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May 31, 2016
Also related to the rapture: North Korea’s state media endorses Donald Trump.
North Korea praises Trump and urges US voters to reject 'dull Hillary' | The GuardianPosted by gerardvanderleun at 4:15 PM | Your Say (1)
Snoop Dogg Calls For Boycott of Roots,
Create Programs That Show "How We Inspire People Today" :
"No disrespect but I can't watch no motherf**king black movies where n**gas get dogged out - 12 Years A Slave, Roots, Underground, I can't watch none of that s**t," he declared.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:59 PM | Your Say (3)
If this were poker, which hand looks stronger to you for a national election?”
Donald Trump will win in a landslide. *The mind behind "Dilbert" explains why.Writes Adams:
“Identity is always the strongest level of persuasion. The only way to beat it is with dirty tricks or a stronger identity play. … [And] Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males. Clinton is well on her way to owning the identities of angry women, beta males, immigrants, and disenfranchised minorities.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (3)
Peter Thiel recently became one of my favorite billionaires by bankrolling
the legal destruction of Gawker who – as most of you already know – totally deserves it. Gawker’s business model is built around destroying the lives of innocent people to attract clicks. Hulk Hogan found that out. Peter Thiel found that out. I found that out. So did a lot of other people. - - Billionaire Branding Mistakes | Scott Adams BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (0)
The Madman as Painter
where he tried to murder a passenger in the carriage in which he was traveling. It had been his intention to go to Austria to assassinate the emperor. He was arrested and taken to an asylum in Clermont, remaining there for ten months before extradition to England. His main treatment in Clermont was cold showers, but these failed to alter his ideas or his state of mind. Dadd believed that his father was an imposter, his real paternal parent being Osiris, and that Robert Dadd, in fact, was an enemy of Osiris, perhaps the Devil himself, intent upon preventing Richard from coming into his divine heritage. | City Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:49 AM | Your Say (2)
Last Photograph of General Grant
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (0)
The Marie Antoinette Socialism of Bernie Sanders's Wife
While her husband has been out promising everyone free college, she used to run a $25,000-per-year private college—which just announced it will be closing down due to the crushing weight of debt it incurred under her leadership. The debt was backed by fraudulent claims about millions of dollars in pledged donations to the college. The case of Burlington College is a nice little microcosm of what we can expect from her husband’s economic agenda: grandiose schemes for expansion and improvement and lavish benefits offered to everyone—based on lies and financed by reckless, unsustainable borrowing, resulting in eventual collapse. - - The Federalist
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (2)
Two themes seem to dominate Commencement speeches.
One is shameless self-advertising by people in government,or in related organizations supported by the taxpayers or donors, saying how nobler it is to be in "public service" than working in business or other "selfish" activities.... The second theme of many Commencement speakers, besides flattering themselves that they are in morally superior careers, is to flatter the graduates that they are now equipped to go out into the world as "leaders" who can prescribe how other people should live. Commencement Season - Thomas Sowell
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (1)
The myths of identity politics literally drive people crazy.
a woman who sees herself as a victim and who sees all men as oppressors will naturally come to believe that she is surrounded by enemies who can do anything they like to her because of their “privilege”.She will start to interpret everything that any man says or does in the worst possible light because he belongs to an oppressor group and therefore must be evil. The more deeply a person comes to believe in identity politics the more paranoid he or she will become. Hmm | Tim Worstall
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (3)
A Severed Head, Two Cops, and the Radical Future of Interrogation
All the major tropes of a traditional police interrogation can be traced back to Reid and Inbau’s manual: the claustrophobic room, the interrogators’ outward projection of certainty, the insistence on a theory of the case that assumes the suspect’s guilt. (The manual calls this a “theme.”) The interrogators bolster that theme with what they characterize as incontrovertible evidence, which can include facts drawn from real detective work (“We know you got off work at 5 pm”) or details that are completely fabricated (“The polygraph says you did it”). Toward the end, interrogators are encouraged to “minimize” the crime in a consoling sort of way (“He had it coming, didn’t he?”). All the while, they cut off all denials until the suspect cracks. Detectives are allowed to use deceit and trickery because, as Inbau and Reid explained, none of these techniques are “apt to induce an innocent person to confess a crime he did not commit.” | WIRED
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (2)
Comment Type #23: The Linkmaster Comment Type #22: The Boast Comment Type #21: The Flirt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (0)
May 30, 2016
To date 200,000 were killed by nuclear weapons.
Between 1939 and 1945, 60 million people were killed in the most sanguinary conflict the world has known so far.Of those, only about 200,000 were killed by nuclear weapons. On either side of that conflict, Russian and Chinese communists murdered 120 million, all with antediluvian weapons. Before they got going, another 17-20 million had been killed in the First World War – yet Rutherford hadn’t yet got around to splitting the atom. Let’s hear it for nuclear weapons – Alexander Boot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:54 PM | Your Say (2)
"First one to pull my finger wins."
Jerry Brown: No Endorsement Yet in California Primary
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:19 PM | Your Say (1)
"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince,
nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." -- Theodore Dalrymple QQQ - Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:07 PM | Your Say (1)
Why Is This Hardcore Conservative Not #NeverTrump? Because Hillary Is So Much Worse
Hillary's going to come looking for me, and she’s foolish and clueless enough to push and push until we normals get tired of it and start to push back. I, for one, prefer my country not to be sucked into a second civil war because some former president’s angry wife is playing out a freakish psychodrama revenge fantasy against all the guys who have rejected her, from her father to Bill to those of us male-identifying men who laugh at her cankles. Advantage Trump. - - Kurt Schlichter via | Western Rifle Shooters Association
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:38 PM | Your Say (1)
The Pause That Reloads
By “soda machine gun safes,” I mean: soda-machine gun-safes. Not: soda machine-gun safes. (Although, given the number of soda machines that have been converted to gun lockers, it’s always possible that there might be a few soda-machine machine-gun safes out there.)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:17 PM | Your Say (3)
KNITTING WITH DOG WOOL
And they can’t just pull the fur out. They have to brush their dog regularly and save what comes off. Then they mail their precious fur collection to Doumé and she returns it to them in a 50-gram ball of dog wool. It takes her 2 hours of work per wool ball and it costs 11 euros. - The OtherThe Other
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:42 PM | Your Say (0)
It turns out that married women are twice as happy as single women.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (2)
Hollywood's economic ignorance. Not Just Wrong But
However, if you did think that you would be wrong. In fact you couldn’t be more wrong if you were Bob Wrong from the city of Wrong driving his 2010 Wrong 550, made by Wrong Motors, through the magical land of Wrong, while wearing a suit made from 100% hand woven Worsted wrong from the tailoring firm of Wrong & Wrong. The average citizen of the Axis of Ego probably knows less about how economics really works than an all too ordinary shopkeeper in the very small village of Correct. - The Rebel
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (0)
May 29, 2016
Things were slow in the trenches of discrimination.
Most victories had been won. A woman commanded the SEALs, who had been disarmed to prevent violence. The new main battle tanks had changing tables, and urinals had been outlawed throughout the services or converted to flower pots to preclude uncomfortable spaces. The warriors of social justice needed a Cause. Fred On EverythingPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:15 PM | Your Say (3)
69 Words: Robinson Crusoe's Title In Full
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished but Himself. With an Account how he was at last as Strangely Deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:47 PM | Your Say (0)
"I'm never too cool to respect the flag."
It's a good time to be a patriot. Your president just shat on the service members who fought in the Pacific War, as sure as any insult ever hurled. The US Marine with a face no older than a child's, who died trying to assault a beach from the front, is no different than the Nippon soldier who bayoneted a 7 year old boy in China. You understand that, don't you? That's called morally evolving. I'm never too cool to respect the flag. - - Casey Klahn
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (2)
May 28, 2016
The remains of the city were sown with salt, a ritual on conquered cities to symbolize a curse on their re-inhabitation.
It must be destroyed without impunity for its habitual transgressions, perpetual failures and the fiends that have infected it. It’s time has come. As the symbol of the Old Right’s impotence and incompetence at halting the Left’s conquest of our nation and its heritage, National Review must be purged out of existence. It must have no voice nor provide guidance. Woodpile Report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:17 PM | Your Say (4)
Though Nazi Germany and militarist Japan are now gone ideology is with us still with the same potent certainty it possessed in 1940s.
It is still as sure as ever it will succeed however frequently it fails, in China, Russia, Cambodia, Cuba or North Korea. The president's own party has a 2016 candidate who advocates the same policies that are destroying Venezuela without worrying it will do the same in America because Sanders is smarter than Maduro. - - Hiroshima as Gun Control | PJ MediaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:54 AM | Your Say (1)
I don't write the headlines, I just report them.
Menstrual synchronization and cryptic ovulationPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (0)
So we don’t have long lines of people looking for work; instead they sullenly stay home,
or a few joyfully take the dole, food stamps, and all the other entitlements. Most Americans don’t like doing that. They want jobs. But the jobs are gone, sent overseas along with the equipment they worked with, and the economy settled into one of opening containers of goods from China, and “paying” for these cheap goods by borrowing the money from China to give it to the not-unemployed people who used to have jobs but don’t any more. And the deficit grows, the economy stagnates, people get more angry, and many of the Republican establishment long for the old days when nobody expected them to WIN for heaven’s sake. - – Jerry PournellePosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 AM | Your Say (0)
'I was the principal of there school when they found there W buried there in there time capsule' on my last day at there school'
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (5)
You will not hear me say: bottom line, game plan, role model, scenario, or hopefully.
I will not kick back, mellow out, or be on a roll. I will not go for it and I will not check it out; I don't even know what it is. And when I leave here I definitely will not boogie. I promise not to refer to anyone as a class act, a beautiful person or a happy camper. I will also not be saying "what a guy." And you will not hear me refer to anyone's lifestyle. If you want to know what a moronic word "lifestyle" is, all you have to do is realize that in a technical sense, Atilla the Hun had an active outdoor lifestyle. - - George CarlinPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (1)
A First Look at America’s Supergun
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (9)
May 27, 2016
The future of Facebook is more bias, not less
Facebook's mistake was to attempt to create a universal, one-feed-fits-all headline service.The company put itself in a no-win situation. Even if it were possible to create a purely unbiased news feed, a lot of people would still perceive bias in it. And most people don't want an unbiased news feed, anyway -- they just want to be able to choose their own bias. So here, if you'll allow me to exercise my own jaundiced bias, is what I bet will happen. Once all the fuss dies down, the Trending Topics section, in its current universal form, will quietly be eliminated. In its place, Facebook will start offering a variety of news "channels" that will be curated, for a fee or an ad-revenue split, by media outlets like Fox News, or Politico, or Brietbart, or Huffington Post, or Vice, or Funny or Die, or what have you. Facebook members will be free to choose whichever channel or channels they want to follow -- they'll be able to choose their own bias, in other words -- and Facebook will tighten its grip over news distribution while also getting a new revenue stream. Now that's a win-win. | ROUGH TYPE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:30 PM | Your Say (2)
There's a First Time for Everything
At 96, Dr. Heimlich finally uses his life-saving techniqueMonday’s incident at the Deupree House was the first time Heimlich, who has demonstrated the maneuver countless times since inventing it in the 1970s, used it to stop someone from choking, he said. In a telephone interview Thursday, Heimlich recounted what happened. He said Ris had been sitting next to him at his table. “When I used it, and she recovered quickly,” he said, “it made me appreciate how wonderful it has been to be able to save all those lives.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 AM | Your Say (0)
Inside the Real Noah’s Ark buried on an Arctic Island
Marijuana however, is very welcome. On the Nordgen website, the resource centre that manages the facility, you can keep track of what exactly is being stored in the global vault. According to the database, there are currently more than 20,000 seeds of two different marijuana species. They also store almost 600 types of barley used to make beer. | Messy Nessy Chic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (1)
Göbekli Tepe
So old, in fact, that its builders, whoever they were, started their project as the last Ice Age was coming to a close, a remote epoch during which our ancestors were supposedly still sub-literate cave dwellers.... We have no idea how large it really is, who built it, what they used it for, or why. We know it was in use for thousands of years. And it was apparently, intentionally buried around 8,000 B.C. The deliberate burial of such a complex, requiring the movement of hundreds of tons of earth is in itself as stunning an engineering achievement as the construction of the monument itself. Articles: What Lies Beneath?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (0)
We've Learned How To Stop School/Mass Shootings
The real factor that drives casualty count is the time before the shooter is opposed – by someone else with a gun.Looking at all the events over the past couple of decades, the killers have an average of nine minutes of completely unopposed time to do whatever they want. Considering that over 70% of school killers end their spree by committing suicide, it’s clear that time is all they seek. There’s no escape plan. There’s not even a big hurry. Nine minutes of complete and total domination is an eternity. In fact, according to Martin’s research, it usually takes two minutes before a 911 call is placed. That alone is an eternity. Then it takes minutes for the police to arrive. Then it takes more minutes for responders to formulate and execute a response plan. The killer actually knows, not thinks or believes, but knows, that they have another four minutes after they hear the sirens coming. The result of all that is nine minutes of pure hell for the victims. - LewRockwell
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (1)
How Tenderness Leads to the Gas Chamber
The liberal West has been driving on the fumes of Christianity for about a century now and the car won’t go much further.
We think all that matters is being tolerant, kind, compassionate, forgiving and by that what we mean is that we let anybody do whatever they want however they want because personal freedom is all that matters and “who am I to judge?” The problem with this is that without the Christian faith there is soon no Christian morals. Why should a person be good if there is no God? As Dostoevsky said, “If there is no God everything is possible.” When the only virtue left is tolerance and tenderness everybody gets away with everything and there’s no one to put on the brakes. -- Patheos
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:55 AM | Your Say (5)
Inevitably, we will learn that this is a carefully choreographed slowdown by the TSA so they can get more money.
It’s not just miniature horse keepers who will benefit.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a well regarded airport engineer and security expert, is demanding dogs be unleashed on the people standing in line. You’re standing in-line and a miniature horse just took a dump on your sneakers and then a pack of hounds trailed by fat guys in blue shirts starts chasing the horses through the terminal. Maybe that’s where the clowns come in. Like at the rodeo, their job will be to distract the animals.Send in the Clowns | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 AM | Your Say (2)
May 26, 2016
Zuckercucks
Vox Popoli: We don't need their platforms. We don't kiss the gatekeepers' asses.
We storm the gates, tear them down, and erect our own institutions using their skulls as decorations. The Brainstorm knows what's coming next. In August, the rest of you will too. There is nothing to accommodate. We will replace them by Fox Newsing their CNNs, Breitbarting their Salons, and Castalia Housing their Tors. They can keep the left-liberal third of the literate population. We'll take the rest.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 PM | Your Say (0)
"A little less off the top, Joe."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:37 PM | Your Say (0)
Perhaps there are those who do enjoy smoking Mixture No. 79 by Sutliff; I however would not be among them.
However, during my travels I took note of a people who enjoyed the rind of a fruit, dipped in salt that was so bitter it was nearly impossible to keep on the tongue. There are people who bury fish heads in mud for a month and then dig it up and consume the putrid flesh. There are others who eat boiled eggs wherein the embryo has developed into a partially formed duck. So it stands to reason that there would be some within a population of respectable size, who might enjoy this tobacco. I have never eaten the flesh of rotted fish, but I have tasted "balut", the aforementioned egg of the duck; it did not taste like chicken, nor did it remind me in any way of peking duck, and I remember I required a significant amount of the local beer in order to distract my palate in hopes of avoiding an unpleasant reaction. All this is to say that, while I cannot decide which experience I would choose should it ever be necessary to revisit one of the undesirable experiences; suffice to say that I would prefer not to. again, experience either of the two. Sutliff Tobacco Company - Mixture No.79 - Tobacco Reviews
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (0)
How long before we see a headline, "Terrorists Blow Up TSA Screening Area, Dozens Dead, Hundreds Injured"?
Shall we then see pre-screening screening?Shall we be required to show up the day before our flight? Yes, this is a shakedown to restore recent job cuts. It's also the sheerest kind of incompetence , TSA's expertise aside from their daily theatre. Ever gone through a third world airport? You will, without ever leaving the country. Next. Woodpile Report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (4)
Are You #ManEnough4Hillary?
The Campaign that couldn't shoot straight. First they put out this ad for Hillary:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:11 AM | Your Say (3)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (4)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (0)
Haters will say "photoshopped"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (0)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (1)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (2)
"Furthermore, I consider that islam must be destroyed." -- Barnhardt
Root and branch, tribe and family: Elderly Christian woman stripped naked and paraded through streets by mob | AfricaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 AM | Your Say (4)
I’ve checked out this thing about Trump being some kind of liberal.
Even in the smear jobs, he comes off looking like a mercenary who has become tired of the rules he has successfully followed. This is the very picture of the newcomer-conservative that the movement should be making efforts to welcome. House of EratosthenesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 4:47 AM | Your Say (0)
MEN: DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK, AND DEFINITELY DO NOT LOOK AT THE PICTURES
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:25 AM | Your Say (5)
Brooklyn couple takes pictures of themselves in vagina costumes around New York
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:21 AM | Your Say (3)
May 25, 2016
When you’ve reached the point that coloring books are your stock in trade, the end is near.
Along these lines, too, adult coloring books, which are print but not conventionally so, helped bolster trade paperback sales, which rose by more than 16%. | The Arts MechanicalPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:57 PM | Your Say (0)
When Orville Wright died, Neil Armstrong was already 17 years old.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:51 PM | Your Say (1)
“The cerebro-spinal axis of our political system"
In 1911 Britain completed the “All Red Line,” a network of telegraphs that linked its possessions. The system was so redundant that an enemy would have had to cut 49 cables to isolate the United Kingdom, 15 to isolate Canada, or 5 to isolate South Africa. As a result, British communications remained uninterrupted throughout World War I.Sir Sandford Fleming described the network as “the cerebro-spinal axis of our political system … through which would freely pass the sensory impressions and the motor impulses of the British people in every longitude.” Small World - Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 PM | Your Say (0)
“Truly viral news content tends to be terrible.”
The wisdom of the crowd, when it comes to picking news stories for wide circulation, is indistinguishable from idiocy. | ROUGH TYPE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:29 PM | Your Say (0)
24 Sci-Fi Novels You Can Read for Free
Deathworld is a sort of parallel story to Harrison's famous Stainless Steel Rat series, taking place in the same sort of framework but focusing on a gambler thrust onto a hellish world full of dangerous beasts and awful weather on a smuggling trip. Planet of the Damned is an interplanetary Hunger Games, in which a survivor of the Twenties (a fittest-person challenge) tries to navigate a harsh realm of planets seemingly on the brink of nuclear war. There are also symbiotic aliens and more weirdness as the protagonists try to defuse worlds on the brink of destruction. -- Links here at Popular Mechanics
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:05 PM | Your Say (0)
The Wimpening
If Milo had knocked her cold, I’m thinking that would be the last of these confrontations. The risk assessment by these people would change overnight. Taking on the honky would suddenly come with real danger. Whatever benefits there are, assuming there are any, of refusing to fight, there’s no doubt it encourages troublemakers like that woman to get increasingly aggressive.
Watching the reaction from his fans on-line, I feel like I’m from another planet. Frankly, I cringed watching that video. Yet, the reaction on twitter suggests most people think he was the winner in that exchange. If that’s “winning” then I don’t want to see losing. To my old eyes, that looked like a white guy being dominated by a scrawny black bitch and then slinking away. I get that he is a gay guy and maybe the rules are different, but still, it was hard to watch, much less cheer. | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (4)
Pensions Will Go Away In The Apocalypse
Reagan tapped the debt spigot. Resources began to flow freely, and it changed the very way we viewed them.Suddenly, everybody had a right to a house, and college, and birth control, and diapers, and health insurance, and food, and cell phones, and anything else they could think of. Foreigners deserve citizenship, and free money, and they should even be allowed to send that money to their home country, so their families can have free money there. Nothing is worth anything, and money grows on trees. There was literally no way to communicate to the public that such profligacy would lead to a total collapse of the economic system which provided those resources, and even if there were, you probably couldn’t make people care enough to do something. Their amygdalae had grown too weak. -- Anonymous Conservative
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (1)
The so-called “sweet spot” for digging tunnels along the California/Mexico border.
“and the ground will be sandy and potentially soggy from the water of the Pacific Ocean. That could lead to flooding, which wouldn’t be good for the drug business. Too far east and you’ll hit a dead end of hard mountain rock.” However, Song continues, “in a strip of land that runs between roughly the Tijuana airport and the Otay Mesa neighborhood in San Diego, there’s a sweet spot of sandstone and volcanic ash that isn’t as damp as the oceanic earth and not as unyielding as stone.” The Soft Spot – BLDGBLOG
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (0)
May 24, 2016
An Entity With Earthly Allure
An entity with earthly allure with whom they can identify: who builds buildings they can admire, who rages when they are angry,who speaks common sense when others cannot even classify gender. Who finally turns the tables to bully their tormentors. Somebody who does not inhabit the murky world of power as a “dark force the market cannot account for”: an invisible hand that seems somehow to control the invisible hand these days. Folks who produce – well nothing really but yet feed on something in the darkness until they grow wealthy, obese. People have had enough of an economic system that exists outside their understanding, outside their control – outside their access. | Joel D. Hirst's Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:51 PM | Your Say (1)
Everyone just stay calm and remember that polls don't mean anything this far out from general election unless they show Trump losing.
— Conservative Pundit (@DemsRRealRacist) May 24, 2016
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:15 PM | Your Say (0)
The Obama Regime’s Criminal Syndicate
In short, the DOJ, leveraging the settlement process under threat of prosecution, has bypassed Congressand the Courts to secure settlement agreements to provide consumer relief funds to third-party radical leftist groups. Moreover, the DOJ has used a portion of the funds agreed to under the settlements to finance the administrations housing policy goals as the DOJ inserted its own spending priorities to pick certain groups, such as La Raza, to receive funds without any requirement that the funds be disbursed to aggrieved homeowners. Officials within the DOJ have also effectively skimmed off three percent from mortgage-related bank settlements and thus have been able to create a $500 million dollar slush fund allowing them to spend the money in whichever way they best see fit. – Politically Short
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (2)
There’s the great new dividing line in politics
One side is concerned solely with stability and comity at the top. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times argue endlessly about how best to organize global governance, because that’s what matters to them. They are not just indifferent to what happens in your neighborhood. They see such concern as a fault, a mental defect that should exclude you from the halls of power. As far as they’re concerned, you are no more important than the Malaysian sweatshop worker. You’re just an economic unit.
On the other side of the dividing line are the localists, the people who focus their attention on their neighborhood, their town, their city and their country. The Super Duper Global Trade Pact may be great for Mega Corp, but if it means all the jobs in your town get shipped to Malaysia, then it is not good for you. Cheap stuff at Walmart is not much good to a man without a job. Generous welfare benefits are not much good when everyone spends it on liquor and meth.The End of Left and Right | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:04 PM | Your Say (2)
“Have you made an herbarium yet?”
Dickinson adored the plant kingdom from a young age. She recalled going on “rambles” through the woods in her teenage years and finding many “beautiful children of spring,” her epithet for wildflowers like trailing arbutus, adder’s tongue and yellow violets. In her youth, she began composing a book — not of poems, but of plants. She meticulously dried and flattened a wide range of species — chestnut, dogwood, poppies, lilac, nasturtiums, even a couple of algae — and artfully fixed them to paper, christening many with the appropriate Latin names.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:37 AM | Your Say (2)
Chopstick Diplomacy: Parts Unknown with Quisling Anthony Bourdain
In case you’re not familiar with Anthony Bourdain, he’s the former chain smoking, coke sniffing, heroin addicted NY chef, foodie writer and documentarian.I liked him in his first TV incarnation - A Cook’s Tour - as a jaded wise cracking ex-chef who visited other peoples kitchens in interesting locales and ate what they cooked. Then he moved to the upper West Side and has been intolerable since. He turned into a snide, hypocritical, liberal – butt I repeat myself - TV food celebrity. Instead of being funny now he’s just ironic. Michelle Obama's Mirror:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (1)
May 23, 2016
A choice. Not an echo.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 AM | Your Say (3)
Extra Credit for "Retromingency"
Beck And Erickson Are Wrong On Facebook These are the complaints of useful idiots.
They are stupid and both men should be ashamed at their dull-witted retromingency in making them. Facebook is not being shaken down in any capacity. It is being criticized not as a corporation, but in its chosen role as a media entity. Facebook curates the news; it is a news source for the vast majority of Americans. It put its trending algorithm forward as a source of news, with the false impression given that it accurately represented the trending topics of the Facebook community. Instead, it warped these results according to their ideological framework and their biases to falsely represent the top stories of the day. This is a serious accusation and one Facebook has admitted to as a problem. Yet Beck and Erickson are arguing against Mark Zuckerberg when they say that it doesn’t matter.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (1)
How Did the Pet Rock Fad Start?
(Not that a rock needed to breathe, of course.) Inside the box, the rock had its own bed of wood shavings to nestle in while it waited for someone to take it home. Lastly, the perfect pet wouldn’t have been complete without its very own, official training manual, which was arguably the real product being sold. - - TIFO
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (1)
"Doesn't matter what kind of family you come from in this country. You can be anything you want to be."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (0)
Although we can regularly screen out the thoughts, sounds, images, memories, opinions and ideas of others
If one of those ‘foreign’ messages gets packaged into a catchy melody or a well-crafted song, we not only let the message in and take it to heart, we might end up constantly repeating it and go searching for more of the same! The well-crafted melody or song is an extremely powerful way to colonise or influence other minds. While most of us can resist this mind control when it comes in the form of speeches, tracts, newspapers and blogs, we have much less power when that message comes as a song or a jingle. Why a well-crafted melody has the power to colonise your mind | Aeon Opinions
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:42 AM | Your Say (2)
In under three decades, the web has expanded to contain more than a billion sites.
Every day about 300 million digital photographs, more than 100 terabytes’ worth, are uploaded to Facebook. An estimated 204m emails are sent every minute and, with 5bn mobile devices in existence, the generation of new content looks set to continue its rapid growth. Virtual memory: the race to save the information age - FT.comPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:35 AM | Your Say (4)
May 22, 2016
The rise of Trump I did not foresee, although any clearheaded person should have.
For entirely too long working-class people have been dismissed as not smart enough, their passion rooted in racism, guns, and beer.These same people have not had a raise in their standard of living since the Reagan era. In the meantime the wolves of Wall Street have all become billionaires, while none of the Goldman Sachs crooks and others of their ilk who caused the 2008 recession have gone to jail. So it was bound to happen, the awakening of the working-class white stiff who is now even told not to retain the silly old notion that single-sex, multiple-occupancy bathrooms and changing facilities should be entered based on a person’s biological gender as opposed to the one they imagine it to be. A Stinging Endorsement - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (2)
I don't write the headlines, I just report them.
A female security guard threw out a transgendered Michelle Obama lookalike who ventured into the women’s restroom at a Giant store in Washington, D.C. The guard went into the restroom and told the tranny, Ebony Belcher, to get out. "You guys cannot keep coming in here and using our women's restroom,” the guard told Belcher as she grabbed the trans from the restroom. “They did not pass the law yet." The guard was later charged with simple assault after Belcher called the police.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (5)
Deep in my bones I imagine I can vaguely remember this
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (1)
💈 NEW NATIONAL POLL
— Jared Wyand (@JaredWyand) May 22, 2016
ABC:
TRUMP - 46%
Inmate #749342 - 44%
Look at this death cross about to happen! 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/r8TEAnoiH4
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:47 AM | Your Say (0)
I'll be sure to mention that to the 5-Megaton NORK warhead detonating 2,000 feet above Telegraph Avenue.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (4)
We had the road mostly to ourselves and arrived safely home ahead of the "red".
I am amazed at how weird it's getting everywhere. The crazy soft life problems are more troubling to me then the crazy hard life problems. I asked Four what she thought about people boycotting Target. She said people ought to use the bathroom at home if they're worried about what's going on in the next stall. My mother was worried about VD on public toilet seats, my kid doesn't seem to be worried about much of anything. True North: barely ahead of the red ...
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (2)
May 20, 2016
How? Planning. Careful, prolonged, and detail-oriented planning.
The world’s most hapless robbers are arrested after crook’s gun jams, getaway driver parks his moped INSIDE the shop, all while witness films them at Swedish jeweler’sPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (2)
Your Moment of Zen
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:23 AM | Your Say (1)
It's not smart to swallow your phone
The patient was brought to the operating theatre, intubated and the initial intervention was an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. The findings are shown in Fig. 3. Following failed attempts at endoscopic removal, using endoscopic snares, graspers, tripod forceps and baskets, the endoscopic approach was abandoned. The mobile phone could not be aligned correctly to allow for a safe retrieval while limiting the potential harm to the oesophagus. The use of overtube was not an option in this case due to the size of the phone. An upper midline laparotomy was then performed and an Alexis® O Wound Protector was used to protect the wound. A gastrotomy (3â4 cm) was made in the anterior stomach away from the pylorus. The phone was delivered through the gastrotomy by manual manipulation assisted by Babcock forceps. The dimensions of the foreign body were 68 × 23 × 11 mm. This was followed by a two-layer gastrotomy closure, fascial and skin closure. A nasogastric tube was placed during the surgery and secured with a bridle. The mobile phone was sent as a specimen for forensic examination. [HT davidthompson: Friday Ephemera]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:07 AM | Your Say (3)
May 19, 2016
Three Rules for Contemporary Air Travel
1. Do Not Fly Where Muslim Crews Work on Planes 2. Do Not Allow Muslims to Pilot Planes 3. Why Are Infidels Still Traveling to Muslim Countries? Infidels should not travel to Muslim countriesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 PM | Your Say (4)
The White Shaman's secret
The rock shelter called White Shaman has an anthropomorphic figure depicting a ''shaman''. It is carved into a limestone bluff located near the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Pecos River. This is one of the most photographed pictograph sites and it has become a symbol of the expeditions. On the walls of the White Shaman Cave is a painting depicting the flight of the shaman to the land of the spirits. It is also his metaphorical death and rebirth, shown as a message from the past about humanity’s mission and a solution to the mystery of life according to the tribe, which lived there 4,000 years ago. The painting, and the message which is easy to read, surprise many who see it with its sophistication. Unraveling the secrets of White Shaman Cave | Ancient Origins
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:11 PM | Your Say (0)
Ladyboys and Trannygirlz, put your glands together for The President of the United Toilets
Glory Hole, Glory Hole, Hallelujah! - Obama is on the can, and there he sits, brokenhearted, because certain states have decided to keep biological men out of ladies-only bathrooms and locker rooms.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:04 PM | Your Say (3)
We’re on a planet where the bad guys win, the moment the good guys go off their game.
I feel sorry for the Americans. They did not want the job. But they are stuck with it until they walk away, and jilt all their remaining allies. They did not even want the praise that goes with the uniform, let alone the more frequent contumely. But a man must do what a man must do, to keep the world in order, and in this respect the USA remains the big kid on the block. Either he will deal with the little devils, or they will finally deal with him. In patience to abide : Essays in IdlenessPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:32 PM | Your Say (2)
Changing Times: How Cultures Old and New Perceive the Perplexing Concept of Time
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (2)
Wasting away again in an Obamaville.... are those who voted for him.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (2)
All Cucked Up: This just in from the big cucksuckers of the right
As cuckservative went more or less mainstream, most conservative pundits scrambled to distance themselves from it, which makes sense, since it wasn’t doing much to enhance their standing in a presidential election cycle (and since conservatives, as we know, are traditionally averse to both pornography and obscenity). Erick Erickson at RedState denounced the word, calling it “a slur against Christian voters coined by white supremacists”—a condemnation echoed by Matt Lewis, the aforementioned “mild-mannered, clean-cut” sociologist of porn. No Such Cuck | Amber A'Lee FrostPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (1)
Results matter more than theories.: Trump is Normal, the Republican Party is Not
Dear cuckservatives: your limited government, your empire of liberty, and your Constitution were all dependent on having a state intelligent and muscular enough to resist subversion and protect its national character. In the post 1960s era, every principle but identity was intellectually fought for and defended, and so conservatives lost again and again because they refused to recognize the new yet eternal rules. Results matter more than theories. American Aberrationalism: Trump is Normal, the Republican Party is NotPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (0)
You Quickly Learn To Watch Your Back Around These People
The newsroom is a huge groupthink shark tank, filled with vicious co-workers who will anxiously throw you under the bus if it means 15 minutes or even 15 seconds of fame and glory for them.Most are Social Justice Warriors or those who conform to leftist ideology. They will swarm and destroy anyone who does not conform to their opinions, such as: Barack Obama is god, the government will bring about heaven on earth once the Evil White Male is destroyed, and anyone who has a grievance against the WASP middle class represents The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed and cannot be questioned or challenged on any of their positions. 5 Shocking Things I Learned From Working In The Mainstream Media
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:03 AM | Your Say (5)
May 18, 2016
Ratings Flop – Megyn Kelly Broadcast Show, Trump Interview, Few Viewers and Last Place…
Yeah, the virus of failure was headed toward the executives of Harper Collins and they needed something to calm their nerves, toot sweet. With Fox stock dropping precipitously, and with Harper Collins on the hook for a significant sum, and with Megyn Kellyâs ratings loss in the key demo (25-54), Kelly walked into Trump Tower because she had to, not because she wanted to. The Last Refuge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:57 PM | Your Say (8)
Here we go again....
EgyptAir Jet Disappears Over Mediterranean Sea The jet made no distress call and was 20 minutes from its destination when it vanished with 66 on board, including one Briton.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 PM | Your Say (1)
Simply put, however, the Venezuelan economy has disappeared.
Mass starvation and riots loom as it is now apparent to all but the most fanatical chavista, that Venezuela's fabulous oil wealth has been squandered by corruption, mismanagement, and, above all, by the consequences of the belief that trust in government is the solution to life's problems. The Venezuelans are discovering what millions of others have: let your liberty get taken away in exchange for promises of safety and porridge, and you will end up with neither liberty, safety nor porridge. The DiploMad 2.0: Venezuela Implodes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 PM | Your Say (6)
This insane debate about school bathrooms is... I was going to say "surreal," but it's really subreal.
There is no reality to it, and yet, we are forced to pretend there is.As such, to even concede that the other side has a point is to have validated a reality that does not and cannot exist (like "homosexual marriage"). Hey, I'm a psychologist. So back off, man. I try to heal delusions, not patronize or aggravate them. Otherwise the patient will end up healing me of my contact with reality. One Cʘsmos: Garbage In, Liberalism Out
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (4)
The answer to Fermi's paradox revealed
Quite simply, the alien civilizations became so advanced that they fell victim to utterly incompetent self government. In other words, they fell into the deep, dark pit of socialism, and they fell into it one more time than they were able to get out. Sense of Events:Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (3)
The Electoral College vote follows the national vote.
There have been four exceptions.In 1824, the Electoral College failed to achieve a majority decision and the vote went to the House of Representatives, where John Quincy Adams won over Andrew Jackson, the plurality winner. Then came 1876 when Samuel Tilden became the first and only candidate to receive a majority of the popular vote and not win the presidency. However, voting irregularities in the South which kept black voters from voting threw the election to a commission, which gave the election to Rutherford B. Hayes. And in 1888, when Cleveland had a plurality, and again in 2000 when Al Gore had a plurality.... Don Surber: The Electoral College likely won't matter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (4)
Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them
The firearm is the tool that makes any man or woman physically dangerous to the trained soldier. (Ask any Revolutionary-era Redcoat. Ask any soldier today in Iraq.)No other weapon is as effective at force-equalization. There is more than a little truth in the sales slogan, "God made man. Sam Colt made them equal." Combine that lethality with rigorous training and formidable armies can be created. Instill in those armies an aberrant philosophical grounding - a coercive religion, a need for "living space," a belief in racial superiority - and aggressive and immoral war will result. A fundamental belief in individual liberty, however, will produce government that fights only when it must, and quits when it believes itself safe. And it will produce an army that will fight with both ferocity and morality - as moral as war allows, at any rate. Further, a population that believes in individual liberty, and is armed to defend it, offers a formidable challenge to either invasion or internal usurpation. The Smallest Minority:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (6)
Remind me again where Trump, at least currently, is not a conservative?
Taxes, check.
Deficit, check.
Immigration, check.
Sanctuary cities, check.
Strong defense, check.
Supreme Court, check.
Veterans, check.
Common core, check.
Iran deal, check.
Israel, check.
Healthcare, check.
Pro-life, check....
Oh, yes, Planned Parenthood.
- - artfldgr commenting at neo-neocon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (0)
If the Republican Party is all that stands “between the Jews and their annihilation,”
then everybody better get those attics soundproofed, pronto. The Great Sorting continues, ‘Renegade Jew’ chapterPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (1)
The Decadent West
Max clicked off his cell phone and watched as the scramble app closed.He then took his San Pellegrino to his room’s double window. The Spanish Steps and Via Condotti spread out before him. The good life, the decadent West. People were doing the same thing in Paris a few nights ago. No one had a gun, not even the police. He and Chris had had access to all of the video. He thought he recognized one of the bodies on the floor of the concert hall. A neighbor’s daughter from when he lived in Paris in the late eighties. She was three then. She had a heart-shaped birthmark on the back of her right hand. There it was on the closeup. Her head was blown away, but how many women had heart-shaped birthmarks on their hands? | Blogging About Books And Life
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (0)
Those bins for your shoes could be dangerous if 100 of you started throwing them at the TSA
All you travelers stuck in mile-long TSA security lines are pawns.
I’m not advocating breaking through those long lines in grand acts of civil disobedience (not just yet, anyway). But it is long past time for sick and tired, beleaguered and molested, robbed and overtaxed travelers to demand respect of their own and call out this selfish, security-undermining Big Labor power grab. TSA’s Union Power Grab: Thousands Slowing Down Airports
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (2)
Putin Riding on a Bear Action Figure
This will usually result in submission by the aggressor. My landlord was being a jerk while trying collect the lot rent. When I pulled this out, his drunk butt fell off my block step.This talisman will also make the ladies throw themselves on you. It's really not fair to them that this exudes so much testosterone. Amazon.com: Putin Riding on a Bear Action Figure: Toys & GamesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:00 AM | Your Say (3)
May 17, 2016
“Suckers try to win arguments,
nonsuckers try to win.” –Nassim TalebAction isn’t concerned with opinions, it’s dedicated to reality. Action doesn’t leave room for gossip. Action couldn’t be small if it tried. 10 Overlooked Truths About ActionPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:52 PM | Your Say (1)
It's probably nothing....
Russian officials announced that they will be deploying the RS-28 Sarmat ICBM in 2018.
The respective moves come as Russia continues its massive revamp of its military capabilities, while Obama continues his goal to decommission nuclear arsenals worldwide. What makes the missile particularly deadly is its potential to carry up to 15 individual nuclear warheads. The elderly Minuteman III is not likely to be able to provide assured deterrence as enemy missile defenses continue to improve rapidly. Woodpile Report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:28 PM | Your Say (1)
Sanford Gifford, A Gorge in the Mountains, 1862
Gifford fully visualized this painting before he made his first sketch. This is as it had to be. We're seeing a map of how he got to the final canvas, a sort of mind-hand coordination, the miscommunications being pared in a process similar to a sculptor, one of acceptance and rejection, until the canvas presented most nearly what his mind beheld. -- Remus @ Woodpile Report 
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:15 PM | Your Say (1)
Listen up, all ye flaccid effeminates, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COERCION. The Obama regime can not FORCE you to do ANYTHING.
You either freely choose to capitulate or not. This “forced”, “coercion” bullshit is 100% candyass agitprop.You know what the solution to this is? Every parent who LOVES THEIR CHILDREN WITHDRAWS THEIR CHILDREN FROM PUBLIC SCHOOL MONDAY MORNING. It is non-violent. It is very, very doable. Workarounds to educating children outside of the public schools abound. And you know what? No one will do it. Public schools are now LITERALLY open, unapologetic child sex abuse centers, and no one will do a damn thing about it. The Chesterton Axiom No Longer Applies | BarnhardtPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:45 PM | Your Say (3)
There are no flies in Movile Cave, but the spiders still spin webs.
Many are born without eyes, which would be useless in the dark. Almost all are translucent as they have lost pigment in their skin. Many also have extra-long appendages such as antennae to help them feel their way around in the darkness. The bizarre beasts living in Romania's poison cave Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:31 PM | Your Say (1)
Captain America: Civil War for the Beltway crowd
Captain America (Donald Trump) has gone to Avengers Headquarters in Washington for a showdown with Ryan-Man (Paul Ryan) over his plan to make America great again.Meanwhile, Rino-Man (Mitt Romney) and SuperPac-Man (Mike Murphy), who has the amazing superpower of being able to take $100 million and shrink it to a buck seventy-nine - now that their protégé Low-Energy-Man (Jeb Bush) is no more - are urging the Mighty Sasse (Ben Sasse) and the world's oldest boy-sidekick Buckeye (John Kasich), whose superpowers don't work beyond the state border, to jump into the fight against Captain America. Priority Boarding on the Lolita Express :: SteynOnlinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (1)
The Map That Changed the Middle East (1916)
The Sykes–Picot Agreement map: the map that changed the Middle East. It was an enclosure in the French ambassador Paul Cambon’s letter to Sir Edward Grey, dated 9th May 1916. Seven days later the two would sign the Sykes–Picot Agreement, a secret agreement between the the UK and France outlining, according to the lines on the map, how they would carve up the Middle East should the Ottoman Empire be defeated in the First World War. The Ottomans were indeed defeated two years later and the rest, as they say, is history: a complicated, sad, and very bloody history. | The Public Domain ReviewPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (1)
Renegade Conservative Site BREITBART’s Sin–Not Anti-Semitism, But Pro-Trumpism
According to the Main Stream Media consensus, Breitbart.com, a site named after a Jew (Andrew Breitbart) whose CEO and President Larry Solov is an Orthodox Jew, is now an openly anti-Semitic publication.Its sin: posting an article by well-known Jewish conservative David Horowitz accusing another Jewish conservative, Bill Kristol, of being a “Renegade Jew” for opposing Trump. Horowitz’s argument: the “Never Trump” movement weakens the GOP, which he says is all that stands “between the Jews and their annihilation, and between America and the forces intent on destroying her” - - VDAREPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:35 PM | Your Say (0)
Upward Exit
To understand the path of the upward exit, we must understand the Hell from whence it leads. We here at Amerika borrow a theory from French Existentialist and attention harlot Jean Paul Sartre. Hell, quite simply is other people. Not in small numbers, not at a leisurely pace. Hell is other people packed butt-to-flank. Hell is other people acting in a concerted zombie apocalypse of the low double-digit IQs to enforce their mediocrity as if it were the beneficent commonweal. Hell, Monsieur Sartre, is Crowdism. You do not know it, but you are a slave. You are not enslaved by a central authority, but by the Crowd. Their opinions determine what you can say; their product-buying choices determine what’s on the market; their government preferences create a “window” of acceptable ideas and anything else is excluded. This is tyranny by the Crowd… - - AmerikaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (3)
An argument for post-natal abortion
Now that the Royal College of Midwives has supported the idea of scrapping legal time limits on abortion, it’s time to start thinking logically.
Now, being a simple sort, I can’t for the life of me see any valid medical, physiological or, for old times’ sake, moral difference between a baby one day before climbing out of his mother’s womb and one day after. Some women are a bit early, some a bit late, but their babies look similar to me. If it’s permissible to kill one, there’s no reason not to kill the other, should his birth be inconvenient or undesirable.Logic would then suggest that there’s a serious argument to be made in favour of infanticide at any age at all. For example, why not abort Dave Cameron post-natally? His mind certainly hasn’t advanced beyond foetal stage, although his deviousness is very grown-up.
More to the point, why not abort Cathy Warwick, the RCM chief executive and the driving force behind this monstrous initiative? Surely she’ll be happy to go to her death upholding the logical extension of her innermost convictions. Her cause, like so many others, needs martyrs to be widely persuasive. – Alexander Boot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:12 PM | Your Say (1)
BREAKING NEWS
— Walter Cronkite (@CronkiteSays) May 17, 2016
Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton are teaming up to defeat Trump using the new slogan "Make Mexico Great Again"Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (0)
Trump is a skilled persuader who understands that people don’t make decisions based on policy details, logic, reason, common sense, or any other illusion of rationality.
Trump literally takes both sides of the issues whenever he can.
As a candidate, he’s a human Rorschach test. I might see in Trump a skilled persuader who always makes aggressive opening offers, and you might see a future dictator. We are looking at the same set of facts but we are primed by our experiences to interpret them differently. I study persuasion in all its forms and perhaps you watch the History Channel too much. Trump’s persuasion strategy depends on a growing number of voters finding something they like about him and fewer people reflexively making History Channel analogies. So far, it seems to be working. You’ll see Trump’s strategy fully-flowered over the summer. Watch for how many different reasons people offer for why they support him. That’s your tell. About Those Trump Policy Details |Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:42 AM | Your Say (1)
"Ms. Sanders, the Sanders campaign, and Burlington College’s spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment"
Little Venezuelas Everywhere: BREAKING: Burlington College Closes Due To "Crushing Weight of Debt" Acquired By Jane Sanders Less than a year after leading Burlington College into massive debt, Ms. Sanders resigned, taking with her a $200,000 severance package. By 2014, because of its shaky finances and running deficits, Burlington College found itself placed on probation for two years by the regional accreditation agency.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:23 AM | Your Say (0)
Tell me again about socialism and health care....
Venezuela: Where doctors amputate the limbs of patients because they have no antibiotics to treat simple infections. Where doctors and nurses take turns operating respirators by hand -- the machinery sometimes broken and without power anyway -- until they simply collapse from exhaustion and helplessly watch their the patients die. More Powerful Than a Bomb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (3)
Hitler was only the second most destructive thing Germany country had unleashed upon the world.
Worse by far, he said, were the ideas of Karl Marx. ....
How this "miracle" crashed down into ruin is something yet to be explained. Suffice it so say there is unexpectedly no food, no electricity, nor even gasoline in this oil-rich nation. In the the ultimate irony "gasoline-making fluid catalytic cracking units ... are currently down ... with critics blaming shortages of spare parts, lack of maintenance, and a shaky electrical grid for outages and unplanned stoppages." Looting is epidemic. Trucks are being swarmed by mobs on the highway. Army troops -- crucial for regime survival -- have been reduced to foraging to make up a meal. The Atlantic, hardly a right wing publication, writes "Venezuela is falling apart".More Powerful Than a BombPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (3)
In the country I grew up in, you got on an airplane by walking up these funny little steps with wheels on them.
Then you sat down.That’s all you did. I know, I know: You don’t believe this. It’s true. You just walked on. Further, the stewardesses were not merely civil but — so help me — friendly and pretty. Flying was actually enjoyable. The seats were big enough that you didn’t sit with your knees beside your ears and your feet in your pockets. Today, getting aboard is like going into max security at some ghastly penitentiary. I once flew a bit around the old Soviet Union, as distinct from our new one, on a junket. Security was less oppressive, though the food was marginally worse unless you liked green chicken. The service was just as peremptory. | Fred On EverythingPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 AM | Your Say (2)
May 16, 2016
German word of the day is "Staatsvergötung" ("deification of the state") https://t.co/wXNZuVmc15
— Kalpurrnia (@kalpurrnia) May 16, 2016Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (1)
"The older people that one admires seem to be fearless.
"They go right out into the world. It’s astounding. Maybe they can’t see or they can’t hear, but they walk out into the street and take life as it comes. They’re models of courage, in a strange way." - James Hillman
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (1)
Well, you could stop the heroin suppositories and give her back her crack pipe for starters.
Clinton probably could not change even if she wanted to. “I mean, we can’t give her an injection to make her an energetic candidate.” - Washington PostPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:18 AM | Your Say (1)
May 15, 2016
"We really don't care about his myriad flaws."
If Trump stripped naked in front of television cameras at the Washington monument, did a little pole dance, confessed to a daily cocaine-and-call-girl habit, then promised to put every Congressman and Senator on trial, he'd gain five points in the polls. Maybe ten. - - Vox PopoliPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 PM | Your Say (6)
Obama’s white half was unavailable for comment.
The transcript of Obama’s speech finds 29 instances of the word “black” and seven of “white,”and then mostly to point out how much better whites have it than blacks. “Thousands filled with pride,” blared the Miami Herald headline about Obama’s bliggity-blackest speech ever. “President Obama offered up a rousing celebration of blackness Saturday,” chirped CBS News. The Week That PerishedPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:18 PM | Your Say (6)
WeaponsMan: On Zimmerman’s Gun Sale And The Resulting Furor
Disgusting. Keep this example in mind when you are thinking of the exciting times ahead. Most folks are invertebrates. | Western Rifle Shooters AssociationPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (2)
This Just In: 1) Things are getting very bad in Venezuela. 2) This tranny thing is getting out of hand.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (0)
Faceberg is one-sided. And it's not on your side.
"Trending" Translated After having your fix of what liberals want you to read about in terms of political and cultural news, there will sometimes be some brain-dead, degenerate celebrity stories which really ought to be of no consequence to the rest of us. It only serves to blunt and distract readers’ minds. Finally, to round things out, there are usually sportsball or local crime headlines. Some things have not changed from print. Alternative Right: Facebook is the Nuclear Option/a>Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:05 AM | Your Say (1)
May 14, 2016
My phone camera "sees" through fog better than my eyes do but refused to notice the hundreds of fireflies about tonight.
Sammy came over, sat on my bare foot, and leaned his body against my leg. I rubbed his ears wondering if he could see them. And if he could, because surely he can, what does he think of them. Probably nothing. They make me smile. I've never seen so many of them at once. They are down by the water and up in the trees. They are all about like stars.
True NorthPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 PM | Your Say (3)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:30 PM | Your Say (1)
“People will see what they want to see.”
I uploaded this image to twitter without any comment.
People were outraged and began attacking me. I received hundreds of outraged messages from #BlackLivesMatter. They hated me for what I said. But what did I say?Why I Don't Play Defense or Explain MyselfPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 PM | Your Say (4)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 PM | Your Say (5)
The Plague of Things That Are Too Long
Colorful diagrams and instructions festooned the sinus-rinse box, including a long list of the 10 “advantages” of using this particular nasal spray. For example, the nozzle on the “easy-squeeze” plastic bottle fits any nasal opening whatsoever. Very important detail for people with virtually invisible nostrils. But the sinus-rinse makers were just getting warmed up. Inside the box I found a 32-page manual with an introduction, testimonials from physicians and customers, warnings about mishandling the device, a full page of instructions for cleaning and disinfecting the unit, and four pages of answers to frequently asked questions about sinus rinses. - WSJPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 PM | Your Say (5)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 PM | Your Say (0)
the ventilated jackboot – Knowledge is Power Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 PM | Your Say (1)
File Under: It's Probably Nothing
With a new Cold War in the offing, a possible indictment hanging over the Democratic front runner,
the European Union poised to break apart, and the middle class disappearing not just in the US, but in Germany, the Obama administration has adopted what Seth Cropsey calls "the Alfred E. Neuman defense policy" and concentrated on launching a toilet revolution overturning rules for using the bathroom. For absurdity it rivals the droll story told in The Atlantic about the Venezuelan businessman who in the middle of the economic collapse tries to comply with "an obscure clause ... requiring the factory’s restrooms to be stocked with toilet paper at all times" only to find himself raided by the secret police for buying black market lavatory paper claiming they had busted a major hoarding operation, "part of a U.S.-backed 'economic war' the Maduro government holds responsible for creating Venezuela’s shortages in the first place". It's Inclusive | PJ MediaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:31 PM | Your Say (3)
Conservatism has outlived its usefulness.
The Conservative movement was born out of a necessity to reorient the freedom loving historic America against Soviet Communism, and, despite its flaws and inefficiencies,did just that. However, now that that battle is over, the Conservative movement, although (mostly) aware of the evils we now must face on the home front (in our living rooms, schools, and very streets),lacks the ammunition to battle the new Leviathan- that of globalist-financed cultural Marxism. Conservatism’s environment has adapted despite it. Therefore, it is only right that it make way for something fresh and young to take its place. The End of A Life CyclePosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:10 PM | Your Say (0)
Focus Instead on the Pawns
So for those who would win – ignore the oligarchs, bathing in cream and Champagne. The fat men who move pawns about on the chess board with one hand, the other clutched greedily around a sweaty wad of ill-gotten money. They are not the problem. They exist at the discretion of those they so readily deploy. Some of them know this – those who still make their abodes in this world of flesh and blood. Most do not; have forgotten that repression is still an individual act of an individual man. They are of no consequence. Focus instead on the pawns. Then you will have won. | Joel D. Hirst's Blog Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (0)
When Trump was a child, his minister was the famous Norman Vincent Peale?
Peale wrote a huuuuugely influential book called The Power of Positive Thinking. Critics said the book is full of unsubstantiated claims. (Sound familiar?) Critics also said the book uses well-known hypnosis techniques. Hypnosis? Hmmm. That’s the sort of skill that could turn a much-hated person into a president. -- Scott AdamsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (1)
BARKING by Jim Harrison
The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (1)
"One person can make a difference. But most of the time they probably shouldn't." Marge Simpson
Finally, if your news comes from the tiny trending bits on the sidebar of Facebook, you're about as informed politically as my desk lamp, and I ask that you not vote. - - Amy AlkonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:30 AM | Your Say (0)
We live in a nation of laws, in the same way people on "Hoarders" live in houses of cat food boxes
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 14, 2016Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (3)
May 13, 2016
"You thought the collapse of Western Civilization wouldn’t look ridiculous?"
HappyAcres Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:18 PM | Your Say (0)
May 12, 2016
Zuckerberg pretends to be merely an aggregator,
when he is no such thing. He's a moral narcissist of extreme bias and a leading progenitor of a kind of burgeoningdigital totalitarianism of self-regard, a new American Silicon Valley version of a Soviet nomenklatura. Whether the young editors of his "trending" section were working under his express orders (Facebook denies the charge) when they censored conservative writersis immaterial. They knew what they were supposed to do, where their bread, as the saying goes, was buttered. Facebook's More Dangerous than the NSA | PJ MediaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:05 AM | Your Say (4)
Into the AIR! Junior Birdmen!
Dummy pilot and seat soar, as engineers test a catapult escape system in Arizona, March 1963 National Geographic Found Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:21 AM | Your Say (1)
May 11, 2016
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
BY WALLACE STEVENS
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:54 PM | Your Say (2)
Hillary Clinton personifies delusion
Insecure, transparently phony, privately nasty, and unlikable, she has no political gifts other than her marriage.Her performance since law school has ranged from, at best, undistinguished, to a disastrous tenure as Secretary of State. She embraced foreign interventionism and regime change that had clearly failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, rebranding it as a “Responsibility to Protect.” At Clinton’s behest, the people of Libya were “protected” out of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship and into the bloody chaos of a failed state and new Islamic State stronghold. She blessed arms shipments from Libya to Syria to help US-backed rebels foment a revolution similar to the one that had failed in Libya. Her characterization of Vladimir Putin as Hitler set up a cardboard devil that prevented her from understanding either the point of view of the other major nuclear power’s leader or the subtleties of one of the US’s most important international relationships. One expects far better from America’s chief diplomat. Running the Table, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGICPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:19 PM | Your Say (6)
If our society wants to succeed, we must drop the dead weight.
The ranting wild-eyed professors, blue-haired activists, obedient cubicle slaves and others must go. We need people who can adapt to any situation, not succeed only within the narrow confines of what society has defined for them. The tools must go. Forty Percent Of Citizens In Western Europe Are ObsoletePosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:43 AM | Your Say (5)
THE MENTAL INFECTION known as “political correctness”
is one of the most dangerous intellectual afflictions ever to attack mankind.The fact that we began by laughing at it–and to some extent, still do–doesn’t diminish its venom one bit. PC has an enormous appeal to the semieducated, one reason that it’s struck roots among overseas students at minor colleges. But it also appeals to pseudo-intellectuals everywhere, since it evokes the strong streak of cowardice notable among those wielding academic authority nowadays. When Excess Is A Virtue - ForbesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:07 AM | Your Say (2)
Everywhere is going on at once
I came up with the term "place lag" to refer to the way that airliners can essentially teleport us into a moment in a far-off city; getting us there much faster, perhaps, than our own deep sense of place can travel.I could be in a park in London one afternoon, running, or drinking a coffee and chatting to the dog-walkers. Later I'll go to an airport, meet my colleagues, walk into a cockpit, and take off for Cape Town. I'll fly over the Pyrenees and Palma and see the lights of Algiers come on at sunset, then sail over the Sahara and the Sahel. I'll cross the equator, and dawn will come to me as I parallel the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, and finally I'll see Table Mountain in the distance as I descend to the Mother City.Then, less than an hour after the long-stilled wheels of the 747 were spun back to life by the sun-beaten surface of an African runway, I'll be on a bus heading into Cape Town, sitting in rush hour traffic, on an ordinary morning in which, glancing down through the windshield of a nearby car, I'll see a hand lift a cup of coffee or reach forward to tune the radio. And I'll think: All this would still be going on if I hadn't flown here. And that's equally true of London, and of all the other cities I passed in the long night, that I saw only the lights of. For everyone, and every place, it's the present. I fly 747s for a living. Here are the amazing things I see every day. - Vox
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:12 AM | Your Say (0)
May 10, 2016
“The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.”
they asserted that war had evolved to “using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.” The barrier between soldiers and civilians would fundamentally be erased, because the battle would be everywhere. The number of new battlefields would be “virtually infinite,” and could include environmental warfare, financial warfare, trade warfare, cultural warfare, and legal warfare, to name just a few. They wrote of assassinating financial speculators to safeguard a nation’s financial security, setting up slush funds to influence opponents’ legislatures and governments, and buying controlling shares of stocks to convert an adversary’s major television and newspapers outlets into tools of media warfare. According to the editor’s note, Qiao argued in a subsequent interview that “the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.” That vision clearly transcends any traditional notions of war. A New Generation of Unrestricted WarfarePosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 PM | Your Say (0)
"Simply heartbreaking, when God’s creatures don’t like how they’re made"
'I have to be taller': the unregulated world of India's limb-lengthening industry: The 24-year-old, from the town of Kota, in western India, went to see Dr Amar Sarin, an orthopaedic surgeon in Delhi, who made her eight centimetres (3in) taller, a procedure which involved breaking the bones in her legs and wearing a brace until she could walk again.Her parents had to sell the family’s ancestral lands so she could get the surgery, but for Komal, the extra height is worth it. “I have so much confidence now,” she says. “I was just 4’ 6” [137cm]. People used to make fun of me and I couldn’t get a job. Now my younger sister is doing it, too.” Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:56 PM | Your Say (2)
"How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, / In states unborn?
HappyAcres Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:52 PM | Your Say (0)
“Long before our own time, the customs of our ancestors molded admirable men,
and in turn these eminent men upheld the ways and institutions of their forebears. Our age, however, inherited the Republic like some beautiful painting of bygone days, its colors already fading through great age; and not only has our time neglected to freshen the colors of the picture, but we have failed to preserve its form and outlines. - – Cicero, De Re PublicaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:49 PM | Your Say (2)
May 9, 2016
How to avoid the cuck mindset?
Reject the slavery mindset. Live for yourself. Fight for what you believe in.If you want to be on TV, start a YouTube channel. If you want to be a best-selling author, start a website and write books. You don’t need permission from anyone to live life on your terms. The Cuck Mindset (How the Right Lost its Readers)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 PM | Your Say (2)
Nothing but goalpost.
I don't write the headlines, I just report them. - Gerard Van der Leun
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:26 PM | Your Say (7)
This is the potential for the “Trump Effect”. This is the Monster Vote:
That’s 7.2 million more votes than Barack Obama carried in 2008, and almost 13 million more than Mitt Romney carried in 2012. | The Last RefugePosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (2)
Always remember: “Officer, this person tried to kill me. I will be glad to cooperate with you as soon as I speak to my attorney.”
Then, STFU. Do not EVER. and I mean EVER get drawn into any subsequent conversations.Hand him/her your ID and let them copy the info. They will then ask for your phone number. That’s it. Do not ask them any questions. Go mute. Legally, the only time you are required to give information to the police is if you are in a traffic accident where someone has been injured. | Western Rifle Shooters AssociationPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (1)
Trump should roll into Cleveland with a team: Bring Rudy Giuliani as your director of Homeland Security,
Chris Christie as your AG, and Ben Carson as your head of HHS. Try to fit Newt Gingrich somewhere in there, and try to seduce Democrat Joe Manchin, too. Trump should try to make his appeal bipartisan—by which I mean, get working-class whites and blacks. - - STREET CARNAGE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (4)
May 8, 2016
Another Muslim Country Has the Bomb
Sadiq Khan began his ceremonial duties as the new mayor of London in triumphant style, less than 12 hours after he was officially confirmed in the role. The Labour MP was greeted warmly by actor Sir Ian McKellen as he strolled into Southwark Cathedral for his signing-in ceremony on Saturday morning, marking the end of the Conservatives’ eight-year reign under Boris Johnson at City Hall. - The Rumford MeteorPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 PM | Your Say (3)
Death by GPS
Most death-by-GPS incidents do not involve actual deaths—or even serious injuries.They are accidents or accidental journeys brought about by an uncritical acceptance of turn-by-turn commands: the Japanese tourists in Australia who drove their car into the ocean while attempting to reach North Stradbroke Island from the mainland; the man who drove his BMW down a narrow path in a village in Yorkshire, England, and nearly over a cliff; the woman in Bellevue, Washington, who drove her car into a lake that their GPS said was a road; the Swedish couple who asked GPS to guide them to the Mediterranean island of Capri, but instead arrived at the Italian industrial town of Carpi; the elderly woman in Belgium who tried to use GPS to guide her to her home, 90 miles away, but instead drove hundreds of miles to Zagreb, only realizing her mistake when she noticed the street signs were in Croatian. | Ars TechnicaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (5)
Clinton is but a comparatively familiar veneer on a frothing, violent left that has completely departed from America’s values.
We face coming generations, indoctrinated in the public-school and university systems, who seek radical, destructive revolution and dissolution of our national sovereignty. Reversing their gains begins with leadership that unapologetically declares that our American story is a good one, that our people’s sacrifices for freedom, for others, and for principle make our story different and worth cultivating anew. Any pundits who claim there is little difference between Trump and Clinton are wholly removed from what is occurring in America’s universities and schools, the tenor of what is happening in the protest movements, and the destructive aims of the left. Trump is the Nominee, What Now? Legal Insurrection Authors DebatePosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (3)
The Battle Over the Sea-Monkey Fortune
The story began with the widow, whose name is Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut. She is a onetime heir to the considerable fortune still generated by her husband Harold’s iconic invention, Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys. As her lawyer told it, she was now isolated, cash-starved, often without electricity or running water on a palatial estate on the Potomac River in southern Maryland. Having retreated to a single room in the old mansion, she was prepping for her second freezing winter, barricaded by thick quilts, her bed next to a fireplace stocked with split wood. From this bunker, Signorelli von Braunhut has been waging legal combat against Sam Harwell, chief executive of a big-time toy company whose name seems straight out of a Chuck Jones cartoon: Big Time Toys. - NYTimes.comPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (1)
There is a particular kind of human who thinks it is right to do harm to those close by
in the name of anything or anyone that shows their higher moral concern: starving Africans, the future, the proletariat, the master race, non-human life, Gaia, the Holy Catholic Church. -- Vegans threaten death to apostate restaurant ownersPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (1)
Republicans Should Take a Time Out
When I read this afternoon that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced (on CNN!) his reluctance to support Donald Trump,his party's assumed presidential nominee, I knew it was time for the Republicans to take a time out, to shut up for, say, a week and let things cool off. Furthermore, hard as it may be, they should not for that period give any press interviews and they should refrain from makingany public pronouncements. (Ryan, generally a smart guy, was absolutely a sucker for Jake Tapper.) And that includes Mr. Trump, who won the primary election far more quickly than even he thought he would. He needs to take a breather to figure things out. Anybody would. | PJ MediaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:52 AM | Your Say (2)
Hunger Games come to life.
I found myself reaching back in my own experience to Uganda – the Lord’s Resistance Army specifically – we all conjure the past, some more willingly, some less.“What do they do to keep their fighters?” I asked? The LRA would take their abducted nine-year olds, thirty of them at a time, pick one and tie him up and make the others walk by him single file taking a bite until the child was dead. They would force young men to rape their mothers while their family watched. They would randomly hand out machetes and force the little boys to fall upon each other; Hunger Games come to life. You Have No Right Over The Life Of Another | Joel D. Hirst's BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:34 AM | Your Say (2)
The pundits are ablaze, this is their finest hour!
No need for insight or clarity – shock will do, vitriol, rage. Befuddlement.They are the only ones surprised.
The old order, which they pretend to mourn, was moribund – we killed it, those of us who shrugged and wandered off. Those of us who assumed the republic would always abide – that people would always be safe, choose security; that they would come back, like they always have. We who believed that progress – hollow and vapid – would cease to motivate. Truth is we surrendered our republic to the little man with a screwdriver removing the “girls” sign from the bathroom door at the elementary school where our children used to learn about Jefferson and Madison. And to what end? Nobody can articulate that – so please don’t ask. Of Taco Bowls and Presidents | Joel D. Hirst's Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:39 AM | Your Say (3)
May 7, 2016
Portraits featuring some of the last surviving tribes
- Album on Imgur Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:50 PM | Your Say (3)
We could go back to our web archives all the way to 2007 to show the current GOPe class,
(even Rush is/was clueless) how totally insulated they are from the street, the ascendant power of the Left, and from the Dirt People, the Breitbarts.Try and argue with them and they will sneer and call you names. Try to get them to see what they don't see about the times they are living in and you'll get pejoratives enough to swim in. Having failed to predict, they now cloak themselves in "Principles!!" as though the world ran on such a quaint notion. - - Joan of Argghh!Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:02 PM | Your Say (3)
Lincoln on our present talking phase of our next Civil War
Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." -- 2nd InauguralPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (1)
Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That’s Wrong
Cobb himself was never asked about segregation until 1952, when the Texas League was integrating, and Sporting News asked him what he thought. “The Negro should be accepted wholeheartedly, and not grudgingly,” he said. “The Negro has the right to play professional baseball and whose [sic] to say he has not?” By that time he had attended many Negro league games, sometimes throwing out the first ball and often sitting in the dugout with the players. He is quoted as saying that Willie Mays was the only modern-day player he’d pay to see and that Roy Campanella was the ballplayer that reminded him most of himself. - ImprimisPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 AM | Your Say (2)
A large part of the appeal of Donald Trump
even to those of us who oppose much of his style and substance is that he and he aloneappears prepared to fight the Left and fight to win, which of course means using all their dirty tactics against them. He alone seems to grasp that we are in a war, and that civility has no place in a war, except for a mock civility deployed when it is advantageous to do so. The politics of personal destruction has been a trademark feature of the Left since at least V. I. Lenin, and Trump has shown that he is skilled in this nasty art. Case in point: his swift elimination of the gentlemanly but effete Jeb Bush. Poor Jeb went from Jeb! toJebin no time despite all the money behind him. One hopes that Trump can destroy the despicable Hillary in the same way. Maverick Philosopher: Can We Live Together in Peace Despite Deep Differences?Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (2)
May 6, 2016
"Ooooo, now that's gonna leave a mark."
The OATH 12ga TSR Slug: OATH Ammunition company of Rockledge, Florida just made their long-anticipated Tango Shotgun Round available for pre-purchase. OATH specializes in highly expanding pistol ammunition, and now they applied their expertise in projectile and case manufacturing to the mighty 12 gauge. This new cartridge is optimized for one specific task: stopping aggressive hominids on impact. Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (10)
#HillaryByProxy
The #NeverTrump camp expresses a wide range of issues with Trump: he blew up their son’s/brother’s campaign, they find him too coarse, they think he’s going to cost them the votes of illegal immigrants they were counting on…the reasons are many and varied. Often cited are rock solid conservative principles – principles as we’ve seen are likely to be set aside as soon as your candidate is entrenched in office anyway. Butt sitting home on your principles or voting for a candidate from the other party whose principles you also don’t support seems, at best, counterproductive. Worse, it makes you a member of the #HillaryByProxy cabal. Michelle Obama's Mirror:
Now available in the MOTUS store! Get them before they’re gone,
the Bush family ordered 100 gross.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (0)
Gun control is accomplished by using weapons of war in the streets to murder anyone who tries to resist.
The foes of individual freedom aren’t creative. To achieve their ends, they will use the same tools they claim to disdain against any opposition. And, ever the believers in collective responsibility, they will use deadly force on anyone associating with their enemies through kinship or friendship. In other words, it would be enough to be a relative of the enemy of the state or a casual social connection to get imprisoned or murdered. That’s how Pol Pot’s regime wiped out a quarter of Cambodia’s population over mere four years. -- | VolkStudioPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:17 AM | Your Say (2)
Of course, collapse isn’t always so bad.
When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, ordinary people were often better off because they were freed from the empire’s oppressive taxes and regulations (like the rules that sons of soldiers, civil servants and workers in government factories, among others, must enter the trades of their fathers). Many people in the provinces welcomed the barbarians. The new governments were actually better at what governments are for, as Tainter writes: “The smaller Germanic kingdoms that succeeded Roman rule in the West were more successful at resisting foreign incursions (e.g., Huns and Arabs). ... The economic prosperity of North Africa actually rose under the Vandals, but declined again under Justinian’s reconquest when Imperial taxes were reimposed.” Likewise, Venezuelans will probably be better off when they eventually get a new government. They could hardly be worse.Glenn Reynolds: Don't let U.S. become next RomePosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:51 AM | Your Say (4)
Allrecipes reveals the enormous gap between foodie culture and what Americans actually cook.
And at a time when readers of aspirational food websites are used to images of impossibly perfect dishes—each microgreen artfully placed by some tweezer-wielding stylist—Allrecipes offers amateur snaps of amateur meals. The site is awash with close-ups of sludgy-looking soups; photos of stuffed peppers that look like they’ve been captured in the harsh, unforgiving light of a public washroom; and shot after shot documenting the myriad ways that melted cheese can congeal. It is all, Kimball and his ilk would agree, extremely disappointing. It’s also perhaps the most accurate, democratic snapshot of American culinary desires.... If you look for “lasagna recipes,” as I did the other day, you’ll immediately find “World’s Best Lasagna,” a recipe that has been one of the website’s most popular dishes for 15 years. The recipe (which makes a perfectly tasty lasagna) was viewed more than 6 million times last year alone and has received more than 11,000 five-star ratings. In an era of celebrity chefs and recipe-kit delivery services developed by experts, a pasta dish by a Dallas dad who describes his heritage as “entirely Anglo-Saxon” is quite possibly America’s most-cooked meal. - - SlatePosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 AM | Your Say (3)
And is there anything creepier than that current Hillary meme, the campaign slogan “I’m with her”?
The blurred borderlines of those pronouns (“I” numbly dissolving into “her”) and that ambiguous preposition (“with” her like a child, a lover, or a nurse’s aide with a geriatric patient?) are close to pathological. The Hillary acolytes are joined at the hip to “her”, the Great Leader Who Needs No Name, the Maternal Tit daubed in wormwood, the bitter toxin left by men–those spoilers of the universe who created the master structures of modern civilization that provide us put-upon gals with jobs, transportation, abundant food, clean water, housing, electricity, and a magical disease-spurning municipal sewage system that only men seem required to clean and repair. - - It’s not about sexism: Camille PagliaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:34 AM | Your Say (1)
George Will Is A Haughty Dipshit
George Will writes: The minority of people who pay close attention to politics… This fucking guy. You know who pays attention to politics in an election year? EVERYONE. Fucking every last grown person knows what the hell is going on. My neighbor isn’t like, “Donald Trump? Nope. Never heard of him. I’m afraid I’ve been sticking to sports this whole time.” Will and his cocktail party ilk are under the remarkably mistaken impression that only THEY understand the ins and outs of this process, all because they went to a Bob Woodward key party. Think about how isolated you have to be to believe this. Think how tight that bowtie must be to cut off the circulation to your crème fraiche brain. -- Drew MagaryPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:10 AM | Your Say (1)
The New York Times,
a paper so desperate to reverse its fortunes that it now pretends that being a transsexual is normal, and shades toward the criminal classes at every opportunity.The Times hates cops, Christians, and white people. Hence it’s now firing people and losing money. A bit like Brussels, the old rag. The worse the policy is, the more they double down on it. -- Cowards, Go Reproduce YourselvesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:00 AM | Your Say (0)
The Art of the Late Artiste Known as Prince:
“Pussy got bank in her pockets, This allows us another fascinated peek into Prince’s complex Weltanhschauung:
Before she got dick in her drawers
If brother didn’t have good and plenty of his own
In love pussy never did fall.”by thus glorifying a feline, he makes a neo-Franciscan point about animals being our siblings in that we all share the same Father – and indeed many commentators singled out Prince’s deep religiosity as his most salient characteristic. Prince of this world has left us – Alexander BootPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:31 AM | Your Say (0)
May 5, 2016
This Ancient Laptop Is The Only Key To The Most Valuable Supercars On The Planet
This is a Compaq LTE 5280 laptop from the early 1990s, running a bespoke CA card. In 2016, McLaren Automotive—one of the most high-tech car and technology companies on the planet—still uses it and its DOS-based software to service the remaining hundred McLaren F1s out there, each valued at $10 million or more. - - JalopnikPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:14 PM | Your Say (2)
I hope David Brooks gets what he deserves, namely to be beaten to a bloody pulp by a tattooed redneck.
This would be a triumph of social justice, really and it’s not hard to imagine how it would happen, either.Probably at a Waffle House. “Hey, buddy, you look kinda familiar,” says the truck driver, while he’s paying at the cash register. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” “You’ve probably seen me on Meet the Press or PBS Newshour,” says Brooks, who has been sitting at the counter, studying the menu and wondering why there’s no espresso. “My name’s David Brooks.” “Well, doggone it, I thought so,” laughs the trucker. “I was just thinking to myself, that fellow looks like he writes for New York Times.”The Despicable David Brooks : The Other McCainPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:38 PM | Your Say (0)
You had ONE job. pic.twitter.com/oP73g4YBnE
— Vanderleun (@Van_der_Leun) May 5, 2016Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (2)
Political brawls have a half-life measured in hours.
It's like the can-o'-worms intrigues behind a 19th century kerfuffle in some Balkan principality, i.e., who besides heirs and assigns could possibly care.Problem is, the best—although not the very best—writers on the 'net get wound around the axle and do some excellent commentary. It displeases me to see valuable talent deployed in this way although, in their defense, it's often a vehicle for The Bigger Issue they were going to write about anyway. Woodpile ReportPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 AM | Your Say (0)
Who says there's no good news?
John McCain on tape: Trump damages my reelection hopes - POLITICOPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:23 AM | Your Say (5)
One should never fear threats.
It’s like with a dog.A dog senses when somebody is afraid of it, and bites. The same applies with humans. If you become jittery, they will think that they are stronger. Only one thing works: Go on the offensive. You must hit first, and hit so hard that your opponent will not rise to his feet. – Vladimir Putin.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 AM | Your Say (2)
No scientific discovery in history has ever matched the indisputable truth of anthropogenic global warming.
All those laws of thermodynamics and theories of relativity suffer from a perennial lack of credibility because they were vouchsafed to the world by individual scientists. – Alexander BootPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 AM | Your Say (2)
Romanian hacker Guccifer: I breached Clinton server, 'it was easy'
The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer,” claimed he easily – and repeatedly – breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013. "For me, it was easy ... easy for me, for everybody," Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News from a Virginia jail where he is being held. | Fox NewsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:03 AM | Your Say (0)
May 4, 2016
Whitman Sells!
Walt Whitman—Patriotic Poet, Gay Iconoclast, or Shrewd Marketing Ploy? The publishing and bookselling industry has also long relied on Whitman’s image to convey the seeming opposites of unconventional bohemian values and elite, refined taste. During the 1990s, Borders Bookstores adapted an 1883 photo of Whitman contemplating a butterfly perched on his hand by replacing the insect with a coffee cup to advertise the stores’ espresso bars. The original photo was also a staged publicity shot, created with a cardboard butterfly to promote the poet’s connection to animals and nature.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:51 PM | Your Say (1)
America’s Last Election
If those of us in the Republican party cannot let go of the personal animosity that exists against each other and unite against the Democratic party, then the 2016 election will be the last election in American history. What I mean by this is if Hillary Clinton becomes our next President then America will enter the longest period of uninterrupted Democrat rule since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Meaning, as Daniel Greenfield of Front Page Mag writes, “it will be the single greatest opportunity for the left to transform America since the days of the New Deal”. Furthermore, Greenfield notes that “even if the Democrats never manage to retake Congress, they will control two out of three branches of government. And with an activist Supreme Court and the White House, the left will have near absolute power to redefine every aspect of society on their own terms without facing any real challenges. And they will use it. Your life changed fundamentally under Obama. The process will only accelerate”.America's Last Election -- Politically ShortPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 PM | Your Say (2)
Womenfolk on the home front in WWII
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Army and Navy limped from year to year on shoestring budgets that didn't include, say, development of a credible tank, or even maps of future operations areas—after Pearl Harbor they requisitioned 'em from the National Geographic. Woodpile Report Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:45 PM | Your Say (3)
Trump is the warning shot. He’s the food riots before the revolution.
He’s the stack of letters to the editor in protest over some issue. People do not go from happy to bloody revolt overnight. It’s a process and the early stages are warnings, at least they should be viewed as warnings. If the people in Washington insist on flooding the country with helot labor, despite what’s happening in the election, the people are going to insist on building scaffolds in Washington. The Trump phenomenon is the warning.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:50 PM | Your Say (6)
Lost Wright Brothers' 'Flying Machine' Patent Resurfaces
The long-missing patent paperwork filed by aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright on March 23,1903, included a diagram of their invention, their petition for patent approval, the patent registry form, and their patent oath, affirming that "they verily believe themselves to be the original, joint inventors" of the so-called "Flying Machine." - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/54409-wright-brothers-missing-patent-found.html#sthash.AihitZFg.dpuf -- Live Science Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:22 PM | Your Say (0)
31 Signs You Might Be A Bobo
5. You have a liberal arts diploma or working experience in the left-leaning world liberal arts Self-explanatory. 6. You care about eating organic Eating organic means buying expensive food that has an “organic” label on it. If you follow a Paleo diet and legitimately blame the vegetarians’ annoying holier-than-thou attitude, eating lots of meat is expensive too, and caring a lot about your food is typically Bobo. Bonus points if you eat goji berries on a regular basis.7. You inhabit an “artsy” worldA world of art exhibitions featuring abstract paintings and pompous comments over glasses of champagne.8. You are an atheistAnd you believe that ancient history is made of “myths,” that everything can be boiled down to “human” and physical causes, that Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins deserve public recognition. -- Return of KingsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:18 PM | Your Say (4)
"I certainly did not expect Trump to go the distance, but he outsmarted us all."
He put in a tremendous and even historic political performance, certainly the most remarkable since, at least, Ronald Reagan.Whether you like him or not, he deserves a lot of respect for how he calibrated the public's mood, defied the conventional wisdom, and charged ahead. He was at times boorish, rude, and crude, and almost always and above all politically incorrect. He showed no fear in turning the spotlight on the many elephants in the room that the progressive taboo culture refuses to let us mention. Voters, sick of the progressive assault on the soul of America and furious at the GOP betrayal of the past few years, loved it, and disregarded the various admonitions of the Republican/conservative elite to shun Trump. The DiploMad 2.0: Time to Focus on Hillary ClintonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (1)
Two October ISIS attacks on American shopping malls in Pittsburg and Alexandria pushed Trump ahead 48-43
especially after it was revealed that the machine guns that had killed 25 U.S. citizens had been smuggled in from Tijuana. This undercut Hillary’s immediate pivot to gun control – something her internal polling told her had already been weighing her down in the Rust Belt – and again Trump was at her: “Hillary, who still won’t say the words ‘Islamic terrorism,’ wants to take away your guns and leave you defenseless when these guns come from Mexico. That’s crazy! She won’t build a wall to protect you, and she won’t let you protect yourselves. But she has many, many guards with guns, you know. Instead of registering our guns, how about we register Muslims? Sad!” -- Looking Back On How Donald Trump Beat Hillary ClintonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (0)
May 3, 2016
The one thing both sides agree upon is that Trump is being carried to the nomination by a wave of heroin addicts from the hill country.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:09 PM | Your Say (3)
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
Some people are concerned at the popularity of reality TV, but I save much more of my angst for the popularity of lies, particularly defamatory lies. It was inevitable: Trump suggests we need to look into whether Ted Cruz’s father had something to do with Lee Harvey Oswald neo-neoconPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:59 PM | Your Say (2)
'Burning Man for the 1%': the desert party for the tech elite, featuring GoogleMogul Eric Schmidt in his "Yes I am an asshole" hat
Party planners at Burning Man are careful to hide their luxury dwellings behind large walls dressed as art projects, but Further Future had no such pretension. Behind a chain-link fence was the VIP neighborhood with airstreams ($5,000) and Lunar Palaces ($7,500) – 200 sq ft, 9ft high, custom-made luxury domes with wooden flooring and furnished to sleep four. These included something called an entourage concierge – “a personal, dedicated lifestyle manager and assistant ready to help you with any requirements or desires you may have. No request is ever unattainable.” The lifestyle assistant, who makes sure you have the soap you like, will work with you on everything “from the green juice you enjoy every morning to the old-fashioned cocktail you sip on in the evenings”. -- The Guardian Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (5)
"America Looks At Itself In The Mirror
— Vanderleun (@Van_der_Leun) May 3, 2016
creepy, dying, sickly, insane"https://t.co/bSkzagMuyt pic.twitter.com/mFCAaRVG4wPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:23 AM | Your Say (7)
For every piece of bacon you eat God adds one minute to Keith Richards' life.
Bacon May Prolong Your Life: New Study
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (0)
The reality is our opinion makers are all kept men.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:29 AM | Your Say (0)
"I'll sell at a loss but make it up in volume!"
New York Times Co. Reports Loss as Its Digital Subscriber Base Grows The net loss for the quarter was roughly the same as in the first quarter of 2015. Total revenue fell about 1 percent, to $380 million, from $384 million in the first quarter of 2015.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:05 AM | Your Say (1)
Boxers, Briefs, or Wolf Underwear?
Amazon.com:
- 3D wolf pattern print underwear make man looks sexy and wild
- the wide waist design make man comfortable no tight feeling
- U convex design, large space and breathable
- High quality material and great handwork, perfect gift to boyfriend or husband
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:49 AM | Your Say (4)
May 2, 2016
Donald Trump’s campaign reveals the establishment for what it is, a swamp of corruption as fetid as those of Latin America.
It is better entertainment than Vaudeville. It is better entertainment than Vaudeville. The frantic scramble to rig the primaries, change the rules, and thwart the voters–anything to defend their cozy entanglement of political tapeworms–makes absurd any pretense of democracy.
This morning in the Drudge Report: “Trump Highest Number of Republican Voters in History.” Who do the Republicans want to get rid of? Trump.
On the same page a poll reports Trump tied with Hillary nationally. Who do the Republicans want to get rid of? Guess.
It’s wonderful. The GOP is looking for someone that Hillary can beat. She would squash Kasich or Cruz like stepping on bugs. Trump might actually win. This the Republicans strive to avoid. What could make more sense?The Mask Comes Off: Putrefaction Most Foul | Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:16 PM | Your Say (1)
Meanwhile, In Maine
Last week, a guy that I don't know, but know people who know him, tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head. Three times. With a flare gun. While parked by the side of the road. In his truck. Which runs on propane, for some reason. He didn't die, because two passing motorists saw him and pulled him out of his burning truck. Because Maine. Sippican Cottage: 
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:10 PM | Your Say (3)
May 1, 2016
The pneumatic tube's strange 150-year journey
North Philadelphia showed off its system by sending a cat and an aquarium through it, as well as eggs, china, and hot tea. A rabbit hopped in a tube as well. Once, even a sick cat was sent through the tubes to a veterinarian. (When he emerged, he jumped out of the canister and ran away as fast as possible.) - Vox Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (0)
Comprised of six different ethnicities, most of which did not want to live with each other, the only way Yugoslavia could be kept together was through a strong totalitarian regime.
Interestingly, the people most able to "get along" were the educated "cognitive" types whilst the masses maintained their grudges.
The failure of the policing state meant that natural demographic forces could assert themselves, the rest is history. Yugoslavia failed because it need a strong state to force Croats, Serbs and Slovenes to be Yugoslavs and it was an example of trying to fit men to the model instead of fitting the model to men.The Social Pathologist: Human Nature and Political Society.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 AM | Your Say (1)
All of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over Trump disguises the fact that the American Left is collapsing.
One place you see it is with their candidates. Hillary Clinton is a world class screw up planning to run as an old hen clucking about the men, with a mild whiff of lesbianism to spice it up. No wonder the 2000 year old man is giving her a run for her stolen money. The Left has nothing to offer so it coughed up these geriatric hairballs from the 1970’s. -- Great Culture WarPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:12 AM | Your Say (3)
