... no, I do not mean the kid on the bike, wise guy.

ReadRight: Essential Links to the Right Side are on the right side of this page. Yes. That's right. Just over there on the right. ⇒

... the gigantic teeming horde of men dressed as Sarah Palin. Many will have beards.

Palin the champion at Seattle costume store "It's more about hair spray. Get a wig and fluff it up."

And then... there's THIS. My eyes! Arggggh, my eyes!

Read all, and print out for your permanent scrapbook -Velociworld: The Man in the Lavender Automobile

Continued...

GOP Mom has the details and the documents: From Tony to Barack, Part I

Documented evidence proves that Senator Obama and Tony Rezko coordinated their purchases as well as the relative values of the house and the lot. Significant economic value was transferred between the properties after the execution of the purchase agreements and prior to the closings on June 15, 2005. Furthermore, this transfer fully explains Senator Obama’s reason for buying the extra strip of land. In sum, Senator Obama would not have been able to purchase the house at such a large discount if Rezko had not purchased the adjacent lot.

How small we arein our petty arguments (See below. See always below.), and yet how wonderfully made. Perhaps our only real purpose is to create the instruments that reveal to our eyes and souls the unfathomable wonder that is the Creation. Perhaps we are here only to be the witnesses.

An image taken by Hubble Space telescope showed a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147, photographed on October 27-28, 2008. Arp 147 lies in the constellation of Cetus, more than 400 million light-years away from Earth. - Photo Journal : Pictures of the Day

Can't have a prostitution gap."Based on the prostitutes' voter registration cards, they're destined to become Obama girls in November. That's because 78 percent of them registered as Democrats" - Majority of Allegheny prostitutes are on the Democratic side

Posted by Vanderleun Oct 30, 2008 5:39 PM | Comments (0)  | QuickLink:

That stalwart conservative and relentless social bouder, T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII (known as T-Bag to his twinks) has just chimed in with a ripping rant:

"How can I say this, you ask? One look at this Obama chap is all the answer you need. Suave, tanned, unflappable, Harvard connections; it's obvious that here is a man to the conservative manor born. One imagines him at the helm of the Ship of State, basked in the sunlight diffusing through the seaspray over the bow, like some beautiful rugged Othello from a rapturous Ralph Lauren catalog, calmly issuing instructions to the deck crew in that magnificent mellifluous baritone of his. It's that easy-going, almost effortless grace that has all the A-list conservatives like David Frum and Kathleen Parker whispering Reaganesque in hushed tones. Even Peggy Noonan -- the Grand Dame of Gipperism -- has succumbed to Obama's undeniable conservative charms. Just last month I listened to her wax poetic about the Adonis of Chicago between chukkers at the Newport Club polo tournament final. "Why Peggy, you old dowager," I quipped, "I believe you just had an orgasm." - iowahawk: As a Conservative, I Must Say I Do Quite Like the Cut of this Obama Fellow's Jib

Jolly good, what?

Remember last week? Last week in Obamaland you were rich and selfish if you made $250,000. This week, O's defined rich and selfish down to 200K.

"Here's what I'll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year." -- Barrack Obama's prime-time infomercial.

Want to bet that's the bottom? Want to bet your bank account, your mortgage payment?

That's got to be the first infomercial where people discovered they were going to actually pay more by buying the product. No steak knives either.

Obama's limit to "I won't tax you" is going down faster than Andrew Sullivan in an asparagus patch.

The dyed-finger idea could go a long way to eliminating voter fraud in America.

[Note: In the last week or so, I've heard -- here and elsewhere -- some defeatist carping about "not voting." Worse still is the plan of voting for someone you think is bad in order to make the country worse so that, at some moment in time, it learns from the experience. Both poses -- and poses they are -- strike me as malicious and childish. And I think of this conversation with Paul on Election Day in 2004. He knew what faction and party politics brought. He knew it from hard experience.... ]

Once a week Paul and his sister come to my house to clean it. They're recent arrivals to America from Russia and work at cleaning houses in order to support themselves and take courses at night at Irvine's community college. They're part of a larger group of Russians that live, not in the astronomically expensive beach towns along Southern California's solid gold coast, but inland where life is considerably cheaper.

Every Tuesday Paul and his sister arrive in a beat-up old Toyota, haul their vacuums and supplies in and set to work with a single-minded thoroughness at their job. They're in and out in an hour and off to another house. If they're ever feeling down, I've never seen it. They're pleased to be working and they work hard.

Paul's sister has better English than he does. His is spotty to say the least, but it improves. We all try to spend a few minutes talking in English since they are keen to learn the vernacular. We once spent 45 minutes going over the inflections of "Too cool for school," "Whatever," and the inner meaning of "Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em." I like to think I'm giving them insights into English not available in the classroom.

But this is Laguna Beach, a latter-day hippie stronghold of liberal socialists griping as they sit in homes with an average value of $1,300,000, and so Paul and I don't ever speak of politics. Until election day this week.

Continued...

Mockery works, especially with "serious" issues. I wonder why the early success McCain ads had with parting the red sea weren't followed up on in the later days. Seems to me you always reinforce success.

Gateway pointed me at it.

Miranda Wilding @ the Britannica ponders Glamorous Excess: Men in Tights (as in "Mantyhose")

Continued...

by Michael Ramirez

Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ulysses

"Journalist" is a bogus word for people who are trying to make it sound like this wretched business is something exalted, something professional, something that requires arcane, secret knowledge hard come by. All things it never was, as amply demonstrated on a regular basis by some of the best in the business working at some of the finest publications in the nation. Yes, there are some skills, knacks and tricks of the trade. It helps to be familiar with stuff like - your subject matter, the English language , telephones and computers. Bloggers, untrained, in a couple of years have shown that millions upon millions of dollars have been wasted in this country on journalism degrees. - Jules Crittenden » Embarrassment

Continued...

Do you fear "inflation?" Do you even know what it looks like? Here's a little photo-essay that brings the real meaning of government by printing press home. What the real crisis is like!

On the plus side, the use of this technique can mean that America can have just about as many billionaires as it has citizens.

Spreading the wealth!

What the spread wealth buys.

Paying for dinner. The tip is in there, somewhere.

Moral: Those who do not remember the present are condemned to pay for it.

Okay, it's deep-geek, but it impresses.

As the countdown to the Obama rapture accelerates, the press corps battles its performance anxiety. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine

The windows of this mind-set are provided by Slate's Jacob Weisberg, for whom the Obama election is a national referendum on racism; the New York Times' Nicholas D. Kristof, for whom an Obama presidency is an opportunity to "rebrand" our nation and "find a path to restore America's global influence"; E.J. Dionne, who sees an Obama presidency as representing a chance to "rekindle the sense of possibility and transformation" in American life; and a swooning Andrew Sullivan, who almost a year ago speculated that Obama might be "that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about." For Chris Matthews, of course, the Obama candidacy is a "thrill" going up his leg, one that will arc over his torso and detonate his head in the event of a victory.
The leading Obama cheerleader among the commentariat is Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, whose "erection of the heart" for the candidate has no match. Alter sees the presidential election as a world referendum on the United States and "the common sense and decency of the American people." Obama symbolizes hope over fear, and his election would produce an "Obama Dividend" that would "blow the minds of people in the Middle East and other regions, and help restore American prestige."

November 28, 2004 Soros Buys Kiev Holiday Inn for Inbound Contingent of Blue State Human Shields @ AMERICAN DIGEST

"Then it came to me. The Human Shields have been out of work and gathering rust and dust in the remainder bins of history for well over a year. The millions of depressed Democrats who have been considering relocation to a Bush-Free Zone have run out of gas long before the petroleum exporting countries ruled by Halliburton. Kerry isn't giving the $16 million back, and I don't know what to think about the rumors that Teresa is out buying a house and new suits for Obama.

January 22, 2005 Of Snow Flurries, Ted Kennedy, Teased Unders and the Final Four @ AMERICAN DIGEST

First Ted Kennedy. Since this guy couldn't pronounce "Barack Obama" - somebody has to stick a microphone in his face and ask him to pronounce "Ben Roethlisberger" or "Troy Polamalu."

February 21, 2006 The Beclowning Begins @ AMERICAN DIGEST

From the Obama side of the equation, the beclownment was limited. Essentially the campaign stated that, well, no they're not going to give the money back, David (Billionaire) Geffen would continue as finance director, and that Hillary can -- in effect -- pound sand.

At this juncture, that would seem to be the state of play in what continues to be our long national electoral nightmare that only has, what?, 18 months more to run.

Have The Got the Right Man?

From Season 4 "The Red Mass"

JOSH: What does this remind you of?
"I believe in hope, not fear."
"I'm a leader, not a politician."
"It's time for an American leader."
"America's earned a change."
"I before 'E' except after 'C'!"

Continued...

Of cystic fibrosis, age 41

"At the innermost point of the circle are the things that really matter: family, faith, love. These things stay with you until the day you die. At the very end, because the circle has shrunk down to its center, they’re all you have left. But as we approach that end, we finally realize that all along, they were what mattered most. As a consequence, life often remains beautiful and worthwhile right up until the end." Dean Barnett in "The Plucky Smart Kid with the Fatal Disease: A Life with Cystic Fibrosis"

"Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyager."

He said, "Call the doctor. I think I'm gonna crash."
"The doctor say he's comin', but you gotta pay him cash."
-- Eagles- Life In The Fast Lane

Last June I was visiting an old friend in San Rafael, California. He lives the classic Marin county life high on a brindle California hillside. His house is reached by driving the blind curves of one of those thin hill roads. He's got open land and long views next to his house. And a beautiful and extensive garden. A Sunset Magazine garden.

And like most homeowners in Marin, he's got his own personal Mexican to keep it together. Yard work, it's what most of the Mexicans of Marin do. That and construction, and cooking, and cleaning, and any other kind of scut work that brings them cash.

From what I could see, this yard worker gets about $85 a day. Maybe more, maybe less. Maybe for that day only. Maybe for two days a week. Hard to imagine it could be for three. But I have no way of knowing. In Marin it would be the height of political insensitivity to ask, "By the way, how much do you pay your own personal Mexican?"

His personal Mexican doesn't speak much English. Just enough to get by. The home owners treat him with respect and a strange deference, lapsing in a kind of Spanglish in order to talk to him. They ferry their personal Mexican from their house high on the hill to his home -- somewhere in the rambling and beaten down apartment complexes east of the freeway in San Rafael.

Continued...

Reparations by proxy are only the beginning. Obama: "To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.... I'm not optimistic about bring major redistributive change through the courts.... The courts start engaging in a process which is adminstrative." [Emphasis added.]

HT: neoneocon

"Undecided" voters find out early
how to lie to pollsters with a smile.
Say "I don't know" and you won't have to worry,
You can cast your vote in private and in style.

Lying non-disclosure sure gets lonely,
I guess every form of bullshit has its price.
But their Dem friends will love a voter only
If they think they'll vote Obama, maybe twice.

So they tell them they might vote for Messiah
And comfort those Dem friends who'd put them down.
But I know how they're voting on that Tuesday,
They're heading for the Palin side of town.

You can't hide your lyin' eyes
and your smile is a thin disguise.
I thought by now you'd realize
there ain't no way to hide your lyin' eyes.

Continued...

The Sinking of the MSM Titanic -Best Day by Day Cartoon by Chris Muir ... Ever.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Oct 26, 2008 11:53 AM | Comments (0)  | QuickLink:

Man enough to be President of the United States of America.

Not man enough to be President of the United States of America.

And that goes for their respective running mates as well.

The question the O-campaign has to be asking themselves right now is, "Is it too late to send Joe Biden out for a new set of brain plugs?"

Magnetic Paintbrush Holder - Lee Valley Tools

We never learn that what you see is not always what you get. A few days ago Dinosaurs and Robots highlighted some "Handy Painting Tools from Lee Valley" as, "a pair of clever painting tools made an impression on me while perusing the Lee Valley Tools Catalog." The item made an impression on me too, so, thinking to be "helpful" I pushed it along to the master craftsman, in wood as well as words, at one of my favorite pages, Sippican Cottage.

Continued...

Obama: Not Man Enough to Be President

Continued...

There's power and there are the tools of power. There's intelligent and there's smart.

If you are entirely insulated from the consequences of your actions, it would be decent to recuse yourself from offering advice to others, no less so than a man who stands to profit from the outcome. When a man is facing a spinning blade, the cardinal sin is to distract him. Yelling: "Look out!" is akin to shoving him into the blade. The time to identify danger is before, not after. It is predictability and stability and a certain kind of respect that is helpful. Nothing else.

Let me tell you about the blade. You think you can handle it because you fancy yourself intelligent. You're wrong. Because the danger it presents, the real danger, is hidden from you. - Sippican Cottage: Politics

In annotated outline:

• 1960s: The Population Bomb. Too many people yields global famines and cannibalism. [Long pig -- the other white meat -- still not on any local restaurant's menu, except for that movie joint serving Fried Green Tomatoes.]
• 1970s: No oil by 2000. [Still pumping and there's more wherever we look.]
• 1970s: The new Ice Age. Just when the oil wells ran dry, the glaciers would begin.... [Good thing the polar bears will thrive. We'll need the fur coats.]
• 1980s: AIDS. You're all going to die, YES YOU.... [Who me? Even if I don't share needles and body slam 15 guys a night at the bath houses which will never ever close? YES YOU-- and give us a lot of money too.]
• 1990s: BSE. Eat beef? You're going to end up a drooling victim of Mad Cow Disease. [Better that than a member of Daily Kos. Saner and healthier as well. Bring on the rib-eye and let's get this over with.]
• 1990s-present: Global Warming. Well, the Ice Age didn't emerge. [Good thing the polar bears are still thriving. We can feed the Eco-Nazi's to them.]
• 2000s: Terrorism. We're facing a 9/11 every week from bombers who plan to destroy planes with weapons hidden in shampoo bottles. [Not if we adopt the secret TSA master plan and all fly naked with a box of sanitary wipes for the seats.]
• 2000s: Bird Flu. [If the Chicken Blood Drinking Decathlon at the 2008 Beijing Olympics didn't spread this around the world nothing will.]
• 2008: The credit crunch. Recession, depression or financial apocalypse? [I'm going long on canned goods and ammo. Especially Dinty Moore Polar Bear Stew. Hey, you gotta cut somewhere.]

Outline expanded @ Seconds To Doomsday

Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. -- MATTHEW 14

A disturbing element of the Obama campaign is the shameless use of children by his supporters and the campaign itself. (See this coming weekend's Grassroots "Kids for Obama Parade" in Seattle for the latest of these "pet parades.")

Deploying children in campaigns is not an unusual element in political contests. Supporters are always convinced they are supporting their candidate "for the children." At the same time, it can't be overstated that the Obama campaign and its supporters/parents are more than usually enthusiastic about getting the kids to convince everyone in the nation that Obama really is in it "for the children."

Continued...

Because she's the only one who is young enough and idealistic enough and man enough for the job.

Writer (left) & Editor (right)

[Note: James Taranto declares @ Best of the Web Today - WSJ.com

2008 is the year in which "fact checking" of political ads and statements became a full-blown journalistic fad. May it soon go the way of streaking and Mexican jumping beans. The "fact check" is opinion journalism or criticism, masquerading as straight news. The object is not merely to report facts but to pass a judgment.

He's right. People have too much faith in THE FACTS when it comes to politics, or anything else in the media sphere these days. Here's a little something I wrote about the reality of fact -checking inside media back in May of 2007. It is still true today, only more so. And that's THE FACTS, JACK.]

"Fact-checking in publishing." It's such a quaint notion. It thrives on the belief that if publishers checked the facts, the truth would out. But on many levels, most publishers -- especially book publishers -- don't want to check the facts and, truth be told, seldom do. Book publishers are not interested in truth, they are interested in stories; stories that sell.

Having worked for more than 30 years in book and magazine publishing, I had many chances to view the "fact-checking" element at work in both fields and, although it was rigorous in magazines, it was close to non-existent in books. Even the much-vaunted "fact checking at the New Yorker" is pretty much a myth at this point; the kind of myth that lets the current phase of The New Yorker slide on by as a "dependable" source. But it really is about 50% BS now. And for book publishers it always was 95% BS.

Continued...

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
-- Sonnet 18

In the end, it is not our failure to learn from history that condemns us to repeat it, but our mind's turning away from even the briefest glimpse of what the dark passages of history were like that damns us. We may know, but we refuse to see. We blind our own mind's eye. It is our inability to imagine the most evil things that all men are capable of that corrupts us.

No, do not say "our inability" to imagine. Say rather, "our refusal" to imagine since the imagination itself -- if we were honest -- can indeed visualize carnage and depravity with ourselves as the actor and never the acted-upon. Our mind can and does see things that we cannot stand to admit. Our mind can bring to an image and hold in our mind's eye things of infinite vileness.

Continued...

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If the goal is not beating Obama, despite the fact that the polls show he can be beaten, then I would say that the Republicans are simply victims of themselves....

If winning is to be abandoned as strategy, and the Republicans lose, what is to be done in the next five years with a lame duck Obama who can do as he wishes? Whine and complain? Get even more sick and tired of ever-more-entrenched Obamacare? Start an armed revolution? Position another loser to head the 2016 ticket? I think a lot of Republicans will get tired of this new, losing paradigm. I know I will. --Classical Values

A recent trend is prominent blacks like Kobe Bryant getting in trouble over remarks insensitive to gays.... I think it reflects a more general impatience with stereotypical black behavior. A lot of straight white people are happy to seize upon a different Official Victim Group as a club to justify finally upbraiding blacks to not be such knuckleheads. -- Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog:

Back to a list of 2:

"Some are simply universally admired for their activism, like Clint Eastwood (pictured), John Wayne and Bob Hope." -- Box Office Politics: The Movies and Stars Dems vs. GOPers Love (and Love to Hate)

Uh, make that "John Wayne and Bob Hope."

Did anyone even think of deploying our wind turbines to make good the energy shortfall from Russia?

Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure.... Somehow the reality of that situation should be impressed upon these green activists who have wormed their way into positions of control. It may be that they are merely pursuing the fastest route to the "great human dieoff," an issue dear to the hearts of large numbers of green activists and philanthropists. But those of us who actually wish to live our lives, must get in the habit of telling them: "You first!" -- Al Fin Energy

Road kill scraped off a randomly-selected backwoods highway comes next, followed by a gap,

followed by the spider I killed last summer because it bit my girlfriend. Then the proverbial syphilitic camel, then a few randomly selected lunatics just sprung from the asylum, then we get into the presidents from history who were voted out because they blew it. I mean, the rancid ones. Buchanan, Tyler, Harding, Hoover…THEN we go overseas and look to some dictators who’d like to see us dead…THEN include Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars…THEN, after another gap, we loop back over here and pick up Jimmy Carter… Tyler Durden. The Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. A bucket of turpentine. An old sock someone used because they were out of toilet paper. A spitoon. Its contents. A booger. A mummified hemorrhoid.... -- Your 2012 Lineup @ House of Eratosthenes

John Fleming reflects on Side-Lines: Yup, not a teaspoon of testosterone from toenail to topknot

"I just figured out why he's got that stupid 4-yr old face. A case of arrested childhood development. HIs commie mommy never let him play with guns. He had a most unusual non-American childhood. He probably never had two cap guns with holsters, or a Johnny Seven shooting plastic bullets, or a wrist-rocket, or a super-soaker, or Daisy BB gun. Never got to build and launch rockets. Never went plinking with a .22. When he was in Indo, and he got the opportunity to play with other American boys (not often), he probably came home to mom and asked for cool stuff like the other kids had, and his mom sniffed, "No, they're not our people."

Guns are only for the Security Committee people. If the Party wants you to have guns, it'll give you one. He looks like that, because at 50-something years, he finally gets to have a little manly fun. All his life, mom, grandma, wife, have been telling him no, he can't go have fun with guns. Tragic, really.

The Yorktown neighborhood of Philadelphia, immediately adjacent to Temple University,

prevailed upon the city to create a special Yorktown Overlay in which "student housing" would no longer be permitted in its single-family zones... This is the first time that I am aware of that a city has taken the bold step of barring a certain class of persons, by name, from a neighborhood (at least since the era of racial zoning). --Old Urbanist: Tuesday Zoning/Takings Litigation Update

What will it be about? Anything.

There are no limits to my subject material. I’ll write a poem about flowers. I’ll write a poem about dragons. I’ll write a poem about a flower that fights a dragon and you’ll be all smug and think, Well obviously the dragon would win. But don’t get too comfortable with that mindset because, like a stealth bomber ravaging your brainscape with heartfelt language, here I come out of the blue with all these poetic details explaining why the flower winning is not only plausible but necessary. -- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Monologue:

If you enter “Dostoyevsky” into the search function of Twitter, you don’t come up with much interesting these days. --Dostoyevsky — Marginal Revolution

Clint is right. It IS halftime in America. We're down by about 5 trillion. Time to switch quarterbacks. -- Clint Eastwood's Chrysler Super Bowl Ad: The Untold Obama Connection - The Hollywood Reporter

Elementary school students learn what journalists do. “

Everyday exciting things happen” to journalists, according to a third-grade textbook found by the Stuff Journalists Like blog. “A good journalist works very hard to make sure his or her stories are interesting and true.”

No matter who you support this year, you have to admit Mitt Romney went about becoming president the wrong way.

Instead of wasting his time learning how business works and building a multi-billion-dollar company that really did save or create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Mitt should have lived off his daddy's fortune like Jack Kennedy. Chasing skirts and molesting teenage virgin is a lot more fun than figuring out how to revive an old business. Instead, Mitt Romney gave his inheritance to charity. Who does that anymore? -- ｫ Don Surber

The "O" Face Splat! Geek-in-chief Obama tests marshmallow gun "The Secret Service is going to be mad at me about this,"

Obama said, before energetically pumping a compressor and shooting the marshmallow gun, invented by 14-year-old Joey Hudy. Obama watched open-mouthed as the candy shot across the room before crashing into the wall near the entrance to the Red Room, an elegant state parlor which stuffed with rare 19th century French furniture.

The man who "got" Bin Laden. Yeah, right.

I'm sure there will be a lot of takers to explain that house as mental illness, but like I said: I'm not buying.

The person went feral. Back into a state of nature. It's the hunter-gatherer Eden ruined by Western Civilization that we're told we need to go back to that's on display here. She was living off the land. When the land is covered with stripmalls, pizza and Diet Pepsi represents the nuts and berries. --Sippican Cottage: So You Want To Be A Landlord

Planned Parenthood is very far from the uncontroversial organization the Susan G. Komen Foundation aspires to be. According to its most recent annual report, for 2010, Planned Parenthood sells abortions to nine out of every 10 pregnant women who come to its clinics.

And it's known throughout the country as an implacable and aggressive opponent of any meaningful restrictions on deliberate feticide.... Breast-cancer victims are only the latest hostages taken by Planned Parenthood. Unless the organization is finally held to account, they will surely not be the last. --Robert George and Carter Snead: - WSJ.com

I still like the Charles Murray argument which is, basically, that the poor are increasingly populated by the cognitively inferior and that taking away certain social controls has lifted the lid off of the crock pot.

The cognitively inferior need stringently enforced social codes in order to stay on the straight and narrow. So what has happened over the past several decades is that the cream of the crop are leaving the areas where dumb people reside, and the voice of morality has diminished. This is a double whammy on the dumb class. --Folgers ｫ Gucci Little Piggy

At 1,000 feet above the water... 40 knots too fast with the glideslope full scale deflection below us. Obviously, this is not going to work.

Me- Ok, this is not a stable approach. Let's go around and try it again. He says something that makes me laugh... Now? Me- Yes, now... Go around. -- Flight Level 390:

There is not enough money in the world to pay back America's national debt.

Total United States currency (paper and electronic entries in reserve accounts) sums to about $2 trillion. The national debt sums to over $14 trillion. If people ever really suspected that the U.S. monetary printing press was broken, there would be the mother of all bank runs. Bond holders would redeem their U.S. debt instead of rolling it over. Savers would hold tightly to any real currency. --Europe's Wile E. Coyote Moment

On the same day a report revealed the names of a number of top donors to presidential campaigns, President Barack Obama spent time with around 25 wealthy donors who paid $35,800 each to be with him behind closed doors at a Washington hotel. --President Obama Spends Afternoon With Wealthy Donors In DC ｫ CBS Washington

Voters this year look set to continue an odd pattern that's prevailed in presidential politics for a quarter century.

They will elect either a candidate with a famous father or with no father. The surviving serious contenders—Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney—all exemplify one of these two categories. For the seventh consecutive election, the winning candidate will be either a privileged prince with an adored, powerful patriarch, or an up-from-nothing scrapper with no relationship with his biological dad. -- Michael Medved: Presidential Fathers and Sons - WSJ.com

In 1993 geneticist Dean Hamer studied pairs of brothers

who were very loosely defined as “exclusively or mostly” homosexual. He claimed to find a pattern in a specific region of the X chromosome that such brothers seemed to disproportionately share. This was widely trumpeted in the media as the landmark discovery of a “gay gene.” But Hamer and others failed to subsequently replicate his results. In fact, a 1999 Canadian study contradicted them. Hamer is a gay man who has reportedly stated he hoped his research would help end intolerance toward homosexuals. He also later claimed he’d discovered the “God gene,” so take whatever he says with a grain of DNA. --Homosexuality: What’s Choice Got to Do With it? - Taki's Magazine

Hit the piste like Grizzly Adams’ gung-ho nephew with your very own Beardski. Part insulating ski mask, part fake beard; these spectacular accessories will make you look like the most experienced man on the slopes. --Beardski @ Firebox.com

Answer: you sold it for a mess of pottage.

When civilization abandoned institutional Christianity for liberalism, then abandoned Christian notions of decency and individualism for socialism, and then abandoned Christian notions of chivalry and truth for political correctness, and then abandoned Christian notions of the objectivity of truth, beauty and virtue for the roaring abyss of nihilism, civilization lost the engine and motive of its progress. When you stopped calling yourself sons of God and started calling yourself naked apes, you stopped climbing Jacob’s Ladder toward the angels, and slumped instead toward the jungle where Nature red in tooth and claw holds reign. -- Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal

Where Christian virtues fail there liberty turns into license and licentiousness: pornographers admired as men of business. Wealth promotes an industry of envy, as lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians make it their daily business to loot what others produce. Medicine turns to infanticide, and the Hippocratic Oath languishes. Science goes mad, and says the universe is nothing but a carousel of atoms, and your brain a defective calculation machine that merely hallucinates self-awareness and free will. --Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal

but rather of the candidates themselves. None of them are worthy -- at least at this point --€” of the presidency. A three-term congresswoman and a half-term governor are as unready as Barack Obama was in 2008. Let's not fight fire with fire. Let's use water. That usually works unless it is a grease fire. --The view from the fence « Don Surber

"The $4 million price tag is the least of it." -- The 1st of 14 screens @ Business Insider

It does not believe that most of the national debates are a tempest in a teacup

that can be settled amicably behind closed doors. It is uninterested in bipartisan great compromisers, it seeks fighters who will stand up for its agenda. It is not interested in the progressive voyage to the national future that has been taken up by both parties, what it would like is independence from their reign of policy terror. It would like to roll back the progressive policymaking of both parties. --Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield RTWT!

Unearthed in a gravel pit at Piltdown in East Sussex and revealed to the outside world exactly a century ago,

those shards of skull were part of a scientific scam that completely fooled leading palaeontologists. For decades they believed they were the remains of a million-year-old apeman, an individual who possessed a large brain but primitive jawbone and teeth. --Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax The Observer

U S Bases

What would you report home to Tehran after reading the Washington Post day after day?

I think you'd end up saying: "We can't compete with the Krauthammers. They are better than us at putting together words. Therefore we can't guarantee that the ruling class in Washington won't work itself into another frenzy like it did in 2003 and do something stupid. So, we'd better get ourselves a few nukes as a deterrent." --Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog: The Great Game ain't so great anymore

JUST ABOUT AS BAD A GAME AS YOU'D EXPECT FROM TWO MEDIOCRE TEAMS...

There are Year-Rounders who brave the 120ｰF summer inferno, and Snowbirds who land from as far as Canada with their souped-up RVs and pensions,

soul-searching Gypsy Kids who arrive by train with little more than the ragged clothes on their back, Spaz Kids and their electro-psychedelic outdoor parties, and Scrappers who risk life and limb to collect shrapnel from the gunnery range that flanks the camp, where Navy SEAL teams train year-round (and where rumor has it they prepared for the Osama bin Laden raid). That's to say nothing of the rowdy bikers who pass through, or the meth-addled loners on the outer edges inclined to greet a trespasser with a gunshot. -- Slab City: Living Off the Grid in California's Badlands

Once an honest and intelligent person opens himself to the facts,

it becomes very difficult to support big wind power on any basis whatsoever. Unless, of course, you are a big developer or investor in government subsidised wind farms. In that case, there are $billions to be made, without the need to provide any useful power to the public, whatsoever. A neat scam, if you can live with yourself. Just ask Warren Buffett. --Al Fin Energy:

those of the uninvolved and uninformed lives, the bar-raisers, the downright mean ones,

the never deserving of respect ones, the Vegas junketeers, the Super Bowl jet setters, the tuition stealers, the faux-Christians who do not pay higher taxes, the too much income makers, the tormenters of autistic children, the polluters, the enemies deserving of punishment, the targets to bring a gun against, the faces to get in front of, the limb-loppers, the tonsil pullers, the fat cats, the corporate jet owners, the one-percenters, the stupidly acting, the not paying their fair sharers, the discriminators on the “way you look”, the alligator raisers and moat builders, the vote deniers, the clingers, the typical something persons, the hunters of kids at ice cream parlors, the stereotypers and profilers, the cowards, the lazy and soft, the non-spreaders of money, the not my people people, the Tea party racists, the not been perfect and mistake makers, the disengaged and the dictating, the not the time to profiteers, the ones who did not know when to quit making money, and on and on. My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons? -- Works and Days » Are You "Them"?

“Slow traffic keep right” is such a simple rule to understand,

but evidently they’re issuing drivers licenses to people too stupid to understand that rule, who are probably also too stupid to figure out that passing a semi-truck might require use of the accelerator pedal. (Trust me, idiot: It’s down there on the floorboard of your car, probably somewhere on the right side.) If there were any justice in the world, state troopers wouldn’t be laying radar traps for guys doing 82 mph in a 65 mph zone, but would instead be issuing tickets to slow-moving idiots who take more than a few seconds to pass a semi-truck. -- Hate Hoax Busted by Cop’s Dash-Cam (Also: You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!) : The Other McCain

How exactly do we know, from the photo, that she is on the political left rather than right?  Seriously.  Here is her blog and profile.  Here is her Twitter feed.  How do we know?  And that we know — should it make you less confident in your own political beliefs?  WWRHS? -- Assorted links -- €” Marginal Revolution

The status quo must be thought of as a direction, not merely a state,

considering how predictable change has become. (Does anyone dispute at this point that, for example, gay marriage will soon be legalized, most likely by the courts?) Political action must address this change, must figure out where it stands relative to that change and act accordingly; if it limits itself to addressing the present, it may end up misdirecting its energy, addressing issues that will soon resolve themselves by pure inertia and ignoring issues for which the direction that inertia will eventually drive them in has not yet been decided. --Anonymous admits its irrelevance

If you had to write one big check for the whole twelve years of public education of the 88 percent or so of the entire population of the United States that doesn't go to private schools, at 2011 rates of $10,441 per person per year, it would be a check for thirty-three trillion, eight hundred forty-eight billion, eight hundred eighty-six million dollars. --Sippican Cottage: Bin Laden; Joe Biden; Whatever

Tru' dat, but every few days it seems that this whining "candidate" redefines "sore loser:"

"They outspent me five to one to quote destroy Newt Gingrich?" Gingrich said in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." "You know, I think that doesn't deserve congratulations. I think that's reprehensible, I think it's dishonest, and I think it's shameful." --Gingrich: Romney didn’t deserve congrats – CNN Political Ticker

Sigh. The person who doesn't deserve congrats for the regularly scheduled destruction of Newt Gingrich is.... Newt Gingrich!

Hoping for another visitation from ye olde Proverbs 5:3

Valentine's Day gift ideas for the nerd in your life.

Over 700 abandoned settlements bear the collective name The Dead Cities of Syria....

Between the cities of Aleppo and Hama there is a limestone massif and it is here these ancient settlements were built by their once prosperous peoples. The area is about thirty kilometers in width yet is several times longer – extending to almost 140 kilometers in length.... An extensive and fascinating photo essay @ Kuriositas

Kenneth Boehr, Clara Lazen's science teacher, handed out the usual ball-and-stick models used

to visualize simple molecules to his fifth-grade class. But Clara put the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms together in a particular complex way and asked Boehr if she'd made a real molecule. Boehr, to his surprise, wasn't sure. So he photographed the model and sent it over to a chemist friend at Humboldt State University who identified it as a wholly new but also wholly viable chemical. -- | Popular Science

No fool like an old.... etc. A Day With Warren Buffett Offers Wealth of Photo Opportunities

The ritual ends with a photo shoot. Each student gets to take two pictures with Mr. Buffett. The first one is a serious shot, the second is a funny pose of their choosing.

Would the ritual ended with sepaku for the hilariously named "Sage of Omaha."

Obama: 'I have fallen on my knees with great regularity' - Investors.com

No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month!

So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. -- | ZeroHedge

To all Roman Catholics who voted for Mr Barack Obama: SUUUCKERS! -- | John C. Wright's Journal

☛ Thinking Right Archives ☚

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• The Costume That Shall Haunt My Dreams for All Eternity
• Prediction: The most terrifying thing about this Seattle Halloween will be...
• "The Man in the Lavender Automobile" Greatest O-Rant Yet
• Slick House: The Home Obama Bought and the Lot That Rezko Sold Him
• The State of the Creation in the Constellation of Cetus
• This Just In: Whores Lag Behind Media in Obama Support
• More Mush from the Wimps: This Just In from T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
• The American Rich Just Got $50,000 Poorer
• "I will vote always for best, always:" Conversations with Paul
• Takes Me Back to When the McCain Ads Were Amusing
• Gamechanging Question: Boxers, Briefs or Mantyhose?
• Who Are We to Judge?
• Stand
• Crittenden on the Fathomless Bogosity of Journalists
• Why I Got My Mom Cable Years Ago
• Zimbabwe: Hey, how's that wealth-spreading thing working out?
• Geekerlude: "Proficiency in Excel Required"
• Who Will Be Named Obama's First Lewinski?