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January 31, 2016
"The future of the Western Hemisphere is not in doubt for me."
As I sit in the ghetto airport that is Ft Lauderdale, waiting for my delayed flight to get me back to Los Angeles, I find myself missing the clean expanse of Bogota's El Dorado International.Then again, we have our airways for the class of folks that are on Bogota's busses. The future of the Western Hemisphere is not in doubt for me, and my company's alliance with Latin America and Australia is giving me a unique perspective in international business and living. I am proud to be Western. We know how to live, and I think we will survive with confidence any sort of catastrophe evil men are planning for us. We are working with optimism here, and we know how to build and rebuild. Our people expect it, and they are right to. Bogotanos - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (0)
TRUZ: Trump – Cruz 2016: They are as much fun as chemotherapy,
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (4)
January 30, 2016
[Bumped] My dad is dying, please help me pay for a budget cremation
He shortened the war with Japan by improving the design of the Calutron, the machine used at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to separate uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. After over 20 happy years caring for my late life partner, who died of complications of multiple sclerosis in 2004, I came back home in October 2006 to live with my dad and provide his care. But I need help from my friends to do my last service for him. I need to ask for donations to cover the cost of a budget cremation for him. — Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative LesbianDone.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:23 PM | Your Say (19)
Snoop Dogg narrating Planet Earth is one of the most iconic things of 2016 thus far pic.twitter.com/ykD6U4F8Ua
— Animal Plizzanet (@AnimalPlizanet) January 29, 2016More than 16,000 people have signed a petition to get @SnoopDogg to narrate 'Planet Earth' https://t.co/Z3k3V1sEgS
— Mashable (@mashable) January 29, 2016Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (5)
The latest word of modern science lasts no longer than the latest word in women’s fashion.
If the Bible is chained to an interpretation saying that ‘Let There Be Light’ refers to the Big Bang,what becomes of faith when scientists in our children’s generation discover that the Steady State theory was correct after all, and there never was a Big Bang? What do Biblical scholars who busily reconciled Genesis with Darwin do once Darwin is thrown on the same ash heap of exploded scientific models as phlogiston and geocentrism and phrenology? Darwin and Genesis | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (3)
No longer bothering to even pretend they're not propagandists
HuffPo to State Trump Is 'Racist' After Every Article (NEWSER) –Hoping to learn more about Donald Trump's campaign by perusing the Huffington Post? You'll also learn that he's a "serial liar" and a "racist." An editor's note attached to a Trump story published Wednesday reads: "Note to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims—1.6 billion members of an entire religion—from entering the US." It was no one-off message: A Huffington Post rep tells Politico the note will be appended to all future stories about the Republican frontrunner.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (3)
January 29, 2016
These Guys Are Old: It's 12 O'Clock High for the Traditional Conservative Establishment
Captain Capitalism: With the National Review's hit piece on Donald Trump, it because apparent to me not only how ineffective this group has been for the past three decades, but how out of touch they are from the political reality on the ground.They, eerily similar to their leftist academian counterparts, pine and pontificate haughtily thinking penning one more piece in the WSJ or one more interview on Fox News will somehow convince millennials not to vote in more of their own financial slavery, or get women to realize there isn't a war on them by white male republicans. But the problem is, quite simply, their time is over. And I don't mean that in a leadership way. I mean that in a literal way. These guys are old. Their lives are over. Ann Coulter like Jennifer Aniston WAS hot. And the battle is no longer about what kind of America THEY are going to live in (they've already lived in it - a failing one). The battle is now ours and what we want America to become. And thus it is time to relieve the traditional conservative establishment.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:59 PM | Your Say (7)
We're the Only Animals With Chins, and No One Knows Why
“When we're looking at things that are uniquely human, we can't look to big brains or bipedalism because our extinct relatives had those. But they didn't have chins. That makes this immediately relevant to everyone.” - The Atlantic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (9)
Google Maps You Can Explore the World's Largest Model Railway
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (0)
"Oh yeah? Well The Jerk Store called and they're running out of you!"
(In fact, I have considered writing a post playing devil’s advocate and dispensing anti-AMOG advice to Trump’s Trumpenstruck victims.) However, it’s much more fun to watch Trump steamroll every goddamn cuck, cunt, and globalist turncoat in his signature jerkboy style. Why Shitlibs Are Helpless To Stump The Trump | Chateau Heartiste
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:19 AM | Your Say (0)
January 28, 2016
After all, if a man can wear a sundress and become a woman,
a girl can put on a set of mouse ears and be a rodent.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:02 PM | Your Say (1)
Otherkin Rights Now!
All of this sounds insane and it used to be considered as such, but we live in an age where the line between reality, insanity and fantasy is arbitrary. As soon as something is declared arbitrary it becomes a social construct and those are just about the worst things imaginable, except Hitler. He remains the worst, but social constructs and those yesterday men who traffic in them are down there with Hitler too. | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:38 PM | Your Say (2)
Smart money says Trump will draw more viewers than the seven dwarfs running out the string will attract to the debate.
Don Surber: Trump on CNN versus Fox News at 9 p.m. Rand Paul, who refused to accept a position in the children's table debate, will take Trump's place.
It's like Johnny Manziel replacing Cam Newton. At 75, Ailes should know by now you don't defecate where you dine.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:43 PM | Your Say (2)
Trump Proves He Isn’t Qualified
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:05 PM | Your Say (5)
Enough about Megyn Kelly, whose metastasizing ego
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:21 PM | Your Say (10)
Media to Donald Trump: Unchain My Heart
I'm under your spell like a man in a trance
But I know darn well, that I don't stand a chance so
Unchain my heart, let me go my way
Unchain my heart, you worry me night and day
Why lead me through a life of misery
When you don't care a bag of beans for me
So unchain my heart, oh please, please set me free
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:14 PM | Your Say (1)
In 2008 the Western political classes supported a leader whose avowed program was to reach an arrangement with the worst regimes in the world.
We are now in the 7th year of that policy.That democracy has been in retreat since then, and that the West is being invaded by millions fleeing the collapsing totalitarianisms is less surprising than inevitable. The Guardian bemoans the fact that Chinese snatch-squads are roaming the world, kidnapping dissidents from anywhere on the planet without so much as raising a whimper from the Western governments.But what did they expect? If it is now immoral to defend Western borders against "migrants" then there is no case for defending anyone from foreign strongmen who might be worth a couple of billion in donations. Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean ... | PJ Media
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (1)
The left simply shifts power and legitimacy to whatever institutions it controls, elected or unelected, and then governs from there.
If the Republicans control the White House, the left proclaims that Congress is the true voice of the people and must be heeded while the guy in the White House is the next Hitler.If Democrats control the White House and Republicans control Congress, then we must all support "our president" and Congress is a bunch of obstructionist bigots fighting to bring back the Middle Ages. If Democrats lose both, then the Supreme Court suddenly becomes the most legitimate institution. If they lose all three, then it's the heroic regulators, watchdogs and activist non-profits who matter. Sultan Knish: Trump, Dictatorship and Competing With An Illiberal Left
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (0)
January 27, 2016
"We are Muslims, defending Muslim religion, we are on our own, my dear, we have organized our own group..."
A terrorist-style plot intended to kill dozens of people with automatic weapons at a Masonic center in Milwaukee was foiled this week by FBI agents, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. Samy Mohamed Hamzeh discussed his plan to attack the center with two others, detailing how they would quickly and quietly kill the first people they saw and then methodically move through the building, "eliminating everyone" they encountered, according to a federal criminal complaint. Hamzeh, 23, has been charged with possessing a machine gun and a silencer. Despite indications of an attempted act of terrorism, Hamzeh is not charged with any terrorism counts.... "Thirty is excellent. If I got out, after killing thirty people, I will be happy 100% ... 100% happy, because these 30 will terrify the world."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (10)
Parisian Poodle Serving Table: Part dog, part French maid. Best of both worlds.
I can't prove this but I am 100% certain my dog is avoiding me ever since I bought this. He keeps at least a 10 foot distance from me and just turns his head whenever I look at him. This table, remarkable craftsmanship and wonderful aesthetics aside, has cost me my only friendship.... It was love at first sight when I first glimpsed the Parisian Poodle Serving Table, which seemed the perfect complement to my home. Unfortunately, that very same home was taken from me when the tunnels I was digging underneath collapsed, causing the entire structure to be condemned. I intend to tunnel back in and reclaim this beautiful serving table, along with several changes of clothes so I don't raise any red flags at work.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (4)
The competition on the Republican side has narrowed to Trump versus Trump.
If he stumbles, he loses.
If he doesn’t, he wins. But the other candidates and all of their money will not change anything. The presidency is 100% in Trump’s hands to win or lose.... If FOX doesn’t budge, and Trump skips the debate, he will tweet the entire mess like it is Mystery Science Theater 3000. The next day, the news will interject his tweets with their commentary about each participant. Obviously Trump’s tweets would include his usual eyebrow-raising insults and claims, and draw all attention his way. And unlike the people in the debate, he can “twitter-interrupt” them at any point with his counter-punches and clever insults. | Scott Adams
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (0)
January 26, 2016
We’re all gonna die.... Tomorrow
Algore said ten years ago that we had ten years to save the planet, that if we didn't, that life on earth would be totally unlike it was ten years ago. And then guys like Larry David came along, "You know, Al, he's a funny guy, but when he gets serious, you have to listen, 'cause Al's telling us that if we don't act on this, the earth is gonna become this giant skillet in ten years." --Rush Limbaugh Show
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:26 PM | Your Say (7)
Regarding the Call for The Affirmative-Action Oscars....
Stop acting like spoiled brats. Look to the next awards show for recognition — if you deserve it." Molen doesn't know the racial makeup of the more than 6,000-member Academy, but it's a "stupid assumption" to presume a good number of white members aren't voting for black actors due to their skin color:
"In a liberal town like Hollywood, that makes about as much sense as saying all members of the Academy vote Republican."
Molen has produced Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Twister, Rain Man, Minority Report and other blockbusters, as well as the Dinesh D'Souza documentary 2016: Obama's America. Conservative Oscar-Winner Denounces Hollywood Brats Crying Racism | Truth Revolt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (5)
January 25, 2016
Both Republicans and Democrats, our ruling class, have utterly failed this nation for far too long
and have betrayed their supporters, the Constitution, and the rule of law with outright impunity.My advice to all Americans in regards to this coming election is to be no longer the dupes and property of the hypocrites and traitors to our country who make up the ruling class. We must conserve what we have left before it is soon gone as whatever the betrayers of our country get, we the people must lose; and what is worse, must lose a great deal more than the others can get; for the ruling class cannot successfully remain in power without destroying, perverting, and corrupting that which is left of our America. Americaâs Ruling Class vs. All â Politically Short
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:16 PM | Your Say (9)
Observing Hillary’s performances, it is kind of obvious that she is a drunk or druggie
who cannot be trusted to be sober for a public appearance,or else she is suffering from some premature brain disease, or very likely both.... Hillary’s “health” problem – that she cannot be trusted to be sane and sober – is rather more serious. How did the democrats wind up anointing this drunken carpet muncher to be president? Answer: Quid pro quo for sticking to her husband in spite of his innumerable infidelities. Jim's Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:37 PM | Your Say (5)
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so,
almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” — John Kenneth GalbraithPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:23 PM | Your Say (2)
National Review Editor Rich Lowry practically begged Barack Obama to run for the presidency on December 1, 2006:
— a very basic concession that nonetheless takes some bravery in the blog-besotted fever swamp that is much of the left right now. He has shown that he can speak the language of religious believers in a non-focus-group-tested, genuine way. And he has charisma, an invaluable asset that can’t be bought or faked." Don Surber: Remember when National Review begged Obama to run?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (0)
The wonder of Thunder Bay: Look inside a gallery of overlooked books
The shop is, in fact, four connected buildings. The book collection, divided into various categories, takes up the front half, along with a small workroom for repairs, a bathroom and storage space. The back half has been turned into an apartment, with a modest kitchen, bathroom, a personal research library and office, and two bedrooms, one of which is devoted to the books he has written and published under his own imprint, and where he sleeps on an air mattress. - The Globe and Mail
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (0)
The attack on the Benghazi consulate is less important than Hillary's failure to secure her email server.
The death of Ambassador Stevens and his companions was merely a physical loss.By contrast Hillary's email fiasco represents the potentially far bigger disaster. It compromises Obama's game. It leaks the reservation price. It discloses the best alternative to a negotiated settlement. It shows who can be bought. If one reads former SecDef Robert Gate's remarks on Clinton's server with other eyes, it appears what he objects to most is not Hillary's lack of moral fiber, but her sheer incompetence; her inability to keep the secrets. When Everything's For Sale | PJ Media
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (2)
Little Big Gulp: Known as ex-mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg.
He successfully pushed for a 2012 ban on pop larger than 16 ounces, applicable to most businesses, but which was overturned by the courts as “arbitrary and capricious.” It certainly was. Perhaps, as comedian-cum-commentator Dennis Miller put it, Little Big Gulp didn’t like Big Gulps because he had to look up at the rim. Whatever the case, LBG also has big ambitions: he’s now considering a third-party presidential run.
Because, you see, we live in an unprecedented political age. With Donald Trump running the tables on the GOP side and the Bolshevik Bern giving Bill Clinton’s 527th favorite woman heartburn, Little Big Gulp thinks his time may have come: he can give Americans that moderate, sane choice, is his thinking.
And what a choice Little Big Gulp would be. New York Values™ do exist, and if you want them, LBG has that trademark. As an Internet commenter put it Sunday (I’m paraphrasing), in what could be Comment of the Week, if you combined his words with NY governor Andrew Cuomo’s to create a campaign slogan, you’d have “You only need a 16-ounce soda to kill a deer!” SelwynDuke.com: Man’s Ego and Michael Bloomberg
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (3)
So here we are today with the National Review forming the He-Man Trump Haters Club,
and the Weekly Standard threatening to take its ball and form a third party.They tell us they do not care if that gets Hillary elected. They live in a cocoon in D.C. and have no idea of the devastation and destruction caused by their Democratic pals in Washington. Not a clue. Not one. First, Hillary lost the nomination. Bernie Sanders will be the nominee. It is too late for anyone else to enter, and Martin O'Malley is lost in the woods. If you think it is McGovern all over again, I hate to tell you this, but we are in a new century where socialism is no longer a dirty word. Don Surber: Get off your high horse and stop Bernie Sanders
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (2)
January 24, 2016
Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years
concluded these are the only ones on Ball's Pyramid, the last ones. They live there, and, as best we know, nowhere else. How they got there is a mystery. Maybe they hitchhiked on birds, or traveled with fishermen, and how they survived for so long on just a single patch of plants, nobody knows either. The important thing, the scientists thought, was to get a few of these insects protected and into a breeding program. : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:03 PM | Your Say (4)
‘A worm fell into my mouth. I gagged’: my life as a badger
Tom needed to sleep, so he did, curled foetally on bracken, his paws, earth-brown from digging, clasped under his chin. I, too, needed to sleep, so I didn’t. We had to change our rhythm to that of the badgers, which meant sleeping in the day, but, at least at first, I found the sett a threatening place. Was this an old fear of burial? A worm fell into my mouth. I gagged quietly and went back to sleep. | Environment | The Guardian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:28 PM | Your Say (1)
"It could cause trouble in the wrong hands."
Nearly $50,000 In Bull Semen Stolen From Turlock Truck: Tanks filled with thousands of dollars worth of bull semen were stolen out of a truck in Turlock, and it could cause trouble in the wrong hands. The bulls are the cream of the crop and have been selected for their genetic value.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:23 PM | Your Say (1)
Right Wing Extremism vs. Islamic Extremism in the United States: A Look at the Numbers
Moreover, such accounts limit themselves to attacks in the United States (not worldwide), and purposefully exclude the nearly 3,000 deaths (as well as the over 6,000 survivors treated at hospitals) that took place on September 11, 2001. They don’t count the 9/11 deaths as then the numbers would be extraordinarily lopsided (in terms of total U.S. deaths due to Islamic extremism vs right wing extremism) and so such claims are careful to be based only on deaths in the United States AFTER the events of 9/11. | Andrew Holt, Ph.D.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:09 PM | Your Say (3)
January 23, 2016
Today at Arlington National Cemetery
... when the rest of the government was closed.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:04 PM | Your Say (3)
These sea creatures looked at the telegraph wire. “What is that thing?” they asked, “and what isn’t it?”
“Good for nothing!” said all the creatures in the sea, and held fast to the sea-cow’s opinion, so as to have an opinion.
The little fish had its own thoughts. “That exceedingly long, thin serpent is perhaps the most wonderful fish in the ocean. I have a feeling it is.” “The very most wonderful,” say we human folks, and say it with knowledge and assurance. It is the great sea-serpent, long ago the theme of song and story. It was born and nourished and sprang forth from men’s cunning and was laid upon the bottom of the sea, stretching from the Eastern to the Western land, bearing messages, quick as light flashes to our earth. It grows in might and in length, grows year by year through all seas, round the world, beneath the stormy waves and the lucid waters, where the skipper looks down as if he sailed through the transparent air, and sees the swarming fish, brilliant fireworks of color. Down, far down, stretches the serpent, Midgard’s snake, that bites its own tail as it encircles the earth. Fish and shell beat upon it with their heads—they understand not the thing—it is from above. Men’s thoughts in all languages course through it noiselessly. “The serpent of science for good and evil, Midgard’s snake, the most wonderful of all the ocean’s wonders, our—GREAT SEA-SERPENT!” Hans Christian Andersen: The Great Sea-Serpent
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:34 PM | Your Say (0)
If the present polls hold up through Iowa and New Hampshire, it'd be the reconfiguration of Mr and Mrs Main Street America as just another interest group.
So a philosophical commitment to free trade means less to them than the degeneration of mill and factory towns into wastelands of fast-food service jobs and heroin addiction.An abstract respect for religious pluralism means less to them than reducing the number of crazies running around whose last words before opening fire are "Allahu akbar!" A theoretical belief in private-sector health care means less to them than not getting stiffed by crappy five-figure health "insurance" that can be yanked out from under you at any moment under Byzantine rules and regulations that change 30 times a day. And bipartisan myth-making about "a nation of immigrants" means a whole lot less than another decade of Press One For English, flatlined wages, sanctuary cities and remorseless cultural transformation... The World They Made :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:48 PM | Your Say (1)
Bloomberg? Yes, Bloomberg.
Because what this election was lacking was a megalomaniac billionaire idiot https://t.co/dpwHqphOAA
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) January 23, 2016
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (5)
The conservative movement is dead because it no longer has a reason to exist.
Intellectual conservatism is no longer the razor wire defending the trenches of the middle -class.At best, it is a tangled mess left over from the battle. Increasingly it is seen as the top part of the fences the managerial class has erected around us. America is no longer a self-governing republic under assault. It is a custodial state, a nation-scale version of the Stanford Prison Experiment.... The conservative movement is dead because it no longer has a reason to exist. Whether or not something replaces it is debatable, but if that does happen, it will not be a defensive crouch. it will be an ideology appealing to insurgents and revolutionaries. It will be the credo of those who take joy in throwing sand in the gears of the big machine. The Dead Right | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (3)
Excuse Me While I Throw Up: Peanut Butter and Jam Old Fashioned
- Warming tasty bourbon with notes of peanut butter and jam
- Sweetened using homemade raspberry syrup
- Salted with pink Himalayan rock salt
- Each burly bottle is labelled and corked by hand in East London
- Dipped in a delicious raspberry-scented wax seal
- Even better than the legendary sandwich
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 AM | Your Say (12)
Pluralism is the proper ethos for America, multiculturalism is not.
The difference can be explained simply by assuming Americans can be divided into two tribes:
Ideological Tribe A: We believe that America is at its best when its mainstream is maintained without regard to race, creed, color, sexual preference, etc.. Ideological Tribe B We believe that America is at its best when its mainstream is maintained with special regard to race, creed, color, sexual preference, etc. The Problem With Multiculturalism - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (1)
Venus Flytraps Are Even Creepier Than We Thought
It struggles, knocking the trigger hairs even further and sending off more electrical impulses, around one per minute. The third impulse raises the trap’s calcium levels even further, prompting it to produce a hormone called jasmonate. In many plants, jasmonate is a touch hormone, which is released by wounds and injuries and coordinates programs of defense and repair. In the Venus fly trap, jasmonate doubles as a carnivory hormone. It primes the gland cells in the trap to start making digestive enzymes, which they finally do once they detect a fifth electrical impulse. - The Atlantic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (2)
January 22, 2016
Help! I’m Trapped in a Drop of Water
Just ordinary H2O floating about in what appears to be zero gravity. And inside its wetness there’s a passenger, a goldfish, a very alive goldfish… that is trying desperately to escape—or so it seems. It flings itself at the blob’s edge, pushing it outward. – Phenomena: Curiously Krulwich
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:47 PM | Your Say (0)
The Sore Losers at National Review Continue to Dampen Their Panties
For the most part, these barely rise above the level of “democrats r real racists guyz!” to denunciations of “nativism”, and faux patrician concerns about “vulgarity” as defined by Leo Strauss (I’m looking at you Kristol). What we are seeing is no more than the death throes of Conservatism Inc. in a wild temper tantrum. -- Radix Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:30 PM | Your Say (4)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:04 PM | Your Say (3)
Not a teaspoon of testosterone in a trainload [Bumped]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:21 PM | Your Say (14)
Deforming the language has long been a cornerstone of leftist politics.
If you can find a way to couch odious polices in pleasant sounding language, there’s some chance you can convince the public to slit its own throat. -- Saluting a HatPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:44 PM | Your Say (4)
Current College Grads = Functional Morons
It's far worse than you thought:Nearly 10% of college graduates surveyed in a poll believe Judith Sheindlin, aka "Judge Judy," serves on the Supreme Court. It also found that almost 60% of college graduates couldn't correctly identify a requirement for ratifying a constitutional amendment and 40% of college graduates didn't know that Congress has the power to declare war. Additionally, the poll revealed that less than 50% of college graduates surveyed know that presidential impeachments are tried before the U.S. Senate.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:05 PM | Your Say (3)
January 21, 2016
“When the tide goes out we get to see who is naked.”
This is bad for the technocrats and the libertarians. Both camps operate from the assumption that culture is meaningless and can be plowed under in the quest for power, material goods or economic efficiency. It’s also a handy way of steering clear of the social justice warriors. There’s an old gag in in finance that goes, “when the tide goes out we get to see who is naked.” That is generally understood to mean that in a down cycle you get to see who is well capitalized and who was operating on credit. We’re seeing something similar in the political sphere. We’re suddenly finding out who is and who is not on the Right. The libertarians are swimming back to their island and the technocrats are waddling back over to the Left.The Naked and the Right | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:04 PM | Your Say (5)
Made in the Little Ice Age
Between 1309 and 1814, with Europe in the grip of the cool period sometimes known as the Little Ice Age, the river Thames froze over 23 times. In five of these instances, the river's ice was thick enough to support structures, and citizens of London took advantage of the circumstances to throw dayslong "frost fairs."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:38 PM | Your Say (0)
Francis Bacon on Gardens (1902)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (0)
Pretzels are popular all over the U.S., of course, but here in Philly, they’re breakfast.
but here, if you want to make friends at the office, you swing by Furfari’s Soft Pretzels on Frankford Avenue (or wherever your secret spot is) and pick up a dozen soft pretzels still warm from the oven. You’ll even find their fresh pretzels sold inside the local elementary schools first thing in the morning, with a line of children clutching quarters stretching down the hall from the pretzel cart. Pretzels: the Bagels ofPhiladelphia - Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (3)
What Happens if Hillary Isn't Indicted?
an inspector general's unclassified letter to lawmakers tells us the former secretary of state was keeping the most classified of all intelligence material -- beyond "top secret" -- on her homebrew server.[If Hillary isn't indicted what it means is...] that the rule of law will have, for all intents and purposes, ended in the United States. Equal justice flew out the window. How does the public react to that? A good portion of it will roll over, but a certain percentage will not. Their reactions will be contingent on a number of things -- whether Clinton is elected anyway (unlikely at this point, but possible), the steadfastness of opposition politicians and media, etc. | -- Roger Simon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (6)
January 20, 2016
Severe, long-duration snowstorm begins Friday, blizzard watch in effect
due to the potential blinding combination of snow and powerful winds. “Potential life-threatening conditions [are] expected Friday night into Saturday night,” the National Weather Service says. “Travel is expected to be severely limited if not impossible during the height of the storm Friday night and Saturday.”Severe, long-duration snowstorm begins Friday, blizzard watch in effect - The Washington Post
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:37 PM | Your Say (8)
Total Food
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:09 PM | Your Say (3)
The "Not-So-White" Awards of 2016
Best Black Actors of 2015: #OscarsSoWhite pic.twitter.com/mMrRnD7FDv
— Chip Formica (@chipformica) January 20, 2016Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:08 PM | Your Say (1)
[Bumped] "When we are looking for a whetstone against which to press and hone the edge of our discontent, any target will suffice."
All the correct, wise, expedient things we can observe about a person's state serve no purpose except as information. It may be useful at some point, even crucial, but it should never dehumanize.I've lived among "these people" (see the question near the top) by choice, and among other less fortunate wards of more corrupt foreign states by choice, and I know full well their choices, culture, and self-deceptions as surely as God knows my own. But, the bigger wheels that turn above our heads do not diminish the person we find, when we are looking for a person.
When we are looking for a whetstone against which to press and hone the edge of our discontent, any target will suffice. I can deftly point out the stress-points, the causes, the reasons for cynicism and dismay with the best of them. And I have.
But to dehumanize is to invite your Creator to judge you according to your own unattainable-even-to-yourself sense of righteousness. May He have mercy on us all. -- Joan of Argghh! in It's Poppin! Ah man, the building is on fire!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:56 PM | Your Say (16)
Bernie's not offering anything, not really, except a chance to throw a pie at the Clintons' collective face.
Althouse writes:What gets me is the cession of the party to the Clintons. How can a party be so inert, so uninspiring? Why did Obama leave it in such a condition that it should offer up only the elderly woman who lost to him 8 years ago, offer her up as if she's so decidedly right that no one else should even compete? What deadness! Such deadness that a significantly more elderly man drops in and feels like the future. How could a party lapse into this predicament? -- It Happened on the Way to the Legacy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 AM | Your Say (3)
The Jews In The Attic Test
I explained to the others in my little band of activists that I looked at all laws that restricted freedomwith a view to the impact it would have on the 2nd Amendment in a worst case scenario of our government run amok. Will this law make it difficult or impossible to protect innocent life from a government intent on their imprisonment or death? Although I pretty much made everything up on the spot I told them I called this test my "Jews In The Attic Test". Furthermore I told them that if it fails this test no further discussion is really needed, the law must be opposed in the most vigorous manner possible. -- Joe Huffman
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (1)
January 19, 2016
ASASSN-15LH: Astronomers Have Found the Brightest Supernova Yet
At that distance, the blast was 22,700 times dimmer than the faintest objects a human can see with the naked eye. But the far-flung supernova was so powerful that astronomers calculate if it had happened at the distance of the famed "dog star" Sirius, just 8 light-years away, it would have been as bright as the sun. -- Smithsonian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 PM | Your Say (3)
Many liberals seem to have no problems "fanning the flames" of racial hatred,
The desire of many Europeans and other self-declared devotees of "human rights"to cover up, downplay or explain away what is happening in Europe, in fact represents the opposite of what people genuinely concerned with human rights care about: respect for others and equality before the law. When a society built on the rule of law begins to cover up criminal behavior and absolve criminals of responsibility, this only weakens and corrodes the very values it claims to want to uphold. - - Is Europe Choosing to Self-Destruct?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 PM | Your Say (3)
"Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction," said Obama.
Figured by the Depression era method, unemployment is 23%. Retail is still in retreat, railcar loadings are way down, including intermodal.Equities have fallen around 12%, forced selling and margin calls are in motion, and the VIX is percolating above 25. Oil dropped below 30, drillers and frackers are taking their meals at the Chateau de Salvation Army, the whole Chinese economy has cheerfully stepped off the ledge and the high seas are all but untroubled by commerce—the Baltic Dry Index fell under 400 for the first time. Ever. Oh, and the unwinding of enough debt for a whole nuther galaxy is under way. Fiction? No wonder the media is touching the hem of Obama's robe with ten-foot poles.
Yes, it's a fresh Woodpile Report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (3)
“Real”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (4)
On the "unqualified" nature of Trump
Dad: "I can't see a guy like Trump as President"
Me: "Obama is an ambiguously gay, 1/2 black, who was raised Muslim. Repeat that again."
— SOBL1 (@SOBL1) January 19, 2016Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (3)
January 17, 2016
It's Poppin! Ah man, the building is on fire! [Bumped]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 PM | Your Say (36)
The 1960s called: They want their idealistic worldview back
Iran is playing war games while Obama and John Kerry are toking up on some really good Mary Jane and playing their puds. Either that or they think we’re too stupid and high to know just how dangerous a world they are leaving while they quietly slip out of Washington and make millions on the speech-making circuit.
As delighted as I am that Americans have been released from Iran, I shudder to think what hidden concessions Obama and Kerry surrendered in order to gain their freedom. If Obama is willing to bend over and hand the Taliban five of their top generals and merry buckets of cash in exchange for one deserter, I imagine whatever those concessions were to Iran are going to be horrifying. - PatriotRetort.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:01 PM | Your Say (4)
When you humiliate a man, he remembers it forever.
The leaders of Western European countries are doing just that.In an unprovoked act of genocide-scale aggression, these governments and institutions are imposing on their people a fight-or-flight condition with nowhere to flee. People have picked up the scent of malice. It does not appear that the usurper elites, in their arrogance, had thought this through. They rely on state security forces to suppress a reaction but they donât seem to have considered a scenario in which policemen remove their helmets and join the protestors like Slovak riot police did last year at an anti-immigration march. -- "Welcome to Hell, Stray Lambs"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:42 AM | Your Say (2)
Why did Democrats stand back and allow Clinton to run unopposed?
Why did Obama leave it in such a condition that it should offer up only the elderly woman who lost to him 8 years ago, offer her up as if she's so decidedly right that no one else should even compete? What deadness! Such deadness that a significantly more elderly man drops in and feels like the future. How could a party lapse into this predicament? - -Althouse
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (7)
If, from time to time, a Communist government could not kill its citizens, how would you expect it to govern?
At its beginning, the Chinese Communist movement was fired with genuine revolutionary ideals;it sought social justice passionately and succeeded in mobilizing the generosity and courage of a moral and intellectual elite. From the very start, however, it carried within itself the seeds of its eventual corruption; the Communists always believed that mankind mattered more than man. In the eyes of the Party leaders individual lives were merely a raw material in abundant supply—cheap, disposable, and easily replaceable. Therefore, quite naturally, they came to consider that the exercise of terror was synonymous with the exercise of power. If, from time to time, a Communist government could not kill its citizens, how would you expect it to govern? After the Massacres by Simon Leys |
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (2)
January 16, 2016
The Revenant
Don't see this in the theatre. Don't watch it on cable. Don't even wait for the DVD/BD, or even catch it on Netflix.Buy it bootleg from China for 50 cents, or better yet, wait for it to be on sale in the bargain bin at BigLots! or the 99 Cent Store, and use the discs to make shiny hanging bird-scaring devices for your wife's herb garden. In true Hollywood fashion, the white men are all worthless land-raping Indian-hating baby killers, while the native tribespeople are all just humble misunderstood noble savages, practicing sustainable living and low-impact low-carbon footprint subsistence living in harmony with Mother Earth and Father Sky. - -Raconteur Report:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:56 PM | Your Say (2)
On “The Case for Short Words.”
In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity.Let your conversational communications possess a compacted conciseness, a clarified comprehensibility, a coalescent cogency and a concatenated consistency. Eschew obfuscation and all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectations.
Let your extemporaneous descants and unpremeditated expatiations possess intelligibility and voracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all vapid verbosity, polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolificacy. salacious suspiration and pestiferous profanity.
That is, say what you mean and mean what you say. Be brief and don’t use big words! Yogi Berra Left His Mark On Our English Language | Richard Lederer's Verbivore
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:05 PM | Your Say (4)
Hemingway, alas, was not around, but a family from the Gulf was.
To call it a freak show would be too charitable for my taste. (Bearded ladies and Siamese midgets have nothing on this bunch.)Dark brown, obese, Concorde-nosed children wearing Versace jumpsuits in leopard prints had six white bodyguards with earpieces jumping at their commands. The mother’s corpulence reminded me of a beached sunfish I had once plugged out dead off a Florida Key. Her only movement was guiding chips from her plate into her ravenous mouth. She wore Kardashian-like clothes with a winter beanie on her head with a fur ball on top. The husband was even more absorbed than the wife in his french fries. He looked angry and plebeian, a brutal lump of jelly, except when indulging his children while they screamed abuse at the bodyguards. Terror on the Slopes - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:54 PM | Your Say (0)
"How long must we wait for the Accountant above to balance the Book of Justice?
In all recorded history, the "Accountant" referenced has never interceded on behalf of anyone that can be proven. Waiting for help from "God" or any other supreme entity is like waiting for the axe that has started for your neck to reverse direction.All power is in the people. The tyranny can only be stopped by the people. The people can only stop this tyrannical government by joining together. That seems out of the question due to the deep divisions which this government has built between the people. And is now building even faster to prevent a massive revolt. The government is a monster and single party beast bent on staying in power. The so called two party system is a vision from the past. Can you not understand this? Terry, Comment on.... 13 Hours: Appointment Cinema
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:47 PM | Your Say (0)
The distribution of sociopaths is completely uniform across both space and time.
All you need is favorable conditions for them to bloom, much as mushrooms do after a rainstorm. Conditions for them in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the TSA to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to - not repelled by - a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day.
But the 50,000 newly employed are exactly the same type of people who joined the Gestapo - eager to help in the project of controlling everyone. Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo. The Ascendance of Sociopaths in U.S. Governance | Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:37 PM | Your Say (6)
January 15, 2016
13 Hours: Appointment Cinema
It puts you right in the team of six GSR's, fighting wave after wave of Al Ansar and Al Qaeda terrorists. You know their voices, their nicknames, and, depending on the person (I don't say "character," as these are all real people, though a couple are named by pseudonyms), their backstory, their families, and their personalities. And as wave after endless wave of attackers comes to them -- one soldier says, quite correctly, "This is like a horror movie" * -- the viewer waits for a rescue that he knows, from the newspapers, just isn't coming. - - Ace
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:36 PM | Your Say (6)
Progressives would love nothing more than to turn the churches into moonbat meeting houses.
The Death of the Episcopal Church | Just as the Muslims turned the Hagia Sophia into a mosque,Progressives would love nothing more than to turn the churches into moonbat meeting houses. If killing off the competing faith means killing off the church in which they have attended since childhood, they are fine with it. In the end, like the leadership of The Episcopal Church, they are Progressive first, everything else a distant second.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:20 PM | Your Say (9)
Trump's ground game is Twitter. He does it better than anyone else in politics.
Do you think Iran would have acted so tough if they were Russian sailors? Our country was humiliated.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2016He has 5.68 million followers. Given that almost half of them are people who want to see him boiled in oil, that means he is reaching 3 million supporters 24/7. That is a pretty darned good ground game. One tweet and you reach up to 3 million supporters. Trump uses Twitter not as an abstract tool to promote rallies, but as a way to talk to people. Other politicians hire someone to run their Twitter account and think nothing more about it. The Donald probably has someone doing the same, but Trump also tweets. He studied the animal. He knows what it is and how it works. It is a near-perfect medium for him. Don Surber: Trump's ground game
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:01 PM | Your Say (6)
The Wahhabi is the Wasabi of War
The Wahhabi problem is most obvious in Saudi Arabia, which practiced what it preached.Saudis comprise the largest faction of ISIL and al Qaeda recruits because so many Saudis have been educated in Wahhabi run schools. The Saudi rulers control the clergy, to a point, and do not allow public expressions of anti-Saudi Islamic radical ideas. But many Saudis back ISIL goals (which include replacing the Saudi monarchy), even is many of them do not wish to live under ISIL rule. This ideological mess is something Arab rulers, particularly in Saudi Arabia, have been dealing with since Saudi Arabia was formed in the 1920s. Change comes slowly in religious matters but meanwhile religious zealots Arab oil wealth has paid to create threaten us all. Wars Update: The Solutions Lie Within
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:57 AM | Your Say (2)
Honestly, if you are using a turkey as an "emotional support animal" both you and the bird need to be shot dead at the gate.
So how can a turkey get on a plane? Simple. The passenger provided proper documentation proving the fowl was indeed their emotional support animal, so Delta let the bird on board, and even gave it its own seat.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (6)
Knot a Problem, a seven-year-old group of more than 2,100 “detanglers”
In 2011, a Sacramento, Calif., knitter was cataloging her entire stash of yarn in her backyard—only to leave it out during a rainstorm. She tossed the 30 to 50 balls of soaking-wet yarn into the dryer, producing further chaos. More than a dozen volunteers stepped up, “drooling over the delicious detangling it promises,” as one member put it. The project, about the size of a lamb, was carried in a bedsheet to places such as a library and a park, where detanglers picked at it together. Knitters With Hopelessly Knotted Yarn Call ‘Detanglers’ for Help - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:36 AM | Your Say (6)
January 14, 2016
What's Up Dude?
Officers in Pharr, Texas, on Sunday found 2,493 pounds of suspected marijuana concealed within a commercial shipment of fresh carrots entering from Mexico. "Once again, drug smuggling organizations have demonstrated their creativity in attempting to smuggle large quantities of narcotics across the U.S.-Mexico border," Port Director Efrain Solis Jr. said in a statement.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 PM | Your Say (1)
Trump: "we're not going to pay anymore for all this stuff."
Build a safe zone in Syria.Get the Gulf states, who have a tremendous amount of money -- Saudi Arabia was making $1 billion a day before oil went down. So now they are making half. Okay? They're making a lot. Get them to pay. The other ones aren't paying. We're paying. We always pay. We're the sucker. We're the sucker. We're like the stupid sucker. And we're not going to pay anymore for all this stuff. -- Trump: Germans Are Going To Riot, Overthrow Merkel;
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 PM | Your Say (2)
"He who laughs last....." David Bowie's last photo on his last birthday Jan 8 2016
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:12 PM | Your Say (2)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:40 PM | Your Say (0)
Demand for drugs is a mature industry
The industry runs free of regulatory restraint, standards, checks and balances, corporate or income taxation, health and safety measures, insurance dues, or consumer rights for the end buyer. You can’t lose. Bring Me the Head of El Chapo
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:27 PM | Your Say (1)
The point of painting the Trump vote as angry, toothless peasants pissed off about losing at life
is to try and scare the middle-class into going along with the bipartisan fusion party candidate.It is not an attempt to explain; it is an effort to frighten and stigmatize. “You don’t want to be lumped in with those people do you?” is what is supposed to be heard by the viewers, even when the presentation is less explicit. Anger Fantasies | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:09 PM | Your Say (4)
We don't have central heat in our house.
We live in western Maine, and it gets pretty cold here -- in the summer.In the winter it gets pretty cold, too, or so I've heard. We've managed to make it through five going on six winters by hook and by crook heating. We burned firewood for a while, but we could never afford enough, and the house ended up unheated whenever I fell asleep. I'm a bit of a sissy, and I fell asleep once in February of 2014, and was ashamed for weeks afterwards. Sippican Cottage: The Tin Man's Autopsy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 AM | Your Say (2)
Glenn Reynold's Law
"The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have:If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them. - - Instapundit
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (2)
These are not your grandfather's Marxists'.
Joe Biden is not Leon Trotsky, Hillary Clinton is not Rosa Luxemburg. Time has taken its toll on their movement. It has evolved into a stinking mélange of government corruption and crony capitalism and self-interest. Their hatred of traditional America is unabated but they are old and soft and have not had a new idea in fifty years. Their entire political base is on the take and is bought and paid for with our money. Tenured, overweight, overaged, academic leftovers from the 60's and 70's. Taxpayer funded race hustlers, the professional grievance industry, and all the other assorted thugs, criminals and perverts we see on TV every night. The beer drinkers and pot smokers sitting home living on your back. The young inmates of our university system, a bunch of overeducated, overindulged, overprotected, overmedicated punks who will vanish like the morning fog at the first drop of sweat or first pang of fear. Self-aggrandizing celebrity and media air heads who equate a tight ass with intellect. This movement has no grassroots, unless it refers to what is being smoked. Other than environmental crap they have no ideological underpinning. They are simply the mother of all kleptocracies. Their soldiers will not march to the sound of cannon. They are ripe for a fall. They are as vulnerable as they are stupid and will be as inept at defending themselves as they are at running your life. - -The Left's Endgame Hits the Wall
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (3)
January 13, 2016
Wanker
Simon Watson, 41, has been flogging his "magic potion" for 16 years and becomes a dad around once a week. He now sells his sperm on Facebook and has raked in at least £40,000 for his efforts. The rogue donor advertises his so-called "ammo" on Facebook and other internet selling sites, and at just £50 a pot Simon has a constant stream of business - and babies.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:12 PM | Your Say (3)
The next thing on the horizon? Suicide drones with explosives.
So he did what he said any Kentuckian would do — he grabbed his Benelli M1 Super 90 shotgun, took aim and unleashed three rounds of birdshot. “The only people I’ve heard anything negative from are liberals that don’t want us having guns and people who own drones,” said the truck company owner, now a self-described “drone slayer.” Downing the quadcopter, which had a camera, was a way to assert his right to privacy and property, he said.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:59 PM | Your Say (4)
The Trump is a very, very simple man, the likes of which has never been seen.
No guile, no ego. No act, no brief. He does it all on the fly, effortlessly joining up the dots, and spitting out anything that might hinder his celestial trajectory. The chance of any leftist having any faint idea of what, why, or how he does it, is precisely zero. - - Give me proof
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 PM | Your Say (2)
A big part of how the left won was by transforming its image.
is capturing how people unthinkingly embrace left-wing ideas and attitudes because they are aspirational. They know very little of the theory of the political correctness they embrace. All they know is that they represent the values and attitudes of a higher social class. A social class that shops for organic fair trade stuff at Whole Foods. Sultan Knish: Bernie Sanders and the Threat to the Left's Aspirational Brand
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (2)
"Chicago, Chicago, that slaughterin' town!"
Chicago. A place where the herd culls itself:
A man was found shot to death in the Austin neighborhood and five others were wounded in shootings on the South Side, according to authorities. The man killed, 21, was found face-down with gunshot wounds by officers responding to a call of a person shot. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Someone had shot him in the chest and abdomen, police said. Three people were shot in the Wentworth Gardens neighborhood Monday night, police said. The three were in the 3800 block of South Wells Street when they were shot just before 9 p.m., said Officer Michelle Tannehill, a Chicago police spokeswoman. The closest actual street address is the 3800 block of South Princeton Avenue, according to multiple maps of the area. Two suffered graze wounds and one was shot in the leg, Tannehill said, citing preliminary information that did not include hospitalization information or a description of what happened. -| Jammie Wearing Fools
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (2)
Obama Praises Own Strength, Resilience In Face Of Hardship During State Of The Union
but if there is one constant amid this turmoil, if there’s one truth we can all hold onto, it’s that through it all I have remained steadfast and resolute—my perseverance never ceases to amaze me,” said Obama, his voice swelling with pride and conviction as he noted how, time and again, he has withstood every attack or heartache that has befallen him. From the BP oil spill, to gun violence, to ISIS—I have met every hardship with the deepest resolve. Consider how truly inspiring that is. It is a testament to my incredible determination. My fellow Americans, these are trying times, but knowing what I know about me, about the type of good person I am, there is no doubt in my mind that I will get through whatever I encounter and emerge stronger on the other side. -- News Source
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (5)
January 11, 2016
Women have the same right that men do to be crushed to death in a coal-mining explosion.
Equality is for everyone, and that includes the right to get squashed like a bug by heavy machinery.Why aren’t women afforded the right to be struck dead by falling objects? Didn’t Susan B. Anthony struggle nobly to make it possible for the sisterhood to drown overboard on Alaskan crabbing expeditions? Women have the same right that men do to be crushed to death in a coal-mining explosion. They deserve the freedom and dignity to be pulverized into tomato paste when their semi truck jackknifes around a mountain curve. - - Smashing Through the Glass Coffin
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:43 PM | Your Say (6)
Self-Driving Car Bomb: You say convenience. I say cruise missile on wheels.
what's to keep some bad guy from loading one up with explosives and then programming it to drive to, and park in front of, some juicy target? And then the bad guy detonates the bomb by remote control (i.e. with a cell phone). Or builds in a GPS that detonates the bomb when it's within a small distance of the target. - - Steven Den Beste
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:28 PM | Your Say (4)
What Does Not Kill Me Only Makes Me Whinier
So go on, world, I dare you. Sling your arrows at me.Steal my designated parking space. Cause every ballpoint pen in my possession to prematurely run out of ink. Give me an ice-cream headache. Ensure that my neighborhood drugstore no longer stocks my favorite body wash. Do your worst, world! For my capacity to piss and moan will always prevail. -- Source
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (1)
To the man I sat next to on the train: I am the gun owner you hate:
So, let me say this as plainly as I can: If a bad guy with a gun had decided to walk onto that train and start shooting people, I would have been prepared and able to use my gun to defend my own life and the lives of everyone else on that train, including yours. Although you may hate me, a gun owner, I would risk my life for you. - The Boston Globe
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:46 AM | Your Say (1)
January 10, 2016
Our brains distinguish race insanely quickly, within tenths of a second.
an ancient brain region central to experiencing fear and anxiety. Another brain region, the fusiform, helps us recognize individuals, read their expressions and make inferences about their internal state. When we see an other-race face, there is less activation of the fusiform, and we are less accurate at reading facial expressions. How Our Brains Respond to Race - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:45 PM | Your Say (5)
Big important countries don’t have revolutions anymore. They have democracy!
That’s the theory. The Greeks would point out that they kept voting for something different, but nothing changed.In fact, the more they voted, the more draconian the punishments from Europe. They would have been better off having a good old fashioned military coup. At least that would have made for good television. Instead, Greece is now Germany’s Puerto Rico. - - The Crisis of Liberal Democracy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:37 PM | Your Say (1)
Hussein Obama is something new, a President completely unconcerned with law,
Hussein simply ignores the rules.He has no affection for European culture because he has no roots in it. Africa did not develop democracy or constitutional government, perhaps because doing so would have required writing. The Moslem world is equally dictatorial. Neither culture is much given to abstractions. Obama wants what he wants. Period. A Nation of Fly Larvae: Obama and Gun Control | Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:11 PM | Your Say (5)
Support for Tump isn't that hard to explain
Our ruling class has re-invented itself as a technocracy that justifies its power by claiming moral superiority—and which dismisses challengers from below as morally deficient. We haven't seen this kind of moral attack on working people since the salad years of the Temperance movement, another era when the well-off thought little of entering the public square, as does Eduardo Porter, to denounce the moral depravity of the working man. - - The Politics of Moral Denunciation | R. R. Reno
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (2)
Government by Soporific
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will,the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. - - DeTocqueville Book Four, Chapter VI
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (1)
"By destroying traditional social habits of the people,
by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents,by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on to which the alternative is hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanized or brutalized control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos." — T. S. Eliot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (0)
"We won the war in a military sense,
for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before. In order to defeat Germany and Japan we supported the still greater menaces of Russia and China, which now confront us in a nuclear-weapon era. Poland was not saved. Much of our Western culture was destroyed. We lost the genetic heredity formed through aeons in many million lives. It is alarmingly possible that World War II marks the beginning of our Western civilization’s breakdown, as it already marks the breakdown of the greatest empire ever built by man." — Charles Lindbergh
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (1)
"Utopists abhor what the poets love."
“Utopists abhor what the poets love:
the fauna and the flora, the trees that send their branches outward in such an unpatterned, capricious way, the bridges and the streams, and the untamed instincts of men. As Gaston Lafarge has perceptively noted, utopists prefer the square and compass, account books, syllogisms, and taxonomies. They hate what differentiates, for they are utter conformists in every detail.” - - Jacques Ellul, The Betrayal of the West HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (2)
We have forgotten both the classics and the Constitution in our civilizational vanity to the detriment of our safety.
Now as the Western Spring begins in earnest the issue whichrebels must grapple with is not only who can best lead them against the status quo, but who can do so Constitutionally. In any descent into chaos, some thought must be given to the means by which a return can be made to sanity. Once the public would have been familiar with the classic story of how Theseus slew the Minotaur, a monster who dwelt in the Labyrinth, a mazelike structure so baffling that even if Theseus could defeat the monster, he could never find his way out again. Theseus solved the problem by unwinding a length of string from the entrance. Finding a way out after slaying the Minotaur is every revolutionary's problem. But we have forgotten both the classics and the Constitution in our civilizational vanity to the detriment of our safety. We have learned how to wander but forgotten how to reckon where we are. -- The Western Spring
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (0)
January 9, 2016
The 8th Plague: “And then suddenly it was on him, a trillion beating wings and biting jaws,”
With his telescope he estimated the swarm to be over half a mile deep, and he watched it pass for ‘five full days.’ He worked out that the locusts were traveling at around fifteen miles an hour and came up with the astonishing fact that the swarm was 1,800 miles long. This swarm covered 198,000 square miles, or, if it was transposed on to the east coast, it would have covered all the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. - - The Eighth Plague
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (2)
January 8, 2016
It's a riddle, wrapped in sediment, inside a grotto.
Occupation. There is no debris in the chamber, which is so dark that habitation would have required artificial light,
for which there is no evidence, and the cave is nearly inaccessible and appears never to have had easy access. Water transport. Caves that have been inundated show sedimentological layers of coarse-grained material, which is lacking in the Dinaledi Chamber, where the specimens were uncovered. Predators. There are no signs of predation on the skeletal remains and no fossils from predators. Death trap. The sedimentary remains indicate that the fossils were deposited over a span of time, so that rules out a single calamitous event, and the near unreachability of the chamber makes attritional individual entry and death unlikely. Did This Extinct Human Species Commit Homicide? - Scientific American
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 PM | Your Say (2)
I cannot imagine my permanent oblivion, but that does not mean to say that it is not coming.
I look forward to it with a certain clinical interest. My only regret is that I shall not be able to make use of the experience or to describe it in writing, for death is the country from which no foreign correspondent files (unless you are Spiritualist). It is true that I have on more than one occasion been nigh unto death, but a miss is as good as a nigh. Where death is concerned, we must accept no substitutes as genuine or authentic. A near death experience is not the experience of actually dying. And Death Shall Have Its Dominion > Theodore Dalrymple
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:41 PM | Your Say (0)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
- Golden Mao Statue in China, Nearly Finished, Is Brought Down by Criticism
- The secrets the world’s top experts use to make really good predictions
- Ingenious New Non-Lethal Bullet Burns Propellant Inside the Round
- Rest In Peace Florence King
- The Next Great Famine
- The Anti American empire
- Original Sin: the sexual motivation of religious extremists
- We have no one to blame but ourselves
- New Stick-On Device Could Monitor Heart Problems
- Trump: 'Whoopi Goldberg is Terrible. Very Sad!'
- Did the Beginning of Life on Earth Depend on Black Holes?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 AM | Your Say (1)
"THERE IS NO WAY THAT THEY WALK AWAY FROM THIS": Hillary Will Be Indicted Says Former U.S. Attorney
“I believe that the evidence that the FBI is compiling will be so compelling that,unless [Lynch] agrees to the charges, there will be a massive revolt inside the FBI, which she will not be able to survive as an attorney general. It will be like Watergate. It will be unbelievable.” - - Doug Ross @ Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:10 AM | Your Say (7)
The awaited discontinuity is no longer imminent, but has actually come.
Iran is building up its warhead delivery infrastructure. Its ally North Korea is developing fusion weapons. Pakistan is building an arsenal of suitcase nukes. The Syrian civil war shows every sign of expanding. The House of Saud may be teetering on the brink. Three million migrants are due to cross into Europe in 2016. China may be heading for an economic meltdown that will take whole sections of the world down with it. The good submersible Political Correctness has sunk and it's not going to surface any time soon. - - The Truly New Year
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:01 AM | Your Say (3)
January 7, 2016
Latest Stock Market News
Chipotle Stock Expected to Rebound After Every Location Is Renovated to Include 75 Bathrooms - The Rumford MeteorPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 PM | Your Say (0)
You turn 'who happen to be' into 'because they are'. Wrong.
This is precisely exactly demonstrably the problem with racialist thinking.You take something that happens to an insignificant number of people in reality, and then you apply it to a race of millions. Then you do everything possible to make everybody conscious of your little racial theory. You add racial consciousness by establishing a false causal relationship and substitute prejudicial associations instead of real logic. You turn 'who happen to be' into 'because they are'. Wrong. Counting the Dead - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:15 PM | Your Say (1)
The Parkinson’s Patient
As soon as she sat down on the piano bench, her stuck hand came down to the keyboard, and she would play with ease and fluency, her face (usually frozen in an inexpressive parkinsonian “mask”) full of expression and feeling. Music liberated her from her parkinsonism for a time — and not only playing music, but imagining it. Rosalie knew all of Chopin by heart, and we had only to say “Opus 49” to see her whole body, posture, and expression change, her parkinsonism vanishing as the F-minor Fantasie played itself in her mind. - Practicing Medicine - The New Atlantis
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (1)
Crybullies
therefore a safe target for the bullying, libel, slander, rage, and contumely that forms the social bond among the Social Justice brigade of Thought Police; and at the same time and in the same sense condemned as being the all powerful and ruthless oppressor, guilty of initiating all hostilities, ferocious, unstoppable, horrific, and panic-inducing, therefore excusing one from any scintilla of civil, proportionate, or honest responses in dealing with him. Lying for the sake of the cause when the stakes are so high and the villains so cruel is not only allowable, according to crybully logic, it is laudable. - - Stormbunnies and Crybullies | John C. Wright
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:21 PM | Your Say (2)
“Nobody needs (whatever it is I don't think they should have)”
Really? Well, I don't think Whoopi needs chocolate cake, but I'm not going to pass a law to prevent her from extending her girth to even larger proportions.... What people need isn't someone to tell them what they may or may not "need." What they NEED is to be left alone to make their own (however good or bad) choices. There is no justification for a bunch of dim-witted people sitting around a table on TV telling individuals who are viewing what they need. Nor is there any justification for a bunch of dim-witted politicians doing the same down in Washington by passing laws about what they think the citizens need. What We Need - Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (5)
Why Drudge Report Remains the Best-Designed News Website of All Time
It’s utterly and helplessly unique. There’s no other like it. The design breaks every design and development convention in existence. And in this case, happens to be part of it mass appeal and recognizability. Drudge itself attracts 2 million unique visitors per day, driving more than 600 million pageviews per month, according to Quantcast, but because it’s a page of links, a large chunk of those users go straight on through to his top recommendations. Drudge sent 62 million readers to CBS Local sites between January and July (that’s like directing the entire population of Italy to one website) and 64 million visitors to CNN, according to data from SimilarWeb. Drudge was the number one traffic referrer to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and a host of other outlets, outside of social media and search referrals. Drudge also accounted for 52 percent of all referral traffic to the Associated Press last year. - - RIGHTLY DESIGNED
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 AM | Your Say (2)
Europe’s decades as the West’s delightful tourist theme park are over.
The continent is back to being a dangerous free-for-all of nations, tribes, and factions, with the overlay of alien Islamic intruders making things worse.Who knows who or what will blow up next over there. When it becomes obvious in 2016 that the 2015 refugee influx was not a one-off that the Eurozone could comfortably absorb, the individual nations will commence the deportations. Getting to that has been a difficult road, with the headwind of the memory of the Holocaust. But then, unlike the Jews of the 1930s, the Islamists are slaughtering concert-goers, booby-trapping subways, shooting civilians in restaurants, beheading journalists, and explicitly threatening the existence of European society. Pretend to the Bitter End
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (1)
Thinking in terms of "ooh pretty" rather than ownership, liberty, and the constitution.
Which was just jaw dropping to me. I was simply astounded that nobody seemed to understand that the federal government owning more than 50% of 12 of the biggest states in the union was a bad thing. They thought it was just wonderful! Word Around the Net: NOT YOURS TO TAKE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (4)
Target the media and judiciary and the Cathedral can be defeated. The media may be the key:
it cannot reproduce without control of the Narrative.When one debates progressives and leftists, are you not struck by their lack of understanding? Basic science, history and economics is sorely lacking from their arguments. If most progressive support is simply manufactured consensus, the herding of rabbits in their warrens, then destroying their microphone and reforming the judiciary to not allow them a way to block you, may be all that is needed to end their 150 year run. They melt away as the communists melted away in the former Soviet Union. Unorthodoxy: Poland Learns From Hungary's Purge of Progressives
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (0)
January 6, 2016
‘How do we stop people noticing what’s going on in front of their eyes?’
Angela Merkel said recently when she met Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook,‘What can you do to stop people writing anti-immigration comments on Facebook?’. That’s the German chancellor, the most important woman in Europe these days. That’s what your political class and our political class in Europe are worrying about - ‘How do we stop people noticing what’s going on in front of their eyes?’ -- Douglas MurrayPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:14 PM | Your Say (2)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:49 PM | Your Say (2)
Maggie's Farm Wants You. Pass It On
We welcome commenters too, regardless of points of view. We don't only do politics - we do a perspective on Life in America. We are a good site for international readers too, to get some idea about what ordinary Americans are up to and thinking about. We are interested in almost everything. Readership growth is our only reward here, but that grows mainly by word of mouth (which includes others linking to us). Maggie's Farm : Worth it for Bird Dog's Morning Links alone
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:49 AM | Your Say (10)
The operating model of this administration is closer to fascism than anything else.
What this action does is create a new category of "gun crime" that does not involve actually firing a gun.It is the creation of a new mala in prohibitum, crimes that are crimes simply because the government says so, as distinguished from mala in se, crimes that are crimes in their own nature, such as robbery or murder. Sense of Events: Totalism and the end of American liberty
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 AM | Your Say (3)
The slow sidelining of over-the-air radio
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (4)
Life in America: I feel naked without a watch
I feel unclothed without one, even wear it to bed.Often, business people like expensive ones, to demonstrate that they know how to make money. That's fine - it's jewelry for men, like ghetto glitz, but it does not say much about how wisely they spend money. I had a semi-fancy watch once but it died and the parts were no longer available. Now I am a Timex guy. -Bird Dog @ Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (6)
January 5, 2016
A Few Facts About MAD Magazine
That Newman was a well-regarded film composer (and, incidentally, the uncle of composer Randy Newman). Hoping to forestall a lawsuit, the staff changed the spelling of Alfred’s last name and added E as a middle initial. - Neatorama
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:57 PM | Your Say (2)
Taxonomists continue to chip away at the number, and in the last decade or so, have reported around 16,000 new species each year.
3. MACACA LEUCOGENYS, THE MONKEY WITH A WEIRD WEINER The white-cheeked macaque, discovered in southeastern Tibet, owes its name to its white whiskers, but it was a feature a little further down that helped researchers determine it as a new species. Among other differences between it and the other macaque species in the region, are the shape and color of its business parts. While the other species there have penises with spear-shaped tips and white scrotums, the new guy has a rounded penis and a dark, hairy scrotum. 12 Cool Species Discovered in 2015 | Mental Floss
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:49 PM | Your Say (4)
Political correctness is hardly limited to the ivy tower and wanna-be intellectuals.
He is indoctrinated in the dogmas of climate change and feminism. He is taught that there is no difference between the sexes and that if he thinks that there is he will be punished by losing points off of his GPA. He is not allowed, in many places, to sing God Bless America or to recite the pledge of allegiance because the ACLU will sue if he does. If he disagrees with feminism he is a misogynist. If he has doubts about same-sex marriage he is a homophobe. If he thinks that most terrorist acts are committed by Muslims he is an Islamophobe. If he thinks that boys should not be showering in the girls locker room he is a transphobe. Had Enough Therapy?: Trump versus Political Correctness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:19 PM | Your Say (1)
"Because the number is so small, you cannot extrapolate a pattern."
Today the subject is 'unarmed black men'.There is nothing more that needs to be done because it's not a significant pattern, there is no significant risk. You say 'unarmed black men' as if 'unarmed black men' were a special group at risk, but 20 million unarmed black men are not at risk. If I said 400 unarmed black men were killed by lightning strikes last year, would you consider it necessary to setup a national awareness campaign and change policy? Of course not. Because the number is so small, you cannot extrapolate a pattern. - - Counting the Dead - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:13 PM | Your Say (1)
Twuu Tweet
Criteria for next presidential candidate seems to be this.... pic.twitter.com/31XCCyiXed
— laurakfillault (@laurakfillault) January 5, 2016Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:27 PM | Your Say (1)
We live in a low time that honors only low men.
Ironically, we affect to admire only “superheroes”because it has become impossible to imagine mere humans showing courage, fortitude, and respect for truth. All conduct is provisional and equivocal. Every law can be parsed to serve what it was created to oppose. Anything goes and nothing matters. Pretend to the Bitter End | KUNSTLER
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (0)
Atheists dismiss Communism as a flawed experiment,
but when the experiment does not prove your hypothesisa true scientist and a rational thinker revises his hypothesis. The most conspicuous and radical effort to create a culture of godlessness must count on the balance sheet of atheism. Given that outcome, one understands why today’s atheists would be presenting so much happy talk. Had Enough Therapy?: The Atheist Cabal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (9)
January 4, 2016
“The chief purpose of life, for any one of us,
is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis … . We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour. And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf … all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.” -– J.R.R. Tolkien, on the meaning of life.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (1)
The envelope please.....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (1)
Riddle Finally Solved: Dogs Should Wear Pants Like This!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (2)
Cassettes, somehow, are making a comeback.
As a format for recorded sound, the cassette tape is a terrible piece of technology. It’s a roll of tape in a box. It’s essentially an office supply. The cassette is the embodiment of planned obsolescence. Each time you play one it degrades. Bad sound gets worse. Casings crack in winter, melt in summer. Inescapably, a cassette tape unspools: It’s only destiny. Fine, death comes to us all. But just because we can anthropomorphize a gadget doesn’t give it a soul.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (1)
The Final Countdown
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (2)
January 3, 2016
The rise of Donald Trump is a good thing,
not because any one man can easily change the course of history, not because he's necessarily the best candidate (although he could be), but because his rise indicates that a lot of people who often ignore things are waking up to this extreme situation.2016: Year of the Chinese CursePosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:11 PM | Your Say (1)
In the beginning was the Word
Via the always inspiring From today's Lectionary: - Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:53 PM | Your Say (2)
Japan: The Land Without Muslims
Japan’s negative attitude toward Islam and Muslims pervades every level of the population, from the man in the street to organizations and companies to senior officialdom. In Japan, contrary to the situation in other countries, there are no “human rights” organizations to offer support to Muslims’ claims against the government’s position. In Japan no one illegally smuggles Muslims into the country to earn a few yen, and almost no one gives them the legal support they would need in order to get permits for temporary or permanent residency or citizenship. -- The Jewish Press
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (4)
January 2, 2016
- No Two Alike: The First Photos of Snowflakes
- Why time seems to speed up as we get older - Vox
- 18 things that became racist in 2015 - Liberty Unyielding
- There's so much snow in the Idaho mountains, elk are sheltering in basements
- FrancisChurch Dogwhistle Words | Barnhardt
- From 'Avatar' to 'Jurassic Park,' 'Beowulf' to 'Jaws,' All Stories Are the Same
- Amazing video captures hippo saving a gnu from a crocodile
- The coming dot-com 3.0 collapse: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter
- The first passenger railway in Australia was powered by convicts.
- ‘Mutant’ white squirrels cause a stir in Florida
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:39 PM | Your Say (5)
Robert Frost, 1962, on Americaâs future
(I always say—you know, talking about money—I tell ’em I always charge more for prophecy than I do for history.) I don’t know how long we’re going to last. The song says, “It shall wave a thousand years.” Thousand is—if you look at history—a good long time. It’s longer than most have done it. The great days of a nation are seldom anything like that. You’ve got to think of that. …We’re squandering our light, almost to the world. It’s wonderful we are, wonderful shining thing we are. But you wonder about the economy of it…-- VIA neo-neocon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (0)
January 1, 2016
Proud to say I limited myself to one drink last night.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (1)
I promise to start really eating right.
One of those good ones that even counts your heartbeats when you sleep. I'll start buying supplements, and I'll mix them into the kale smoothies I'll make for breakfast. I'll get a gym membership, and hire a personal trainer. I'll start with hardcore cardio-type stuff, but then I'll move on to free weights and elliptical work. Then I'll start doing Crossfit all the time, and start talking about doing Crossfit stuff all the time, to everyone I meet, children in the street, strangers on the Intertunnel, even to the clerks in Walmart, but not using a Bavarian accent anymore, of course. Sippican Cottage: Sippican's 2016 New Year's Resolutions
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (0)
Prayer for the New Year
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (0)
I had an idyllic childhood. My childhood was so normal that in the new America, I’m a freak.
Two parents (of differing sexes, a necessary clarification these days),a nice house in the suburbs, a stay-at-home mom, a hard-working father with a stable, nonpolitical job. A yard, a friendly dog, home-cooked meals, and a kitchen always bursting with food. A family that would get me through anything—if there was anything to get through. There’s no trauma in my past. No abuse. No bullying at school. No diseases. No racial slurs around the dinner table. Gregory Hood, "An American Son"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (1)
The strange, preachy, profitable saga of Billy Jack
Laughlin chose himself, a stocky, middle-aged white man and former college football player from Wisconsin who quit acting in the early 1960s to run a Montessori school with his wife, Delores Taylor. / The Dissolve
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (3)
The Tree of Death
d that belongs to the diterpene family of esters. Because phorbol is highly water-soluble, you don't even want to be standing under a manchineel when it's raining - the raindrops carrying the diluted sap can still severely burn your skin. -- ScienceAlert
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (2)
Targeted Killings and Drone Warfare
"If other states were to claim the broad-based authority that the United States does—to kill people anywhere, anytime—the result would be chaos." -Philip AlstonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:02 AM | Your Say (2)
Murder by Blob
The killer comes in from the right, turning lazy circles in the water, like nothing’s going on.But that’s an act. As we’ll learn later, it is getting into position, moving close, finding an angle so it can point its … its what? I see no weapon. Does it have a weapon? “I don’t know about this exact type of ciliate,” microbiologist Patrick Keeling wrote me, “but I know about other similar predators,” and at the very end of its snout-like appendage, it’s probably packing a bunch of “poisoned harpoons.” ≈—The Miniature Version – Phenomena: Curiously Krulwich
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (0)