the jv team

San Bernardino Terrorist Attack

"Actions speak louder than bumper stickers"

(found on facebook, slightly edited)

Here's a little history lesson on who is taking away your Social Security.

Social Security Cards up until the 1980s expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes.

Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION message was removed.

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program.

1.) That participation in the program would be completely voluntary [No longer voluntary],

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program [Now 7.65% on the first $90,000, and 15% on the first $90,000 if you’re self-employed],

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year [No longer tax deductible],

4.) That the money the participants put into the independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program [Under Johnson the money was moved to the General Fund and Spent], and

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income [Under Clinton & Gore up to 85% of your Social Security can be taxed].

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month — and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘put away’ — you may be interested in the following:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the general fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democratically-controlled House and Senate.

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democratic Party.

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?
A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
A: Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!

Now, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is uninformed citizens believe it! If enough people receive this, maybe the truth will begin to replace the lies.

a letter to both sides

logic was never their strong suit

This picture has been making the rounds on Facebook with over 300K likes and 400K shares:



The leftist hivemind thinks this proves their point that we should blindly open our borders to anyone, in this case Syrian refugees. This from the same leftist hivemind that believes Europeans coming to North America was one of the worst events in human history. I would ask them if they were wrong then or wrong now, but the kind of useful idiots that fall for this kind of cheap sloganeering are incapable of seeing past their brainwashing.

---

For the record, I am very much FOR allowing immigrants to LEGALLY come here to ESCAPE unbearable situations, and am very much against BOTH the lawless fifth-column hordes (foreign and domestic) bent on destroying America AND the jingoistic amoral xenophobia of its opposition party.

#BlackLivesMatter

Walsh, again, read it all:

"Abortion doctors kill more black people in a week than the KKK has in the past century. There are almost 2,000 black lives ended by abortion every single day in the United States, and overall, a black baby is more than 5 times as likely to be executed as a white baby. Try to reflect on this statistic: abortion kills more black people than heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and respiratory illness — COMBINED. Throw cops in there, too, and it’s still not close. Comparing just the two causes of death, it appears that abortionists kill about 700 times more black people than do cops...

...In New York, a black child is more likely to be aborted than born... In the country’s biggest city, there are more black children discarded in waste buckets and toilets than there are placed in nurseries at the maternity ward.

And cops are the ones dehumanizing black people?

Hundreds of white abortion doctors have become millionaires by killing black babies. Moreover, the abortionist murders black children and never faces so much as a grand jury proceeding. No, all he gets is a fat paycheck and a ‘God bless you’ from Barack Obama.

Black teens are sometimes shot by police when they fall into a life of violence and crime. But black infants are dismembered, decapitated, and poisoned just for falling into life in the first place.

Now let’s take this deeper. As horrific as Planned Parenthood’s ethnic cleansing is, the full story is much bigger. Side note: please don’t take my ethnic cleansing remark to mean that Planned Parenthood is attempting to wipe out the black race for the sake of quenching their racist urges. I don’t believe that for a moment. They’re just wiping out the black race for the sake of making a quick buck. This is a holocaust for profit, which makes abortionists like Nazis, but in some ways worse."

skip the title

"It’s time for a competent and honest adult of either gender to be president."

"The presidency is a job that requires action. When those actions are performed ineptly or dishonestly, bad things happen. The president is not a figurehead or a cheerleader. He (or she) has to do things. And now, after a long succession of presidents who immensely expanded the powers of the executive branch, it’s also important for the president to know when not to do things.

In the end, what matters is what has been done or not done, and for what reason those things were done or not done. If bad things were done for bad reasons, it’s not going to matter, in any practical sense, whether they were done by a man, a woman, a transgender eunuch, a goat, a walnut, or a dyslexic alien from planet Xenu.

Barack Obama just illustrated this dynamic quite explicitly, which was very helpful of him.

We were told it was “time” for a black president, and many black people voted for him for that reason alone. But then their median household incomes dropped precipitously, their unemployment rate didn’t, and their poverty rate went higher. I think they would agree that it isn’t, in fact, a better sort of poverty or a more palatable sort of unemployment because it happened under the reign of a black man. It still sucks, frankly. Just like it did before, or worse.

As it turns out, we elect presidents to get results, not to be demographical mascots. And if they don’t get results, or if the results are poor, their physical characteristics will not blunt the impact nor dull the sting of their monumental failures.

So, “time for a woman”? What does that mean? Would you apply it to any other area of your life? Do you have a checklist on your fridge of the races and genders of the plumbers, electricians, pediatricians, landscapers, and dermatologists you’ve used over the years, so that when you need one you can make a selection based on a rotation of sexual organs and pigment shades? “Hmmm. Need someone to come install wiring in our new addition. Whose turn is it? Let’s see, looks like it’s time for a Chinese person with a penis.”

Is that how you conduct yourself in your daily life? Of course not. You might want universities to admit people and countries to elect people based on affirmative action, but in your actual life, when push comes to shove, you always go with whoever you think will do the job and do it well, don’t you?"

...and his second point is even better.

coexist, the directors cut

(If anybody knows the credit for this one please let me know and I'll add it.)

soon it will be time again time to hold your nose and vote

beating a dead donkey

#AllLivesMatter

(update: matt walsh expands on the concept)

ask, tell,

via facebook

where the truth lies, pt.3

In coverage of creativity-related stories, every once in a while someone will use the phrase "their truth" in reference to whatever the artist is trying to convey.

For better understanding, that phrase should be understood to mean "the artist's infinitesimal subset of Truth, confused with a lot of misunderstanding and hand-me-down nonsense."

meet the new boss

Lileks - What Does The Left Want To Ban Today:

"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot, stamping on the floor where once there was an accelerator pedal, forever."

read it all

pet update

the black dog
no longer bites
or barks.
he just sits
in the corner
glaring at me
and drinking
my milkshake.

but sadly, we will

irony board

I found this Robert Heinlein quote posted at a rabid militant atheist's blog:

“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”

Well, isn't that just a bit... morrisettian?

hatchet, axe, and saw

Pope Lileks: It’s Time to Fix America’s Income-Inequality Crisis Once and for All!

(The left's list of ultra-rich people does not include) the Kennedys, because the Kennedys could strike oil on their Hyannis Port compound, pay African orphans a dollar a day to work the pumps by hand, build a pipeline that ran through a protected Monarch-butterfly preserve, and the media would still hang halos over their heads because JFK was martyred in Dallas by a free-floating toxic cloud of right-wing hatred that inhabited the brain of a well-meaning Marxist.

"could you, for once, be consistent?"

Dennis Miller on Facebook:

You say you're a creationist, liberals cite Darwin. You then cite survival of the fittest, liberals tell you to be more Christ-like.

Mencken

In search of one of his quotes, I found others by him which are sadly applicable, but mostly opposite to the way that he intended them nearly 90 years ago:

The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful, and others abhorrent and felonious. Laws limiting the radius of his free activity multiply year by year: It is now practically impossible for him to exhibit anything describable as genuine individuality, either in action or in thought, without running afoul of some harsh and unintelligible penalty. It would surprise no impartial observer if the motto “In God we trust” were one day expunged from the coins of the republic by the Junkers at Washington, and the far more appropriate word, “verboten,” substituted. Nor would it astound any save the most romantic if, at the same time, the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas-relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet. Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest.

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

The strange American ardor for passing laws, the insane belief in regulation and punishment, plays into the hands of the reformers, most of them quacks themselves. Their efforts, even when honest, seldom accomplish any appreciable good.

Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle — a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism. It is the aim of the Bill of Rights, if it has any remaining aim at all, to curb such prehensile gentry. Its function is to set a limitation upon their power to harry and oppress us to their own private profit. The Fathers, in framing it, did not have powerful minorities in mind; what they sought to hobble was simply the majority. But that is a detail. The important thing is that the Bill of Rights sets forth, in the plainest of plain language, the limits beyond which even legislatures may not go. The Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, decided that it was bound to execute that intent, and for a hundred years that doctrine remained the corner-stone of American constitutional law.

And you thought having only two channels on TV was bad...

#AllLivesMatter

One must wonder why the #BlackLivesMatter movement does not protest Planned Parenthood...

Images via IMAO

Many
good
editorial
cartoons
recently

Legacy of Loss

In this otherwise interesting article about the decline of the Democratic party, Politico makes a small mistake:

...this time, there’s neither a Great Depression nor a criminal conspiracy in the White House to explain what has happened.

Just because the term "depression" is not used, and the criminal conspiracy has not yet been prosecuted, doesn't mean they don't exist.

A titan arum by any other name smells just as vile.

FrankJ on Trump

Random thoughts for Aug.12 (very slightly edited):

“So do you want some sort of coherent politically philosophy, or are you happy with just angry yelling?”

Apparently a large number of people can’t tell the difference between being tough and being thin-skinned and pissy.

Are there people who really didn’t get that Trump is a joke candidate until the Megyn Kelly line?

Was there anything so awful Ted Kennedy could do that he’d lose support? Such is Trump’s base.

I can still be surprised by how silly Trump gets, but I don’t take him seriously enough to get outraged.

*dog repeatedly runs into glass door*
“He never backs down! He just like hero Donald Tromp!”

I’m glad we’re finally cracking down on the number one threat to black people: Bernie Sanders.

Difference between Democrats and Republicans:
Republicans are working really hard to stop the horrible person who is their frontrunner.

You don’t need to be politically correct, but it helps to be correct about something.

Also, go watch The Kronies!

If the 80s had internet mashups, part one

no sympathy for the devil

Tomi Lahren:

“Do I care that [gunman Mohammad Abdulazeez] seemed like an 'All-American' young man? Do I care that he was good at mixed martial arts or a smart, quiet guy? Do I care that his high school friends wouldn’t classify him as overly religious? No, I don’t give a flying you-know-what about any of that ****. I care that this **** killed four of our United States Marines, and I care that our commander-in-chief is more concerned with Muslim sensitivity than the honor and sacrifice made by these Marines.”

Gun Free Zone

Iowahawk observes:

Luckily, the gunman spared the "Gun Free Zone" sticker https://t.co/rvA39Mn79G

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 16, 2015

Their Queen

ur head asplode

I wonder which side the Ds will root for when Islamists bomb a gay pride parade...

i just can't identify with that

seraphic press via imao:

Obama's Legacy

In
Three
Pictures

The Plague Spreads

Monica Crowley wrote an excellent piece about the Baltimore riots, but a ridiculous amount of popups at the Washington Times website needlessly hinder the message. I intend no infringement, and only hope to remove the frustration caused by their ad-bloated site.

(Emphases mine)

“Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

“[Expletive] the police!” — rioters in Baltimore.

“We also gave those who wish to destroy space to do that as well.” — Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

During the past 40 years, the nonviolent movement for racial justice has morphed into a violent movement for social justice.

The upheaval in Baltimore in the aftermath of the mysterious death of Freddie Gray, who died in police custody, is just the latest in a long line of racial violence, from Watts to Detroit, from Crown Heights to Ferguson.

The Rev. Martin Luther King’s legacy has been destroyed by leftists who depend on racial division. The struggle for civil rights lost its moral power when the demands switched from equal rights under the law to equal results. That changeover, from a movement based on legal justice to one of social justice, corrupted the mission and created a charlatan leadership. The result has been a cult of black victimhood and dependency, leading to endless cycles of crime, poverty, drug abuse and related violence and the general breakdown of the family.

What we have witnessed in Baltimore (and Ferguson last year) is the natural result of allowing leftist-articulated “grievances” to usurp the rule of law and the maintenance of civil order.

Ms. Rawlings-Blake tried to walk back her statement that she gave rioters a “space to destroy” after her comment encouraged more violence. This should not have been a surprise. During the Crown Heights riots of 1991, New York Mayor David Dinkins kept the police back in order to let protesters “blow off a little steam.” The violence, of course, escalated. The Obama administration has also repeatedly called for police “restraint.”

They intend to send a signal of racial sensitivity and social justice, but the result is black communities being burned to the ground.

When there is a lack of strong leadership, sinister characters fill the void. Thugs pour into the streets; few are there out of deep rage about their collective treatment by the police but rather because looting and torching businesses are fun ways to pass the time. Particularly when they know the television cameras are trained on them. After all, who wouldn’t want Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame (or infamy)?

The professional race hustlers then alight on the scene to profiteer and further enflame. The race industry claims to be the black community’s savior, when all it does is keep itself fat and rich.

There are legitimate questions surrounding the death of Gray, and I understand the anger and frustration among many in Baltimore. The investigation, like the ones into the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York, must be allowed to proceed.

But as Winston Churchill is attributed to saying, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” And that was before instantaneous social media.

In America today, ideology — political, racial, religious — drives everything, and the truth takes a back seat, only emerging after a lot of damage has been done.

Some Baltimore rioters have been quoted as saying that they’re lashing out at the “system” they consider “unjust.” OK, but the “system” against which they are lashing is predominantly black. The Baltimore City Council is majority black, the mayor, police commissioner and 63.3 percent of the population are black, and the majority of the Baltimore Police Department is non-white. The problem, it seems, is not white racism, but a “system” they have installed themselves over many decades.

The Baltimore riots also show the limits of elections based on symbolism. Ferguson, Baltimore and general increased racial tension have occurred with a black president, two black attorneys general, a black Homeland Security secretary, and other top black officials. Campaigning in 2008, Mr. Obama told us that he’d be able to unify all races and creeds through his transcendence as a biracial president.

Instead, we’ve seen escalating racial animus, thanks largely to the signals he’s sent: from claiming that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in their exchange with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates to calling for police restraint in Ferguson to inviting ignominious agitator, the Rev. Al Sharpton, to be his top adviser on race issues to his muted response when two New York City police officers were assassinated while sitting in their patrol car.

The left, of course, needs chaos and division in order to thrive. Therefore, it stokes them whenever possible.

Perhaps this is why Mr. Obama has failed to do the one thing a black president could do that a white one could not: speak directly to the black community about personal responsibility, the need for fathers to raise their children, the strength to be derived from strong families and faith, the need to be productive and decent human beings.

He could have served as their ultimate role model, but instead he put his ideological desire to “fundamentally transform the nation” above all else.

I wish he — and the nation — would focus less on the words of Rev. Sharpton and more on the words of Rev. King: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

It's funny because it's true

"Given a choice between the two of you, I’d take the seasick crocodile!"

How to defeat the Offendotrons

Step 1: Tweak their noses
Step 2: ???
Step 3: PROFIT!!!

Happy Earth Day!

From Iowahawk!

Cloud god angry! Sea god angry! Big power chief fly great iron bird to swamp village, make science dance for great Earth Mother!

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 22, 2015

From Lileks, an article more than 140 characters!

PWEI

Progressivism Will Eat Itself

the hollow world

A couple of today's comments at Lileks got me thinking:

Coolness is a hollow facsimile of maturity.
The effect of drugs is a hollow facsimile of joy.
Prostitution is a hollow facsimile of marital bliss.
The star/celebrity system is a hollow facsimile of true friendship.
Political correctness is a hollow facsimile of morality.

Can you think of others?

Common Core Coercion Program

As we should all know by now, heavy-handed central planning does not work.

kids these days with their mashups, pt.3

also found in lileks' comments:

kids these days with their mashups, pt.2

found in lileks' comments:

homestarrunnercomeback?

there was something new last halloween and april fools...

as if anybody was surprised

in a highly-predictable move, the left once again proves it is intolerant of religious freedom.

Iowahawk

King of Twitter:

Don't let a nuclear-armed Iran distract us from America's #1 threat - Indiana bakeries

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 29, 2015

US peace partners Egypt & Saudi Arabia ready to invade US peace partner Yemen to fight US peace partner Iran http://t.co/Xv5XP3238U

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 27, 2015

"OMG ISRAEL SPIED ON US" - government currently spying on you

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 24, 2015

Voting should be mandatory, says guy who missed over 300 roll call votes in his 4 years in the Senate http://t.co/QEeXymYbjK

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 19, 2015

Obama tried harder to influence the Israeli election of 2015 than to support the Iranian uprising of 2009.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 18, 2015

#AskHamas How much did you pay the Ku Klux Klan for wardrobe advice? pic.twitter.com/qrEfUoF6pP

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 13, 2015

The Hillary story is starting to resemble a mashup of House of Cards, Fatal Attraction, Caine Mutiny, Election, Carrie, and Cocoon

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 12, 2015

kids these days with their mashups, pt.1

Karen Carpenter sings Nirvana?

Live Long and Prosper

...at other people's expense?

An interesting take on Spock's philosophy.

Not only do Spock’s peacenik inclinations routinely land the Enterprise and the Federation into trouble, his “logic” and “level head” mask an arrogant emotional basket case. Unlike the superhuman android Data, a loyal officer whose deepest longing is to be human, Spock spends most of his life as a freelancing diplomat eager to negotiate with the worst enemies of Starfleet...

...in Star Trek VI... Spock has taken up secret negotiations with the Federation’s mortal enemy, the Klingon Empire, to dismantle the neutral zone and end the military dimension of Starfleet. Then Spock decides the best person to accompany the Klingon high chancellor to a galactic peace conference is Kirk, whom the Klingon’s despise... Furthermore, Spock volunteers Kirk for the job without the captain’s permission. His decision thoughtlessly plays into the hands of the interstellar conspiracy to foment war between the Federation and the Klingons, because the plot’s leaders see Kirk as the perfect fall guy for the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon...

...and it gets better.

SNL40

After the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special was advertised as "One Night Only", it will play again in a few days. When asked whether the slogan was false advertising, an unnamed NBC spokesperson said no, that it was just mis-repeated.

on islam

two quotes at lileks today:

"no matter how many skulls (islamic terrorists) heap, the moon on their banners will still have an American flag planted on its surface, and they are utterly incapable of doing anything about it."

"Islam: you can practice it peacefully, and many do, but it's not designed that way. Just as you can practice Christianity militantly, but it's not designed that way."

late valentine

first, i forgot to relink the classic "practical valentine".

second, i was listening to online indie music today, and heard several very odd romantic-ish lyrics:

"your lips were like two strips of bacon"
"i used to shower for you, now i rarely bathe"
"love is an open door to a book of your bad poetry"

third, weird al sends mandatory valentines:

Happy Mandatory Valentines Day! pic.twitter.com/pn7bOWQKEL

— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) February 14, 2015

obamalogical

via liberal logic via imao



very similar in concept to "the beatings will continue until morale improves" philosophy

I don't see what all the fuss is about

update 3: Brian Williams has been suspended for doing what all the talking heads do.

update 2: welcome imao readers :)

update 1: in the interest of piling on, i fired up photoshop tonight:

(reference link for our younger audience)

--

(many separate links)

Brian Williams is just speaking his father's language - as always, just like the rest of his family.

--

On the lighter side, some highlights from #BrianWilliamsMisremembers

Misremember the Alamo! @BWilliams

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 5, 2015

The time I rode the atomic bomb onto the Soviet Union “Yeeee Haaawwww” #brianwilliamsmisremembers pic.twitter.com/g9XpgFP670
— Robert Orris (@Robert_Boston) February 5, 2015

The real hero of Star Wars was Brian Williams #BrianWilliamsMisremembers @michellemalkin pic.twitter.com/uTKfdt6p5Y
— Harry Gato (@harrygato) February 5, 2015

#BrianWilliamsMisremembers - My greatest achievement was to get my life depicted in a Monty Python movie pic.twitter.com/vfD7rDOb5j
— Julie (@Juicexlx) February 5, 2015

That time Brian Williams stopped the tanks #BrianWilliamsMisremembers pic.twitter.com/p7c7d0lBJj
— Marshall Maher (@Marvelle) February 5, 2015

When he rode a giant dog named Falcor to stop The Nothing. #BrianWilliamsMisremembers pic.twitter.com/n9Fr5Tbt80
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) February 5, 2015

#BrianWilliamsMisremembers I was a founding member of The Beatles! pic.twitter.com/wvRFHkOTuF
— jimmer...jst jimmer (@udpate) February 5, 2015

I told my men that they'd never take our freedom, then I commanded them to hold! #BrianWilliamsMisremembers pic.twitter.com/St6uoN4grr
— Don Shappelle (@DonShappelle) February 5, 2015

and in time for valentines:

Sorry.... I misremembered how we met... #BrianWilliamsMisremembers #RejectedCandyHearts #NBCNightlyNews pic.twitter.com/N0GITaKo34
— Vashia V.C. Rhone (@VashiaRhone) February 5, 2015

a good read despite the title

one of many good quotes: "If we’re searching for “global warming” culprits, we might want to look at that 27,000,000 degree ball of gas in the sky."

via imao

Prince of Peace

Isaiah 9:2-7

The people who walk in darkness
Will see a great light;
Those who live in a dark land,
The light will shine on them.
You shall multiply the nation,
You shall increase their gladness;
They will be glad in Your presence
As with the gladness of harvest,
As men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
For You shall break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders,
The rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian.
For every boot of the booted warrior in the battle tumult,
And cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire.
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Eternal Father,
Prince of Peace.
There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,
On the throne of David and over his kingdom,
To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness
From then on and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.

Thanks Giving

Psalm 107 (NASB)

-------+++++++-------

O give thanks to the LORD, for He is good,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
Let the redeemed of the LORD say so,
Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary
And gathered from the lands,
From the east and from the west,
From the north and from the south.

---+++---

They wandered in the wilderness in a desert region;
They did not find a way to an inhabited city.
They were hungry and thirsty;
Their soul fainted within them.

Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble;
He delivered them out of their distresses.
He led them also by a straight way,
To go to an inhabited city.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
For He has satisfied the thirsty soul,
And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good.

-+-

There were those who dwelt in darkness and in the shadow of death,
Prisoners in misery and chains,
Because they had rebelled against the words of God
And spurned the counsel of the Most High.
Therefore He humbled their heart with labor;
They stumbled and there was none to help.

Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble;
He saved them out of their distresses.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death
And broke their bands apart.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
For He has shattered gates of bronze
And cut bars of iron asunder.

-+-

Fools, because of their rebellious way,
And because of their iniquities, were afflicted.
Their soul abhorred all kinds of food,
And they drew near to the gates of death.

Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble;
He saved them out of their distresses.
He sent His word and healed them,
And delivered them from their destructions.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
Let them also offer sacrifices of thanksgiving,
And tell of His works with joyful singing.

-+-

Those who go down to the sea in ships,
Who do business on great waters;
They have seen the works of the LORD,
And His wonders in the deep.
For He spoke and raised up a stormy wind,
Which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They rose up to the heavens, they went down to the depths;
Their soul melted away in their misery.
They reeled and staggered like a drunken man,
And were at their wits' end.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
And He brought them out of their distresses.
He caused the storm to be still,
So that the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad because they were quiet,
So He guided them to their desired haven.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
Let them extol Him also in the congregation of the people,
And praise Him at the seat of the elders.

---+++---

He changes rivers into a wilderness
And springs of water into a thirsty ground;
A fruitful land into a salt waste,
Because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it.

He changes a wilderness into a pool of water
And a dry land into springs of water;
And there He makes the hungry to dwell,
So that they may establish an inhabited city,
And sow fields and plant vineyards,
And gather a fruitful harvest.
Also He blesses them and they multiply greatly,
And He does not let their cattle decrease.

When they are diminished and bowed down
Through oppression, misery and sorrow,
He pours contempt upon princes
And makes them wander in a pathless waste.

But He sets the needy securely on high away from affliction,
And makes his families like a flock.
The upright see it and are glad;
But all unrighteousness shuts its mouth.

---+++---

Who is wise?
Let him give heed to these things,
And consider the lovingkindnesses of the LORD.

-------+++++++-------

the cognitive dissonance was deafening

at work after the election, one person told us about having voted straight-ticket democrat and being sad that none of them won.

at work tonight, the same person was railing against political machines.

i'm guessing they've never been to chicago.

which is worse:

that certain communities have never understood civil society, or that they admire people who keep them ignorant for money and power?

thank goodness

that you don't have to live through these mcsweeneys thanksgivings:

Butterball Helpline Helpline
Pardoned Turkeys
An Ill-Informed First Thanksgiving

he is the very model

...of the monster that jefferson recognized

(via imao)

pun of the day

my pleas for a quieter workplace have fallen on deaf ears.

the real epidemic

...is not ebola

(via imao)

Ebola panic in New York

Here are some reasons that New Yorkers are upset about Ebola reaching their city:

1) The virus is not gluten-free.
2) It is not locally-grown.
3) It leaves a large carbon footprint as it flies across the ocean.
4) Ebola won't fit in a 16oz. cup.
5) Its name mocks the name of their tri-syllabic Saint Obama (PBUH).
6) It is unsustainable.
7) Opposition to any lifeform from Africa appears racist.
8) The virus is waging a war on womyn.
9) Its symptoms include reddening.
10) It shows that there are some undocumented immigrants New Yorkers are opposed to after all.

Can you think of any others?

Move along, no bias to see here

update 1: it's october, no surprise. i just wanted to bump this to the top in time for the midterm elections.

scary, isn't it?

update 2: an additional source (some overlap this list, some are different)

---

Irritable Pundit via IMAO:

So, in just one day we had approximately 17 times as much coverage of a political traffic jam in New Jersey, as we did of Obama's use of the IRS as a political weapon for six long months. No, seriously.

see also...

Well, i was going to just note a few of the under-reported missteps, misdeeds, misdemeanors, felonies, and treasons that obama has inflicted on America, then i found some much-more-thorough sources (primarily InvestmentWatch). Brace yourself:

• "Green" payments and bankruptcies of Solyndra, NextEra, Ener1, Solar Trust and many others
• Refusal to enforce federal immigration laws
• AP Spying
• Rosengate
• Jeremiah Wright
• Sequestration
• Eric Holder Serial Perjury
• The ATF “Fast and Furious”
• Sebelius ObamaCare Bribery
• Sponsored performances by radical rappers like Michael Franti and Common, both of whose lyrics are anti-police, anti-white, and anti-America
• The Pigford scandal
• Blocking WW2 veterans from their memorial while having fundraisers on other government facilities.
• GSA gone wild
• Veterans Affairs in Disney World
• Hosted at the White House many Islamist members of groups associated with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc
• Sebelius violates the Hatch Act
• AKA Lisa Jackson
• Failure to prosecute The New Black Panthers
• Violation of War Powers Act in Libya
• Obama’s Solicitor General (and now Supreme Court Justice) Elena Kagan prevented the families of 9/11 victims from appealing their lawsuits against the Saudi royal family for financing the 9/11 attacks
• Biden press bullying
• Intentionally misquotes the Declaration of Independence
• Intentionally blundered oath of office to avoid swearing on the Bible
• Paid David Axelrod, AKPD Message and Media, to promote passage of Obamacare
• Lied about his close associations with former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers
• Labeled Nidal Malik Hasan's terrorist shooting as “workplace violence”
• The 2009 National Christmas Tree in the White House was decorated with ornaments depicting Chairman Mao, a drag queen, and a picture of Mount Rushmore with Obama’s head next to George Washington’s.
• Air Force One Manhattan flyover
• False “recess appointments” to avoid Senate approval
• Obama’s own author bio in his literary agent’s catalog and on their Web site stated for 17 consecutive years that he was born in Kenya; this claim remained intact despite other portions of the bio being altered and updated repeatedly. It was only in 2007 after he decided to run for the presidency that the “born in Kenya” claim was taken down.
• Compelled Catholic and other religious organizations to provide health plans with free contraception
• Ignored Simpson-Bowles commission recommendations
• Joe Sestak forced to drop out
• Efforts to bankrupt the coal industry
• Selective Law Enforcement
• Sided with Argentina in its new claim on the Falklands
• Repeatedly broke “No family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase” campaign promise
• America’s credit rating was downgraded
• $800 billion in stimulus cash for “shovel-ready” jobs that didn’t exist
• Defied “WARN Act” and told defense contractors to delay layoff notices until after 2012 election
• Illegally ending the welfare-to-work requirements
• Big-Brother-style “Attack Watch”, “Flag@Whitehouse.gov”, and “Truth Team”
• Insulting ally Israel: 1967 border demand, Benjamin Netanyahu feud, bowing to Arab tyrants
• Appointed his own underage daughters as “senior staff members” so that their vacation to Africa would be paid for with taxpayer money
• "Choom Gang"
• Sided with Hugo Chavez and the Castro regime regarding the Honduran Constitutional Crisis of 2009
• Promoted Cap and Trade energy tax
• Exposing Navy SEALs to retaliation
• Sharyl Attkisson’s computer hacking
• Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher defamation
• “The future must not belong to those who slander The Prophet of Islam”
• “you didn’t build that”
• Canceled plans to complete a missile defense shield in Poland
• Established list of people (including Americans) Obama claims the right to kill on sight, and then bragged about it
• Hired tax cheat Timothy Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury
• Appointed Maoist Anita Dunn to be White House Communications Director
• Appointed Communist Van Jones, who supported a “9/11 Truth” petition, to be “Green Jobs Czar.”
• Appointed John Holdren, forced mass sterilzation advocate, to be Science Czar.
• Appointed Steven Chu, who openly advocates artificial energy price increases, to be Secretary of Energy.
• Appointed Kevin Jennings, who promoted X-rated “sex-positive” textbooks for 13-year-olds, instructed teenagers at a conference how to perform “fisting”, refused to report instances of statutory rape, and expressed admiration for a member of NAMBLA, to be America’s “Safe School’s Czar.”
• Cash for Clunkers
• Blocked continued construction of the Keystone Pipeline, which intentionally reduced energy resources for the US and forced Canada to sell more of its oil to China
• Promised Putin to cave in to Russian demands
• Obama praised anti-Western anti-Israel academic Edward Said
• Numerous visits from Union boss and far-left activist Andy Stern
• National Debt Ceiling flip-flop, then doubling the National Debt
• GM & Chrysler buyout, a.k.a. Union payola
• Implicit approval of anti-Romney campaign ads which threatened violence against Republicans
• Appointing numerous unconstitutional and unaccountable "czars"
• Aided and abetted the “Arab Spring” which replaced existing secular governments with hardline Islamists
• Refused to aid secular Iranian uprising
• Shut down oil drilling in the US, then lent $2 billion to support Brazil's government-controlled oil drilling effort
• Interfering with voter fraud prosecutions
• Nakoula Basseley Nakoula arrest
• Ordered NASA to prioritize “Muslim outreach.”
• Obamacare waivers to political friends
• Inspector General Gerald Walpin retaliatory firing
• Alejandro Mayorkas Influence Peddling
• Increased food stamp dependency to 15% of the nation’s population
• Obama campaign disabled the credit card verification system for Web site donations
• "57 states" *
• "marine corpse" *

and of course Benghazi, which includes:

• The failure of administration to protect the Benghazi mission.
• Talking points changed to falsely blame an anti-Muslim video
• The refusal of the White House to say what President Obama did the night of the attack
• Relied on an Islamic fundamentalist militia group called “The Martyrs of the February the 17th Revolution Brigade” to provide security at the American mission in Benghazi

(sorry for the inconsistent tenses, capitalization, punctuation, etc. i might try to find links for each story later - if i have a spare week. the wikipedia category is a start)

update: welcome imao readers, and thanks to the anonymous commenter for two additions (marked *)

White Male Privilege (tm)

Matt Walsh revokes Kira's "Get Out of Thinking" card in this must-read-the-entire-article including page two.

(sadly, the people i know who need to read this won't)

Let's Talk!

two graphics via imao

about islam and other problems

seen online

I just saw this photo of Kristen Stewart where she has an expression on her face.

dumb clucks

lileks on chickens and their friends. it's all balanced perfectly between humor and insight, and point #1 is the most important:

Yelling at strangers that their egg-salad sandwich is the moral equivalent of supporting Third World underage sex slavery might not be as persuasive as you think. What’s more, if egg consumption is the equivalent of infanticide, people might wonder why you just sorta leaped over the whole actual infanticide part of modern society and went straight to weeping conspicuously over unborn birds.

doubleplus or minus a few years

this, plus a bit of brave new world, explains a lot

Obama's Legacy

...summarized in visual and verbal form.

(both links via imao)

radical

this information is more relevant to the 2016 presidential campaign than any of the posturing the media-infotainment complex will bestow upon shrillary.

you got to know when to folder

"Eric Holder, the Consigliere of the Obama Crime Syndicate, has resigned his office. This crooked figure has long been the subject of multiple investigations for his criminal misconduct and for abusing his position to persecute political enemies... Goodbye to a racebaiting thug who understands nothing about the law but plenty about petty personal feuds."

read the rest


(via dustbury)

Is his last name Streisand?

"The Reddit user responsible for bringing the hacked photos into the public eye has decried an invasion of his privacy by the media."

To rephrase, John Menese, a 33-year-old onanism promoter from Nevada, is upset that his privacy has been violated because he violated the privacy of others.

(title reference)

Washington DC wants to host the 2024 Olympics

DC is a perfect host city for the games. They already have the infrastructure for gridlock, corruption, raw ambition, and hollow pageantry.

"We will bury you"

Kruschev just forgot to mention that the USSR would do it posthumously:

"...ideological and memetic warfare has been a favored tactic for... America’s (major recent) adversaries — Nazis, Communists, and Islamists. All three put substantial effort into cultivating American proxies to influence U.S. domestic policy and foreign policy in favorable directions... like the (Nazi) “German-American Bund”... Today, the Islamists are having some success at manipulating our politics through... organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

But it was the Soviet Union, in its day, that was the master of this game. They made dezinformatsiya (disinformation) a central weapon of their war against... the U.S. They conducted memetic subversion against the U.S. on many levels at a scale that is only now becoming clear as historians burrow through their archives and ex-KGB officers sell their memoirs.

The Soviets had an entire “active measures” department devoted to churning out anti-American dezinformatsiya... (and) their memes seeped into Western popular culture and are repeated endlessly in (for example) the products of Hollywood.

Indeed, the index of Soviet success is that most of us no longer think of these memes as Communist propaganda. It takes a significant amount of digging and rethinking and remembering... to realize that there was a time... when all of these ideas would have seemed alien, absurd, and repulsive to most people — at best, the beliefs of a nutty left-wing fringe, and at worst instruments of deliberate subversion intended to destroy the American way of life.

Koch shows us that the worst-case scenario was, as it turns out now, the correct one; these ideas (were) deliberately designed to destroy the American way of life. Another index of their success is that most members of the bicoastal elite can no longer speak of “the American way of life” without deprecation (or) irony... In this and other ways, the corrosive effects of Stalin’s meme war have come to utterly pervade our culture.

The most paranoid and xenophobic conservatives of the Cold War were... the closest to the truth in estimating the magnitude and subtlety of Soviet subversion. (Though anticommunists) dismissed half of the Right’s complaint as crude blather. We were wrong; the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss really were guilty, the Hollywood Ten really were Stalinist tools, and all of Joseph McCarthy’s rants about “Communists in the State Department” were essentially true. The Venona transcripts and other new material leave no room for reasonable doubt on this score.

While the espionage apparatus of the Soviet Union didn’t outlast it, their memetic weapons did. These memes are now coming near to crippling our culture’s response to Islamic terrorism."

read it all

update: then read this somewhat-related piece

that news conference

i saw that obama was talking on tv the other day. the room was noisy so i couldn't quite hear, but i'm guessing he didn't say "i've signed legislation declaring isis illegal and we begin bombing in five minutes".

random pun of the day

i'd like to start a band that plays muzak versions of mariachi songs and call it...

iowahawk

via twitter:

Curious; what was the Congressional vote tally on this Iraq invasion?

If ISIS captures the Yazidis, I hope they won't waterboard them or put underpants on their heads and stuff. That would be wrong.

I wonder if Thomas Jefferson and George Carlin ever argue about who gets fake-quoted the most.

Israel builds bomb shelters for its kids; Hamas uses kids as bomb shelters.

he also links to the sadly-necessary israelhasbeenrocketfreefor.com

Cow. Horn.

Not since Andy Warhol has there been such a surreally humorous and perfect summary of pop culture.

missing inaction

both harvey and i were gone last week, but his (niece's) excuse is funnier than mine

On Spec

A must-read by Michael Crichton from 2002.

Razing Awareness

This shirt design reminded me of one of my favorite (and few) long blog posts.

The Gratingest Show On Earth!

"There's a Democrat born every minute."

Declaration of Independence

Were that founding document to be rewritten for modern audiences, it might be titled

"Use this ONE WEIRD TRICK to eliminate tyranny!"

YOLO!

today i figured out what it really means:

quotes of the day

Lileks at StartRibune:

...the original story seemed “fishy” in the sense that a trawler coming back to the docks after a week of dragging the ocean with enormous nets is “fishy.”

...when you enter the parallel world of Twitter, where people who cannot spell and have the sense of history that makes a fish’s experience look like the recollections of Methuselah, you know that it’s not an inherently wise medium.

seen online

there are two types of countries in the world:
1) ones that use the metric system.
2) ones that have been to the moon.

this is a song of hope... eventually

 "If you have a feeling that the seventies have rumbled up from their grave and are walking forward like zombies in an apocalyptic movie you might just be right."

read it all

soundtrack for the upcoming star wars movie

newsflash: an unnamed disney source has leaked this clip of the soundtrack for the upcoming star wars movie!

too long for lolbama

and not exactly the right subject...

two faced

(original link lost)

overheard recently

"i refuse to live in a world where a chicken cannot cross the road without its motives being called into question"

M$

"Seldom have both Microsoft's lack of innovation and their kludgy, ad-hoc approach to software design been explained so concisely."

i can't drive 56k

arbitrarily low speed limits set by a distant and unresponsive government didn't work during the era of the previous worst president ever either.

Rules for feminists

Collected and adapted from the article and comments here:

• We are just as strong as men, yet we need men to escort us or avoid us when we’re alone because all men are potential rapists.
• Since we are just as smart as men, we need affirmative action programs in order to show it.
• We are just as capable as men, yet we need feminist men to defend us and speak on our behalves.
• We stand in solidarity with all women, yet we’re willing to defame and destroy those women who are successful without us or who dare to disagree with us. (In fact, when possible, we prefer getting the feminist men to do it.)
• Since we have the same interests as men, we're not interested in typically male pastimes - it’s the men’s fault for being such misogynists.
• We are just as powerful as men, yet we are perpetual victims. If a woman is not aware of her perpetual victimhood, we will shame her into admitting it, since ours is the only way to think.
• We decry sexism, but value paternalism.
• We advocate for equality and social justice, as long as everyone realizes that we are more important than anyone else.
• We are fully-actualized, independent human beings who refuse to take responsibility for our own actions.
• We believe all women should be able to choose for themselves what they wish to do in life, unless they choose something considered "woman's work".
• Gender stereotypes are false, but all men are filthy rapey beasts to be shunned.
• We will fight for gay rights, while using homosexual slurs in arguments against men.
• We complain about lack of women in male-dominated fields, but are hypersensitive and intolerant of "male culture".
• Because we are strong, we require movies and books to provide us with strong female characters.
• We can engage in joking about sex or touching a man, then cry harassment when a man does the same.
• We want freedom and happiness, but instill fear and anxiety on people (such as "rape culture").
• We vouch for diversity, but treat non-white and foreign women with arrogance, "educating" them and deciding for them what they should want.
• We want men to offer us career opportunities and promotions, recognize our potential and achievements, without approaching us, talking to us, hiring us, including us into their circles - because we might accuse them of harassment for any excuse.
• We are diverse women of many rich diverse backgrounds who all must unflinchingly favor Democratic policies.

Brewdog Dead Pony Club Pale Ale

no matter that i 1) will never use their product, and 2) dislike their marketing,

THIS

is the proper response to the soft tyranny of quangos of all kinds, up to and including the e.u.

the sky is not falling

no
matter
how
often,
how
loudly,
or
how
annoyingly
the
lying
con
men
tell
us
anthropogenic
global
warming
is
coming
soon,
it
has
not,
can
not,
and
will
not
come
true.
it is
a hoax
fueled
by
greed
and
envy
of
prosperity.

(inspired by and expanded from this post)

Hollywood: a class act

(massive profanity warning)

Every time they say "think of the children", hear this.
Every time the kids watch cartoons, hear this.
Every time they play a "classic episode" from the good old days, hear this.
Every time they say "fair and balanced", hear this.
Every time they advertise "fun for the whole family", hear this.

p.s. Every time you see anyone flashing gang signs, hear this.

(Thank April Winchell for the collection of really horrid recordings)

i'm still here

, just don't have much to post about. be back eventually...

having problems with suntrust bank?

and/or robocalls from 800-828-7959?

you're
not
the
only
one.

r-s-p-e-c-t

(i woulda posted sooner but i was out of town)

What does the Fox say?

Aretha Franklin may spell out the word “Respect” several times throughout her synonymous song, but that doesn’t mean Harvard-educated President Obama knows how to spell it.

During a speech at the White House’s Women of Soul concert series, Obama missed a letter when spelling the word out loud, Entertainment Weekly notes.

Obama said: “When Aretha [Franklin] first told us what R-S-P-E-C-T meant to her, she had no idea it would become a rallying cry for African Americans, and women, and then everyone who felt marginalized because of what they looked like or who they loved. They wanted some respect.”

In a subsequent White House press release, President Obama blamed the gaffe on Dan Quayle for stealing that "e" to spell "potatoe".

the right to privacy

All of these spying scandals could be cleared up quickly if it was pointed out how they all violated Roe v Wade.

...or maybe NSA's nosiness can get Roe v Wade overturned. Either way it's a win.

update: welcome imao readers, particularly oppo who commented there:

The NSA’s spying has only two outcomes: Woe vs. Raid.