I had half a slab of ribs; Mom had fish. She enjoyed the fish; I loved the ribs and wish I'd gotten a full slab. Their BBQ sauce is the best I've ever tasted. Their cole slaw should be a bigger portion but its size is typical of how places dole the stuff out around here and it's really good, too. (Most places make it too sweet. This place puts horseradish in it, just enough for flavor.)
Oh man, that was some damn fine food.
* * *
Mike Flynn quotes Teddy Roosevelt's autobiography.
Later I discovered that Bill in a fit of playfulness had held up the Northern Pacific train at a near-by station by shooting at the feet of the conductor to make him dance. This was purely a joke on Bill's part, but the Northern Pacific people possessed a less robust sense of humor, and on their complaint the United States Marshal was sent after Bill, on the ground that by delaying the train he had interfered with the mails.Damn it I love that mode: the incredibly dry, ironic recitation of the events is what makes this account funny.
Just remember: the only person who could possibly ever stand up to Chuck Norris (other than God Himself) is Theodore Roosevelt. And Chuck knows if he ever gets too big for his britches, old Teddy will come back and kick his ass until his britches fit again.
Doubt me? Read the whole thing. You'll understand.
* * *
A snowmobile converted into a trike. Okay, that's cool.
* * *
It turns out that the guy up in Canada who has all those neat and insane car vids on YouTube has a sex offense dating to 1992. He went to jail and served his time, and reportedly has not comitted any similar crimes since.
I think I agree with many of the commentors at that thread: the guy screwed up, he served his time, so WTF, let him be.
* * *
Francis Porretto has a "midweek rumination" up and it's worth reading.
* * *One of the most critical pieces of information Western politicians have always tried to bury under the rug is the fact that the barbarism committed by Muslim radicals has involved diverse ethnic groups of Muslim fundamentalists, from India to Israel to Indonesia to Spain to England etc… According to Mr. Hal Lindsey, an expert who wrote several books on the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, “this reveals that there is a cohesive source that motivates all of them to commit such atrocities…The cohesive core of Islam that continues to inspire its long history of violence is the Koran and the sayings and actions of Muhammad himself”.The author of that astonishingly candid statement goes on to cite a selection of the more than 150 hatred, deceit, and violence-inciting verses of the Qur'an in support of his thesis -- all of them beyond the ones I'm forever citing, at that.
The deficit this year will be $1,300 trillion, the second largest in history, behind only last year's deficit.
I know what will happen. Next year, the mainstream media will be awash in stories about how "the deficit for 2010 was unexpectedly higher than originally estimated...." or something similar.
Count on it.
The CBO said, "Growth in the nation's output since mid-2009 has been anemic in comparison with previous recoveries that followed a deep recession, and the unemployment rate has remained quite high." Someone tell the CBO that THERE IS NO RECOVERY which is why the unemployment rate has remained high.
* * *
It'll be interesting to see if the Obama administration doubles down on Obamanomics. I'm betting they will. So far the President has not seen a failed socialist idea which he has not loved too much to part with.
* * *
Og posts an interesting defense of people who use their phones while driving, and I think he makes an important distinction.
If you look at the driving habits of people you can pretty well seperate their behaviors by age demographic. The younger a driver is, the more likely he is to take stupid chances (I say "he" regardless of sex because that's proper fuckin' English) and to think he's the best driver on the road, when in fact he's the absolute worst. "I've never had an accident!" WTF, you're nineteen; you've been driving for three years at most. That's not impressive; that's just luck. I'll be impressed when you're fifty-nine and have never had an accident while doing all the stupid shit you do. Until then, stay away from me.
Example: the thing I mentioned in passing a few posts back, about the girl changing her tampon while driving.
Example: one time when Mom and I were going to Indiana for her monthly cigarette run, there was a 20-something driving a van behind me, and he was texting while driving. He had his forearms on the steering while and the device in both hands; I could see it clearly in my rear-view mirror. His speed control was for the birds; first he'd tailgate, then drop way back, then catch up with me again. His lane positioning was pretty bad, too, varying left and right. He was obviously paying too much attention to the mobile device and not enough to driving, which is the wrong way to do things. Let's say a deer had run out in front of me; would he have seen me slowing down before he rammed me? Fortunately, I didn't have occasion to find out. But it was luck, not skill.
Counterexample: Og doing business while sitting in traffic. I used to drive to Oak Brook/Bensenville from the south suburbs every damn day (50 miles each way) and I've sat in the traffic on 294. You sit; then you crawl; and then you sit some more. Plenty of time to fire off a short e-mail.
* * *
Big Dick discusses a violation of the Fourth Amendment by TSA.
TSA started searching her wallet, "looking for razor blades", and:
Two Philadelphia police officers joined at least four TSA officers who had gathered around her. After conferring with the TSA screeners, one of the Philadelphia officers told her he was there because her checks were numbered sequentially, which she says they were not.She should have replied, "Officer, kindly tell me what basis you have for making that statement." The checks were made out "to her and her husband" which means it is her money; if her name was on the check, even as part of a list of names, then it's hers.
"It's an indication you've embezzled these checks," she says the police officer told her. He also told her she appeared nervous. She hadn't before that moment, she says.
She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. "That's my money," she remembers saying. The officer's reply? "It's not your money."
"An indication you've embezzled these checks"?
This kind of thing is too damn prevalent. TSA's business should extend only to ensuring that people are not bringing weapons or explosives aboard aircraft; EVERYTHING ELSE should be beyond the pale for them.
WTF, cops aren't allowed to inform INS of illegal immigrants, so why should TSA be required to inform cops of anything unrelated to their bailiwick?
TSA is nothing but security theater anyway. It's preparation for 9/11/01. Which, you know, already happened.
* * *
Boortz talks about the utterly predictable consequences of ObamaCare which plenty of us on the right actually predicted.
Only we were told that we didn't know what we were talking about, that of course ObamaCare wouldn't do those things, and that everyone was going to get first-class care and no one would have to pay more for it, and it was all going to lead to America becoming a nicer place where people would just care more
...only the death panels have started, and costs are going up, and care is being rationed, and employers are planning to make changes to their insurance policies, and-and-and: everything the right predicted is coming to pass.
You know, it's not because we're smarter nor is it because we have a crystal ball which lets us see the future that we could predict these things so accurately and with such confidence. We already knew what would happen because have this thing called history which we look at, and all the times that socialized medicine has been tried it has never, never, ever worked the way its proponents said it would; and in fact the things we predicted that ObamaCare would do were merely the results which have always come from socialized medical plans.
* * *
The imam behind the GROUND ZERO MOSQUE is apparently just as much a savage barbarian as the rest of 'em.
Big surprise.
* * *
Indeed we do:
Republicans used to have the brand of fiscal conservatism. That brand of Republican won the most electoral votes in history just 26 years ago. It took over the House of Representatives, for the first time in forty years, just sixteen years ago. With majorities in Congress, it cut capital gains tax rates, ended welfare, ended the byzantine farm program, cut federal spending to its lowest level since 1966, and ran surpluses -- just ten years ago.Republicans win elections every time they run as conservatives, yet the Republican leadership is dead set on being "Democrat Lite":
We want that brand of Republicans back.
If we want expanded entitlements, more government programs, macro-economic tinkering, more federal government intrusion into education, agriculture, energy, etc., we will vote Democrat. We don't need Republicans for that. That is the Democrats' brand; let them have it. What we need is someone to oppose all that.Exactly as I have been saying time and again right here.
* * *
"They said I was good; I thought they said 'great.'" The line from a Kansas song comes to mind:
Obama suffers from a lifetime of others excessively praising his intellect. It insulates him from ideas and facts that conflict with his pre-existing liberal rubric (so “every economist” believed his stimulus would work). It leaves him unprepared to engage in real debate with informed opponents (e.g. the health-care summit). It skews his understanding of how geopolitics works, as he imagines that his own wonderfulness can sway adversaries and override nations’ fundamental interests (the Middle East). Is he as well read as George W. Bush? As intellectually creative as Bill Clinton? As grounded in history as Harry Truman?That's Obama for you.
* * *
All sorts of swearing here. But it makes a good point:
I am...sick and...tired of being told that not wanting to be taunted for the most vile attack on our country in my lifetime is somehow "bigoted'. I am really...sick and...tired of being told that "hate" is what motivates me.Sorry; I'm the only one who gets to use lots of swear words in posts. I just decided on that rule. Since the Fungus is a (largely) benevolent dictatorship, and I'm the editor-in-chief as well as the janitor of this place, I get to decide that. Ha ha.
...but this guy has it right: the GROUND ZERO MOSQUE (fuck you, AP) is just the muslim world taunting the US. It's nothing but a celebration of their "victory" over us. Fuck 'em with a industrial shredder.
I just found this blog, Doubleplusundead, thanks to a link from Ace of Spades, and after I read that one post--one post--I added him to the blogroll.
"In defense of hate". Good writing, good reading.
* * *
Moron.
If you want to learn anything, you need three tools: language, mathematics, and history. Without those three tools, you're not going to learn a damn thing. Particularly if you want to learn anything that's truly useful.
"I wish to one day be in the area of IT," says the idiot. "Yes knowing about Egyptians, World Wars and the Stolen Generation can help me reach that, Go school!"
...I'm being generous with the punctuation of the dialogue tag. In fact, it's all one big run-on sentence.
You don't just go to school to learn a trade, unless you're attending a trade school. A good education doesn't just teach you how to do useful things; it teaches you how to use your brain to best effect. And you can't do that if you don't know language, mathematics, and history.
History is vital to any well-rounded education because if you learn about the mistakes which were made in the past, you are less likely to repeat them.
Besides that, history teaches us that people are still the same now as they were 10,000 years ago. People living in our modern world are not fundamentally different from the people of ancient Eqypt; only the culture and technology are different.
Look at the Roman Empire: the only thing they didn't have that we do is machine power. They had mass communication; they had fast food; they had running water and indoor plumbing. (Strangely enough, our Ruling Class is now making some of the very same mistakes made by the Ruling Class of Rome.)
Nearly all the history I know is self-taught; I learned it because I was interested in learning other things and found I needed to understand the history to understand those other things. Most of the history I was taught in school was useless pap disguised as history.
Example: "The Civil War was over slavery." Yeah? That's what the winning side thought; that's certainly the way the liberal establishment wants the conflict framed--but isn't the losing side's perspective important in order to have a true understanding of what happened and why it happened? Slavery was the defining issue, but the conflict truly arose because the federal government was trying to do an end-run around the 10th Amendment. The South thought the federal government was being tyrannical, hence the secession. The real explanation of the Civil War is a lot more complex than just "it was over slavery". It's kind of like saying WW2 was fought "over the Jewish question".
I don't know how old the facebooker who wrote that idiotic post was, but it sounds like someone from high school. *sigh*
* * *
...my stomach didn't stay happy very long. Now it's a scant three hours since dinner and I'm hungry again. WTF, low fat spare ribs? Who could see that coming? And I ate plenty of the french fries!
Well, I hadn't eaten anything since 2 AM; going from 2 AM to 5:30 PM is a bit long. (I did have some Slim-Fast, but that is not food. I wonder if it's actually helping me lose weight, or what.)
Anyway, the next task is to go get me some new freaking glasses. I've only needed new glasses for approximately forever, but the current pair lost a nosepiece and that's finally prompting me to get off my duff and go do it.
...so that's tomorrow afternoon's task. *sigh*