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September 30, 2015
The people we call Progressives are suffering from a mental disorder.
These are not people with whom you can have a conversation because they find some way to preach Progressive craziness at you, even over the damned weather. - -The Faith of the CrazyPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:45 PM | Your Say (4)
Party ON, Dude
Sebastien Lucas, the pathologist who carried out the postmortem, said that Bismarck had been injecting cocaine on an hourly basis on the day before his death, and that Bismarck's body contained the highest level of cocaine that he had ever seen, as well as morphine; he also had liver damage, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV. - - Gottfried von Bismarck
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:15 PM | Your Say (1)
Meet the Turtles That Hibernate in Mini-Fridges and Cruise in Barbie Jeeps—and the New Yorkers Who Can’t Live Without Them
She was calling him ‘Little Turtle’ which in her young voice sounded more like ‘Little Dildo’ which was not something I wanted to call him,so I tried shortening his name to ‘LittleDill’ which still sounded like “Little Dildo” — so finally he became “DoubleDill” — no space between letters. -- Narratively
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:42 PM | Your Say (0)
When God Abandons a Nation (Romans 1:18-32)
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." - - John McArthurPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (0)
The beginning of the end, for us, was democracy.
It trained us to be vapid, waiting for other people to present us the question to vote on, and to be irresponsible, blaming “the voters” (as if we were not among them) for whatever outcome and scapegoating the politicians, TV preachers and advertisers who showed up to take advantage of the bonanza of that much concentrated incompetence in any one place. Why ours is a fallen worldPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (1)
William Levitt: The Man Who Built Suburbia
If the American family wanted a chance to prosper, they were going to have to play by his rules. | Mental FlossPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (6)
More Mush from the Wimp
"The human predicament is driven by overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources, and the use of unnecessarily environmentally damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens' aggregate consumption." Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich March 2013 ProceedingsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (4)
September 29, 2015
Even on a fixed income I donate every month to Bill Whittle
You should too. Become A Member | Bill WhittlePosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 PM | Your Say (2)
Putin to Obama: "I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realize now what you've done?"
We should finally acknowledge that no one but President Assad's armed forces and Kurds militias are truly fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria. Putin’s U.N. General Assembly speechPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:36 PM | Your Say (14)
The Mystery Of Hillary's Missing Millions
If the Clintons made $230 million, spent $135 million and have just $45 million left over, what happened to the other $50 million? - - ForbesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (6)
The message, as always, has to fit the medium.
We’re learning that as the net shrinks to the size of a smartphone screen, the national conversation shrinks with it. - - Rough TypePosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (5)
"Born That Way"
There he goes again, warning about the slippery slope and predicting horrors just because we're nice to homosexuals. -- Word Around the NetPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (7)
Theodore Roosevelt: Concepts of the early 20th century United States
The gravest wrong upon his country is inflicted by that man, whatever his station, who seeks to make his countrymen divide primarily in the line that separates class from class, occupation from occupation, men of more wealth from men of less wealth, instead of remembering that the only safe standard is that which judges each man on his worth as a man, whether he be rich or whether he be poor, without regard to his profession or to his station in life. Via | Sake WhitePosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (0)
For interior walls, however, I strongly recommend hard plaster, applied with trowels, by skilled human hands.
Interior light plays upon such walls, and the sunlight through open doors and windows is in love with them, and combines by infinitely complex reflexion to pick out every beauty in the colourings of grained wood and fabric, bringing to the stillness of the room, a dance. - - On WhitewashPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (4)
September 28, 2015
Espresso Coke: Give Your Soda the Coffee Treatment It Deserves
There’s caffeine and then there’s the kind of big-time caffeine boost you’ll get from topping off a bottle of Coca-Cola with two shots of espresso.... - Bon AppétitPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:06 PM | Your Say (2)
What It's Like To Be Buried Alive
To keep myself calm, believe it or not, I was actually, in my head, singing the song of "Great Balls of Fire," by the wonderful Jerry Lee Lewis, to try and keep myself calm. —NPRPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 PM | Your Say (1)
Red Planet, Now Wet Planet
NASA has found evidence that liquid water exists on Mars.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 PM | Your Say (1)
World Begs U.S. For Military Force In Syria To Bitch About It Later
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, “We call upon the world’s greatest nation — the United States — to help bring peace to this terrible civil war, because, fuck it, none of us want to.”- - DuffleblogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:20 PM | Your Say (5)
Why ours is a fallen world
Where our ancestors had heroes, we have celebrities; where they had aristocrats, we have entertainers; where they had social order, we have shopping. -- AmerikaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:11 AM | Your Say (6)
September 27, 2015
All of the usual suspects have been telling us Fiorina is surging in popularity.
This is the classic use of a straw candidate to dilute the support of an adversary.Straw WarsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 PM | Your Say (6)
It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency:Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:21 PM | Your Say (3)
What shape is the internet?
According to patent drawings, it's a cloud, or a bean, or a web, or an explosion, or a highway, or maybe a weird lump.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:18 PM | Your Say (1)
THE EDGE is aptly named – this fabulous home is very edgy.
Set high up and floating among the trees with the best view Port Douglas has to offer.4Sale / $6,500,000Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:55 PM | Your Say (4)
"No problem. I've done this thousands of times."
Driver tries to scare off spider using lighter, sets gas station on fire.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:19 PM | Your Say (5)
Man with waaaay more than one sausage in pants busted in Fort Pierce
Nineteen cans of Vienna sausages, five cans of SPAM, four bags of peanuts and two bottles of Smirnoff booze. -- Off the BeatPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 AM | Your Say (2)
I'm Mike Rowe, Host of Somebody's Gotta Do It, and This Is How I Work
It doesn’t really matter where you sit on the plane, the size of the table is always the same. -- LifeHackerPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (2)
Are Your Barbecued Chicken Kebabs Missing a Key Ingredient? Give it a bacon infusion.
For incredible depth of flavor as well as juicy meat, we turned to an unusual technique: grinding bacon to a paste and applying it to the salted meat. - - The FeedPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 AM | Your Say (2)
Remote Peak in Myanmar Nearly Broke an Elite Team of Climbers
When I reach the ridge and push my ice-crusted face into the sun, it’s like poking my head into heaven. - National GeographicPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (0)
Boehner’s depature is yet one more sign that the narrative is breaking down.
As any dramatist knows, there is nothing more fatal for a play than the audience to so lose interest in the plot that they begin to notice the shabbiness of the props, the obvious make-up of the players and the cardboard nature of their swords. - - BelmontPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (4)
“Donald Trump’s supporters are angry“
The back lash from over reach has always been proportionate to how far off center it went before coming back … right now we’re staring at a whole hell of a lot of the country (about 80-90% of the land mass, as well as about 50% of the population) that is FED UP. - - Cold Anger | The Last RefugePosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (6)
PJ O'Rourke on Ann Coulter
[Coulter tweets:] "How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?" Not anywhere near as many as there would and should be if FDR hadn’t been as much of a jerk about immigration as you are, Ann, you etiolated bean sprout butt trumpet. - - Weekly StandardPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (3)
September 26, 2015
The Ancient Civilizations that Came Before: Self-Eradication, Or Natural Cataclysm?
It is estimated that are more than 500 ancient deluge legends similar to those mentioned in the Biblical and Qur’anic accounts.- - Ancient Origins
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 PM | Your Say (5)
Granted, if they get rid of the gum,
I’ll miss the opportunity to keep up on the innovations of the Chemical Flavor Industrial Complex, which comes up with things like Kiwi-Sriracha Sherbet, and sells you 10 sticks wrapped in premium foil shaved from the hulls of Gulfstream jets. LileksPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:57 PM | Your Say (1)
Most ex-colonial nations have floundered.
Even when they’ve avoided war and political turmoil, their people have remained poor.If you were living in, say, Sierra Leone, or, say, Pakistan, or, say, Laos fifty years ago, hope was reasonable. Your nation had control of its own destiny at last. Onward and upward! Work hard, perform your civic duties, and watch your kids climb into prosperous modernity. That hope is not reasonable today. If today you live in Sierra Leone or Pakistan or Laos and you want your kids to enjoy a good life, the sensible thing is to get the hell out of there. Find some way to get into Europe, or North America, Australia, or New Zealand. “Refugees” Are Breaking Into Europe In Search Of…White Supremacy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:23 PM | Your Say (2)
What defines the modern society is democracy, which starts — like a tear in silk — as the simple idea of one person, one vote.
Democracy justifies itself by arguing that these one-person-one-vote individuals are in fact each equally capable of making decisions. Validate mePosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:06 PM | Your Say (1)
Small Towns on Google Street View
I don’t go looking for places that look abandoned, but I keep finding them. A fascinating project from LILEKS (James)Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:03 PM | Your Say (3)
We're not going to have some libertarian utopia in which everyone gets high and lives in communes, but doesn't bother with regulations and taxes.
Nor are we going to be able to import tens of millions of people from countries where working class politics is Marxist without mainstreaming Marxism as a political solution in major cities across America. - - Sultan KnishPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 AM | Your Say (3)
Basements in the ruined cores of today's cities will bloom in the darkness
with ever-expanding metallic reefs, as the steel frames of skyscrapers and the collapsed machinery of the modern world become source material—industrial soil—for future metal-eating microbes. - - BLDGBLOGPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (1)
POLYSOMENOGRAPHY
I sit in my favorite chair and read poetry until I feel sleepy again – usually no more than a half hour – and return to bed until dawn’s early light wakes me. -- Robert FulghumPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (0)
On a revivalist note
The important thing, in this time of darkness for the Catholic Church in the West, is to keep her on life support, to keep her breathing and ingesting some trickle of nutrition. - - David WarrenPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (0)
If I were Trump, I'd tweet [Trey Parker and Matt Stone's] home addresses.
Because people who create such incentives should have to live with them. And if you don't appreciate liberal bourgeois values, maybe you should try living without them for a while. . . . - - InstapunditPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:08 AM | Your Say (1)
Is Nothing Sacred?
McDonald's Straws Are Designed to Mimic the Experience of Breastfeeding - NeatoramaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:08 AM | Your Say (2)
Best to talk about the dangers of "climate change", as the Pope is doing this week,
even as in the heart of Christendom the post-Christian future is showing up at the express check-in. - - The Emperor's Moral NarcissismPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (1)
September 25, 2015
"My friends all drive Porsches. I must make amends...."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:37 PM | Your Say (2)
Elvis Presley’s Legendary Midnight Sandwich Run on his Private Jet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:39 PM | Your Say (4)
“There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (2)
September 24, 2015
The breastplate of 19 23 years old cuirassier Antoine Fraveau, struck and killed by a canonball. He was serving Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:58 PM | Your Say (6)
Never Mind
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 PM | Your Say (0)
Obama’s position on Syria has been so vague
that he can plausibly convince his followers that, whatever the result, it was what he intended to begin with. It’s pitiful to watch. | BelmontPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 PM | Your Say (5)
Michelle to reveal truth in new reality show, 'I Am Michael'
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:07 PM | Your Say (3)
Biden 2016 earns key Papal endorsement
Vice President Joe Biden set off a rash of head scratching and furrowed brows when Thursday he made apparently pro-life statements such as “at the moment of conception there’s human life,” and “abortion is always wrong.” [ Peoples Cube]Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 PM | Your Say (0)
Can we have flavor back now? Please?
Anything the government demands you do about the food you eat, just do the opposite and you’ll be fine. -- Cold FuryPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:46 PM | Your Say (3)
The great task of diplomacy in the 21st century is a sad and dreary one, namely managing the decline of Muslim civilization.
The most likely outcome of Islam’s civilizational crisis is a body count that would beggar the last century’s world wars. One hopes to be proven wrong about such things. SpenglerPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (4)
The real "rich" are not the Kennedys,
because the Kennedys could strike oil on their Hyannis Port compound, pay African orphans a dollar a day to work the pumps by hand, build a pipeline that ran through a protected Monarch-butterfly preserve, and the media would still hang halos over their heads because JFK was martyred in Dallas by a free-floating toxic cloud of right-wing hatred that inhabited the brain of a well-meaning Marxist. -- Lileks, James.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (1)
September 23, 2015
Why is There Vodka in Vodka Sauce?
Alcohol has a magical emulsifying ability, bonding with both water and fat, encouraging the two to coexist smoothly. -- ChowhoundPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (2)
The more we have, the more we think we deserve — or else.
In T-ball everyone is a winner; so is today’s student who feels A’s are his birthright. -- The Weariness of the WhinersPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (1)
"It ain't over 'til it's over."
One by one they appear in
the darkness: a few friends, and
a few with historical
names. How late they start to shine!
but before they fade they stand
perfectly embodied, all
- - My Sad Captains by Thom Gunn
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (1)
September 22, 2015
Pope Francis Reverses Position On Capitalism After Seeing Wide Variety Of American Oreos
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 PM | Your Say (3)
The true masters of this country will retain their grip. They never stood for election and never will.
The dance will go on. The Ruling Class Party – Orwell called it only “The Party,” and he was wiser than we knew at the time – will continue to stage WWF-style “cage matches” of Democrat against Republican.The media will continue to ballyhoo each such contest as “the most important election in our lifetimes,” regardless of which “side” the commentator favors. Millions will flock to the polls, firmly convinced that “every vote matters.” Election night parties will be held across the Land of the Formerly Free, with families, friends, and political clubs gathered closely around the Idiot Box as county after county submits returns. But it’s all a sham. The true masters of this country will retain their grip. They never stood for election and never will. That’s not how they acquired their power, and it’s not how they keep it. They keep it by a system of quasi-hereditary oligarchy, mated to an unelected bureaucracy that answers solely to them. America rejected the Kennedys because theirs was too plainly a family dynasty that deemed itself above all law. It might reject the Bushes for similar reasons. But that’s what happens when a family parades its pretensions to royalty right out in front of God and everybody. The masters of this country are smarter than that. -- Liberty's Torch: Sitting Back Is Not Giving Up
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:25 PM | Your Say (7)
In his Critique of Socialism, Alexis de Tocqueville summarized the ideology of progressives by writing the following:
They unceasingly attempt to mutilate, to curtail, to obstruct personal freedom in any and all ways.They hold that the State must not only act as the director of society, but must further be master of each man, and not only master, but keeper and trainer. [“Excellent.”] For fear of allowing him to err, the State must place itself forever by his side, above him, around him, better to guide him, to maintain him, in a word, to confine him. They call, in fact, for the forfeiture, to a greater or less degree, of human liberty, [Further signs of assent.] to the point where, were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom. Tocqueville’s Critique of Socialism (1848)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:47 PM | Your Say (4)
When I was in high school I often wondered “What will become of me?”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:40 PM | Your Say (4)
Nature may be able to handle “complexity,” but men cannot.
Men only think they can, when they are drugged by their own vanity; in the end, more simply, we fail and we die. And that is a fact: then, now, and in the foreseeable future. - - David WarrenPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:01 PM | Your Say (1)
Want to know how to make a leftist miserable? Just double everyone's income.
Everyone will be more affluent, but "income inequality" will be twice as wide, so envy will eat away any joy. - - One CʘsmosPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:58 PM | Your Say (1)
The Left Has Its Pope
Which has a better track record of helping the less fortunate — fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie, or producing a bigger pie? -- Thomas SowellPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (4)
Naked clown activists issue apology to Palestinians after protesting at wall separating Israel with West Bank.
"Then they all got into one tiny car and drove off."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (1)
The Missing Pilot and the Crash That Rocked Alaska’s Golden Age of Aviation
His schedule called for working more than sixteen hours that day, with about nine of them in the air. It was a plan that would not be legal under modern regulations, which permit only eight hours of flight in a twenty-four-hour period and fourteen total hours on duty for single-pilot operators. His situation was complicated even further as his Travel Air was an open-cockpit aircraft that required more concentration to operate than modern planes. Fatigue makes everything more difficult and many pilots have fallen asleep in the air only to wake up too late, after something has gone terribly wrong. - - Narratively | Human stories, boldly told.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (2)
Since the Reagan years, it seems, the Cult has been telling us that the Latin King is coming
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (4)
September 21, 2015
Sophia Loren, Venice, 1955
Happy 81st Birthday to Sophia.
Sophia Loren, 81, stars in new Dolce & Gabbana lipstick campaign
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:01 PM | Your Say (23)
There are currently around 110 million rifles in the hands of American citizens. With ammo.
who had accompanied Gen. Daniel Morgan to thwart Gen. John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne and his invading British Army. Murphy climbed a tree with his Kentucky rifle and took aim at Brig. Gen. Simon Fraser, who was busy rallying the British troops in an effort push back the Americans’ regular forces. Murphy took the shot even though Fraser was more than 300 yards away. Call him the original American sniper. Murphy’s shot dropped Fraser to the ground — and the general died the next day.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:19 PM | Your Say (6)
In January 2017, Hillary Clinton will be sitting in front of a television set watching someone else take the oath of office.
And the Clintons can’t stop paying them because they have no true loyalists, only mercenaries. If their checks don’t clear, they’ll be working for Biden or O’Malley before you can say "Whitewater." It will take that machine some time to slow to a halt. Hillary Clinton burned through $200 million fighting Obama. Elections have only gotten more expensive since then. But her donors will learn the hard way that money alone can’t make an unlikable politician with no charisma or compelling message, president. Sultan Knish: The Last Days of Hillary
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (3)
Japan hurled itself into the future, but didn't find anything there.
Now China's elites are rushing into that same void and are beginning to discover that technocracy and materialism are hollow. That is why China is struggling to reassert Communist values even while throwing everything into making Walmart's next product shipment. Like Japanese and Korean leaders, Chinese leaders are realizing that their technological and material achievements have left their society with a spiritual void. Sultan Knish: We're Turning Japanese Now
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (1)
Most of these folks are vets, and the children of vets, they’ve had guns in their hands since middle school or before
You guys (the left) really want to stop pushing quite so hard.The political pendulum has never, in the history of humanity, stayed on one side of a swing. The back lash from over reach has always been proportionate to how far off center it went before coming back. (Hint, that’s what started the whole prohibition thing, and it’s also what started the 60s, was backlashes) Well right now we’re staring at a whole hell of a lot of the country (about 80-90% of the land mass, as well as about 50% of the population) that is FED UP. You really don’t want those guys to decide that the only way to fix it is to burn it down and start over… REALLY! Most of these folks are vets, and the children of vets, they’ve had guns in their hands since middle school or before, or they’re still serving either in the regulars, the reserves, or the NG. If it goes to armed insurrection, even if the left wins, (highly damn unlikely) it will be a mess worse than reconstruction, worse than the Balkans. Thoughts on the road. – William Lehman | According To Hoyt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (4)
‘Close Your Eyes and Pretend to Be Dead’
the assault on the Westgate Mall lasted only a few hours, almost all of it taking place before Kenyan security forces even entered the building. When they finally did, it was only to shoot at one another before going on an armed looting spree that resulted in the collapse of the rear of the building, destroyed with a rocket-propelled grenade. And there were only four gunmen, all of whom were buried in the rubble, along with much of the forensic evidence.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (1)
If anyone had told Candy Crowley on that Romney/Obama debate evening
an expeditionary airbase in Syria; that Europe would be beseiged by millions of Africans and Middle Easterners; that China stood to inherit Afghanistan at the cost of American lives and treasure — and that there would be more watchtowers in Europe than in Harry Lime’s day who would have believed them? Another Strand in the Wire | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (2)
Why should we treat a genetic mechanism differently than a dietary supplement or some external technology like the Internet?
It does raise another level of ethical concerns, but we already aim to enhance intelligence through education. Computers and the Internet are also cognitive enhancers. We give children food supplements and better diets to enhance cognitive ability. So why should we treat a genetic mechanism differently than a dietary supplement or some external technology like the Internet? The only difference is gene therapy is really risky, and that’s why we don’t do it. But if it becomes safe, there’s no difference in ethical terms between gene therapy and any other sort of biological or social intervention. If science gives us the opportunity of improving people’s lives, we should use it. Julian Savulescu: The Philosopher Who Says We Should Play God
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:30 AM | Your Say (1)
Even gender must be destroyed, so we have boyish girls and immature men with girly behavior,
because nothing must come before ideology.Ideology, like heroin addiction and pursuing white whales from the Pequod, absorbs all like a black hole and replaces that variety with uniformity, conformity, and obedience. This society will replace African-Americans and perform on them the same “soft genocide” by outbreeding that it is doing to Europeans, Jews, and every other group it can seize. -- Alternative Right
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (1)
It's always something....
Earth Blamed for Cracks in Moon The moon is shrinking, and Earth is to blame for how the moon’s crust has cracked.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:05 AM | Your Say (3)
September 20, 2015
From the beginning, God wanted to involve Africa in the plan of salvation of the world.
In secularized Europe and in all the so-called developed countries, wealth has perverted men to such an extent that they do not think in any other way than to satisfy their physical and carnal desires. They only count on money and material success, and if they are not successful, they fall into depression and sadness. In Africa, poverty is still very strong in many of her countries, yet Africans exude happiness and joy. God is their wealth and their hope. Obviously, they also aim to combat economic misery, but not to enter into spiritual poverty of those who have driven God out of their lives.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (9)
September 19, 2015
Shot Glasses
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:25 PM | Your Say (4)
For the first time in decades, we have a presidential election that gets into what real Americans care about.[Bumped]
And the rest of the politicians and pundits are floundering.They like debates to revolve around meaningless politically correct discourse. Can we call #BlackLivesMatter a terrorist group or is that too mean? Is air-conditioning sexist? When is it time to retire football? Fuck off. - -Daddy’s Boys
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:10 PM | Your Say (19)
$30 million
(It's also good news for the school district, since Ms. Porat will be shelling out about $350,000 in property tax per year in perpetuity). Before you think to yourself what a grand palace it must be, and on such a stunningly huge plot of acreage, let me disabuse you of this notion: this house is 4,700 square feet, and it is on a plot of land smaller than a single acre. There are two really nice neighborhoods in town: Crescent Park (which is where I live, thank you very much) and Old Palo Alto, which is where the above house is located. She's a block away from the ghost of Steve Jobs. It's a lovely neighbhorhood, to be sure. But...........thirty million dollars??? Palo Alto Outdoes Itself | Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (2)
Amazingly, we have a photograph of a man who crossed the Delaware with George Washington.
He served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, crossed the Delaware with Washington in December 1776, and fought in several major battles. The Maine Historical Society says that this makes him the earliest-born human being ever to be photographed. - - Looking Back
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:27 AM | Your Say (7)
7 Reasons Why Tri-Tip is a Steak Worth Knowing
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (1)
Adam's Apples
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (0)
In America's most expensive city THIS is what $350K buys you in San Francisco
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (5)
'Diversity' is newspeak for Affirmative Action.
These days people saying 'thats racist' or 'thats sexist' is a kind of pathetic echo of what was real 50 years ago.I am writing this answer from a community where my father could not live. In fact here's the little short story which was that my parents marched against racially restrictive covenants and my pregnant mother had to dodge a brick thrown at her from the hostile crowd. I live in that neighborhood now. My wife was head of the PTA. My daughter was student body president at the elementary school. My other daughter was head cheerleader at the high school. My son was captain of the marching band at the high school, and they all did 3.5s or better. And yet still people will tell me how racist it is over here because the neighborhood is about 1.5% black. (6) Michael David Cobb Bowen on Quora
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (2)
Today in Europe, we have become if anything over-Christianized:
We render to Caesar without question, turn the other cheek before the hand is raised, and eschew swords, believing dogmatically that they inevitably kill their wielders. The direct result of this doctrinal thinking is our current migration crisis. - - Kindness Can KillPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 AM | Your Say (0)
September 18, 2015
What we’re seeing on TV and the Interwebs is just the glitter path.
It’s not simply a disagreement over the direction of society.... The dispute today is over the nature of society and it is an irreconcilable dispute. The ruling class of today imagines a world that does not include a thriving, rambunctious middle class that participates in the decision making. They imagine a world that looks a lot like feudalism, where the people are kept, like pets or farm animals. It’s a world that cannot accommodate the English speaking world’s idea of a citizen. -- Irreconcilable Differences
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:13 PM | Your Say (1)
Awwww......
Phoebe and Tillie had been missing for 5 days and VIPP assumed that both dogs were either stuck in a building or over a slope. With the word getting out to the community, they finally received a phone call from someone who claimed they’d seen a ‘reddish’ dog matching Tillie’s description. This dog has quickly come up to the person’s property but then just as quickly headed back to a ravine. When VIPP got word of this, they headed out to the property and found something they really weren’t expecting. They did find Tillie! But they found her on the edge of a cistern, looking over her BFF Phoebe who had been unable to move from the cistern for an entire week.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:17 PM | Your Say (6)
September 17, 2015
We live in the post Pax Americana.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:05 AM | Your Say (3)
September 16, 2015
Trump: The only serious candidate
No wonder they hate him so much. If you're even remotely concerned about immigration and its societally destructive effects, Trump is the only candidate you can possibly support. One thing I think those who assume he is bluffing are missing: politicians are affected much more strongly by their wives than most people think. And look what is happening in Melania Trump's homeland[Germany]. I'm as cynical about politics as anyone, but I don't see Trump doing a double-cross on immigration were he to win. Vox Popoli:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:42 AM | Your Say (5)
The only appropriate response to Ben Carson is to compete with everyone else complimenting him on his wonderfulness.
None of which changes the fact that he is where he is because he is a black guy being nice to conservatives.If he were an Irish guy with the same resume and presentation, he would be this guy or this guy. No one would have any reason to know him and friends would assume he has lost his marbles. But, he is a sacred person and that means he gets to be on the big stage running for president. Unintentionally, Carson is proving a point the revolting have been making for a while now. That is, Conservative Inc.is just the dull-witted little brother of the Progressives, tagging along behind them, imitating whatever they do. The Left got their magic negro in 2008 and the Right gets their magic negro in 2016. Ben the Magic Negro | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:05 AM | Your Say (10)
September 15, 2015
Relax
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:20 PM | Your Say (12)
Thomas Jefferson’s 1774 pamphlet
“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental option of a day;but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:06 PM | Your Say (3)
If the Bible were literally the words of God it would be too hot to handle.
I would take issue with God as sole author of history.Rather, as with scripture, he must be the secret co-author or holy ghostwriter. Or, might we say of history: the acts of God in the acts of man, so to speak? In other words, God has a plan, but the plan must largely be executed via men who are free to ignore the plan. Is this not the whole drama of history, whether personal or collective? One Cʘsmos: What To Do When History Breaks
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:03 PM | Your Say (8)
When you select for an administrative, bureaucratic elite based on how maudlin their essays are about their trips to Africa and South America
This group will be completely immune to persuasion that it might be a bad thing for all the nice people who posed so nicely in those photos when you were on your international community service trip might be less than compatible with the countries that you have been charged with ruling. When the only pilgrimage you recognize as valid is the one taken for community service hours to buffer your application to Harvard, it’s going to be hard to empathize or understand cultures that take things like pilgrimages to Mecca seriously. The Global South Marches On the Global North - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:12 PM | Your Say (2)
It's Always Something
Medieval skeleton pulled out of grave by uprooted tree
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (2)
Planned Parenthood Guts Babies And Sells Their Organs, But Who Really Cares?
Even Fox, the supposedly conservative outlet, treats it like a relatively minor item. In the debates last month, they asked one candidate one question about Planned Parenthood, and it was more of a cheap “gotcha” attempt than an opportunity to actually hear where these people stand on defunding the abortion industry. Some conservative commentators have been all over this scandal, but many others, like Ann Coulter, remain utterly and shamefully silent (although to be fair, Coulter did take the time to call pro-lifers “p*ssies”). Social media hasn’t been much better. As I write this, the most recent video is not a trending topic on either Facebook or Twitter. Instead, the top stories are Donald Trump, college football, and Hispanic Heritage Month. | TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 AM | Your Say (4)
Most of the good things in this world were created by people whose names we don’t even know.
They were created by “happy families” of ordinary working stiffs trying to pass the strait gate of truthand not by ambitious politicians each convinced in his megalomanic way that he already had the truth or worse, that it did not exist. If the world wants to step back from the crisis engulfing it, it may have to do it in parts. That means putting the politicians in their place and slowing them down so that the ordinary world can work its magic. At present the great are so blinded by the light of their own self-righteousness that it’s hard to see a thing. Tolstoy and Watertight Bulkheads | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (4)
The Ethiopian Fashion Tribe that turns Nature into Haute Couture
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (3)
September 14, 2015
Deep in the Dark Zone Digging Up Homo Naledi
How they got there is a mystery. The most plausible answer so far: Bodies were dropped in from above. Hundreds of fossils have been recovered, most excavated from a pit a mere yard square. More fossils surely await.Facebook Ad: Skinny individuals wanted, with scientific credentials and caving experience; must be “willing to work in cramped quarters.”
Within a week and a half he’d heard from nearly 60 applicants. He chose the six most qualified; all were young women. Berger called them his “underground astronauts.” .... “Weird as hell,” paleoanthropologist Fred Grine of the State University of New York at Stony Brook later said. “Tiny little brains stuck on these bodies that weren’t tiny.” The adult males were around five feet tall and a hundred pounds, the females a little shorter and lighter. This Face Changes the Human Story. But How?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:13 PM | Your Say (7)
The River Will Have the Last Word
He travels to the Southwest in the wintertime and camps out in the desert, where he studies ferruginous hawks and golden eagles in New Mexico, and hawk migrations in the Manzano and Sandia Mountains. In the spring, he returns to the Driftless for the grand migration of birds on the Upper Mississippi. The topography of the Driftless — specifically, the rock bluffs along the Upper Mississippi River — create ideal updrafts for bird migration. Birds follow the north-south contours of forested slopes and rest in the protected woods along the river. Hawk says that contiguous woodland makes for some of the best birding in the world. | Narratively
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (3)
Teeny-Tiny Paintings
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (2)
“The West must shatter Islamists' political will and eradicate those who do not renounce Islamism,”
“All instruments of national power – including convention and nuclear force and PSYOPs [psychological warfare operations] – must be harnessed … to capture the hearts and minds of Islamic peoples, break their will to fight for Islamism, and leave them prepared to coexist with the West or be utterly eradicated....”
To wage “total war” against a tenacious and all-but-omnipresent enemy, all restrictions on government power must be supplanted by what he calls the Law Of Armed Conflict (LOAC), in which the executive is emancipated from checks and balances and the constitutional subordination of the military to civilian control is reversed: “[I]t is the military upon whom the constitutional duty to defend Americans is incumbent, and in whom Americans repose trust.” -- William C. Bradford
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (8)
Mark your calendars for the The Autumn Harvest Festival and West Virginia Roadkill Cook-off on September 26, 2015
As the title indicates, this annual event is all about cooking up the most exotic dishes. The cook-off starts at 9am and visitors to the festival are encouraged to try everything from boar nachos and bear meatloaf, to squirrel fried rice, porcupine skewers, possum stew, teriyaki rabbit, and deer sausage with a side of squirrel gravy and biscuits.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (3)
September 13, 2015
L'Shana Tova - Happy Rosh Hashanah, שנה טובה
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:54 PM | Your Say (0)
The fences are going up all over Europe, we shall not see them torn down again in our life-time.
The Left, like radical Islam, must either rule or live apart.
The failure of Islam to conquer and the abortive end of socialism’s one world under political correctness policy means leaders like Corbyn and Sanders now represent the forces of fragmentation rather than unity. If they cannot rule in heaven they will rule where they can. Europe was challenged by Islam and Russia with a problem it could not solve on its own terms. The world, after a long period of coming together under a single hegemon, the United States, is diverging again. The fences are going up all over Europe, we shall not see them torn down again in our life-time. The Map Comes To Life | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 PM | Your Say (2)
The Lost Treasure of the Beale Ciphers
Beale and 30 fellow adventurers transported the hoard to Bedford County, where they buried it in a secure location. Beale then wrote three encoded letters: one giving the exact location of the treasure, a second giving its detailed description, and a third giving the names and contact information of the 30 partners. He placed them in an iron box and gave them to a trusted friend—the local innkeeper named Robert Morriss—before disappearing, never to be seen again. | Ancient Origins
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 PM | Your Say (2)
Libreria Acqua Alta
Located in Calle Lunga Santa Maria Formosa, this bookstore not only sells books, but also turns them into furniture (there’s a book staircase you’ve got to climb to get a good view of the adjacent canal). The owner of Libreria Acqua Alta, Luigi Frizzo, opened the store over a decade ago and it has slowly become a success, attracting tourists and locals.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:30 PM | Your Say (2)
The Walls Have Fears
Israel is hardly alone in strengthening its frontiers. Germany, after tilting one more time at the windmill of “open borders” has announced the reimposition of “temporary” controls.“‘The focus will initially lie on the border with Austria,’ de Maiziere said. ‘The goal of this measure is to restrict the present inflow of migrants into Germany and return again to an orderly process upon entry.’” It’s a trend everywhere. A 560 mile Saudi-Iraq barrier is going up to add to the 1,100 mile Saudi-Yemen fence already in existence. Hungary is working overtime on fortifyng its Serbian border. “On a bright late-summer Saturday, a work crew was laboring overtime to complete one of the most closely watched construction projects in central Europe: an 11.5-foot high fence, topped with razor wire strands, spanning the 110 miles of Hungary’s border with Serbia.” The Map Comes To Life | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:20 PM | Your Say (0)
If You Are a Christian but You Reject Christ’s Teachings, You Are Not a Christian
It’s about as insightful and deep as you’d expect, considering the source and the title: “I’m a Christian, But I’m Not.”The viral clip, which spawned thousands of shares and a trending hashtag, features six millennials describing their makeshift Build-A-Bear faith. It starts with each person assuring us they’re “Christian” but they don’t think they’re “perfect,” and they’re certainly not “homophobic,” “unaccepting,” “uneducated,” “judgmental,” “ignorant” or “conservative.” If lumping “conservative” in with “uneducated, homophobic and ignorant” didn’t get the passive-aggressive message across aggressively enough, the next part makes it painfully clear: one by one, the carefully selected collection of manicured trendies informs us that although they are allegedly Christian, they’re also ”accepting,” “queer,” “gay,” “feminist,” “feminist,” and in case you missed it, “feminist.” | TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:43 PM | Your Say (3)
Homo Naledi: Mysterious New Human Species Emerges from Heap of Fossils
The bones of humans and animals alike accumulate in the caves there through catastrophic events such as falling down a hole in the ground into an underground cave and getting trapped, or becoming dinner for the large carnivores that denned in the caves. But the Rising Star bones are not encased in sediment, nor do any remains of any vertebrate animals, apart from a few rodents and birds, accompany them. Given the absence of any evidence to indicate that Homo naledi fell or washed into the underground chamber or was transported there by a predator, the discovery team suggests that this small-brained human deliberately disposed of its dead. Furthermore, the location of the H. naledi bones in a chamber that appears to have always been lightless and difficult to access suggests that the humans went to great lengths to deliver the bodies there, and possibly needed an artificial light source (perhaps a simple torch) to do so. The behavior is important because it implies that H. naledi had, as Hawks puts is, “a shared cultural knowledge of mortality.” - Scientific American
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:34 AM | Your Say (4)
The Sushi Nazi
This Keyser Söze of squid came from Japan to L.A. to New York on a wave of whispers, less for the manufacture of his sushi, I suspect, than for the manufacture of his profit. He has an air of great seriousness and nobility, like a man who has outsmarted life but still knows its gifts are worthless. His eyes are Yoda-wise; his movements are brief and graceful; he is wearing bright blue shoes. I fantasize that he is an actor playing Chef Masayoshi Takayama (“Masa”) while the other — the real Chef Masayoshi Takayama (“Masa”) — is elsewhere. Maybe there are three of them, one for each restaurant, and more to come, depending on demand. But I let it go. I think he is laughing. Specifically at us. He bows..... Chef Masa comes to emit wisdom, but I miss it. I am sitting on the toilet in a room that looks like a hovel made of rock, or the set of the last act of the Lord of the Rings. (After the shed, witness the cave!) My companion relates: he came over; he shook her hand and nodded with all courtesy; the waiter asked, as if bearing some dazzling gift, “Do you want a photograph with Chef Masa?” Being of strong mind, and immune to even the more powerful narcotics that Public Relations can deliver, she declined. But she thanked him (for what, she still cannot say); and he was borne away on the golden winds of commerce, presumably to Kappo Masa and George Clooney’s mouth. The bill was $1,706.26. -- Tanya Gold
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (1)
For Sale: The Perfect Bond Villain's Lair Atop a Desert Volcano
and sold airplane parts to the likes of Lockheed & Co. during World War II. Design features include 360 degrees of glass that creating an overhang, which partially shades the interior from the merciless desert sun and a fireplace carved out of a stone cylinder, surrounded by a sunken conversation pit with Austin Powers-like commands. The one-bedroom guest house at the base of the volcano has its own private lake at its doorstep. | Messy Nessy Chic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (4)
September 12, 2015
She held her hand down over her face and said 'it's not what you think'."
Woman discovers 'boyfriend' of two years is woman when she removes blindfold during sex Describing what she said was their last sexual encounter before she went to the police, she said:"When I was having sex I grabbed for the back of his head and my hand got caught on something. It did not feel right. "I was sat on the bed, he was standing up. Something in my mind said 'pull it (the blindfold) off, pull it off'. I just pulled it off. Gayle was just standing there... I just couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it. Straight away she held her hand down over her face and said 'it's not what you think'."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:38 PM | Your Say (7)
Sweet Meteor of Global Extinction, hear our prayer! 2
“The Cappuccino of Forest Mushrooms,” Damrosch writes,
called for one person to hold the soup terrine on a tray, one to hold mushroom biscotti, the mushroom foam, and the mushroom dusting powder (à la cinnamon) on a tray, and one to serve the soup. If a maître d’ stepped in to help, he made four. If the sommelier happened to be around pouring wine, he became a fifth. The backserver pouring water and serving bread made six. -- Tanya Gold
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (0)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (1)
That is the craziness that has lately started to consume us:
Not only are our infinitely wise village elders infinitely wise, but it makes sense for us to turn over our resources for them to spend on our behalf, because when they spend the resources the resources aren’t really spent.If I am to upsize my 4-cylinder into a V-8 — provided I can find one nowadays — that is just an appalling offense. But our public officials can fly to faraway places on enormous jets, for no higher goal than a publicity stunt, to rename a mountain, whatever…even, irony of ironies, to give speeches about how we all need to drive smaller cars. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, but there’s something wrong with you if you notice it. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (0)
“We are narcissistic paranoiacs who love tiny little fish and will share them with you for money. We request no pictures or notes be taken.”
“All reservations,” says the website, which is the most explicitly controlling — okay, rude — I have yet encountered, “for the sixth week out are booked at that time.” You then receive an email that may have been written by a lawyer. It says the kinds of things lawyers say, in the language that lawyers use. It is comprehensive and sadistic, and it does not tell you to have a nice day, not ever. For instance: “We welcome you to enjoy your food free of distractions. We request no pictures or notes be taken.” Payment must be made in advance. No sneakers. No vegetarians. No flip-flops. No joy. (I invented the last one.) Because none of this is for us. It is for them. It would have been kinder to say, “We are narcissistic paranoiacs who love tiny little fish and will share them with you for money. We request no pictures or notes be taken.” A Goose in a Dress, by Tanya GoldBrooklyn Fare now charges $255 for its 20-30 course menu, up $30 from its previous price of $225.
Dinner for two at The Chef’s Table, after tax and 20% service charge, will now run you $657, a 13% hike from $580, which is what dinner for two used to cost. Date night at Per Se, by contrast, is a few dollars less at $642 after tax (the menu is listed at $295, service included). THE PRICE HIKE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (4)
Secrets of the Brooklyn Basement Domino League
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (0)
September 11, 2015
Mark Steyn on the New Economy
What does every initiative of the Obama era have in common?Obamacare, Obamaphones, Social Security disability expansion, 50 million people on food stamps... The assumption is that mass, multi-generational dependency is now a permanent feature of life. A coastal elite will devise ever smarter and slicker trinkets, and pretty much everyone else will be a member of either the dependency class or the vast bureaucracy that ministers to them. And, if you're wondering why every Big Government program assumes you're a feeble child, that's because a citizenry without "work and purpose" is ultimately incompatible with liberty. The elites think a smart society will be wealthy enough to relieve the masses from the need to work. In reality, it would be neo-feudal, but with fatter, sicker peasants. It wouldn't just be "economic inequality", but a far more profound kind, and seething with resentments. Via Doug Ross @ Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 PM | Your Say (0)
Nails it...
The pronunciation of
"Llanfairpwllgwyngyll-that is.
gogerychwyrndrob-
wllllantysiliogogogoch"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 PM | Your Say (1)
Bin Laden knew that the weakness of the West lay,
not in it’s armed forces, technology or economy, but in the alienation of its own elites.Attempting to explain the complete capitulation of the Western decision makers to the refugee flood rushing at their borders Peggy Noonan notes in her Wall Street Journal article that the political and cultural elites no longer even regard territorial integrity as an existential issue. It was something well enough to have, but certainly nothing worth defending to the point of inconvenience; and most assuredly not unto the death. Like the barons of yesteryear, they were secure in castles rising above the squalid countryside, safe from pestilence, hunger and even war. Noonan describes the modern aristocracy as a law unto themselves, living in a world unto itself, with more in common with foreign princes, other elite classes than with the commoners who surround them. Prediction From the Grave | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:46 PM | Your Say (0)
This is the only shot I have of the twin towers,
I know people who think it was some kind of conspiracy. I know a lot of people who act like it never happened, or think that remembering it with horror and anger is an overreaction, and that whoever hijacked those planes had a reason that we can understand, or even sympathize with. I don't know who frightens me more. some old pictures I took: Twin towers
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:13 PM | Your Say (0)
“We’re supposed to die in some desperate battle performing great deeds.”
He is reported by many witnesses to have sung “God Bless America,” “Men of Harlech, ” and favorites from Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. “Today is a day to be proud to be an American,” he told evacuees. A substantial portion of the South Tower’s workforce had already gotten out, thanks to Rescorla’s efforts, by the time the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, struck the South Tower at 9:02:59 AM. Just under an hour later, as the stream of evacuees came to an end, Rescorla called his best friend Daniel Hill on his cell phone, and told him that he was going to make a final sweep. Then the South Tower collapsed. Rescorla had observed a few months earlier to Hill, “Men like us shouldn’t go out like this.” (Referring to his cancer.) “We’re supposed to die in some desperate battle performing great deeds.” And he did.Never Yet Melted » 14 Years Ago: Rick Rescorla Saved 2700 Lives
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:57 PM | Your Say (1)
If you spend all day listening to blockheads on Facebook or Twitter, you’re likely to get caught up in whatever the other blockheads are doing.
The so-called Arab Spring is a good example.The claim at the time is it was driven by social media. How did that turn out? Egypt had a nice blood bath with a brief period of control by Muslim lunatics. The same thing played out across the Maghreb. One could argue that the unrest in the Maghreb is in some small part responsible for the mass invasion of Europe from the Near East. It turns out that a million nitwits can be wrong.... It’s when the stupid become confident that things can get out of hand. Mass Stupidity | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:02 PM | Your Say (2)
9/11 has been transmuted into something that was always there, something that no longer surprises.
And although I haven’t watched any footage today of the attack, I think there is less shock and no surprise. The reason for that is that a great deal has happened since I wrote those words four years ago. neo-neocon 9/11: fourteen yearsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:40 PM | Your Say (0)
Many in the world stand ready to assist as many Muslims as possible to get their dearest wish as soon as possible.
"Dying in #Mecca especially in these days is every Muslim's wish ! It's like one of the best ways to die as a Muslim." - - انتصار #وصلاوية @int9_SPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:07 PM | Your Say (1)
Titanic survival rates: women 75%, children 50%, adult men 19%
- - Iowahawk "According to the UN, 72% of those fleeing to Europe in this crisis are men, only 13% women and 15% children." -- @PeggynoonannycPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:04 PM | Your Say (0)
In the last week of August, we lost one cop a day.
So far, for dead cops, we have Officers Ramos and Liu, who were sitting in their cars in a shitty neighborhood waiting to risk their lives to rescue ingrates from one another.A 28-year-old black man (and Muslim convert) made it very clear he was going to kill cops in retaliation for Brown and he made “pigs fly,” as he put it. We had Officer Brian Moore assassinated in May of this year by a piece of shit named Demetrius Blackwell. It seems clear this shooting was part of the anti-cop culture #BlackLivesMatter has created. That’s three officers down. Last Friday, Sheriff Darren Goforth was gunned down in Texas by shitstain Shannon J. Miles shortly after Texas #BlackLivesMatter activists called for the murder of white cops. Three days after Goforth, also in Texas, Officer Don Allen was found dead in his home. His death was believed to be the result of a plan involving “multiple parties.” As I write this, they are still looking for three suspects in the shooting of Lieutenant Charles Joseph Gliniewicz in Chicago on Tuesday morning. We’re now up to at least six officers’ deaths that can be directly tied to #BlackLivesMatter. That’s twice as many real, dead cops as there are wildly inaccurate stories. Is that enough? Enough Dead Cops?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 AM | Your Say (2)
The refugee population itself is flush with killers from both sides fleeing the war.
250,000 people have died in Syria’s civil war since 2011 because other people killed them,mostly with small arms or improvised explosives (such as the government’s notorious “barrel bombs”). Such killing is a labor-intensive affair, and requires the participation of many thousands of killers. It is isn’t only that ISIS (and other jihadists) are able to smuggle to Europe as many of their operatives as they care to, as ISIS itself purportedly boasts. == Asia Times
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (0)
Jesus, Take the Wheel of My Giant Farm Machine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:08 AM | Your Say (0)
September 10, 2015
Polar Bear Playing in Summer Flowery Fields
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 PM | Your Say (2)
The last time I saw so many people looking like that, it was the mass suicide at Heaven’s Gate.
with Cook introducing another man who was dressed virtually identically to Cook, who introduced another guy dressed the same, and then a woman dressed similarly, then again another guy, like Russian matryorska dolls popping out of each other. They were all in the same uniform, or rather anti-uniform, in some kind of California-forced-conformity/anti-conformity. The last time I saw so many people looking like that, it was the mass suicide at Heavenâs Gate.Why Apple's Launch Event Was "Creepy As Hell"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:38 PM | Your Say (1)
True story! Man saves rack of ribs from a burning building!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:05 PM | Your Say (4)
Hungarian Convicts Build 100-Mile, Anti-Migrant Fence Out Of Razor Wire
Asked whether building a barrier that conjures images of Cold War-era razor wire and watchtowers was really the best idea Hungary could come up with, Prime Minister Viktor Orbansaid simply said that the flows must stop if Europe wants to preserve its "Christian identity." | Zero HedgePosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (3)
Ann Coulter: REFUGEES: ANOTHER ONE FOR THE "NOT OUR PROBLEM" FILE
As he cheerfully told his terrorist buddies back in Uzbekistan: "We are the closest ones to infidels. We have almost everything. What would you say if, with the help of God, we implement a martyrdom act? ... There are military installations right here, targets, and vehicles are available as well." Kurbanov had plenty of time on his hands to plot terrorist attacks in the U.S. because he was being supported by you, taxpayer. As the Lewiston Morning Tribune (Idaho) reported: He was "struggling" to find a job -- preferably something that involved either marketing or killing all the Jews. For the cherry on top, the whole welfare-dependent, Islamic terrorist-nurturing family won refugee status in America by claiming they were persecuted in Uzbekistan for being Christians. -- Ann Coulter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 AM | Your Say (6)
Hell's filling up at an alarming rate. Reserve your space now.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (6)
The Original Nature Boys
The record set off a brief journalistic frenzy in 1948 over its hitherto unknown lyricist eden ahbez, who had long hair and a beard, dressed in a robe and sandals, ate only fruits and nuts, had given himself a Book of Genesis first name and cosmic A-to-Z last name, and lived in a tent under the first “L” in the “Hollywood” sign. In other words, years before the word was coined in the 1960s, this guy was a hippie. He and the dozen or so other robe-wearing proto-hippies who hung around a German couple’s health-food store in Laurel Canyon called themselves “Nature Boys.” - Steve Sailer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (5)
"She lived in a white nonprofit world. She didn’t really represent the black community."
Harvey had harsh words for a diversity consultant the organisation hired who “was black, and lesbian, and she had a niche in the nonprofit world, because they’re always trying to check off those boxes, in terms of quotas, so they can say [they are diverse].“At a certain point, she made a speech which was pro forma, which I didn’t know was the speech she always made, about the racial question. I said ‘Well, I don’t think black folks like to camp as much as white folks!’ And she said ‘You son of a bitch!’ Burning Man festival co-founder talks frankly about race - The Unz Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:37 AM | Your Say (2)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 AM | Your Say (0)
Why I don't give a damn any more.
No more spending American blood and American dollars to help anyone, anywhere, for any reason, at any time, unless it has direct, tangible, and specific US interest and people. No more invasions, kinetic actions, air strikes, UN involvement, NATO assistance. Nothing. I think the USA should yank its world bases out of nations that treat us with contempt and hatred. Leave only a few scattered bases in strategic locations, and pull all those US dollars and spenders out of the region. No more contracts, no more soldiers buying goods, no more taxes for land, nothing. This is what you wanted, its what you get. -- Word Around the Net
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:21 AM | Your Say (4)
Now let’s talk about that “wall” that is not a wall at all.
Realistically, what we are talking about is sealing the border using whatever works for each area.
Sometimes a fence will do it. Sometimes you need armed border guards. Sometimes you might need a bad-ass wall. So “wall” in this context just means sealing the borders somehow. And one of those ways to seal a border might include a permanent force of drones and robots, at least for key spots along the border where a wall is either too expensive or not good enough. The drones and robots don’t need to stop everyone. If they catch most of the folks trying to cross the border, that should be enough to discourage all but the most motivated. A Demonstration of Persuasion - Scott Adams
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:15 AM | Your Say (3)
September 9, 2015
¡Hay moros en la costa! (Moors on the coast!) - Refugees and Real Threats
According to the UN, they are overwhelmingly young men, nearly three-fourths--and that's the data from the UN so the real number is probably closer to 90%.
In the European case, the "refugees" also come bearing extremely hostile attitudes towards the very Europeans whom they demand take them in. They come armed with something that at least "our" Latin American "refugees" did not have: Islam, the world's most totalitarian, intolerant, and murderous creed. Just wait as child sex trafficking rings, rapes, murders, and acts of terror begin to spike -- the Progressive media, of course, will downplay all that, try to make it invisible, ignore it or explain it away, as they do with illegal alien crime in the USA. - - The DiploMad 2.0
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:49 PM | Your Say (4)
The great danger in our society is not that it is populated by sinful people, but that it’s populated by heretics
who campaign to move their favorite sins from the “bad” column to the “good,” as if God is some indecisive bureaucrat whose moral laws can be amended or abolished by popular vote.Many sins — especially any of the sexual variety — have their own PR teams these days, making it all the more necessary for Christians to fight back, as unpleasant and politically incorrect as the fight might be. -- Matt Walsh / If You Are a Christian but You Reject Christ’s Teachings, You Are Not a Christian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:46 PM | Your Say (4)
‘Black Lives Matter’—but Reality, Not So Much
The great lie of the summer has been the Black Lives Matter movement. It was founded on one falsehood—that a Ferguson, Mo., police officer shot a black suspect who was trying to surrender—and it is perpetuated by another: that trigger-happy cops are filling our morgues with young black men.The reality is that Michael Brown is dead because he robbed a convenience store, assaulted a uniformed officer and then made a move for the officer’s gun. The reality is that a cop is six times more likely to be killed by someone black than the reverse. The reality is that the Michael Browns are a much bigger threat to black lives than are the police. “Every year, the casualty count of black-on-black crime is twice that of the death toll of 9/11,” wrote former New York City police detective Edward Conlon in a Journal essay on Saturday. “I don’t understand how a movement called ‘Black Lives Matter’ can ignore the leading cause of death among young black men in the U.S., which is homicide by their peers.” -- WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (2)
September 8, 2015
Sweet Meteor of Global Extinction, hear our prayer!
How does the food taste? To ask that is to miss the point of Through Itself.This food is not designed to be eaten, an incidental process. It is designed to make your business rival claw his eyes out. It could be a yacht, a house, or a valuable, rare, and miniature dog. But I can tell you that the cornet of salmon â world famous in canapé circles â is crisp and light and I enjoyed it; that there are six kinds of table salt and two exquisite lumps of butter, one shaped like a miniature beehive and another shaped like a quenelle; that a salad of fruits and nuts has such a discordant splice of flavors it is almost revolting; that the lamb is good; and that, generally, the food is so overtended and overdressed I am amazed it has not developed the ability to scream in your face, walk off by itself, and sulk in its room. [Criticism] | A Goose in a Dress, by Tanya Gold | Harper's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:56 PM | Your Say (3)
Dark Roasted Blend: Link Latte 235
Theories of Everything, Mapped - [fascinating, graphic]
Pollen Magnified: Incredible Art - [wow nature]
Adventures in Typography & Calligraphy - [cool site, art]
Mysterious: ants circling an iPhone - [fascinating]
Subatomic particles point to undiscovered forces - [science]
The World's Largest Archive of Natural Sounds - [audio]
Stylish Art by Jan Van Der Veken - [art, style]
Japanese Micro RV Vehicles - [gallery, auto]
Vintage Consumer Electronics - [cool site, could be w/audio]
Unique Occult Imagery Collection - [Tumblr site]
Slime mould solving a maze to get food - [wow nature]
Cranes lifting cranes, ad infinum- [wow tech]
Fully Automated Restaurant Opens - [sign of the times]
The Longest Yard Sale - [cool article]
Great Flying Car Concept Video - [wow tech]
The Vanishing Island with Alaskan town on it - [nature]
Audio Idiots: Great collection of old hi-fi gear catalogs - [useful?]
Crash Tests at 200 km/hr - [wow video]
Automated Cake Decorating - [neat video]
Unusual way to change a tire - [wow video]
3D Printed B787 Jet Engine - [geek video]
Cool trick for skinning a watermelon - [fun video]
"The Creepiest Military Vehicle" from Japan - [fun video]
Be careful not to fall a victim to this - [wow video]
Drone pilot spots man sunbathing... where?? - [wow video]
Hair-Raising Rally Car Video (feat. Ari Vatanen) - [wow video]
Human Toddler vs. Gorilla Toddler - [fun video]
Too Cute! Le Petit Chef - [short fun movie]
Play "Steven Universe" for a break! - [gaming]
See McCartney and his doll. What will yours look like? - [great gift idea]
Landscapes of Communism: A History through Buildings - [book review]
All from Dark Roasted Blend
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (2)
Battle of the Baddest Women on Earth
Three times a year, fierce fighters from all over the world gather here to battle for the Femmes Fatales belt. The rest of the year, most of them fight against men. - - | Narratively
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:14 PM | Your Say (4)
Throughout my life I’ve had moments where I felt like one of these visiting aliens,
I remember walking home from somewhere, struck by how strange streets are: flat strips of artificial rock embedded in the earth so that our traveling machines don’t get stuck in the mud. Everything else seemed strange too. Metal poles bending over the road, tipped by glowing orbs. Rectangular dwellings made of lumber and artificial rocks. The background noise is always the hum of distant traveling machines, and all of this stuff was built and operated by a single species of ape. Don’t Forget How Strange This All Is
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:42 AM | Your Say (2)
Sign Of The Apocalypse
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 AM | Your Say (1)
8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live
all 8.4 million citizens in each of the five boroughs packed up their belongings and told reporters they would rather blow their brains out with a shotgun than spend another waking moment in this festering cesspool of filth and scum and sadness. By 5:15 p.m. there was gridlock traffic on the outbound sides of the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, and the area's three major airports were flooded with New Yorkers, all of whom said they wanted to go anyplace where the pressure of 20 million tons of concrete wasn't constantly suffocating them. - America's Finest News Source
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (3)
Wife Will Probably Leave Me Now That She Knows English
well beyond the basic words and phrases I taught her during the early days of our marriage (“Need beer,” “Bring me remote,” and “Back needs shaving,” among them), then there’s no way I’ll be able to keep hiding behind the false persona I’ve worked so hard to maintain ever since I found her on that “Thai Brides” website when I was stationed in Japan.- - Duffleblog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (1)
Africa has a billion people, a number that will double by 2050, and double again to 4 billion by 2100
Are those billions of Africans going to endure lives of poverty under ruthless, incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical regimes, if Europe’s door remains wide open?What is coming is not difficult to predict. Europe is going to run out of altruism long before it runs out of refugees. Islam’s Conquest of Europe
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (5)
The refugees have given the Germans the sort of frisson of good feeling that one gets from adopting a stray puppy.
Germans have spent the past seventy years feeling badly about themselves and are determined to take this opportunity to feel good about themselves.The refugees have given the Germans the sort of frisson of good feeling that one gets from adopting a stray puppy. This one redemptive act, they seem to believe, compensates for the country’s criminal behavior during the middle of the past century. It is one thing to take in one stray, however, and quite another to find a pack of hungry dogs baying at one’s door. At that point one calls the dog-catcher. The price of Europe’s fecklessness | Asia Times
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (2)
September 7, 2015
A Drone finds a Man Sunbathing on Top of a 200ft Wind Turbine
drone enthusiast Kevin Miller was taking footage of a 200-feet-tall wind turbine when it captured something unexpected: a man sunbathing at the top! ‘Upon landing he saw me bring the drone down and was leaning over the edge’, Miller said. ‘I looked up and wave to him and he waved back’. - - Messy Nessy Chic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 PM | Your Say (4)
The word automation entered the language only recently. It was first uttered in 1946,
when engineers at the Ford Motor Company needed a new term to describe the latest machinery being installed on the company’s assembly lines. “Give us some more of that automatic business,” a Ford vice president reportedly said in a meeting. “Some more of that — that — ‘automation.’” Dawn of the automatic age | ROUGH TYPEPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 PM | Your Say (0)
Hey, remember who police officers backed for president in 2008?
"The National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), representing 238,000 rank-and-file law enforcement officers from across the United States, is pleased to formally announce its endorsement of Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden for President and Vice President of the United States."Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden have a proven record of standing with the law enforcement community, from giving our officers on the front lines the resources and tools they need in the fight against drugs and crime in our communities to supporting law enforcement officers' right to work place protections", stated Tom Nee. "NAPO believes that Senators Obama and Biden will make giving our nation's law enforcement officers every protection they need a top priority of their administration." Don Surber: When police really acted stupidly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:47 PM | Your Say (4)
"Hey everybody, enjoy some organic non-GMO pesticide free corn "
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:23 PM | Your Say (8)
The “Outsider” Explanation
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (9)
Many decades back, Mexico had a comic-book character called Memin Pinguin,
In 2005, Mexico issued postage stamps with Memin’s picture, as we might of Elvis. To Mexicans it was innocent nostalgia. Yet in America outrage erupted. Jesse Jackson attacked the Mexican government and George Bush denounced the stamps as racism. People here were furious: Mexico couldn’t even issue postage stamps without approval from Washington. Why They Hate Us | Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (6)
On the right, many who fancy themselves thoughtful intellectuals
That view is fatuous and simplistic, because there are very big ideas at issue here, and a small town country clerk is proving to be the first American to put both Civil Disobedience and the First Amendment to the test in the 21st century. Kim Davis: 21st century Civil Disobedience and the federal overthrow of the First Amendment
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:57 AM | Your Say (2)
Why are we still celebrating Labor Day, when nobody seems to be laboring anymore?
A record 94,031,000 Americans were not in the American labor force last month -- 261,000 more than July -- and the labor force participation rate stayed stuck at 62.6 percent, a 38-year low, for a third straight month in August. CNS NewsLet’s see, we added 173,000 jobs last month butt the number of people in the workforce dropped by 624,000, placing the number of us not working at over 94 million, a nearly 40 year low. How much labor can that take? Michelle Obama's Mirror: Working: It’s SO Overrated.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:48 AM | Your Say (3)
September 6, 2015
The Trumpening
Polls indicate that Trump is going to be the Republican candidate, and going to win, going to be the next president. Jim's BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 PM | Your Say (6)
Art is mostly fraud perpetrated by narcissistic academic quacks on a public easily gulled.
If modern sculpture were placed in a junkyard, art critics couldn’t find it. Most of what we are told are great works are great works only because we are told that they are.
Consider the Mona Lisa, for mysterious reasons regarded an epochal detonation of artistry. Why? She is an excessively round woman who looks as if she is about to spit. We have to be told that she was an astonishment and marvel. Otherwise we would rate her a a pretty fair effort for an art student somewhere in Nebraska. A Treatise on the Nonexistence of Art: Pretty Nearly, Anyway | Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:40 PM | Your Say (12)
From Chelsea Clinton to her mother, expressing horror at the absolute uselessness of the United Nations.
On February 22, after a four-day visit to the quake zone, Chelsea Clinton authored a seven-page memo which she addressed to “Dad, Mom,” and copied their chief aides. …The memo—by a Clinton, with a master’s in public health from Columbia University, pursuing a doctorate in international relations from Oxford and with a prominent role at her family’s foundation—would have obliterated the public narrative of helpful outsiders saving grateful earthquake survivors that her mother’s State Department was working so hard to promote. …“The incompetence is mind numbing,” she told her parents. “The UN people I encountered were frequently out of touch … anachronistic in their thinking at best and arrogant and incompetent at worst.” “There is NO accountability in the UN system or international humanitarian system.” The weak Haitian government, which had lost buildings and staff in the disaster, had something of a plan, she noted. Yet because it had failed to articulate its wishes quickly enough, foreigners rushed forward with a “proliferation of ad hoc efforts by the UN and INGOs [international nongovernmental organizations] to ‘help,’ some of which have helped … some of which have hurt … and some which have not happened at all.” Plain omelette. No potatoes. Tomatoes, instead | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:11 PM | Your Say (3)
USS O’Bannon and the Potato Incident of 1943
Nobody on deck carried a gun. The Americans didn’t, the Japanese didn’t. As the Japanese sailors rushed towards their submarine’s 3-inch deck gun, sailors on the deck of O’Bannon had to do something - but what?
From the storage bins on deck, the sailors picked up potatoes and threw them at the Japanese submarine. Yes, potatoes. As Ernest A. Herr remarked, “A potato battle ensued.”No Moss Here
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:14 PM | Your Say (1)
Muammar Gaddafi's Last Speech
This wall was Libya. You‘re breaking it. You’re idiots, and you will burn in Hell for thousands of migrants from Africa and for supporting Al Qaeda. It will be so. I never lie. And I do not lie now.” Gaddafi's Revenge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (1)
Retribution.
because the real tide of human suffering will be released when one side or the other “wins” in Syria/Iraq and the ethnic cleansing begins. One need only recall the exodus of “boat people” who fled Indochina in 1975 to imagine how big the flood in MENA might potentially be. But in those innocent days the flotsam only washed up in neighboring Southeast Asian countries. This time they will be showing up in Germany, France and Britain. If one side “wins” the human catastrophe till now will be as the draining of the backyard pool in comparison to the Parting of the Red Sea. Biblical | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 AM | Your Say (0)
Wind Energy: Not Where You Want It, Not When You Want It, Not as Much as You Need
even as the nation expanded wind generation capacity by 9 per cent, Energy Information Administration records show. The reason was some of the softest air currents in 40 years, cutting power sales from wind farms to utilities. The feeble breezes come as the White House is promoting renewable energy, including wind, as part of its Clean Power Plan to counter greenhouse gas emissions. “We never anticipated a drop-off in the wind resource as we have witnessed over the past six months,” David Crane, chief executive of power producer NRG Energy, told analysts last month.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (9)
September 5, 2015
The power elite has all the characteristics of a dominant organism within its optimum ecological niche.
There is only one countermeasure. It’s one too few Americans are willing to embrace:
Destroy the niche.
The new basis might be the old Constitution, amended to preclude at least some of the crimes of the last century. It might be a more dispersed form of organization. It might be outright anarchism. But whatever form it takes, it must be utterly cleansed of the power elite and its bastion in the unelected government. Not one stone of that edifice must be left standing on another.It won’t happen. There’s a stout, high security fence around the status quo.
It’s composed in part of the millions of Americans who are partly to wholly dependent on government for their occupations or sustenance. Those millions will never agree to the amputation of the hand that feeds them. Alongside them are the many millions who believe, whether they express it or not, that “the way things are” is the way things must be. And standing just a little way off are the many – a frightening number, really – whose dearest desire is to gain admission to the power elite and work the system for themselves.We have the weapons.
We have the numbers. But we haven’t the will. Liberty's Torch: Sitting Back Is Not Giving Up
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:28 PM | Your Say (5)
A Black Bird With Snow Covered Red Hills
One ancient text tells the story of a crow who was flying with a piece of meat in its beak. Twenty crows were pursuing it trying to grab the meat. Flying high to escape them, it became tired. Suddenly, it dropped the meat, and the twenty crows flew down shrieking, fighting for it. Then the crow, flying high, thought, “How good it is to carry nothing – the whole sky belongs to me!”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:27 PM | Your Say (2)
People HATE the Establishment, and there isn’t a font big enough to express the hate they feel for the Media wing of The Establishment.
So who is stupid, the guy who keeps getting suckered into voting for GOP candidates with conservative stances that only surface in an election year,or the guy who has not always been conservative but is passionate enough about current issues to boldly voice his opinion and not back down now? It’s a gamble, but is it any more of a gamble than voting for the anointed candidate Jeb, who is fairly in line with the Left on key issues like immigration, and who can’t seem to display that he has any fight in him? Most comments I’ve seen about Trump support what he’s dong as a candidate more than the idea of him actually winning. Apparently our pundits can’t differentiate between the two. But we’re the stupid ones, huh? House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (3)
OOPS! Lawsuit dismissed: Caucasian lesbian woman who received African-American sperm by mistake
It wasn't until Cramblett, who is white, was five months pregnant that she learned she was accidentally impregnated with the sperm of a black man. Cramblett learned of the mix-up when she called to reserve additional vials from the same donor so her partner, Amanda Zinkon, 30, also could become pregnant. - - DailyHerald.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (9)
Florida Gunmaker's 'Crusader' Rifle Three safety settings: Peace, War and God Wills It.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (9)
It seemed like a good idea at the time....
Yet another instance of an inventor mounting a gun on an unlikely object, the Helmet Gun was patented in 1916 by Albert Bacon Pratt of Vermont. Basically, a marksman strapped on a metal helmet with a gun protruding from its crown. The gun’s trigger was attached to a balloon or bladder, allowing the marksman to fire the gun by blowing into a tube, bringing a whole new meaning to blowing someone away.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:41 AM | Your Say (1)
Hillary’s Emails Reveal Her to be a Rich & Helpless Senior Citizen
Stephen L. Miller read some and tells us those emails portray a Hillary better suited to an Assisted Living facility than the Whitre House. In a recently released e-mail from January 3, 2010, she personally messaged an assistant, wishing her a Happy New Year, and then offered a demand list to start the year off:I’d like to work w you to prepare a menu for Jason. Also does he give me a monthly bill for the food he buys and prepares for me? Could you or he buy skim milk for me to have for my tea? Also, pls remind me to bring more tea cups from home . . . Can you give me times for two TV shows: Parks and Recreation and The Good Wife? - - Never Yet Melted
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (0)
"It is necessary to repeat the truth over and over again
because the falsehoods around us are also being constantly repeated, not by individuals but by the masses, in newspapers and encyclopedias, in the schools and at the universities. Everywhere, falsehood is on top, comfortable and secure in the knowledge that the majority is on its side." -- Johann Wolfgang von GoethePosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (1)
September 4, 2015
Traitor to His Class
It would seem to be the duty of every American pundit today to explain the inexplicable and problematic rise of Donald Trump. The critical question, however, is not the source of Trump’s popularity but rather the reason his popularity is so shocking to our political culture. Perhaps Trump’s candidacy threatens a larger consensus that governs our political and social life, and perhaps his popularity signifies a profound challenge to elite opinion. --- | The Weekly Standard
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:03 PM | Your Say (4)
Your Government at Work:
In the late 1980s, India's government announced a plan to release specially bred flesh-eating turtles into the Ganges river. According to Hindu faith, there is salvation in being cremated on the banks of the riverand then dumped into it. But sometimes the corpses are only partially burned, and according to the BBC, the corpses of those who cannot afford to be cremated are put in the river, too. "Hundreds of years ago, such turtles flourished in the Ganges until they were killed by hunters for meat," the Los Angeles Times reported. "Now, the government has begun breeding them on a farm near Lucknow." The turtles were raised on dead fish, "so that they wouldn't develop a taste for the living," reports Atlas Obscura.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:03 PM | Your Say (2)
"And then he was dangerous."
The source of the wizard’s power was a simple discovery.
He learned that when he described to people a better version of themselves, they automatically rewired their minds to become the person of his description. At first the wizard used his method to control one person at a time. Before long he learned how to move entire crowds. And then he was dangerous. - - The Time of Kings | Scott Adams Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:48 PM | Your Say (2)
Every Christian elected official should be determining, within the scope of their duties, which lines they will not allow the state to cross.
All of a sudden it looks like a hill to stay alive on, covered over with topsoil that looks suspiciously like common ground. So it turns out that surrendering hills is not the best way to train for defending the most important ones. Retreat is habit-forming. … The point here is not just private conscience. The right to liberty of conscience is at play with florists, bakers, and so on. But Kim Davis is not just keeping herself from sinning, she is preventing Rowan County from sinning. That is part of her job. Never Yet Melted » Kim Davis's Honorable Stand
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (2)
Donald Trump and Ben Carson may have signed a desperate No Third Party Pledge -- but their voters have not.
Where is the vote on Obamacare that forces the president to veto?
Where is the court case that demands that the Iran Treaty get two-thirds approval by the Senate?
Where are the hearings on 307,000 veterans dying while waiting for the Civil Service-protected ingrates at VA to fulfill America's promise?
Where is the hearing on the EPA turning the Animas River orange?
Why are we still funding Planned Parenthood if the House controls spending?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (2)
September 3, 2015
Disappear in the Wilderness
get naked, mud up, and roll on the ground. In less than 5 minutes you’ll be an unrecognizable fixture in the forest around you. - - Natural Camouflage
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 PM | Your Say (6)
Most PPP are happy when a neighborhood transitions from sacred people to Hispanic.
Even though most will be on welfare, they are not robbing and murdering like the sacred people.Plus, a fair number who do work, work very hard and that flatters the typical PPP in SWPL-ville. Europe has a different problem. Their immigration is coming from two places, the MENA and sub-Saharan Africa. These populations have high degrees of clannishness, fanaticism and violence. The Czechs and Slovaks parted ways with a handshake and good wishes. Syria is breaking up in a bloodbath. Similarly, sub-Saharan Africans slaughter one another for sport. The Invasion | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:54 PM | Your Say (1)
All across the Old Continent we are seeing massive flaunting of law and order as thousands, tens-of-thousands, maybe more, of so-called refugees
flood into Europe and then slosh about from one country to another looking for the best deal.The UK has become a particular target as "refugees" try to make their way to Britain's generous public benefits. Recall that in a fit of Euro madness the leadership of the UK,traditionally the sole repository of common sense and hard-eyed realism in Europe, agreed enthusiastically with the construction of the absurd Chunnel, putting thereby an end to one of the country's historic defenses, the sea. What would Drake and Nelson have to say about that? -- The DiploMad 2.0
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:27 PM | Your Say (7)
Yam a lam a ding dong!
The husband is expected to give his wife's father or brother a gift in turn for the yams they give his wife. When the woman is first married, she receives yams from her father until the woman's brother thinks his sister and her husband are old enough for him to give the yams. At the beginning of the yam harvest, the yams stay on display in gardens for about a month before the gardener takes them to the owner. The owner is always a woman. There is a great ceremony for this every year. The yams are loaded into the woman's husband's empty yam house. Young people come to the gardens dressed in their most festive traditional clothes early on the day the yams are delivered to the yam house. The young people are all related to the gardener, and carry the yam baskets to the owner's hamlet. When they get to the owner's hamlet, they sing out to announce the arrival of the yams while thrusting out their hips in a sexually provocative motion. This emphasizes the relation between yams and sexuality. A few days later, the gardener comes and loads the yam house, and the man is now responsible for the yam. Yam Exchanges Trobriand Islands
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:53 PM | Your Say (7)
An Ode to the Humble Safari Jacket [Bumped]
Today, the purpose is the same, but the inventory is just a touch different. Nonetheless, whether you’re Teddy Roosevelt lugging shotgun shells in the twenties, Yves Saint Laurent toting a flask in the sixties, or just a guy with more iPhones than ears, the Safari Jacket is the ultimate in “where-able” technology. | A Continuous Lean.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:11 PM | Your Say (12)
This is known as "bad luck.”
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as 'bad luck.' ” ― Robert A. HeinleinPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (0)
Kiss the Constitution Goodbye
Recent supreme court decisions have simply negated the Constitution entirely, building on decades of ignoring and twisting the document, inventing things not in it until its simply trash. And all of this happened because of well-meaning tiny little steps, any one of which the founding fathers would have been enraged at, but we sigh and shrug at today. There is no rational basis for thinking that any government will reverse this. Word Around the Net: THE CONSEQUENCESPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (4)
The European 'Refugee Crisis' Is Funny
Liberals consider it responsible and humanitarian to say pious thingsabout caring for the wretched masses, even though as individuals none of them bear either the cost or the responsibility for the health of their countries. It costs nothing to say something pious about the refugees, but it’s quite risky — and in some cases illegal — to stand up and say that states can’t provide free lunches to everyone everywhere in perpetuity with no conditions attached. - - Henry Dampier
Europeans expect their continent to become a comfortable retirement village dutifully supported by Muslim immigrants. How likely is that?
— Lawrence Auster (@LawrenceAuster) August 11, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:23 AM | Your Say (0)
September 2, 2015
#NoLivesMatter
I arose from the gneiss of two billion years pre-biotic sedimentation to stand mute beside the Tethys Ocean. The waters receded and reformed and countless lives and extinctions preceded you, upright bipeds. Now your cities have risen and fallen and risen again. You struggle on the constant brink of self-annihilation, your animal instinct for survival warring with your reptilian desire to kill. Now, I'm not racist, but my main point here is that if a police officer asks you to do something, I observe no possible reason to disobey. - - SA
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:47 PM | Your Say (3)
Let's Brainstorm Some Ideas for Our New ISIS Video
More heads on bigger poles. Throw paint on all the fur coats. Lecture people about carbs. Shoot pet dogs. Okay, okay, our messages are getting a little mixed. Not enough history. I like the heads and the poles. Always very strong. How about I remix those other ideas and we shoot people we catch with books and then feed them to dogs? No, I don't really know where carbs will factor into it. - - SAPosted by gerardvanderleun at 4:41 PM | Your Say (1)
For many years the Third World has functioned as the sump of toxic Western ideas.
Ideas too dangerous for any sane person to actually try were boldly exported there.Years ago a Bavarian friend remarked that the most destructive German export of all time was Karl Marx; far more catastrophic in effect than that perennial rival for ideological malpractice, Adolf Hitler. There’s something to this. Marx’ disciples Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro and the Kim family have between them killed many more people than perished at the hands of Adolf. Yet after each catastrophe, the intellectuals would go back to the drawing board and try again with the highest hopes — since the inhabitants of Africa, Asia and South America seemed perpetually ready to be sacrificed on the altar of ‘scientific’ socialism. Marx Materializes at the Border | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (4)
How the Ballpoint Pen Changed Handwriting
. Eventually, they refined both the ink and the ball-tip design to create a pen that didnât leak badly. (This was an era in which a pen could be a huge hit because it only leaked ink sometimes.) The Bírós lived in a troubled time, however. The Hungarian author Gyoergy Moldova writes in his book Ballpoint about Lászlóâs flight from Europe to Argentina to avoid Nazi persecution. While his business deals in Europe were in disarray, he patented the design in Argentina in 1943 and began production. His big break came later that year, when the British Air Force, in search of a pen that would work at high altitudes, purchased 30,000 of them. Soon, patents were filed and sold to various companies in Europe and North America, and the ballpoint pen began to spread across the world. - -The Atlantic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (2)
September 1, 2015
New American Magazine Hits the Stands
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:27 PM | Your Say (7)
Names, said Confucius, had to convey the truth.
If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. … Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.Modern politicians appear to believe the opposite: social disorder can result from telling the truth. Better the lie. The Politics of Symbolism | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:48 PM | Your Say (3)
The annual Burning Man festival sounds a bit like a socialist utopia:
Why the Rich Love Burning Man:Black Rock City has had its own FAA-licensed airport since 2000, and it’s been getting much busier. These days you can even get from San Carlos in Silicon Valley to the festival for $1500. In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg flew into Burning Man on a private helicopter, staying for just one day, to eat and serve artisanal grilled cheese sandwiches. From the New York Times: “We used to have R.V.s and precooked meals,” said a man who attends Burning Man with a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. (He asked not to be named so as not to jeopardize those relationships.) “Now, we have the craziest chefs in the world and people who build yurts for us that have beds and air-conditioning.” He added with a sense of amazement, “Yes, air-conditioning in the middle of the desert!”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 AM | Your Say (5)
Nothing but bastards all the way down...
“The fundamental problem … is that of family structure. The evidence—not final but powerfully persuasive—is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling.” On the day his report was released, about one quarter of black kids were living only with their mothers. Moynihan called this a crisis, as indeed it was, but 50 years on between 70 and 75 percent of all black Americans are now born out of wedlock, a tripling of the trend Moynihan had spotted. More than half of Hispanic children are also born out of wedlock today, and 29 percent of white babies.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (6)
Everywhere, the design of creatures involves anticipation.
This is not the exception but the strict, unvarying rule.Biology thus requires an Aristotelian — a teleological — approach to gain genuine, provable knowledge. It always did. Even the Darwinians, to learn anything at all, must keep asking themselves the elementary question, “What is this for?” The “neo-Darwinian synthesis” still tries to deny this: not on the basis of any experiment or proof, but because faith in Atheism demands this denial. Nature, to the godless Darwinoid apprehension, must be stupid, bumbling, uninformed and clueless. Their problem is: she’s not. Phenotypic plasticity : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (1)
We allow these butchers to accomplish the ultimate feat: not just killing innocent people, but luring the rest of us into participating in their evil.
That isn’t to say we are all guilty of murder, but when we exploit a grotesque travesty, using it to make an entirely disingenuous point about gun control or whatever, we disregard the dignity and sacredness and decency and beauty of human life.
We play the killer’s game. We look at things through his lens. We dance like puppets for him. I think part of the problem is that we don’t know what else to do. These days, when some broken, barbaric predator goes out and inflicts his wrath and hatred on unsuspecting victims, we don’t know how to handle it, so we just spout rhetoric and leave it at that. Nothing improves. Nothing ever gets better. But if we could come back to a basic understanding — or at least recognition — of good and evil, then we could begin to understand why bad things happen, and how we might mitigate them in the future. -- Our Problem Isn’t Guns or Mental Illness, It’s Godlessness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (1)
The anti-reactionary alternative is on display with Trump in the GOP primary
For all his faults, Trump is his own man and he has his own opinions about how to do things.In contrast, the 17 other candidates have built their entire political resumes in opposition to the Cult of Modern Liberalism. Their positions, career choices and priorities are all about what they think the Left will think of them. They are not men; they are shadows. Arx-holes | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 AM | Your Say (0)