I guess they're trapped in ice that doesn't exist

The Polar Ice Caps are Melting!  There are no Americans in Baghdad!  We are slaughtering them at the gates!

Dude, when you're trapped by record amounts of ice IN THE SUMMER (yes, it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere) then maybe, just maybe you might want to revisit your little theory, mmm-kay?

But no, like the Obamabots in San Fransicko who refuse to change their beliefs even while they get hammered by Obamacare, Liberals and other ProgNazi spawn treat their pet theories like religions, and refuse to let go no matter how hard the truth hits them.  Record amounts of ice in the North?  Global Warming!  Record amounts of ice in the South during summertime?  Global Warming!

All we can do at this point is laugh at them.  Long, hard, and loud.

Don't know what it is

About girls on the beach that I love so much.

Goatee

I don't shave when I'm on leave.  It's nice to not scrape your face off if you don't have to.  So for the past few days I've been rocking a goatee again.  I'll shave the sides of my face and my neck just to look somewhat groomed, but I leave the rest of my face alone.

The Ragin' Mrs. met me when I was a civilian and had facial hair.  She never saw my chin until I re-enlisted and shaved for the first time, some three years after we started dating.

To be honest, I can't wait until I retire and can grow it again.  It makes the morning ritual that much easier.  I miss having a goatee.  Seems odd to want something so simple, but there it is.

How I loathe this facist state

If you'd like to find a gas station that sells non-ethanol polluted fuel, there's a map for that!

Now, look at Kalifornia on that map.

The ethanol they put into gas steals at least three miles per gallon from me.  My little Scoot has a ten gallon tank, and when I run non-ethanol, I get at least 250 miles from that tank, and that's in stop-and-go traffic.

Put in the ethanol crap, and it drops to 210-200 per tank.  I have to purchase a gallon and a half MORE of the ethanol crap to drive the same distance as normal, unpolluted gasoline.  And gas ain't cheap here in this filthy fucking fascist freakshow of Los Angeles. 

I cannot wait to leave this fucking hell-hole for good.  I'm going to piss on the "You're Leaving California!" sign they have at the border, and I'm never looking back.  And never coming back.  Fuck this commie-run septic-tank of a state.  It could fall into the ocean and I wouldn't give a shit.

Driving

I have spent a huge chunk of the past week driving around various states visiting various family members for the holidays.  I am loving being able to sit down on my own couch and read up on the news that I've missed.

Boise State got it's ass handed to it in Hawaii.  And the team lost it's head coach to the University of Washington.  Gotta see how they're going to rebuild with their new coach, who's a Boise State guy from a few years back.

Obama is on vacation pissing off the locals in Hawaii.  Hey, you fuckers voted for that shithead.  YOU deal with him!

Phil Robertson is back on Duck Dynasty on A&E.  It seems that if the whiney douch-nozzles want to keep their cash flowing, they'd better tell the Facist ProgNazis at GLAAD to go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

Meh.  I'm going to have a cigar and do some more catching up.

Did you all have a great Christmas?

I spent half the day in my PJs, and ate so much that all I could do was lay back and rub my swollen stomach.

Life was good.

With Angelic Host Proclaim....

Gloria en Excelsis Deo

I love Christmas music, especially when it's well sung.

Almost there

But this song is too beautiful to only have it one night.

Need better speakers

So, about the Duck Dynasty kerfluffle

Look, the Duck Commander folks are going to be fine, on or off TV.  Let's not forget that Phil Robertson was a multimillionaire with his own wildly successful business before he ever got on TV, OK?

With that being said, I think A&E just screwed the pooch.  Hard.  They knew who the Robertsons were.  They knew what the Robertsons believed.  That's the hook to the entire show!  And Duck Dynasty has a huge audience of people who are happy to see hard-working Christians on their TV sets.  People who pray over their dinners, and enjoy watching a TV show where a family prays together before they tuck in to their meal.

So A&E caved to the tiny minority and suspended Phil Robertson "indefinitely".  How'd the rest of the Robertson clan react?  Well, just like you might suspect:

We have had a successful working relationship with A&E but, as a family, we cannot imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm.  We are in discussions with A&E to see what that means for the future of Duck Dynasty.

I was reading somewhere else about how the Robertsons had signed a contract and they couldn't get out of it without paying a load of cash, and blah blah blah.  Someone else responded "You have no idea just how much "Screw You!" a redneck can come up with when he puts his mind to it."  I have no doubt that the Robertson clan is going to either get their way with A&E, or find some other place to do their show.  Or for that matter, to simply fold up shop on the TV show and go back to being wildly successful millionaires in Louisiana.  But I've heard that Glenn Beck has already put out an offer to bring Duck Dynasty to his Blaze TV.

Now, wouldn't THAT be a hoot?

Kicking the Hornet's Nest

You know a guy has hit his target when he writes a blog post denouncing Atheism, and he gets 1,430 comments on it.

Wow.

Well done, Sir!

By all means read the article, and if you have the time read some of the comments.  They're....  instructive.

Remember, kids....

Bleach is our friend.  Always keep some handy.  You never know when you'll have to completely disinfect the bathtub.  We filled it up, dumped bleach into it, and let it sit overnight to make sure anything in there was dead.

Woo. Hoo.

You want to have fun?  Try plunging your toilet, only to have sewage back up into your bathtub.  Then go outside to the spot where the pipe meets the sewer and see water (you wish it's only water) dripping into the crawlspace of your house.

Yeah.  I should be in bed right now.

UPDATE:  Tree roots.  You could actually smell them as the snake was cutting through them.  There were at least four sections where the plumber had to back the snake out and push it back in to deal with the roots.  We'll see how long his clean-out job lasts, but with the sweet-gum trees around here, it's only a matter of time before they plug it up again.

Reno erat Rudolphus

HAHAHAA!

*snort*

You want to know how you love someone?

It's when you hurt when they hurt.

When they cry, and you feel that stab in your soul.

It's not some teenage infatuation, or some pop-music ideal of love.  It's sharing the sorrow that they have, and both wanting to take that pain away, and yet understanding that they have to undergo that pain on their own, yet still suffering with them.

Every description of love seems to involve the glassy-eyed, Romeo and Juliet, "Let's die for each other!" kind of love.  I've seen every few novelists actually get into the painful side of love; the part where you hurt in your soul because your loved one hurts.  I suppose it's because so much writing today is done in a politically correct, pussy-whipped sparkly-vampire novel, and that sucks, because it takes away so much of the actual experience.

But then, if the writers haven't experienced it, how can they write about it?

Meh.  I've drank to much.

Leftism is inherently violent

Ace of Spades has a link to the news report on the newest school shooting in Colorado.  And the shooter is a hard-core Leftist, as usual.

Trying to explain all the different ways that Leftism is violent is like trying to explain all the different ways that mercury can poison you.  But the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.  Time after time after time, the mass shootings that go on are perpetrated either by people who are bug-fucking nuts, or Leftists.

But I repeat myself.

Memories

A post over at Og's place brought back a memory from my high school days.

I was over at a friend's house, and he had invited some of his other friends over; please note that just because we were all friends with my amigo, that doesn't mean we were all friends with each other.

My friend had some bb guns, and in a fit of inspiration, his other friends suggested that we go out and see if we could shoot each other.  I guess they figured that with three of them and only one of me, I'd be easy bait for them to have some fun with.

I do recall telling you folks that I grew up in the country, right?  And that my father is a Marine?

I spent the better part of an hour and a half peppering their asses with that bb gun.  Every time they thought they had me cornered, I'd pop a round into someone's leg, wait for the loud "OW!" and hightail to cover somewhere else while they fired at me in vain.  "Kentucky Windage" was not a part of their lexicon.  It was a part of mine.  I left them fuckers welted, and I enjoyed every minute of it. 

I told you all that to tell you this.

After all was said and done, and we were drinking water, one of those fuckers pumped their bb gun up to max, snuck up behind me and shot me right in the ass.  My eyesight went red; my friend blocked me from killing the gutless pussy who did it.  I managed to leave the premises without committing murder, although the little shitheel never walked on the same side of the street as I from that day on.

But I went home, and that night as I was getting undressed for bed, I saw a small little hole in my jeans.  Right where I had been shot.  Uh oh.

Took of my skivvies.  Same hole, same location, with blood around it.  Well, crap.

Went to the bathroom, and saw the hole in my butt-cheek, still bleeding a little.  Not good.  What to do, what to do?  I couldn't find any tweezers to pull it out, and trying to twist myself in half just to see the area was making me cramp up after fifteen minutes.  The bb was still lodged in my butt-cheek.  So I did what I didn't want to do - I went and got my Dad.

"Hey....  um....  Dad?"
"Yes Dave?"
"Can you help me out a bit?"
"Sure...  what's the problem?
"Well....  um....  there's this bb in my butt, and...."

And that is how my Dad ended up digging a BB out of my ass with what tools he could find in the bathroom - a syringe needle (Mom was an RN at that point; she used to come home and just dump her pockets out in the drawer.  We had syringe needles, but no syringes) and a bottle of witch-hazel to wipe the blood away.  I still have the scar on my ass.  And after he got the bb out, he handed it to me, washed his hands, gave me a look and said "We will never....  ever....  speak of this again."  My mom still doesn't know.

A customer review

So, on the advice from a reader, I recently checked out a place called Gotham Cigars.  I looked at all the various offerings, saw what they had, and bought a five-pack of stogies.

Now, there are probably as many different ways of reviewing a cigar business as there are people who do reviews.  But for me, the best way to check out the quality of a shop is to see what they have in the bargain section.  I've found that a lot of folks have about the same prices on the top-shelf sticks.  You can only discount a Montecristo so low before you're losing money with the sale.  But the good shops I've found have the best bargains in terms of quality of smokes.  So with that in mind, I went bargain shopping.

I ended up getting the Alec Bradley Tempus Imperator seconds 5-pack.  It was $14.50 for the pack, $5.99 S&H for a total of $20.49 out the door (so to speak).  A touch over $4 per stick on Tempus ANYTHING is a damn good price, considering you'll never see a Tempus for under $10 a stick here in the LA area. 

Payment was collected on November 30th, and I received notice that package shipped on December 5th.  That's a touch longer than I would expect, but I waited to see how fast they got to my door.

Cigars showed up on December 7th.  Very nice.  They were packaged well enough that I could smoke them right out of the box.  I know, because I did smoke one of them right then and there.  The rest went into the humidor for a nice little nap.  The stogies were everything I would expect out of an AB Tempus.  All in all, it was one of the best bargains I've gotten on a second from one of the big name factories.

So, was I happy?  Well, you'll notice that Gotham Cigars is over on the sidebar under the "Be A Man" heading, so that's a yes.  I'll be giving their shop a more in-depth look later on, after the holidays have finished draining my bank account dry.

Battery issues

Had to deal with some hardware issues on the ol laptop.  Sorry bout the free ice cream going missing.

Veni, Veni, Emmanuel

Did I ever tell you about my grandfather?

Don't know if I did nor not.  Anyways, short Irish guy.  Born and raised in South Dakota, where my great-grandfather had settled after his stint of being press-ganged into the Cavalry.  And when I say "short", I mean 5'1".  He coulda been a Hobbit, only with less hair.

Too short to join the Army.  Too short to join the Marines.  The only branch of the military that would have him was the Navy, and only for a few jobs that didn't require the person to work vertically.  So Grandpa pulled and closed the charging plate on the guns; guns load, close plate, guns fire, open plate, clean out chamber, repeat.

It destroyed his knees.  It destroyed his back.  It destroyed his eardrums.  But he did it for four years in the Pacific Ocean.  A good Catholic man, he kept his rosary with him at all times.  I have the crucifix from that rosary.  The rest of the rosary fell apart decades ago, so I put it on a new rosary.  Just a simple cord with knots for "beads", and a crucifix that my grandfather had during his years in the Navy.  Fighting the Japanese.  Because they blew the ever-living hell out of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.  Today, 72 years ago.

Evil can walk the earth.  Entire societies and countries have gone bat-shit crazy.  Good men have to fight back, and those who forget these simple facts will either perish, or live as slaves.

The Ultimate Nanny State

Bill Whittle once again lays Kalifornia to the bone.  And since I'm currently one-third through my nightmare of a tour here in Los Diablos, formerly the City of the Queen of the Angels, I can only say that he's not telling you half of it.



This state is in the full control of people who get sexual pleasure off of telling you what you can or cannot do.  Unless you happen to be in one of the politically protected classes, in which case you can do whatever you want until the evidence against you gets so large that they can't hide you anymore.  Kind of like the California Teacher who spoon-fed children in his class cookies that he had laced with his own semen.

Whatever horrible things you've heard about Kalifornia, double it.  The California Teachers Association was fighting to keep that pervert in the classroom until the bitter end, even after there was evidence proving that he was feeding children his semen in cookies.

I want you to read that last sentence again.  THAT is Kalifornia in a nutshell.

Another lie in a litany of lies

So Obama, having sworn that he never met his uncle who likes to tie one on and get behind the wheel, lied.

I know!  This is my shocked face!

I point this out not just to show how Obama the fucking liar once again lied, but just how compulsive and pathological a liar he is.  When dear Uncle Omar got tossed in the pokey for drunken driving, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for Obama the damned liar to simply say "Yep, I lived with him for a month or two.  Decades ago.  I don't approve of drunk driving, and I don't do it.  He screwed up."

Instead, he lied.  Again.  Over, and over, and over.  Just as he lies about everything to everybody.  Over and over and over.

He lies because he doesn't know how to tell the truth.  He lies because it is WHAT HE DOES.  He lies about little things.  He lies about big things.  He lies about everything.

Never forget that every word out of that fucking Nazi's mouth is a lie.  Period.

Frost Warning

That cold weather that's pushing down the West Coast has given the Los Angeles area a frost warning for tonight through tomorrow morning.

I has a happy face.

The colder it gets, the more the natives burrow into their holes and refuse to come out, which means traffic is lighter, running trails are less crowded, and I have less general stupidity to deal with.  I really, REALLY wish it would snow here, as the resulting traffic accidents would probably kill almost a quarter of the population off in the first 12 hours.

A bad thing?  Well, maybe. 

I can actually enjoy the weather for a change, rather than broil in the hellish temps that normally occur around LA.  I'm the guy out dancing in a tee-shirt and shorts.  If you can find me.

Martin Bashir gone from MSNBHeeHaw

So long, you commie fuck - I hope you wind up in a back alley sucking schlong for your rent money.

Oh, I'm sorry, was that mean?  No more than wishing that someone would shit in Sarah Palin's mouth. 

Let's call it what it is, shall we?

Leftism, in all of it's various forms, is ultimately Satanic.

A graphic video from Argentina is making the rounds of the Internet today showing violent protests with pro-abortion activists attacking pro-life people praying at a Catholic Church.

The abortion activists attempted to storm the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista (John the Baptist) in Argentina late last month.

Taken in San Juan de Cuyo, Argentina sometime between November 23 and 25, the video shows, as described on YouTube, “feminists and their male peers bellow[ing] noisy and anti-Catholic slogans drawing through the city. In retaliation, 1500 young Catholics formed a human shield around the Cathedral to prevent about 7000 antagonists from storming the Archdiocesan Church.”

The video shows topless women spray painting the people praying — in their faces and putting Nazi swastikas on their clothing.

Do please read the whole thing.  The "activists" weren't just spray-painting the people who surrounded the cathedral - they were hitting them, spitting on them, drawing on their faces, and various other acts. 

You need to watch the video.  You have to see the hatred in the Leftist's faces with your own eyes.  You have to see the hatred when they yell their chant and people who dare to pray......

"feminists and their males peers bellow[ing] noise and anti-Catholic slogans"....  I couldn't make it all out, but prominent was the word "basura".  Trash.  These people aren't just anti-Catholic, they are anti-LIFE.  They are anti-PRAYER.  They are anti-GOD.  They are Satanic, and they are backed by the Leftist government, just as they're backed by the Leftist US Government.  Time to gird your loins, any believers out there:  This is what the USA could experience sooner than you think.

Woman verbally attacked for showing off post-birth body

Some Norwegian soccer star's wife gave birth, and took a picture four days afterwards to prove she's still a smoking hottie.







That's her, and yep, she's a smoking hottie, despite just popping out a new Skandiwhovian kid.  However, let's take a few things into perspective here, shall we?

Low body fat - she kept herself in shape throughout the pregnancy.  She didn't sit back eating Bon-Bons and ice cream while making excuses that "I'm eating for two!"  Yes you are, one adult and one baby, not two elephants.  I guarantee that Mrs. Eriksen was eating healthy foods while pregnant, not Ho-Ho's, Ding Dongs, McDonald's, or any of the other processed crap food that people love to eat.

Muscles - she worked out while pregnant, unlike many modern folks who seem to think that any activity in any form will damage the baby, even though the luxury of NOT working while pregnant is only about 100 years old.

Genetics - she hit the lottery, but that wouldn't mean anything without points one and two above.  

Bottom line?  You want that body up there in that photo, you have to work for it.  Hard work.  Dedication.  Day in and day out, never taking a day off, controlling what you put in your body and what you do with it.  And most folks don't have that kind of dedication.  I know I don't; if I didn't enjoy my food and wiskey so much, I'd have the body of Adonis.  As it is, I'm fighting the battle of the bulge.  Winning, slowly, but still fighting it.  But I refuse to give up my bacon, or my pasta (I've cut back on that, but not given it up).  I'm willing to bet that Mrs. Eriksen up there hasn't had a bite of pasta in years.  So that she can look like that.  And then she gets crap for it, by people who are too jealous of what she has to look at their own actions.

Bah.  I need to run more.

We Need to Abolish the IRS

Since the IRS is nothing but a politicized agency used to attack Obama's enemies, we need to get rid of it.

Flat tax, anyone?

Treading in the Inferno

I had to go to the mall yesterday.

I wasn't Christmas shopping.  I hate Black Friday.  But I needed new running shoes.  So into the bowels of hell I went.  Luckily, I didn't have to kill anyone.  I escaped relatively unscathed, although the sight of a monstrously fat woman in the food court chowing down on a plate of fries the approximate size of my torso will be seared, seared into my memory.

And hey, new shoes!  Now it won't hurt to run anymore.  My old shoes had given up the ghost about fifty miles ago, and my feet and legs were both telling me it was far past time to replace them.  But having to tread in the mall on Black Friday....  ugh.

How sad and pathetic is it, that we go from being thankful for what we have, to "GIMME GIMME GIMME I WANT I WANT I WANT NOW NOW NOW!" in less than 24 hours?

Everyone Survive Thanksgiving?

I ate so much I needed a wheelbarrow to cart my bloated stomach around.  Smoked turkey, asparagus with that hollandaise sauce, twice baked sweet potatoes with cave-aged cheddar and rosemary ham....  wine....

Yeah.  Food coma.  I managed to waddle my fat ass around the neighborhood taking the dogs for a walk, then I collapsed my my chair with a cigar and two fingers of scotch.  The, I slept in until around 9 this morning, curled up with the Ragin' Mrs in bed.

If it weren't for the fact that I need a new pair of running shoes, I wouldn't leave the house today.  Howzabout alla yous?

Beyond the Sea

The Mrs. and I were starting batches of mead last Saturday, and she plugs in the Rat Pack Channel on Pandora.

Or so she said.  Ask me what "Pandora" is, and I'm going to bring up some Sci-Fi reference, but apparently it's a way to listen to music on your phone.

Anyways, I'm grooving out to all the good old tunes, and this song comes on, and I'm taken back to the first time I heard it.  I won't bore you with the details, I'll just put the song up.

FYI - the YouTube link says it's Frank Sinatra.  It's not.  It's Bobby Darin.  Plug it into your speakers and prepare to dance....

Brining the turkey

Gonna smoke that bad boy tomorrow.  We had plans all laid out, but they fell apart, so it's me and the Mrs. and the dogs, and the dogs ain't getting any damn turkey.  That's all mine.  Along with asparagus and twice-baked sweet potatoes. 

Yeah.  I'm going to eat well, and do my best to be thankful for what I've got.

Another "Unexpected" Outcome

Charitable hospitals that treat uninsured children will now be fined and receive harsher scrutiny when applying for non-profit, tax-exempt status.

Here, let me state that again:

Charitable hospitals that treat uninsured children will now be fined and receive harsher scrutiny when applying for non-profit, tax-exempt status.

 Tell me that this was all a mistake.  Go on, try to tell me that.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Section 501 goes into effect under Obamacare. The provision stipulates new financial penalties for charitable, tax-exempt hospitals that treat uninsured poor Americans. Currently, 60 percent of American hospitals fall under this category.

Analysts explained that charity serves as a major deterrent for the uninsured to enroll in Obamacare, so the Obama administration is fining charitable hospitals.

Congratulations, Democrats!  You've just made it harder for sick children to be treated for FREE!  But you're all about the "people", right? 

Bullshit.

The only thing Democrats care about is power.  Sheer, unadulterated power.  Just like every other Marxists in history.

!!!!!

Sorry about the lack of posting yesterday

My day started off at 0700, and I didn't get home until well after 2000.  In any case, I spent a bit of the day reading about Iran, and about how Obama the complete incompetent fuck-up just gave them everything they wanted and didn't get a damn thing in return except a bunch of promises that everybody knows from the start aren't worth a roll of toilet paper.

You know, if you're in the "Let them all kill each other and burn the place down" frame of mind, Obama truly is the perfect president.  I can't think of any other person capable of giving Iran a nuclear weapon, allowing Syria to keep the WMD's it got from Saddam, alienating everyone in the Middle East, and setting up conditions for the entire region to go up in flames.

Then again, if you happen to like sanity, or a stable world, well, Obama is pretty much the antithesis of what you want.

Anyways, as I predicted when Obama the Nazi got elected, he would abandon our allies just as soon as he could.  Sorry, Israel.  Hey, at least you don't have to give a shit about what the American President thinks anymore, you can just do what you need to do and ignore whatever comes out of Obama's Marxist piehole.

Your Sunday Awesome

Kids.  Middle-school kids.  Can't do nuthin', right?  Don't know nuthin, can't do nuthin, they's just kids, right?




Shut your piehole, sucker!  Can YOU do that?

Children have the amazing ability to learn just about anything they put their mind to, which is why they can do things on a computer that old geezers like me don't even know can happen.  Imagine what we could do in this country if we had a school system that actually educated them instead of indoctrinated them....

Bill Whittle on Health Care

A must-watch

Cooler weather

Dropped down into the 50's recently.  Great for running in the morning.  I'm out there in a t-shirt and shorts, watching what few locals are brave enough to dare the "arctic" temps struggle to jog while they're wrapped up like Nanook of the North. 

The parks have been rather peaceful.  Nobody to get in the way of the dogs and I as we make our trek. 

The driving, of course, has gotten worse.  Nothing like adding a little moisture to the roadways here to ensure that maximum stupidity commences!  More than once I've stifled the urge to lean out my window and ask the guy next to me if he got his license out of a CrackerJack box. 

I swear, the vast majority of this city would die in 24 hours if they were dropped into a rural town in the upper Midwest.  Maybe that's why I have daydreams about that very thing.

On the ProgNazis going "nuKYOOlar"

Look, Harry Reid and the rest of the ProgNazis have been presiding over one big kangaroo court/banana republic for five years now.  This isn't a change, people!

And predictably, the GOP will roll over and fuck this country up the ass once the ProgNazis are finished.  Again, THIS IS NOTHING NEW.  This has been going on for the past five years.

We ain't voting our way out of this - not by a long shot.  Reality is going to have to break entire generations before we're done with this mess.

Had reason to ride public transit today

Won't get into why, suffice to say that I avoid it if at all possible. 

Waiting for the Orange line bus, look to my left, and there's some douchebag getting high on the bus platform.  White guy, wearing baggy clown-shorts, neck tattoos, sucking on his glass dick in broad daylight.  I wasn't close enough to smell what he was smoking, thank goodness. 

You want to know why I think this city should just fall into the sea?  Because more people in this shithole would defend his right to suck on that glass dick in public than would disapprove of it. 

Would you approve of someone downing a fifth of vodka in public?  If not, why would you approve of someone sucking a glass dick in public?

And if you're the sort of person who approves of public intoxication, then quite honestly you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

What is that in scores?

150 years ago today....

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

After this country goes to war with itself again, who will write such a speech for the dead?

Compounding Failure

So, while reading this piece regarding a ProgNazi named Arne Duncan taking out his frustrations on "White Suburban Moms", I came to a point in the piece that I just really, really wanted to highlight:

A few years back, the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard found that 12 percent of black 4^th grade boys were proficient in reading — compared to 38 percent of white boys. It found that only 12 percent of black 8th grade boys were proficient in math — compared with 44 percent of white boys.

12% of black 8th graders are proficient in math.  44% of white 8th graders are proficient in math.

Less than half of the students in the 8th grade are proficient in math.  At a cost of roughly $9k per student nationwide, less than half the students are learning what they need to learn.  If that does not prove how worthless and damaging the publik skool sistim truly is, I don't know what else could be shown.

The rest of the piece highlights how the Federal Government is doing it's level best to prevent local and state leadership from improving their school systems.  It's rather sickening, when you realize that our schools are horrible failures because the FedGov is making them horrible failures.  We need to destroy the Department of Education, get rid of it completely, and start over fresh.  There can be no reform of a totally corrupted, debased system.

Interacting with Obama voters

The Ragin' Mrs. and I were out doing some shopping today; some groceries, a new pair of jeans for me (first new pair in years to tell the truth) and various sundry items.  On the way from one store to another, we pass a bicyclist doing his best to make an annoyance of himself in the middle of the road.  We maneuver  around him, pull up to the light (which is red) and wait for the green.  I'm in the far right lane, getting ready to turn right.  In the meantime, Mr. Future Road Pizza pulls up at the crosswalk, and engages in a conversation with some skinny gang-banger wanna-be covered in tattoos that guarantee he'll never make more than minimum wage.

The light turns green.  Mr. Future Road Pizza is still blocking traffic, still chatting up Mr. Gang-Banger.

A car beside me honks.  Mr. Gang-Banger hollers something at him.  Whatever, I don't give a damn what he yelled, I just want to get a move on.  The car in front of me manages to turn, and so I start to creep up to make my turn, and Mr. Future Road Pizza decides that now is the perfect time for him to cut right, exactly in front of my car.  So I hit the brakes before I hit him, and both the Ragin' Mrs. and I yell "HEY!" at the same time.

Apparently, Mr Gang-Banger doesn't like our reaction, because he flips his lid and jumps out in front of us, screaming all kinds of "I'm such a badass" bullshit.

You know that "fight or flight" reaction?  Both the Ragin' Mrs. and I were ready to jump out of the car and beat that motherfucker's ass.  I was suffering from mixed emotions - beating that punk-ass bitch would have been one of the most satisfying things I've ever done in California.  However, it would have most likely gotten me tossed from the military at this particular juncture, and I wasn't ready to toss my career down the tubes for the satisfaction of turning that fucking punk into a bawling, slobbering pile of bloody meat.  I'm still suffering from those mixed emotions, to tell the truth. 

My desire to inflict large amounts of pain must have been written on my face, because he shut up after about five seconds and moved out of the way.  He was still talking, but he wouldn't make eye contact.  We made our turn, and then both the Mrs. and I worked our way out of the RCOB adrenalin rush that we were both experiencing. 

I have never lived in such a place, where huge chunks of the population were incapable of driving, or following the rules of the road.  I have never lived in such a place where so many people were incapable of any kind of polite interaction with the rest of the population.  I have never lived in such a place where my desire to pulverize the arrogant, rude, selfish fucking bastards has risen to the forefront of my consciousness every single day.  I've got two years left in this fucking hellhole, and I hope and pray that I can make it out of here without breaking my fists on the face of some punk-ass bitch who thinks he's tougher than I am, and wants to try to prove it. 

All I wanted to do was drive to the store and get a pair of jeans.  And I almost hopped out of my car to curb-stomp some oxygen thief in the middle of the day.

I really do pray the day never comes when I give in to that urge.

Ragin' Dave's Quote of the Day

Lapping up the tears edition:

You think a bunch of people can sit down and... Lux Fiat! ...re-write the rules for how 15% of the economy works in one fell swoop, in what amounts to a giant bong-fueled bull session, and have nothing go wrong? You might as well try to change the spark plugs on your car while the engine's running.

Then again, these are people who think that the efficiency of internal combustion engines or the amount of water it takes to carry off a turd are governed by legislative magic and not the laws of physics.

I so, so very much wish I had come up with that last line.....

I just spoke with my Congressman's office

I asked the guy who answered the phone what the Congressman intended to do about the President';s violation of the Separation of Powers and the breaking of his Presidential Oath of Office.

Congressional Aide: "Well, I don't think that's what the President is doing."

Me: "Okay, but aren't there deadlines written into the Affordable Care Act? Dates on which certain steps must be taken and certain things must be accomplished, written into the law, voted on, and signed by President Obama?"

CA: "Yes, that's true."

Me: "Okay, and since those dates were enacted by Congress, and the Act became Law, the President doesn't have the authority to simply rewrite the law, and change those dates to suit his political necessity. The Constitution gives the power to write and edit laws to the Legislature, and tells the President that it is his job to enforce those laws, not rewrite them."

CA: "Yeah, but I'm not sure that's what is happening."

Me: "But that IS what the President is doing. He is changing those deadlines because it isn't popular any more, and he simply doesn't have the Constitutional authority to do that. What happens if a Republican has the Presidency and uses what is happening now as precedent, perhaps saying, 'Oh, I don't think I will bother raising those taxes, even though Congress wrote them to take effect now, I will push them off for a few years because I want to help out the people who helped me get elected'?"

CA: "Well, I don't think you understand that this is how things are done here in Washington these days."

Me: "Oh, so the President thinks that the Constitution doesn't matter anymore? Thanks for telling me." {Click}

"...against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic..." I no longer believe that this government is legitimate. It has violated the Constitution, over and over again, and intends to go on doing so. They have forfeited all claim to my allegiance, and I am going to begin treating them like the hostile occupying power they have become.

Ragin' Dave's Quote of the Day, O LOOK SHINY edition

From Vox Day:

Most "ADHD" is little more than mothers and female teachers drugging little boys due to their inability to behave like little girls.

You can go read the rest of the post.  It's interesting just how much difference there is in both diagnosis and treatment in two different countries.

What Democrats really think of women

Dear women - according to the Democrat American Communist Party, you are nothing more than stupid sluts who only care about cheap free birth control pills, and are too simple to understand complex economic decisions regarding your health care coverage.

You think I'm kidding?  You think I'm wrong?  Look at what they put out for their ad.  WHO ARE THEY TARGETING WITH THAT ADVERTISEMENT?

Young women, that's who.  Because they think you're just a bunch of dim-witted sluts who can be bought off cheap.

You gonna prove them right?

Spot the similarities

Obamacare flaw allows anyone on Earth to fraudulently enroll through healthcare.gov

I got ten bucks says the code was written by the same douche-nozzles who set up Obama's electioneering donations page!

Hmmmmmm, using past performance as an indicator of future actions!  How quaint!  Or, as the Democrat American Communist Party likes to say, "SHUT UP YOU RACIST HATER!  IT'S BUSH'S FAULT!"

The trouble with Atheists

... is that they won't ever quit bringing up God in everything they do.

Now I have nothing against atheists, just as I would have no issue with Flat-Earthers, but simply taking the religious position they do doesn't grant them any sort of moral or ethical superiority. I point out that having a religion does not require a Supreme Being or Deity. Buddhism is the largest such example, with between 350-550 million followers. (The beings known as "Devas" or "Brahmas" are not deities as such, but merely those reborn into the highest planes of existence, having necessarily passed through humanity at some point.)

Now we have atheists sitting around, singing songs that support their religious beliefs in a crowd of their coreligionists, and taking moments of quiet contemplation to begin and end their religious convocations. If it looks like a church, sounds like a church, and talks like a church, it's a church.

My only question is what religious symbol they have atop the spire? And whether they will have the chutzpah to demand tax-exempt status given to churches.

Well, it's kind of veteran-themed

This email making the rounds on the intertubes...

"Putting things in perspective: March 21st 2010 to October 1 2013 is 3 years, 6 months, 10 days.  December 7, 1941 to May 8, 1945 is 3 years, 5 months, 1 day.  What this means is that in the time we were attacked at Pearl Harbor to the day Germany surrendered is not enough time for this progressive federal government to build a working webpage.  Mobilization of millions, building tens of thousands of tanks,  planes, jeeps, subs, cruisers, destroyers, torpedoes, millions upon millions of guns, bombs, ammo, etc. Turning the tide in North Africa,  Invading Italy, D-Day,  Battle of the Bulge, Race to Berlin - all while we were also fighting the Japanese in the Pacific!!  And in that amount of time - this administration can't build a working webpage."

Ragged thots

So CMBlake had up a post regarding Halloween costumes, specifically Captain Spaulding.  If you look in the comments, Lobo posted a little video of the Captain.

I think that's the best stand in for Uncle Sam under the Obama regime that I ever did see.

Unaltered

I've always had a thing for Asian women, ever since I was stationed in Korea.  I saw very few of them with plastic surgery.

Oh, there are always a few who have it, but they're in the minority, especially compared to what I see here in California.

Satori

I have just realized why things are turning to shit so fast.

The greatest generation - those who fought WW2, both on the battlefield and back here at home - were the last generation that had a winnowing of smart versus stupid.Up until the early 1900s, nature and a frontier allowed for that winnowing to occur naturally enough that it was barely noticed. The smart survived, the stupid died off, and the race was continually improved, and we were a nation of pioneers. That gave us the spirit they needed to pass along to their kids (who fought WW1) and their grandkids (who fought WW2).

But when the League of Nations failed and the United Nations outlawed war, that gave the greatest generation and their kids (the Baby Boomers*) and their grandkids (Generation "X" ) the chance to relax and since nature was conquered, and medical science was saving kids from accidents that would have killed them off in centuries past, there was suddenly no serious penalty for being stupid.

The teachers started seeing more stupid kids showing up in the classrooms, and had to learn to adapt until the stupids started becoming teachers themselves. This, perhaps not coincidentally, happened at about the same time as universities were starting to be taught by the baby boomers (the late 70s) and jokes about getting degrees for "underwater basket weaving" happened along to cover up the multiplicity of degree programs in some of the most inane areas imaginable, culminating in the current jokes about "a doctorate in Albanian Lesbian Poetry of the late Triassic".

It has gone from being merely acceptable to be stupid, through enforced association (peer pressure graduation), to being the eagerly sought for "norm" ("Everything I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten").

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity. -- Robert A. Heinlein

But since there has been no natural weeding of the stupid, they have begun to outnumber us, to the point where a majority think that money comes from the government and happiness is a big screen TV.

Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be a documentary.

* - which includes every President since Clinton, and almost every politician in Washington, DC and most State capitals

I read this story...

It was a sob story by some San Francisco residents who have had their insurance cancelled.

San Francisco architect Lee Hammack says he and his wife, JoEllen Brothers, are “cradle Democrats.” They have donated to the liberal group Organizing for America and worked the phone banks a year ago for President Obama’s re-election.
 ....

The couple — Lee, 60, and JoEllen, 59 — have been paying $550 a month for their health coverage — a plan that offers solid coverage, not one of the skimpy plans Obama has criticized. But recently, Kaiser informed them the plan would be canceled at the end of the year because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The couple would need to find another one. The cost would be around double what they pay now, but the benefits would be worse.

My response?

More laugh-a-licious goodness:

I asked Hammack to send me details of his current plan. It carried a $4,000 deductible per person, a $40 copay for doctor visits, a $150 emergency room visit fee and 30 percent coinsurance for hospital stays after the deductible. The out-of-pocket maximum was $5,600.

This plan was ending, Kaiser’s letters told them, because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. “Everything is taken care of,” the letters said. “There’s nothing you need to do.”
The letters said the couple would be enrolled in new Kaiser plans that would cost nearly $1,300 a month for the two of them (more than $15,000 a year).

And for that higher amount, what would they get? A higher deductible ($4,500), a higher out-of-pocket maximum ($6,350), higher hospital costs (40 percent of the cost) and possibly higher costs for doctor visits and drugs.

Lose-lose-lose! WOOHOO!

The wages of feminism

Now apparently include Vaginal Reconstructive Surgery.

Look ladies, I'm about to lay down some serious advice for you, mm'kay?  If you can offer your man something else besides just sex, you don't need to have any doctor take a scalpel to your cooter.

I mean, let's just break down what this surgery means, shall we?  Women, apparently so worried about what men thing of their va-jay-jay, are going under the knife to have plastic surgery on their genitalia in order to make it more attractive to men.

So what these women are saying is that they only important thing they have to offer men, the thing that they are spending thousands of dollars on improving as a way of attracting a mate, is their pussy.

I want you to think about that.  This is what the sexual "revolution" has wrought.   This is the end result of the feminist movement, that supposedly "freed" women from the bondage and slavery of the oppressive patriarchy.  "I'm my own woman!  I'm free to do whatever I want!  And I'm going to slice my vagina in order to get men to notice be, because I'm free from all that silly man-centered stuff!"

Gosh, aren't we all modern and liberated and stuff?

And of course men, freed from their responsibilities of being a husband and a father by a society that tells them they are unimportant and expendable, are constantly offered a revolving course of rejuvenated pussy, which they will use and discard as they wish.  Why bother supporting a woman and kids when you can just get rid of the old, tiresome wench and get a new one?  Yay Liberalism!  Yay Feminism!

Welcome to our world, folks.

The death of the medical system

So, Obama and his flunkies are attacking a cancer patient who's losing her health insurance thanks to Obamacare.  Crap like that is par for the course for the Obama regime, and we shouldn't expect anything less from a group of people who only care about collecting power for themselves.  Hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few million eggs, right?

But here's where it gets even worse for everyone - that cancer patient had a 2% chance of living this far.  TWO.  PERCENT.  And while it's a joyful thing that she's lived this long, it's also extremely important for medical research, because here we have an actual living example of what went right in cancer treatment.  It's a case study.  It's an opportunity to look at how this woman was treated, and apply the concepts to other folks who have cancer to see if we can extend their lives or develop a cure.

And it's not going to happen very often under Obamacare.  In fact, I'm willing to bet that the incidents of people getting the treatment that this woman was getting are going to vanish.  Gone.  Kaput.

And all the knowledge gained will stop as well.

Thanks, Obamacare!

Ragin' Dave's Quote of the Day

From Mostly Cajun:

Doesn't that just explain the Democrat American Communist Party to a "t"...

Cooch de Sarlac

The Ragin' Mrs injured herself while exercising, and she's been on crutches for a little while.  Tonight, we were doing some grocery shopping and a lady who was walking perpendicular to us made eye contact with the Ragin' Mrs, then sped up and tried to cross in front of us.  Normally not a big deal, except that she didn't cross fast enough, and the tip of the Mrs' crutch came down smack dab on the rear of this woman's flip-flop, which came off her foot with a loud *POP*.  It caused the Mrs to stagger a bit until she could regain her balance.

But what really got to me was the fact that the slow-crossing woman threw a bitch-hate glare at my wife before grabbing her sandal and going on her way.

Listen, you self-righteous bitch:  Either slow down and allow my injured wife to pass, or speed up and get the fuck out of our way.  My wife can't stop on a dime.  Nor can she speed up without turning into a pole-vaulter down the store isle. My wife didn't try to get your sandal with the tip of her crutch, she just wants to get to the checkout isle.  So quit your bitchier-than-thou attitude and get the fuck out of our way!

I told the Ragin' Mrs. that the bitch probably needed a good fucking, but no guy in his right mind would touch that woman, given that based on her attitude, her cooch has the strong possibility of possessing the various attributes of a snapping turtle.

Salve Regina

Yeah, I love music like this.

The funny thing about charges of racism

I was just thinking that charges of racism only work to shame those people who are obviously NOT racist.

That is to say, you cannot use the charge of "You're just a racist" against a member of the Klan or any of the 'White Power' skinhead groups. Their likely response? "Yeah. Your point being...?"

It only works to shame people who agree that being a racist is such an abhorrent thing that they should stop saying anything lest they prove the charge true. It does nothing about topic under discussion, except make it okay to use the threat the next time the topic comes up.

Unfortunately for those out there who have used the charge too often, when the first response to any perceived threat is to glibly throw around the charge of "Oh, that's just because you're a racist. You want lower taxes because you don't want a black man in the White House. You don't want the government dictating your health care choices because you're a secret member of the Klan. You think the IRS threatening political groups is wrong only because you hate Muslims. You're just a homophobe for insisting that marriage is the basis of civilization. You're just a H8RXTIANIST for not wanting the EPA to triple the cost of energy. He won and now no one has to pay their rent or phone bills or health care, so SUCKITHATERS."

Which, fuck that. They have overplayed their hand, and the charge is utterly worthless, but only if you call them on it every time they use it. Whenever they make the charge, make them look like fools by making that explicit: "Damned skippy, pal, I hate anyone not in the human race, now answer the question about {whatever topic they are avoiding}." Every time. (Or your own variation, but make it clear that they are making charges solely to avoid answering the embarrassing question. So let's embarrass them.

Things what not to do with your wife

When she models a new hair-style for you, do NOT run up and ask her which finger she stuck in a light socket (complete with a triage check of her hands).

Not a good idea.  Nope.  Not at all.

There are many types of Mantids,

"none of which have laser beams, but all of which resemble what would plop out of a nightmare that farted too aggressively."

I just bust a gut laughing at that.....

Stolen from RNS

How Obamacare Really Works

Yep, that's about right.

!!!!!

Halloween

Used to be one of my favorite holidays.  I'd get dressed up to the nines, even if it was just to hand out candy at the door.  In Wisconsin we'd have hot drinks for the parents as well.

Not so much these days.  The porch light will remain off tonight.  No candy at the Ragin' household.  I think it's just a general malaise brought about by living in this shithole; I really don't feel like celebrating much while I'm stick in this cesspool of failure and despair. 

In any case, I can't really afford to go buy tons of candy right now.  So sorry, kids.  Dave ain't got nothin' for ya.

It is who they are. It is what they do.

Had he been honest with people about anything, nothing would have passed.  Had he been honest about his stimulus, it wouldn't have happened.  Had he been honest about what he intended for the job, the economy, he wouldn't have been elected.  Had he been honest about what he intended in foreign policy, he wouldn't have been elected.  Had he been honest about what's gonna happen to people's health care, he would not have been elected.  What do you mean, you don't know why he lied to people?

Is it an extreme statement to say the Democrat Party has to lie in campaigns?  The Democrat Party cannot be honest about its intentions.  That's why we don't have a federal budget for four years, because the Democrat Party does not want to spell out their policy objectives.  They don't want to spell out what they intend to do with tax increases, the size of government, health care, you name it.  That's why we don't have a budget, pure and simple.  A Democrat consultant wonders why Obama wasn't honest with Americans, and people on our side say it took 'em five weeks after the immaculation to figure out who they're dealing with here?  Man, are we screwed.  There's no other way to put it.

That's from Rush Limbaugh.  This is from Instapundit:

Here’s the explanation: They couldn’t have passed the bill — which barely passed — without lying. So, they lied. And it worked until after the election.

Now, anyone with half a brain knew that the Democrat American Communist Party is, was and will always be a group of filthy worthless liars.  But the people who DON'T have half a brain still allowed themselves to be sucked in to the fantasy that there's a Free Lunch, and that the ProgNazis really truly love this country, and blah blah blah.  Now the lies are on display in such a way that even the half-witted mouth-breathing fucktards who vote for the ProgNazis can't avoid them.  They can only stick their heads in the sand for so long before their asses get kicked by reality.

Time to hammer that reality home, with anyone you can.

I want them to hurt

I want them to hurt so very badly....

'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'

WHO THE HELL DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO PAY FOR IT, YOU STUPID IGNORANT BITCH?!?!?!?!

Human beings learn from two things - pain, and repetition.  Repetition ain't gonna work on the Low Information Voters; that leaves pain as the only method of getting them to learn.  I want them to hurt.  I want all the Democrat American Communist Party voting ignorant dipshits to hurt, and hurt bad. I want them to spend years and years in economic depression.  I want them to feel the pain that they have inflicted on everyone else who actually understands economics and voted against that fucking communist shitheel in the White House.

They need to hurt.  Badly.  For a long, long time.

He calls it a "Tipping Point". I call it a "Death Spiral".

More people on means-tested government benefits than full time workers in America.

This is the natural result when parasites can vote themselves largess from the producer's wallets.  As it was in Rome, so it is in America, with Obama as our Emperor Nero.

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”  -Robert A. Heinlein

This is what you get when you care more about skin color than capability

Moochelle Obama's Princeton pal top exec at company that received no-bid contract for Obamacare website.

Gosh, a no-bid contract for multiple millions of dollars that ends in complete and total disaster?  Where are all the ProgNazis screaming "HALLIBURTON!  CHIMYMCHITLERBUSH!"

Hurting

Due to a combination of something I ate and work I've done, my abs feel like there's an alien about to chew it's way out of my guts.  So pardon me if the posting is light.

If you'd like to waste a couple of hours, go watch this.  (NSFW)

You want to fix health care?

Two VERY SIMPLE things that could be done to cut costs of both health insurance and the additional costs of malpractice insurance for hospitals, clinics and medical personnel (which WILL get passed onto the consumers, e.g., you and me and everyone else).

First, a simple change to malpractice lawsuits: Loser pays. Court costs, attorneys fees for both sides, filings, costs associated with juries, all of it. That will cut down nuisance suits to damned near nothing, because when personal injury lawyers can file a suit over damned near any sort of "pain and suffering" and settling is cheaper than having to pay thousands or millions to fight even the most bullshit of cases. (Remember that case of "I didn't know coffee would be hot!"? Eventually settled while on appeal.)

If the lady who didn't know that hot coffee would be hot had been told up front that she would have had to pay the legal fees for the other side if she lost (because juries can sometimes suffer attacks of common sense), do you think she would have started attorney shopping, hoping for a big payday from a corporation with deep pockets? After all, she had originally only asked for $20,000, to cover both "past and anticipated future medical expenses", and what's 20 grand to a corporation that makes almost a billion in profits every year?

Yeah, I don't think so, either.

Second, allow for insurance companies to spread out. Right now, health insurance companies are operating under a federally-applid restriction to not cross State lines. That means you can get car insurance from a company in a different State, but your health insurance MUST be offered from an insurance company in the same State as you. MUST.

That limits the available pool out of which your company must make up its payouts, and in many small States, there is no real competition. Allowing your health insurance company to widen its pool and spread out the risk allows them to lower the costs for everyone, and the instant competition will drive down prices to truly competitive levels, since every insurance company will be looking to get as many customers as they can by offering better deals, while still turning a profit for its shareholders. Which is, after all, why the shareholders invested in the company in the first place.

The math behind actuarial tables hasn't changed since the time of Hammurabi, so it will also come down to better service, lower rates and happier consumers.

And all by opening up the State borders.

Easy. Simple. "Loser Pays" means lower costs to the providers of medical services, and opening the State borders means lower costs to the consumer of medical services. We save money coming and going.

I know it's wrong

But I can't stop laughing...




!!!!!

Forgetting the Past

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and -- thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”

Robert. A. Heinlein

There are multiple reasons why a majority of Americans today would just look at you and go "Huh?" when you mention the anniversary of the attack in Beirut.  The collective symptoms of those reasons are manifest in the blithering Marxist jack-ass currently infecting the Oval Office.

We've lost the lessons of the past, and now we're going to relearn them in painful ways that could have been avoided.

Two. Just two,

Army's chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno told a Washington conference Monday that the U.S. Army had not conducted any training in the last six months of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. And, he said, there currently are only two Army brigades rated combat-ready. That's a total of between 7,000 to 10,000 troops and less than one-third what the combat veteran regards as necessary for proper national security.
"Right now," Odierno said, "we have in the Army two brigades that are trained. That's it. Two."

That's roughly one-third of the troops we would need to merely defend our own borders. But we have money to waste on 404Care and closing down national monuments?

Burn it down. Scatter the stones, salt the ground then take off and nuke it from orbit.

This bears repeating

Ace pointed it out to me first yesterday, but it still bears repeating.

The Phone Help Line for the 404Care our Democratic Overlords are attempting to ram down our throats was announced by TFG his own self. (Because, of course, the website was a colossal failure.)

1-800-F1U-CKYO.

No, I'm not kidding. (800) 318-2596

Of course, the phone lines crashed soon after his announcement (overwhelming call volume can do that), in yet another stunning display of both Smart Power (tm) and government pre-planning.

And these are the people who claim they know our health needs better than we do?

Listening to Mark Levin

As I was driving around doing errands tonight, and he had a couple of clips of Mitch McConnell on some Sunday talk show, and 'ol Mitch is promising that there will be no more government shut-downs, and golly, we have a sayin' back in old Kentucky about blah blah blah blah.

This is why this country is fucked.  Because the Progressive Anti-American Left doesn't even need to send out their own spokes-holes on Sunday - the GOP does it for them.  And these are the people in charge of the GOP - they're the ones who get to dole out the dollars for election and re-election bids; they're the ones who get to set the course for the party as a whole, and they are wholly, completely and totally given to be quivering, spineless little bitches for Obama and the rest of the Anti-American ProgNazis.

Take a country and culture of pefectionists

And then introduce Catholicism.

And then have them learn Latin Hymns.



I truly did enjoy my time over in Korea.  To this day, the Ragin' Mrs. and I go to a Korean BBQ restaurant every chance we get.

Bela Fleck

Doing Bach





Yes, a banjo.  LISTEN!


!!!!!

This is where Dave's content would normally go

My days right now are like shoving ten pounds of crap into a five pound bag.  Thanks, Drum, for doing the yeoman's work.

Oh Dear Lord

The Dodgers lost, and they're out of the playoffs.

Now I'm going to have to spend my weekend dodging suicidal LA people who downed a handful of qualudes to drown their sorrows before they snorted handfuls of coke to wake up before they got into their cars to drive from where-ever to where-ever.

In other words, it'll probably be just like every other weekend on the roads here.  This place might not be Hell, but you can see Satan's front porch.

Of course he does

And it's not like the courts would actually rely on the plain language used by a bunch of old, white, privileged slave-owners, am I right?

Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to run for President

I mean, he was born in another country and served as Governor of the most populous State, so why not let him serve as President of all 50?

Well, Article 5, Section 2 of California's State Constitution only requires that the Governor be both a citizen of the United States and a resident of California, for the five years preceding the election.


The United States Constitution is a little more stringent. Article 2, Section 1, Paragraph 5:

No person except a natural born Citizen, ... shall be eligible to the Office of President;

Arnold was born in Austria, so that rules him out. Of course, given that the courts have repeatedly ignored the plain language of the Constitution on multiple occasions, I wouldn't be in the least surprised. And he's been thinking about it for a while, it seems...

Columbia University Law School professor Michael Dorf, an expert in constitutional law, said about the Governator’s case in 2007, “The law is very clear, but it’s not 100 percent clear that the courts would enforce that law rather than leave it to the political process.”

Oh, one other thing. If you cannot run for President, you cannot run for Vice-President*, either, although there have been numerous Senators and Representatives, and even Cabinet members who were foreign-born. (If disaster strikes, and they have to start figuring out who the senior Executive Department Secretary is, they would just skip over who is ineligible.) So he could get to attend meetings in the White House, and maybe even stay overnight a few times, but he won't get to live there...

* - Last sentence of the 12th Amendment: "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."

I've liked Jeff for years

so I tend to stop by his site a few times a day, even when he isn't posting, just because the comments are so great.

But he posts a wonderful link that will help us keep track of exactly what the Federal Government is doing. To you and I, and everyone we know, if you wanna be picky about it...

I'm not on Facebook, but I imagine a few of you are... Enjoy

One minor quibble is something that geoffb points out:

Instead of the poor guy having to go hat in hand asking for his debt limit to be raised, he simply writes a new debt limit amount on his contract himself and if the bankers can’t all agree to cancel it in a few days then it becomes the new limit.

Rinse, repeat, as needed until the walls fall down

Instead of the poor guy having to go hat in hand asking for his debt limit to be raised, he simply writes a new debt limit amount on his contract himself and if the bankers can’t all agree to cancel it in a few days then it becomes the new limit.
Rinse, repeat, as needed until the walls fall down
- See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51586#sthash.AskiwoO9.dpuf

Instead of the poor guy having to go hat in hand asking for his debt limit to be raised, he simply writes a new debt limit amount on his contract himself and if the bankers can’t all agree to cancel it in a few days then it becomes the new limit.
Rinse, repeat, as needed until the walls fall down
- See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51586#sthash.AskiwoO9.dpuf

Instead of the poor guy having to go hat in hand asking for his debt limit to be raised, he simply writes a new debt limit amount on his contract himself and if the bankers can’t all agree to cancel it in a few days then it becomes the new limit.
Rinse, repeat, as needed until the walls fall down.
- See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51586#sthash.AskiwoO9.dpuf

Instead of the poor guy having to go hat in hand asking for his debt limit to be raised, he simply writes a new debt limit amount on his contract himself and if the bankers can’t all agree to cancel it in a few days then it becomes the new limit.
Rinse, repeat, as needed until the walls fall down.
- See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51586#sthash.AskiwoO9.dpuf

Instead of the poor guy having to go hat in hand asking for his debt limit to be raised, he simply writes a new debt limit amount on his contract himself and if the bankers can’t all agree to cancel it in a few days then it becomes the new limit.
Rinse, repeat, as needed until the walls fall down.
- See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51586#sthash.AskiwoO9.dpuf

For all the bluster

It turns out that the Obama Administration is nothing but a bunch of software pirates, after all...

They were using a piece of software that was actually FREE to use, so long as the copyright notice was included in the page(s) where the software was to be used. Not hard, and it is quite easy to post such notices, especially when it's just a case of copy-and-paste.

But NNNNOOOOOoooooooo... they actually DELETED the copyright notice. But, in their infinite knowledge of how we should be doing things, they left in the internal comments that allowed the company to prove that the software is theirs.

Yeah, these yahoos should be handed control of our most private lives... the parts that are so private, it is actually one of the four protected classes of communication (husband-wife, priest-penitent, doctor-patient and lawyer-client). So private, that doctors are actively protected from having to report anything they learn from patients while testifying.

Until ObamaCare, that is.

Burn it down. Scatter the stones.

How long?

Okay, this one will be a little math-intensive, so you can skip it unless you want to skip down to the end, just to see how boned we truly are.

Okay, as of the writing of this column, the running National Debt is $16,963,909,000,000 ($16.96 trillion) dollars.

If we were to suddenly stop borrowing and started spending a million dollars per minute - every minute, round the clock, round the calendar, 24/7/365 - on paying off the principal amount (the interest is handled as a separate expense, so we are just talking about the principal), how long would it take to pay off that amount?

A million dollars every minute x 60 minutes in an hour x 24 hours in a day x 365 days in a year = 525,600 minutes (which is where the song title from "Rent" comes from, btw) x $1,000,000 per minute = $ 525,600,000,000, or $525.6 billion per year. Divide into the number above, and we get... (drumroll, please)

32 years and 14 weeks.

That'a more than a generation... That long ago, Diana Spencer was walking down the aisle at St. Paul's Cathedral to meet Prince Charles... Ronald Reagan had just nominated the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court... The Space Shuttle had celebrated its first space mission...

That's if we stop borrowing NOW and start paying it off at $1 million/minute. Slower means longer. Not stopping makes it worse.

What cannot go on forever, simply won't.

To make it even easier

Let's see if we can make the First Amendment a little simpler to understand

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 Simplest terms, brass tacks and bottom line, that means that the Government cannot tell you

1) what to think
2) what to say
3) who to say it to.

They cannot tell you, force you, or coerce you in any of your most personal beliefs, nor can they prevent you from giving voice to those beliefs, and they don't get to decide who you hang out with in order to discuss those beliefs.

They can limit conduct, especially if there is a clear and present danger of harm, and remember that a Democracy has the right and authority to fight back against actions that can harm it (pity the Weimar Republic didn't learn that lesson).

Lots of court cases have defined what limits can be placed on certain dangerous expressions (shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater, so-called "fighting words", intimidation, etc.), but absent the clear harm or threat of harm to another, the government does NOT get to tell you what to believe, what to say (or print out), and who your friends are. Those most basic of tenets must be defended.

And if it is a case of my neighbor trying to build a church on his property that crosses over our shared fence line, I would expect the police and courts to limit his expression insofar as it infringes upon my own rights, using force if necessary.

But what if it is the Government that is doing the infringing upon those rights? What fallback position do we have in those cases?

Relax, that's the next Amendment. Our Founders had just used all those "hunting tools" to kick out the most powerful Empire on the planet at that time.

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. -- Justice Alex Kozinski, Ninth Circuit Court, in his dissent to Silveria v. Locker

and
 

The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government - even the Third Branch of Government - the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges' assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. -- Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the 5-4 majority in District of Columbia, et al., v. Heller (2008)

Glendale Boy

Becomes youngest African-American Eagle Scout.

Good on 'im.  Making Eagle Scout is hard.  Doing it by the age of 12?  Unreal.

You want to know what the biggest help for him was?  I spotted it pretty early.

His name is James Hightower the Third.

His father's name is James Hightower the Second.

His mother's name is Lucretia Hightower.

Stable nuclear families produce good kids, as a rule.  Both his parents are active as Scout Leaders, based on the shirts they were wearing for the interview.  A nuclear family, setting good examples, produces good kids.  Eagle Scouts.  Leaders.

Now, compare this family to a majority of the EBT crowd that freaked out yesterday, and hazard a guess at how many of those folks come from families where they all share the same last name?

The Progressive mind in one paragraph

From a comment by Vox Day at his blog.

Phony is clearly one of the rhetorical crowd. He literally cannot learn from new information. That's why "Shut up, Tad" and "Go away, man talk" are valid responses for people like this. They simply have no ability to change their minds on the basis of information, they only change their minds in response to their changing emotions.

Phony will not change his mind on the subject unless someone he recognizes as his authority tells him to do so, and then he would very likely deny that he ever believed otherwise.

Doesn't that just perfectly capture how Progressives process information?  You can explain reality to a Progressive all day long.  You can point out the inherent flaws in their arguments.  You can use logic, reason, deductive reasoning, facts, numbers and statistics, and yet after explaining reality to a progressive you're met with "YOU'RE RACIST!" and they walk away convinced that they're the smartest people on the earth while you're a knuckle-dragging racist red-necked sister-humper.

Facts do not penetrate a Progressive brain.  Which is why they can look at Obama and call him their God, King and Savior, even while the economy tanks, American influence abroad is reduced to tatters, the military is being turned into a gutted, hollow shell of it's former self, our enemies act without any fear, and our former allies use the knives we've shoved into their backs to begin to severing ties to us.  Because you're racist.  And it's Bush's fault.

Seen all over the Conservative side of the web

Because it's that damn good.

A vet still serving his country by giving the barrycades back to the anti-American clown who ordered them put up around the WWII Memorial.

The pic is already going viral.  I'm just helping it along.

Yep

So much awesome in one piece, I don't know what to quote:

But the president who slept through the Benghazi massacre once again forgot that our military is not just an agitprop. Our soldiers really do put their lives on the line, and lose them — as did the one marine and four soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan last weekend. That made it all too real. When bereaved families were suddenly denied death benefits by our government, there was no hiding the fact that the commander-in-chief had, yet again, abandoned those who’d made the ultimate patriotic sacrifice. What’s more, this dereliction was nothing more than crass political calculation — or, as it turned out, miscalculation.

Public anger erupted and even the Associated Press courtiers were reduced to reporting a sharp drop in the president’s approval rating. Congressional Democrats scrambled and a superfluous, face-saving death-benefits law was enacted so the White House could try to pretend the president now had payment authority he’d previously lacked. Administration lawyers continue to mumble about how, though Obama felt really terrible about it, the perfectly clear POMA had been “too vague” to help military families in their time of need.

You know, there’s also a 1996 law on the federal books that makes it a felony to provide material support to terrorists. It’s not vague. In fact, it’s clear as a bell, according to the many federal courts that have applied it in sentencing scores of jihadist-abettors to hundreds of years in prison.

Don’t you find it strange, don’t you think the public at large would find it strange, that in a shutdown Obama has instigated in order to enforce the Obamacare law Americans don’t want, he so skews the rest of our law that his administration says we can fund al-Qaeda but we can’t fund the families of our war dead?

 Read The Whole Thing.

And in the 'Let Them Eat Cake' Department

That scrunt currently using up taxpayer funds on a staff larger than her husband (because we all know that being the First Baby Mama entitles her to a full household of personal servants) has managed to reach an incredible height. Or should I say "depth", since we ARE talking about TFG and his baby mama?

Turns out she is in a bidding war with Kate Moss (yes, THAT Kate Moss) for the services of Adele (yes, THAT Adele) to perform at her upcoming birthday party. The last time Adele was asked to perform at a private function (a wedding), she was asking for £100k a minute (roughly $160,000 - or TFG's entire goddamn annual salary for hearing a single rendition of "Rollin' In The Deep", just to make it clear how much we are talking about).

To sweeten the deal and beat out Kate Moss (who can easily match The FBM's taxpayer-backed checkbook), she has offered to "let her sing alongside Beyonce".

No word on whether Beyonce has to be paid to hang out with The FBM, too, but my question is "who, exactly, will be paying the millions of dollars to a pop star for the entertainment of someone who was, in fact, NOT elected to anything at all?"

Or is it going to be a fundraiser, with tickets on sale to the 1%?

Depths, indeed.

£100k a minute

£100k a minute

£100k a minute

Freedom of the Press does not refer to an occupation

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In no other respect is any other single profession granted special protection under the Bill of Rights, so why would anyone try to argue that someone who claims to be a "Member of The Press" gets something special out of the Constitution? Members of the clergy don't claim that they get special legal protections, even if legal precedence has caused the de facto status.

When the Founders first started arguing about the Bill of Rights, it was their intention to protect the freedom to express opinions. There are several different ways to overtly express an explicit idea, but the two main ones were most in need of protection - either through speaking or by writing it down. The new printing press had managed to start giving the colonists a means of expressing ideas to people who might not be present at its conception and evolution (say, around drinks at a tavern one night), and who would come along later to read the broadsheet pinned up in the public square. And it was the freedom of using your speech to express an idea, or to use the [printing] press to express it.

It was all about expressing the idea, not whether the person was paid to express it. Think of the two different levels of damaging another's reputation, slander and libel. The only difference between the two is whether the damaging expression was spoken aloud or written down and handed around. It's the same with the "Freedom of Speech, or of the Press" (which is exactly how it is phrased - see above), and should give a clue to what the Founders meant when they wrote it down the way they did). The lack of a semi-colon shows that it is part of the same clause, and part of the same thought.

Your right to express an idea, and the reach of that expression is entirely dependent upon your assets. If all you have is a soap box on a corner, then the only ones who hear your ideas will be the people who wander by during the length of your speech. If you happen to have access to a TV network or high-volume blog, you can have hundreds of thousands of people, or even possibly millions, (or merely hundreds if you're MSNBC) see what you have to say every day, and that is perfectly legal. You don't have to belong to any kind of specific union to be able to print out something and hand them out on street corners. And you don't have to have a special ID card just because your printing is actually appearing on a laptop monitor in a Starbucks halfway around the world. It is the expression.

So the next time someone starts saying that one must be an accredited journalist to have protection of that Freedom of the Press, let them know the truth.