Homeless people are outraged!

Homeless people are outraged that McDonald's has raised its prices forcing them to find dining resources elsewhere. This really distressed me until one of my favorite TV commercials came on.

American Exceptionalism

During his public life, Barack Obama has often referred to his biracial background and itinerant childhood and has said, "In no other country on Earth is my story even possible." True.
But earlier this year, while attending the European summit of the Group of 20 major economic countries, the president was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism. He replied, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
Not exactly the way Mr. Reagan would have answered.

Good article from The Washington Times.

Stardate 5997

In an unprecedented move, newly elected President Bloooorg-Smeel blames our economic woes on George Bush. We must research who this "George Bush" was - it must have been before the great exodus from Earth.

Levin on the Tea Party (Modern and History)

Mark Levin gives his view on the Tea Party movement and how it relates to history.

He's Always Been A Big Fan

Yet he's a bit weak on any names. Guess they didn't air the games in Kenya.

David Barton's U.S. Capitol tour.

They want you to somehow forget how this country was made. They especially want you to forget how important Christianity was to the founding of this country. They want you to believe not only will we be "just fine" without religion, we'll be better off without it. I do not agree.



From Moonbattery.

Etymology of terms

Sometimes I wonder where the hell terms come from. Here are some recent examples of my wonderings.

Vaudeville:  The origin of the term is obscure, but is often explained as being derived from the expression voix de ville, or "voice of the city."

The term vaudeville, referring specifically to North American variety entertainment, came into common usage after 1871 with the formation of Sargent's Great Vaudeville Company of Louisville, Kentucky. It had little, if anything, to do with the Comédie en vaudeville of the French theatre. More here:

Numerary:  is a civil designation for persons who are incorporated in a fixed or permanent way to a society or group: regular member of the working staff, permanent staff, or member, distinguished from a supernumerary.

The term "numerary" and its counterpart, "supernumerary," originated in Spanish and Latin American academy and government; it is now also used in countries all over the world, such as France, the U.S., England, Italy, etc.

I was reading something the other day and came across this numerary word.  It made me think of my days in the army ... when we pulled guard duty they would put all the guards in formation and do an inspection.  The guy with the highest marks (best shined boots, brass, etc etc) was designated as the "Supernumerary."

Supernumerary: is an additional member of an organization. A supernumerary is also a non-regular member of a staff, a member of the staff or an employee who works in a public office who is not part of the manpower complement. Thus, a supernumerary could be an extra member or a temporary employee in addition to the permanent staff, or permanent members of a society

The supernumerary was then relieved of his duty and all he had to do was sit around and watch tv for the 24-hour duty call ... unless one of the other guards got injured or otherwise incapacitated, in which case the supernumerary would take over.  Anyway, I always wondered where that term came from.  Half of me thought the mucky-mucks were making it up or had an inside joke with it or something.  I never cared enough about it to look it up.

I did make supernumerary a time or two during my stint. One of the tricks was to ensure you didn't have any loose threads on your uniform ... particularly where your name tag or unit patches etc were sewn on your uniform.

Propeller recorded with a cell phone camera?

Hey, remember how stupid Bush was?

Of course you do ... and if you ever forget, the media will still remind you once in a while (if they ever take a break from telling you how stupid Sarah Palin and the Tea Party People are.) While Bush was in office, every time he made a mistake was an opportunity for the media to point it out and say how stupid he was.

Anyway, in case you didn't know, Obama just had the oval office remodeled (I guess it was really in bad shape so we had to spend a kazillion bucks to take care of it.)

A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.

President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.

Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama.

Just add it to the list of "If Bush had done it...."


An excerpt from a DrewM post over at the Ace of Spades blog::

I took the pic from This article at the Washington Post (where there are more pics.)

The Tea Party Is The Enemy - GET THEM!! GET THEM!!

Soros and the foundation left have launched a website designed to go after the growing Tea Party movement. Teapartytracker.org will post video interviews and blog entries gathered by folks on the false left who never grow weary of demonstrating their outrage over the very idea of a grassroots political effort overthrowing establishment Democrats and Republicans in the district of corporate criminals.

Teapartytracker.org will be sponsored by the NAACP, Think Progress, New Left Media and Media Matters for America. Think Progress is a George Soros operation connected to John Podesta’s Center for American Progress. Podesta is Clinton’s former chief of staff. Media Matters for America is the brainchild of a MoveOn consultant and Podesta’s Center for American Progress. Soros is a major supporter of MoveOn.

More here:

Yes, those GD Tea Party people.  What do they think they're doing trying to oust the communists Democrats?  Why are they trying to stop the government from running up the debt even further?  Why do they want to stop the coming hyper-inflation (or, now that I think about it, deflation might even come first.) What do they have against the government telling us what kind of toilets & light bulbs we can use

One thing's for sure, George Soros has determined that the Tea Party people (that is to say ... YOU) are the enemy.

There's another thing too.  Aren't all these groups "non profits?"  I thought non-profits had to be non-partisan to get the tax exemption, didn't you?  Why doesn't the IRS investigate these groups to ensure they meet the requirements?  Too busy investigating Sarah Palin and the rest of those "right-wingers?"

Seriously folks -- we need to gain control of this government and start throwing every disgusting communist jackass out on the streets.  People like this have been  squirreled away inside our government  as bureaucrats and they can't be fired.  Therefore we just need to start eliminating "agencies."

Those hysterical Iraqis

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi reality television program broadcast during Ramadan has been planting fake bombs in celebrities’ cars, having an Iraqi army checkpoint find them and terrifying the celebrities into thinking that they are headed for maximum security prison.

The show “Put Him in [Camp] Bucca” has drawn numerous protests but has stayed on air throughout the fasting month, broadcasting its “stings” on well-known Iraqi personalities.

All of them were ensnared by being invited to the headquarters of the private television station Al Baghdadia to be interviewed, but en route to the station a fake bomb would be planted in their car while they were being searched by Iraqi soldiers, who were in on the deception.

The unwitting celebrities are then secretly filmed, Candid-Camera-style, as they reacted with shock, disbelief and anger as fake checkpoint guards shout abuse at them: “Why do you want to blow us up?” “You are a terrorist.” “How much did they pay you to do it? You will be executed.”

The celebrities protest that they know nothing about the supposed bomb, that they are innocent and honorable Iraqi citizens, only to be told, “We have caught you red-handed, with the bomb in your car.”

More here with actual dialogue::

So THIS is what this song is about

I've heard friends sing snippets of this song before but I'd never heard the original song.

This guy makes a critical point

fri pins

Are you dead yet?

From CIACH... sorta.

Stephen Hawking is smarter than I previously thought.

In his new book, he concludes that, "The Big Bang was the result of inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the universe". Your first question should then be, "Okay, but just who do you think created the inevitable laws of physics" and you'd be astute for asking.

However, while the MSM tends to trail off after reporting this tidbit, Mr. Hawking elaborates.

In June this year Prof Hawking told a Channel 4 series that he didn't believe that a "personal" God existed. He told Genius of Britain: "The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can't understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science 'God', but it wouldn't be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions."

Aha! A man of science begins to understand God.

At the risk of condescending*, I'll elaborate. I have been aware for decades that God is not a white bearded old man in the sky. Unfortunately for me but by design, my human pea brain is not capable of fully understanding just exactly who or what God is.

I realize that some people of some religions insist that there was a time when God spoke to people directly and definitively but those days are long gone. I suspect it's because God got tired of wasting his breath. That said, I still believe that God still speaks to all of us but we're just not very good listeners. I see God's messages in sunsets and thunderstorms and in myriad other venues. You can argue that I see what I seek and I won't argue. Stephen Hawking sees God's messages in physics. The more I understand God, the more complicated God seems to be.

This paraphrase from the Gospel of St. Thomas sums it up for me: "His kingdom is in you and all around you. Lift a stone and you will find me. Split a piece of wood and there I am."

Nevertheless, leave it to the idiotic Lefty media to use this as an opportunity to poke a stick in the eyes of the religious out there with headlines like these:

"Bad News, Religious People: Stephen Hawking Says God Didn’t Create the Universe" 

 -New York Magazine.



Or

"Somebody's Going To Hell! Stephen Hawking: 'God Not Necessary For Universe To Exist'

- Geekologie

The good news is that there are people out there with skills of comprehension so poor that they make me feel like a genius by comparison. The bad news is that they have no idea that they're wrong, nobody bothers to tell them they're wrong, and there are people who read only the headlines and then "share" their knowledge with friends at cocktail parties and then are mystified why things seem to suck so badly.



More of the article here.

*"condescending" means talking down to people.

Shoe comes off at 0:06

I never tire of people deshoeing themselves the the most artistic way possible. It seems that any severe impact is all that is needed to cause one or more shoes to go flinging off someone's foot or feet.

Another Palin-bashing article surfaces.

From Newsbusters (it's well worth the read but I've only included a small bit of the article on this blog for the sake of simplicity).

Another day, another media hit piece aimed at Sarah Palin. Surprise, surprise.

A 10,600-word article in the October issue of Vanity Fair reads like the rambling diaries of a spurned middle school student. Writer Michael Joseph Gross ran through a list of ill-sourced, hearsay attacks on Palin designed to depict her as a raging psychopath - a far cry from the down-to-earth "hockey mom" she portrays in public.

But in more than 10,600 words, Gross managed to cite just one person to criticize Palin on the record. Colleen Cottle, who served on the Wasilla City Council when Palin was mayor, complained that she "had no attention span" and "does not understand math or accounting." Heavy-hitting stuff, that.

The article continues for several more paragraphs and while I was reading it, I had to ask myself the question, "Why does the left hate Sarah Palin? " At first, I thought it was along the same vein as the Right verbosely despising President Obama but I quickly realized that they're able to specifically and definitively list the reasons they hate him and these reasons are based in fact. The same is not true of the Left's hatred for Mrs. Palin.

Pictured at left is a classic example of those who love to hate her. I'm not going to speculate on the sexual orientation of the gentleman pictured to the left. I will say though that his choice of attire doesn't do him or people like him any favors when it comes to being readily accepted by the rest of society. We all make choices... it's just that some of us suck at it.

Allow me to list the reasons I think explain the Left's overt hatred.

1. Let's face it- Libs don't care who wins as long as they're on the winning side. They'd rather be able to control the winner but they'll take what they can get. If she runs, she's going to get elected and if she gets elected there won't be any way in hell for Libs to credibly claim that they "secretly" voted for her.

There's a Snapple commercial wherein a doofus makes a slogan proposal in a board room and only after his idea is accepted by his peers does a woman at the table whisper to the gentleman next to her, "we're dating". This is classic Lib behavior- only claim allegiance if you know they're going to win... or better- if they've already won. If Sarah Palin wins, no self-respecting Lib will be able to claim they were with her all along. Painfully, Libs aren't self-respecting so the rest of us will have to watch the aftermath. Nevertheless, they'll fight the possibility of her getting elected tooth and nail until the inevitable flip-flop.

2. Libs hate powerful, feminine women. Libs think the two are mutually exclusive... unless you're a celebrity. In that case, they love you. The reason for this is that if you're a celebrity, you really can't be taken at all seriously and in the event that you say something with which the Left disagrees, they can cut you loose without much ado. Misogyny is pervasive in the Lib collective mind so it's much easier to tolerate a woman like Hillary Clinton than one like Sarah Palin.

3. Libs hate the fact that she's popular among people who aren't beholden to anyone. She has the freedom to do what the people want rather than what a political party wants. Sure she's a Republican but she's acting like an Independent... a very popular, very successful Independent. She may not be particularly eloquent and she may not be particularly sophisticated, but she's certainly honest and she certainly has good judgment and she certainly has disdain for dishonest, sneaky people. Obviously, Libs despise people who have these qualities because they'll not only succeed, but also tend to undo all of the evil work the Libs have done all along.

As I write this, I'm watching a news story on the actual article. Surprisingly, all of it is negative. All of it iterates and reinforces what the article said. The author of the article finished his interview with "I spent 3 weeks in Wasilla... so..." and we all know what it means when someone finishes a statement with "so..."  He might as well have said, "I didn't really say anything as definitive or convincing as I thought it would sound before I said it so you're on your own to complete my thoughts".

A T-shirt I like.

I'm not one to hawk wares in which I don't have a vested interest but I want to bring this most excellent shirt to your attention. I came across it through an advertisement on another web site and figured, why charge them for further advertising when I can give it away for free?

Here it is. Do with it as you please:

Get one here.

Hubris

The Resolute Desk was built from the timbers of the HMS Resolute and was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes. It is considered a national treasure and icon of the presidency. Mr. Obama, with all due respect, get your damn feet off our desk.

More info here.