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...