Comments or suggestions: Gerard Van der Leun
Getting My Compromise Hoodie On

Neighborhood_Watch_Death_NY_0a30d.jpg
Soon to be starring in the remake of Boyz n the Hood, Boyz n the Hoodie

In the spirit of racial harmony, I have, for several days now, been thinking that I have to stop dressing like a white man and get with the Hoodie program. After all, isn't it better that we all learn, like Reginald Denny to "just get along?" (Or was it Rodney King? So hard to remember all the post-racial celebrities, isn't it?) Isn't it also safer for WASPs to Africanize now that we live in a nation where very marginal, very demented, and very repulsive groups such as the "New" Black Panthers can offer bounties on the head of anyone they dislike because of the color of his skin? Do I really need a weatherman to know which way their skin blows?

But how best to do that? At first I tried skin-tinting, or as my dermatologist likes to say, "reverse Jacksoning." Alas I quickly discovered, as millions of my fellow Americans of the African persuasion have discovered, that it just isn't that easy to change my hue. The other night I steeped in a bathtub I'd filled with hot water and 496 Black Teabags. I was hoping for some sort of mahogany tint by midnight but all I got was a transdermal caffine rush.

Yesterday morning I briefly applied a gallon of walnut body paint but one glance in the mirror and I recalled that running around in blackface, or even walnutface, was frowned on from every official African American from Lewis Farrakhan to Rachael Maddow and that albino president Bill Clinton. Hence body paint was right out. Following that I considered a full body tattoo using India Ink but the process of covering half of one cuticle was so painful I backed out of that one too.

It was clear to me that the only thing I could do was to dress like a brother. Fortunately I've had a lot of help with over the past few days from a gazillion white folks who also want to "African-American up" in the ever-popular hoodie. The hoodie, of course, is a perfect marker for African-Americaness because -- as we have been taught assiduously by glorious television shows such as the Wire and endless rap videos -- to wear a hoodie is to take on the aspect of the clean-cut and honest African American without any criminal overtones attached to such a garment at all. All those black hoods and thugs in hoodies you've been seeing and hearing about for years you did not, it turns out, see at all. Your eyes and ears were lying to you the whole time.

Of course, dressing in a hoodie in support of my African-American non-hood hoodie wearing fellow citizens was hard for me since I was, I am deeply ashamed to say, born white. Not just white but worse, WASP. As such I can't just boogie down with my bad self to the half-block ghetto of Seattle and grab me a genuine hoodie. As a WASP I not only don't know where the Hood Hoodie Store is, I am not allowed to know. Hell, I don't even know where to find the stores that sell those special baseball caps that have the bill sewn onto the side. The bottom line is that I am just too, too white to wear a brother's hoodie. It's not my fault. I was born this way.

But this morning, thanks to Rodger the Real King of France at Curmudgeonly & Skeptical I found an answer. I found a hoodie that was a compromise between the Hood Hoodie and the Neighborhood Watch Hoodie; a hoodie that, like our current president, brings us together at last: The NRA Concealed Carry Hooded Sweatshirt!

We want concealed carry to fit around your lifestyle --€“ not the other way around. That's why we developed the NRAstore's exclusive Concealed Carry Hooded Sweatshirt. It's the only garment of its kind we know of! .... Inside the sweatshirt you'€™ll find left and right concealment pockets. The included Velcro®-backed holster and double mag pouch can be repositioned inside the pockets for optimum draw. Ideal for carrying your favorite compact to mid-size pistol, the NRA Concealed Carry Hooded Sweatshirt gives you an extra tactical edge, because its unstructured, casual design appears incapable of concealing a heavy firearm -- but it does so with ease! Colors: Black, Navy. Made in USA

hoodiecarry.jpg

Sounds just great, doesn't it? Sounds like something that can be worn with pride by every American from the Klu Klux Klan to the New Black Panthers! Sounds like something that will, like our half-white, half-black president, really bring us together at last. At least until we have to reload.

I'm thinking of ordering seven. One for every day I get to wear one in Barack Obama's new "post-racial" America. How about you?



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 29, 2012 3:00 PM | Comments (18)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Michelle Obama Needs Me. She Really, Really Needs Me. Please Advise.

I try to keep my special and intimate relationship with Michelle Obama on the down low. The thing Michelle and I have is too precious to be cheapened by and tossed about in the grubby paws of Andrew Sullivan and other gossips. What we have is pure and unsullied. It is first and last about my respect for her massive pride in her massive intellect that is supported by my dusky dreamboat's massive back.

MO and I first met in an eHarmony chat room long long before she was elevated to her current position as First Nanny of the United States. At that time we were both lonely souls in need of the kind of soul soothing solace with which such sites seethe. We found it in each other, extra batteries, and lots of Kleenex. I understood her long-distance loneliness at being a political wife whose husband was a vote-humping horndog. She, seeing that I was from Seattle, initially confused me with Tom Hanks.

The hot chat between us soon grew to a deeper and more soulful sharing of our innermost secrets. Mine was to someday help elect a man of an indeterminate and chameleonesque racial and sexual background to the presidency. Hers was to own her very own Cheesecake Factory franchise with 24 hour access to the test kitchens. Needless to say, I achieved my dream while Michelle's was not to be.

Still, after her rise in the world we continued to correspond, albeit rather casually. She would pretend to write me as yet another in the Democrats' endless stack of useful idiots. I would pretend not to answer. It was a relationship we both treasured even if we could not unleash the inner beasts of our lustful natures as we had once in the Ponygirl Chat Rooms of FurryFockers.com.

Lately however it would seem that a shadow has been cast over the sunlit meadows of Michelle's life.

I have to be blunt. It's her husband. He just can't seem to handle money.

At first I ignored her pleas to help him out. After all, I figured, he gets free rent, free food, free gas, and free airplane and David Axelrod mustache rides whenever he wants. Why should I help him? But then came this truly touching letter from MO sharing his pain, and I started to weaken; I started to pull out my wallet. After all, three dollars meant so little to me and it seemed to mean the world to the teeterer I loved. How could I not pay?

motomoi.jpg

There you have it. Straight from the horse's, or Michelle's, mouth.And yet... and yet...still I hesitate. What do you say loyal readers? Should I give him three bucks for working hard late into the night to spend three trillion bucks? And if I don't what kind of a man am I? And will Michelle hold it against me?

Signed,
Sleepless but Not Tom Hanks in Seattle



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 28, 2012 3:37 PM | Comments (19)  | QuickLink: Permalink
In That Great Street Carnival


Singing the Concept.


Performing the Song.

Performing in pants (rare) and with Jennifer Turner on guitar.

I've walked these streets
In a spectacle of wealth and poverty
In the diamond markets
The scarlet welcome carpet
That they just rolled out for me

I've walked these streets
In the mad house asylum
They can be
Where a wild eyed misfit prophet
On a traffic island stopped
And he raved of saving me

Have I been blind
Have I been lost
Inside my self and
My own mind
Hypnotized
Mesmerized
By what my eyes have seen?
By what my eyes have found
In that great street carnival
In that carnival?



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 24, 2012 2:33 PM | QuickLink: Permalink
Those Lesbians. They all look alike, look alike, look alike...

You may recall the story from last week where the "tolerant" lesbian in Washington tried to force a Catholic Priest to go against his vows by giving her communion while she was still in her normal state of sin. Well, it seems that the Washington Post is having trouble determining exactly which local lesbian it was.

alesbiancorrection.jpg

Washington Post correction, March 17 (left); March 16 (right) JIMROMENESKO.COM

At Romanesko's Jim Hopkins predicts:

Here's how tomorrow's correction will read: Roseanne Barr, the American actress, comedian, writer, television producer and director, was misidentified as Sarah E. Reece, director of the Academy for Leadership and Action of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, in a correction on March 17 of a correction the day before of an earlier photo caption, on March 15, where she was misidentified as Barbara Johnson, a a lesbian denied Communion on Feb. 25 at her mother's funeral.

If this is how it is there is going to be a tsunami of corrections coming in when lesbian weddings really get going.



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 19, 2012 3:25 PM | Comments (13)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Thinking On His Seat: Smartest Man in the Tomb and History's Greatest Orator Strikes Again
Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 18, 2012 10:29 AM | Comments (18)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Famous for Nothing

pb-120316-ipad-celebrate-ps.jpg
"Christof Wallner, 23, from Austria, the first buyer of the new iPad in Germany, poses after purchasing the tablet in front of the Apple store in Munich, March 16, 2012. Apple's new iPad went on a sale in Germany on Friday and more than 500 people waited on the line to purchase the new device in front of the shop prior to its opening." -- Waiting to score the newest iPad from Apple

To update Andy Warhol, "In the future everyone will be famous for 15 nanoseconds for doing nothing." And indeed they are.

Above we see an all too typical moment where the largest company in history in terms of perceived market value is celebrated by having a skinny chestless European male of dubious sexuality emerge from a doorway holding a mass-market object above his head in a gesture of triumph. Such photos were previously spread throughout the world as the result of some sort of measurable genuine achievement. Now it would seem you are awarded global recognition for just showing up very, very early with about $500 in your pocket. Color me massively unimpressed.

What I am marginally impressed by is that although this is happening in Munich, today's photo editors seem to be blissfully unaware of the subtext seen in the upraised saluting hands on the right. Oh well, so it goes. You can't expect a people whose grand-parents and great grandparents ended up burned to ash by Brits and Americans and gang-raped by Russians to retain my interest in history.

We've been seeing these "nerds line-up early for tech goodies and nerd myths" stories for decades now. I think the first "newsworthy" stories centered around early line-squatters for "Star Wars," but they surely have lost their allure by this point. And they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, "news." Indeed, the only time they seem to become news is when people are beaten and/or killed during the line-up and subsequent swarming. That of course usually has to do with toys or shoes. If all you want to do is note that a nerd swiped his card and entered his PIN and got a box first, please pass the coke spoon and hold the Sominex.

If Nike's newest sneaker is causing dropping bodies at the mall, that's news. As for the newest nerd-swarm over a techtoy, wake me when they start setting themselves on fire as the doors open.



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 16, 2012 8:08 AM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Obama: Imaginary Friend of Democrats

smugobamashotweb2.jpg
Last night upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I hope he never goes away

-- Variation on a nursery rhyme

Even as Obama’s methods grow more radical, his means more aggressive, and his motives darker, and his ideology more naked, most Democrats polled persist in their belief that he really is their friend. It’s entirely imaginary, of course, since we see with every passing day that the “friendship” of Obama only lasts as long as it is needed -- by Obama. When the need is no longer there, the friendship fades like the Highland mist at dawn. The now tattered and overused phrase “Under the bus” has become code for “Any speed bumps on Obama's road will be steam-rolled to a flat black stain on the pavement like an armadillo on an Arizona highway in August.”

And yet, if we are to believe the polls, Democrat love for Obama endures in many even as the pain from his policies grows. The tryst that was consummated in the soft and moonlit honeymoon suite in January 2009 by February 2010 seems more and more like a long dark night in Michelle Obama's Dominatrix Dungeon with no safeword.

Incomprehensible as it may seem to any neutral observer many Democrats continue to believe, in the face of stark facts daily seen, that Obama is indeed their friend. It has to be tiring because this fantasy -- now entirely a product of the imagination -- requires that greater and greater energy is expended on the part of the believer in "Keeping it real."

How can Democrats continue to "feel the love" even as the whip comes down? Yes, it's perverse but they have no choice. Those that believe Obama is their friend find it necessary to believe. Why is Obama the imaginary friend necessary to them? Because, regardless of their age, all Obama acolytes and most Democrats are children. They need to believe in Obama like Virginia needs to believe in Santa Claus, and like a beaten woman needs to believe her man really loves her. These are immature attitudes but in the USA of the 21st century “childishness” is what we do. It's the one sector of manufacturing in which we still lead the world.

We’ve been producing the manchild, the femchild, and the girly-boy in this country for decades. What the Chinese emperors once did to women's feet we can now do to human souls and we're not outsourcing. The binding that cripples the soul begins in the early indoctrination of kindergarten, where they learn all they need to know and then stop learning much of anything else. To make sure it sticks, the indoctrination is repeated for as long as they remain soaking in the thick multicutural, transnationalist, progressive soup of our educational system:

“ The New York Times, Grievance Groups, Government, Diversity = Good” vs “The Great Books, Individualism, Responsibility, America = Bad.”
That’s pretty much it these days. Rinse and repeat that mantra like a Hari Krishna on crack and you too can actually succeed in school right up to a Ph.D. in “Diversity Studies.”

It’s Big Education’s formula for stunting spiritual growth and producing Peter Pans and Pams that won’t and can’t grow up. As a result the liberal Democrat's capacity for sustaining imaginary friends never really abates. Indeed, with many of our Baby Hueys living well into their fifth and sixth decade the imaginary friend demand was exceeding the supply. This was all solved by Big Media’s manufacture and distribution of Barack Obama as a kind of “Barakbi Doll – The Only Imaginary Friend You’ll Ever Need!”

As some have gotten chary of pointing out, Obama was tailormade (by an as yet unknown tailor in an as yet undisclosed location) for rich and/or liberal white people. It was a classic example of branding a substandard product in such a way that it gained major market share in the target demographic. Without them, Obama was nothing. Without Obama, they were less than zero.

What was the product? It was “Your New Best Friend in the White House.” It was “President Jed Bartlet Built Better Because a Bit Blacker.” To underscore this point comedian and soothsayer Chris Rock has a routine in which he relates,

“These days black folks have a LOT of white friends and white folks all have ONE black friend.”
This has, he notes, been a trend for quite some time and, given the relative population percentages of African-Americans versus Americans of the Caucasian persuasion, it was only a matter of time before there was an African-American / Caucasian friend gap.

Obama seems to fill that gap providing “a friend in need.” He’s cool. He’s slender. You not only want him to come to dinner, but to stay for the long weekend and bring his family. His family is the very essence of picture perfect latter-day Jeffersons in a Tiffany frame. You want that framed picture with you in it with them to hang on your ego wall. Obama knows you want that photo-op more than anything. He also knows what you like to hear, and he knows how to say it when he’s doing just the opposite. His stiletto is so smooth you hardly feel it going in.

Obama is a better liar than most politicians because he’s far beyond shame. Shame was stripped out of him as a teenager. Shame is for sissies. Truth is not the tool of tyrants.

Most of all Obama knows how hard it is to stop loving someone even when you see them buying lap dances from Nancy Pelosi night-after-night in the champagne court at the back of the DC titty bar. Like all abusive spouses, Obama knows that once he can get you to stick around after he’s been unfaithful and knocked you around, you’ll stay around for even more abuse and infidelity. Why? Because you’ve come to need the abuse more than the love; you’ve come to want more than anything else to just spend more time close to him in the hope that he’ll change and finally feel your pain and feed your needs.

The problem is your needs may be real, but Obama’s got a full schedule when it comes to his “Let’s wreck America as quickly and completely as possible” needs. He just doesn’t have time to hang out with you. So you’ll just have to imagine the love.

Where did this compulsive need for an imaginary friend come from? A 2006 study of the phenomenon of imaginary friends by Dr. Louise Newman, child psychiatrist and the director of the New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry , sheds a glimmer of light:

Most children grow out of imaginary friends, Newman says. But in some cases an imaginary friend can emerge in adulthood, usually in response to trauma, inability to cope with stress and sometimes psychotic illness.In rare cases some adults develop what's known as Doppelganger syndrome, which occurs when they believe a twin or invisible friend accompanies them.

Seen in that light, it’s easy to understand why so many folks retain the impression of Obama as their imaginary friend. It is, as it always is, the fault of George W. Bush. What was once the mental disease that crippled tens of millions of American minds, "Bush Derangement Syndrome" (BDS), has morphed into "Obama Arrangement Syndrome" (OAS)

which requires that people interpret or ignore events in a manner that reinforces their preconceived, and rigid, notions about Obama.

If Bush Derangement Syndrome needed a 12-step program, Obama Arrangement Syndrome is going to need a 13-step program. It begins with, “We admited to ourselves and others that the idea Barack Obama was our friend was utterly imaginary, and no matter how many times he promised it we were never going to be sharing long, hot showers into the wee hours of the morning.”

[Rewritten, updated, and republished from November 4, 2009]



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 14, 2012 12:45 PM | Comments (12)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The AF2011-A1 DOUBLE BARREL PISTOL or "Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Overdoing."

You Want Gun Porn? We Got Gun Porn.

Let's face it, if you're the kind of odd person who is deeply disturbed by the Second Amendment and gun rights you're probably thinking, "They're making this just to irritate me." And you'd be right. But that wouldn't be the only reason.

From the Arsenal Arms page describing this behemoth:

"The AF2011-A1 Double Barrel Pistol comes actually as the very first industrial double barrel semiautomatic pistol of all times. The original idea came about ten years back to Swiss armourer Vivian Mueller, who at the time experienced cutting and welding together multiple parts of the famous Sig P210: the result was a long slide, double barrel 9mm, highly decorated collector piece, which indeed shot very well.

"Our idea took the challenge further: to commemorate the legendary Colt 1911-A1 in the Centenary by making a true industrial market-ready double barrel .45 caliber pistol. [And because at Arsenal anything worth doing is worth overdoing. ] We achieved success in the brief span of 6 months, after intense and round-the-clock 3D designing, stereolithographic modeling and parts machining. The gun can be handled by any shooter able to shoot with a .45 Acp and it is not only very pleasing, but very accurate and great fun. [Such great fun that it will soon be the gun of choice among Mexican and ghetto drug lords.]

"The AF2011-A1 holds amazing and surprising target performance for the shooter: in fact, it will group all the 8 double .45 caliber rounds (16 bullets) held in the duplex, single columns magazines, in a target of the size of an orange at 15 yards and of a water melon at 25. [Comes with a t-shirt that says "Death from Downrange to Fruit!"]

"The stopping power of the AF2011-A1 is tremendous: 2 bullets for a total of 460 Grains weight impacting at 1 to 2 inches apart (depending on the distance of the target) will knock down a bull [I don't want to think about how they know this.], while the whole 18 bullets, for a payload exceeding 4000 Grains, can be delivered to the target in about 3 seconds. [Do not, repeat, do not be that target.]

"The AF2011-A1 obviously features a number of very special parts, such as the single slide, the single frame, the single spur double hammer, the single grip safety, the single body double mainspring housing and the single double cavity magazine floor plate [I.E. This is one bad single mother.], the long and double magazine latch, the special barrel bushings and the hold open lever and side lever safety with long shafts: but the most interesting feature of the new pistol which we strived to keep during the development of the project, is the interchangeability of most internal parts, which come as standard 1911 replacement parts. These include the firing pins, the firing pins plates, the sears groups, the triple springs, the inner parts of the mainspring housings, the recoil springs and recoil springs rods, the magazine bodies and inner parts, the sights (including after market adjustable sights) the grips and grips screws and bushings. [Translation: It's like a parts car for you 1911, only more expensive.]

"The AF2011-A1 (“Twenty Eleven” for aficionados [Or badass gangstas.] ) can be ordered either with 2 independent triggers and one sear group (left or right, with user-interchangeability for right or left operations) or with 2 triggers permanently joined and the choice of 1 or 2 sear groups.

"The AF2011-A1 is available in mirror finish Deep Blue or with a 3400 Vickers surface hardness White Ash Nitrite coating. [Gold plating for gangstas will be extra and custom and you just know THAT is going to happen.]

Worlds-First-Double-Barrel-1911-Semiautomatic.jpg



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 12, 2012 11:44 AM | Comments (20)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Sandra Fluke: A Slut for All Seasons

postergrlfluke.jpg
Image by Rodger, Real King of France

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. -- Benjamin Franklin

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. -- Othello

So far March has been a life changing experience for one Sandra Fluke. When the month began she was an obscure activist despairing of life: she was going to law school. Why? Well, on the one hand it was to get some sort of accreditation to do some sort of thing with her heretofore wasted life. On the other it was her chance to butt into the business and spiritual lives of her fellow students with her own half-baked theories of why some people should tell everyone else how to live. It was, as noted, a rather obscure and pointless existence.

Then Fluke testified before a sham congressional committee to exploit her own sex, lies and videorapes with absurd statistics. In the process she became, now and for the rest of her life, the woman who would always be thought of as the official Washington “slut.” She has now, no matter what the truth of her behavior is, firmly planted herself in the minds of her detractors or supporters as “that slut.” Her supporters won’t ever admit they think of her that way. They will always say, “She’s not a slut, she’s a champion of wymyns’ rights to do what they want with their bodies!” At the same time they will think..... “Slut.” Not because Rush Limbaugh had the innate honesty to call her a slut, but because even her supporters now know her to be a slut. When it comes to being honest about sex in this day and age everyone has been trained to say the kind and politically correct thing while thinking and meaning quite another.

In a real way Fluke’s slutitude is parallel to the famous catch phrase from Seinfeld about homosexuality: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” That phrase has entered the culture so deeply that you often still hear it mockingly said whenever homosexuality is discussed. In polite company it is meant to signal what it says, i.e. “Nothing wrong with gayness.” That’s how we’ve agreed, as a culture, to handle this topic in public. But what people actually think in the back of their minds, gay or straight, is that there really is something wrong with it. If this wasn’t the case, the phrase would not have persisted in American culture for the last 20 years since it was first uttered in 1993.

Another even more similar case was that of Anita Hill who testified against Justice Thomas in 1991. Hill is currently working in the kind of standard “distinguished” professorial positions reserved for good little progressives if they do what they are told , but she will always be associated with “Long Dong Silver” and a public hair on a Coke can. Her reputation and legacy were pretty much cemented into place when she testified against Thomas. She will never emerge from that shadow.

Then we have the “successful” self-degradation embodied by the career of Hillary Clinton. Clinton, it would seem, has become qualified for any political position you can think of by virtue of the fact that she became, following her husband’s harvesting of blow jobs from a zaftig intern, the most publicly humiliated woman in history. No matter what she’s done since and no matter what she will do from now on, Hillary’s decision to “stand by her man” in order to advance her own naked ambition will forever stain her reputation more indelibly than semen on a blue dress. It will forever be associated with her.

Fluke is in that same sort of degraded position now. Decades will pass and she will always be known as “that Slut woman.” She’ll go on in her life with appointments to some sort of law firm, think tank, or government bureau as a reward for being a good little apparatchik. She might even run for some sort of public office and win. It won’t matter. Fluke’s tarnished her own goods with her own testimony in the last few weeks. She’s hoisted herself with her own petard. She’s put the needle in and it will never come out. Just as Marlo Thomas will forever be known as "That Girl, " Fluke will forever be known in the back of everyone’s mind as “That Slut.”

For one week Fluke took the heat off of the president's war against religion and the constitution. She got a phone call from Obama out of it. I hope she thinks the damage she's done to herself was worth it, because to get it she made herself into the kind of “damaged goods” parents once used to warn their daughters against becoming. The rich irony is that she doesn’t even know it yet. But she will. She will.



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 11, 2012 12:51 PM | Comments (17)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Unemployment Definition - Abbott and Costello

abbott%26costellofrankenstein.jpg
unemployjan.jpg

U.S. Unemployment Up in February | Underemployment is 19.1%, up from 18.7% in January

PRINCETON, NJ -- U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 9.1% in February from 8.6% in January and 8.5% in December.

COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America .
ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible times. It's 9%.

COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?
ABBOTT: No, that's 16%.

COSTELLO: You just said 9%.
ABBOTT: 9% Unemployed.

COSTELLO: Right 9% out of work.
ABBOTT: No, that's 16%.

COSTELLO: Okay, so it's 16% unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, that's 9%...

COSTELLO: Wait a minute. Is it 9% or 16%?
ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.

COSTELLO: IF you are out of work you are unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, you can't count the "Out of Work" as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.

COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!
ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.

COSTELLO: What point?
ABBOTT: Someone who doesn't look for work, can't be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn't be fair.

COSTELLO: To whom?
ABBOTT: The unemployed.

COSTELLO: But they are ALL out of work.
ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work. Those who are out of work stopped looking. They gave up. And, if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.

COSTELLO: So if you're off the unemployment roles, that would count as less unemployment?
ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!

COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don't look for work?
ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That's how you get to 9%. Otherwise it would be 16%. You don't want to read about 16% unemployment do ya?

COSTELLO: That would be frightening.
ABBOTT: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means they're two ways to bring down the unemployment number?
ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.

COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?
ABBOTT: Correct.
OSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?
ABBOTT: Bingo.

COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to just stop looking for work.
ABBOTT: Now you're thinking like an economist.

[Via Free Republic]



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 8, 2012 11:45 AM | Comments (6)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Miss Fluke, Do You Swear to Be the Slut, the Whole Slut, And Nothing But the Slut, So Help You Obama?

aaafluke.jpg
Ms Fluke testifies on problems discovered during her participation in last year's slutwalks.

In which conservatives and Republicans are played once again:

"Rather belatedly, we are becoming aware that this supposedly typical Georgetown coed is not very typical at all:
[B]irth control is not all that Ms. Fluke believes private health insurance must cover. She also, apparently, believes that it is discrimination deserving of legal action if “gender reassignment” surgeries are not covered by employer provided health insurance. She makes these views clear in an article she co-edited with Karen Hu in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.The title of the article . . . is "Employment Discrimination Against LGBTQ Persons"€ and was published in the Journal's 2011 Annual Review. Here’s one brief quote from the article:
Transgender persons wishing to undergo the gender reassignment process frequently face heterosexist employer health insurance policies that label the surgery as cosmetic or medically unnecessary and therefore uncovered.
-- Sandra Fluke Argued for Mandatory Coverage for Sex-Change Surgery : The Other McCain

And now.... this...


ANDREA MITCHELL: So, a phone call from the President of the United States!

SANDRA FLUKE: I know!

ANDREA MITCHELL: What was that like, Sandra?

Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 5, 2012 5:29 PM | Comments (17)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Afterburner with Bill Whittle: My Friend Andrew


"Why not give Andy a country worth dying for?"

"Put it away.": On Andrew Breitbart, heart attacks, twitter and their personal meaning. And, by the way, never forget that, "The real enemy is the media."



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 4, 2012 10:38 AM | Comments (3)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: "Don't Blink"

"Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster than you think...."



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 2, 2012 10:33 AM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Media Vita in Morte Sumus: The Sudden Death of Andrew Breitbart

obamception.jpg
breitbartassassin.jpg
"In the midst of life we are in death. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." -- Book of Common Prayer

The conspiracy theories began, like dubious mushrooms, to pop up around the death of Andrew Breitbart before the portable defibrillators that tried to save his life could be recharged. There's a segment of our population that wouldn't have it any other way; a segment that seeks to always explain the unfair, mystical randomness of the world as the outcome of some vast, dark plan. Breitbart is, to this group, only the latest victim; a man struck in the neck by a poison dart fired from a silenced black helicopter hovering high above a midnight street in Brentwood.

After all, our conspiracists point out, Bretibart had the goods on Obama! He had the videotapes! He had the proof! Positive! At long last! They HAD to get him before he released them!

Always remember: "The Alamo The Maine The Grassy Knoll The Moon Landing Vince Foster!"

Never forget: "Breitbart was too young to die. He was too good to die. He was too essential to our cause to die. THEY did it. AGAIN!"

Really? Well, let me assure one and all as a person who has done it and has been returned to life to tell you: It is actually possible TO JUST DROP DEAD. Yes, strange as it may seem, a man can be just going along in life -- having a drink, talking with friends, making plans, walking home at night along a street in Brentwood -- and simply and quickly fall out of the world. It doesn't take any special powers of the Federal Government or shadowy agents firing poison tipped darts from the shadows. It doesn't take that at all. It only takes a blockage in an artery, it only takes something breaking loose from the wall of an artery and lodging somewhere it is not supposed to be.

It doesn't take long. And, as one who did survive, I know that even with a rapid response of men skilled in saving lives on the street, not very many so stricken have a happy outcome. Nationwide, for every 100 people admitted to the hospital after coronary arrest, only 7 emerge alive from the experience. Only seven. A sobering number indeed.

Like the ad says, "The first sign of heart disease is often sudden death."

I am deeply saddened by the death of Andrew Breitbart. I am concerned with the future of his wife and four (4!) children. I wonder what will happen to his fledgling empire without his charismatic personality and abilities. I am distressed and angered by the insects of the left that celebrate his death. None of that compels me, however, to surrender to the dark and constipated gods of conspiracy theory.

Unless and until some substantial mass of actual evidence is found that confirm, far beyond an unreasonable doubt, that Andrew Breitbart was offed by the sinister secret agents of Barack Obama hovering above Brentwood in their invisibility cloaks, then I'm just going to have to believe that it was, sadly, simply his time. We all, as I know well, have one:

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

aalargeconspiracy.jpg



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 2, 2012 9:08 AM | Comments (16)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Citizen Andrew Breitbart (February 1, 1969 – March 1, 2012)

andrewbreitbartpasses.jpg

"He was the spiritual leader of the modern conservative, libertarian cause. He was immersed in pop culture and wished to drag the right into the modern world - knowing this is how America speaks to the world. He was the heart of the matter. The fighter. Losing him is like a fiery planet going dark." -- Greg Gutfeld

"Breitbart died unexpectedly from natural causes Los Angeles. He was 43 years old. A bystander saw him collapse while out on a walk in Brentwood shortly after midnight and called paramedics, who rushed him to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center where he was declared dead."

aabreitbart.jpg
From Stilton @ Hope n' Change Cartoons: Andrew Breitbart



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 1, 2012 8:51 AM | Comments (28)  | QuickLink: Permalink
G2E Media GmbH

MONTHLY ARCHIVES


SIDELINES

FIND


BACKMATTER

RECENT ITEMS