheese, Garlicke, Overmuch Knocking or Noise, & To smell a white Rose. -- From A Rich Store-House or Treasury for the Diseased Ask the Past:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:18 PM | Your Say (1)
Pet Semetary: 8 Million Dog Mummies Found in 'God of Death' Mass Grave
8 Million Dog Mummies Found in 'God of Death' Mass GraveIn ancient Egypt, so many people worshiped Anubis, the jackal-headed god of death, that the catacombs next to his sacred temple once held nearly 8 million mummified puppies and grown dogs. The catacomb ceiling also contains the fossil of an ancient sea monster, a marine vertebrate that's more than 48 million years old, but it's unclear whether the Egyptians noticed the existence of the fossil when they built the tomb for the canine mummies.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:00 PM | Your Say (0)
"Why would I want to do that?"
Don't you see? Can't you see it? It's the answer to everything. It's the Swiss army knife of life, with the little can-opener dongle on it, except instead of opening cans it opens universes. If everyone would answer 99 percent of the questions put to them every day with, "Why would I want to do that?", the world would be a better place. Not just for the questioner. All manner of mischief would fold up and die and I wouldn't get messages from Nigerian princelings anymore because every offer to send a million dollars tax-free would be met with, "Why would I want to do that?" Sippican Cottage: The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (1)
“Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!”
Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence,and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? "Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!" will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Theeâa banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel. -- The Grand Inquisitor redux
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:19 AM | Your Say (0)
July 1, 2015
I will pay a half-million dollars to each of my slaves, and free them immediately.
I am not sure how many I have, but will try to give you an estimate in even dozens.
Further, I believe that all blacks are entitled to a similar amount for every year in which they were slaves. However, I think you owe us royalties for the use of our civilization, which can be regarded as a sort of software. There should be a licensing fee. After all, every time you use a computer, or a door knob, you are using something invented by us. Every time you sharpen a pencil, or use one, or read or write, you infringe our copyright, so to speak. We have spent millennia coming up with things–literacy, soap, counting–and it is only fair that we receive recompense. - - Fred Reed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:08 AM | Your Say (6)