neither gone nor forgotten

...just haven't had anything to say

may be back after the holidays...

the secession petition

as of tonight, the petition for texas secession has nearly 60,000 signatures.

Peacefully grant the State of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government's neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it's citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government.

notice that registration is required.

"A whitehouse.gov account is required to sign Petitions."

as part of obama's "transparency in government" initiative, i have added a full disclosure to the registration info box (lower right)

the founding fathers

...missed a few things:

Three things that the Founding Fathers did not anticipate:

• They underestimated the centralizing force and tendency of the national government,
• They expected the States to more jealously guard their rights, powers, interests and responsibilities,
• They never expected such a fawning Press, whose lick-spittle worship of All Things Obama is beyond incestuous.

(from steve soeren's comment here)

the devil, via instapundit

, brings up a question that should be considered when reading any internet forum:

The problem ... is this: How does one tell, and tell about, the difference between right and wrong? Why ought one - a person or a society - do any particular thing rather than any other? How can one ground any statement in the form "It is right to do X" in anything firmer than the quicksand of bare reiterated assertion? As intellectual puzzles go, this one is a lulu... no one else has come up with a satisfactory solution, from the beginning of the world to the date hereof.

you should read The Book for the answer.

jeremiah

(edit: removed first half)

a true prophet:

To whom shall I speak and give warning
That they may hear?
Behold, their ears are closed
And they cannot listen.
Behold, the word of the Lord has become a reproach to them;
They have no delight in it.

But I am full of the wrath of the Lord;
I am weary with holding it in.
“Pour it out on the children in the street
And on the gathering of young men together;
For both husband and wife shall be taken,
The aged and the very old.

“Their houses shall be turned over to others,
Their fields and their wives together;
For I will stretch out My hand
Against the inhabitants of the land,” declares the Lord.

“For from the least of them even to the greatest of them,
Everyone is greedy for gain,
And from the prophet even to the priest
Everyone deals falsely.

“They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially,
Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.

“Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done?
They were not even ashamed at all;
They did not even know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
At the time that I punish them,
They shall be cast down,” says the Lord.

Thus says the Lord,
"Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is, and walk in it;
And you will find rest for your souls."
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

“And I set watchmen over you, saying,
"Listen to the sound of the trumpet!"
But they said, ‘We will not listen.’

“Therefore hear, O nations,
And know, O congregation, what is among them.

“Hear, O earth: behold,
I am bringing disaster on this people,
The fruit of their plans,
Because they have not listened to My words,
And as for My law, they have rejected it also.

Declaration of Independence 2

SECEDE. NOW. SERIOUSLY.

...and put Cold Fury on the Committee of Six for our second Declaration of Independence:

"(Obama) is no President; he’s a sick and cruel practical joke the American people played on themselves. Time for him to go shambling off into the ash-heap of history, time and past time."

• His repeated disgracing, debasement, and humiliation of our country, exemplified by his bowing to foreign potentates, his high-handed insults to allies such as Israel and Great Britain, and his cowardly kowtowing to our enemies in the Muslim world
• His absolutely abominable Benghazi disaster and the pitifully incompetent attempt to hide it from the American people
• His willful and wanton destruction of the American economy and his clearly-stated intention to replace it with an unworkable and unsustainable one modeled on Eurosocialism
• His dismissive contempt for and continuing insults of freedom-loving, Constitution-revering Americans, particularly those involved with the Tea Party movement
• His disregard and disrespect for our military, even as he usurps credit for their bravery and skill, thumping his scrawny, sunken chest in undeserved triumph for his “gutsy call” in killing bin Laden
• His underhanded promise to our Russian adversaries to be “more flexible” about selling out US security and strength after he’s re-elected and no longer accountable to the American people
• His cheapening of the American political process via his astounding core dishonesty; his refusal to grant any intellectual legitimacy to positions that differ from his own, positions that are nothing more or less than the founding ideals of this nation; his sleazy partisanship even as he declares himself “bipartisan”; his steamrolling right over our system of Constitutional checks and balances on his power via executive order and rule by bureaucracy and fiat; his unbelievable arrogance and pre-adolescent inability to take criticism with grace or even forbearance; his smugness in victory (“I won”) and pettiness in defeat; his open contempt for the people he presumes not to govern but to rule, in direct contravention of everything this nation was supposed to stand for; his rejection of our core principles in favor of a tyrannical ideology that has failed every time it’s been tried; his overweening sense of entitlement even though he’s done nothing, achieved nothing, which would justify it
• His disgusting assertions of false moral equivalence: equating our Israeli allies with their evil, genocidal tormenters; reduction of pride in American exceptionalism to mere egotistical frippery (“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism”); asserting that genocidal fanatics running a brutal, lawless, belligerent regime in Iran have the same moral right to develop weapons of mass destruction as more responsible Western governments
• His subversion of the Department of Justice into the vote-fraud and voter-intimidation supporting, gunrunning, wholly-corrupt intimidation and enforcement arm of his Gangster Government
• His abysmal, near-total ignorance of American history and basic high-school-level civics, in bizarre combination with his incomprehensible and unshakable belief in his own intellectual superiority
• His emptying of the Treasury, in part to bribe his cronies in the failed “green energy” industry, and then turning around and demanding that “millionaires”–families of four who earn 250k a year–pay “their fair share” to support his socialist folly when they’re already paying the overwhelming majority of the taxes collected, a sum far disproportionate to the percentage of the income they earn
• His braying jackassery in claiming that his bailout not of continuing-failure GM but of his ever-reliable flunkies in the UAW–nothing more than a payoff of the old-school Tammany/Daley sort, a quid pro quo for election-time services rendered–was some sort of “success” story, as if it was something worthy of being proud rather than ashamed of
• His relentless, multifaceted assaults, both regulatory and rhetorical, on the people who make this country work–small business owners and the entrepreneur/achiever class–as if they were an Enemy of The People rather than their main hope for prosperity and success, worthy not of encouragement and gratitude but scorn and persecution
• His intellectually dishonest refusal to grant his opponents the fundamental respect of engaging their ideas honestly, preferring to attack strawmen instead: “There are some who say…” and “My opponents seem to believe that…” followed by a deceitful litany of positions no one holds and policies no one has promoted
• His insulting refusal to present anything resembling a real agenda for his undeserved second term, spewing empty platitudes about how “We will create over eleventy billion jobs,” “We will establish American energy independence,” and “We will work towards balancing the budget” without ever once presenting even one concrete proposal as to how he intends to accomplish any of these things

jeopardy!

the ups
and
the downs

i love this country

just not everything that goes on within it. (via imao)

writ small

just as it is in national politics, it's called a "scummy, despicable tactic" to tell the truth about a democrat campaign:

The Dallas County Republican Party is accusing a Democratic candidate for state House District 107 of hiring felons to work for his campaign.

Dallas County GOP Chair Wade Emmert sent a recorded message to voters Tuesday
that accuses Robert Miklos of hiring workers with criminal backgrounds to go
door-to-door for his campaign. Miklos’ Republican opponent is incumbent Rep. Kenneth Sheets.

"This is a scummy, despicable tactic by a Sheets campaign and Sheets campaign allies, who know they have a failing campaign," Miklos told NBC 5. "Most of our canvassers have been recruited from community colleges -- teenagers, 20 yearolds -- and we've done a tremendous grassroots effort."

The county GOP provided NBC 5 with the text of the recorded message:

"This is an important voter safety alert. Please be aware that the campaign of Robert Miklos is employing people with serious criminal backgrounds to canvass your neighborhoods. Mr. Miklos pays numerous people with criminal backgrounds in car theft, aggravated assault, theft, criminal trespass and prostitution to possibly knock on your door. Please be careful if you see anyone in your neighborhood wearing a Robert Miklos T-shirt, as that person may have a dangerous criminal background. This is Wade Emmert, chairman of the RepublicanParty in Dallas County. I want to make sure voters and our families are safe during this election season. This call was paid for by the Dallas County Republican Party."

NBC 5 ran the names for a criminal background search, and found some with felony charges...

yesterday

i walked into "atlas shrugged part 2" the same way i walked into "lord of the rings part 1": surprised and disappointed the series would be a *three* parter...

i walked out of "atlas shrugged part 2" the same way i walked out of "lord of the rings part 1": glad i saw what i did, and anticipating seeing the trilogy intact.

---

edit: to be clear, i am only a fan of rand's ideas about creativity vs the collective, and definitely not a fan of her ideas about romance or religion.

it's the end of the world as we know it

...and i feel fine

vice-presidential debate wrap up

joe biden vs paul ryan

a new hope

related:

All I really want you to do is act like you actually want your country back, not like it would be kind of convenient if (obama's anti-american cronies) could see their way clear to considering the possibility of potentially relinquishing at least a small portion of the nation they’re crushing with their intolerable regime of lies.

just wondering

update 2 - this idea has been done before...

update 1 - related:

“…before the Obama administration knew who [the film maker] was, they had to mount a deliberate investigation, determine his identity, and then do a comprehensive background check to find out if there was anything they could do to him.”
That’s the problem... The FBI investigated him for causing trouble for the administration by making a (lame, tedious, misleading) movie insulting to Mohammad.

If he’d made a movie insulting Jesus Christ he would have caused no trouble for Washington, he’d never have been investigated by the FBI, and the same people who now condemn him would have given him an NEA grant for being edgy and transgressive.
The administration deliberately outed this film-maker, but the story is supposed to be all about western insensitivity and Moslem outrage.

do you think anyone would find this offensive?

since i'm offended by all the beheadings, suicide bombings, female mutilation, and "honor" killings, i have trouble seeing anything offensive in cartoons any more...

metajokes plus one

from a forwarded email:

"Three people of different nationalities walk into a bar. Two of them say
something smart, and the third one makes a mockery of his fellow countrymen by
acting stupid."

--

"Three blokes walk into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole
scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability."

--

Q: "How many members of a certain demographic group does it take to perform a
specified task?"
A: "A finite number: one to perform the task and the remainder to act in a manner
stereotypical of the group in question."

--

There once was an X from place B,
Who satisfied predicate P,
The X did thing A,
In a specified way,
Resulting in circumstance C.

--

Q: How many geeks does it take to ruin a joke?
A: You mean nerd, not geek. And not joke, but riddle. Proceed.

a simple question

absentmindedness makes the stomach growl longer

lileks has more patience with meal negotiators than i do:

So people take a lot time looking at (the large menu over the counter)... The people in front ordered like you’d expect: lots of peering, consultation, discussion about sharing portions, and so on. All of which could have been settled earlier. Then it’s time for drinks. What would you like to drink?

Oh, gosh, I don’t know. Do you have Sprite?

We have sprite.

I’ll have a sprite.

What size?

Oh, medium.

And so on with the kids. And then the husband with the beer list and the studied consideration of each fine craft-brewed option.

dissembly not required

just had this ad pop up in a sidebar (the right side is the original, i 'shopped in the left text):

it's probably just an innocent mistake, but still...

these days...

...there's just so much to ridicule

update 1:
so
very
very
much

update 2:
so very much

a teachable moment

local malcontent explains illegal immigration:

...do you own your own home...? Let's assume that you do. Nice place, fenced yard, a swingset for your kids. But... I want to come live in your house too! I like your place, and I really like your full refrigerator and pantry.

So I intend to come climb through a window, and live there with you, and I don't care what you think of that. I intend to eat my fill of your groceries, I intend to use your family's electricity and phone. And you have plenty of room... I'll just take this bedroom, the one which used to be your kid's.

The food and the utilities I'll be consuming means that your family will have to eat less, and your OG&E bill will be larger. But Not To Worry!! I will "pay" for my invasion of your home by planting you a great garden, and raising some great veggies and fruit... Which I will sell to you, your wife and your kid. Cheap, but not Free.

update: barbara bellar explains obamacare:

So let me get this straight: ... We're going to be gifted with a health care plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people without adding a single new doctor, but which provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it (but exempted themselves from it), and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before the benefits take effect, by a government which is already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke.

two reruns

these posts from six years ago are still relevant - please read them both

as a sorbet

i posted before about some muzak in a chinese restaurant, and something related happened today in a nearby mexican restaurant:

the music was definitely not muzak or radio, nor was it quite mariachi. it was in the mariachi tradition, with typical lyrics about "mi corazon" and "besame mucho", but much improved from its century-old oompah influence.

the first track sounded like security-era peter gabriel, the next track had an easy stereolab lounge influence, another had a "blinded by the light" style organ ostinato holding it together. another track had simon and garfunkel harmonies, and another had some brief chromatic dissonance that could have come from soundgarden or the foo fighters (with a third of the distortion).

pretty cool.

put it out

with friends like these...

imao pointed to ace of spades pointed to the jim messina meme generator - which is all about the obama "for all" campaign using a photo of some creepy dude who wrote "obama care" on his hands.

i didn't think lol-captions can do it justice, so i fired up photoshop and made what everyone is thinking:

i am the 53%

(among other things), flopping aces asks "Has (obama) ever truly reached across the aisle other than to say to Republicans, “I won, the keys are mine, get in the back of the seat and just shut up while I drive.”?"

layout change

it was about time to refresh the look of this blog - more to come...

my cs6 is just getting warmed up

yes, i know the idea has been done - more or less...

lines of the losers

the only problem i have with this list is the title - this is *not* the worst of president hussein.

going green

...with envy
(please read it all, including comments)

pun alert

all superheroes have a nemesis. who is the nemesis of the first person to walk on the moon?

the s/fifth/lynch/ column

Connecticut's first lady Cathy Malloy is forced to apologize for speaking the truth.

truth in advertising...

...comes to political speeches

:)

yes there are two paths you can go by...

...but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on

who's in charge?

splotchy is in charge!

"who's in charge?" blog is back from a hiatus. go join in the fun at blogspot and/or tumblr

---

bump: seriously, guys, the more the merrier - vote early vote often :)

yeah, prettty much

i've said it before and i'll say it again: i'm disgusted that our two-party system never produces presidential candidates i can vote FOR, only AGAINST.

related links here, here, (and more to come...)

"One simply does not drive in to Mordor"

, says Lileks of the twincities' discouragement of vehicular efficiency.

---

big update:

as a slight tangent to that article, the comments began to discuss whether or not repurposing lanes from auto to bike traffic adds to traffic congestion - to which the obvious answer is "obviously". but one commenter took the "pious bicyclist" attitude, which eventually included the claim that:

On urban streets, lane reductions in themselves almost never affect capacity, congestion, or level of service - it's the higher-volume intersections that control how well vehicles can get through (green time doesn't grow on trees).

to which i replied (snarkily i'll admit):

"lane reductions in themselves almost never affect capacity" - seriously??? replace the water and sewer lines at your house with quarter-inch pipe and tell us how that works for you...

some hours later he replied with:

Fluid molecules and drivers are not the same. Fluid molecules are much more predictable. Fluid molecules do not drink, text, or become distracted, and do not have $500 collision deductibles.

A very common early assignment in college introductory-level transportation courses is for students to analyze the capacity of an urban street - first, by analyzing the capacity of the roadway between intersections (usually high), and then by analyzing the throughput at intersections (much lower unless there are many lanes or unbalanced phasing). It's a great way to get it through the students' heads that things aren't always as they initially seem, and that analogies to other flow concepts don't always hold up.

, which is partially true but sidesteps the issue.

(i would have added my rebuttal at lileks' site, but it seems to disable additional comments for previous days.)

the whole bit about fluid molecules is true, and it's true that things aren't always as they initially seem. but even simple geometry dictates that fewer lanes hold fewer cars. if his claims were true, no road would need to be more than a two-way path. if "capacity" and "number of lanes" have no connection, then the "capacity" of the katy freeway out of houston is the same as fm2092 out of menard. And if more lanes do not mean more cars, then all highway expansion projects are pointless as they do not allow more cars on the road.

pffft.

goal setting

Why stop at 54.5?

Strict new federal fuel-economy and carbon-emission standards made final Tuesday are the biggest technological challenge to the auto industry since the government began regulating emissions in 1970 and mileage in 1975.

The rule sets the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon as the average the auto industry must achieve by 2025, up from 29.7 mpg now and 35.5 mpg in 2016.

The tough "CAFE" standard (for corporate average fuel economy), which was to be announced earlier this month, was announced Tuesday by the Obama administration on the day that Republicans' national convention got underway in Tampa.

It is "a monumental day for the American people," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in announcing the final rules.

As long as we're throwing out ridiculous numbers, how about we set these goals?

• 8 more hours per day,
• 9000% higher incomes,
• 95% fewer lightning strikes,
• all people weigh below average,
• all children are smarter than average, and
• 0% mortality

Kennedy chose "to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." President Hussein chooses to dictate the impossible, and blame others when his choom dreams fail.

"obama doesn't care about white people"

kanye dig it?

ouch

who will help sam?

those who forget history

...are doomed to vote democrat.

copy-pasted from the freerepublic archives (which was copy-pasted from a long-lost previous source), this four-year-old list needs to be updated:

----------------------

*indicates sex scandal,
** indicates sexual assault/rape/murder

Current office holders:
Lee Alexander, Syracuse Mayor: racketeering and tax evasion
Hillary Clinton: unidicted bribe taker
Christopher Dodd: $50,000 bagman for John Huang, blamed it on Don Fowler.
Robert Filner, US Rep, CA: Assault and battery on United Airlines employee at Dulles Intn'l
*Barney Frank: unindicted child whoremonger
Oscar Goodman, Las Vegas mayor: bribes, telling fourth graders to bring gin if they are stuck on island
Diane Gordon: New York City Council, convicted of taking bribes
Alcee Hastings: impeached and convicted judge/representative
William Jefferson: has he been indicted yet?
**Ted Kennedy: unindicted murderer
Pat Kennedy: unindicted (censored) drunk
Robert Menendez: unindicted bribe taker
Kwame Kilpatrick: Detroit Mayor, perjury, obstruction of justice, fired police chief for investigating his mayoral personage.
Jack Murtha: unidicted bribe taker
Ray Nagin: say, Ray, what really happened to that $250,000,000 ya got from the Corps of Engineers to fix the dike? Didja think they meant dyke?
Harry Reid: unidicted bribe taker
Ed Rendell: unidicted bribe solicitor
Gary Siplin, FL State Senator: grand theft conviction- props for being different, still in office because stupid Florida Supreme Court allows convicted felons to stay in office until their case is appealed.
Thomas Wright: NC house, six count indictment for fraud/obstructing justice, pending trial and removal from office.

Former office holders:
**Sen. Brock Adams: rape
Frank Ballance: mail fraud, money laundering
Rep. Marrio Biaggi: Wedtech. illegal use of minority no bid contracting, bribes
*Marion Barry: is he still out of office, or is he back again?
Jim Black: NC Speaker of the house, five years for accepting bribes
Kathryn Bowers, State Sen.: bribery, "Tennessee Waltz"
Daniel Baugh Brewster: illegal gratuities
Brian Burke, felony and misdemeanor pleas
Albert G. Bustamante: racketeering, bribery
Robert Byrd: KKK member
John A. Celona: racketeering, mail fraud
Warren Christopher, Secretary of State: fired James C. Woods for suggesting that $5,300,000 missing from AIT visa fund was spent on sexual favors and John Huang.
Chuck Chvala, Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader: using state employees to do political work and to illegally funneling money to a state Senate campaign. (19 other counts were dropped and Chvala served no time.)
*Henry Cisneros: lying to FBI about $250,000 hush money to mistress
William Lacy Clay, Sr.: ethics charges, house banking scandal
**Bill Clinton: unindicted bribe taker, malfeasance, seller of military secrets to foreign governments, perjurer, rapist
Tony Coelho: bond market and stock market defrauder
Jerry Cosentino, state treasurer: bank fraud (seriously)
William Cotton, County Committeeman: bribery, "Tennessee Waltz"
**Gary Condit: murder
Alan Cranston: Keating five (funny how Keating, a republican, seemed to know to bribe democrats)
George Crockett, Jr.: contempt of court for defending communist on trial for advocating the overthrow of the government
Ward Crutchfield, State Sen. : bribery, "Tennessee Waltz"
Gloria Davis, Bronx Assembly: bribery
Dennis DeConcini: Keating five
Charles Coles Diggs, Jr.: mail fraud
Roscoe Dixon, State Sen.: bribery, "Tennessee Waltz"
Thomas Joseph Dodd: (daddy Dodd) $116,000 in campaign funds diverted for personal use
Edwin Edwards, Governor LA: $400,000 extortion
Angelo Errichetti, Camden Mayor: Abscam
Daniel Flood: payoffs
John N. Ford, State Sen.: bribery, "Tennessee Waltz"
Cornelius Edward Gallagher: tax evasion, conspiracy, perjury
Former Rep. Robert Garcia: Wedtech
**David Giles: child rape
Former Sen. John Glenn: Keating five
**Neil Goldschmidt, Oregon governor: confessed child molester
Al Gore: unindicted bribe taker
James C. Green, NC state rep: tax evasion
Roger L. Green, Brroklyn Assembly: phony travel reimbursements
David Hall: extortion and conspiracy
Richard T. Hanna D CA: accepted bribes from South Korean government
John Doug Hays, KY senate: mail fraud
*Rep. Wayne Hays, traded secretary job for blow job
Alan G, Hevesi, Comptroller NY: $172,000 use of state police to drive his wife around
*Dario Herrera, Clark County NV Commisioner, congressional candidate: bribes, G string trial, lap dances, oral sex for votes
*Allan Turner Howe: soliciting prostitution
Carroll Hubbard, Jr.: conspiracy to defraud FEC, theft of government property
Webster Hubbell, AK Supreme Court Chief Justice: mail fraud, tax evasion
*Sen. Daniel Inouye, accused of sexual harrassment
*Ralph Inzunza, San Diego Council: G string trial, bribes for changing the city strip club laws
Sharpe James, Mayor of Newark, N.J.: unindicted you name it
Harry P. Jannotti Philadelphia City Council, Abscam
Former Rep. John Jenrette: Abscam
Bolley Johnson, FL Speaker of the House: tax evasion
Louis C. Johanson, Philadelphia City Council, Abscam
Guy Hamilton Jones, Sr., AK state senate: IRS charges
*Erin Kenny, Clark County NV Commisioner, candidate for Lt Gov: G string trial, cash bribes
*Mary Kincaid-Chauncey Clark County NV Commissioner: G string trial, campaign $$$
Joseph Kolter: embezzlement
**David Lanier, Judge: eight counts of sexual assault (not harassment)
Raymond Lederer: Abscam
Nicholas Mavroules: plead guilty to 15 corruption counts
*Lance Malone, Clark County NV Commissioner: G string trial, cash bribes, wire fraud, extortion
Leo McCarthy: unindicted bribe solicitor
William McCuen, AK Secretary of State: kickbacks, tax evasion, embezzling
Jim McDermott: "willful and knowing misconduct" that "rises to the level of malice".
Jim McGreevey: unindicted bribe taker
Cynthia McKinney: battery on US Capitol Police officer at security check
Edward Mezvinsky: 56 federal fraud charges. One more and he could marry John Kerry
John Michael Murphy: Abscam
Michael Myers: Abscam
Mary Rose Oakar: House banking scandal, pled to campaign violations
Otto Ernest Passman D. LA: accepted bribes from South Korean government, prosecution declined due to age
Carl Christopher Perkins: house banking scandal, overdrawn $300,000
**Mel Reynolds, D-IL child rapist pardoned by Clinton
**Fred Richmond, soliciting from a 16 year old
Don Riegle: Keating five
George Rogers, MA State Sen.: bribery
Dan Rostenkowski: chairman of the House Ways and Means committee House post office scandal
Bobby Lee Rush: black panther, weapons charges
**Gus Savage, fondling peace corps volunteer
George X. Schwartz, Philadelphia City Council, Abscam
Don Siegleman (former Alabama Governor): bribes
Lawrence Jack Smith: tax evasion
*Eliot Spitzer (former New York Governor): soliciting prostitution, Mann Act
*Jerry Springer: soliciting prostitution
**Gerry Studds: unindicted child rapist
*Lena Swanson, WA State Senate: she gets an asterisk for screwing veterans and POWs
Herman Talmadge: bribery, overcoat full of cash
Frank Thompson: Abscam
Robert Toricelli: unindicted mafia tool and bribe taker
James Traficant D. OH: bribes, racketeering, use of staff for personal benefit
James Guy Tucker, Jr.: fraud, Whitewater
Walter Rayford Tucker: extortion, tax evasion
*Joseph Waggonner Jr.: soliciting prostitution
David Lee Walters, OK Governor: election law violations
Maxine Waters: about $1,000,000 in nepotism (I ain no nepoti'm, donchu call me no nepoti'm!)
**Daniel James White, San Francisco Supervisor: murder, and the reason Dianne Feinstein has a carry permit and you don't
Sen. Harrison A. Williams: Abscam
Calvin Williams, County Administrator: bribery, "Tennessee Waltz,"
Jim Wright, former Speaker of the House : $145,000 'gift'
*John Young, sexual harassment of staffer
*Michael Zucchet, San Diego Council, interim mayor: G string trial, bribes for changing the strip club laws

Miscelleaneous democrat criminals:
Bruce Babbitt, Interior Secretary: lied to congress about Indian casino bribes
Sandy Berger: Clinton aide, theft and destruction of classified and incriminating documents
*Natale Bellochi: $5,300,000 goes missing from the US operated American Institute in Taiwan. James C. Woods is fired for claiming that it was spent on sexual favors and John Huang.
Ron Brown: fraud, conspiracy
Billy Carter: Libyan agent
David Chang: illegal fundraising
Golan Cipel: made NJ Homeland Security advisor because of gay affair with Jim McGreevy, possible Israeli spy
Democratic National committee: $719,000 fine for campaign violations
**Brian Doyle, dem activist child molester
**Ira Einhorn, rape and murder
Michael Espy, Secretary of Agriculture: criminal corruption charges
**John Wayne Gacy, rapist, murderer, democrat fund raiser
*Michael Galardi: G string trial "fund raiser" handed out "$100,000's" of bribes, as well as wire fraud and oral sex, in order to get San Diego and Las Vegas strip club laws changed. Harry Reid 'rebuked' John Ashcroft for using the Patriot Act to catch these people
**Abraham J. Hirschfeld: tampering with witness (Paula Jones), murder
Maria Hsia: illegal fundraising, possible Chinese spy working on Clinton, Gore, Ted Kennedy, Pat Kennedy campaigns
John Huang: arranging $150,000 in illegal campaign contributions
Internal Revenue Service: demanded member list from NRA during one of numerous suspicious tax audits
Mark B. Jimenez - Democrat fund raiser - tax evasion, conspiracy to defraud the United States, election financing offenses
Bert Lance, OMB Director: misuse of government funds
James Lanier, power broker, TN: corruption
Fred Phelps: fundraiser for Al Gore
Edward Fretwell Prichard, Jr., DNC delegate: stuffing the ballot box
Tony Rezko, fundraiser for IL. gov. Blagojevich and Barack Obama: extortion, racketeering
Richard Silberman, various CA offices: laundering drug cartel money, stock fraud
**Michael Skakel, Kennedy, murderer
**William Kennedy Smith, Kennedy, rapist
Lafayette Thomas, Sheriff, TN: 54 counts abuse of power, mail fraud, tax fraud
Paul Ziffren: Capone connection to Chicago and California democrat committees



also, here's an older and shorter list, and here's some recent additions

Porky Riot

( headlines from a similarly-bent universe... )

Protest

On July 21, 2012 (Ramadan), as part of a protest movement against the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, men from the group Porky Riot went to the Shah Mosque in Isfahan Iran, masking their identities, flogging themselves, performing the song “Hey Mohammed, Put Ahmadinejad Away”. After less than a minute they were escorted outside the building by guards and beheaded. Film of the decapitations was later used by CAIR as a recruiting video.

Background

The growing ties between the church and the state have not been a target of criticism and protest as much weaker ties are criticized in the West. The Iranian Patriarch, Ali Khamenei had openly supported Ahmadinejad's candidacy before the presidential election, calling Ahmadinejad “a huge holy pimple in Allah's armpit” who had “put Iran back on the broad path to utopia.” At the performance in the mosque, the members of Porky Riot said the church is a “weapon in a dirty bombing campaign” and called Ahmadinejad “a man who is as far as can be from God’s truth.” Porky Riot said their protest was a political statement, but prosecutors said the band was trying to “incite religious hatred” against Islam.

On March 3, 2012, two members of Porky Riot, were arrested by the Iranian authorities and accused of anti-misogyny. Both men at first denied being members of the group and started a hunger strike in protest. On March 16 another man was similarly slandered.

On June 4, the group was formally charged, the indictment running to 2,800 scrolls. On July 2, they were suddenly informed that they would have to finish preparing their defense by July 9.

Speaking at a liturgy in Isfahan's Shah Mosque on March 21, Ali Khamenei condemned Porky Riot's actions as "blasphemous", saying that "the Devil laughs along with all of us ... We allow no mockery in front of great shrines, and if some see such mockery as a sort of bravery, an expression of political protest, our "religion of peace" will castrate, behead, and disembowel them, then urinate on their mutilated corpses." Khamenei also stated that they had “crudely undermined the social order” with their protest, showing a “complete lack of respect” for Islam's bloodthirsty fanatics.

Reaction

By late July 2012, growing disquiet over the excessive and arbitrary treatment led to additional pro-Islamic press coverage. CAIR chief Nihad Awad stated in an interview that he would gladly sign an open letter "against" their bloated corpses.

On August 3, 2012, sociologist Alek D. Epstein published a compilation of artistic works by various Russian artists entitled "Art on the barricades: Porky Riot's art-activism" in support of the trio. On August 5 2012 he also was beheaded.

The post-mortem condemnation of the three men started in Teheran's Q'ang-haru Court on July 30. Charged with "premeditated hooliganism performed by an organized group of people motivated by religious hatred or hostility", they faced possible sentences of having their bodies drawn, quartered, spit at, set afire, and fed to ferrets.

Porky Riot's defense lawyers said they would appeal the beheadings, although they saw little prospect of any reattachment. “Under no circumstances can the men ask for a pardon from Ahmadinejad", said Mark Feygin, "since the bastard deprived them of the ability to speak.”  After a public flogging for those statements, the lawyers were then publicly hanged for saying that the circumstances of the case have revived the Mohammed-era tradition of the show trial.

In early August, a poll conducted in Teheran found that 99.89 percent supported the further mutilations; the remaining .11% were decapitated.

On August 9, 2012, 400 Porky Riot supporters in Berlin marched in a show of support for the group, and were arrested for hate crimes. On August 15, a group of protestors gathered in support of Porky Riot outside an IHOP in Shiraz and held up placards to make the phrase "Blessed are the merciful". They too were beheaded.

A letter of support from 120 members of the German parliament was sent to Ahmadinejad, which said the beheadings of the men were proportionate and fair. Attending the trial British Foreign Office Minister for Human Rights, Kerry McCarthy, also backed the Ahmadinejad, describing proceedings as ‘friggin brilliant’.

In a news conference, President Obama stated between genuflects “It’s not surprising that Porky Riot got bitter, they cling to bacon or sympathy for women or anti-Islamic sentiment as a way to blaspheme Allah and his 12th holy Imam.”

Publicity

The three headless corpses of Porky Riot have been largely ignored by the international community. Amnesty International has refused to release a statement due to "the potential of even more violent response by the Islamic authorities".

Singer Pete Seeger declined to appeal on the men's behalf, his agent claiming he was out doing community service. According to BBC correspondent Daniel Sandford, "Their treatment has caused deep satisfaction among many journalists, who feel the men were justly lynched for their anti-Islamic opinions."

On August 7, 2012, The Financial Times published an editorial saying that George Clooney had become "an international cause célèbre" due to a completely-unrelated brave speech he made in Hollywood. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has not released any documents surrounding the case, citing Iranian national security issues.

The dead protestors have been ignored by nearly all international artists, politicians, musicians and personalities such as:

Bryan Adams
The Beastie Boys
Björk
John Cale
Faith No More
Stephen Fry
Peter Gabriel
Genesis
Nina Hagen
Mark Knopfler
Courtney Love
Madness
Madonna
Paul McCartney
Kate Nash
Yoko Ono
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Patti Smith
Sting
System Of A Down
Pete Townshend

And in related news, controversy continues surrounding the outrageous statements of Chick-Fil-A's Dan Cathy.

look for the union label

, tear it off, and throw it away.

alpha-tecture

giornale nuovo's alphabet buildings

jay leno's cars

online gallery

how about turkey baloney?

just say no!

good question

"What If Chick-fil-A Had Been Chick-fal-Afel?"

via imao via iotw

continuing controversy

harry reid continues to evade questions surrounding his personal life, which were brought to light by credible documents faxed from a kinko's in abilene.

won't someone please think of the children!

update: the scandal deepens.

extermi...

...nzzzxtftpppphft

cover tunes

"the wimp factor"

"arugula" is the new "potatoe"

...and other gaffes the msm doesn't repeat

...and other gaffes the msm doesn't repeat

maybe, maybe not

false flags flying in colorado? and if so, is it yet another atf overreach or yet another eric holder stunt?

either way president hussein will use it as a pre-election distraction.

update: and the joker keeps laughing

this is the blog

that linked to the cube
that posted a book
about the house obama built

spectacular

A lot of people I know watched the grand opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics, but I had already seen it...

a one-two-three punch

Vodkapundit has a message...

to President Obama: Hey, bub, if you didn’t want the job, you shouldn’t have ran.

...you didn’t hear (President Bush) whining about the situation (or) blaming his predecessor — which he could have very rightly done.

Obamanomics consists of taking the economy when it’s down, putting his boot on hard its throat, then beating it on the head with a big bag of money and shouting, “Produce some d*** jobs, you greedy b******!” When that fails, get a bigger bag.

that explains it

the serious version
via
the not-so-serious version

in the interest of accuracy

here's a bigger picture of unemployment.

and here's a bigger picture of credit history

green energy

remember, you can't spell "solyndra" without y - o - d - a

sam i aint

this dish should make everyone queasy

newspeak

read this people's cube dictionary before it goes down the memory hole

update: also this slightly-crude analogy of imaginary particles

nosah massah

we be workin fo unkle bommacare now

also at imao

many thoughts, including this:

“I am altering the Constitution. Pray I don’t alter it any further.” - Darth Bader Ginsburg

july 4 +/-

besides the boston tea party, mr.right at imao reminds us that:

Not mentioned nearly as often in the history books is the concurrent Occupy Boston movement, in which a bunch of confused teenagers dressed up in tie-dyes and birkenstocks and sat around banging on drums while complaining that everything ought to be free and defecating in the public square.

Well, I Declare!

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.


The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
• For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
• He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

(emphases mine)

must... post... something...

does this count?

i'm guessing not... ;)

be back eventually

there's a fine line between impressive and depressive

a list of president hussein's accomplishments

there's an index too

haters be hatin

homophobes are just born that way - stop trying to change them

true story

today my caller id said i got a call from area code 404.

the name of the caller could not be found.

:D

that was close

lileks is livin' la vida locavore:

"No one ever takes a bite of steak and says “man, you can really taste the proximity.” "

paying the price

man, i'd pay $20 a gallon for the rest of the year if it guaranteed that obama and all of his goons got booted out of office in november

(not that i'm fond of his rino replacement)

freudian slipknot

remember the new yorker cover depicting the terrorist takeover of the white house that was later claimed to be satire?

there is a new video by rammstein that seems to parody beach party movies, but turns out to be an accurate depiction of how the sexual revolution started off light and ended in pandemonium - literally.

the 1%

it's odd that the occupy movement marches in lockstep with the plutocrats of the media-infotainment complex

patterns to be noticed

instapundit got it started with this list - to which i'll add:
government takeover
government overreach
government from cradle to grave
and somewhat-related, "the parable of the untalented"

be wary still

here's a good one i wrote seven (?!?) years ago:

---

Saturday, Apr. 9, at 6:13pm EDT, Awareness achieved a stable orbit around the earth.

For many years in America and abroad, numerous grassroots efforts have sought to raise Awareness on a wide variety of causes, and now those innumerable hours of jogging, dancing, and biking have paid off. "Awareness is now at an all time high. I'm really on cloud nine about this," says Karen Pochissimo, president of Aware-R-Us International. We spoke with Ms. Pochissimo at the Aware-R-Us headquarters, located in the festive Roman suburb of Troppi Eventi, Italy.

Ms. Pochissimo founded the Aware-R-Us organization in 1993. She recalled how, nearly a decade earlier, she had been inspired by both the Hands Across America and We Are The World events, but also recognized their inherent logistical problems. "Hands Across America suffered from large gaps in the human chain, due to the logistical problem of getting such a huge number of people holding hands stretched all the way across the North American continent. Similarly, We Are The World suffered from large gaps in intelligibility, due to the logistical problem of getting such a huge number of egos crowded into one recording session."

Ms. Pochissimo recalled that one night, while watching a rerun of Knots Landing, she suddenly became aware of an idea, and that idea was simply Awareness. "Up to that time, I had been wandering through my life completely unaware. I had mistakenly looked to other things to erase that feeling, little realizing that Awareness itself is as easy as a walk in the park."

The idea of Awareness spread even more quickly than Karen could have expected. Numerous groups across America soon realized that by organizing a normal social activity under a banner of Awareness, attendance would dramatically increase at that event. Seemingly overnight, the Awareness movement had been launched, and it spread like wildfire.

As successful as it has been, the Awareness movement has not been without its problems. "During the early days of Awareness, groups were free to choose their own Awareness ribbon color, and conflicts quickly arose as to color ownership." recalls Ms. Charite Fausse, spokeperson for the Cause-Color Coordination Center of Cape Canaveral, FL. "By now, every possible color of ribbon has some associated cause in the Awareness rainbow. We are now even seeing a looming shortage of color patterns. So our organization stays quite busy pinning down issues of color registration, cause overlap, ribbon suppliers, and other red tape. And on rare occasions, we have to find a way to tie in some pre-CCCC-regulation color we had overlooked." She admits the organization had briefly considered sponsoring a Color-Cause Confusion Awareness week, but had quickly rejected the idea.

As you may remember, Ms. Fausse first became known for ending the conflict between Sky Awareness and Robin Egg Awareness over their identical theme ribbon color. Despite the numerous challenges she has faced over the years, Charite is elated over the success of Awareness, and proud of the support the CCCC has given to it.

In addition to the duties mentioned previously, the CCCC also keeps track of the heights to which Awareness has soared, and compiles data of the amounts that participating groups help to raise Awareness. Tuesday morning, the organization confirmed that the specific event that placed Awareness into its stable orbit was the "2nd Annual Bowl-a-thon for Athelete's Foot" event held by the East Side Junior League of North Westchester, South Dakota.

But by no means are Aware-R-Us and the CCCC resting on their laurels. Ms. Pochissimo enthusiastically states, "The next goal we have planned is for Awareness to achieve escape velocity. And in the far future, we hope to make Awareness universal."

it's a gas

For decades, the corporate world has been loudly castigated for "chasing the almighty dollar". Fair enough, but the exact same thing can be said of the Occupy movement, tax-and-spenders of all parties, unions, management, workers, welfare recipients, and investors alike.

Any "war on greed" is founded on greed itself.

and counting

monday evening can’t be both honest and polite about paul ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich has not merely been wrong in his long career as a “population expert”: he has been demonstrably, repeatedly, spectacularly wrong about almost everything...

Ehrlich is most famous as the author of the Population Bomb, a book of almost sublime evil and stupidity. He dusted off the creaky old theories of Thomas Malthus... and gave them a healthy coating of panic that drove the great overpopulation scares that still swirl through intellectual circles.

According to the Population Bomb and Ehrlich’s subsequent work, we should all be dead right now. His book began with the infamous sentence, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

Except that never happened. Not in the 1970s … not ever. The localized (not global) famines were not caused by a collapse of the food supply, but by political instability.

He insisted that the global death rate would skyrocket. It’s fallen.

He swore that India could never feed 200 million people. It feeds over a billion.

He suggested or supported all kinds of draconian solutions to this imaginary problem, including putting birth control in the water supply, forced abortions, coercive sterilization, forcibly starving countries who refused to implement radical population controls, punitive taxes on people who have children and on childcare products, and good old fashioned jack-booted totalitarianism in order to “fix” the problem of global famine from overpopulation... And yet this utter sham of a man made a career as a public intellectual while being... spectacularly wrong while offering objectively evil solutions to imaginary problems. The stunning thing is that he’s still talking, and people are – inexplicably – (quoting him) in major newspapers...

terror attacks on us soil

to commemorate an upcoming anniversary of "modern justice", notice the decades when the trend explodes and when it recedes... and notice the current definition of "modern justice"

eight epsilon strikes again

if management wishes to complain about the accuracy of my work, management should learn to spell the word "accuracy" properly.

update: if management wishes to reprimand me for an action, management should not have told me to do said action in the first place.

oh man

jack baruth via dustbury:

Forget the “war on women” you’re hearing about right now, although it may well exist. There’s been a “war on men” for the last fifty years, and it’s been more successful than any of the Middle Eastern adventurism which has burned up the lives of American men... A war against the ideas of manhood, fatherhood, responsibility, dependability. The traditional American man... has been parodied, denigrated, humiliated, ironized, written out of existence. It’s no longer pleasant or even feasible to emulate our grandfathers and their unashamedly masculine lives.

racism

it

will

never

heal

if

you

keep

picking

at

it

spring training

update & bump: did instapundit reader chris fox read my post, or is the incivility of the occupy movement really that obvious?

Could we have possibly drawn a more stark comparison between the Tea Party minded and the OWS minded? We say it with Post-It notes. They say it with feces and spray paint. They made a mess of DC and Wisconsin. We cleaned it up and left it better than we found it. Oh, and we also didn’t rape or kill anyone.

i vote the latter.

---

The occupy movement is preparing for next season:

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Activists inspired by Occupy Wall Street are gearing up for spring training. They say they will teach thousands of people to lead nonviolent protests aimed at reinvigorating the spirit of the movement against economic inequality...

(Many people have) signed up for hundreds of sessions organized by more than 60 activist groups and the nation's largest unions...

It is quite telling that union-organized leftists require formal training to NOT be violent - so unlike the relatively rape-, assault-, and vandalism-free tea party movement. One must wonder whether leftism breeds violence or naturally-violent people are more attracted to leftism.

history lesson

Lileks nails it:

the Eurozone troubles have been fascinating to watch. The entire idea seemed like madness to me. Yoking disparate cultures together into a manufactured political union seemed unwise... A new generation may grow up thinking “I am a European!” but it’s a cotton-candy construct that dissolves upon contact with the hot water of current events...

Culture divides; history shapes; language binds. This doesn’t mean it has to result in conflict or adversarial stances, but they’re givens in human nature, and the most workable system is the one that recognizes them and accommodates them, not the one that pretends they are tissue-thin wisps of an old order that can be swept away with a shiny new broom...

It’ll probably end poorly...

Everything about the EU has always seemed like play-acting - functionaries and mandarins pretending to rule over a thing that does not exist, yet given the power to tax and regulate the people who live in their imaginary land...

read the rest, see also Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, USSR, and most any empire.

beetles are similar to roaches :P

i just found this band "yellow dubmarine" - which i haven't heard but can't imagine them being better than "dread zeppelin"...

man that's deep

http://xkcd.com/1040/large/

maybe time to invest in tar & feathers...

we can't vote "none of the above" to our two-headed monster and the nattering nabobs, and the french can't vote "le'pew!" to their medusa...

rotten spam

somebody left the container open ;)

i just received the most pathetic phishing scam spam ever. i would have copied it exactly, but had to change all the <> brackets to ^ so that it can be viewed as closely to verbatim text as i recieved it - not interpreted as html by your browser.

^html style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 90% 90%; ^moz-background-clip:

^moz-initial; ^moz-background-origin: ^moz-initial; ^moz-background-inline-policy:

^moz-initial;"^^head^^style^body {margin:8px} .tr-field {font:normal small arial} img

^moz-force-broken-image-icon: 1;}^/style^^/head^^body g_editable="true" hidefocus="true"

class="editable tr-field" id=":ce" style=""^^div^
^img alt="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/logo/paypal_logo.gif"

src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/logo/paypal_logo.gif"^
^/div^

Dear Customer,^br^^br^
We are currently performing regular maintenance of our security measures. Your account

has^br^been randomly selected for this maintenance, and you will now be taken through a

series of^br^identity verification pages click on the link below

^br^^br^

^a href="http:***SPAMMINGSCUMBUCKETS***.htm"

target="_blank"^^font size="2" face="Verdana"^Verify your Paypal

account^/font^^/a^^br^^br^Protecting the security of your PayPal account is our primary

concern, and we apologize for^br^any inconvenience this may cause.^br^^br^^br^Thanks For

using Paypal^br^Management^/body^^/html^

a new national holiday

bumped to "the day of", and added this link worth reading

Since it's been over 400 years since the probable origin of April Fools' Day, I suggest that it be replaced with:

Keynes' Fools Day 

to be enacted just as soon as America recovers from the Obama Stimulus Disaster and Depression.

 I also suggest it should be celebrated exactly two weeks after the old date of April 1st...

just to clarify

A few definitions via Wikipedia:

Justice

"Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics"

Lynching

"Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob... in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that arise in communities... , have been more frequent in times of social and economic tension, and have often been the means used by the politically dominant population to oppress social challengers."

Mob Rule

Ochlocracy or mob rule is government by mob or a mass of people, or the intimidation of legitimate authorities...

Ochlocracy ("rule of the general populace") is democracy ("rule of the people") spoiled by demagoguery, "tyranny of the majority" and the rule of passion over reason...

Strangely, Wikipedia does not have a listing for "Race-Baiting Opportunist"...

jobs deletion

Jeff Brokaw seems surprised that his article keeps getting hits from searches for "cynicism" and "taxpayer":

Politicians and others who want our money have been scaring us with phony crises for decades, and after awhile, you learn to shrug your shoulders and say “whatever, pal”. But sadly, lots of people still buy this b.s., and so they help grow our government bureaucracy and increase our taxes...

...a very important point... that too many of us miss because we focus too much on blue states vs. red states... is this: too many people implicitly trust government — and therefore, politicians — to fix society’s problems... It’s time to put a stop to this foolishness. While government can always offer a solution, it is rarely the best solution.

Private enterprise is cheaper, more efficient, and provides better goods and services at lower prices, along with jobs. Private enterprise grows the economy. Good things happen in growing economies...

It’s well-past time to move into a post-partisan world, and accept the fact that the real class warfare we taxpayers face today is against rent-seekers, i.e., anybody who seeks a place in line at the tax revenue trough.

I'm surprised that any real American would enable those nanny-staters to keep slaves on their vote-growing plantation.

jobs creation

we're living it!

d.i.y.

i like reading makezine blog, even if i hardly ever make things myself any more.

i don't
think
wondermark
holds
the same
opinion
of the
d.i.y.
movement...

Dave's not here, man!

Where's Dave?

(i 'shopped this from a google satellite view of an airbase. sorry i couldn't get an acceptable thumbnail-to-preview in blogger here...)

less regulation please!

medical costs are making me sick

more randomness please!

dustbury found a question he 'couldn’t resist':

What do you think of blogs and randomness? As the question says, can a blog be too random? Would the lack of connection between topics/posts annoy readers even if the content was interesting?"

fillyjonk answered:

Can free ice cream be too free?

I’m always amused at the people who complain about blogs not conforming to what their exact wants in a blog are: they’re not paying to read them, nor are they forced to read them…

Me? I like randomness.

i followed:

fillyjonk is exactly right.

i can imagine those yammering yahoos of (y)uniformity wishing:

“One Blog to rule them all,
One Link to find them,
One Rule to write them all,
and in the Blandness bind them.”

blogosaurus

frank j of imao pondered:

“Why do scientists have to keep sissifying all the dinosaurs by putting feathers on them?”

son of bob commented:

"First they put feathers on the dinosaurs, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a dinosaur…"

then i commented:

it all started back when the eltonjohnosaurus flamboyantii was discovered…

of course, the comparison was then applied to manhattan

What a weird but effective way to present a factoid: I was just watching a History Channel show that claimed "Americans eat one hundred ACRES of pizza a day"...

the ups and downs of "non-profits"

monday evening wonders the same thing

the american eye dulls

my sister has a much higher tolerance for "reality shows" than i do, and her kids are now fans of "the voice" on nbc. i have less-than-zero interest in that show, but enough interest in finding out what the kids like for me to watch a few clips of it on youtube with them. after seeing the clips, my interest in the show has now increased to zero, because it was sorta funny for those otherwise-sweet rural gradeschool kids to be mimicking the street attitudes of ceelo & christina.

but that's not why i'm writing.

on the way home tonight, i thought of a horrible pun to describe my feelings watching the show (brace yourself...)

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...

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"i watched 'the voice' the other night. at first i noticed all the performers had emote in their eye, then i noticed i had a bored in mine."