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December 31, 2015
HUGE Dubai New Year celebration
https://t.co/rbJnjZYBt0 pic.twitter.com/Tyi5dfwIDh
— 2ANow (@2ANow) December 31, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:32 AM | Your Say (5)
What it's like to live as a conservative.
You can see right through the lies and insanity, but few want to listen, and the ones in power have the might to punish you for not being one of them. Just ask the groups audited and leaned on by the IRS under Lois Lerner, by the EPA, by federal programs such as Operation Choke Point. Ask cake companies penalized for not making someone a cake, and told that they are violating a basic constitutional right... to have a cake baked for you.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:03 AM | Your Say (7)
December 30, 2015
And the 2015 Newspaper Front Page of the Year Award Goes to The New York Daily News last minute entry. pic.twitter.com/5Isk0SP67J
— Vanderleun (@Van_der_Leun) December 31, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:17 PM | Your Say (6)
“Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing.
Nobody listens — and then everybody disagrees.” — Russian actor Boris Marshalov, after visiting the House of RepresentativesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:01 PM | Your Say (0)
Fifty years ago this week, six astronauts posed on the moon for a selfie-ish photograph
next to a newly uncovered three million-year old alien artifact, a towering sheer black monolith, one that was about to set us on course for an encounter with the infinite.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:59 PM | Your Say (1)
So much of what they regularly enjoy and consume is designed to be temporary and forgotten.
Word Around the Net: RENTING YOUR FUTUREPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:57 PM | Your Say (1)
Instead or refighting Desert Storm the military model adopted by both groups is that of the historical Assassins.
Assassin's Screed -- Fernandez @ PJ MediaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:24 PM | Your Say (4)
The perfectly punctual podiatrist
I chose one who is relatively nearby, about a seven-minute drive. Easy-peasy.....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:14 PM | Your Say (0)
Escape for thy life; look not behind thee,
neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. Genesis 19:17
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (1)
By the time Trump is in the general election and running against Clinton,
you will start hearing that Trump (Lucky Hitler) is – for all practical purposes – “running unopposed” as Clinton’s poll numbers plummet. | Scott Adams
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (3)
Pretty nearly every major American city lives under a thoroughly corrupt, appallingly mismanaged one-party regime,
whose permanent grip on power is based on the block voting of a property-less, non-tax-paying, practically illiterate, welfare constituency, residing under what amounts to a permanent military occupation. Never Yet MeltedPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (1)
Rest of the World Displeased with the US for being a threat World Peace
US Displeased With Russian S-400 Air Defense Systems Going Global "The proliferation of weapons like the S-400 and its S-300 predecessor pose a serious challenge to US and allied air power," Dave Majumdar, defense editor for the National Interest.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 AM | Your Say (0)
The Real Target List for Nuclear War
The population is the primary objective, not "another" target. Nuclear War is Klausewitzian. It is winner-take-all. - - Vault-CoPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (2)
By 2006 the New New Left had a sales pitch, even if they had nothing to pitch.
Voters will pick energy over lethargy and the Democrats in the mid-2000’s had plenty of energy. Then they found Black Jesus and could run as moral crusaders, even though they could not articulate the point of the crusade. -- The Z BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (0)
Nobody’s doing much of anything at all.
“That happened on my watch!” scores the biggest bragging rights. It looks phony and fake, because it is. House of EratosthenesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:47 AM | Your Say (1)
December 29, 2015
Announcing 2015's Muslim of the Year
The Holy Quran, as Obama likes to call it, teaches that this false god’s will must be obeyed and that all infidels must perish from the earth. As the inscription reads on a ring the “Muslim of the Year” has worn since college, “There is no god but Allah.” -- WND
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:50 PM | Your Say (3)
The wars for the inner city cannot be won.
America is going broke and the largesse cannot continue forever. Sooner or later, the riots will expand. The more important thing will be what happens to the medium and smaller towns of America? The Captain's Journal -- COIN In ChicagoPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:43 PM | Your Say (8)
Remus's notebook for 29 December 2015
New, large Woodpile is not available:If you want to know what collapse looks like, look around. We're living in an ongoing collapse—civil, economic, military and moral. Everything's political, acquiescence is mandatory, dissent is a crime . We have fallen far. Woodpile Report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (2)
Lower the stick, and look around.
Don’t you get bored of its pocks and contours? Do you decorate your home with mirrored walls? Have you become supremely accomplished at doing things back-to-front? If someone was run over in front of you, would you rush to help, or just take out your phone to film? Well I’ve got bad news for you, Selfie-stick Man. Your bid for immortality is folly. This self-actualization you seek — it’s a mirage. One day, that phone will be obsolete, thrown on a scrap-heap, or stripped down, its parts recycled. These images of your face will no longer exist. Neither will you. What Are You Thinking, Selfie-Stick Man? — Personal Growth — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (1)
The Newspaper Monsters of Walt McDougall
like moon calf, wamguzzle, terrabilis, glossary, rambillicus, quidnunc, skeewink, spookissimus, colliwobble, and gastritis. The gastritis has a particularly apt name for his appearance and behavior. - - - Neatorama
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:51 AM | Your Say (0)
My personal rules assume a continent-size penal colony with armed inmates,
to wit: no public place is safe, but I especially avoid cities, airports, sports venues, malls, bad neighborhoods and bars.I'm not in public places much past dark. I avoid minorities. If there are two or more of them and one of me, I'm the minority in the only way that matters. I avoid mass transit and heavy traffic, rallies and demonstrations. In short, I stay away from crowds. I'll not be missed. When a crowd is unavoidable, I part company as soon as I can. The declared purpose for a crowd is nonbinding, its conduct volatile and its fate my fate. There are no good crowds. Ol' Remus @ Woodpile Report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (1)
Our Reptilian Rulers
Among other things, they are perfectly copacetic about committing murder, though they are rather inclined to “outsource” such operations, both to ensure plausible deniability for themselves and also for mere convenience’s sake; after all, such a method enables them to compartmentalize their misdeeds, which is a prudent way of ensuring loyalty from their subserviently blackmailable henchmen, who can become “fall guys” in a pinch. But there is a more visceral appeal here: being carnivorous vipers, the Reptilians appear also to have a positive hunger for the “meat” of souls, procured either though outright killing or perhaps through more terrifying means of sacrificial defilement which leaves a victim wishing for the comfort of elusive death. Alternative Right: OUR REPTILIAN RULERS, PART II
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (1)
Vladimir Putin's 2016 calendar. Obama's? 12 pictures of Pansies.
-- either fishing topless, going to church, lifting weights, or dressed in naval uniform. Each image is accompanied by a quotation from the man himself, on topics ranging from his love of dogs, Russian women and fishing to the country's growing military power. Vladimir Putin's 2016 calendar: Look inside - CNN.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (0)
The why of Trump in one bumper sticker [bumped]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (2)
December 28, 2015
"Made it Ma! Top of the World!"
American Digest wins in the category of "Salvador Dali Award for Most Creative Blogging."
These awardsrecognize a variety of blogs and websites operating in the conservative hemisphere of the Internet, all of which have worked tirelessly to promote conservatism, free market capitalism, fiscal sanity, the sovereignty of the individual, and otherwise protect America from the cockroach-like Statists -- some in very unique ways. All at Doug Ross @ Journal: #Fab50
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 PM | Your Say (2)
Zen Nouveau: New Year’s Greetings from Early 20th-Century Japan
In Japan, oranges are often a symbol of the New Year, and New Year’s cards are hugely popular, so that’s probably what this card was, but why the skull? And why the reference to “Le Sang,” which is “blood” in English, or “Propre,” which can mean “clean” or “own” or “proper,” depending on the context? “It’s an interesting card,” Reed says matter-of-factly. “It doesn’t match anything else I have in my collection, and Lauder doesn’t mention it in his book. But I’m not really an expert. I just like it.” - - | Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 PM | Your Say (0)
If America decides in some future time to add racial scrutiny for misdemeanors,
then we will have reached an Orwellian level of dystopia in many ways. Primarily because it will have infantilized the protected class so completely that it will be generally accepted that they need a police state to survive. Dumbing Down Racism - CobbPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 PM | Your Say (0)
Dumbing Down Racism
This has taken the form of 'triggers' and 'microaggressions' whose remedies are politically correct speech and 'safe spaces'. The aim is to sensitize individuals to this and then come up with 'solutions'. These solutions will deliver attention, influence, money and votes to their originators who are the Multiculturalists. The redefinition of racism to ever more sensitive levels and calls for a 'national discussion' satisfies the fetishes of 'experts' who would rescue victims of this 'abuse'. The effect of the acceptance of this sensitization is the induced crippling of the protected class. It sustains what Toni Morrison called the 'dilemma of the rescued'. Ultimately it goes against self-determination, this is why it is subversive and wrong. - - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:26 PM | Your Say (1)
Ever notice that you don’t meet poor people with special diet needs?
Next I see the gluten-free section filled with crackers and bread made from various wheat-substitutes such as cardboard and sawdust.I skip this aisle because I’m not rich enough to have dietary restrictions. Ever notice that you don’t meet poor people with special diet needs? A gluten intolerant house cleaner? A cab driver with Candida? Candida is what I call a rich, white person problem. You know you’ve really made it in this world when you get Candida. My personal theory is that Candida is something you get from too much hot yoga. All I’m saying is if I were a yeast, I would want to live in your yoga pants. … Never Yet Melted ｻ Whole Foods Revisited
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:16 PM | Your Say (1)
"Or are you just glad to see me?"
Pistol Pulled During Penis Pump Beef DECEMBER 28--Minnesota cops are still searching for the man who pointed a handgun
at an adult video store employee during a dispute over a malfunctioning penis pump. According to a police report, the suspect approached a clerk at Viva Video (seen below) last Wednesday night and “attempted to return a sexual device” he had previously purchased at the St. Paul business. The customer claimed the item--which police identified as a penis pump--did not work as advertised. However, the store clerk declined the return request “because [the pump] had been used,” cops noted.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:18 PM | Your Say (0)
“Man, I’ve had a good run,” he said at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony
and he specialized in the long-distance hook, a trick shot he made with remarkable regularity. But it was his charisma and comic bravado that made him perhaps the most famous Globetrotter. For 22 years, until he left the team in 1978, Lemon was the Trotters’ ringmaster, directing their basketball circus from the pivot. He imitated Tatum’s reams, like spying on the opposition’s huddle, and added his own.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:35 PM | Your Say (0)
2,000-year-old roman face cream with visible, ancient fingermarks
The tin pot is believed to have been deliberately hidden in a Roman drain, accounting for its "pristine condition". The container was opened by Liz Barham, the Museum of London's conservator. She said: "It seems to be like an ointment, and it has finger marks in the lid. If this is a sealed Roman container, those are Roman finger marks." - - Telegraph
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:55 PM | Your Say (0)
The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes.
— HL Mencken (@HLMenckenBot) December 26, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (1)
As a Christian, I see wonderful opportunities.
Why don’t we find a few people who are still awake, and start a counter-culture?Right in the middle of this one, as it were: simply manoeuvring around all the psychic stiffs. For I think we may have reached the point where the silent majority are unable to stop us. “The revolution” begins, the hippies once believed, with Dr Timothy Leary’s prescription, that we “turn on, tune in, drop out.” But his drugs were just another form of technology, or passive home entertainment. Comes the counter-revolution, we do the precise opposite: turn off, tune out, and drop back into human civilization. Ever the optimist : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 AM | Your Say (1)
It’s been a tough few years for the President.
The collapse of Libya, the crossing of red lines in Syria,nearly 300,000 deaths and God knows how many wounded, the Muslim Brotherhood being ousted in Egypt, the Russians jumping in big time in Syria….it’s really been working hell with his Agenda for Change. Firstly, his golf handicap has suffered, secondly, police forces around the country are still arresting violent criminals, robbers and rapists and not giving them the respect that Americans of all faiths deserve, and thirdly, college cafeterias are still culturally appropriating salsa and guacamole—I mean, that’s just tearing his heart out.” The Farce Awakens - Barrel Strength
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:15 AM | Your Say (0)
Annie Leibovitz, Elvis’s TV, Graceland, Memphis, 2011
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (0)
I'm all in favor of concealed carry, but this is over the top.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (2)
December 27, 2015
The crisis faced by the West is not just the wave of migrants or the mountains of debt. Those are easily solved.
Angela Merkel is the answer to a question posed thirty years ago, one no one asks anymore, because we have new questions to answer, like how to keep Mohamedfrom self-detonating in Europe. What comes next, what always follows a economic revolution, is a massive political reorganization. Maybe this time it is collapse under a wave of flea infested migrants from the south. Maybe the popular uprisings in response to the flood of migrants will usher in a clearing of the debts. Maybe the Germans will stop apologizing for Hitler and Southerners will stop apologizing for slavery. My Theory of Everything: Part VII | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (3)
December 26, 2015
Auden On America
America may not have inspired Auden directly, but it made it possible for him to work.And if he was at times a bit condescending about his new compatriots, he was also grateful. This is clear from his late poem “On the Circuit,” in which he sardonically but affectionately evokes his mad scramble to fly from one venue to the next all over America for readings or lectures:Another morning comes: I see, Dwindling below me on the plane, The roofs of one more audience I shall not see again.
God bless the lot of them, although
I don’t remember which was which:
God bless the U.S.A., so large,
So friendly, and so rich.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:24 PM | Your Say (0)
Pocket Notebooks: A Brief History
Remember that notes made with a hard pencil will last longer than those made with ink, and be readable as long as the paper lasts. Every scientist and every surveyor knows this and it is only tenderfeet, who use a soft pencil and fountain pen for making field notes, because an upset canoe will blur all ink marks. | The Art of Manliness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:19 PM | Your Say (3)
It’s an interesting neurosis we’ve developed since the heyday of the assassinations in the late 1960s, this continuing promise to abolish the unforeseeable.
Of course new atrocities happen all the time despite these ritual committee inquiries— these days, the mass murder of strangers is more in fashion than targeted political slayings — and there’s always another incident, and it ought to be obvious by now that we’re not so good at making sure that bad things don’t happen. Can’t Anyone Fix This? | KUNSTLER
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:54 PM | Your Say (3)
Listening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, you feel anything is possible.
“He could perceive the world and other people only through the prism of his own consciousness, judging them in the unforgiving terms he judged himself,” says Swafford. “He served mankind but never understood people, and though he yearned with all his heart for love and companionship, year by year he could bear humanity less and less in the flesh.” Beethoven, Anguish and Triumph
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 AM | Your Say (1)
The Thousand-Year History of the Spectacular Cliff Face Monastery of Sumela
There are no exact records about when it was built or by who, but it is estimated that its history dates back some one thousand years and that the locals who constructed it did so to escape enemy attacks.This incredible feat of architecture is located high up on the steep cliffs above the surrounding forest in Trabzon, Turkey. Over the centuries, Sumela thrived and became an important location not only for monks, but for pilgrims.It changed hands many times over the course of its existence, until it was finally abandoned in 1923. -- | Ancient Origins
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:56 AM | Your Say (0)
December 25, 2015
The most famous form of magic floating around today is Magic Dirt Theory.
For the unaware, Magic Dirt Theory claims that the soil alters behavior.Place a bunch of Bantus in Paris and they magically transform into Frenchmen. Round up residents of your typical inner city, set them up in suburbia and they become the Cleavers, just without all the honky-ism and white privilege. They will quit gang-banging, get jobs, pay taxes and join the Rotary Club. The Cult of Magic | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:57 PM | Your Say (3)
Obama continues to rely on the mainstream media to fight Islam and is losing badly.
One man who understood the power of "Salafi jihadism" was Saddam Hussein, who according to Kyle Orton, writing in the New York Times,understood long before Obama that secular socialism was no match for full-bore jihadism. "The Arab nationalist Baath Party, which seized power in 1968 in a coup in which Mr. Hussein played a key role, had a firmly secular outlook. This held through the 1970s, even as religiosity rose among the Iraqi people. But soon after Mr. Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, it began to change." We Will Not Be Assimilated | PJ Media
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 PM | Your Say (0)
China Is Building a Giant Animal-Cloning Factory to Feed the Masses
The 200 million yuan (over $31 million) commercial animal cloning center will be located in the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area, a government-sponsored business area about 100 miles from Beijing. Xu Xiaochun, the chief executive of BoyaLife, the company behind the new operation, told The Guardian, “We are going [down] a path that no one has ever travelled. We are building something that has not existed in the past.” The company intends to produce 100,000 cow embryos per year and hopes to provide 5 percent of the meat eaten in China. In addition to cattle, BoyaLife will be cloning champion racehorses and dogs used to sniff out victims of natural disasters or stashes of illegal drugs. | MUNCHIES
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 PM | Your Say (3)
What if Joseph had said no to the angel and had sent Mary away anyway?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:55 PM | Your Say (2)
And all through the house
I was expecting a visit from my son, who was flying in as a rare treat. I had tidied up, and was putting on the finishing touches while waiting for him to arrive from the airport. As I was poised at the top of the staircase on my way down from the second floor, I saw a movement on one of the lower steps. A dark shape. A small dark shape—very still, and then in motion again. With tiny little ears, and a long tail. A mouse. Very much stirring. -- neo-neocon And all through the house...
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:27 PM | Your Say (1)
Let the Great Unwrapping Begin!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (0)
December 24, 2015
In Hoc Anno Domini
He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.
Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.
And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. This editorial was written in 1949 by the late Vermont C. Royster and has been published annually ever since by WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (0)
December 23, 2015
Anybody want to go for a walk?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:29 PM | Your Say (4)
Loafers
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:29 PM | Your Say (3)
‘My view’, says Scruton, ‘is that what’s underlying all of this is a kind of nihilistic vision that masks itself as a moving toward the enlightened future,
but never pauses to describe what that society will be like.It simply loses itself in negatives about the existing things – institutional relations like marriage, for instance – but never asks itself if those existing things are actually part of what human beings are. Always in Zizek there’s an assumption of the right to dismiss them as standing in the way of something else, but that something else turns out to be Nothing.’ ‘Left thinkers have destroyed the intellectual life’ | spiked
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:36 PM | Your Say (1)
Memories of Christmas Present
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:29 PM | Your Say (1)
The best way to handle any potentially injurious encounter is: Don’t be there.
Don’t go to stupid places. Don’t associate with stupid people.Don’t do stupid things. ...Crowds of any kind, particularly those with an agenda, such as political rallies, demonstrations, picket lines, etc are good examples of “stupid places.” Any crowd with a high collective energy level harbors potential catastrophe. To a lesser degree, bank buildings, hospital emergency rooms, airports, government buildings, and bars (particularly crowded ones) fall into the same category. All should be avoided. When they can’t be avoided, we should make it a practice to spend only the minimum time necessary there and then quickly get out. Bayou Renaissance Man: After San Bernardino: self-defense considerations
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (5)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (1)
What your food will look like in 2035, told through meatballs
Two billion of the earth’s humans are already eating them, but they’re mostly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Maybe the best way to get Westerners to catch on is to bread and fry the little buggers into a ball. Photos: - Quartz
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (2)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (1)
December 22, 2015
Putin: “Should we need to get somebody, we can do so without a base.”
Putin was asked about whether Russia wanted to keep a base in Syria forever. Here is what he replied:The Americans have destroyed their Pershing ground-based medium-range missiles as well. However, they have kept their sea- and aircraft-based Tomahawks. We did not have such missiles, but now we do – a 1,500-kilometre-range Kalibr sea-based missile and aircraft-carried Kh-101 missile with a 4,500-kilometre range. So why would we need a base there? Should we need to get somebody, we can do so without a base. Russian Intervention in Syria: A Step Back from the Brink? - The Unz Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (4)
The Story Behind the Famous Portrait of André the Giant Clutching a Beer Can
It’s the opening image to an amazing story about one of the largest characters the world has ever known: André Roussimoff, aka André the Giant. The resulting photo makes the beer look so comically small that when the out-of-context image made the rounds on Reddit and Buzzfeed three decades later, many commenters insisted that it must have been a product of Photoshop. But Photoshop didn’t exist until six years after the photo first appeared in Sports Illustrated and more importantly, Roussimoff’s hand was actually that big. The writer who penned the piece, Terry Todd, noted that Roussimoff’s wrists are more than a foot in circumference—“about average for an adult male western lowland gorilla”—and that you can pass a silver dollar through his ring, which would make it around a size 30. | Atlas Obscura
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (4)
From the image below, identify the tool that maps to: Rubio, Cruz, Trump, Carson, Clinton, Fiorina, Christie, Paul.
No thinking required. But I’ll bet you started feeling your rational mind kick-in to identify Cruz and Rubio. And that’s my point. Trump is operating on the reflex part of your brain, and intentionally. The other candidates are appealing to your reason. A Deeply Unscientific Test of Your Political Bias... | Scott Adams Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (0)
December 21, 2015
The Autobiography of W.H. Auden
we witness him moving from brash youth to sagging middle age to the final cragginess of his last decade. Auden’s aged face was famously described as looking like “a wedding cake left out in the rain,” but to me his final features, with their weathered furrows and arroyos of wrinkles, look more like an outcropping of battered rock, “a secret system of caves and conduits.” The Autobiography of W.H. Auden - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:25 PM | Your Say (2)
No, It's Atheist Scientists Are Incompetent
Let’s define “God” as the “supernatural being who created the Universe.” That is, God is the cosmological singularity. To see this, unpack the definition of “God.” The word “supernatural” literally means "above nature," or outside of space and time, and not subject to the laws of physics. “Super” just means “above,” and the meaning of “nature” is clear if we use the Greek work for nature: “physis.”
The initial cosmological singularity is not in space or time, but rather it is the origin of space and time, the origin of all that is, seen and unseen. The cosmological singularity cannot be in space or time, because it is intrinsically infinite, and anything in space or time, and subject to the laws of physics, must be locally finite. To put it another way, the cosmological singularity is the cause of everything that exists, but is itself uncaused. The cosmological singularity is the uncaused first cause, which is how Thomas Aquinas ("The Five Ways") and Maimonides ("The Guide for the Perplexed") defined “God.” | PJ Media
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:14 PM | Your Say (4)
When modifying guns is outlawed only outlaws will modify guns
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:54 PM | Your Say (2)
The Forgotten Kingpins Who Conspired to Save California Wine
After the San Francisco earthquake and during the fire that followed, another two million gallons of wine were salvaged
from the C.W.A.’s main headquarters, at Third and Bryant Streets, but not before “the wooden tanks and casks came apart in the fire storm,” as Sullivan describes it. The spilled wine might have washed into the streets as it had at other warehouses, but a “plugged sewer line” and the building’s solid concrete walls and floor kept the sloshing wine within the structure. Suddenly, the building itself had become a wine cellar, which enabled the C.W.A. to pump the precious liquid through fire hoses to a small fleet of barges, which were towed to Stockton in the San Joaquin Valley, where the wine was distilled into brandy. | Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:51 PM | Your Say (0)
Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.
If the liberty of myself or my class or nation depends on the misery of a number of other human beings, the system which promotes this is unjust and immoral.But if I curtail or lose my freedom, in order to lessen the shame of such inequality, and do not thereby materially increase the individual liberty of others, an absolute loss of liberty occurs. This may be compensated for by a gain in justice or in happiness or peace, but the loss remains, and it is a confusion of values to say that although my ‘liberal’ individual freedom may go by the board, some other kind of freedom—social or economic—is increased. - - Isaiah Berlin,
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:41 PM | Your Say (3)
"The great thing about Trump is he is the great fuck you no matter what.
Trump is a win win no matter what.When he is elected and he ends up like the axiom portends, or he somehow fails in his bid, or they put a bullet through his head, and it doesn’t matter what becomes of Trump, it all begins to really dawn on enough people, and they become sorely disenchanted by the outcome in any of the possible eventualities, that mass of tolerance out there comes to a fucking screeching halt, that’s when the party really starts. Trump signifies the end of an age of America no matter what. Hard to say what the next epoch is like." Monday morning links - Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:50 AM | Your Say (2)
The Islam Terror Truthers
Today it’s the NRA. Yesterday it was a Coptic Christian who made a YouTube video. But like the USSR’s efforts to blame its economic failures on a shifting gallery of villains, these explanations are unsatisfying. And they leave even leftists, never mind ordinary Americans, uneasy about a crisis they don’t understand. There is something of Orwell’s “We have always been at war with Eastasia” to these deceits. Today Muslim terrorists are attacking us because of the NRA. Yesterday it was because it was too hot. Before that, it was because of Israel. And before that, it was because of Bush. - - Sultan Knish:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (2)
The jihadists fight as if they were pirates, with the desert being their sea.
They treat the cities and towns they have captured as ports of call, for booty and resupply. When challenged by superior forces attempting to retake these ports, the jihadists dissolve away into the desert, leaving small and determined bands of fighters to deflect and bleed-out the invading force. Their best fighters are not garrisoned in those cities; they live in the skiffs that carry them around the desert, such as the ubiquitous Toyota pick-up trucks they favor. Where is the ‘Strategic Depth’ of the ‘Islamic State’? | Talisman Gate, Again
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (0)
Ominous opening scene of a Stephen King horror story is your first reaction
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:18 AM | Your Say (2)
ISIS now almost as evil and depraved as Planned Parenthood
You see a Saudi Sharia Judge has issued what is called an “Oral Fatwa” authorizing the execution of disabled children in all area that ISIS controls.So far, 38 dirt naps for Allah have been initiated and the moral indignation rises towards heaven. This truly proves Barack Obama correct in characterizing ISIS as the JV. If they had issued a proper fatwa like Roe v. Wade they could pop enough waterheads to irrigate the Sahara. With some Good Old Amerikan ingenuity, they could fatwa the fvck out of about 60 million of the little blighters in the next 52 years. Just think of all the non-performing student load debt they could avoid. ISIS the distant mirror
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (1)
"During that time, I had more than 70,000 Twitter followers."
Money anxiety is a deep and longtime trigger for me.I’ve almost quit Just Between Us a few times, once after spending hours hysterically crying in my parked car because I wasn’t sure how I was going to make rent. My parents couldn’t help me financially because they had their own problems. I had already sold some of my old clothing at Crossroads and Buffalo Exchange. Allison’s parents offered to lend me money, but I wasn’t comfortable taking from them. Finally I borrowed money from a very kind friend who I’ve since paid back. During that time, I had more than 70,000 Twitter followers. The sad economics of being famous on the internet | Fusion
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:06 AM | Your Say (0)
Jenna Marbles Net Worth: $2.5 million
How do you like those marbles? She just released her 200th video since her start in 2010, and her subscribers are about to reach 15 million. The funny, playful Jenna is not only sexy, she's wicked helpful with her girly tutorials and funny think-pieces. From "Drunk Makeup Tutorial" to "What Girls Do in the Car," Jenna has everyone's attention, along with a nice wad of cash in her pocket. It's speculated that she pulls in nearly $4 million each year, but is listed at only $2.5 million net worth currently. Meet the Filthy Rich Stars of YouTube - Mandatory
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 AM | Your Say (1)
December 20, 2015
Weapons of Mass Deception
Imagine that it must convince an attentive and discerning audience to believe in and interact with something that is not really there. Further imagine that your workspace is in the middle of a war zone, and that thousands of lives depend on your success. Also, imagine that next week you will be asked to do it again. That, in a nutshell, was the mission given to the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, also known as the Ghost Army, one of the most unusual units to serve in the United States Army during the Second World War. by Rick Beyer (Works That Work magazine)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 PM | Your Say (1)
Constructing the World’s Biggest (Disassemblable) City
An entire city was built for the occasion in just eight weeks, a nagri (temporary city) springs up on the riverbanks, on an otherwise uninhabited floodplain that was under water only a month before the start of construction. On the most important days of the 2013 festival, attendance reached an estimated 30 million people (or roughly the combined populations of Belgium and the Netherlands), so this temporary city had to provide not only lodging and provisions, but an entire infrastructure complete with roads, bridges, sanitation, power grid, hospitals, seven train stations and a police force of over 12,000. In the three weeks after the festival ended, the entire city was disassembled and the plain returned to the rivers, which would flood it again a month later. by Rahul Mehrotra (Works That Work magazine)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 PM | Your Say (4)
The vacuity of voters The vacuity comes from the increasing number of voters who do not make their decisions on who will create the most jobs,
build the most infrastructure, save the environment, strengthen the economy or even keep citizens most safe.These people don’t care about that. And while they do vote based on what they think is in their own self-interest, their regard is not for what they view as the path most likely to improve society’s lot. It is, curiously, motivated entirely by their sense of what is most socially fashionable – in other words, the fundamental high school desire to be one of the cool kids. The Long March of illiberalism is reaping what it sowed - Barrel Strength
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:54 PM | Your Say (1)
When the left talks about how violent and blood thirsty the right is, they’re just virtue signaling for their tribe.
If my people were a fraction as evil and hateful as they portray us, they’d never say a word. They do it because they know it is safe to do so.Christians aren’t going to saw their heads off. The Tea Party isn’t going to set off a car bomb in front of their house. Ever notice how to the media talking about radical militant Islam is islamophobia, but there’s no equivalent media buzz word for being irrationally terrified of half of America? We all saw the idiotic meme floating around with the thing about how there had been something like three hundred and fifty something mass shootings this year. The only problem? It’s crap. It isn’t the FBI’s definition of that particular crime. They changed the definition to anything where multiple people got shot, so it’s mostly gang violence, drug crime, and even includes things like family murder suicides. Worse, it looks like some of those “mass shootings” never even happened. Guns and Vultures | Monster Hunter Nation
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:45 PM | Your Say (1)
Freeloading to the Last Drop: Count the White House Spoons.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:04 PM | Your Say (0)
The GOP is the Stupid Party because they keep finding ways to piss off their voters. It’s like they have a death wish.
What we call the two parties are nothing alike.The Democrat politicians are ideologically in tune with their voters and work hard to deliver on their shared goals. They fail a lot, thank goodness, but it is not for a lack of trying. When the Democrats strayed too far from the mission of the Cult, the Green Party sprouted up as a reminder about who is the boss. The Democrats quickly fell in line. Republicans are a different animal entirely. They exist not as an ideological alternative to Progressives, but as a mild critique of the Progressive wing. That means they can’t exist as a standalone entity. Their existence as a party is ectosymbiotic, defined by their dependence on the other party. The opinion of Progressives is vital to the psychological well-being of the Conservative wing. It’s their food. The Stupid Party Collapse | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:04 PM | Your Say (5)
The Studio Conservatives are winning
Don Surber: Many conservatives don't care if Trump is not a conservativeThe Studio Conservatives are winning -- are getting six- and seven-figure salaries -- after years of taking abuse from their liberal counterparts. The Studio Conservatives talk among themselves, and the herd mentality has taken over. They do not want to lose their gigs. The point of view of the Studio Conservative is at times the polar opposite of the Home Audience Conservatives, who are the reason Ailes has millions to throw around. Fox News brings in $2 billion a year. It is not a cash cow, it is a cash whale.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:26 PM | Your Say (2)
Seeing the World Through Third World Eyes
When you compare your average American’s night out with the 50% of the planet who live on less than $2.50 a day, you realize we are gods.
America is a country built on mind-boggling inventions, remarkably diligent entrepreneurs, and unfathomable mountains of hard work. We take all this greatness and indulge in opulence that makes the Roman Empire look like a trailer park. What is everyone complaining about? Right now we’re celebrating a tradition that involves getting drunk with people who love you, eating until your stomach hurts, and opening tons of presents. What the hell is in heaven, cheaper beer? - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:08 PM | Your Say (1)
The Real Story Of Apollo 17... And Why We Never Went Back To The Moon
07 00 00 47: “Bob, this is Gene, and I’m on the surface and as I take man’s last steps from the surface, back home, for some time to come, but we believe not too long into the future. I’d like to Just list what I believe history will record that America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus Littrow, we leave as we come and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.” --- IO9
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:58 PM | Your Say (3)
The class of people who formerly trafficked in political ideas have been too busy celebrating the wondrous valor of transgender.
Well, now the wheels are going to come off the things that actually matter,such as being able to get food and pay the rent, and might perforce shove aside the neurotic preoccupations with race, gender, privilege, and artificial grievance that have bamboozled vast swathes of citizens wasting a generation of political capital on phantoms and figments. Contrary to current appearances, the election year is hardly over. There is still time for events to steer history in another direction. Fedpocalypse Now? | KUNSTLER
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:23 AM | Your Say (1)
In the culture of spectacle, the great figures are chefs and fashion designers, athletes and actors, television journalists.
Intellectuals, whose chief interest was in ideas, have been replaced by so-called public intellectuals.
These are men and women of no notable depth whose domains are the op-ed pages and the television news and talk shows. The culture of spectacle has no interest in ideas. Nor does television, its main medium, which makes all ideas banal. Whatever Happened to High Culture? | The Weekly Standard
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (3)
One is hard pressed to think of great names in the realm of contemporary culture.
A few performing musicians, two or three strong symphonic conductors, an actor or two, but not much else comes to mind.Concerts of symphonic or chamber music are attended mainly by people 70 and older. Once strictly classical music festivals now need to give way to more and more pop and rock performances to pay their way. If there are any powerful novelists now at work, I do not know who they might be. Contemporary painting and sculpture have long seemed more about money than about art. Dance lives chiefly off the great choreographers of the past, from Marius Petipa to George Balanchine. The condition of poetry is perhaps saddest of all, for it has become little more than an intramural sport, read only by the same people who write it. People continue to churn out vast quantities of art -- novels, plays, poems, musical compositions, painting, sculptures -- but nothing very much seems at stake in any of their productions. Whatever Happened to High Culture? | The Weekly Standard
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (0)
The Illustrated Alphabet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (0)
December 19, 2015
No, It Is Not A Crime For A 57-Year-Old Guy To Carry A Rifle While Only Wearing Light Blue Thong Underwear
Some Constitutional rights endure: When a cop arrived at the home in Woodruff (pop. 4090),Rector was wearing only a "light blue pair of thong underwear," according to a police report. After ordering Rector off his porch, the officer retrieved the unloaded rifle and a cartridge from a nearby table. “Ricky was asked why he was in his underwear and sitting on the porch with a rifle. He stated he was looking for deer,” the cop reported. The Smoking Gun
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:32 PM | Your Say (5)
"Just one other thing — I gotta get this off my chest — Donald Trump is a jerk."
Said the man who also said: "You cannot insult your way to the presidency." - - AlthousePosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:25 PM | Your Say (2)
If you are of the male persuasion in any way
you really do not want to know about THIS. Trust me. You. Do. Not.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (5)
New York City: "Hell, with good restaurants."
Snake in the bus pic.twitter.com/OfnEl7K8Mn
— Krysta j. Roach (@JadaK_R) December 12, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (0)
Electric Fences? That's It. I'm Outta Here!
Fugitive monkey goes on the run because he was being bullied "Our electric fences are designed to be a deterrent and will deliver a shock when touched."However, they are not designed to harm our animals. Tamil would have received a shock - but in this case it was not enough to stop him."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (0)
Dear PETA, GFY
Clay's Corner Live Possum Drop gets go-ahead from judge PETA contends the law is unconstitutional because it provides special treatment for the Possum Drop event and makes it unclear how the laws apply to people to return injured wildlife to their natural habitats.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (1)
Sarah Palin: Congressional GOP Are Abusers And We’re Their Battered Wife
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (2)
December 18, 2015
My wife swears the dollar store has an actual name, but I can never remember it.
Whatever it is called, they have regular incandescent light bulbs on the shelf. They're made in Mexico, I think. They supposedly run on 130 volts, but if you screw them into a 110-volt fixture, a transmogrification takes place, and they "save" energy by only giving you about 50 watts instead of the 60 on the label. Sippican Cottage: Glimmers of Light in the Darkness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 PM | Your Say (6)
“His education had been neither scientific nor classical – merely “Modern.”
The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help him. He was a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers) and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling.” – C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength [Via HappyAcres]Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:05 AM | Your Say (1)
Great News! Freedom-Hating Lesbianic Socialist Harpies From The UN Still Hate America
If you’d happened upon the grim spectacle of fainting-couch feminist bores in scarves and problem glasses visiting Planned Parenthood clinics
and bossing everyone about, bleating about how bad America is for women, you’d likely have figured they were gender studies professors from an Ivy League university. Or senior advisors to the Hillary Clinton campaign, perhaps. Your mistake would be understandable. As it happens, the women are from a global body more often invoked at Halloween than at Christmas: the United Nations. Good News! Freedom-Hating UN Harpies Hate America
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:02 AM | Your Say (1)
Feminists Are In the Shit Now
Gender equality in construction: getting women to build London’s super sewer | The Thames Tideway chief executive wants half the workers on the multi-billion pound construction project to be female."A few weeks in to my new role as chief executive at Thames Tideway Tunnel, I announced that I wanted to achieve gender parity by the time we finished construction of London’s “super sewer” in 2023. A few faces around the table dropped visibly; there was a sense of disbelief as those around me started fretting about how on earth we were going to achieve the seemingly unachievable. We are a construction project, after all. We are going to be building a 25-km concrete tunnel up to 65 metres below the River Thames to transport the raw sewage that currently discharges in to the river away for treatment. This is a distinctly unglamorous project in a “man’s world”."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (9)
December 17, 2015
I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford’s, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles,
The first deposit consisted of ten hundred and fourteen pounds of gold, and thirty-eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited Nov. eighteen nineteen. The second was made Dec. eighteen twenty-one, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at thirteen thousand dollars. 89, 263, 201, 500, 337, 480 • Damn Interesting
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:16 PM | Your Say (1)
The notion that the government can prevent terrorism suggests studied inattention to the obvious.
NSA did not prevent the first attack on the Twin Towers in 1993, nor the successful one. French intelligence did not prevent the recant attacks in Paris, nor Russian intelligence the downing of the airliner over Syria. On and on. The idea that terrorism can be prevented must include the idea that a package containing ten pounds of C4 (or Semtex, or RDX, or….) and a blasting cap can be kept out of a country with long and almost open borders. America can exclude neither tons of prohibited substances nor tens of thousands of prohibited people. C4 is not hard to use. I learned in infantry training at Camp Lejeune long ago. Nothing to it. Exercise for the reader: Think of five ways a terrorist cell with the resources of the Nine-Eleven attackers could get a small suitcase into America. Think how you could do it. Security Theater: Customary Federal Pointlessness - The Unz Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:00 PM | Your Say (8)
Traveling the Durian Trail
In Singapore a quarrel over durian ended in a stabbing, while another in Malaysia ended with a murder charge. A man in Thailand died inexplicably after consuming four five-pounders by himself, while another died after washing his durian down with milk, and yet another with beer. I read about $700 U.S. durians that can only be purchased by those with royal connections, and ancient warriors who battled tigers over the fruits. - - Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (2)
It's Time For The Other 13 Candidates To Drop Out
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (5)
Leftism is universal acid
Leftism eats away at whatever container it is put in - whether that container be religion, science, education, the legal system, the military or whatever. All these started out carrying a small beaker of Leftism, and ended-up being dissolved into Leftism. - - Bruce CharltonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (0)
How to Blow up a Death Star
Joe had a bunch of different chemicals, which gave different effects. One, which George Lucas liked a lot, was secondary ignition of Titanium chips, and these became one of the main ingredients of the final Death Star explosion. They are responsible for all the little dancing sparkles, which comprised the aftermath of the explosion. We also experimented with multi-stage bombs where there would be an initial, black powder explosion, which ignited a baggy of gasoline, which in turn set off a third explosion. These were my personal favorites. | Zacuto USA
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (0)
So Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are sitting in a bar.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (0)
December 16, 2015
"Don't eat the Santa snow!"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (2)
Presenting the most beautiful people on the planet (according to a study, anyway)
Women rate a softer jaw-line, slimmer face, fuller lips and clean-shaven look as the most attractive, compared to the more masculine appearance that is considered the most attractive by men. Interestingly, for the female face of beauty, women rated a sexier appearance as the most beautiful. Women perceived fuller lips, a slimmer face, larger eyes and higher cheekbones as the most beautiful, more so than the male population’. Lost at E Minor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (5)
“Obama schmoe” has recently become an all-pervading part of Russian pop-culture.
“Obama schmoe” has recently become an all-pervading part of Russian pop-culture. There are “Obama schmoe” bumper stickers (in addition to others, like “Obama is bad” and “Obama is the devil”), and there are tee-shirts with pictures of Mr. Putin whispering into the ear of the embarrassed American President, “Obama, you are a schmoe.” Russian Media Explodes With Vulgar and Racist Anti-Obama Rhetoric | | Observer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (6)
Donald Trump Is the Good Guy: "It is a corrupt and vulgar system and virtually all Americans know it"
The habits of decades of the political system simply ignoring problems as they festered and grew — abortion, immigration, wealth disparity — has disgusted the country, and coincided with a pecuniary inundation of politics on a scale the world has rarely glimpsed in a democratic country. Most congressmen and senators are unambiguous representatives of the leading economic interests in their states or districts, and presidential campaigns, as we are seeing, last for years and cost over a billion dollars for each party. It is a corrupt and vulgar system and virtually all Americans know it, and everyone above the age of 40 has seen an alarming decline in the quality of candidates for high, and especially national, office since the Reagan years. -- NROnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (1)
Vegetarian and 'healthy' diets may actually be worse for the environment
"Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon," said Paul Fischbeck, one of the researchers. "Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken." - ScienceAlert
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:31 AM | Your Say (2)
December 15, 2015
The French are the kings of bullshit.
There's been an academic paper doing the rounds these days, called On the Reception of Pseudoprofound Bullshit.
Well, you know Pseudoprofound Bullshit? The French are kings of that. Fortunately there is also a (smaller) group of French which are serious scientists. Some of them are in the healthcare business, and they publish stats of screening for sickle-cell anaemia. Sickle-cell anaemia is a genetic aftereffect of malaria resistance in Africans, so France only screens Africans (both blacks and Maghrebians). 37.20% of newborns in France are of African descent. It is increasing at a rate of around 1.5% per year. That means in 10 years half of all French newborns will be of African descent. In 30 years, half of all French 20 year olds will be of African descent. ЧÑо ÐелаÑÑ | Bloody shovel
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 PM | Your Say (1)
ISIS have become my favorite entertainment.
They enjoy provoking the West by throwing homosexuals off buildings, finding new sadistic ways to execute drugged captives and now, lopping the heads off the already headless. They do this because they have only one business plan: provoke the West into war so they can kill us on a 1-to-10 ratio but, by doing that, can stir up their base and get more funds. It’s not far removed from the Democrat party agenda. Retards outraged that ISIS kills retardsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:30 PM | Your Say (1)
Updating one of my old standards.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:31 PM | Your Say (0)
Chipotle: The Long Defeat Of Doing Nothing Well
First and foremost, Chipotle is a company so out of control and negligent that it repeatedly endangers the public.But they also illustrate something important about food safety: Although the crops, meats and other foods produced by modern conventional agricultural technologies may not bring to mind a sentimental Norman Rockwell painting, they are on average safer than food that reflects pandering to current fads. And Chipotle knows it..... Let’s be clear: The source of the company’s woes is a marketing-driven propensity to exploit current food fads, even if it diverts the corporate focus away from what should always be “job one”—safety.... Chipotle rejects modern synthetic fertilizers in favor of suppliers who use manure on their crops. This approach may be “all natural” and “organic” and make some customers feel warm and fuzzy, but it should not come as a surprise that applying stool, feces and excrement to growing fruits and vegetables significantly raises the risk of spreading disease. - Forbes [HT: Michelle Obama's Mirror]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (3)
Fedpocalypse Now? (Jim Kunstler)
Everybody can see Janet Yellen standing naked in that corner — more like a box canyon — and it’s not a pretty sight.Despite her well-broadcasted insistence that the economic skies are blue, storm clouds scud through every realm and quarter. Equities barfed nearly four% just last week, credit is crumbling (nobody wants to lend), junk bonds are tanking (as defaults loom), currencies all around the world are crashing, hedge funds can’t give investors their money back, “liquidity” is AWOL (no buyers for janky securities), commodities are in freefall, oil is going so deep into the sub-basement of value that the industry may never recover, international trade is evaporating, the president is doing everything possible in Syria to start World War Three, and the monster called globalism is lying in its coffin with a stake pointed over its heart. Debt Rattle December 15 2015 - The Automatic Earth
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:20 AM | Your Say (2)
Skip to the chase and admit: "It's all just window-dressing, and political payback to the NRA."
What has to go? All magazine fed, self-loading firearms. Yes, that means handguns too. Yes, that includes your 4 shot Remington hunting rifle. Yes, that includes rigid controls on police firearms.Nothing says they've lost more plainly than apocalyptic tantrums. Their ship has capsized and they're shaking their fists. Savor the moment. This one is insufferably dreary. After waving the bloody shirt it immediately bogs down into a long procedural fantasy, protracted self-arousal I suspect, with an occasional whiff of red meat intended to, but failing to, keep the reader attentive. Think last orders from the Fuhrer bunker: ghost armies, wonder weapons, unshakable will—that sort of stuff. Touching in a way. Woodpile Report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:57 AM | Your Say (4)
There's a New Woodpile Cut and Stacked
Putin, via Zero Hedge - Regarding the submarine strikes ... This new, modern, highly efficient, and highly precise weapon can be equipped with both a conventional warhead as well as a special, nuclear warhead. Naturally, in the fight against terrorism that is unnecessary, and I hope there will be no need to use nukes against the Islamic State. Woodpile Report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (0)
Islamic State's version of Planned Parenthood
IS militants have reportedly issued a fatwa to its members authorising them to“kill newborn babies with Down syndrome.” According to activist group Mosul Eye, 38 babies have already been killed since the religious decree was issued. In a post on the Mosul Eye Facebook Page today, the media site claims any child with a disability is now at risk of being killed. The information and video have yet to be verified.Shocking, until you consider that at least 30% of Down Syndrome babies in this country are aborted. Indeed, we abort a million babies a year. Don Surber:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (1)
Battle of the Bulge: Dec. 16, 1944: “Kraut column goin’ by. Tanks everywhere.”
He talked about how those “daisy clippers” would scream through the night and turn a wall of solid white into terrifying green from the limbs blasted off Evergreen trees. What a lonesome, spooky sight that musta been! Said they started the battle with six hand grenades and two extra clips and one blanket. It was a sonofabitch, we were assured. It was a night that had a habit of coming back. They were in the Bastogne area for part of that time.The next 3-4 weeks was being surrounded, and unsurrounded, and surrounded again. He said moving that wire truck at night was the scariest shit in the world. You never knew who owned what real estate. Krauts and Yanks strung piano wire across the roads, so riding atop a truck was pretty much not advisable. NOIR CHRISTMAS, 1944 - BRUCE HANIFY
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (0)
"You might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots."
- If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
- If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
- If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (4)
December 14, 2015
Deport Steve Jobs' Corpse
and the inspiration of callow nerds everywhere to ‘think different’ by talking like pretentious Unitarian Universalist new age shits who have been trying and failing to get their hands on mushrooms. So if in taking in fewer migrants (very few of whom are Syrian, as purported) we prevent a future Steve Jobs, I would welcome it. Stupid ‘Designed in California’ phones, built for minimum wage in China, creating few American design jobs contra Chinese manufacturing jobs? Ugly, spotless, antiseptic animated films? Stupid missed-the-train hippie rhetoric? If I had the chance I would’ve deported him. I would rather have Osama Bin Laden buried on American soil than this bastard. - STREET CARNAGE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:56 PM | Your Say (2)
Oh my, the poor little snowflakes. Time to take them to the San Bernadino funerals in full burqa
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (3)
Today it is not difficult to imagine a world devoid of high culture.
In such a world museums will doubtless stay in business, to store what will come to seem the curiosities of earlier centuries;so, too, will a few symphony orchestras remain, while chamber music will seem quainter than Gregorian chant. Libraries, as has already been shown with bookstores, will no longer be required. The diminishing minority still interested in acquiring the benefits of high culture will have to search for it exclusively in the culture of the past. No longer a continuing enterprise, high culture itself will become dead-ended, a curiosity, little more, and thus over time likely to die out. Life will go on. Machines will grow smarter, human beings gradually dumber. Round the world the vast majority might possibly feel that something grand is missing, though they shan’t have a clue to what it might be. Whatever Happened to High Culture? | The Weekly Standard
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 AM | Your Say (3)
Why the "Peaceful Muslim Majority" is Irrelevant
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or execute honor killings. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority,” and it is cowed and extraneous. - Op-Eds - Arutz Sheva
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (1)
Experience!
Gotta admit, Trump does lack the formative experience of our past three presidents: community organizer, president's son, rapist.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) December 12, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (1)
Obama's 2015 "Holiday" Card
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (2)
I didn't get the memo that having an ugly Christmas sweater was now mandatory....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (0)
December 13, 2015
Allahu Akbar!: The View from 2018
In May of 2018, the second year of Mrs. Clinton’s administration, national puzzlement was high over the continuing wave of mass killings.
A week before, nineteen children had died in the Blaintree Kindergarten massacre in San Francisco when Mohammed Shah Massoud, Faisal ibn Saud, and Hussein al Rashid burst into the school and began firing.
As in the shooting three months earlier of thirteen in Washington by Mohammed Faisal and Sala al Din Hussein, and in the preceding fire-bombing of the Hancock Tower in Chicago by Farouk ibn Mohammed, experts struggled to make sense of events. The head of Homeland Security, Chupamela Sanchez-Jones, explained it succinctly: “It is almost impossible to prevent attacks when they have nothing in common. What do you look out for? What is the connection between killing children, firebombing a restaurant, and flying aircraft into buildings? There is none. It is baffling.”
Everyone of importance—the New York Times, MSNBC, NPR, the Huffington Post, Mother Jones, and Salon—agreed that there was no obvious motive. Time and again for many years attackers had come from nowhere and killed for no reason. There was no pattern except the strange cry, “Allahu Akbar.”
Mrs. Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Wilhelmina “Creepy” Crawley, offered an explanation. “My staff at the Pentagon have determined that “Akbar” is a combination of “AK,” automatic Kalashnikov, which I am told is a form of gun, and BAR, Browning Automatic Rifle. This shows an unwholesome fascination with guns. We are investigating links to the NRA:”Many more details at | Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:07 PM | Your Say (0)
The Japanese: Nuked Too Much or Not Enough?
Japanese online retailer Felissimo specializes in all things feline, but they really seem to be in love with cat odor. So much so that they're releasing their second cat-scented product this year! First they came out with a cat paw-scented cream earlier this year, and now they're introducing a special fabric spray that carries the smell of cats' foreheads.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:03 PM | Your Say (2)
Trump exposes the conservative media racket for what it is so they hate him for it.
The way it is supposed to work is the GOP works with National Review,Fox News, “grass roots” organizations that have K Street offices and so on. That way, these folks can make some money, get relatives jobs in the bureaucracy and look like players in the “arena of ideas.” In return, these groups go to the megaphones and rally the voters by declaring the GOP candidate the next Ronald Reagan. The Battle Cry of the Ruling Class | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:59 PM | Your Say (4)
Someday we’ll figure out that war doesn’t require agreement from both parties.
Al Qaeda’s decades-old threat has been supplanted by ISIS, an organization with tens of thousands of adherentsand funded by forty to fifty million dollars per month in extortion, oil and tax money. ISIS has declared war on us, and someday we’ll figure out that war doesn’t require agreement from both parties. When war is declared on you by thirty thousand religious fanatics with weapons, combat experience, hundreds of millions in capital and a burning hatred for anyone who doesn’t agree with their beliefs, you’re at war whether you like it or not. What Police Shootings and Jihad Have in Common | chrishernandezauthor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:39 PM | Your Say (0)
Putting Words
The dentures were made by 22-year-old military dentist E.J. Mallory. “I figured it was my duty to carry out the assignment,” Mallory remembered in 1988. “But that didn’t mean I couldn’t have fun with it.” An amateur ham radio operator, he inscribed the phrase “Remember Pearl Harbor” in Morse code into the dentures and delivered them to Tojo. - - Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (0)
Clinton, Bush, Walker, Sanders, Rubio, Paul, O’Malley, Christie, Perry,
Biden, Santorum, Cruz, Chaffee, Graham, Jindal, Webb, Pataki, Kasich, Gore, Fiorina, Huckabee, Warren, Carson, and Trump.That’s not a list of presidential candidates. That’s a list of congressionally appointed members of a bipartisan blue-ribbon commission named to look into a question of pressing national importance such as “paper or plastic?” Garish Tastes, Awful Hair: Donald Trump Is America - The Daily Beast
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (0)
Freedom is the condition....
Freedom is the condition when a man’s ability to carry out his natural duties
to his civilization are not curtailed by the coercion of the state, nor by the violence of invasion, nor by the trespass or fraud by his fellows. Freedom is when the laws permit and encourage him to carry out those natural duties rather than the reverse. Defining Freedom | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (0)
“Racial” and “Religious” Profiling Now — or Death Later
Those who rail against good profiling — using the propaganda term “racial profiling” — profile using racial factors.They just do it all wrong. Immediately after the San Bernardino shooting, MSNBC suggested it might be the work of pro-lifers (profile: “white”). CNN opined that it could have been perpetrated by militia types (profile: “white”). It was the kind of dishonesty inspiring some leftists to claim that white people are our biggest terror threat. Yet this assertion uses a raw-numbers comparison of murderers from a group representing 62 percent of the population with those from a group representing less than 2 percent of it, conflates a category with a creed (non-ideological mass killings with Islam-inspired incidents), and confuses acts of deranged minds with global jihad. Moreover, as I illustrated last year using statistical analysis, it’s a myth that whites commit in inordinate percentage of mass shootings. SelwynDuke.com:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (2)
This Will be E-Z Pay Day Loans' Most Festive Christmas Yet
Sure, most of our budget to keep the store presentable goes towards chemicals that halt the thick fog of urine wafting in from the alleys outside, but it doesn't take a whole lot of money to give this former feral animal euthanization clinic the True Reason for the Season. -- SA
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (0)
What's happening is that Gessler's Hat has been knocked off the pole.
For those who don't know the story, the rebellion against the Habsburgs by what became Switzerland started when a certain William Tell refused to bow to Gessler's headgear, which was placed on a pole in the market square of Altdorf.
It was only a seemingly little incident but it turned into a big deal. No one could know it, certainly not Gessler and perhaps not even William Tell, but that act of symbolic defiance touched off a series of unpredictable events whose consequences echo to this day, 800 years later. A very similar thing is unfolding today. Trump has forced politics to squarely face the taboo. That act has caused a cascade which is releasing a lot of pent-up energy. The American Reboot | PJ Media
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (0)
December 12, 2015
Is there anyone out there who really thinks the likes of Bill Gates and Richard Branson will do anything at all to stop this world from burning to the ground?
Having these oversized walking talking ego’s sign petitions and declarations they know they will never have to live up to is completely useless.Branson will still fly his planes, Gates will keep running his ultra-cooled server parks, and Obama and Merkel will make sure their economies churn out growth ahead of anything else. Every single country still demands growth. Whatever gains you make in terms of lower emissions will be nullified by that growth. And in the hallways, ‘smart’ entrepreneurs stand ready to pocket a ‘smart’ profit from the alleged switch to clean energy. At the cost of you, the taxpayer. And you believe them, because you want to, and because it makes you feel good. And you don’t have the knowledge available to dispute their claims (hint: try thermodynamics).You’re seeking the cooperation of people who let babies drown and who incessantly bomb the countries these babies and their families were seeking to escape. CON21 - The Automatic Earth
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 PM | Your Say (6)
Make no mistake — this is a free fall, not a slide. We aren’t slipping down the proverbial slippery slope; we’re diving into the abyss, plunging right into the bowels of Hell.
The only developments that could halt our descent are
an apocalyptic asteroid strike, the fall of civilization, the return of Christ, or, less likely, a drastic generational rebellion against the perversity and insanity of our age. Unfortunately, I don’t believe my generation will lead that rebellion — although a bold minority of revolutionaries will certainly try — but perhaps our kids or our kids’ kids will be the ones to turn back the tide. (Then again, we aren’t really having kids anymore, so I guess that brings us back to the fall of civilization as the next most immediate remedy.) Clearly, We Need More Shame And Judgment In Our Society | TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (1)
December 11, 2015
This is hands down the greatest video I have ever seen. pic.twitter.com/LY7QUj3ecA
— 30 Second Fights (@ThirtySecFights) December 8, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:12 PM | Your Say (2)
The Emperor is the ultimate good guy of the Star Wars universe,
— sorry, feminists — ugh, I mean the Yuuzhan Vong. All of his military build-up was to defend the galaxy from this terrifying invasion, and instead the terrorists caused a war to take a different path, one that cost half of the galaxy their lives.Star Wars Is Garbage - Breitbart
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:40 PM | Your Say (0)
December 10, 2015
"JOHN LENNON IS A TRADEMARK OF YOKO ONO LENNON"
so that when Mark Chapman pumped 3 bullets into him on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, it wasn't just the dollar millions of the Lennon estate that passed into Yoko Ono’s hands, but also custody of a spiritual legacy that embraced everybody who lived through or was influenced by the 60s. From the early days of their relationship the enigmatic, unsmiling, twice divorced Yoko was reviled. Paul in particular had trouble tolerating her. - - Alternative Right:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:58 PM | Your Say (10)
"F#$% You Rahm" Strong letter follows.
Do you have a clue? Perhaps it's because you aren't driving a ghetto-hoopty ride with one headlight, invalid plates and music jacked up do window rattling volume at all hours?Maybe you aren't howling gibberish, shoving shoppers, snatching iPhones on Michigan Avenue? Maybe you aren't hanging out on the corner at all hours, holding an entire neighborhood hostage with your drug sales, threatening, beating, burning the houses of those who complain? Or maybe, just maybe, you aren't firing weapons at someone who "dissed" you over a rap song, killing the rival dealer or executing 9-year-old kids for who their relative are to the tune of 450 murders and 2,800 wounded. Second City Cop
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:36 PM | Your Say (3)
Collective punishment. The Nazis used to do that in the occupied countries.
It’s a great strategy for sowing fear, and fear is exactly what the left wants to spread.Another great strategy is to make it clear that one mistake will be your last. People will always second-guess their actions if they know they won’t have a second chance if they screw up. Last but not least is the strategy of making the crime of being racist equal to or greater than that of, say, committing mass murder. In the wake of last week’s terror attack, we saw this tactic employed by excremental harridan Linda Stasi in the New York Post when she claimed that one of the San Bernardino victims not only deserved his death, but was as culpable as the murderers, because of “hateful” views he expressed on Facebook. Sum Ting Wong - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:26 PM | Your Say (1)
December 9, 2015
Time's Slut of the Year
To be fair to TIME, they did also make Hitler and Stalin TIME Person of the Year. https://t.co/YUbYXxb2pj
— scientism (@mr_scientism) December 9, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:01 PM | Your Say (0)
”With the exception of POTUS, the Atty General, both leading presidential candidates, the media, and universities, Americans love free speech.”
Calling Trump a fascist is a bit much(fascism, as Tom Wolfe once reported, is forever descending upon the United States, but somehow it always lands on Europe), but movements like fascism and communism get their start because the mechanisms of liberal democracy seem weak and ineffectual and dishonest. If you don’t want Trump — or, perhaps, some post-Trump figure who really is a fascist — to dominate things, you need to stop being weak and ineffectual and dishonest.Glenn Reynolds: Liberals have chosen The Donald as their 'Destructor'
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:16 PM | Your Say (3)
If Americans want grace by helping these people, planes fly to these countries, not just from them.
Let the grace seekers hop a plane to Marrakesh and help the Mohammedan in his native land.
But then, saying that means casting doubt on the whole moral structure of the ruling class. If Mohamed is not going to workout as a potential citizen in a modern technological society, then that means not all men are the same after all. If that’s true then universal equality is false. At that point the whole rationale for the modern American ruling elite unravels. A ruling class without a raison d’être is going to have a short shelf life. Fear of the R | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:54 PM | Your Say (1)
“The reading public has learned how to consume even the greatest fiction as if it were a can of soup.
Business executives can buy great paintings and hang them on their walls as status trophies. Tourists can ‘do’ the greatest architecture in an hour’s guided tour. But poetry, thank God, the public still find indigestible.” Auden : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (2)
Trump: "If a person is a Muslim and goes overseas and come back, they can come back. They are a citizen, that is different."
Don Surber: Why do reporters misquote Trump? My money is on him. Here's why: He already has reduced them to lying.
Take his call to block the immigration of Muslims "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." That resonated with America, and so Ben Kasimar of The Hill falsely reported that Trump would include U.S. citizens who are re-entering the country. He based that on an email from a spokesperson. Kasimar did not disclose what his email said. But increasingly the truth -- in this case, what Trump's actual position is -- does not matter to national reporters. Rather than merely report the news, Kasimar decided to make the news up. Trump went on ABC and made it clear that what he said was what he sid: Immigrants, not citizens:"If a person is a Muslim and goes overseas and come back, they can come back. They are a citizen, that is different."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (2)
Obama is Scylla to Trump's Charybdis. It's a menace in itself.
Choose Your Fascism | PJ Media As the blogger Ace of Spades
put it, "think about this for a moment though. How many people who are deeply, deeply offended about keeping non-citizen Muslims out of the US think it's perfectly fine to force Christian bakers to provide a cake for same sex ceremonies? " It is a false kind of hospitality that rolls out the red carpet to strangers only to direct them straight to the bugged room. It is a strange kind of anti-fascism that uses police state methods to enforce tolerance. We live in a world of "friends and neighbors" only rhetorically. In practice we are well on our way to creating a penitentiary.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (0)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Putin threatens to use nuclear weapons against Isis but hopes they "will never be needed."
Vladimir Putin has said he hopes nuclear warheads will not be needed to deal with Isis, after Russia launched cruise missiles from its submarine at the militant group in Syria. During a meeting in the Kremlin, Russiaâs Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told the President that Kalibr cruise missiles had been fired by the Rostov-on-Don submarine from the Mediterranean Sea for the first time.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (2)
December 8, 2015
AR-15 vs. AK-47 v.s. Mosin-Nagant [Bumped]
AR-15: Carried by elite special forces and highly-trained American soldiers
AK-47: Carried by illiterate peons and unwilling conscripts.
Mosin-Nagant-Nagant: Carried by Vassily Zaitsev.
AR15: Might just stop that charging terrorist with a three round burst
AK47: Would stop the terrorist in his tracks
Mosin-Nagant: Would stop the charging terrorist, his three buddies, and blow up the IED in the next block from the shockwave of the bullet…
AR15: Shoots a .22.
AK47: Shoots a carbine round.
Mosin-Nagant: Shoots a cannonball.
AR15: Invented 50 years ago by a consummate engineer
AK47: Invented 60 years ago by wounded tank sergeant
Mosin-Nagant: Invented 117 years ago by two drunks on a budget.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:11 PM | Your Say (14)
‘This Will Be The End Of Trump’s Campaign,’ Says Increasingly Nervous Man For Seventh Time This Year
by once again stating this would be the end of the Republican frontrunner’s campaign, sources confirmed. “Well, that’s it—you just can’t say those kinds of things and expect to be taken seriously any longer,” said an anxious Howe, his voice quavering slightly as he spoke aloud the very same words he had previously uttered in reaction to remarks about Mexicans, women, the disabled, former POW John McCain, and a number of other targeted parties. “That’s the final nail in the coffin right there. There’s no way he’s coming back from this one.” At press time, a visibly tense Howe was steadily amassing the angst and exasperation that would be unleashed in his seventh expletive-filled exclamation of the year when he catches sight of the newest set of GOP poll numbers. - - Source
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:01 PM | Your Say (2)
"A country filled with baby pussy's will be enslaved, caged, tortured, and killed."
Plan "A": The president must run a PSA on all TV channels and radio station every 1/2 hour for 30 days straight.
In this PSA he tells the american people that all adults over the age of 18 must be armed with a firearm at all times and if they see danger they are required to neutralize said danger as fast as possible no matter the race, gender, religion, or otherwise of the danger party. For a country with supposedly 300,000,000 guns there is no sane reason for any citizen to be scared of anything at all, ever. People need to be forced to rely on their own spines for the support that others have used for millenia and stop begging others to take care of them, in all things. A country filled with baby pussy's will be enslaved, caged, tortured, and killed. There is no Plan B because A is the only permanent solution. - see history -- ghostsniper
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:35 PM | Your Say (2)
How many dead Americans are you willing to pay?
I propose that instead of calling fellow citizens racists or idiotswe do a deeper dive into the risks and put a price tag on our preference for religious intolerance. If the risk of future terror attacks is tiny, most of us would prefer maintaining our respect for religious differences. But if the risk is more than tiny, can you put a price on your love of religious tolerance? In other words, how many dead Americans are you willing to accept? I’ll go first. Personally, I would accept up to 1,000 dead Americans, over a ten-year period, to allow Muslim non-citizens to enter this country. My calculation assumes we are better off accepting some degree of tragedy in the name of freedom. That is often the case with freedom. Risk Management - (Trump Persuasion Series) | Scott Adams Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:08 PM | Your Say (4)
There's Life in the Old Bird Yet
Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, was seen at the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge with a mate at the weekend following a year’s absence. She was first tagged in 1956 and has raised at least 36 chicks since then. - - Telegraph
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:21 PM | Your Say (5)
Greeks Told To Declare Cash "Under The Mattress", Jewelry And Precious Stones
When earlier today we read a report in the Greek Enikonomia, according to which Greek taxpayers would be forced to declare all cash "under the mattress"(including inside) or boxes that contain more than 15,000 euros as well as jewelry and precious stones (including gold) worth over 30,000 euros, starting in 2016, we assumed this has to be some early April fools joke or a mistake. After all, this would be merely the first step toward full-blown asset confiscation, conducted so many times by insolvent governments throughout history, once the government cracks down on those who made a "mistake" in their asset declaration form or simply refuse to fill such a declaration, thereby making all their assets eligible for government confiscation. | Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:43 PM | Your Say (6)
"I have faith, if not confidence, that Enlightenment Liberals still believe in class, noblesse and society."
For several years I've been looking for an elevated Left.
I don't think I'll ever be satisfied but I have faith, if not confidence, that Enlightenment Liberals still believe in class, noblesse and society. So whoever, wherever such people are, I'm happy to join with them in opposition to the kind of shrill blowhard that is Trump. I don't blame America for having credulous people and I don't blame the people for being angry or feeling that Trump expresses that anger well. It's simply that we should all know that great leaders don't scream. Helpless people scream. And I sincerely believe that Donald Trump is the kind of helpless person who simply cannot understand the limits of his power. He thinks that he can do in government what he cannot do in real estate or entertainment, and for those questions that make him itch, he wants the power to make the itch go away. Now. Trump's Head - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:27 PM | Your Say (6)
Trump is playing the odds, and smartly, whether you like it or not.
ISIS, or its supporters, will certainly strike again.And each time that happens you will try to imagine what can be done about it. And you will only know of one option – the Trump option of shutting down all Muslim immigration for now. You can hate that option or you can love it. But you probably don’t know of any other plan. Risk Management - (Trump Persuasion Series) | Scott Adams Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (2)
"China is engaged upon a more lasting and civilization-changing process too long-term to interest the Western media."
In May 2014, China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency clarified the intended route of the New Silk Road. This engineering marvel will run from Xi’an in Central China toward Kazakhstan, where it switches to a southwest route across Central Asia to northern Iran before redirecting west again through Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. From Istanbul it crosses the Bosphorus and runs northwest through Europe, from Bulgaria to Germany and ultimately to Rotterdam. From Rotterdam the route heads south to Venice, Italy—where it meets up with the Maritime Silk Road.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (1)
The Left hates decent Americans so very, very much.
They hate your religion, your independence, your stubborn refusal to submit.
They hate your prosperity, your resourcefulness, and your refusal to believe their fairy tales about an Almighty State that can take care of everyone’s needs in a fair and just manner. They hate that you keep noticing their failures. They hate that you won’t let them import a more pliable electorate from other countries without putting up a fight. They’re furious that you won’t accept their sacred religious belief that everything is your fault, and you deserve generations of punishment for the sins of your fathers. Lefty Hatred Unleashed By San Bernardino Jihad
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (2)
December 7, 2015
How many more Farooks are there, and where? And when?
Sense of Events: San Bernadino as Farook's rite of passage No doubt the FBI is working to determine whothe "Middle Eastern looking men" are that a neighbor said started showing up at Farook's house about six months ago. And they are surely even now checking with USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc., on deliveries made to the house that the neighbors reported - where originated, by whom, who paid and whether by traceable instrument. Someone either taught Farook to make pipe bombs or made them for him. Someone inculcated a sense of discipline in the couple to hit the one target for a very short time and leave. Clearly they expected more to come in whatever kind of Islamist affiliation they had.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:29 PM | Your Say (2)
December 6, 2015
The whole Western world has turned sleazy and it needs hype for its fulfillment.
Perhaps that’s why we have to keep inventing them. A one-time Olympic gold-medal winner in the decathlon, the toughest of all track-and-field events, changes sex forty years after his victory, and Vanity Fair sticks him on the cover. I’ve said this before, but if a Martian came down and read the N.Y. Times or watched the TV news, he would definitely think this planet is inhabited by transgender men and women, lesbians, bisexuals, bondage/dominance/submission types, and a few white beer-drinking truck drivers who spend their days and nights shooting black and Hispanic people. Hype Is Tripe - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:35 PM | Your Say (0)
If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:52 PM | Your Say (0)
I blame the Democrats and their media enablers for this massacre.
Their immigration laws have allowed Islam to establish a foothold in our country.
They have prevented us from rational profiling. Thanks to progressive rules, the facility where the massacre took place was a "gun-free zone." The victims, most of whom I am willing to bet were of progressive mind sets, were not able to defend themselves. In addition, of course, California has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S. The killers in San Bernardino not only violated the "gun-free zone" they also had illegal high capacity magazines in their weapons, and of course, they violated the law against pipe bombs and IEDs. The DiploMad 2.0: Yes, Indeed, Let's Revise Our Gun Laws
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:46 PM | Your Say (0)
On San Bernardino: Perhaps the most useful public policy, in light of the latest “homegrown” Muslim terror hit, in San Bernardino or wherever, would be to offer free police firearms training
The alternatives are all worse: we must continue expanding “Homeland Security” or its cumbersome likes in other national jurisdictions.This is both expensive and inconvenient. Police, ambulances, the National Guard, are all very well, but it takes some minutes for any to arrive on a scene where seconds are important. Whether or not the killers are Muslim, we need assurance that they will be cut down within a handshake of initiating their rampages. (Dead within two seconds is the Israeli ideal.) The psycho, in turn, needs to be assured that if he has more than, say, one target, there is a strong statistical likelihood that at least one of them is not only armed, but trained to extinguish him without delay. This way the police may concentrate their efforts on profiling the more sophisticated bombers. On San Bernardino : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:37 PM | Your Say (1)
Quirky Erotic Illustrations
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:57 PM | Your Say (0)
A Bumper Crop at Islam's Heart of Darkness: Saudi Arabia's 2015 beheadings the most in 20 years
The stark rise in the number of executions has seen, on average, one person killed every two days, according to the human rights group, Amnesty International. - Al Jazeera English
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:19 PM | Your Say (0)
Islam is a criminal racket, pure and simple.
It was conceived by a cadre of warlords – I am skeptical that “mohammed” even existed – as a pure scam to muster an army, seize landmass and capital, both physical and human, assert political power, levy taxes and amass enormous wealth as oligarchs.
Oh, and also get as much freaky, perverted sex as the oligarchs wanted. Interestingly, the word “mohammed” was not only a proper name, but also an honorific title. I suspect that these warlords fanned out and were called “mohammed” by their respective gestapo toadies as a title/honorific, and the name stuck and was used as the fake “biography” of “the prophet of islam” when it was written over 100 years later. Then, stories were passed down throughout the Arabian peninsula of ancestors having seen “mohammed”, who was, in fact, just one of these numerous warlord oligarchs. Cut the Crap: Unless âRacketeeringâ is a species of heresy, islam is NOT a âChristian heresyâ. | Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (4)
I remember the rise of the administrative state back in the 1980s.
As a result, people stopped thinking about the consequences of their activities. They just looked for the warning label and, if they didn’t see one, went ahead. If things went wrong, they blamed the government: “There should have been a warning label!” Government gladly paid the fines from these lawsuits because it saw an unstoppable, infinite way to justify increases in its power. All they had to do was find some poor idiot who couldn’t figure out that pulling the pin on a hand grenade and inserting it in his rectum was a bad idea, and boom! another 400 bureaucrats and cops were hired, another 10,000 lines of regulations and twenty federal laws were added, and the great leech-off-society parasitic jobs program called Government could continue. Safe spaces must be destroyed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (1)
It’s a matter of simple math that as the population most likely to commit terrorist acts increases, so do the acts themselves.
When the Redlands Tea Party Patriots objected to the resettling of Syrian Muslim migrants in their community, CAIR accused them of “paranoia and phobia is rooted in a combination of ignorance and bigotry.”But “paranoia and phobia” are the modern condition that the free world has found itself living in. Islamic terrorism can strike anytime and anywhere from a Paris concert hall to a San Bernardino County facility where disabled children were being helped. It’s ignorance to ignore that and bigotry to defend it. Sultan Knish: Protecting Ourselves From the Next Peaceful Massacre
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (0)
Brussels thinks it’s found a whipping boy for all its failures. Greece.
The justification given for this insane shortfall is that Greece doesn’t blindly follow all orders emanating from Europe’s ‘leaders’.Orders such as setting up a joint patrol of the Aegean seas with … yes, Erdogan’s Turkey. Where Greece gets next to nothing as the children keep drowning, Turkey gets €3 billion and a half-baked promise to join the Union sometime in the future.Which was never going to happen, the EU would blow up before Turkey joins and certainly if it does, and most certainly now that Russia’s busy detailing the link between the Erdogan cabal and Europe’s supposed new archenemies -move over Putin?!, which, incidentally, are reason for France to ponder a kind of permanent state of emergency; ostensibly, this is Hollande’s way of exuding confidence. ‘We must protect our way of life’. Greece Is A Nation Under Occupation | Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (0)
December 5, 2015
"Extremist Muslims are living their fantasy life: they're Progressive Rock Stars."
Answer by AnonymousBosch: "By ten years of age, I was suspecting this was the truth. By twenty years of age, I was convinced, and settled on this theory:
"Progressives loathe the good and the beautiful, so will always use whatever power they possess to side with the bad actor in any situation: the weak, the lazy the dishonest, the manipulative, the violent. Anyone who reflects their own sense of inadequacy back at them will be sympathised with, and their negative behaviour will be rationalised away to avoid the progressive considering self-reflection, feeling shame, and feeling any need to work to be any better than they are, for they are already perfect, and it is the rest of the world who is flawed for not recognising their genius and sex appeal.
"Taking this further: given the choice between accepting they're mediocre, bad people who are damaged and broken, they'll project their cynicism onto the world and decide that no-one can actually be good and decent, and that everyone must be secretly-flawed. * (A good example of this was one of the Jezebel writer's defence of Lena Dunham, saying "Like you've never sexually-experimented with your sister!")
"As such, Progressives, given power, will always guarantee a dysfunctional outcome: they will champion justice, tolerance, fairness and equality of outcome in a way that guarantee injustices, intolerance, unfairness and inequality. If they claim to be building a better society or institution, all they will be doing is destroying an existing one. If they strive to elevate a population, they will only degrade it. If they're seeking to protect the marginalised, they will champion those already powerful. If they speak about privilege, they will possess it. If they speak about experiencing hardship, they'll come from comfortable backgrounds.
"So, Muslims? They represent the Progressive Power Fantasy taken to extremes: ruling over a strict society where dissent isn't allowed or tolerated, who terrorise and murder other people who hold different views to them. Pay attention to progressive Twitter feeds some time, and note the constant fantasies of murdering, killing, or mass exterminating others over (often minor) differences in political viewpoints. To Progressives, wishing death on someone over a simple disagreement is a normal, rational way of thinking. This is why they must never be handed state power.
Extremist Muslims are living their fantasy life: they're Progressive Rock Stars. Does it make sense now?"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (4)
Happy Acres: "I pulled off at Vallejo. It was the saddest experience I’ve had in a long time."
I pulled off at Vallejo. It was the saddest experience I’ve had in a long time. An old, historic, picture postcard town…now a set in the Walking Dead. At the top of the map, where Redwood intersects 29, beggars man the four corners, like unspeakably dirty bridge trolls. You intuit they’re permanent fixtures. All around in every direction, your eyes see nothing but dirt, decay, neglect, enshamblement, coarsening, rust – like civilization & intelligence up & left and the jungle is reclaiming the place. But the jungle is reclaiming it SLOWLY, as if to prolong the torture. Hints of the genteel past make it excruciatingly painful to witness.
Graffiti covers every surface. White faces are rare. I did see a regal white matron walking down the Main Street sidewalk who acted like it was all normal around her. Further down Old Main Street - which must have resemble a picturebook not so long ago - quaint storefronts are tarted up like a mockery of their former selves: check-cashing, tattoos, gov’t welfare, pawn Enterprising old black men were pushing garbage containers, scavenging I guess. On every block, always in pairs, dressed in rags. A mob of black teens startled us as they appeared from nowhere, pedalling bikes against the traffic, weaving between cars, chased by other screaming black kids on foot, all in the middle of downtown in the middle of the day. It was chaos. HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (3)
December 4, 2015
How a 5-Ounce Bird Stores 10,000 Maps in Its Head
They’re accurate, detailed, and instantly retrievable. It’s been burying seeds since August. It’s hidden so many (one study says almost 100,000 seeds) in the forest, meadows, and tree nooks that it can now fly up, look down, and see little x’s marking those spots—here, here, not there, but here—and do this for maybe a couple of miles around. It will remember these x’s for the next nine months. : Curiously Krulwich
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 PM | Your Say (3)
First World Dubai Problems
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:46 PM | Your Say (1)
How Many Jihad Killings Would America Have Suffered Without The Surveillance State?
With few exceptions, almost all these thwarted attackers were Muslims putting the lie to the shitlib “religion of peace” mantra of impotence. The total number of American deaths from these 50 thwarted “shadow jihads” could have easily gone into the tens of thousands had the attack planners remained undiscovered by authorities and free to execute with extreme prejudice. | Chateau Heartiste
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:12 PM | Your Say (4)
Somehow, the public debates always revolve around options that are unlikely to work or promise to make things worse.
The public debate over health care in America is one side with their insanely complex plansversus the other side with their insanely complex plans. ObamaCare is tens of thousands of pages of rules and regulations that no one comprehends. The results have been disastrous, but simply repealing it is considered madness. Instead, the only possible option is to pile on even more insanely complex plans, like throwing a drowning man an anchor. It’s as if the people in charge want the whole thing to collapse. A Sickness Reason Cannot Cure | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:09 PM | Your Say (1)
Why Doesn't the GOP Elite Give Up on Amnesty?
Today, Trump’s massive rallies can be interpreted as an expression of the historic populist undercurrent animating America’s white working class.Or they can be interpreted, with less sophistication, as Americans saying, as loudly as they can, “WE DON’T WANT YOUR F___ING ‘COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM.'” Either way, anger over elite “more immigration” plans is the molten core of the Trump eruption. Is there any doubt that if “comprehensive immigration reform” went away for good, Trumpism would wither? So why don’t Haley Barbour and Karl Rove call a big K Street meeting where they say, “Boys, we have to throw the damn yahoos this bone. We’re giving up on amnesty”? | Mickey Kaus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 AM | Your Say (1)
Jack Spicer: Imaginary Elegies: IV
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 AM | Your Say (0)
Room ready for next Obama press conference....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (1)
India gave Muslims their own country and got nothing but grief for it.
This is what happens when you negotiate with terrorists. Indians are the best immigrants we got. They don’t inbreed close to as much as Pakistanis do. They are genetically indistinguishable from whites. They don’t hammer their religion down our throats and are happy to assimilate. They even serve us their most sacred animal with fries and a shake. Muslims don’t like it when we eat BLTs. Indians don’t take jobs, they create them by opening corner stores and motels. - STREET CARNAGE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (0)
December 3, 2015
"The most pacific human beings in world history: 21st-century white American men."
Coulter: San Bernardino Shooters Unknown - Here Are Some Past Mass ShootersAt the time, normal people were enraged that the media refused to cover the Muslim reaction to 9/11, all while lavishing endless column inches on a non-existent "backlash" against Muslims. But now these journalist-referees turn around and insist that the only acceptable proof that Muslims cheered the 9/11 attack is the existence of the very media coverage that they obstinately refused to provide. There's a reason most people trust their own recollections over media reports. After 20 years of nearly non-stop mass murder by non-white immigrants in a country that is still majority white, our media have the audacity to claim that tens of thousands of Syrian Muslims are less dangerous than the most pacific human beings in world history: 21st-century white American men.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (4)
December 2, 2015
No one ever talks about “President Trump” as it is just assumed he is a novelty act.
The first thing the [expert] guy said was that Trump has more paid staff on the ground that anyone other than Bush.He has the second biggest team in Iowa and the biggest team in New Hampshire. Bush with all his money has more paid staff in Iowa, but Bush has collapsed and is laying off staff everywhere. Trump meanwhile keeps climbing in the polls. Current numbers have him in the 30’s. The other thing he said is professionals on the ground in the early states are getting used to the idea of him winning. According to the expert, this is the prelude to voters getting used to the idea of him winning. Gettin’ High off The Supply | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 PM | Your Say (8)
If America had even liberal President Barlet instead of President Pantywaist Pussyman....
Bartlet: Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation?He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the words "Civis Romanis" I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens. Where was Morris' protection, or anyone else on that plane? Where is the retribution for the families and where is the warning to the rest of the world that Americans shall walk this earth unharmed, lest the clenched fist of the most mighty military force in the history of mankind comes crashing down on your house!? Quotes from A Proportional Response
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:39 PM | Your Say (7)
Trump embodies the true American spirit.
Who cares if he says something “stupid” and changes his mind?Trump embodies the true American spirit. Or what it should be, at least. He’s a fucking asshole who doesn’t give a shit what nobody thinks. That’s a beautiful thing in this day and age; and something worth not only celebrating, but championing. Putting Trump in office wouldn’t be some ridiculous move from Idiocracy. It’s a necessary step in making presidents act less like pussies. - STREET CARNAGE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (4)
Latest from the death cult
Sad news from San Francisco, today.It seems Mark Zuckerberg, who has by age thirty or so amassed a fortune of some forty-five billion (thousand million) electronic dollars with his “Facebook” obscenity, intends to loose “99 percent” of this holding. He and his paediatrician wife, Priscilla Chan, announced this in the most sick-making, sentimental way they could think of: framing it as a letter to their (presumably illiterate) newborn daughter. Their huge fortune is now earmarked (if they are telling the truth) to “advancing human potential and promoting equality” — i.e. the usual smug liberal and progressive stodge. I stagger to think of the harm so much money may do. : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (5)
December 1, 2015
Dammit!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:59 PM | Your Say (0)
D. Vader: "Took up photography lately"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:18 PM | Your Say (0)
If you can't judge a book by its cover, what reason do you have for buying it?
Notable Book Covers for 2015 | The Casual Optimist
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:09 PM | Your Say (2)
Pass if they ask "Do you want extra foam?"
Coffee chain Starbucks recently launched a new ad campaign featuring two well-known drag artists – American Idol star Adore Delano and RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bianca Del Rio. Pastor James David Manning, of the ATLAH World Missionary Church in Harlem, claimed last week that Starbucks was “ground zero” for Ebola, which is being spread by “upscale sodomites”. His remarks sparked a protest in which gay rights advocates handed out free coffee outside his church – which has provoked Manning into another attack on Starbucks.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (7)