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April 30, 2015
Poretto: I predict an outward migration of whites, especially white small-business owners, from the city of Baltimore.
I predict that as blacks in other cities “learn” from Baltimore’s example of laid-back riot “control,” the events there will be reproduced elsewhere, with similar demographic and economic consequences. I predict that racialist mouthpieces, starting with Al Sharpton, will blame the further deterioration in majority-black urban neighborhoods on “white greed.” And I predict that the national media, to the extent that they deign to cover those phenomena at all, will rationalize the violence as “to be expected” and deplore the flight of whites to safer, less racially mixed regions as “racist.” Who would like to bet against me?Liberty's Torch: A Quiet Riot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 PM | Your Say (8)
What’s left in these urban reservations are low-IQ violent nitwits.
The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name | The Z Blog On the television you see young black males mugging for the cameras as they commit pointless acts of mayhem. You see blacks running from burning stores with arms full of goods. Of course, the liquor store is robbed and you see blacks carrying away the liquor and beer.These scenes are narrated by the same old voices saying the same old things. To spice it up, they interview a local, who mumbles through the interview, confirming everything you see on TV. This, of course, is the simple reality of places like Baltimore, Detroit, East St. Louis and so on. When the government banned private discrimination in in the 1960’s, whites fled the cities to avoid having to send their kids to school with blacks. Responsible and intelligent blacks tried to keep it together, but they threw in the towel in the 80’s and 90’s when crack turned American cities into war zones. They headed for the suburbs to live with the whites. What’s left in these urban reservations are low-IQ violent nitwits.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 PM | Your Say (6)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:18 PM | Your Say (1)
Heinlein’s “Makers, Takers, and Fakers.”
Not all Makers produce tangible products. The humblest counter girl at a fast-food restaurant facilitates the provision of an objective good -food - to those who would purchase it. That gives her a claim on the title of Maker quite as valid as any farmhand or factory worker.Takers are persons unable or unwilling to produce or serve others.
They're sustained by the production of Makers; without Makers' largesse, they would perish. Not all Takers are willfully so; there are millions of persons unable through no fault of their own to support themselves by productive effort. But the great majority of Takers are not of that blameless sort.Fakers are those who pose as Makers but who are quite as parasitical as the willful worst of the Takers.
Politicians and their hangers-on are Fakers. As Sir Fred Hoyle wrote in The Black Cloud, we treat them as important because the newspapers say they are, whether explicitly or implicitly. Yet theyâre as helpless to sustain their lives by productive effort as any Taker. Liberty's Torch: What Will Follow
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:14 PM | Your Say (0)
Trigger Warning: College Kids Are Human Veal
They act as if they are raising human veal that cannot even stand on their own legs or face the sunlight without having their eyeballs burned out and their hearts broken by a single deep breath or uncomfortable moment. I’m just waiting for stories of college deans carrying students from class to class on their backs. - The Daily Beast [HT: Fat Man]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:01 PM | Your Say (1)
Dear Baltimore, Write if you find work.
I wish you all the luck in the world Baltimore.And I truly wish you had the courage to change. If you ever do, send up a flare. Until then, there is nothing anyone can do for you. You are victims of your own choices, and no one can make choices for you but you. As far as the good people of Baltimore trapped by the terrible voting of your fellow citizens, I suggest you buy more guns until you can move to a city not run by those who see rioting aspart of the Master Plan. Baltimore Is a Democrat Problem, Not America's Problem - Breitbart
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:34 PM | Your Say (2)
In Ferguson and in Baltimore, the dead man was a criminal.
I am not saying they deserved to die, but the confrontations between the police and urban young African-American males is the highest of any demographic group.For example, police do not have many interactions with rural Amish little old ladies. We know why; rural Amish little old ladies are not running drugs, robbing liquor stores and gunning one another down. Young African-American males commit nearly half the violent crime in America. That is the root cause of Ferguson, Baltimore and the rest of this Tour of Destruction Across America sponsored by the NAACP, MSNBC-Comcast, and the Obama administration. Don Surber: Riots show liberal programs failed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 PM | Your Say (3)
Today it seems like feminism is largely defined by cringing, whining, cowering, and weeping emotional infants.
The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate.The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall—it was packed—but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said. Word Around the Net: THE CRINGING
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 AM | Your Say (4)
April 29, 2015
Dateline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 PM | Your Say (2)
A credit to her cause....
Really? Okay, we're locked and loaded. Come and get your love Tiffany.
We're Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
We'd like to thank you once again.
We're Sgt. Pepper's one and only Lonely Hearts Club Band.
It's getting very near the end....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 PM | Your Say (5)
April 28, 2015
Let me just reiterate: YOU DON’T HAVE ENOUGH AMMUNITION. So, whydontcha get on that, mkay?
Assault rifles and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition is one of the best places to park wealth right now. And you better know how to use it, and you better sit your wife down, tell her to cut the sissy, whiny female bullshit and learn how to handle every weapon system in your arsenal. This isn’t a damn game or a TV show. Many, many women are going to find themselves as the ONLY THING standing between a hip-hop rape mob and their children. The Only Three Things I Called That Have Not Yet Happened | Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 PM | Your Say (10)
Well, that'll teach those American dreamers to try and run a business in an Obamanized black ghetto.
'They didn't say anything to me, they just took what they wanted. I opened this store a year ago. I wanted to follow my dream and wanted to make something for myself.'.... 'One guy who was rioting was saying: I've got a big load of medicine' - he was bragging about the stuff he stole. I saw people speeding up the road to the mall to steal more stuff. 'When they came to us they said: 'You don't sell no gas, we guna blow you up. What could we do?' Smashed, looted and burned by the mob - inside the destruction of Baltimore as shopkeepers tell how they fled burning shops and one says he called police 50 times - and nobody came - Boston Newstime
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 PM | Your Say (10)
To hold a gun and to use it wouldn’t be just illegal in most cities without permits, but it would be a violation of a caste boundary.
You’ll hear this often from slave women, who are usually quite happy and comfortable in servitude,no matter what she says in earshot of her masters to show what a spirited, hard-working, self-abnegating little slave she is. When a slave man she knows brings up guns or buying a gun, she will have an immediate emotional reaction to it, sometimes even babbling about how terrible and dangerous guns are, and why one shouldn’t own it or even know how to use it. About the Corporate Slave Class - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:05 PM | Your Say (7)
Weaponizing Sound Fire Control
The basic concept, Tran said, is that sound waves are also “pressure waves, and they displace some of the oxygen” as they travel through the air. Oxygen, we all recall from high school chemistry, fuels fire. At a certain frequency, the sound waves “separate the oxygen [in the fire] from the fuel. The pressure wave is going back and forth, and that agitates where the air is. That specific space is enough to keep the fire from reigniting.”
While I'm aware that it's a little strange this would be the first thing to cross my mind, surely this same effect could be weaponized, used to thin the air of oxygen and cause targeted asphyxiation wherever these robot swarms are sent next. After all, even something as simple as an over-loud bass line in your car can physically collapse your lungs: "One man was driving when he experienced a pneumothorax, characterised by breathlessness and chest pain," the BBC reported back in 2004. "Doctors linked it to a 1,000 watt 'bass box' fitted to his car to boost the power of his stereo."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:43 AM | Your Say (4)
Everything you ever needed to know about trigger warnings and safe areas
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (0)
Hey, Play Fair!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (3)
People on the right tend to prefer to delude themselves that they’re not in the weak political position.
What’s important for the right is to recognize itself as such, and to also see that its interests are harmed rather than served by compromise and cooperation with the progressives who have every intention of destroying their opponents, physically or otherwise, as soon as they have the will and means to do so.How Progressives Purge Corporate Cultures - Social Matter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (1)
Never Forget!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (1)
The strange cosmology of the social justice Left
Theirs is a worldview where Hate and Bigotry are nigh omnipotent,charting the course of civilizations, driving generations of men and women to fundamentally misappraise their fellow human beings, fighting against the very arc of the moral universe and frustrating its bend towards justice. To them, as I’ve argued here and elsewhere, these concepts have a massive explanatory power, are the keys to understanding great swaths of human history. And so anyone who allies themselves with hatred or bigotry (or racism or homophobia or misogyny or whatever the flavor du jour is) is obviously in league with the powers and principalities that hold sway over our vale of tears. And anyone who belongs to one of the designated victim groups that these powers wage their eternal war against are just that: victims. They are the underdogs, despite the testimony of your senses. They are the bullied, damn your lying eyes. And thus they are sacrosanct under the no-punching-down commandment. Punching Down and Liberal Cosmology - Social Matter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (1)
April 27, 2015
Good Question
Has anybody in the media asked Muslim Democrat US Congressman Keith Ellison his views on gay marriage? No? Huh...I wonder why that is? Robbie Cooper (@RobbieCooper)Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 PM | Your Say (5)
Wall Street and corporate American know there is no deal considered beneath the Clintons.
If they will, as reported, wheel and deal off the human tragedy of the Haitian disaster, then they will indeed do anything.If they are willing to defame and destroy women abused by Bill Clinton, they will not only do that, but proclaim themselves feminists. They have created a huge shakedown conglomerate in the Clinton Foundation in Machiavellian fashion: the philanthropy brilliantly masks the cynical tapping of such funds for personal aggrandizement. Quid pro quos go through the foundation to “help” the helpless while providing the family the moral veneer to moonlight and rake in huge fees from foundation donors, who do not give such largess for nothing. Hitting up corporate finaglers for $70 million in tag-along private jet travel would be burdensome; but creating a tax-free “philanthropy” to provide such corporate one-percent travel for the three Clintons (whether to lecture on global warming or the unfair tax policies of the one-percent) is brilliant in the Medieval sense.The Fall of the House of Clinton | Works and Days
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:14 PM | Your Say (1)
Basically, we’re the Terminator.
More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life.Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness - but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator. mikhailvladimirovich: bogleech: It’s funny how...
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (3)
St Louis Blues
In 1954, the St. Louis Board of Education published an 18-page essay in favor of promoting moral values in the St. Louis public schools, including:– Clean speech, thought, and conduct — Honesty — Goodwill and kindness — Loyalty — Respect for elders — Respect for the rights and property of others — Responsibility — Truthfulness — Reverence [ -- Suggestions for the Teaching of Moral and Spiritual Values in the St. Louis Public Schools, Saint Louis Public School Journal, January 1954 ]
The St. Louis Board of Education’s achievements between 2003 and 2011 include:
– 44 vacant buildings, many of which were vandalized — School board members engaging in shouting matches — “Pimp education” rap snacks becoming available in public school cafeterias — In one high school, blacks fighting each other and getting shot — In another high school, girls engaging in dozens of fights — In a third high school, “students” fighting each other in the cafeteria — And one high school administration caving in to threats of trouble from thugs by cancelling a dance —And one high school administration caving in to threats of trouble from thugs by cancelling a dance A Terrible Surrender « The Thinking Housewife
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (9)
This weeks cover of Der Spiegel
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (3)
This system is not particularly wisely put together, nor is it likely to survive,
if only because slaves are such terrible fighters, and helots are also terrible fighters.The slave classes are making very loud noises about how much they distrust the praetorians, and how much they would prefer it if the praetorian caste came to be either replaced by helots, or made into a helot praetorian caste. Why this is doesn’t seem to be from any sort of rational thought process. It’s more that the slave mentality within them has gone to a runaway, ‘left singularity’ signalling competition, in which the slaves are desperate to show that they are more humble and submissive to the needs of the oligarchs than the slave next to them. It’s a sort of groveling competition. The slaves also like to think that their influence over the helots — and their lauding of them as more holy and important than themselves — will also help them use those helots as proxy armies against their real rivals, the freemen. About the Corporate Slave Class - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (0)
The Ghost Army
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (0)
Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet
"They called me foolish and laughed at my predictions. Yet even now, the Midwest is flooded, the ice caps are melting, and the cities are rocked with tremors, just as I foretold. Fools! Why didn't they heed me before it was too late?" - - America's Finest News Source
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (2)
April 26, 2015
The revolution begins!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:35 PM | Your Say (1)
Noted
Apple: ‘We do not accept fart apps on the Apple Watch’ | Cult of MacPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (2)
The Greatest URL of All Time
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/25/bruce-jenner-kardashians-transgender-interview-civil-rights [HT: Sailer]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (1)
Obama took office vowing to end America’s wars. Now we’re in at least five
“We’re sort of seeing the world order cracking around the edges,” says Robert Kagan, a conservative author and historian whose writing has caught the president’s attention. “The only thing Obama can hope is that it doesn’t completely collapse while he’s still president.” - - World War OPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (4)
April 25, 2015
Glamorous Crossing: How Pan Am Airways Dominated International Travel in the 1930s
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 PM | Your Say (4)
Gizmosis
An obsession with any advanced technological device, usually pointless and/or confusing. A condition or abnormal process characterized by an obsession with anything small and electronic." -- Art & Graft
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 PM | Your Say (3)
MLB: Here’s a Perplexing Question to Bat Around
What constitutes batting around in an inning? ‘Niners’ and ‘Team 10’ can’t agree. - - WSJPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:14 PM | Your Say (1)
Blue Tears and the Milky Way
The venerable Astronomy Picture of the Day
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 PM | Your Say (0)
I Feel Like NPR Doesn’t Like My New Radio Show Idea.
It seems these days everyone has a podcast or public radio show. But nobody’s doing a public radio show where the host sits in chain restaurants in the middle of America, listening to Hall and Oates, Kansas, and Blue Oyster Cult, wondering what went wrong. Yet.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 PM | Your Say (2)
U.S. Army and British paratroopers perform a static line jump
at Holland Drop Zone in preparation for Combined Joint Operational Access Exercise 15-01 at Fort Bragg, N.C., April 11, 2015. GOTO: Raining freedom -- Select Full WindowPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:49 PM | Your Say (3)
How to Make Scrambled Eggs With a Waffle Maker Recipe
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (8)
Why people are sick of newspapers
Most of them, I'll bet you, have never baited a hook, changed their oil, or made a raft out of orange crates and old inner tubes. Nor (I'm continuing to bet) have they ever held a gun, much less fired one, and would regard doing so as highly exotic and probably fascistic. Zero of them would have served in the military. The men likely never got into a fight in high school. The women probably think that peeing in the woods constitutes either grave hardship or high adventure. Few have hitchhiked, boozed in a country bar, done shift work in a gas station, pulled crab pots, or played in a tire swing. In short, they are privileged little snots. And have the attitudes to go with it. Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (9)
"A system for allowing a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his center of gravity...."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 AM | Your Say (2)
April 24, 2015
The 'To Hell With Them' hawks" is a really clunky way of identifying a faction.
We only want them to put down their arms against us. Henry Kissinger famously said of the Iran-Iraq War that it was a pity both sides couldn't lose. One doesn't want to be accused of inhuman callousness; but I am willing to confess, and believe I speak for a lot of THWTHs (and a lot of other Americans, too) that the spectacle of Middle Eastern Muslims slaughtering each other is one that I find I can contemplate with calm composure. -- John Derbyshire
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 PM | Your Say (6)
The Rentier Class has no plight. They are the winners.
Rentiers have locked in complete economic security and no longer need to do unpleasant work in order to survive.
Examples of rentiers include: Cashed out entrepreneurs, Wall Street types who banked their salary and now no longer need to work, small business owners who have grown a profitable business that now runs itself, super star athletes who invested their earnings well, etc.
The rentier class is not limited solely to those who have amassed independent wealth. I count as rentiers tenured professors who love their jobs and who can pick their own research topics. A staff engineer at Google who can pick and choose projects might also count as a rentier. Great Problems: The Economic Classes and their Respective Plights
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:12 PM | Your Say (1)
These days I can't sit through that "I'm proud to be an American 'cause at least I know I'm free"
She was worried they were going to shoot her barking dogs. Which the police certainly do. But, maybe if your poor dog tries to protect you and you rush to grab his collar, the sudden move will result in them shooting you - and then trotting back to the vehicle to find a taser to plant beside your body.
What I mean is, when Mr Mauser says "it's hard to know how you would react", you have to react as you would if you were raided by the Egyptian police or the Turkmen police, and figure out a way to increase your odds of surviving the encounter. But, on his general point, I'm in agreement: Americans need to recover the habits of liberty, and refuse to accept the "justice" of squalid hacks like "Judge" Kulka. And they need also to understand that there is a direct line between the contempt for law demonstrated by the super-elite in Washington and the terrifying caprices of Wisconsin "justice".
Like I said, I want a candidate who'll restore government integrity and equality before the law. These days I can't sit through that "I'm proud to be an American 'cause at least I know I'm free" song. I'd like fewer people to sing it and more people to live it. Oligarchs for Hillary! :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:37 PM | Your Say (4)
Are We Out of Nazis Yet?
This old guy is 93. What do they expect to come of this? He’s going to croak any day now. These trials are nothing more than guilt porn. They have nothing to with justice, they never do, and they sure don’t have anything to do with vengeance. The guy is 93. I guess we will have to wait for the final Nazi to die in the next few years. There are only a few thousand left, if that many. The Nazis, in my view, cast way too long of a shadow. Marx is arguably history’s greatest monster. At least 100 million were murdered in that prick’s name. Hitler was a piker compared to the Reds, but Western Progressives see too much of themselves in the Nazis. Maybe when the last Nazi dies, the Cult will be free. Are We Out of Nazis Yet? | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 AM | Your Say (13)
April 23, 2015
The Slave Caste of America
Especially since the 2007 financial crisis and the escalation of the cost of living in these cities,this slave caste (which is often quite wealthy, as slave castes often have been, particularly in the East) has become more squeezed and dependent. It’s not uncommon to hear of particularly ambitious corporate slaves who have achieved ‘success’ only to be able to barely afford to buy a humble, lower middle class home in their favored region near the seat of power. Outside the seat of power, even a truck driver can afford to buy a beautiful home which would cost millions of dollars in the central cities. Inside the seat of power, most of the slaves can only afford to rent from either higher-end slaves or members of the oligarchical class. About the Corporate Slave Class - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 PM | Your Say (1)
The SWPL class
SWPL's are educated, urban, Bohemian, progressives.The social network centers around the upper tier universities and the "blue"/progressive urban centers. Common activities of this class include: listening to NPR, drinking locally roasted coffee, attending an upper tier college, voting for Obama, shopping at Whole Foods, drinking a micro brew, or engaging in some activity to raise awareness. The class is mostly white, but there is a substantial minority of Asian members, and a smaller minority of black and Hispanic members. SWPL's are 'white' in the sense of what a black person from the hood says when he accuses his buddy of 'acting white.'Great Problems: The Economic Classes and their Respective Plights
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 PM | Your Say (1)
Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia.
to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading. George Orwell -- The Prevention of Literature
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:09 PM | Your Say (0)
April 22, 2015
Frightened villagers “killed” the first hydrogen balloon
It fell at three quarters past five near Gonesse, ten miles [actually, 15 miles] from the Field of Mars. The affrightened inhabitants ran together, appalled by the Hellish stench of sulphur, and two monks having assured them it was the skin of a Monstrous Animal, they attacked it with stones, pitchforks and flails. The Curate of the village was obliged to attend in order to sprinkle it with holy water and remove the fears of his astonished parishioners. At last they tied to the tail of a horse the first Instrument that was ever made for an Experiment in Natural Philosophy, and trained it across the field more than 6000 feet. Progress - Futility ClosetFutility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:55 PM | Your Say (4)
The computer is not expected to recover.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:55 PM | Your Say (3)
She has been smart enough to play the skins game well enough to get rich as a colossally bad poet
No, I suspect she knows the truth of things. She just hates white people and would enjoy seeing more white people suffer and die. The cops could shoot a thousand white teenagers in the back tonight and Morrison will want more. I don’t blame her, really. She’s old and no one really cares what she has to say about anything. She may as well let loose with what’s on her mind. She also must think the tide of history is on the side of non-whites. Look around and ask yourself if she is wrong. Death to Whitey! | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:52 PM | Your Say (11)
The left is at its best when it’s trying to take power.
It unleashes its egocentric creative impulses, it writes poems, plays and songs as its heroes die in doomed battles or pump their fists at protests. And then they win, get rich and fat, the people grow poor and the country becomes a miserable dictatorship. Try putting a 300 pound Che on a t-shirt. Or get inspired by Obama lazily playing golf. Sultan Knish: The Death of the LeftPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:50 PM | Your Say (1)
The Socially Acceptable Sin
we hardly give it a second thought, and that is the constant hunt for more over what is enough. Or, in an uglier terminology, what is known as gluttony.... At its simplest, gluttony is the soul’s addiction to excess. It occurs when taste overrules hunger, when want outweighs need. And in America, where upsizing has always been part of the American dream, it’s often difficult to distinguish what is hard-earned achievement and what is indulgent excess. In this sense, even the most athletic and toned among us can be gluttons. Any of us can be. | RELEVANT Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:42 AM | Your Say (5)
Moron of the [Earth] Day
Gowanus Canal Swim What: Wrapped in a yellow drysuit and exposure protection gear,Water Advocate and Swimmer Christopher Swain will emerge from the contaminated soup of the Gowanus Canal Superfund Site, on Earth Day, to call for an accelerated cleanup of the Canal. Swain’s goal is a Gowanus Canal that is safe to swim in every day. Swain will swim the entire 1.8 mile length of the Gowanus over the course of the day, from the Flushing Tunnel down to New York Harbor, navigating through industrial waste, fuel slicks, sewage, and trash. Swain is thought to be the first person in history to attempt to swim the entire length of the Gowanus Canal.... A layer of sludge 10 - 20 feet thick, spiked with coal tar, heavy metals, and toxic compounds, covers the bottom of the Canal. Dangerous levels of bacteria and viruses, including gonnorhea, have been found in the Canal’s waters as a result of raw sewage discharges.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (3)
Hitler’s six million, Stalin’s twenty to thirty million, Mao’s fifty to eighty million…
the twentieth century’s body count is so massive that mere margins of error often run into tens of millions of human lives.Pockets of just over a million such as we find in the Rwandan civil war (a number which also fits the Irish Potato Famines, by the way, where an element of calculated genocide was certainly present) hardly seem to bear inclusion. If we are not to be permanently, fatally stultified, however, by the depth of our own depravity, we must strive to count every body. We must no longer tolerate speech that incites violence. We must purge mass entertainment of its irresponsible representations of mayhem. We must limit the manufacture and distribution of weapons. Those instruments of doom which we have already created must systematically be dismantled…. And so the program goes. Why Is Human History an Inhuman Nightmare? | Intellectual Conservative
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:04 AM | Your Say (5)
Kicking the Can
Tasty light beer, in a lightweight container that’s strong and durable and stackable. The can has a pop-top, and is recyclable when empty. It’s called “The Silver Bullet.” The cans are one of the most sophisticated pieces of engineering we encounter. The product of more than 150 years of research and development. - - Robert Fulghum
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:20 AM | Your Say (3)
April 21, 2015
Don't Believe the Hype
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:27 PM | Your Say (4)
The Quest for the Chocolate Savior
There’s a sacramental quality to the worship of non-whites and foreigners.I hear this from otherwise sensible people regarding Hispanics in California. They believe the state will turn around when a suitably conservative Hispanic wins the governorship. To my ears, this sounds a lot like ancients believing the right sacrifices could result in a good harvest. It’s magical thinking. In the case of Americans, my sense is many white people think that their sins can only be scrubbed from their soul if they fully and complete submit to those who their ancestors harmed. Racism has taken up the place of original sin. Christians believe you must completely submit to God. The anti-racists think they can only be cleansed by submitting completely to non-whites. -- | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:46 PM | Your Say (2)
For Earth Day: Michael Crichton explains why there is "no such thing as consensus science"
"In science consensus is irrelevant.What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period." - AEI | Carpe Diem Blog ｻ AEIdeas
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:58 PM | Your Say (2)
Down by Me
The Native Americans, we call them "Indians" since that's what they call themselves, they can get real spiritual here.The Anglos, sometimes referred to as Gringos, the land could break their hearts. The Hispanics, mostly Mexicans, they get called Meskins but not in a derogatory way. They're more used to the environment down here. When I think about it, what we call each other gets pushed aside since there are Mexicans that go back three or fourgenerations and Anglos that grew up side by side with them, fighting Nature, rejoicing it, simply being ordinary folks. Spillers of Soup
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:15 PM | Your Say (2)
Meet Boston Corbett, the self-castrated hatmaker who was John Wilkes Booth’s Jack Ruby.
Through the cracks in the wall, he could see the fugitive shift in and out of view, a gun in hand. As the flames rose, Corbett trained his pistol on the image, even though the word from Washington was clear—Booth was to be taken alive. Corbett, you see, wasn’t the kind of soldier who followed orders easily, unless they came from God. | Washingtonian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:47 PM | Your Say (1)
Twinkie's Miracle Comeback: The Untold, Inside Story of a $2 Billion Feast
“The brand awareness was unbelievable,” says Jhawar. “It’s not every day you have an opportunity to acquire a brand that is ubiquitous, that had $1 billion in revenue before the bankruptcy and 80–plus years of legacy.” Acquire they did, plunking down $410 million for the cake brands and promising to inject another $250 million to rehabilitate the business. Now, just two years after buying the shuttered company, they sit atop what will likely be a $2 billion win. - Forbes [HT: Maggies Farm]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (3)
Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, and Georges Clémenceau
They were themselves not causes but symptoms of a disease, which for a word we might call post-modernism. President Wilson did the most permanent damage. He was the Barack Obama of that historical moment, enjoying an immense charismatic popularity in Europe. A moral and intellectual simpleton, he had handy to his lips a short list of glib progressive nostrums that appealed to great masses of the war weary. The valour deficit : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (0)
Roseanne Barr on Losing Her Sight, Smoking Weed, Rejecting Feminism, and Not Voting For Hillary
I thought about starting my own party, the Green Tea Party, a hybrid of freedom and safety net. That’s what I think the future is all about: a limit to government size and power, government made efficient. There’s a party called the National Woman’s Party, which started about 100 years ago: That would be a great party to run with.” - The Daily Beast
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (4)
JUST GO AWAY: The Case Against Jeb Bush for President
Giving Jeb the nomination neutralizes some of the best arguments against Hillary.She’s a relic from the 20th century? So is Jeb. She’s a longtime member of the political ruling class who thinks she’s entitled to the presidency because of her last name? So is Jeb. She supports an immigration policy that rewards lawbreakers and dilutes our cultural identity? So does Jeb. She’s charisma-challenged and is propped up not by grassroots enthusiasm but rather by the largesse of big money donors? So is–you get the idea. Doug Giles | #ClashDaily
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (3)
April 20, 2015
On our marks.... getting set....
Pew Shows Highest Support for Gun Rights Ever Pew Research released a poll showing their highest documented support for gun rights, and 63% of their respondents said the best way to protect yourself against crime was with a gun. The survey also specifically says that Americans do not believe that more gun control will keep them safe.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 PM | Your Say (5)
Otis Taylor, Nasty Letter: "If the devil come I've been wrongly, wrongly accused"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:12 PM | Your Say (1)
If you liked "Global Warming" and Climate "Change," you'll love "Sustainability."
Global warming had a mortal weakness.It was testable. Sustainability does not suffer from the same fault. It need never meet reality. No matter what any individual or organization does, its activities can always be labeled "unsustainable." This is because there is no definition of what sustainability is. It always means just what someone claiming to be more eco-holy than thou wants it to mean. True sustainability is a goal ever disappearing into the distance, one which can never be reached, but which must be pursued with ever increasing vigor -- and funded by ever burgeoning taxes. -- Breitbart
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:34 PM | Your Say (5)
Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (4)
I have seen money. Felt it in my hand.
I have wasted it one day and built temples to my fellow man the next with money, with no good reason to do either.I have watched it slumber in a bank book with my name on it waiting for nothing more than a notion and a signature. All gone. Gone for good, I think but must not say. She hears everything I say. I utter the sounds but I don’t listen to what I’m saying. What is the line? I must remember the line. Strut and fret upon the stage, I think. Sippican Cottage: I Must Not Do It
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (2)
April 19, 2015
Understanding The Fear Of Self-Defense And Revolution
The great lie being injected into the movement over the past few years is that removal of the elites will solve nothing
because the “real problem” is the corrupt nature of humanity in general and that if we remove one set of elites, they will simply be replaced with another set, as if society is fatally predisposed to develop an elitist class. This is the most vapid form of defeatist garbage ever regurgitated by nihilists. First, we have no idea whatsoever what life would be like without the globalist network because we have never lived in a society in which they have been removed, even for a single generation. I think early America after the revolution is the only example I can find of a society free from most elitist controls, and the prosperity that developed in that environment leads me to believe that removal of the entire elitist framework would result in undeniable positive changes for the world. Why else would the globalists spend the past two centuries attempting to dismantle the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?Guest Post: | Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:10 PM | Your Say (8)
The slave class is entirely dependent on the activities in the modern bureaucratic courts
They’re skimmers, financiers, rule-makers, centralizers, standardizers, administrators, teachers, technologists, and cultural manipulators.They usually turn their noses up at independence, even in matters of business, preferring to raise paper money for grand projects with social missions from their oligarchical superiors. They’ll happily trade autonomy for a recognized position within the court, even if it makes them soft and dependent on the system. Hand such a man a gun, and he will tend to feel frightened of the idea of shooting it. About the Corporate Slave Class - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 PM | Your Say (0)
It's not cheap to be poor anymore.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:08 PM | Your Say (7)
"About the Size of a Grain of Rice:" This is the world's smallest computer
Despite its tiny size, the M^3 has the ability to take pictures, read temperatures and record pressure readings. Researchers hope to implement the microcomputer into a variety of applications ranging from medical to industrial purposes. Due to its micro-size, the M^3 can actually be injected into the body, where it can then perform ECGs and also take pressure and temperature readings. The oil industry is also interested in inserting the Micro Mote into oil wells to help detect pockets of oil that can still be extracted before moving on to new sources. - CBS News
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:19 PM | Your Say (2)
The left is winning, but for the left winning is indistinguishable from dying.
The West didn’t defeat Communism; it held it at bay long enough for it to defeat itself.The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China crushed Communism more decisively than Goldwater could have ever dreamed of. The embargo didn’t turn Cuba into a hellhole whose main tourism industry is inviting progressive Canadian pedophiles to rape its children. Castro did that with help from the dead guy on the red t-shirts. Sultan Knish: The Death of the Left
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:48 PM | Your Say (1)
I said to Gandolfini, the bell rings and you look up.
I'm not going to go into [if that's Tony's POV]. I thought the possibility would go through a lot of people's minds or maybe everybody's mind that he was killed. He might have gotten shot three years ago in that situation. But he didn't. Whether this is the end here, or not, it's going to come at some point for the rest of us. Hopefully we're not going to get shot by some rival gang mob or anything like that. I'm not saying that [happened]. But obviously he stood more of a chance of getting shot by a rival gang mob than you or I do because he put himself in that situation. All I know is the end is coming for all of us. This Magic Moment - The Sopranos
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (1)
Kids Today: Dumb and Dumb-De-Dumb-Dumb
American Millennials are among the world's least skilled - Fortune When the results were analyzed by age group and nationality, ETS got a shock.It turns out, says a new report, that Millennials in the U.S. fall short when it comes to the skills employers want most: literacy (including the ability to follow simple instructions), practical math, and — hold on to your hat — a category called “problem-solving in technology-rich environments.” Not only do Gen Y Americans lag far behind their overseas peers by every measure, but they even score lower than other age groups of Americans.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (4)
It was as if some Faustian fire took Europe in one fell swoop
from barbarism, “a time when people believe the laws of their own village are the laws of nature”, to civilization “where people continue to believe in the justice of their ways but harbor openness to the idea they might be in error”, straight to final and fatal phase: decadence “in which people come to believe there is no truth, or that all lies are equally true.” The Thirty One Years | Belmont ClubPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (0)
April 18, 2015
The strangest moon in the Solar System
In fact, the second of Saturn’s moons ever discovered, Iapetus, presented a tremendous mystery to Cassini. While it clearly orbited Saturn like the other moons, it was only visible during half its orbit, remaining completely invisible during the other half. As telescope technology improved, we discovered why: one half of Iapetus is only about one-fifth as bright as the other!— Starts With A Bang! — Medium
Posted by gvanderleun at 11:59 PM | Your Say (1)
The U.S. in Afghanistan: A Fractally Stupid War
Like a fractal, the stupidity exists at every single zoom level: from the tactics of the soliders patrolling the streets, to the mission of the platoons taking a city, to the overall theater strategy, all the way up to the objectives of America herself. -- Devon HeltonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:50 PM | Your Say (3)
When true Christian faith in a culture is weak-to-absent, superstition fills in that vacuum.
Since people no longer worship God or believe in the concept of sin or penance, they instead embrace superstitious faux-penances to feel like they are engaging in something “religious” and “penitential”, and make sure that EVERYONE SEES THEM PUT ON THEIR LITTLE DIETARY SHOW, like the Pharisees praying on the street corners for show in Matthew 6. I’m sorry, but I’ve had just about enough of that crap. And have you ever noticed that the people who are constantly refusing to eat perfectly good food for these complete bee-ess reasons are the same people who are always “sick”? Notes on Food | Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:06 PM | Your Say (4)
Not Everyone's Internal Clock Is Set for the 9-to-5
Maggie isn't lazy; she suffers from delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS)—a disorder that affects one in 750 adults that causes them to be somewhat nocturnal.
By that estimate, DSPS affects over 400,000 Americans. Essentially, DSPS means a person's internal clock is set differently. These clocks, called circadian rhythms, are innate and often change over the course of a person’s life—which is why little kids wake up so early, and teenagers prefer to sleep in. DSPS sufferers have internal clocks that run at least two hours slower than normal, giving them "social jet lag" which is pretty much what it sounds like: They’re out of sync with the rest of society. They struggle to keep their eyes open during morning business meetings because their bodies are convinced it's the middle of the night. DSPS can wreak havoc on their health and careers, causing depression, anxiety, brain damage, heart disease, drug addiction, and a myriad of other afflictions due to sleep deprivation.- The Atlantic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 PM | Your Say (2)
To exercise your right of free speech you have to fight against economic pressure and against strong sections of public opinion,
You can say or print almost anything so long as you are willing to do it in a hole-and-corner way. But what is sinister, as I said at the beginning of this essay, is that the conscious enemies of liberty are those to whom liberty ought to mean most. The big public do not care about the matter one way or the other. They are not in favour of persecuting the heretic, and they will not exert themselves to defend him. They are at once too sane and too stupid to acquire the totalitarian outlook. The direct, conscious attack on intellectual decency comes from the intellectuals themselves. George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:11 PM | Your Say (1)
Remember when Feminism was fun? Me neither.
The cover to the first issue of Ms. Marvel is full of potential: a superheroine that kicks ass and takes names. It even proclaims: “This Female Fights Back!” – a tagline you could imagine being attached to a Pam Grier movieFeminism Fail: Ms. Marvel Comics in the 1970s | Flashbak
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:02 PM | Your Say (0)
The Underclass
Underclassers did not grow up in homes where parents instilled middle class culture and values.
They may have never learned to dress for a job interview, to show up at work on time day after day, and to follow the rules set by the boss. Decades of hood life have bred in vulgar language and a contempt for authority. The underclass street culture has an honor culture. A man must show strength and retaliate for slights or else he becomes an easy target and attracts more abuse. In any confrontation, you have to stand your ground and not show weakness. This attitude does not work well with managers. As the economy shifts to a service economy, worker traits such as appearance and attitude matter more than physical skill. Underlcass workers with their attitude problems provide negative value to employers, and thus may not be employable at any wage. Great Problems: The Economic Classes and their Respective Plights
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (1)
April 17, 2015
[Biumped] A significant percentage of people with IQs over 140 are being systematically and, most likely inappropriately, excluded
It then falls about 1/3 by 140. By 150 IQ the probability has fallen by 97%! In other words, a significant percentage of people with IQs over 140 are being systematically and, most likely inappropriately, excluded from the population that addresses the biggest problems of our time or who are responsible for assuring the efficient operation of social, scientific, political and economic institutions. This benefits neither the excluded group nor society in general. For society, it is a horrendous waste of a very valuable resource. For the high IQ person it is a personal tragedy commonly resulting in unrealized social, educational and productive potential.The Polymath Archives: The Inappropriately Excluded
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 PM | Your Say (27)
The current Democratic party needs four more years of power the way an addict needs a fix.
That Hillary should be considered indispensable is proof of how desperate the need is.‘Where was it.’ Raskolnikov thought, as he walked on, ‘where was it that I read of how a condemned man, just before he died, said, or thought, that if he had to live on some high crag, on a ledge so small that there was no more than room for his two feet, with all about him the abyss, the ocean, eternal night, eternal solitude, eternal storm, and there he must remain, on a hand’s-breadth of ground, all this life, a thousand years, through all eternity– it would be better to live so, than die within the hour? Only to live, to live! No matter how–only to live!’– Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky Avoiding the Unthinkable | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 AM | Your Say (2)
After the Civil War, Yankees continued, as they do today, their encouragement of integration for everyone else.
Yankees are always sure of what someone else ought to do.Since most blacks were in the South, it was safe to be for racial amity as the North would not have to practice it. When blacks migrated north, the Yanks contained them in poor parts of the cities, as they do today (consult the list of cities foregoing). There were occasional adventures such as the Harlem Renaissance, when fashionable Northerners could go to the Cotton Club and mingle, barely, with real blacks. “Why, they are just like people, almost. Look at them dance!” Uptown, they might keep a few trained and gelded blacks around as ornaments. That was the extent of it. Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (5)
“It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October,
I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars. The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair”. -- Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (2)
"Beige. I think I'll paint the ceiling beige." Look Up
We had hoped that there would be another plane leaving within a couple of hours, but that was a misguided thought. The next flight wouldn’t leave for another 8 hours or so. Not bad in the scheme of airport delays, but long enough for a kind of boredom to set in. And that was mostly as a result of jet lag. I am one of those people who actually enjoy airports. Between reading and watching fellow travelers pass by, I am happy. Add to that some fancy ductwork and I’m really set. I couldn’t decide if leaving the ceiling exposed was a design decision or whether there were ongoing repairs happening. No matter… Mrs. Easton
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (1)
Everything you suspect about the TSA is true....
Former TSA Screener: Groping Plot Was "Just A Game" « CBS DenverWhen an attractive male passenger would enter the security scanner,the agent would press a button indicating the passenger was female, triggering an alarm and then allowing her male colleague to conduct a pat down search on the genitals of passengers he deemed “attractive.” In February, a TSA investigator said he witnessed the plot firsthand, watching as the male agent gave a signal to his female co-worker, who then rigged the system so it would allow the male to fondle the crotch of a male passenger.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (2)
April 16, 2015
Pets Looking at Food
MORE ==> Pets Looking at Food
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:40 PM | Your Say (2)
Nixon in a Pantsuit
Even the most stalwart of Clinton supporters acknowledges that she is physically incapable of telling the truth. They laugh about it and treated as a quirk, but it says something when your best friends think you are a sociopath. Nixon people used to joke about their boss’s reputation for skullduggery, but it was never a compliment. The differences are there too. Nixon was a very smart man, maybe one of the smartest presidents in the modern era. Nixon was also a foe of liberalism at a cultural level. This was as much personal as anything else, but he really hated the hippies. He could plausibly run as an antidote to the excesses of the Progressives. Clinton is in a very different position as sort of an old school lefty throwback and a member of the Democrat Party. Nixon in a Pantsuit | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:56 AM | Your Say (9)
The Bird Cage
“With my face-guard such an accident cannot happen.” When catcher Jim Tyng first wore Thayer’s mask on April 12, 1877, it was roundly derided. Spectators yelled “Mad dog!” and “Muzzle ‘em!”, and opposing players greeted Tyng with “good natured though somewhat derisive pity.” The Portland, Maine, Sunday Telegram wrote, “There is a great deal of beastly humbug in contrivances to protect men from things which do not happen. There is about as much sense in putting a lightning rod on a catcher as there is a mask.” -- Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (2)
Google Searches Dangerous to Your Mental Health: “Poodle Grooming Art”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (4)
I'm not usually taken aback by the folks at my local Walmart, but.....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (14)
April 15, 2015
We Will Feast in the House of Zion
Chorus
We will feast in the house of Zion
We will sing with our hearts restored
He has done great things, we will say together
We will feast and weep no more
We will not be burned by the fire
He is the LORD our God
We are not consumed, by the flood
Upheld, protected, gathered up (Chorus)
In the dark of night, before the dawn
My soul, be not afraid
For the promised morning, oh how long?
Oh God of Jacob, be my strength (Chorus)
Every vow we’ve broken and betrayed
You are the Faithful one
And from the garden to the grave
Bind us together, bring shalom. (Chorus)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 PM | Your Say (2)
[Bumped] Is it possible for the United States to break up, either de facto or formally?
The country is not a happy place. Today it is more consciously and resentfully divided,politically, regionally, racially and by sex and class than perhaps ever before. The rich prosper and the middle class sink. Three major racial blocs eye each other with fear and hostility. The hard left controls the media and government against the desires of much of the country, enforcing social engineering that is deeply disliked. Feminists make war on men, and destroy the schools and universities. Washington is widely loathed. Rules, laws, and regulations never voted on grow ever more burdensome and intrusive. Many quietly want out. The question is how to get there. Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 PM | Your Say (13)
Eye Candy for Today: Sargent’s Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
The account is that Sargent was inspired by a glimpse of chinese lanterns on the shore while boating on the Thames with American artist Edwin Austin Abbey. Sargent set up to paint in the garden of painter F.D. Millet, at whose home he was staying, initially using Millet’s daughter as a model, but then replacing her with the daughters of illustrator Frederick Barnard, whose hair color he preferred for his composition. -- Lines and Colors
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 PM | Your Say (1)
Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever buy ANYTHING that says “halal”.
First, your money may very well be going to support the Caliphate.Would you have bought “certified Nazi schnitzel” back in ’44? Nope. Second, musloids are taught by their psychopathic political system to be liars and cheats AS POLICY, and that the goal of all business is to screw over your neighbor as hard as possible. So, how this manifests is by halal kill plants being FILTHY DIRTY (cleanliness costs money) AND by halal killers putting “deads” in the human consumption chain. What is a “dead”? It is a beast that died of itself before being slaughtered. Notes on Food | Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 PM | Your Say (11)
Hey, young man, should you get married?
Men are, after all, male, and occasionally capable of reason. The first question to ask yourself is: Why marry? What would you gain? Would your troubles disappear? Would sex be better? Would food be more savory? Would you get tax breaks, enjoy more freedom? Do stock options come with marriage? Is there any practical advantage at all? For you, I mean. For her, the advantages are considerable, and the drawbacks few. Your salary will allow her an upscale house, something more important to her than to you, which on the odds she will get in the divorce. Marriage locks-in child support. Since men die younger, she will get to pick your bones. For her, it is a good deal. Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:55 PM | Your Say (13)
The European Union serves three main functions.
It gives the French the illusion of power, the Germans a possibility of being something other than German and the political class of all European countries the hope of eternal life, or at least of power beyond the normal natural life of a democratic politician. It is a giant pension fund for European politicians. Enthusiastic Place Seekers - Taki's MagazinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:33 PM | Your Say (1)
"People are getting sick of having nutjobs throw sand in the gears"
We are seeing this all over and increasingly people are getting sick of having nutjobs throw sand in the gears. Otherwise cautious people vent in public at having to navigate around social justice warriors. They are learning that life is trade-offs. A sane and stable society is mildly intolerant of the weirdos. A society that embraces its weirdos grinds to a halt and begins to collapse. The University of Monty Python | The Z BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:57 PM | Your Say (1)
An Illustrated History of Tex-Mex
“Otis created the combo plate with beans, rice, and an entree. He called it The Regular. Quickly after, restaurants in Texas started copying this concept. The first chains came from Dallas in the 1930s. El Chico and El Fenix were the first real chains in Mexican food history,” he says. They spread the combo plate and also popularized the concept of ordering by number. Melted cheese and sour cream became a recurring theme on platters. The new tweaks to the formula don’t stop there. In the 1930s, Fritos were created by an Oaxacan immigrant who sold the idea to Elmer Doolin of Fritos-Lays, based in San Antonio. Tortillas also began to be mass-produced, and were in such demand that they were sold in cans by Ashley’s Mexican Food to preserve the freshness. | First We Feast
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (4)
April 14, 2015
“The settled happiness and security which we all desire,
God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:24 PM | Your Say (1)
Hillary and the Liberal Way of Lying
What was this knowledge? That the lying was for the greater good, usually to fend off some form of Republican malevolence. What was so intoxicating? That the initiated were smart enough to see through it all. Why be scandalized when they could be amused? Why moralize when they could collude? It always works. We are hardly a month past Hillary Clinton’s Server-gate press conference, in which she served up whoppers faster than a Burger King burger flipper—lies large and small, venial and potentially criminal, and all of them quickly found out. Emails to Bill, who never emails? The convenience of one device, despite having more than one device? - - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (1)
Army Transfers Chelsea Manning To Marines “So She Can At Least Feel Like A Woman”
“I’m so pleased that the Marines aren’t as hung up on fixed gender stereotypes as the Army,” a smiling Manning told reporters. “All the Drill Instructors here respect my choice in sexual identity, whether they’re calling me a ‘pussy’, a ‘twat’, or even just a ‘little bitch.'”
Manning added that the other Marine Recruits were also surprisingly open-minded to having a non-cisgendered individual in their unit, and recognized her assertiveness as a proud transgender woman with the nickname “Tough Titties.” She said they even encouraged her to skip physical training and drill to see if the corpsman could wash the sand out of her vagina. -- Duffleblog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (1)
Unemployed Gender Studies Major Sues ‘The Patriarchy’
An unemployed gender studies major from Eugene, Ore. sued “The Patriarchy” today in federal court for refusing to give her a job.In a 25-page brief, attorneys for Sarah Miller-Jones, 24, argue that gender discrimination from the patriarchy has prevented their client from finding gainful employment since she graduated from university three years ago. The suit seeks $2 million in compensation and $139 million in punitive damages, which together equal $1 from every adult man in America. - The Daily Currant
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (3)
Maxine Powell’s Motown Charm School
And, what makes you tick? I don’t teach singing. So I also told the artists that, ah, they would, this department would groom and polish them so that they could appear in number one places around the country and even before the king and queen. Of course the youngsters, you know they came from humble beginning and some were rude and crude from the street and the projects. But with me, it isn’t where you come from, it is where you’re going. - Flashbak Flashbak
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:25 AM | Your Say (1)
Pretty in Petals
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 AM | Your Say (3)
April 13, 2015
I agree and miss the smoke: "2 coffees and a smoke is a perfect meal."
Gee, thanks - but I knew that. He wants to build muscle weight and eliminate soft weight so it comes out about even. He said quit carbs and eat a hard-boiled egg, or a small plain yoghurt, or one slice of meat or 2 of cheese after hard work-outs as breakfast, to inject a little protein in the bloodstream. Nothing more. Said that was plenty for a guy doing a hard morning workout since I have mostly sitting or just walking afterwards. I guess I can handle that, altho I never have eaten any breakfast except coffee since I was a teen and do not like to eat in the morning. 2 coffees and a smoke is a perfect meal. Life in America and First World Problems: Physical Fitness for the white collar sedentary worker - Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:52 PM | Your Say (1)
The Greatest Mullets of All Time
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:39 PM | Your Say (3)
No, it isn’t “time for a woman to be president.” It’s time for a competent adult of either gender to be president.
She can’t even play the character of someone fresh and exciting.She’s Hillary. She’s a tired, old, worn-out retread who makes even the most oblivious and susceptible among us chuckle when she tries to sound sincere. Hundreds of political strategists have spent thousands of hours trying to make her into someone even halfway appealing on even the most superficial of levels, and they’ve failed. The best they could do this time around is have her stand in front of some suburban shrubbery and talk about how she plans to be a “champion for everyday Americans.” Sure, “everyday Americans” who’ve lived in mansions since 1980, have never held a job besides lawyer or politician, and charge colleges a quarter of a million dollars to deliver speeches. Matt Walsh @ TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (6)
Millions of American Voters Rallying to Tolerate Hillary Clinton
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 AM | Your Say (2)
Campers of Shag: A Look Inside Groovy Recreational Vehicles of the 1970s
thick lustrous burnt-orange shag carpeting, miles of wood paneling, and the gaudiest upholstery the decade had to offer. The 70s studs had their muscle cars, the stoners had their full size vans, families had their “metallic pea” colored station wagons… and for a select few – the traveling 1970s groove shacks on wheels – the motor home. - Flashbak Flashbak
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (7)
You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship.When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.” – Robert A. Heinlein [Doug Ross @ Journal: TRUTH: The Cure for Cognitive Dissonance]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:07 AM | Your Say (1)
The eeriness of the English countryside
Fanshawe raises the binoculars to his eyes – and that “lovely landscape” is disturbingly disrupted.Viewed through the glasses, a distant wooded hilltop becomes a treeless “grass field”, in which stands a gibbet, from which hangs a body. There is a cart containing other men near to the gibbet. People are moving around on the field. Yet when Fanshawe takes the binoculars from his eyes, the gibbet vanishes and the wood returns. Up, eerie; down, cosy. Up, corpse; down, copse. He explains it away as a trick of the midsummer light. From there, though, the story takes further sinister turns. The Guardian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 AM | Your Say (1)
April 12, 2015
Babykillers and Bastard Factories
There are a couple female life patterns that feed contemporary leftism in the West: that of the babykiller and the bastard factory. The babykiller lifestyle tends to be for more up-market women, whereas the bastard factory lifestyle is for the poorer and usually (marginally) more religious demographic. - Henry DampierPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 PM | Your Say (0)
The Secret Republicans of Silicon Valley
In Hollywood, where acclaimed movie stars and directors throw lavish fundraisers for Democrats and unabashedly support liberal causes, Republicans are a rare breed. Friends of Abe, a GOP support group of sorts, caters to A-list conservatives in the entertainment industry. Only a handful of its members have made their affiliation known, and its roster is kept secret out of fears of a blacklisting reminiscent of the McCarthy era. The Secret Republicans of Silicon Valley - NationalJournal.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 PM | Your Say (2)
April 11, 2015
A recent development in America among the superrich, is the benign disinheritance, as practiced by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett
and others of their ilk. All I can say is I sure hope so.Gates and Buffett are worth close to one hundred billion between them, both are rather nerdy and totally uninteresting, and have made disproportionate amounts of money compared to those who work for them. When they announce they will leave no money to their children it’s a bluff and a publicity stunt. Even one fiftieth of their fortune, will make their children billionaires, so who do they think they’re kidding? -- Landed Fortunes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (7)
Now consider the case of an ambitious mediocrity in the Oval Office who is enamored of himself.
In trying to be the Lee Kuan Yew of Chicago such a man would be blindside American polity because where people expect a president to be forthcoming, he would lie.Where his political opponents relied on the protections of the law and custom, they would encounter small minded and vindictive persecution. He would succeed for a time by breaking all the rules and congratulate himself on his cleverness, even deluding himself into thinking that his Occupy Wall Street thugs are a street fighting force on par with the thugs of other strongmen.
But once this mediocre authoritarian was pitted against the real thing he would be overmatched by the pros. They would see through his amateurish plots in an instant. To his lies they would reply one better. Lawfare and the race card would bounce off Rouhani or Putin like peas off the frontal armor of a King Tiger Tank. He would no more succeed at the Game of Rogues than Occupy Wall Street would make headway against Ernst Rohm’s Brownshirts or the Hezbollah. They would not even get to first base.Malice vs Incompetence | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:13 AM | Your Say (8)
April 10, 2015
Conservatives have long been overly trusting of corporate and social power
usually assuming we'd be in control of it, so that we would be protected from any misuse thereof.I think we are now suddenly discovering that was a terrible assumption to make, and that we should have been asking ourselves, all along: What if this power to gin up the forces of social conformity and legal bullying were not in our hands, but in fact used against us? Well, if any conservatives were previously unaware of the danger of empowering scolds, busybodies, bureaucrats, and police to Make You Behave As The Group Thinks Is Proper, surely none can still be ignorant. If you're still fighting for Statism and Conformity and Group Decisionmaking, you are an enemy of liberty and an enemy of conservatism. Ace of Spades HQ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 PM | Your Say (1)
Rolling Stone Can't Even Apologize Right
Because most of my readers are not journalists,it seems worth noting that if this story had not fallen apart, it likely would have walked away with a National Magazine Award. It checks all the boxes: important social issue, beautiful writing, a vivid and gruesome event at its core, a heart-rending miscarriage of justice. When Jackie threatened to slip away, she was threatening to torpedo Rolling Stone's major coup. There were certainly other stories that Erdely could have used instead, but less sensational stories that are more typical of campus rapes would not get the kind of readership or professional recognition that the magazine would earn for uncovering a clear-cut and horrific crime that the university had inexplicably failed to pursue. - Bloomberg View
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:01 PM | Your Say (1)
Free Today: All 8 Volumes of Churchill's Biography for Kindle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:47 PM | Your Say (3)
Lileks: Your goto source for cultural wisdom with a soupcon of snark since 2001. Now with added twitterifica!
Scrolling thru Netflix gives me same feeling as the office room where we store review copies of books: OK half of you stop doing things. / New on Netflix: "Hitler and the Nazis." I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but whoa, that sounds like it's way out there. James Lileks on TwitterPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (0)
DZHOKHAR TSARNAEV: Just Another DREAMer? Should We Be Bringing in More Potentially Like Him?
The Tsarnaev familywas a ridiculously dysfunctional bunch,with few marketable skills, a history of run-ins with the law, including domestic violence, 9/11 trutherism, and just general aggravated mopery. Both parents sought psychiatric treatment, and the two future pressure-cooker bomb makers were enthusiastic and frequent pot smokers. And the whole lot were able to take advantage of our generous “social safety net”. According to the Boston Herald, they received over $100,000 in government benefits, including Section 8 housing and food stamps. Their four children all attended public schools, although only two of them graduated from high school. You see, as “refugees,” they were “entitled” to these benefits. Doug Giles | #ClashDaily
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (1)
Black on Black
| The Public Domain Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (3)
April 9, 2015
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 PM | Your Say (3)
The UVA fake rape is even worse than the Duke lacrosse team fake rape.
The accused fraternity hadn’t even courted danger by hiring a stripper.They were going about their lives, minding their own business, when, out of the blue, Rolling Stone, the president of their university, and a fiendish coed decided to accuse them of a monstrous crime. If UVA’s much vaunted “honor code” means anything, it ought to mean the permanent expulsion of a girl who was willing to ruin the lives of men she had never met by accusing them of gang-rape – just to get the attention of a guy she liked. To the contrary, even after this unprovoked attack on blameless UVA students, the associate dean of students, Nicole Eramo, said that college rape accusations required “balancing respect for the wishes of survivors while also providing for the safety of our communities.” -- Ann Coulter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:13 PM | Your Say (4)
There are an awful lot of people willing to fight and die for their religion and our Constitution.
Liberals think this free society just sort of happened, that they can poke and tear at its fabric and things will just go on as before.But they won’t. So at the end of the day, if you want a society governed by the rule of force, you better pray that you’re on the side with the guns and those who know how to use them. Liberals May Regret Their New Rules - Kurt Schlichter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:09 PM | Your Say (5)
“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator,
the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.” – William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)The Liberal Bubble: ‘They Can’t Fathom That Somebody Disagrees With Them’ : The Other McCain
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:27 PM | Your Say (3)
Tens of millions of Hispanics moving north will bring their culture with them.
Having spent time south of the Rio Grande, I don’t think those countries are the way they are because of chance.They are the way they are because of their populations. That’s one point to keep in mind when thinking about the future. Tens of millions of Hispanics moving north will bring their culture with them. California is a great test case. A land dominated by northern Europeans who moved there from the Midwest became a land dominated by people from South of the border. It now resembles Puerto Rico in its governance. The Cost of Ferguson | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (3)
April 8, 2015
"Yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy!"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:39 PM | Your Say (6)
The Curse of the Samurai Muramasa Blades
The ban was taken seriously by the shogun, and those caught keeping Muramasa blades were severely punished. The most notable case was that of Takanak Ume, the Magistrate of Nagasaki. In 1634, the magistrate was discovered to have hoarded 24 Muramasa blades, and thus was ordered to commit seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment). Despite such harsh punishments, there were those who continued to keep Muramasa blades, and even had the markings on these blades changed so as to avoid detection from the authorities. The Curse of the Samurai Muramasa Blades | Ancient Origins
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (1)
¡Viva los Republicanos!
To quote myself, the RINO fantasyis a world where pasty-faced blancos rule over a land of socially conservative brown people who enjoy authoritarian rule. The fact that California turned into la dictadura perfecta, to borrow Mario Vargas Llosaâ description of the Mexican ruling party, never comes up. Maybe in addition to learning Spanish, the Jeb Bush GOP has some other transformation in mind. | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (4)
Journalism does not require sympathy for human beings. It requires sympathy for readers, who deserve truth.
So the left specifically chooses to feature situations in which facts are under dispute.Then leftists claim that no one could reasonably dispute the facts; the only people who would dispute facts about the occurrence of an evil are those who sympathize with the evil. Leftists craft Americans who require evidence into victimizers, simply so they can portray themselves as heroes. If you wanted evidence of racism with regard to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, you were a fan of Bull Connor-style police brutality. If you wanted evidence with regard to Lena Dunham's rape accusations, you stood with rapists. Leftists don't require any evidence; they will take any allegations that support the narratives they desire at face value because that's how seriously they take rape, racism, etc. Why the Left Lies | Truth Revolt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (3)
What greater proof of His divinity could there be than the fact that He is still resisted, even hated, after 2,000 years?
Nobody hates Julius Caesar anymore; it’s pretty hard even to hate Attila the Hun, who left a lot of hard feelings in his day. But the world still hates Christ and his Church.The usual form of this hatred is interesting in itself. For every outright persecutor, there are countless people who pretend not to hate Christ, but subtly demote him to the rank of a “great moral teacher,” or say they have nothing against Christianity as long as the “separation of church and state” is observed, or, under the guise of scholarship, affect to winnow out his “authentic” utterances from those falsely ascribed to him — as if the Apostles would have dared to put words in his mouth! And as if such fabricated words would have proved as durable as “authentic” ones! (Try writing a single sentence that anyone could mistake for a saying of Christ for even a century.) Sobran's --- The Words and Deeds of Christ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:00 AM | Your Say (6)
America is the right to be different from other people.
I don't see why a store run by a pious conservative Muslim can't demand that women be covered, if that's his bag,nor why a store run by a pious conservative Catholic can't also insist that women cover their shoulders, if that's his sense of what his business should be, of what should happen on property he owns. Will there be hurt feelings when some are turned away? Sure. And who cares? What the fuck are we, babies? Is this kindergarten, where everyone must be made to feel welcome, always? Ace of Spades HQ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (1)
April 7, 2015
“Every crowd has a silver lining” – P.T. Barnum
(about $22.6K today) for an elderly slave named Joice Heth, who claimed she was 161 years old and had once served as George Washington’s nurse. Given that Washington died in 1799, it’s not completely impossible that the woman really did serve as his nurse at some point, though of course the 161 years old part seems more than a little suspect. This Day in History: April 7th- The Great American Showman
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:58 PM | Your Say (3)
Tim Cook, End the Hypocrisy!
Tim Cook, head of Apple and leading homosexual fascist, says that
, “Opposing discrimination takes courage,” and we agree. We call on Mr. Cook to live up to our shared principles by pulling Apple out of Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran until they stop their official government policies of jailing and murdering gays and lesbians. Sincerely…. | Power Line
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:53 PM | Your Say (3)
Mistaeks Wur Maid
"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." It appears to be a reference to Angelou's best-known book, her 1969 memoir "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." But the Washington Postreported yesterday that the quotation can also be found in "A Cup of Sun," a 1967 poetry collection by children's author Joan Walsh Anglund. A Postal Service spokesman told the newspaper that the line, which has been widely attributed to Angelou by people including President Obama, was approved for use on the stamp by Angelou's family.In fairness, Angelou's poetry is pretty bad.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:03 PM | Your Say (9)
At the heart of radicalism is a tantrum against biological reality.
Radicals latched onto the Civil Rights Movement. What better way to freak out the squares, like their parents, than to invite the blacks in for dinner? So the New Left jumped into the cause, not to help blacks, but to harass white people like their parents. At the heart of radicalism is a tantrum against biological reality. Eventually, we all become our parents and radicals rail against that by indulging in juvenile and dangerous political causes well into adulthood. The Homo Wars | The Z BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 AM | Your Say (4)
April 6, 2015
Time to Start Taking Out the Fascists and the Trashists
To doubt those doctrines is to commit deepest heresy, and to pose a threat to the community that the modern university needs.For the modern university tries to cater to students regardless of religion, sex, race, or cultural background, even regardless of ability. It is to a great extent a creation of the state and is fully signed up to the statist idea of what a society should be—namely, a society without distinction. It is therefore as dependent on the belief in equality as Cardinal Newman’s university was dependent on the belief in God.Never Yet Melted ｻ Roger Scruton: The End of the University
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:46 PM | Your Say (1)
THE LOOK
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:38 PM | Your Say (1)
"I do not bite my thumb at you, Sir, but I do bite my thumb."
It's libel or slander to falsely accuse a specific individual of, for example,taking bribes to enact speech codes and "anti-hate" laws whose purpose is to silence critics of "militant Islam." Shakespeare had the right idea in Romeo and Juliet, though. We do not accuse any specific individual of corruption, but rather say, "Some of them must be on the Islamist payroll, as there is no other rational explanation for laws that punish truthful speech. I am certainly not going to point to anybody in particular without proof, but it is certain that some have taken Islamist money to betray their countries and societies." This effectively carpet-bombs every single European legislator and jurist behind the speech codes with the taint of corruption while libeling nobody. Articles: PsyWar: Militant Islam's Worst Enemy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:11 PM | Your Say (3)
April 5, 2015
Nothing Gold Can Stay / Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 PM | Your Say (0)
The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return;
Via The Social Pathologist: A Sovereign Mind
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 PM | Your Say (1)
Tiny songbird can fly the Atlantic
can fly over the north Atlantic, scientists have said, resolving a 50-year mystery. Tipping the scale at a mere 4.2 ounces (12 grammes), the white-throated, black-capped blackpoll warbler (Setophaga striata) migrates each autumn from New England to South America. - Telegraph
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:56 PM | Your Say (5)
I am sick of hearing about gay cakes. First off, I’d like to say that pretty much all cakes are gay.
and get some Betty Crocker cake mix, make your own damn cake and shut the heck up and help us focus on killing Islamic death-jockeys who sure as shiitake won’t bake you a frickin’ cake should they ever take the helm. Honestly, obviously, and for the record, I find your fascistic demands for a private Christian business to bake you a gay cake as odious as I would if the Westboro Baptist Church berated a gay baker to build them a Sodom and Gomorrah cake commemorating its destruction. Doug Giles | #ClashDaily
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:08 PM | Your Say (1)
God sustains the world, in good times and in bad.
Catholics, along with many others, believe that only one person has overcome and rescued history: Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, savior of the world and head of his body, the church.Those who gather at his cross and by his empty tomb, no matter their nationality, are on the right side of history. Those who lie about him and persecute or harass his followers in any age might imagine they are bringing something new to history, but they inevitably end up ringing the changes on the old human story of sin and oppression. There is nothing “progressive” about sin, even when it is promoted as “enlightened.” The world divorced from the God who created and redeemed it inevitably comes to a bad end. It’s on the wrong side of the only history that finally matters. Catholic New World - The Cardinal's Column - The wrong side of history
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:00 PM | Your Say (1)
Time to Lock and Load
Here’s What Happens When It’s Okay To Punish People’s Beliefs If, following a breathless media report, it’s okay to destroy the business of someonewho objects to you or your lifestyle on religious grounds, why not burn their home down? Does someone like that really deserve to have a place to live? Why not torch his cars? His kids are allowed in school? Hell, why not drag those hateful, homophobic bigots outside and hang them, pour encourager les autres? Of course, it couldn’t happen here, says America’s justice-warrior class, “We just want you to stop having Wrong Thoughts.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:00 PM | Your Say (3)
Those who are influenced by human respect
have tongues that utter no sentiments but those which others may applaud;they have ears that watch to catch the floating opinion of the crowd, that their own may be found according to the vulgar standard; they have eyes that see not their own contemptible subserviency, and their own wretched degradation; they have feet that walk not in the ways of God, but follow in the wake of those that insult and deride Him. Shameful servitude! infinitely more degrading than any physical bondage to which poverty or even crime subjects the outcast of society or the victims of the law. The Universal Desire to Be Liked
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (0)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 AM | Your Say (3)
April 4, 2015
At Spring Break 2015, it appears that not even real rape is considered rape.
On college campuses, rape is pretty much anything that makes a woman uncomfortable.At Spring Break 2015, it appears that not even real rape is considered rape. The police recently tracked down a 17-year-old girl who was being molested by a mob of guys after performing for them naked. She told them everything was cool. I was told of two separate cases where a passed out girl lay naked on the beach as men took turns having sex with her. That’s called rape, kids. “We need to teach our boys not to rape” the other panelists keep telling me. We do. Rape gets you 15 years in jail. We also need to teach our girls not to get into a state of mind or go to a place where rape is perfectly normal. #Rapefest 2K15 - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 PM | Your Say (4)
We are not dealing here with “another point of view.” We are dealing instead with the satanic.
It takes many forms, but when “Allah” is deemed to have commanded massacres of the harmless and defenceless, it may be seen that devil-worship is directly in play.For the poisonously befogged liberal mind, demonic service is less conscious. The liberal is not so much the Devil’s worshipper, as the Devil’s plaything. But this may be rationally demonstrated, by the consistency of his support for the more evil of any two rival causes — for whichever side promises the greater reduction of human life, up to the stage where it becomes so visibly icky that natural mechanisms are triggered, and he throws up. Holy Saturday : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:36 PM | Your Say (2)
“I operated an underground black-market Pez economy for 10 years,”
During more than 70 wild missions to Europe, he persuaded factory workers to sell him priceless dead-stock dispensers and bribed factory bosses to make him kooky rejects, which he then sold for up to $500 each. He fooled customs agents in more than 13 countries as he smuggled 750,000 Pez dispensers into the United States, and he claims to have made a staggering $4 million. -- Playboy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (1)
“Security questions” were the reason so many Christian students were massacred in Kenya this week.
This analysis dominates the headlines, as I write, of the BBC, CNN, and so forth.Owing to “security questions,” Christian students were separated from Muslim students at the Garissa university campus (many of the former identified because they were praying). By some strange and unaccountable coincidence, only the former were slaughtered. But wait, but wait, there were Muslim victims, too! At least four of them: wearing suicide vests, who blew themselves up at the end. Holy Saturday : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (1)
Martin Luther King jr was killed on this day in 1968
I think he'd be appalled and furious that anyone would compare the plight of the homosexual in Americato the horrendous evils, brutality, and systemic oppression that blacks faced in "Jim Crow" areas. I think he'd be shocked that anyone would compare refusing to bake a wedding cake or arrange flowers for a homosexual "wedding" to people having dogs and firehoses turned on them. The comparisons are absolutely hysterical - not in the humorous sense, but the shrieking overreaction sense. They are utterly without rational basis and simply done to generate outrage and pressure people to shut up, submit, and comply with the demands of a very small elite group of white Americans. Word Around the Net: SISTER ROSA
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (3)
April 3, 2015
Against Aioli
It took me a while, but I eventually sussed out why I could take the Dog Haus raw ingredients and create something special, but was turned off by all of their pre-suggested menu items.Namely: the suggestions they put forward were far too likely to feature an innocent sausage drowned in “aioli.” It’s not just the Dog Haus. I’ve been to a disturbing number of upscale burger joints that seem to think that aioli is what one puts on cheeseburgers. (Not to mention “brioche buns” — don’t get me started.) It is not. Traditionally, on burgers one puts ketchup, and on hot dogs and sausages one puts mustard, in addition to whatever other creative accoutrements one is inspired to add. But not aioli, a garlicky kind of mayonnaise meant for eggs or fish or something else light and delicate. I am here to inform the gourmet chefs of the world that hot dogs and hamburgers are not light and delicate foodstuffs. They are robust, coarse, energetic foods, and they require condiments that can stand up to the challenge. Something with a kick, with some life in it — not a greasy white emulsion of oil globules. | Sean Carroll
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:23 PM | Your Say (10)
Part of what makes modernity strange is that
although technology renders it super-capable in some ways, many of the things that we build lack permanence and beauty.The people are also enervated, with few honestly believing in the core spirit of that civilization. Sadness, depression, and madness emanate from a people sapped of meaning to their lives. When people can readily come to a satisfying answer about what their life is fundamentally for, they become far more animated, in a way that tends to leave indelible marks on history. Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation" - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:04 PM | Your Say (4)
California supplies a staggering percentage of the nation’s fresh vegetables and fruits;
it’s among the most efficient producers in the world of beef, dairy, and staple crops.One can purchase an iPhone 6 or a neat new Apple watch, but he still must eat old-fashioned, pre-tech food. There are no calories in Facebook, and even Google can’t supply protein. On the other hand, I can live without an iPad. Who is to say which industry is essential and which isn’t? Insulin and antibiotic production constitute a micro-percentage of GDP, but is their water usage less important than Twitter’s? Is a biologist who studies bait-fish populations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta really more important than a master tractor driver whose skill gives broccoli to thousands? An Engineered Drought by Victor Davis Hanson, City Journal April 2, 2015
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:55 PM | Your Say (5)
April 2, 2015
Okinawa – grim reality in Japanese underground hospital - See more at: http://ww2today.com/3-april-1945-okinawa-grim-reality-in-japanese-underground-hospital#sthash.wHNzhcMK.dpuf
April 3, 1945: Outside was a rain of bullets from morning to night.In the evening, it quieted down a little. It was then that we carried out limbs and corpses. There were so many shell craters — it sounds funny to say it, but we considered that fortunate: holes already dug for us. “One, two, three!” we’d chant, and all together we’d heave the dead body into a hole, before crawling back to the cave. There was no time for sobbing or lamentation. WW2 Today
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:41 PM | Your Say (2)
Welcome to the Tehran Pizza Hut
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:18 PM | Your Say (1)
April 1, 2015
Obama is about to announce that he may be running for a third term.
"I know that there are other “firsts” that lie ahead for America, and I want to be part of them.I’ve done a lot of thinking about my next move, and I have decided that as part of my continuing evolution it is time for me to transition to becoming a woman. Thus, I can be not only the first black president, but the first female president as well. I have directed my legal team to explore the question of whether this act of mine would constitute enough of a change of identity that it would enable me to run for two more terms. I am fully confident that the answer will be in the affirmative, because I will effectively be a different person: Barika Obama."neo-neocon ｻ Blog Archive ｻ Hope and change from Obama
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:52 PM | Your Say (2)
Ah, the old knife-in-the-nose stunt:
"How to seeme to cut ones nose halfe off. For the effecting of this feate, you must have a knife for the nonce, made with a gap in the midst of the blade, as it is demonstrated in the following figure noted with the letter A. You must conceale the notch with your finger, and then wring it over the fleshie part of your nose, and your nose will seeme as it were halfe cut off with the knife. Note that in such feats as this, it were necessarie to have a piece of spunge with some sheepes bloud in it to be retained privately."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (0)
This just in....
Indiana Gov. Signs Law Removing Waiting Period for Gun Purchase in Case of Gay Divorce. Vanderleun (@Van_der_Leun) | TwitterPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (3)
The Winner and No Longer Champion
World's oldest person, Misao Okawa, dies weeks after 117th birthday Tomohiro Okada, who worked at her nursing home in Osaka, said: “She went so peacefully, as if she had just fallen asleep. We miss her a lot.”... Asked for the secret of her longevity, Okawa responded nonchalantly: “I wonder about that too.”Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (3)