credit where credit is due

the stOpped clOck is right this time:

"Mr. Obama said academics should be receiving an athletic-like focus. And as he presented a set of initiatives intended to improve the science and math scores of American students, he announced that the White House would begin holding an annual science fair starting next year.

"If you win the N.C.A.A. championships, you come to the White House. Well, if you're a young person and you've produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too," Mr. Obama said. "Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models..."

i won't even quibble that some athletes and most entertainers shouldn't be role models...

update & bump: right again? unprecedented!

update 2: and here's a third topic to agree with chairman zero, in which rightwingsparkle explains:

"We were right. Obama isn't up for the job. But in truth, he is proving that in every way except for this decision. The leftwing of the blogosphere is already beside itself over this. I think Obama will be shocked at the vitriol that will be thrown at him from his own party.

We on the right need to do what the left never did with Bush. We need to support our troops and back Obama up on this, because it is the right thing to do. If Obama has the courage to send the additional troops against the wishes of his party, then we on the right need to have the courage to be behind him 100%. This is not "Obama's war," this is OUR war. As long as our soldiers are fighting in foreign lands we should support them no matter who is President."

keep watching

climategate grows

kiva loans

found at viewpoint, this idea looks better than many charities

twilight sucks

Here In Idaho mocks

BSPCN enumerates

(p.s. i prefer not to use "suck" as a pejorative, but there is no better title)

lest we forget

Socialism has been tried in America before, and (as always) it failed miserably.

We have much to learn from the history of the Plymouth Plantation. For, in their first year in the New World, the Pilgrims conducted an experiment in social engineering akin to what is now contemplated; and, after an abortive attempt at cultivating the land in common, their leaders reflected on the results in a manner that Americans today should find instructive.

William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony... and his advisers considered "how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery." And after much debate... they chose to abandon communal property, deciding that "they should set corn every man for his own particular" and assign "to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end."

The results were gratifying in the extreme, "for it made all hands very industrious" and "much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been... the experience that was had... well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients... that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing." In practice, America's first socialist experiment "was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit."

In practice, "the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong... had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it."

Naturally enough, quarrels ensued. "If it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And [it] would have been worse if they had been men of another condition" less given to the fear of God. "Let none object," he concludes, that "this is men's corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them."

The moral is perfectly clear. Self-interest cannot be expunged. Where there is private property and its possession and acquisition are protected and treated with respect, self-interest and jealousy can be deployed against laziness and the desire for that which is not one's own, and there tends to be plenty as a consequence.

But where one takes from those who join talent with industry to provide for those lacking either or both, where the fruits of one man's labor are appropriated to benefit another who is less productive, self-interest reinforces laziness, jealousy engenders covetousness, and these combine in a bitter stew to produce both conflict and dearth.

(slightly edited for length, emphases mine)

the winds of change

apparently "UK's Brown" doesn't know the winds have changed...

Thanks Giving

Psalm 107, KJ21

O give thanks unto the LORD, for He is good;
for His mercy endureth for ever.

Let the redeemed of the LORD say so,
whom He hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy,

and gathered them out of the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.

They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way;
they found no city to dwell in.

Hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainted within them.

Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble,
and He delivered them out of their distresses.

And He led them forth by the right way,
that they might go to a city for habitation.

Oh that men would praise the LORD for His goodness,
and for His wonderful works to the children of men!

For He satisfieth the longing soul,
and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.

They that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
being bound in affliction and irons,

because they rebelled against the words of God
and contemned the counsel of the Most High,

therefore He brought down their heart with labor;
they fell down and there was none to help.

Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble,
and He saved them out of their distresses.

He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and broke their bonds asunder.

Oh that men would praise the LORD for His goodness,
and for His wonderful works to the children of men!

For He hath broken the gates of brass
and cut the bars of iron asunder.

Fools, because of their transgression
and because of their iniquities, are afflicted.

Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat,
and they draw near unto the gates of death.

Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble,
and He saveth them out of their distresses.

He sent His word and healed them,
and delivered them from their destructions.

Oh that men would praise the LORD for His goodness,
and for His wonderful works to the children of men!

And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving,
and declare His works with rejoicing!

They that go down to the sea in ships,
that do business in great waters:

these see the works of the LORD
and His wonders in the deep.

For He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind,
which lifteth up the waves thereof.

They mount up to the heaven,
they go down again to the depths;
their soul is melted because of trouble.

They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man,
and are at their wits' end.

Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble,
and He bringeth them out of their distresses.

He maketh the storm a calm,
so that the waves thereof are still.

Then are they glad because they are quiet;
so He bringeth them unto their desired haven.

Oh that men would praise the LORD for His goodness,
and for His wonderful works to the children of men!

Let them exalt Him also in the congregation of the people,
and praise Him in the assembly of the elders.

--------

He turneth rivers into a wilderness
and the watersprings into dry ground,

a fruitful land into barrenness
for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.

He turneth the wilderness into a standing water
and dry ground into watersprings;

and there He maketh the hungry to dwell,
that they may prepare a city for habitation,

and sow the fields and plant vineyards,
which may yield fruitful increase.

He blesseth them also so that they are multiplied greatly,
and alloweth not their cattle to decrease.

Again, they are diminished and brought low
through oppression, affliction, and sorrow.

He poureth contempt upon princes,
and causeth them to wander in the wilderness where there is no way.

Yet setteth He the poor on high from affliction,
and maketh their families like a flock.

The righteous shall see it and rejoice,
and all iniquity shall stop her mouth.

Whoso is wise and will observe these things,
even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the LORD.

football

at .438 of a century old, i just now realized something: it's not so much that i hate football. what i really hate is having no choice but to watch football...

an unprecedented use of "unprecedented"

so obama('s teleprompter) uses "unprecedented" a lot. big deal. he is the un-president, after all...

AGW is a hoax

Anthropogenic Global Warming has been proven to be a hoax.

The proof: read the east anglia emails

One summary: read this post

quoting one commentor: "Did silly Al forget to invent a security system for his internet?"

LOL


update: read more & follow links at the anchoress & michelle malkin

turn over rocks

...and the bugs & worms won't like it...

britcoms

just overheard a line on tv from some old british comedy on pbs that inadvertently describes me:

"he has a certain flair for appearing derelict"

:)

darkness falls

the obama depression in words.

the obama depression in pictures.

the obama depression in ratings.

the obama depression in double-standards.

remember how dark it got during fdr's tyranny, and how much better things got when the country rid itself of his national socialist mistakes?

remember how dark it got during the battle of britain, and how much better things got when that country rid its skies of the national socialist invaders?

remember how dark it got in east berlin, and how much better things got when that city rid itself of its communist oppressors?

i'm seeing a pattern, and i'm hoping it will not take long to throw out our current plague of socialist losers...

creativity

there's an app for that.

update: there's a lie for that too.

update 2 & bump: as darmok might have said "obama, with pants blazing".

taliban bananas

Which part of it's illegal to provide business services to the Taliban and their supporters does Google not get?

off the menu

via dustbury:

Have you heard about McDonalds new Obama Value Meal? Order anything you like and the guy behind you has to pay for it.

PDS network

All Palin Derangement Syndrome, all the time:

"Love Sarah Palin or not, one has to admit the press is so undone by her that they are both aggressive and passive-aggressive in their hate, and they betray themselves continually in all sorts of ways. They betray their snobbism; they betray their spitefulness, and most emphatically, they betray the fact that our “fourth estate” is populated mostly by perpetual adolescents...

They betray their hate, their spitefulness and their perpetual adolescence very succinctly, here, in this piece about Palin’s spectacularly well-attended book signing in Michigan:

Country music played as Palin’s tour bus, painted to resemble the cover of her book, pulled up to the Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids.

“I just can’t tell you how good it is to be back in Michigan,” the former Alaska governor . . . Alaska and Michigan have so much in common, with the huntin’ and the fishin’ and the hockey moms, and just the hardworking, patriotic Americans who are here,” Palin said.

Ah, those rubes lining up were treated to “country” music... And then here comes former Governor-Palin-Buckshot-Annie and her too-large family, droppin’ ‘er g’s and layin’ on the “hardworking, patriotic Americans” schtick with a graceless trowel...

The press is so busy embracing urban irony, they do not realize the disoriented, out-of-touch clowns they have become; just like those out-of-touch Beltway players they so love to promote. The clown-politicians are going to be voted out of office in the next two elections, barring fraud. And the clown-press is going to then stump around in their floppy clown feet, sadly beeping their horns and shaking their heads, wondering how it all fell apart.

The American public was... swayable in 2008, when the press spent every last dime of its credibility convincing America that Barack Obama was the smartest man ever to run for president, that he was “sort of God”, that he was “stepping down” to accept the presidency...

So, persuaded by the positivism of the press, Americans voted for a charismatic fellow whose college transcripts, friendships and background -and seemingly all of his instincts- were cloaked in a secrecy untroubling to incurious media... The guy who, since becoming president, has revealed himself to be... a flip-flopping, thin-skinned, secretive, teleprompter-dependent, far-left radical spend-a-holic who talks incessantly and does not listen, who can’t tell us where the money has gone; a guy who says pretty much anything that comes into his head, whether it is true or not, and figures that’s the new history; a “uniter” who has locked the opposition party out of every policy debate (there actually is no debate, anymore) and has weakened our influence abroad (by becoming “the worst sort of ally”) and our security at home, has disrespected, snubbed or betrayed every one of our allies, cozied up to tyrants and done little in a bare year besides bankrupting the country, dissing his predecessor at every opportunity, making us wonder what sort of government he is fomenting, and whether he is in fact, actively working to tear the country apart...

The American people... are not going to listen to the press, anymore. They will no longer be swayed by stuck-up 14-year-olds telling them who is stupid and who is smart, because they’ve seen just how incredibly stupid the common-sense-deficient “smartest people in the world” tend to be...

The press has not had President Bush... to use as an outlet for their boundless disdain, They need an outlet, because they are frustrated. They cannot allow themselves to admit that they -they! who are so smart, so clever- have been utterly hoodwinked by the supposed-genius of Barack Obama (who said yesterday that “accounting is an inexact science”) – and they need a reassuring “stupid” focalpoint on which they can direct their scorn and reassure themselves that they are smart, and cool and not at all parochial and closed off.

Palin is that outlet, now Bush is gone, and the putzes in the press can’t mock, spite, roll-their-eyes or seethe enough about her. But their mugging and huffing and mocking is not working, this time... Whatever Palin’s weaknesses, and she does have them, the outsized disdain of the press for this woman... is backfiring on them, and to her advantage."

separation of church and state

"Separation of church and state is a good thing for everyone involved. The separation of religion from public life is not."

(yes, i know, i link to viewpoint a lot...)

poverty is recovery

not only is the stimulus plan flushing ~$240,000 down a sinkhole for every job (allegedly) created, the compass on the official map even points to the left of true north.



this administration can hardly get anything right. ;)

update 1: just like my tax dollars, it looks like the image i uploaded is also missing... <\conspiracyvoice> will try to reupload tonight.

update 2: image now shows up sporadically. hmmm...

update 3: oh look! they provide a form to report fraud waste & abuse. i wonder how many citizens are brave enough to point out the obvious: that this whole "stimulus" crock is a fraudulent waste of taxpayer dollars and an abuse of power.

fantasy journalism

if only they'd ask real questions - even once

freedom of meep

(For the 98% of us who didn't know, arcane profanity ahead)

Dustbury, Theodora Michaels, and I will vigorously defend our right to say "meep":

Danvers High School is banning students from uttering the word “meep,” a trademark of Beaker from “The Muppet Show.”

The Salem News reported Principal Thomas Murray banned the word after school officials got wind of a student plan brewing on Facebook to stage a major disruption on school grounds using the “meep.”

WBZ-TV reported Murray informed students in an e-mail and phone message that police are monitoring the situation.

The Urban Dictionary defines meep as another way to say “ouch,”or “uh-oh.” It can also be a substitute for a swear word.

I personally abstain from swearing as much as possible, but this rule is ridiculous. Immature as it may be, kids will find a way to curse, and banning this word will 1) encourage its use, and 2) encourage them to find new curses, or give a vulgar meaning to some word.

An aside, I'd rather hear that m-word than the f-word. If nothing else, its use would have made "Reservoir Dogs" much more entertaining to me... one example:

Nash: That meep! That sick meep! That meepin meeptard!

Orange: Marvin, I need you to hold on. There's cops waiting less than a block away.

Nash: What the meep are they waiting for? This meeping guy slashes my face, and he cuts my meeping ear off! I'm meeping deformed!

Orange: [yells] Meep you! Meep you! I'm meeping dying here!

ideas have consequences

The 20th century was simply Columbine High School writ large.

cast down the idols

My "faith in America" is not based on faith in "America", but on "faith" in America.

oh my...

Unless you list your ethnic status as "Easily-Offended-American", go check out this recipe: Turbaconducken

Just in time for the winter season comes a recipe that is sure to bring bacon lovers some warm holiday cheer. Turbaconducken. That’s right — a chicken stuffed in duck stuffed in a turkey, all wrapped in bacon. Otherwise known as a bacon-wrapped turducken.

If you made it this far, go read their recipe, and the many comments - in which are raised a few issues:

"eww gross, i'm a vegetarian"

then why are they visiting www.BACONtoday.com? hypocrites...

"that'll give you diabetes"

another comment answers "type 1 diabetes is caused by your immune system attacking your pancreas... has nothing to do with your diet... type 2 diabetes is based around the carbohydrate and insulin resistance... which is why most type 2 diabetics are coached on eating meals higher in protein..."

"you should've deboned the poultry"

correct. the idea is to be able to slice all the way through, so that all meats are presented together in each serving.

"this offends peta and muslims"

good! "if your opponent is quick to anger, seek to irritate him." - sun tzu


(via snadrs)

The cost of PC

The cost of a PC is far less than the price of political correctness that Hasan's victims paid.

Government authorities have punctiliously avoided mention of the killer's religion and his associations with radical Islamists in the days following the massacre at Fort Hood. President Obama admonishes us not jump to conclusions, but this sounds a little strange coming from the man who had no trouble jumping to the conclusion that Professor "Skip" Gates was the victim of "stupid" racist cops in Cambridge Massachussetts last summer.

Imagine how quick everyone would be to "jump to conclusions" had a Christian walked into an abortion clinic shooting everyone in the place while shouting "Jesus is Lord." Would President Obama be urging us to withhold judgment about the killer's motivations until "all the facts were in"? If a fundamentalist pastor walked into a gay bar and opened fire would the media recoil from calling the man a domestic terrorist? Would the President say that the killer might have "just snapped," and that we shouldn't assume that the man's religion played a role? I very much doubt it.

There would, in fact, be no end of pontificating on the alleged deep current of misogyny, hatred and bigotry running through American Christianity, but Hasan, we must understand, was a Muslim so we must tread lightly so as not to smear the millions of good Muslims in this country. We must be careful not to assume that he was in fact acting on the same motives that inspire his co-religionists around the world to kill and maim whomever and whenever they can.

There was no reticence whatsoever among our political leaders last summer to portray angry retirees at town hall meetings as terrorists, but we dare not suggest that a Muslim mass murderer is a terrorist until every i is dotted and t crossed even if the man has just perpetrated a classic act of Islamic terrorism.

(link not in original article)

bad company

After a long hiatus, I wrote a new post at News Through The Mirror.

lego names

or, how to build the tower of babel out of plastic bricks

they shoot papers, don't they?

mr. dinosaur & ms. wagon wheel, meet your new neighbors.

orbiting fort hood

three(ish) observations of hasan's madness:

via doug ross

via dustbury

via van helsing

saturday funnies

i haven't seen this week's "saturday funnies" regular feature at the jungle hut, so here's a couple to tide you over:






and some new cnn slogans - read post and comments

that's crazy

update: one cnn headline said "what set off maj. hasan?". apparently cnn doesn't read yahoo news:

Soldiers reported that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God (sic) is great!" — before opening fire.

---

i've only met one sane psychiatrist and one sane muslim, and the fort hood shooter isn't one of them:

"(Major Nidal Malik Hasan) was making outlandish comments condemning our foreign policy and claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans," Col Lee told Fox News.

"He said Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor and that we should not be in the war in the first place." He said that Maj Hasan said he was "happy" when a US soldier was killed in an attack on a military recruitment centre in Arkansas in June. An American convert to Islam was accused of the shootings.

Col Lee said that other officers had told him that Maj Hasan had said "maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Time Square" in New York.

like they say, it's the rotten 99.9% that give the .1% a bad name...

fog

...and the clearing thereof:

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad... ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

If you don’t have free speech, you don’t have free anything else.

“Remaking America” should be called “The Fog of Obama.” Except, it’s not just Obama, or his assorted rights-eroding, speech-silencing, sovereignty-surrendering, cognitive-dissonance-embracing, and utterly hypocritical elitist pals.

We are living in an era of sublime phoniness... and the one tool that can penetrate through that increasingly dense and lingering fog of fakery, the internet, is being seriously imperiled...

The outcome of the NY-23 election does not mean anything that anyone is saying it means. NY-23 was not about candidates... wasn’t even about ideologies, per se. It was about the noise and fog of war and the manner in which that fog obliterates the clarity needed to focus on the proper target, effecting the change necessary to, in the end, beat back the larger and encroaching evil.

The larger, encroaching evil is contained in the first link of this post. It is huge; it is not remotely connected, in theory, to NY-23, because it is a worldwide, global evil.

But in NY-23, after a great deal of political grasping and some mild hysterics, the best candidate actually won. He won after politicians of national prominence came in to work against him. He won, even though there was a momentum-gaining force at the back of his opponent.

He won because, despite all of that fog, voters - who now understand that they were nothing but grifter’s marks in 2008, victims of a shameful bait-and-switch that has left them distrustful of all political machination and all mainstream media - looked at who they trusted to represent their most pressing immediate interests.

the pot calling the dove black

Realizing that they have no legal basis, the UN invents another scheme to guilt-trip the productive portions of society:

Yvo de Boer, the top U.N. climate official who oversees the (global warming/cooling scam) negotiations, said any decision emerging from Copenhagen that is accepted by all 192 countries would be "morally binding" even without formal legal status.

For the UN to claim something is "morally binding" is beyond laughable, as proven by their record of im- and a-morality:

UN-backed Congo military offensive results in more than 1,000 civilians killed, 7,000 raped, and 900,000 displaced.

Fifty UN peacekeepers receive slap on wrist for sex abuses.

UN slaps its own wrist for massive Oil-For-Food corruption.

UN peacekeepers in Liberia have been accused of selling food for sex from girls as young as 8.

UN promotes sexual promiscuity to children.

UN leaves its own soldiers to die.

UN plans to steal by illegal taxation.

Too bad they don't just withdraw, as they do from certain other opposing forces which shall remain (cough ISLAM cough) nameless: "Embattled UN rethinking Afghan-Pakistan role"

think again

Rightwingsparkle:

"If Republicans think they can slide into 2010 on the back of an unhappy out-of-work populace disappointed with Democrats, they better think again. Republicans used to say that "any Republican would be better than a Democrat." We don't say that anymore...

In other words, just because you have a "R" next to your name, doesn't mean we are going to vote for you. Prove yourself. Tell me you believe in the constitution. Tell me you believe in state rights. Tell me you will not spend any more money that we don't have. Tell me you will not allow this government to take over private industry. Tell me you will let business thrive with low taxes, less red tape, and incentives. Tell me you believe in freedom, liberty, and the principles this country was founded upon. Tell me that government was never meant to be our daddy. Tell me that we will teach people not to depend on the government, but to bear responsibility for their own lives."

read the rest.

p.s. since we have been "told" a lot of stuff that didn't mean anything, i'd edit this second paragraph to delete the numerous "tell me"s, so it would read:

"Believe in the Constitution and state rights. Do not spend any more money that we don't have. Do not allow government to take over private industry. Let business thrive with low taxes, less red tape, and incentives. Believe in freedom, liberty, and the principles this country was founded upon. Know that government was never meant to be our daddy. Teach people not to depend on the government, but to bear responsibility for their own lives."

complain

i could complain about minor incidents over the last week and a half, only to sound as shallow as the complainant of this king's x song

ozone disappearing in the sky
bud man asking us why ask why
if i could find my magazine this bug would die
i complain
china boy standing up to a tank
southern boy living in the house of yanks
if i can't seem to get my motorbike to crank
i complain

complain so much easier
complain so much easier
complain so much easier, easier

small kid begging for a crumb of bread
next kid bloated lying nearly dead
i wonder what to take for my aching head
i complain
lots of people crying for a little rain
whole nation learning how to live with pain
i don't know how I'm gonna clean this little stain
i complain.

complain so much easier
complain so much easier
complain so much easier, easier

black man singing mississippi blues
africa starves a little baby drools
i'm trying to figure out all the basketball rules
i complain
mr. rush limbaugh giving me the facts
treetops falling and the newsman yaks
I'm thinking about carter and how I'm gonna be taxed
hey

complain so much easier
complain so much easier
complain so much easier
complain, complain

there's probably at least 5.99 billion other people out there who had worse weeks than mine, localmalcontent being one of them.