another thoughtful case

...in which the "Trilateral Commission" is mentioned in a sensible manner.

States, Right?

America would be "a more perfect union" if our distant and unresponsive government would abide by the original contract.

Debra Medina

Even though I used to live within a few miles of her office, the first I saw anything about this candidate for Texas governor was on a t-shirt. This statement of values on her website looks promising though...

tasteless

update: New flavor spotted today at the same 7-11, "Liquid Artillery". Probably comes in 88, 105, & 155 oz. sizes. ;)

In the past couple of months, 7-11 has promoted the Slurpee flavors "Apocalyptic Ice" and "Bumblebee Blast". I'll assume those are movie marketing tie-ins, but they still don't sound very appealing. If they keep following that trend of bad names, someday you might see the following Slurpee flavors:

• Mango Malaria
• Sucker Punch
• Psycho Shower Surprise
• Gangreen Apple
• Strawberry Scorpion
• Sui-Cider
• Very Very Verdigris
• Bubonicberry
• Hand Grenadine
• Agent Orange
• Dystopian Delight
• Hepatitis-YAY!

Please comment if you think of any others.

foreign language

Just say "Ag’du na cha’u’ay no tritogash Gibereschi."

epic fail

it continues

parroting

polly want a crackpot?

makin stuff

the good: etched brass modular synth

the ugly: there, i fixed it

the bad: the reason for fewer posts here - computer glitches at home...

The Ministry of Software declares:

your bandwith ration has been increased to 28.8k!

i can haz unimploymunt?

EPIC FAIL!

on iran and intervention

McGehee:

Plenty of other bloggers are arguing over whether the Obama Administration should be doing or saying more to support the protesters in Iran...

If we still had a president who could be counted not to screw up everything his teleprompter touches, I would wholeheartedly agree that the entire force and credibility of the United States should be deployed on the side of real democracy in any country deprived of it by its current ruling regime.

But Barack Obama’s foreign policy chops make Jimmy Carter look positively deft, and some of us remember what happened with Iran when Carter was in charge.

For the sake of everyone involved, I’m praying Obama keeps his mouth shut about Iran. That way when he leaves office the worst anyone will be able to say about him is that he was derelict in his duty and negligent of American interests abroad.

That’s also the best that can be said of him regardless of what he does. And I’m not prepared to trade American lives for a future election result.

finally

a version of the "cats" musical that i might actually watch...

(via dustbury)

think for a minute

...and keep thinking

do the right thing

The first comment on this announcement of an upcoming series says:

Our government (should) do the right thing and demand that Obama produce a valid long form birth certificate or be removed from office and all of his rules, regulations, statutes and programs be overturned and voided. And Obama, along with ALL those who aided and abetted him in the fraud should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Invasion of the Neo-commies

or, The Rise and Fall of the O-man's Empire.

misleading, but funny

what a bunch of wags...

take california

somebody in the state is standing up for property rights:

The concept of insulating a commission, charged with protecting vast natural resources from the politics of politics, is a good idea.

Unfortunately, this insulated configuration allows abusive agents within the quasi-judicial (California Coastal Commission) regulatory agency to usurp abilities beyond its original scope. They grew to create their own laws, judge the legitimacy of the laws they created, and enforce these laws.

They became the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government in one body. Now the commission, armed with absolute power, can do whatever it wants. If the desire for a particular rule comes up, and it didn’t previously exist, they can create the necessary rule, ratify it themselves, and enforce it ruthlessly, free from any encumbrance of rationality.

For instance, in homeowner Kathleen Kenny’s case, for the permit discrepancy on her 741 sq.ft home, a $2.4 million dollar fine was renewed post mortem, and still stands against her surviving mate.

By changing course in incremental steps, over a vast period of time, no one saw the changes happening in the BIG picture. Since most every action involved individual homeowners, and the commission has case-by-case discretion, the commission’s inconsistencies could not be proven.

SINS OF COMMISSION approached many people living in coastal California who’ve had dealings with the commission, to see if they would talk about their experience on camera. People refused, either because they had a case before the commission, or were about to begin one. Nobody wanted to exacerbate their current predicament nor be forced to travel up and down the coast, attending meeting after meeting, only to be postponed or dismissed at the whim of the commission.

When People fear Government there is Tyranny... When Government fears People there is Liberty. - Thomas Jefferson

In Nollan v. California Coastal Commission U.S. 825 (1987) The United States Supreme Court found the California Coastal Commission guilty of extortion and specifically prohibited the commission from conditioning building permits in exchange for land.

However, the commission found a way to circumvent the court’s ruling. By inventing a new requirement for permit approval called a “dedication of property,” the commission was able to continue exacting land without fear of legal recourse nor loss of property tax revenue.

SINS OF COMMISSION also found out that previous attempts to restore balance and fairness to the commission by acts of legislature, no matter how slight, were greeted with the loudest howls from those who stand to lose should the lopsided system find balance. In 1988, AB 4122, a bill that would prohibit Coastal Commission members from engaging in political fund-raising activities, was introduced by Tom Hayden. It was defeated.

Number 473281 in the hood T

This video is funny, but I was expecting a different Arlington and Clarendon...

the bluetooth is coming! the bluetooth is coming!

four bars by land, two bars by sea

You can't spell "forget" without "O"

What did the president forget, and when did he forget it?

finally, a worthwhile green movement

this one could lead to a safer global environment:

TEHRAN, Iran – Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with police in the heart of Iran's capital Saturday, pelting them with rocks and setting fires in the worst unrest in Tehran in a decade. They accused the hard-line president of using fraud to steal election victory from his reformist rival...

the tone and tactics were more combative than at any time since authorities put down student-led protests in 1999. Young men hurled stones and bottles at anti-riot units and mocked Ahmadinejad as an illegitimate leader. The reformists' new hero, Mir Hossein Mousavi, declared himself the true winner of Friday's presidential race and urged backers to resist a government based on "lies and dictatorship"...

Mousavi did not appear in public, but warned in a Web message: "People won't respect those who take power through fraud."

The scuffles began when protesters gathered hours outside the Interior Ministry around the time officials announced the final election results showing a nearly 2-to-1 landslide for Ahmadinejad. Demonstrators chanted "the government lied" and waved the ribbons* of Mousavi's "green" movement — the signature color of his youth-driven campaign.

funny that America's green movement supports a government who took power through fraud and is based on lies and dictatorship.

* (unrelated but related, here's something i wrote earlier about ribbons.)

worst. flavor. ever.

you can look, but don't taste!

rage against the machine

(update: read this top ten list)

and if not rage, just stand strong against the bile-spewing of the left's media hegemony:

(RightwingSparkle to Sarah Palin)

...They will not stop until they have made a joke out of you.

Any one of us would have quit long ago. We would have said that it isn't worth it. But you are standing strong. You are an incredible amazing woman.

Think about this. Has there ever been a time when comics or the left or the media made fun of a former candidate's children? Ever? No. Al Gore's son gets arrested for going 110 miles an hour with an assortment of drugs in the car, and we never hear a joke or peep about it from the comics. Joe Biden's 20 something year old daughter gets arrested for obstructing a police officer, and once in college she was arrested for possession of marijuana, and there is no joke there? The press and comics could not let go of the Bush twins partying because they ordered a margarita once while in college, when they were not yet 21, but while Clinton was President Chelsea Clinton partied and was photographed stone cold drunk passed out, and only the British press published stories and pictures. I don't remember one joke about Chelsea partying, and as you can see, she clearly did.

It is clear that the media, the left, and Hollywood will do whatever it takes to demean the politicians they hate. With Palin they lied about her banning books in the library in Alaska and they lied about her believing in creationism. They lied about her being a member of the Alaska Independence party and they lied about her cutting funding for Special Needs. And if you think those things were only said by the Internet rumor mill, think again. I personally saw Brian Williams of NBC news say these things one night the NBC nightly news...

Pres. Bush endured years of movies, documentaries, comics, jokes, and commentators whose sole purpose it was to demean, degrade, and discredit our President, including his daughters. Pres. Bush never responded. That was his way.

But it's not Sarah Palin's way and I'm glad. It's time we stood up against this leftwing hate machine. It's way past time.

By all measure, Sarah Palin has been an incredible Governor... But it's the little things that tell me who she is. When she became Governor, she let go of the Chef, because she said she could make the meals for her family. Can anyone see, say Pelosi or Hillary, doing such a thing? Of course not. She hunts and fishes. She has never had a nanny. She's owned a business. She runs marathons. She goes to Church. She is one of us in a way no other politician has been.

She believes in true liberty and freedom. She sees the danger of an overreaching government. She's a Christian, pro-life, pro-family values, pro-gun ownership, and she is woman. This is why the left hates her. This is why they are trying to destroy her.

political correctness must die

update from comment: justifiably harsh language is used here to make a similar point on a wider front. go read it.

an idea whose time has come (heavily-edited list, with additions from comments):

1. It's censorship. It is a tool used mainly by people on the left to attack people on the right, but not the other way around. Example: When Carrie Prejean politely said she thought marriage should be between a man and a woman, the PC thugs set out to destroy her life, but when Obama said it he was elected president. It's used to accuse people of racism even when there is no racism involved. It's a scare tactic and a thuggish weapon of intimidation.
2. It's bigotry disguised as manners. Most of the touchy-feely names invented for various special interest groups are patronizing and segregating, not sensitive and empowering as they claim. Separating people into classes creates a caste system, totally antithetical to American ideals. PC implies that people in these groups are somehow lesser and weaker and must be "protected" because they are not being treated well by other groups (namely white males) - which is a doubly racist argument.
3. It's mind control. The goal of PC always has been to segregate people into classes, destroy the family by marginalizing and polarizing people from traditional values and culture. It also tries to rebrand things to force people to think in a specified manner.
4. It's evil. The textbook definition of evil is that which is willfully and maliciously harmful to others. What else do you call something that is used to commit so much harm against people and a society as a whole? It has become a rampant monster that destroys lives, careers, and society. It's been used by race-baiters for years to extort money from business and government by making up racist claims.
5. It has produced disastrous results. Besides the ongoing damage to individuals and society as a whole, the morally-bankrupt and intellectually-degenerate media elite used it to manipulate the public into electing president an unqualified left-wing extremist who is bent on destroying our country.
6. It impedes our ability to solve society's problems. By not allowing us to discuss issues that are "sensitive" or that "marginalize historically disadvantaged groups", PC dooms society to continue suffering these problems. Example: Bill Cosby was reviled for saying (correctly) that we need to address thug culture and the plague of fatherlessness as part of the problem of the black community.
7. It's slavery. Political correctness inflames racist tensions and hatreds that should have died long ago. It imprisons some sectors of society into an amoral "welfare state" and others into a perpetual fear of being sued, slandered, fired, or worse.
8. Why should we obey power-hungry liars? Who makes up these lame terms and why should we start saying them? In the country blessed with First Amendment rights, why can't we say whatever we want? The obvious example: In the '60s we were told "Negro" is not acceptable anymore. We should say "black" even though "Negro" is merely the Spanish word for "black". Then in the '70s we were told to use "Afro-American", then later "African-American", even though that term makes no sense. A lot of black Americans are simply Americans, many others are from the Caribbean, and others are of mixed race.

house for sale

disclosure: one ferrari was killed here (remember?)

the top twelve

remember back before dopey-changey was president these lists only went up to ten.

worldwide passe

lileks, after the intro: "smug, politically-oriented crudity from someone not overtly political, delivered with the assumption we all share his “values” - boring."

the most muslim country?

i guess those other seven states must be 100% muslim to make up the difference...

forget the trees

if 80% of the country complains, and the media refuses to report it, does it make a sound?

helpful hints for motorcyclists

(This post is dedicated to all the Future Organ Donor Street Racing Club bikers I've had the misfortune to meet.)

If you want car drivers to treat motorcycle riders with respect,

• stop passing cars in the same lane where they are traveling, and
• stop driving between cars in adjacent lanes.

Otherwise we will interpret your ongoing demands to "share the road" to mean "you cars have to follow the rules but we bikes don't".

nobody wins this game

obamonopoly

have you driven a ford lately?

these things just reinforce my choice to remain a third generation "ford guy".

(yeah, i know the uaw mafia is strong there too, but i refuse to buy from a brand who built equipment used by the wrong side at pearl harbor.)

siberian cold blast

Finally, some truth in Pravda:

the American decent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed...

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their Constitutional rights...

Then their faith in God was destroyed*, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more than Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega-preachers were more than happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo-Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breathtaking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more than ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in sheer volume. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American Congress. Again, Congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self-given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less than two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper**...

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically-controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red*** as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

(typos and irrelevant braggadocio fixed)

* as always, there is a remnant, and there is a solution.

** i guess they, like our media, haven't heard about the tea party movement either.

*** and if you kiddies don't remember, pravda used to be a pro-communist rag.

compare and contrast

Molten Thought:

Let's compare the coverage of the shooting murder of an Army recuiter and attempted murder of another with the coverage of the shooting murder of abortionist George Tiller.

Anybody speculating that the recruiters were shot by a deranged member of the far Left?

Anybody waxing philosophical about how this discredits leftists opposed to military recruiting?

We don't even have to ask, do we?