erp's new blog

A Feel Good Story

2017-11-12T17:21:00.000-05:00

There are a group of cat people who try manage feral cat populations around town. They do so on their own time and their own dime.

Yesterday, a friend called to ask if I knew anybody who speaks Russian or Polish because there’s a large feral cat colony behind a nearby subsidized housing complex where there are a number of people who only speak either Russian or Polish who are trying to prevent them from them from trapping the cats. They are apparently afraid the cat people want to take them away. They lavish a great deal of affection on the kitties and actually cook treats for them.

I don’t know anyone who speaks Russian or Polish, but I know how to use Google translator and here’s what I gave him.

ENGLISH:

We want to help your cats.  We take them to the vet to have them neutered and then return them to you.

Please help us.

RUSSIAN:

Мы хотим помочь вашим кошкам. Мы берем их у ветеринара, чтобы они были кастрированы, а

затем возвратили их вам.

Пожалуйста помогите нам.

My khotim pomoch' vashim koshkam. My berem ikh u veterinara, chtoby oni byli kastrirovany, a zatem vozvratili ikh vam.

My khotim pomoch' vashim koshkam. My berem ikh u veterinara, chtoby oni byli kastrirovany, a zatem

vozvratili ikh vam.

Pozhaluysta pomogite nam.

POLISH:

Chcemy pomóc twoim kotom. Zabieramy ich do weterynarza, aby ich wykastrować, a następnie oddać je tobie.

Proszę, pomóż nam.

Very early this morning when the cat people went to feed the feral cats, my friend met them there.  Some

old women were there screaming as usual, however, this time she had the translations on her phone and

held it up so they could read it.  The ladies’ eyes lit up, they hugged her and each other and were brimming

over with suggestions in broken English and sign language.

On the way back to their cars, one of the cat ladies was distraught because the vet won’t work on any more

cats until they pay the $200 owed him and they had no idea where to get it.  Our friend handed her an

envelope containing precisely that amount and she literally bursts into tears.  He assured her they could count

on us if they need help in future.

Such a small thing yet a bunch of innocent kitties give so much love and happiness to a bunch of displaced

old ladies living in public housing -- perhaps reminding them of home.

Sure makes me feel good to be able assist the big guy in sky in his mysterious ways .

erp reading Mein Kampf

2017-04-18T13:33:00.001-04:00

Chinese New Year Gift

2017-02-19T11:25:00.001-05:00

Some of my answers may not be universally accepted as correct. :-)

1. Which can move faster heat or cold? HEAT

2. What can hear you without ears and can answer you without a mouth? ECHO

3. What kind of water should people drink in order to be healthy? AQUAVIVA

4. What man cannot live in a house? CAVEMAN

5. What is the smallest room in the world? MUSHROOM

6. A mouse has a large pocket. What is it? BLACK EYE

7. How do we know the ocean is friendly? IT WAVES AT US

8. What two words have thousands of letters in them? POST OFFICE

9. What is wind? HEY, THIS IS A FAMILY BLOG - NO VULGARITY

10. What starts with T, ends with T, and is full of T? TNT

11. What can be measured, but has length or width or thickness? TIME

12. What is too much for one, just right for two, but nothing at all for three? A BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO

13. Where did Columbus stand when he discovered America? ON DECK

14. What rises in the morning and waves all day? FLAG

15. What kind of man can raise things without lifting them? FARMER

16. How many feet in a yard? DEPENDS ON MANY CREATURES ARE THERE

17. What can you break with only one word? OATH

18. What kind of dog doesn’t bite or bark? HOT DOG

19. What month do soldiers hate? MARCH

20. What full of holes, but can still hold water? SPONGE

21. When is your mind like a rumpled bed? WHEN IT’S NOT MADE UP

22. What building has the most storage? A PLACE WHERE BATTERIES ARE MADE

23. Why is an empty purse always full? “I GOT PLENTY OF NOTHING”

24. What is it that everybody does at the same time? AGE

25. What building has the most stories? LIBRARY

26. What book has the most stirring chapters? COOKBOOK

27. It has a head, but no neck, it has a body, but no warmth, no feet, but can travel? BEER

28. Where can milk be best stored? TEAT

29. When do you go as fast as a racing car? WHEN YOU’RE DRIVING ONE

30. What 5-letter word has 6 left when you take 2 letters away? SIXTY

Abandon All Hope ...

2017-01-20T19:02:00.002-05:00

Not so fast

Apparently, we've been given another chance.

Today my husband and I stood in front of our TV and toasted our new president.

All day long I've been in a state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion.

Alcohol doesn't agree with me, so part of it could be that, but I think it's more the jolt that came from realizing that perhaps, and it's certainly not a sure thing, my grandchildren can live in the United States of America I knew and loved so much.

Update: Spike Lee, Humanitarian Extraordinaire, talks trash.

Adapter Video

2017-01-15T13:35:00.002-05:00

Islam and the West

2015-11-15T11:19:00.000-05:00

Looking over some of the posts below, I found many many links are broken, so I'm copying and pasting whole articles instead of just links in this post on Islam and the West.

First up is this from Red State:

A Timeline of Islamic Expansion in the Dark Ages

By the Sword Dan McLaughlin (Diary) | May 22nd, 2013 at 05:59 PM |

Let me put down here some facts that are worth returning to from time to time, as arguments over the history of Islam and Islamism are back in the news with today’s beheading in London. In debates over the history of tension between Muslims and Christians, the Crusades are often cited, out of their historical context, as the original cause of such clashes, as if both sides were peaceably minding their own business before imperialist Westerners decided to go launch a religious war in Muslim lands.

This is not what actually happened, and indeed it is ahistorical to treat the fragmented feudal states of the West in the Eleventh Century as capable of any such thing as imperialism or colonialism (although, as Victor Davis Hanson has noted, even in the centuries after the fall of Rome, Western civilization retained a superior logistical ability to project force overseas due to the scientific, economic and military legacies of ancient Greece and Rome). Moreover, when Islam first arose, much of what we think of today as Islamic ‘territory’ in Anatolia, the Levant and North Africa was Christian until conquered by the heirs of Muhammad, such that speaking of one side’s incursions into the other’s territory requires you to ignore how that territory was seized in the first place. That entire region had been part of the Roman and later Byzantine empires, and was culturally part of the West until it was conquered by Muslim arms – Rome is closer geographically to Tripoli than to London, Madrid is closer to Casablanca than to Berlin, Athens is closer to Damascus than to Paris.
All that said, it’s worth remembering that the Crusades arose in the late Eleventh Century only after four centuries of relentless Islamic efforts to conquer Europe, and the Christians of the Crusading era cannot be evaluated without that crucial context.

It’s somewhat hazy to identify the genesis of the first battle between the Byzantines and Islamic forces, which probably took place around 629 at the Battle of Mu’tah, before Muhammad had even completed the conquest of Mecca; the first sea battle between Muslim and Byzantine forces took place a few years later. The fall of Mecca in 630 solidified Muhammad’s control of the western side of the Arabian peninsula, and Muhammad died in 632. A decisive Muslim victory at the Battle of Ajnadayn in 634 spread Muslim control into modern Israel. Between 634 and 689, Muslim forces conquered Christian, Byzantine-held Syria and North Africa.

Starting in the middle of the Seventh Century, when Islam was still mostly united under a single political entity, you begin to see Islamic incursions into Europe (including Constantinople, which was effectively one of the leading European cities at the time) – and from there, the conquests and attempted conquests marched on. If you look on a map over this period, you see an almost continuous line of advance on Europe from all sides but the north – from Spain and France in the west to Italy in the center to Constantinople in the east to the frontiers of Georgia in the Caucasus, with the islands of the Mediterranean on the front lines:

650-54: Muslim conquest of Cyprus.

652: Muslim Invasion of Sicily begins.

674-78: First Siege of Constantinople, repelled with the invention and deployment of “Greek Fire.”

711-18: Muslim Conquest of Spain, which would not be reconquered completely by the Christians until 1492.

717-18: Second Siege of Constantinople.

719: Muslim invasion of France begins, establishing Muslim control of the Septimania region of southwestern France.

732: Battle of Poitiers (Tours); Charles Martel halts Muslim northward march into central France.

736: Muslim Conquest of Georgia, where the Emirate of Tbilisi would hold sway until 1122.

820: Muslim Conquest of Crete, which would be held until 961.

827: Muslim Conquest of Syracuse in Sicily.

846: The Muslim Sack of Rome by troops landing at the port of Ostia, including the sack of St. Peter’s Basilica while Pope Sergius II and the helpless Roman garrison retreated behind the city walls.

847: Muslim Conquest of Bari in southern Italy; the Muslim presence on the Italian peninsula proper lasted 25 years. In 915, at the Battle of Garigliano, Pope John X personally led an army against Islamic forces in southern Italy

863: In a rare break from the pattern of this era, the Byzantines go back on offensive, with mixed results over the next 200-300 years of warfare.

902: Muslim Conquest of all Sicily. In 965, an independent Emirate of Sicily would be established lasting until 1091.

1048-1308: The Byzantine-Seljuk Wars, yet another continuation of the mutual, longstanding efforts by the Byzantines and their Islamic neighbors to conquer each other’s territory. In 1071, the Battle of Manzikert would prove the first of a series of decisive engagements (followed by the 1176 Battle of Myriokephalon) that gradually wrested Asia Minor from the Byzantines, converting it from a Christian land to a Muslim one and isolating the remaining Byzantine presence to the immediate surroundings of their historic capital of Constantinople.

And, of course, Islamic efforts against Europe and the West would continue well after the Crusades, from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the naval incursions finally stopped at Lepanto in 1571 to the epic Seige of Vienna in 1683 (which in turn was followed by another century of bloody wars between the Ottomans and Hapsburgs).

As has often been noted, the early history of Muhammad as a military leader and Islam as the driving force of conquest is quite different from the early history of Christianity as the persecuted faith founded by a non-violent martyr, and these differing foundations have presented different challenges for Christian and Muslim thinkers dealing with questions of war, peace, and the defense of self and others. That said, none of this is intended to demonize Muslims as uniquely violent in the Dark Ages. Aggressive wars of conquest were the rule throughout the world in those centuries, and have become only fitfully less so into our own age.

But the Crusades did not originate in a vacuum; they were launched in a world where the Roman Empire, the guardian of Western Civilization, had fallen to outside invaders 600 years earlier and European Christians had been on the defensive ever since. The Europe that would stand astride the non-Western world into the middle of the Twentieth Century was still distant in the future. The fearful and divided Christian principalities of 1095 had grown up in a world where Islam, not Christianity, had been the engine of imperial expansion for long before living memory.

Virtually nobody in the West and/or what passes for Christendom today argues that violence can or should be justified on the basis of things that happened a thousand years ago. The insistence of Islamist propagandists on revisiting such ancient history for present-day propaganda purposes should be resisted – but it should also be subjected to the corrective of accurate history. And that history is one in which Muslims carried the sword to Europe for centuries before Christian armies took the Crusade to them.

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Next from Israel Science & Technology

What is Palestine and Palestinians?

In recent history the area called Palestine includes the territories of present day Israel and Jordan (see map above.

For earlier history of the term see article). From 1517 to 1917 most of this area remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

Ottoman Empire was dissolved at the end of World War I. Its successor, modern republic of Turkey, transferred Palestine to British Empire control under the Lausanne agreement that followed WW I.

In 1917 Great Britain issued the Balfour Declaration for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". In 1922 Britain allocated nearly 80% of Palestine to Transjordan. Thus, Jordan covers the majority of the land of Palestine under British Mandate. Jordan also includes the majority of the Arabs who lived there. In other words, Jordan is the Arab portion of Palestine.

The residents of Palestine are called "Palestinians". Since Palestine includes both modern day Israel and Jordan both Arab and Jewish residents of this area were referred to as "Palestinians".

It was only after the Jews re-inhabited their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria, that the myth of an Arab Palestinian nation was created and marketed worldwide. Jews come from Judea, not Palestinians.

There is no language known as Palestinian, or any Palestinian culture distinct from that of all the Arabs in the area.

There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. "Palestinians" are Arabs indistinguishable from Arabs throughout the Middle East. The great majority of Arabs in greater Palestine and Israel share the same culture, language and religion.

Much of the Arab population in this area actually migrated into Israel and Judea and Samaria from the surrounding Arab countries in the past 100 years. The rebirth of Israel was accompanied by economic prosperity for the region. Arabs migrated to this area to find employment and enjoy the higher standard of living. In documents not more than hundred years, the area is described as a scarcely populated region. Jews by far were the majority in Jerusalem over the small Arab minority. Until the Oslo agreement the major source of income for Arab residents was employment in the Israeli sector. To this day, many Arabs try to migrate into Israel with various deceptions to become a citizen of Israel.

Even the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat himself, is not a "Palestinian". He was born in Egypt. The famous "Palestinian covenant" states that Palestinians are "an integral part of the Arab nation" -- a nation which is blessed with a sparsely populated land mass 660 times the size of tiny Israel (Judea, Samaria and Gaza included).

All attempts to claim Arab sovereignty over Israel of today, should be seen with their real intention: The destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and the only bulwark of the Judeo-Christian Western civilization in the Middle East.

Additional Resources:

by Howard Grief

The True Identity of the So-called Palestinians

The History and Meaning of "Palestine" and "Palestinians"

The Jewish Claim to The Land of Israel and the origin of the term "Palestine"

What is a Palestinian Arab?

The Arabs in Palestine

Palestine Facts

Who cares about Palestinians?

Do the Palestinians Deserve a State?

The territories: To whom do they belong? (Hebrew with English subtitles).

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Correction:
Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.

A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you Really need.

Here we go:

The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians."

As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."

So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death."

I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters." Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living.

That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course --that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel.

Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it -- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something.

It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mid east. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one.

Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five Million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches,Everyone will be pals..

Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.

My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the Numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not.

Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea?Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children?

Disgusting.

No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.

I understand that with vital operations in Iraq, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of super models who've just had their drugs taken away.

However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11th our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.

If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan.

Please feel free to pass this along to your friends Walk in peace! Be Happy!

Have a wonderful life!

The Smirk & the Jerk

2014-07-29T17:12:00.002-04:00

A smirking president has the speaker right where he wants him.

Sure would like to know what they have on the poor jerk.

THE NEW NORMAL

2014-07-22T20:15:00.001-04:00

UPDATE: Feds paying $7,000 per month to house adult illegals!

Check this out.

It’s a partial list of where the Obama Kids are being sent all over the country.

Some are being sent to the broken down strip mall pictured above about 30 miles from here in Daytona Beach, Florida -- along with almost three million of our dollars.

Here’s a Google Map of the area.

FTA 2014 Daytona Beach, FL – 1 facility – Neighbor to Family [Residential and Transitional Foster Care] Address: 955 Orange Avenue, Ste M DAYTONA BEACH, FL 32114 HHS Grant $2,727,525.

Foster families to get $6,000 per month per kid.

Perhaps that’s why the governor of Maryland changed his mind about taking some of them. I sure wouldn’t be surprised if the lion’s share of those payments weren’t “redistributed” to Democratic pols.

That might take care of the underage “refugees” who make up only 15% or so of those coming into the country via the modern version of the underground railroad, but what about the criminals and gang members who make up much of the rest of our uninvited guests?

They’ll add to the mix of violence and lawlessness we’re more and more willing to accept as the new normal.

Connecting the Dots

2014-06-16T09:43:00.000-04:00

Got a brainstorm this morning.

A lot of the world is in turmoil while the president spends the weekend in Palm Springs with his decorators (not hyperbole, his actual decorators).

Then it hit me, he's already resigned and moving on to the next phase in his life.

He has a multi-million dollar beach front compound in Hawaii his commerce secretary bought for him and where better than Palm Springs for their mainland vacation home. There'd be no lack of willing and grateful cronies waiting in the wings to make it happen -- ditto one of those fabulous New York penthouses, just in case the UN calls.

Just a matter of timing before the people running him and the rest of us release the details -- probably when they declare martial law and blame it all on Obama who will be glad to take the rap since neither he nor his beautiful beard care about that boring stuff and their going away package will be very very generous, enough to keep their mouths closed even from the grave.

After a very short period of public contrition, our boy will be back in game with no end of prestigious appointments, maybe even UN secretary to keep him globe hopping and basking in the glow of teleprompters for decades to come.

It will also leave the field open for Michelle to become the first female president, especially if Biden names her VP.

Maybe I should send the script to Hollywood before Denzel Washington gets too old to portray him.

We. the People

2014-05-02T11:31:00.000-04:00

From the WSJ a bleak look at what's in store for all of us non-elites if Obama's insurance scam isn't overturned.

In my opinion, there's an even bleaker scenario in the works if they pull off what they really want: Single Payer.

One thing I can attest to from personal experience, many, if not most, of the physicians we know are retiring -- even those well below retirement age.

Private practitioners can't pay their bills anymore.

GOLD 2.0

2013-12-23T14:09:00.000-05:00

From Breitbart's, Big Government:

Bitcoin is the name of a group of peer-to-peer payment networks that serve as an open-source form of digital currency that was originally introduced in 2009 by a software developer with the alias of "Satoshi Nakamoto.” ... The value of Bitcoins and gold are rooted in their rarity, ease of handling, and inability of government to destroy its store of wealth. All paper currencies have lost a percentage of purchasing power each year, because government printing of more money acts as a tax on accumulated wealth. The emergence of Bitcoin virtual currency has created a powerful competitor to the dollar that will limit Congress and the Federal Reserve’s effectiveness in fostering inflation to tax away wealth. Welcome to the real full-faith of Gold 2.0

This is such a good idea I really want to believe it's not a scam. In fact, it reminds of when the first inklings of the internet started. Both my older kids work at universities thousands of miles apart, one in France, the other in Connecticut and many many years ago would communicate with each other somehow on their computers. At that time, I thought what a great idea that would be for all of us, but I didn't have the foresight to predict that it would completely takeover our lives as it has ... and best of all, without any "help" from our or any other government.

Reading some of the comments, however, makes me uneasy because it might be just Soros et al. duping investors into selling their material investments in gold, silver, oil, etc. for something that only exists in the ether.

I'd really like to think that the crony capitalists have been outsmarted.

Bezos & the Washington Post

2013-08-08T08:28:00.000-04:00

I’m about to place an order with Amazon and am wondering if I should start looking for alternate convenient ways to shop.
I don’t care what Bezos does with his billions. He’s smart, saw a market and made his services indispensable to lots of people, me included.

What bothers me A LOT is the need for secrecy???? People told not to talk about the sale.

My order won’t even make a slight blip at Amazon.com which employs a staggering 97,000 people!

What do you think?

Over-reaction?

The New Jackie Robinson Movie

2013-04-04T10:28:00.001-04:00

Mrs. Obama has been reported as saying the movie made her mad.

I say that the reason the movie was made at this time is to make everyone mad and foment the kind of racism that Jackie Robinson did so much to erase.

It's a tribute to him and many others with varied levels of melanin that white on black racism has declined to such a low level that even with the media colluding to sensationalize non-racial incidents like the Zimmerman/Trayvon tragedy or manufacture racism as in the non-existent racial slurs against congress-critters at a tea party rally, it is now probably statistically zero.

As a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and a childhood resident of the nearby New York City borough of Queens, my friends and I were frequently in the bleachers during games at Ebbets Field. I saw Jackie Robinson play many many times although to be truthful, we girls were mostly there to see dreamboat Duke Snyder out in center field.

Robinson personified affirmative action -- he got the job because he was absolutely the best ball player I ever saw. Grace in motion. He suffered a lot personally and it's painful that his efforts have now been reduced to agitating the unwashed so that the worst, not the best's interests can be served.

In a comment below, Bret says he believes we'll weather this downturn and keep our freedom.

I so wish I could share is optimism.

U.S.S. of A.

2012-11-07T09:48:00.002-05:00

I woke up this morning in a place I never imagined could ever exist -- my country turned on its head from free to a dictatorship led by the worst elements of the world socialist conspiracy.

I tremble for my grandchildren.

What Socialism Has Wrought

2012-08-26T14:14:00.000-04:00

Detroit!

This is the inexorable result of left wing policies allowed to run amok and it's coming to all our neighborhoods should we continue to elect the elites who are more than willing to trade middle class life styles for their lofty ideals.

... and it's looking to me more and more like it will happen too.

Yesterday we went to see 2016 Obama's America.

I was very suspicious because it was given wide distribution even by the big chains like Regal who are solidly in Obama's charmed circle and my fears were proven to be correct.

It may have been that initially the Obama camp was distrustful, but after focus-grouping, they realized, as I did, that it presents Obama in a very sympathetic light, repeats many of his best moments from 2008 on screen including adoring supporters and children singing.

D'Souza was embarrassing. He continually injected his life in junxtaposition with Obama's (they born, married, etc. in the same year) and compared his feeling about colonialism with those of Obama, Sr., etc. As if any, but a handful of voters know or care about colonialism or what an Indian immigrant has in common with the half Kansasian/half Kenyan occupier of the White House.

The great revelation was at the end, a boring white guy, sorry his name and credentials didn't register, revealed that IHO the debt would reach 20 trillion by 2016.

Gadzooks!

People at the showing we attended were shaking their heads in disbelief as we walked out. With all the stuff just waiting out there for somebody to connect all the dots, we get this foolishness from somebody who looked very much like the cat that swallowed the canary.

SURPRISE!

2012-08-20T13:23:00.000-04:00

It's not your health Obama cares about.

Now that the post office is no longer necessary, we can turn all those buildings into medical facilities and keep the post office union people working.

They don't know anything about health care sez you?

So what, sez the prez!

They vote for me and that's what counts.

IT AIN'T ROCKET SCIENCE

2012-07-15T19:03:00.001-04:00

Hayek taught, freedom and the rule of law drive prosperity.

Via City Journal, The Road to Recovery, by John B. Taylor

... As Hayek would insist, we need to be careful about what we mean by economic freedom. The basic idea is that people are free to decide what to produce, what to buy, where to work, and how to help others. The American vision, as I explain in my book First Principles, held that people would make these choices within a policy framework that was predictable and based on the rule of law, with strong incentives emanating from a reliance on markets and a limited role for government. Historically, America adhered to these principles more than most countries did, a major reason why the nation prospered and so many people came to these shores.

To quote Tom Lehrer, "It's so simple, so very simple, even a child could do it."

... Government policy has largely caused these problems.

Yes indeed, yet people who should know better, are buying into the notion that government is able to solve these problems which in my opinion, they not only don't want to solve, they are actively causing one crisis after the other to terrify people into giving over to them total control of their lives.

HYPERBOLE?

2012-07-08T15:28:00.000-04:00

I think not.

For some time now, I've opined that if it looks like Obama will not be re-elected through the usual leftoid methods of buying votes and voter fraud, more pro-active measures will be applied, i.e., orchestrating crises followed by canceling the election and/or instituting martial law.

Naturally this has been met with, at best, cat calls and harrumphing, but now comes a real glimpse that they're getting set to use these measures . . . from the The White House Press Office comes an executive order on the subject, entitled, "Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions."

No doubt, only the first of the many E.O. in our future setting the stage for the unspeakable to perpetrate the unthinkable.

A Thousand Apologies ...

2012-06-26T10:57:00.000-04:00

for ever doubting that Artificial Intelligence could be the equal of, or even surpass human intelligence, but this article showing that man-made machines like to watch cat videos clinches for me.

We. are. not. alone.

I wish the article had told us which cat videos the Google brain likes best. Below are links to vignettes of the life of Henri, the Existential Cat, my favorite online puss. I laugh out loud everytime I watch these even though I've seen them many time.

Henri 1

Henri 2

Henri 3 [Warning comes with embedded Obama campaign ad???]

Watch Henri 3 here if you don't want to watch the Obama ad embedded in the youtube link above. I can't figure out how to get rid of it!

Must they taint everything in my life!!!!!

WOW!

2012-06-18T10:44:00.000-04:00

Finally someone said like it is and whadda you know, it turn's out, it's it a girl, Deirdre McCloskey who did it. :

... The master narrative of High Liberalism is mistaken factually. Externalities do not imply that a government can do better. Publicity does better than inspectors in restraining the alleged desire of businesspeople to poison their customers. Efficiency is not the chief merit of a market economy: innovation is. Rules arose in merchant courts and Quaker fixed prices long before governments started enforcing them.

I know such replies will be met with indignation. But think it possible you may be mistaken, and that merely because an historical or economic premise is embedded in front page stories in the New York Times does not make them sound as social science. It seems to me that a political philosophy based on fairy tales about what happened in history or what humans are like is going to be less than useless. It is going to be mischievous.

How do I know that my narrative is better than yours? The experiments of the 20th century told me so. It would have been hard to know the wisdom of Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman or Matt Ridley or Deirdre McCloskey in August of 1914, before the experiments in large government were well begun. But anyone who after the 20th century still thinks that thoroughgoing socialism, nationalism, imperialism, mobilization, central planning, regulation, zoning, price controls, tax policy, labor unions, business cartels, government spending, intrusive policing, adventurism in foreign policy, faith in entangling religion and politics, or most of the other thoroughgoing 19th-century proposals for governmental action are still neat, harmless ideas for improving our lives is not paying attention.

... Lots more wow.

... Yes, I know, you want to reject all these factual findings because they are “right-wing” or “libertarian.” All I ask you to do is, once in a while, consider. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.

CALL IT WHAT YOU WILL

2012-06-12T10:37:00.001-04:00

Thomas Sowell via The American Spectator: Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom.

If every school child and adult citizen of the U.S. read and understood this article, sanity and propsperity would return to our fair land.

THE PASSIVE TENSE

2012-04-30T16:14:00.001-04:00

I'm a big fan of the English language coming upon it as I did suddenly and without warning in the first grade. I make no claim to expertise, but I do try to follow some of the simple rules the nuns taught us in grammar school.

The first rule was use words so that anyone reading them would immediately understand your meaning. I smile when I think how innocent I was then. I couldn't know that in my dotage, I would be outraged by professional semantists doing exactly that.

From an article in the New York Post via Ace:

... that was lost along with nearly 3,000 lives when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11.

Color me cranky.

and PS: I hate Blogger's new format.

Say Goodnight, Gracie!

2012-03-18T15:54:00.003-04:00

One way or the other, the socialists in power will stay in power. If they can't win fair, they'll win foul, if that doesn't work, they'll just grab it and We, the People, be damned.

From the essential Canada Free Press:

This Executive Order was posted on the WhiteHouse.gov web site on Friday, March 16, 2012, under the name National Defense Resources Preparedness. In a nutshell, it’s the blueprint for Peacetime Martial Law and it gives the president the power to take just about anything deemed necessary for “National Defense”, whatever they decide that is. It’s peacetime, because as the title of the order says, it’s for “Preparedness”. A copy of the entire order follows the end of this story.

Dropping like flies

2012-03-05T09:42:00.003-05:00

If Only ...

2012-01-02T10:16:00.001-05:00

Per the Washington Post:

GOP’s election battle plan: Use Obama’s own words against him.

GOP officials in Washington are quietly and methodically finishing what operatives are calling “the book” — 500 pages of Obama quotes and video links that will form the backbone of the party’s attack strategy against the president leading up to Election Day 2012.

...

One Obama quote will be featured prominently: In 2009 he said on NBC’s “Today” show that if he could not fix the economy in three years, “then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

Maybe the stupid party finally wised up.