Saturday, April 30, 2016

Western Europe incapable of seeing its future because it denies its past

Hungarian President Viktor Orban: “Therefore the Hungarians, unlike Europe, are able to define where they came from, where they are and where they are heading. By contrast, Europe denies where it came from and is reluctant to admit where it is heading …”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7oCXPb2Iw

Link at http://gatesofvienna.net/

Hungarian government exists for protection of its citizens, Orban says.

Government isn’t doing enough to prepare us for … something really bad

‘Experts issue terrifying warning about the threats facing our species and warn that governments simply aren't prepared to combat them’

“The rise of robots and deadly viruses are among the threats that could wipe out swathes of humanity – but governments are failing to prepare properly for them, a new report warns.

“Catastrophic climate change, nuclear war and natural disasters such as super volcanoes and asteroids could also pose a deadly risk to mankind, researchers said.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/science/apocalypse-way-scientists-fear-asteroids-7850630

Link “The End Is Near,” http://thezman.com/wordpress/

Key words: “experts,” “new report,” “researchers.”

I read all of the Z-Man’s column, but not more than four paragraphs of the Mirror story. Some people get money from being a “researcher” and issuing “a new report” that calls for “governments” to become more involved. I guess maybe I am jealous because I never got any of the money and did not publish gloom and doom and warn the public: “The sky is …” BOINK!

The greatest beer run ever

He heard some guys from the neighborhood were thirsty. In Vietnam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4WAUmyKDq0

Link at http://blog.xbradtc.com/

More than half a ton of Roman coins found buried in Spain

“Construction workers repairing water pipes in Seville, southern Spain, have discovered 600kg of ancient Roman coins, covered with dirt and dust. The find is said to be worth at least “several million euros.”

“Tens of thousands of bronze coins, dating back to the third and fourth centuries, were found inside 19 Roman amphoras in the town of Tomares near Seville, El Pais reported.

"’This find is extremely important,’ Ana Navarro, head of Seville’s Archeology Museum now looking after the find, told
El Pais. ‘It is a unique collection, and there are very few similar cases,’ she added.”

https://www.rt.com/news/341324-roman-coins-spain-tons/

(Ms. Navarro is a fine practitioner of understatement.)

“’I could not give you a monetary value, because the value they really have is historical and you can’t calculate that.’”

(Oh, I’m certain somebody can calculate the modern value. And will. And did in an earlier paragraph.)

Link at http://neveryetmelted.com/

You have to wonder: Why did someone bury that many coins? Who deposited the coins? Maybe the jars were not buried by the owner, but by time.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Flying cars, jetpacks and robot kitchens

Not bloody likely.

“The robot future imagined by our overlords is nothing like that glorious future sold to my grandmother in newsreels. Her glorious future was a great time to be alive. American would be free from the mundane to conquer the world. The robot future sold today is sterile and joyless, a great time to take advantage of the suicide kiosk at the mall. The great minds of our age say the future is pointless. Instead of a singularity, it will be a nullity.” – ‘The Automat of the Future’

http://thezman.com/wordpress/

In the days of B&W only TV, NBC’s Dave Garroway hosted a 90-minute Sunday afternoon program called Wide, Wide World. One episode had a segment on the future semi-driverless car, in which the family (Dad, Mom, Sis and Brother) got into their comfortable, transparent-roofed automobile for a cross-country trip. Dad droveto the four-lane highway, and then automation took over, and the family members were free to discuss events of the day, as well as literature and classical music, with no fear of road rage drivers, since all other vehicles also were on automatic pilot. I don’t recall any 18-wheelers or smoke belching cars on the road. No. It was the future, where such did not exist.


Thursday, April 28, 2016

SECNAV: It ain’t gonna happen! Unless it happens

“I will never lower standards,” Mabus said during an April 12 town hall at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California. “Let me repeat that: Standards will not be lowered for any group! Standards may be changed as circumstances in the world change, but they’ll be changed for everybody.”

http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=65486

The Vikings are coming

Longship left Tuesday for America.

“The America Expedition is mind-bogglingly ambitious. Captain Björn Ahlander and a crew of 32 damn hardy men and women selected from 4,000 applicants have embarked on a voyage of 6,000 miles that will taken (sic) them to Iceland, Greenland, through the iceberg fields of the North Atlantic to Newfoundland, then to Quebec City, Toronto and into the US via the Great Lakes. The first US port of call will be Fairport, Ohio, and then on to Tall Ship festivals in Bay City, Michigan, Chicago, Illinois, Green Bay, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota. Then it will head back east again through the Great Lakes, the canals of New York State to the Hudson River. Yes, a Viking longship will be going through canal locks. The sail is coming down for that part, obviously. After a stop in New York City in September, the Draken Harald Hårfagre will winter at the wonderful Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut.”

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/41830

No word on whether Ragnar Lothbrok is part of the crew.



Signs of pending demise

CNN bottom streamers this morning contained two items further reinforcing the idea we are on a downhill slide and that we might be past the point of change.

First item said the governor of Tennessee had signed legislation saying therapists do not have to take on as clients persons who state they are lesbian, homosexual, bisexual or transsexual. The ACLU immediately said the law placed religion as judge of a psychiatrist’s or psychologist’s or counsellor’s decision making. So what? Are Christian or Muslim or any other therapists right now required to take atheists as clients? Must a therapist of declared religion take as a client an admitted child abuser?

Does the ACLU believe the Federal Government has the authority to tell psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors which persons to take as clients? Well, of course. Government knows best. As long as it agrees with the ACLU.

The second streamer said the NCAA advised states that any attempt to gain a national collegiate sports venue must be accompanied by proof of protection from anti-LGBT laws. One bathroom for all, one would imagine from recent news.

We are done.

A headline that demands the response: So?

‘Foreign Policy Elite Unimpressed With Trump Speech’

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/experts-unimpressed-donald-trump-foreign/2016/04/27/id/726147/

Photographs of Mid-19th century India

https://www.1843magazine.com/culture/the-daily/india-in-sepia

Link to page says images were of things “most Indians of the time wouldn’t have recognized.” The publication should remember that the photographs were not produced for Indians.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

I’ll see your 14-shot Glock and raise you an 1859 Walch 12-shot percussion revolver

“The Walch Navy 12 Shot Revolver Of 1859 is quite a strange cap and ball revolver. It has six cylinder chambers, two hammers, two triggers and fires twelve shots.

“How is that even possible? Well, each cylinder chamber is loaded with two loads. Yes, that is a ball and powder over another ball and powder. The ignition system is farther forward in the chamber for shot number one so that fires first. After that, the second charge is ready to shoot.

“This really rare cap and ball revolver had limited success and was quite a worry if the back charge fired before the front one did.”

http://www.wideopenspaces.com/take-a-look-at-the-rare-walch-navy-12-shot-revolver-of-1859/


Hot tub conversation

After water aerobics, the women often sit in the clubhouse hot tub to warm up after an hour in the cool pool.

A couple of days ago, my wife said, one woman said, “I’ve heard that people eat squirrel. Can you believe that?”

Several expressions of “Yuck” and such followed.

My wife said, “I’ve eaten squirrel.”

“You have?” and “Really?” and “You have eaten squirrel?” followed.

“Yes,” my wife said. “I’ve had squirrel stew and squirrel dumplings and squirrel head soup.”

Oh, my goodness, she might as well have dropped a Baby Ruth in the hot tub.

Squirrel head soup!!?”

When the exclamations from that sort of petered out, someone said, “And possums. I’ve heard people eat possums.”

More expressions of disbelief.

My wife said she had eaten possum. “In fact,” she said, “some of my relatives had possum for Thanksgiving.” She then said, “They had turkey, too, but the possum was part of dinner.”

That’s the way it was with poor people in rural Arkansas and other parts of the South way back when. Possum and squirrel might be considered “ethnic food” these days, consumed only by black people who otherwise would go hungry.

Nope. Squirrel and possum were food for poor blacks, whites and Southern Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and etc. Wherever there was poverty, you would find squirrel stew and baked possum.

Northern folk always seem proud of their blood sausage (yuck), but frown when considering squirrel and possum?

My wife also told the Northern ladies, “You had to eat carefully, though, so you didn’t bite down on lead shot.” She also had to explain what shot is.

I had squirrel dumplings when I was 5 years old, at my mother’s parents’ house. They warned about the lead shot. I found two.

A special place in Hell

Force Recon, sniper, rescue diver and in witness protection?

Damn! That dude gets around.

From This Ain’t Hell:

“The folks at Military Phony send us their work on this fairly ample Michael A. Bruno fellow. He claims that he’s a Marine Corps veteran with 11 years of active and reserve service. Of course, he’s a sniper, Force Recon and a rescue diver. We can’t find his records because he’s a secret squirrel. He can’t get VA benefits because he was the sole survivor of a classified helicopter crash. Oh, yeah, he’s in the witness protection program.”

http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=65469

Waiting for the Apocalypse …

… so when standing in the bread line I will hear the reaction when someone says, “Is that bleached white flour bread? See, I have a gluten allergy …”

Yeah, people really write like this in the ivy halls of academia or something

“The gendered exploitation of roosters used in cockfighting is a case example of the social construction of gender via animals — a psychosocial process that injures both people and animals. Similar processes of social construction by way of animals occur in relation to race and sexual orientation, with similarly mutually hurtful results. The rehabilitation of roosters used in cockfighting illustrates the utility of an expanded and amended conception of Herman’s principles of trauma recovery enacted within the emerging insights of trans-species psychology. Those insights lead us toward a truly inclusive eco/feminist psychology centered on acceptance of situated human animality and an understanding of traumatic alienation as a factor in both personal and communal problems in living, including climate change. This perspective shifts the ground for clinical practice, mandating explicit attention not only to interpersonal and intrapsychic cleavages but also to schisms between self and nature, other animals, and one’s own animality.” – Roosters, hawks and dawgs: Toward an inclusive, embodied eco/feminist psychology

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/04/academic-absurdity-of-the-week-a-real-cock-and-bull-story.php

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/

(A candidate for a master’s or a doctorate generally have to appear before a board and defend his/her thesis. You have to wonder if some board member didn’t at least want to say: “After reading your paper, I must ask: Just WTF are you talking about?”)

Some things pop up in the mind when you are thinking about something else

Several times during high school, our daughter said, “Mom, Dad. (Girl's name)is having trouble at home and I wondered if she could stay with us for a while?” Our first question was: “Do her parents know about this?” Oftentimes, the answer was: “Her mother kicked her out.” Not one time did an answer indicate there were a father and a mother in the home, although one girl was kicked out by her mother and told to go live with her father, and the father after a month then told the girl to leave his apartment. Kicked out by both parents is an indication of a few things not right.

The life of one girl, who stayed with us only a few times, now and then, was especially rememberable because: A 25-year-old man asked the 15-year-old girl’s 33-year-old mother if he could date Kimberly. The mother responded with an emphatic “No,” telling the hopeful suitor he was too old for her daughter. The man then asked if the mother would go out with him. She said, “Yes.” The mother and the man were married a couple of months later. The girl in time had three children, by two different men, one named Rooster, and whose child she had not long after he entered the state prison system.

Kimberly dropped out of school, not surprisingly. Later, though, she got a GED and a real job and has not birthed more children.




Monday, April 25, 2016

You're not from around here, are you?

The other day, a Northerner friend of my wife said, “Something I find surprising about people in the South – they don’t know who they are.” My wife said she knows who she is; she is from Texas. “That’s not what I mean,” the woman said. She gestured at another woman. “Carol is Italian. I’m Italian. If you are Italian, you grew up in an Italian neighborhood, just like Germans grew up in German neighborhoods and Poles grew up in Polish neighborhoods.”

In the South and in areas heavily influenced by the South, such as Northeast Texas where I grew up, there was town and there was country. I grew up in the country and cannot speak of town living with complete accuracy, but I do know the separations in town were: rich and poor, black and white. Poor blacks and poor whites did not live in the same part of town. Big towns and cities in the South might have had additional separation of Greeks, Italians, Spanish and Eastern European, but on the whole where somebody lived depended on income and not old European prejudices. We had new American prejudices in their stead.

Another difference between Northerner and Southerner has to do with religion. It’s a given with Italians and Poles that Roman Catholicism dominated almost all those ethnic neighborhoods. Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox were dominant religions in those neighborhoods. Jewish neighborhoods were Jewish.

That might seem an “Of course they were” to a Northerner, but it is a fact of further separation. Ask a Southerner what he or she is, the answer will be Baptist or Methodist or Church of Christ, Church of God, Church of God in Christ, African Episcopal Methodist, or a couple dozen more, with nothing to do with neighborhood.

Most Southerners are Scots Irish, Scot, Irish or English ancestry, and that is the major reason for the Northerner-European outlook and the Southerner-British thought.

Trump voters

Not the poor, uneducated rednecks as claimed by media and Republican bigwigs.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/04/daily-chart-14



Link at http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=65408

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Operation Serval, Mali 2013-14

French and forces of Mali and Chad fight Islamists in Mali. Operation included road movements of 1,000 kilometers and 2,500 kilometers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QDnB6dMAb0

See also: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR770.html




Lizard on the umbrella

My wife said our cormorant was having problems swallowing a fish, so I went outside to see. The cormorant is not “our” bird, any more than fish in the pond are our fish or Sandhill cranes that wander by are our cranes. But, as far as we know, only one cormorant fishes in the pond out back, so we have a sense of possession.

The cormorant tried to swallow the fish while swimming, and apparently could not do two things at one time. The bird straightened its neck and pulled back and straightened again. Then it was on the bank and able to concentrate only on swallowing the fish, which it quickly did.

That was when the lizard made its appearance on the patio table umbrella. The umbrella is closed, and the lizard clung to a lower part. The lizard is between three and four inches long, gray-black and spotted. It has a forked tail. Maybe that has something to do with its honesty among lizards.

My wife had described the lizard several days ago, but today was the first time I got a close look. I walked nearer the umbrella. The lizard expanded its throat, opening an orange sac. “I am a bad lizard. You best leave me alone.” The lizard closed the sac, its message delivered. I put a hand against my throat and wiggled my fingers. The lizard showed its orange sac, twice.

“Perhaps you were unaware of the meaning of my previous message. I am a bad lizard. If you attack me, I will do terrible things to you. Flee while you have the opportunity.”

I throat-wiggled my fingers. The lizard ran into the top of the umbrella and disappeared.

Victory to the human.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

3,000 Ethiopian Jews believe ‘Next year in Jerusalem’

Celebration of Passover defies the reality of now – “Don’t you know about the racism, violence, and senseless terrorism that Israel faces from its enemies?”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-hope-a-plea-a-promise-at-ethiopian-seder-3000-long-for-the-holy-land/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=2caf7a6cd1-2016_04_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-2caf7a6cd1-55395173

Obama says the Exodus was a civil rights battle.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-final-passover-greeting-obama-parallels-exodus-and-civil-rights-battle/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=2caf7a6cd1-2016_04_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-2caf7a6cd1-55395173

‘Newspaper Reporter Still the Worst Job in America’

“For the second year in a row, and third out of the last four, being a newspaper reporter ranks as the worst job in America.

“The Jobs Rated Report has been compiled by CareerCast since 1988, and ranks 200 U.S. jobs based on a wide range of criteria that includes income, outlook, environmental factors, stress and physical demands.

“Just ahead of newspaper reporter is the job of logger/lumberjack, which finished at number 199 for the second straight year after being dead last in 2014.

“Another media-related job—broadcaster—came in at number 198, with an equally glum outlook for the future.”

http://collegeinsurrection.com/2016/04/maybe-you-should-avoid-being-a-reporter-after-graduation/


In business to make money, restaurants lie about food

Bought from local farms? Nope.

Non-GMO? Probably no.

No pesticides used? No proof.

Advertised veal is pork in one Gulfport restaurant.

“Old-timers like Gulfport’s La Cote Basque were dinged for advertising veal schnitzel dishes but having no veal in sight. ‘No packages commercially labeled veal (and) no veal invoices are present (but a) large volume of frozen pork chops and sliced pork’ were observed. Wholesale veal can cost three times as much as pork. For pork-eschewing Muslims and Jews: Surprise.”

http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fable/restaurants/

In the same neighborhood of “Was it grown locally?”, at a Kroger’s in Little Rock, Ark., a sign in the Produce Department said all food was bought from local farmers. I asked a man who was restocking lettuce, “Which local farm grew the pineapples?” His response: “What?” And the bananas and the oranges. The man said the ears of corn were from Mississippi. “I guess they (store managers) consider that local.”

The so-called local stuff will cost more than out-of-area produced. I don’t go to those restaurants. I am cheap.

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/

Man is killing all the reefs, and we have to do something, like get rid of people

‘New Massive Reef System Discovered’

“Scientists have just discovered a massive, 9,500 square-kilometer reef system at the mouth of the Amazon river. And it’s home to some truly bizarre life forms.”

http://www.dbtechno.com/science/2016/04/23/amazon-river-new-reef-system/

OK, the new one is not an ocean reef, except it is in the ocean, but not the way the Great Barrier Reef is in the ocean. So why didn’t someone “discover” this reef before?

“When we hear ‘reef,’ we typically think colorful corals and crystal-clear tropical waters. Which is probably why nobody ever bothered to look for one at the outflow of the world’s largest river. Discharging up to 300,000 cubic meters of sediment-loaded water every second, the Amazon river generates a thick, smog-like plume that darkens the surrounding seafloor, depressing light and oxygen levels.” (Same link.)

“… nobody ever bothered to look …” Scientists and oceanographers already knew what a reef looks like and where reefs are found … Except they didn’t know all they thought.

The Brazilian government has sold blocks for oil exploration, so naturally there is an environmental disaster just around the corner.

Friday, April 22, 2016

Speaking of insensitive

‘After Prince death, Airborne admits maroon berets actually raspberry’

FORT BENNING, Ga. — Following the death of music legend Prince, Army Airborne has admitted that a long suspected myth about their maroon berets is true: the berets are actually raspberry colored.

“They are, in fact, raspberry berets,” said Lt. Col. Korey Brown, Commander of 1st Battalion, 507th Airborne. “The 1-507th Airborne School was reactivated in 1985, the same year Raspberry Beret was released. Prince was winning Grammys, and with Gorbachev stirring the pot we were preparing to win wars. It made perfect sense.”

The color of the berets, worn by elite airborne forces around the world, was adjusted by three shades to reach a more raspberry tone and the school’s leaders continued looking to the artist for inspiration as the fledgling battalion grew.

“Prince’s band was called Revolution and that’s what we were having in the eighties,” said Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, Commander of the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps. “New Airborne school, fresh command, updated technologies.”

“And if we wanted increased student numbers we needed to show that with us, you didn’t have to be rich to get the girls,” Townsend said. “You didn’t have to be cool to patrol our world. We had particular skills you’d be compatible with; we just wanted your extra time and your kiss. I mean kits. Jump kits. We needed you to use our jump kits.”

Noted for the ability to deploy anywhere in the world with little warning and drop in behind enemy lines, Airborne has a proud history, but some say it’s time to shift gears. A February Army Times article questioned if the program is now too impractical and disconnected from modern war to be effective. Townsend says these critiques, combined with the passing of Prince, have encouraged him to step forward about the raspberry berets.

“If you mix the red, white and blue of our flag’s colors together it makes purple,” he said. “And when our paratroopers come soaring down from the skies to enforce freedom and justice, guess what? That’s purple rain.”

“And just like Prince, the legends of Airborne will go on forever no matter what the future holds.”

http://www.duffelblog.com/2016/04/after-prince-death-airborne-admits-maroon-berets-actually-raspberry/#ixzz46cLnYAIl

Link at http://thisainthell.us/






Insensitive

My wife said, “Now he really is the artist formerly known as Prince.”



Harriett Tubman on $20 bill

Shrug.

1400 years of inbreeding

Why Middle Eastern Muslims are backwards, no matter where they live. U.S., Western Europe ... They're still behind in IQ, ahead in living off the dole.

http://nocompulsion.com/muslim-biological-fallout-from-50-generations-of-first-cousin-marriages/

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Sandhill cranes

Sandhills have right of way, and they know it. A Sandhill family will walk onto a street or highway, generally with little to no observation of traffic. They know the traffic is there, but the birds (1) don’t care; or, (2) know you will stop. And that is fine.

Yesterday my wife and I saw at the side of the road a Daddy Sandhill, a Momma Sandhill and two Baby Sandhills. The babies were not much more than a foot high and a light brown. They were the youngest we have seen since we moved here almost 18 months ago.

We got to wondering … Evolutionists would say way back in the past, millions of years ago, Sandhills appeared. Poof! Was there only one Sandhill? Did that one have to wait another year or so until its life-partner also Poofed! Into existence? Maybe so. And since Sandhills summer in Siberia, maybe that first crane said, “It’s getting cold here. Think I’ll go down to Florida. Weather’s good there, so they say.” Or, maybe a Daddy Sandhill and a Momma Sandhill Poofed! at the same time. Or maybe dozens of Sandhills popped into existence.

However it was (and I’ll take the idea God’s mind decided on a bird of a specific form and color and disposition), it is good the cranes decided to tour the peninsula.

Russian airborne not downsizing

But, plans don’t call for increasing strength.

“Largely unnoticed by the rest of the world, since 2006 the Russian army has gone through a series of reforms, trying to transform the force that lost the Cold War into one that could win the next one. One element of the army, the airborne force has remained largely unchanged. Despite a recent reorganization that made the brigade, not the division the main combat unit, the airborne force still has divisions. The paratroopers are still all volunteers although money shortages have led to the use of more conscript volunteers in the last few years. Only about a third of airborne troops are career professionals ('contract soldiers'), yet the allure of the airborne is such that there are always qualified conscript volunteers. Alas, the conscripts leave after a year, so by the time you train them to a useful level they are gone. Still, if there is a national emergency that requires loyal, stalwart troops, the paratroopers are the ones you call. The airborne troops are one of the few bright spots in Russian military developments since the 1980s.”

Soviet use of airborne in World War II not successful, except, sometimes, as elite infantry.

“In mid-1942 the ten airborne corps, and five independent airborne brigades were turned into regular infantry units and sent south to fight in the battles that led to the German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943. But even before this campaign was over paratroopers were pulled out of their infantry jobs at the end of 1942 and used to organize ten Guards Airborne Divisions (basically the same as the previous Airborne Corps). But again an emergency arose that kept the paratroopers on the ground. The Germans launched another major offensive in early 1943, and the paratroopers were once more sent in as ground troops and most of them were lost.”

Large-scale drop disastrous.

“On September 24th, 1943, three parachute and three air landing brigades hit ground 40 kilometers behind German lines along the Dnieper River near Kanev. It was a disaster. Hastily organized, most of the paratroopers had never jumped out of an airplane before, although most had at least jumped from a training tower in a parachute harness. The inexperienced pilots had to do the drop at night, to avoid the risk of German fighters and there was not enough transport aircraft. The Russians had also not learned how important it was to move away from their drop zones quickly and form into larger units. The small, scattered Russians were quickly run down and destroyed by the Germans. What can be said is that the distraction took some German combat units away from the front line and they did allow the oncoming Russian armor units to advance a bit farther than they otherwise would have.”

http://strategypage.com/htmw/htinf/articles/20160315.aspx


Tuesday, April 19, 2016

ISIS destroys idolatry

Except when thousands and more Euros and/or dollars can be made from selling same.

Lintel from Syria for sale in London

“Despite their stated aim of destroying ancient cultural heritage, the so-called Islamic State have been looting Syria and Northern Iraq and selling the antiquities they find to raise money for their activities. It has now becoming apparent that some of those artifacts may be ending up on the market in London. Simon Cox is the BBC’s investigative reporter and Dick Ellis is former head of the Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques squad.”

http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/

Link at http://www.thehistoryblog.com/

We didn’t know the art was stolen by the SS

Yeah, and I’ve got this bridge …

15th c. art stolen from prince by Nazis found

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/


ABC TV drama

I watched an episode of a new ABC drama, the name of which I do not remember. Here is a typical scene:

Man and woman meet at club.

“Hey, wanna dance?”

“Sure.”

Dance conversation:

“You’re cute.”

“You’re cute, too.”

Dance, dance, dance. Song over.

“You’re a good dancer.”

“So are you.”

“Wanna go to my place and ****?”

“Sure.”

(OK, the script was a little different, but the idea was as written.)

Sunday, April 17, 2016

American food is cheap

“The average American spends less than 7% of his income on food, compared to 40% or more in non-industrialized countries. Even among Americans, this is down more than half just in the last 50 years.”

http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/14/a-hippie-discovers-economics-and-youll-never-guess-what-happens-next/

(The column springs from a Facebook remark about how wonderful the Urth would be if everybody grew different fruits and veggies and just traded with each other.)

That 7% figure is from USDA.

http://theweek.com/articles/446652/why-americans-spend-less-income-food-than-other-country


Saturday, April 16, 2016

Let’s do a CT scan on this block of Danish dirt and see what we can see

“The excavation revealed an exceptional treasure of 392 pieces. The silver cup Bagge found was one of two. There were 53 gilt bronze and silver pendants, more than 300 beads made of glass, amber, rock crystal and silver, 18 Arabic and Western European coins, a braided silver chain, a bracelet or arm ring with five smaller rings attached, elaborately decorated pieces from France, Eastern Europe and Ireland or Scotland. Some of the objects of Scandinavian manufacture were already antiques when they were buried in the second half of the 10th century.”

Viking treasure pokes finder in Denmark

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/

Here’s a video of the CT scan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMDnMw7TtUw


Irony at the Chinese takeaway

Those little white boxes the food comes in? "Made in USA."

Judge: Can you explain how a hand grenade works?

Witness: Yes, Your Honor. You just pull this pin …

KARACHI (Staff Report) – A hand grenade exploded inside courtroom in Karachi’s Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) after a judge asked a police constable if he knew how grenades worked. The constable, instead of explaining his expertise in weapons and grenade handling to the judge, opted to demonstrate practically by promptly pulling out the pin from the grenade.

This resulted in a loud explosion, injuring three including the constable and a court clerk.

The blast took place while hearing of a case was underway in courtroom-III. Two policemen and a court clerk were among injured and taken to a nearby hospital for first aid. Court’s proceeding was briefly suspended as a result.

According to media reports, the grenade in question was a locally developed bomb which was brought to the courtroom by Investigation Officer Abid Ali as evidence. The bomb was, reportedly, not defused before production in the court.

The police and paramilitary forces in the vicinity immediately surrounded the area after the explosion fearing a terrorist attack and the security forces were put on high alert.

It is safe to say that now the whole court knows how grenades work, including the curious judge.

According to authorities, the constable who apparently knows how grenades work will be punished severely after he recovers from his injuries.

http://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/pakistan/bomb-explodes-inside-atc-in-karachi/

Link at http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/

From http://thezman.com/wordpress/

Marijuana is bad for you? Say it ain’t so, Alice!

“The risks of heavy cannabis for mental health are serious enough to warrant global public health campaigns, according to international drugs experts who said young people were particularly vulnerable.”

And this information comes about as “the UN prepares to convene a special session on the global drugs problem for the first time since 1998. The meeting in New York next week aims to unify countries in their efforts to tackle issues around illicit drug use.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/15/cannabis-scientists-call-for-action-amid-mental-health-concerns

So say “international drug experts.” What kind of schools do people attend to become an expert in international drugs?

And, “young people were particularly vulnerable.” Come on. Youth is vulnerable to everything. Dope, alcohol, speeding, stealing, sex …

Heavy use of anything is not good.

Oh, and you might want to follow the money involved in this UN special session.

Friday, April 15, 2016

National Resettlement Administration

Shorpy.com has hundreds of photographs of Americans at work, at home and at play. Many pictures were done by photographers employed by New Deal agencies. One agency, the Resettlement Administration, was, as its name implies, in charge of deciding certain citizens would not remain on their small farms, but be taken to new areas and moved into houses built by the government. Originally, the Resettlement Administration planned on communal farming, but Congress and reality put a stop to that. The RA took people from farms for two years 1935 and 1936. RA took the land, too. Some state parks in Arkansas contain land seized by the Federal government in order to “make life better” for some citizens.

Here is a list of New Deal communities:

http://newdeallegacy.org/table_communities.html

From the Gee, Ain’t Government Nice file:

“In 1934, during perhaps the most disparaging time in American history, the town of Eleanor (initially called Red House Farms), became one of three Subsistence Homesteads built in West Virginia under the Roosevelt Administration. A total of 150 families selected for the Town of Eleanor were offered a challenge and a chance for new life. “

http://eleanorwv.com/history.html


‘Cabin on Barton Street’ in Fredericksburg, Va., 1928

The “cabin” is a clapboard house with metal roof. But, the occupants are Negro, so by standards of the day, they must live in a cabin, not in a house.

http://www.shorpy.com/node/20784?size=_original#caption

Waxahachie cotton pickers 1913

http://www.shorpy.com/node/20830?size=_original#caption

I never picked cotton, but my mother did. Her father was a sharecropper until finally able to buy his own land. He had a small place northwest of Maud, Texas, down a dirt road. He raised cotton and had a pig or two, a smoke house and chickens. Except for the experience, my mother would have preferred not to pick cotton.

A friend in Clarksville, Texas, said she could remember going to town with her father and the back of the truck filled with cotton. She did not say she had picked any of it.

Making a bale meant a family would have cash money for a year. Most farmers worked off and on at other jobs when they could, but part time work did not often come along.

Hooray for me!

I took a test to determine if I live in a bubble. I knew the answer, but checked the circles anyway, just to see what the computer said.

The computer agrees with me: I do not live in a bubble. Nor do 99% of my friends.

Seems like I am “A lifelong resident of a working-class neighborhood with average television and movie-going habits.”

Just what I would have said.

Outlaws and wide open spaces

Marshall, Okla., is in Logan County, northwest of Oklahoma City. The 2010 population was 278, an increase of 19 over the previous census.

Oklahoma writer Angie Debo called Marshall her home town. She was born in Beattie, Kansas, in 1890 and died in Enid, Okla., in 1988. Her family moved to the Marshall area when Angie was around 9 years old. Debo is considered "an authority on Native American history, a visionary, and an historical heroine in her own right."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie_Debo

Outlaw Zip Wyatt was shot near Marshall in August 1895 after a running battle with lawmen and posses. Wyatt, outlaw Ike Black and accomplices started a spree of robberies on June 3 that year and were chased until finally cornered August 4 by a posse from the Anti-Horse Thief Association. Wyatt died in the Enid jail on Sept. 7.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/outlaw-zipwyatt.html

“In 1927, SW of Marshall, an oil field was found called Roxanna. Production was found in the Ordovician Wilcox Sand at depths of ~6000' with initial production rates as high as 2,450 bbl/d (390 m3/d). A boom town started and oil hands filtered into Marshall. There is nothing left of Roxanna today.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall,_Oklahoma

Marshall’s largest population was 695 in 1930. Of the 2010 population, 93% were white, 3.88% were native American, 3.88% Hispanic, and the remainder from two or more races or defined as “other.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz_ejGxqA1k says Marshall is a ghost town, which would come as a surprise to the almost 300 people who live there. I have seen many depopulated towns in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, but none completely abandoned. You have to consider definitions.


These two needed a beating

Russian truckers beat up racketeers.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=russian+truckers+beat+up+two+men+in+a+car&view=detail&mid=30A0852DFC6900642DF130A0852DFC6900642DF1&FORM=VIRE

Good Russian drivers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWDXoCyfiys

Thursday, April 14, 2016

For the white, over-educated Northeastern Progressive

Growl

by Gerard Allen Van der Ginsberg

For Karl Rove Solomon

I SAW the second-best minds of my not-so-Great Generation destroyed by Bush Derangement Syndrome, pasty, paunchy, tenured, and not looking too sharp naked,

bullshitting themselves through the African-American streets at cocktail hour lusting for a Cialis refill and one black friend on the down-low,

aging hair-plugged hipsters burning for their ancient political connection to the White House through the machinations of monied moonbats,

who warred on poverty and Blackwater's Wal-Mart and bulbous-eyed and still high from some bad acid in 1968 set up no-smoking zones on tobacco farms in the unnatural darkness of Darwinistic delusions floating a few more half-baked secular notions like "Let's all worship Zero!",

who on the Burly Bears float of gay pride bared their man-breasts and, he she or it, bleated their vaginas' mawkish monologues to John Kennedy's ghost under the Capitol Dome and french-kissed Mohammedan agents in the gore-drenched redrum rooms of Guantanamo,

who passed gas in grad school and on into universities with radiant meth eyes hallucinating President Barry O'Bama and Vice-President Joe Who?, envisioning world peace among the masters of war and stayed on and stayed on and stayed on sucking off the great teat of academe in unpaid student loans and over-paid professorial positions the better to molest the minds and bodies of children for decades with every third year off in Provance for bad behavior,

who were embraced by the academies and hired by the New York Times for crazy & publishing obscene odes or anything else that trashed Republicans or non-Unitarian Christians without regard for truth since there were no consequences for these posturing poseurs of puke,

who cowered in their marble-countered plasma-screened media rooms in smegmaed underwear which was no longer Victoria's Secret, burning their money by donating it in carloads to every half-assed Democratic POL that promised re-erections in Two-Ten without the losing proposition of actually holding an election, and listening to Rush Limbaugh through the wall,

who got bombed at public wine-tastings by chugging the slops bin and referencing Sideways, returning to their summer house in the Hamptons where they ate smoked salmon and each other, smoked $400-a-bud marijuana, wore $250 denims, paid the maid $200 a week before taxes, and bitched about how the economy was a mess but did not really, as they claimed, send their $36,000 tax cut back to the government, and continued to suffer the secret shame of Affluenza,

who breathed fire and bile about ungrateful "Democrat plantation negroes" among their cooler college comrades, and shut up around the one black friend they all shared, and drank turpentine to get through "A Night with Gloria Steinem", claimed bogus ego-death, blended health shakes from Cherry Garcia, seaweed, and the dried dung of Deepak Chopra, and Ab-Busted their torsos night after night that their butts might spread on the Le Corbusier sofa eternally after,

with dreams of Two-Ten re-erection victory without elections, with seven different mood-soothing drugs in the Ikea medicine cabinet, with waking Birkenstock nightmares of Bush, Bush, still of Bush, alcohol Jello shots and the soon to be sanctified Holy Matrimony of gay cock and deballings by their now not-so-significant others,

who blathered continuously about the Florida "theft" for decades after the two Bush terms while the One put one, two, maybe three or even four justices on the Supreme Court, but still not nine!, causing a million fatal air-embolisms during consenting acts of mutual Manhattan humm-jobs,

a lost battalion of a multi-million man and mom marching platonic conversationalists jumping to conclusions about WMD off fire escapes off windowsills off World Trade Center out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering "BUSH LIEEEEEEEEED!" forever after into deepest eternity, and moonbat memories and false anecdotes and eyeball kicks and yearning for the electro-shocks of hospitals and the briefness of jails and bring back the endless Bush wars that we may hate into our drool-cups again .... oh my sorry little schmos.... ,

who wandered around and around at midnight at the White House wondering where O smoked and Michelle hid her dildos, got the address of Obama's birthplace in Hawaii at 1776 Kenya Street and went there with fresh batteries, and found Barbra Striesand lurking in the lanai with Whoopi Goldberg and Goldie Hawn, all set on leaving no child's behind,

who had double-standard visions of fashionable footwear while their baby seals died, turned inside-out into a pair of fur-lined muck-lucks by Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton

who thought they were only mad when the second coming of BushHitler appeared in the clouds above their White House like the mother ship in Independence day proclaiming "Neener, neener, neener,"

who in humorless protest turned Hillary Clinton into their personal hand-puppet, which she enjoyed, and then complained that she looked far too much like the devil spawn of Howdy Doody and Alfred E. Newman, and that the fit was too loose,

who scribbled celebrity porn from scuffed kneepads in the offices of Vanity Fair and collected and shaved stray cats far into their barren Pecksniffian nights until that bleak Upper West Side dawn when, waking from their stupor, rolled over in bed and discovered they had slept, not with their sixth spouse, but with Barney Frank, and thought, "Well, that's an upgrade,"

who dreamt O-Ba-Ma! O-Ba-Ma! hectoring and bloviating in the White House until in galactic luminosity Nancy Pelosi stood knock-kneed and naked on "Fleece the Nation" clad only in her San Francisco penis-gourd of flaccid played-out policies, while being frisked by a thousand agents of I-Am-the-President Obama, super avenging angel of the SortaSocialist Party, now and forever recreating the syntax and measure of polluted human prose, "Oh Hope!, Oh Change!, O Timor!, O Mortis!, Oh Yes We Can't!," and then all of them in their faded glory standing before America past, present, and to come, speechless and pseudo-intelligent and shaking with unshamed shame, a whole once proud party now doomed to decorate pikes and lamp-posts,

who were reduced in desperation after aborting their next generation to bribing the fervently fertile illegal constituents of wise Latina judges with appointments, with dinner parties, with caviar burritos, with $50 a shot artisan tequila, with cash for Cuernavaca clunkers, and invitations to bi-lingual and tri-sexual Hollywood "events," rejected yet confessing to the guttering sparks of thought in its treppaned Democrat skull as it proclaimed its new positive program for "Mourning in America," "Yes, yes, yes, like our patron saint Michelle-O-LaBelle that deep driving dominatrix of The Won, we too have a two-inch political penis, give us alllll your money, give us alllll your votes, give us ALLLLL THE POWER!, we and we alone can give you the golden gifts of our youth -- appeasement, defeatism, pacifism, penury, poverty and death!",

and rose reincarnate in the tattered rags of bluster and blabber in the tinhorn shadow of the ballot box and blew the the suffering of America's lumbering liberals' lust for unearned power into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone bleat still pandering for the Jewish vote after erasing Israel, as the American people, at long last no fools they, shived the elite in their entrails and blew them off again and again right past the last bus stop of democracy

with the absolute loss of political significance butchered out of their own body politic good to lose a thousand years.

http://americandigest.org/



How does Obama get by with this? No one will stop him

Both houses of Congress surrendered courage in order to get re-elected. People who don’t have to pay for stuff certainly won’t oppose executive orders. And the rest of us have seen this stuff go on for so long, we don’t believe a solution exists.

‘Obama forgives student loans of 400,000 Americans’

“Americans with disabilities have a right to student loan relief.” – Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-12/it-begins-obama-forgives-student-debt-400000-americans

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/

Who’s next? Why limit non-payment of debt to citizens? Why limit non-payment at all? Why not end all debt? (Because the economic system collapses, but don’t let that stand in the way of feeling good about something. After all, the government can fix the problem.)

That stuff proclaimed good for us probably killed a bunch of citizens

Nutritional scientists decided cholesterol was the problem, and the Admiral Farraguts proclaimed: “Damn the evidence! Full speed ahead!”

“The Minnesota investigators had a theory that they believed in — that reducing blood cholesterol would make people healthier. Indeed, the idea was widespread and would soon be adopted by the federal government in the first dietary recommendations. So when the data they collected from the mental patients conflicted with this theory, the scientists may have been reluctant to believe what their experiment had turned up.”

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/04/from-the-annals-of-scientific-objectivity.php

(“(M)ay have been reluctant to believe”? How about “didn’t want to” or “refused to believe” facts that could disprove their theory?

(Do not accept at face value any “Studies show” or “Computer models predict.” Not any.)

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/

Castle owners defending the castle

John Lilya of This Ain’t Hell – But you can see it from here every day comes up with homeowner defense of property, part of that “We hold these truths to be self-evident” understanding.

“Carrie Leigh Richards, 24, and Hannah Nicole Kenney, 23 broke into a Greenville, South Carolina home which alerted the homeowner’s dogs. The resident met them with his firearm which he used to hold the pair until the police arrived to cart them off to the hoosegow.

‘In Cincinnati, Ohio a group of armed men forced their way into a college student’s apartment. The student, though, was armed, too and busted caps on the group. It looks like he missed them all, though, but they all un-assed the AO at a high rate of speed.

“You might remember the story of Trayvon Johnson from last month in Miami. Florida where Treyvon tried to burglarize a home, but the woman who lived there killed him. His cousin famously defended Trayvon’s life of crime as his sole means of support. Well, his brother, Vaughn, turned himself in yesterday as Trayvon’s accomplice that day. Vaughn made a video confession and he’s been charged with Trayvon’s murder.”

http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=65253

(My unsensitivity meter really kicked in when Trayvon’s cousin demanded to know how, other than by robbing, the criminal was expected to get money to buy stuff? We could talk about making choices, but as my wife says, “You can’t argue with idiots.”)

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Oh, Canada, we stand on guard for thee*

“We start out the morning with an ‘aren’t you glad you don’t live in Canada’ story. I think this is from Newfoundland where 53-year-old homeowner Gilbert Donald Dennis Budgell struggled with two fellows who invaded his home. Budgell shot one of them and the other escaped and now he’s facing attempted murder charges. According to the Defense Lawyer Mark Gruchy it’s about ‘proportionality’ – if someone punches you, you can’t stab them – it wouldn’t be cricket. Apparently, in Canada you can’t shoot a criminal until they shoot you…or something.”

http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=65220

(I would think a Canadian judge would use common sense … Wait. What? Canadian judge and common sense? You been drinking Flint water?)

* With a small stick. Or something.

‘I am on the Kill List’

Malik Jalal

“I am in the strange position of knowing that I am on the ‘Kill List’. I know this because I have been told, and I know because I have been targeted for death over and over again. Four times missiles have been fired at me. I am extraordinarily fortunate to be alive.

“I don’t want to end up a “Bugsplat” – the ugly word that is used for what remains of a human being after being blown up by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone. More importantly, I don’t want my family to become victims, or even to live with the droning engines overhead, knowing that at any moment they could be vaporized.

“I am in England this week because I decided that if Westerners wanted to kill me without bothering to come to speak with me first, perhaps I should come to speak to them instead. I’ll tell my story so that you can judge for yourselves whether I am the kind of person you want to be murdered.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-am-on-the-us-kill-list-this-is-what-it-feels-like-to-be-hunted-by-drones-a6980141.html

Link at http://www.drudge.com/

Most unusual.

From http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2016/04/11/meet-malik-jalal-who-drone-kill-list

“In the third revelation in recent days concerning a so-called ‘Kill List’ of individuals to be targeted in US strikes, today Reprieve client Malik Jalal took to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to ask the US and the UK to stop trying to kill him.

“Invited by Lord Ken MacDonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Malik Jalal has traveled from Waziristan, Pakistan’s border area with Afghanistan, to ask parliamentarians and the government that he be taken off the Kill List. Today, Malik Jalal has served a letter on Home Secretary Theresa May, who has oversight of MI5 and the NCA and Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who has responsibility for GCHQ and MI6, copied in to the US Ambassador. The letter details the prior attempts on his life, and the impact on him, his family and his colleagues in the NWPC. He asks for meetings to clear his name, and to get off the Kill List.”

(Whom to believe? Most likely a little of both -- Jalal, British intelligence, the Foreign Office ...

(commondreams.org is a U.S. non-profit progressive news site.)




U of MO closing two dorms. Wonder why?

“Mizzou will be closing the Respect and Excellence halls (ironic names, given the circumstances) in order to utilize dorm space 'in the most efficient manner' to keep costs down. In March, the university announced that it saw a sharp drop in admissions for the coming school year, and will have 1,500 fewer students. This will lead to a $32 million budget shortfall for the school, prompting the need to close the dorms in order to save money.”

http://moonbattery.com/#sthash.d7NOdwKm.dpuf

I didn’t know I had applied

Wow. I just got a call from a helpful man telling me my small business loan application has been approved! I can get $8,000 some way or another, but I don’t know what to do now because I hung up.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

‘Geena Davis Says Thelma & Louise “Didn’t Do Sh--” to Fix Hollywood Sexism’

Wull, damn, girl. What did you expect? You make a sh—movie that has no redeeming social value, I mean every man in the picture was a bona fide SOB, and you and that other woman going hell bent for Bella Abzug all over the southwest. Shoot. You’re lucky the po-leece in the movie didn’t just up and fill you and her full of holes.

Thelma, or maybe Louise: “One very common theme in the press was, ‘This changes everything. Now there are going to be so many female buddy pictures, so many female action figures. This just completely rewrites everything,’ and it didn‘t,” Davis, said. “The really short answer is, it didn‘t do shit.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/04/thelma-and-louise-25th-anniversary

Link at http://feminism.trendolizer.com/2016/04/geena-davis-says-thelma-louise-didnt-do-sh---to-fix-hollywood-sexism.html

Oh, Emma Thompson says Hollywood sexism is “worse than ever.” Now how does she know? She older than Mae West?

Monday, April 11, 2016

Frogville, one big deer and Oklahoma for Bernie

Even with four years at the Paris, Texas, newspaper, I never made it to Frogville, Oklahoma, just across the Red River and a few miles down a state highway. The newspaper's IT guy said an aunt and uncle lived in Oklahoma's oldest occupied house, but I just never made the trip. Frogville remains one of those places I wish I had visited.

A satellite photo shows a few houses, but nothing else. Barns, outbuildings, round bales of hay.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Frogville,+OK+74743/@33.8988592,-95.3293846,4959m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x864a922993d7a691:0x5d07b1f94c624791



Here is a 5-year-old running commentary on a huge deer killed, apparently out of season, near Frogville.

http://discussions.texasbowhunter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=209146

Scroll down just a little ways for a picture. Looks like a 24-point buck. I didn’t know they grew that big.

Turns out Frogville is Bernie Sanders country. Well, sort of, says a native son who backs the Vermont socialist.

“It was déjà vu all over again, at least for me, when my wife and I joined the multicultural, multi-generational crowd cheering Bernie Sanders.

“On Sunday, Feb. 28, at Sanders’ OKC rally, it felt like we’d been teleported into the dynamic center of Brooklyn, in touch with the avant garde of the creative class leading the reinvention of the world. Born in the middle of Pax Americana, I was like many Baby Boomers: raised to believe that all things are possible. Being older and, perhaps, a little wiser than I used to be, I won’t jump to conclusions and claim Oklahoma City is entering a brand-new, 21st-Century frontier, but dang, we’ve done it before, and maybe Oklahoma can feel the Bern in a deeper, more long-lasting way beyond the presidential election.”

https://nondoc.com/2016/03/08/sanders-reawakens-oklahomas-socialist-roots/

(Anything not “multicultural” these days is not legitimate.)

Apparently, Southeast Oklahoma has long been a hotbed of socialism.

“Up until World War I, however, Oklahoma had the largest Socialist movement, per capita, in the nation. But it was destroyed by perhaps the worst political oppression (of white people) in American history. When I was writing Closing the Frontier, an award-winning history of frontier socialism, I had a telling conversation with my Aunt Edna on the porch of our family homestead in Frogville. The far-southeast Oklahoma town (just north of Paris, Texas) had had a dynamic socialist community, but my aunt first refused to talk about it. Then, “Edna muttered, ‘Eugene V. Debs, Eugene V. Debs, I’ll never forget that name.’ Asked why she brought up the four-time Socialist party candidate for president, my aunt denied having any other memories; she just liked that name.

"Frogville’s socialists"

"Throughout the day, my seemingly fearless great aunt kept repeating, ‘Eugene V. Debs, I’ll never forget that name.’ Then Aunt Edna volunteered, ‘Lots of folks down here are named Eugene. You have kin folks named Eugene.’ With the cat out of the bag, she explained that Frogville’s sharecroppers — the ‘good decent folk’ — were socialists. They were driven out of the state by those ‘KKK thugs’ in the city, which in this case was Hugo.” (Same link as above.)

(Kind of sad, in a way, that old-line liberal/Socialists do not realize the days are gone of meat packing exposure and tenement slums and Woody Guthrie’s rail ridings. In 1994 at a national collegiate event in San Antonio, I noticed several pony-tailed men my age, college teachers. I considered approaching them and reminding them: “War’s over, dudes. Your side won, so relish whatever you can from the victory of ‘the people.’” I didn’t. It would have been bad manners and might have started too intense a debate, which would have kept me from the free beer.)


Stop. The. Presses.

“Motorist in Wild Chase had Marine Driver Training

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/04/11/motorist-wild-chase-marine-driver-training.html

OMG! Get all those Military-Trained Drivers off the streets and highways! They have driven Big Green Scary Trucks, and there’s no telling what mayhem might be wrought!

The headline says it all

“Kerry Makes Gut-wrenching Visit to Hiroshima Site of A-bomb”

“HIROSHIMA, Japan -- A gut-wrenched John Kerry …”

Here is the sole mention (sort of) as to why Hiroshima received the world’s second successful atomic bomb:

“Many Americans believe the dropping of atomic bombs here on Aug. 6, 1945, and on the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later were justified and hastened the end of the war.”

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/04/11/kerry-makes-gut-wrenching-visit-hiroshima-site-a-bomb.html

Vendor, Arkansas, Zip Code 72683

“Vendor is an unincorporated community in Newton County, Arkansas, United States. The ZIP Code is 72683. It connects with Mt. Judea and Piercetown. It is home to many things such as a creek that runs from Deer all the way past Piercetown. Its name comes from the merchants who would stop and sell their wares by the road, the local legend goes, therefore giving it the name 'Vendor'”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor,_Arkansas

When that is all Wikipedia has to say, what more can there be?

Well, Vendor has a Smith Cemetery.

http://arkansasgravestones.org/cemetery.php?cemID=5455

In the doesn’t really help at all category: “The people living in ZIP code 72683 are primarily white. The percentage of young adults, adults, middle aged, and seniors in this area are slightly less than average, slightly larger than average, small, and slightly larger than average, respectively. The percentage of children under 18 living in the 72683 ZIP code is slightly larger than average compared to other areas of the country.”

http://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/72683/

The population is 215, an increase of four since the 2010 census. Elevation is 834 feet. Median age for men is 35, for women the median age is 40. There are 0 businesses, with an annual payroll of $0. Social Security beneficiaries total 110.

http://www.zip-codes.com/zip-code/72683/zip-code-72683.asp

Federal race/ethnicity breakdown: 204 white; 1 American Indian and Alaskan native; 1 Asian; 1 Filipino; 5 two or more races; 5 white, American Indian and Alaskan native.

http://www.topicway.com/places/zipcode/72683-arkansas.AR.htm


Link to espionage story at Ace of Spades misses point by a wide margin

Ace headline: “Naval Officer charged with espionage and other naughty deeds.”

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/navy-officer-charged-with-espionage/article/2588138


Link at www.ace.mu.nu

Is Ace saying espionage is just a “naughty” deed?

Probably not. More than likely, Ace is referring to the Navy’s allegation of adultery and procurement of prostitutes by the officer. More than likely, Ace sees adultery and procurement of a prostitute as only “naughty” deeds.

Adultery is a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Adultery is a serious crime in all military services because adultery violates good order and discipline.

Will Millennials apply for NSA jobs?

Utah Valley University “has developed a new masters program in cyber security and is working to get special accreditation from the spy agency, in an effort to produce more potential employees for the massive center. A member of the NSA is also on the university's cyber security advising committee.”

http://reason.com/blog/2016/04/10/college-grad-looking-for-a-job-the-nsa-w

A job is a job … Maybe new hires can work a deal on paying off student loans.

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/


Headline: ‘Is wine good for you or is it not?’

Subhead: ‘Should you even care?’

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21696651-more-confusion-over-health-benefits-alcohol-wine-good-you-or-it

Paul told Timothy to drink wine “for your stomach’s sake.”

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/


Studies: Coffee is good for you because it delays the onset of Alzheimer's. No coffee is bad for you because it increases blood pressure and causes skittishness in some people.

Another study: Tobacco is good for you because it delays the onset of Alzheimer's. No, tobacco is bad for you because ... You know those reasons.

Read enough and there is something for everybody.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Ada, a lynching, Happyland and U.S. Highway 666

Ada, Okla., Zip Code 74821 is in Pontotoc County, in South Central Oklahoma.

Around the turn of the 20th Century, Ada was a violent town, with as many as 38 murders reported in one year. After a while, people had had enough.

On April 19, 1909, a gathering of local citizens numbering 50 or 60 or 200 strung up two local ranchers, a middleman and a hired gun for the killing of former U.S. Marshal Allen Augustus Bobbitt. No one was ever charged in the hanging, so the four men must have needed killing.

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/history/ada_lynching.html

Ada is about 74% white, 15% native American, 3.5% black, with the remaining population falling in several other federal-recognized ethnic/racial categories. Almost 15% of families and 21% of the total population live below the determined federal poverty line.

“About 2,000-3,000 residents speak the Chickasaw language.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada,_Oklahoma

My wife’s maternal grandmother was born in Chickasaw Nation, as were all Mrs. Raley’s brothers and sisters. My paternal grandfather’s older sister also was born in Chickasaw Nation.

Happyland, Okla., is a few miles east of Ada. According to http://newsok.com/happyland/article/878980/?page=2 thieves target Happyland signs; probably the same kind of people who steal U.S. Highway 666 signs. However …

“On May 31, 2003, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials approved a new number for the remaining segments of U.S. 666 in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. At the request of State transportation officials, the route became U.S. 491, a spur of U.S. 191.

“This is the story of why it was numbered U.S. 666 in the first place.”

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/us666.cfm

The story is too long. But, it is at a government site, and maybe the writer was paid by the word.



Saturday, April 9, 2016

I know what you did -- and so does everybody else

“Soon enough, everyone will be able to track everyone, thus making all of us agents of the state. That’s the genius behind all of this. Organized social pressure is the way populations will be controlled, much in the way cattlemen manage their herds. Once you realize everyone knows what you are doing and saying, even in private moments, you will act in a way that is ‘appropriate’ even when no one is looking.” – ‘The Future Will Be No Fun’

http://thezman.com/wordpress/

And, all things masculine will be tossed out the window, with the baby and the bath water.

(If you remember babies bathed in small metal dish pans in kitchens, you are among a minority of (possibly) aged and (at one time) poor Americans. Poor people often did not have sinks. Dishes were washed in porcelained tin pans, as were babies, and dishwater and bathwater tossed out the kitchen window. There was a second dish pan for rinsing dishes. The term “dish pan hands” – Oh. You never heard that term?)


Thursday, April 7, 2016

With little else to do …

Flying low over the internet.

There is nothing in a name

Right. So what should we expect to find at Roach Animal Hospital in Sioux City, Iowa?

A partial title

“Self-Assembled Structures from an Amphiphilic Multiblock …”

(Partial because the site is in PDF, and I didn’t want to wait for it to load just to see what is an Amphiphilic Multiblock.”)

And in “We got it wrong” news

We said the salmonella outbreak killed more than 300 people, which is not accurate. It has made 300 people ill.

In a story published on May 20 officials misstated the number of robbers who tried to hold up a bank in southern Israel. Officials eventually revised down the number of robbers from two to one.

The telephone number in a Tuesday Baytown Sun story was incorrect.

An April 5 story stated that Mary Fraijo did not return a reporter’s calls seeking comment. Fraijo died last December.

NPR will get it wrong, even when you’re dead – Sometimes twice

In the audio, we call one of Merle Haggard's songs "The Drinkin' Side of Me." The correct song title is "The Fightin' Side of Me."

As first published, this post attributed the song "If We're Not Back In Love By Monday" to Merle Haggard. That song was written by Sonny Throckmorton and Glenn Martin, not by Haggard, who recorded it.

American refugees to Cuba

“In 1972, Ishmael Muslim Ali LaBeet and four other killers walked into the Fountain Valley golf club in the Virgin Islands. They rounded up four Florida tourists and four employees, forced them to kneel on the ground, and opened fire.

“That was how the Fountain Valley Massacre began.

“Afterward LaBeet and his fellow murderers were swarmed by civil rights attorneys eager to claim that their clients had been tortured into confessing. But the claims of torture were undermined by LaBeet.

“At his trial, Ishmael LaBeet yelled, ‘I killed them all. I don't give a f__. I killed them all.’

“The killers were found guilty and sentenced. But LaBeet hijacked an airplane to Cuba. Today he is still there, north of Guantanamo, calling himself a Communist.” – ‘Castro’s American Victims’

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Stupid college kids plus stupid social media hysteria equals …

… stupid response.

“Rumors of a klansman on campus have proven false after a priest innocently made his way through Bloomington.

“Last night around 9:15 PM, social media became a furious storm of confusion regarding a man in white robes roaming along 10th St. and purportedly armed with a whip.

“Students thought the white robes indicated Klu Klux Klan affiliation.”

http://thetab.com/us/indiana/2016/04/05/last-night-white-robed-priest-mistaken-armed-kkk-klansman-1804

(One SM -- Social Media – user, after the klansman was ID’d as a priest: “OK seriously why the f*** was a priest walking around campus at night?”)

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Stone Age deer on northern Scottish islands not native

“DNA analysis revealed that deer on Scotland's northernmost islands were unlikely to have come from the closest and seemingly most obvious places -- mainland Scotland, Ireland or Norway, said a study in the Royal Society journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"’Our results imply that Neolithic humans were transporting deer considerable distances, by sea, from an unknown source’ some 4,500-5,500 years ago, co-author David Stanton of Cardiff University told AFP by email.

"’These results are surprising... The evidence suggests that we have misunderstood our relationship with this species,’ he added.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/stone-age-humans-brought-deer-scotland-sea-study-233224392.html

Link at http://www.drudgereport.com/

A $5million coin?

So says an adverstory at zerohedge.com.

How long before the Franklin Mint has the $5 million coin for sale at $29.95? Or a reasonable facsimile thereof?




Years have gone by, and we must ask …

“This s(tuff) once mattered? Really? And how long did it take these people to remove their heads from their rear ends?”

A few years before this thing ran, Mick Jagger met with a high Roman Catholic official and a high Church of England official to talk about “What young people want.” All three spoke in tones of “We are brilliantly intelligent, are we not?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaBnIzY3R00

(No more than a couple of minutes required to say, “What?”)

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Chinese company buys Serbian steel mill

“The bid submitted by China’s HBIS – the second largest steel producer in the world – to privatise the Smederevo steel mill was accepted on Tuesday, with the price offered slightly over the required minimum – EUR 46 million, Tanjug has learned.

“A government working group opened the bid with the Chinese partner at 11 am Tuesday, concluding that it is compliant with the tender requirements.

“The initial price set in the public invitation for a strategic partner was EUR 45.7 million.
“Minister of Economy Zeljko Sertic has said earlier that, if everything goes as planned, an agreement on privatising the steel mill will be signed in April.”

http://www.serbia.com/hbis-bid-privatise-steel-mill-accepted/

(A couple of years ago, Poland awarded a contract for a traffic loop around Warsaw to a Chinese company. Warsaw government officials figured the Chinese company would hire several hundred Polish workers for the construction. Not so. The Chinese company said it would bring in 5,000 Chinese to do the work.)

Four ways of doing things

This morning my wife and I went to a compounding pharmacy a few miles away after the pharmacy phone registered a busy signal on five calls. We had used the pharmacy before for Charlie’s cortisone medicine. Charlie is a standard poodle and has Addison’s disease.

For about 15 minutes, the pharmacist could not find the prescription. He used both my wife’s first name and mine for searches, used both our initials and eventually called up all last names beginning with M. He said the pharmacy used three different systems, and did not have a one-method-entry in place.

My wife said she encountered the same problem when she went to work for the alumni department at Texas A&M University - Commerce. Entry codes included Texas A&M University - Commerce; Texas A&M University Commerce; Texas A&M University, Commerce; TAM-Commerce; and TA&M-Commerce. The university IT people had not designated a specific entry code. My wife fixed that problem by making all entries in the alumni office as Texas A&M University – Commerce. It was a simple fix and made her job much easier.

I’m Johnny Al-Knoxville

We’re gonna shoot down a Russian fighter using my grandfather’s machine gun.

Yeah, right.

See Jihadi run. See Jihadi run fast. See Jihadi run not fast enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRTqjfr5yqY&ebc=ANyPxKpqIqmLLJ_xqr64YnNo7iqxckH4xVj5_UQmdjafzn_hd3Hdamf5fpLUTR8iFjdHtdt4TBB44G4P5a0Sx7KUbeC3d-3c4Q

I wish to shoot every jihadist who says “Allah akbar.” Every one.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Combs, Arkansas, Zip Code 72721

Combs is an unincorporated community in Madison County. The number of bridges in Madison County is not mentioned in any visited sites.

In 2000, the counted population of Combs was 391. Of those, 389 were white, six Indian and one was listed as “Other.” By Old Math, 6+1=7, which when subtracted from 391 leaves 384, which should be the white population. Maybe the web site uses Government Math, in which numbers mean whatever the preparers say.

http://zipcode.org/72721

The same site says Combs in 2000 had a female population of 180 and a male population of 211. Median age of men was 45.1; for women, 44.3. Income per household was $31,094. Average house value was $75,000.

http://www.zip-codes.com/zip-code/72721/zip-code-72721.asp says the 2010 population was 268, and agrees with the 391 count a decade before. That is a drop of 123 people. The average house value dropped to $54,700, while average household income rose to $32,857.

In 2010, 85 residents received Social Security payments.

According to http://www.usa.com/72721-ar.htm the 2010-2014 population was 510, “which has grown 93.2 % since 2000. The population growth is much higher than the state average of 10.24 …”

Numbers, numbers. Pick whichever set you like.

OMG! This is literally unbelievable!

Read ‘em and … I don’t know. Scream and cuss with approaching insanity?

https://twitter.com/real_peerreview

If you make it through more than six, you are a better man than I, Gunga Din.

Public schools stopped teaching Latin long, long ago

Which, overall, was a good thing, since the high school dropout rate would be much greater than now, if Latin were a required subject requiring a passing grade. But, if Latin had been required long, long ago, I would not have thought "tempus fugit" meant "I am so pissed off, I just want to say 'Fugit.'"

Sunday, April 3, 2016

‘I want to die with dignity and take all these bastards with me’

Spetznaz calls airstrike on his position rather than face capture by ISIS.

“Tell my family and my country I love them.”

Transcript:

Officer: command I am compromised, repeat I am compromised.

Command: please repeat and confirm

Officer: They have spotted me, there are shooting everywhere, I am pinned, request evacuation immediately

Command: evacuation request acknowledged

Officer: please hurry I am low on ammo, they seem to be everywhere, I can’t hold them for too long please hurry

Command: Confirmed, hold them off, continue return of fire, go to safe position, air support is monitoring, state coordinates

Officer: gives coordinates which are blurred in the translation

Command: command repeats coordinates which are blurred. Confirm

Officer: confirmed, please hurry I am low on ammo, they are surrounding me, bastards

Command: 12 minutes until evacuation, return to safe line, I repeat return to safe line

Officer: They are close, I am surrounded, this may be the end, tell my family I love them dearly

Command: return to green line, continue return of fire, help is on the way, followed by air support

Officer: negative, I am surrounded, they are so many of these bastards

Command: 10 minutes, return to green line

Officer: I can’t they have surrounded me and are closing in, please hurry

Command: move to green line, repeat move to green line

Officer: They are outside, conduct the airstrike now please hurry, this is the end, tell my family I love them and I died fighting for my motherland.

Command: Negative return to green line

Officer: I can’t command, I am surrounded, they are outside, I don’t want them to take me and parade me, conduct the airstrike, they will make a mockery of me and this uniform. I want to die with dignity and take all these bastards with me. please my last wish, conduct the airstrike, they will kill me either way.

Command: please confirm your request

Officer: They out outside, this is the end commander, thank you, tell my family and my country I love them. Tell them I was brave and I fought until I could no longer. Please take care of my family, avenge my death, good bye commander, tell my family I love them

Command: No response, orders the airstrike.

http://neveryetmelted.com/


The Hunley comes out of its shell

“A combination of rust, sand, rock and assorted ocean debris, concretions are hard as concrete. The concretion layer that coated the entire submarine, inside and out, was so thick, the original iron has been obscured since the Hunley was first raised from the harbor floor. Some areas of concretion were harder than the iron underneath them. In order for the sodium hydroxide treatment to leech the corrosive salt out of the iron skin effectively, the concretion had to be removed first. In May of 2014, the submarine was immersed in sodium hydroxide for the first time. That initial three-month soak was intended to loosen the concretions.”

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/

(Archaeologists still do not know why the submarine sank.)

Finding the wrong man guilty

By Christopher J. Green

“On 24th March 2016, Radavan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the terrible civil war in the former Yugoslavia, was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to forty years in prison. His conviction is yet another appalling injustice inflicted upon the Serbian people who were and continue to be, singled out as the ‘nationalist’ aggressors who caused the civil war and who were the guilty perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

“Let me make something very clear: Radovan Karadzic is not a war criminal. He is a hero of the West who should’ve been acclaimed not condemned, supported instead of vilified. His trial is a gross miscarriage of justice and is another betrayal of the people of Europe as you’re about to discover. Because the same horrors that came to the doorstep of the Bosnian Serbs are now spreading to Europe and people are either failing or refusing to join the dots.

“Just two days before the verdict was announced, 35 people were slaughtered by devout Muslim mujahideen waging jihad in the way of Allah in the capital of the European Union, Brussels. The atrocity came just four months after mujahideen waged Islamic jihad in Paris, murdering 130 innocent people and ten weeks after thousands of women were raped or sexually assaulted by Muslim males in Cologne and other European cities on New Year’s Eve 2015.”

http://www.floppingaces.net/2016/04/01/how-the-betrayal-of-radavan-karadzic-led-to-jihad-in-brussels-guest-post/

Western nations decided to side with Islamic jihadists, rather than with Christian Serbia.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

More butchering of the language (and an update)

“When you are paid to write on behalf of a party, your (sic) not a journalist. You are an advocate. When you are an advocate posing as a (sic) independent media, your (sic) are a fraud.”

http://thezman.com/wordpress/

This is infuriating. Someone who maybe gets paid for writing, and he makes fifth-grade mistakes. The Z Man has a habit of talking about African-American intelligence, as in lack of, and yet he continues to write such badly incorrect stuff that his points suffer.

For your own sake, man, read your stuff before posting!

Update

I posted almost all of this at Zman comments. The site author replied with: “Read this,” which was a link to http://gizmodo.com/study-people-who-point-out-typos-are-jerks-1767969516

The site does not say “jerks,” but “Type A a$$holes.”

So the Zman believes I am a Type A a$$hole because I recommend he pay closer attention to editing his copy. At times, I am an a$$hole. I’ve known that for a long time. I became an at-times a$$hole when I got my third stripe and continued with the first and second rockers. As an at-times a$$hole sergeant, I insisted people do the right things the right way. I was even a sometimes a$$hole as a newspaper editor and as a reporter when elected and appointed politicians exceeded their statutory authority.

I will continue to read Zman, and I will become infuriated if easily fixable grammatical mistakes appear in his writings. Zman thinks, which is not in plentiful supply these days.

Norfork, Arkansas, Zip Code 72658

Norfork is in Baxter County, which is the north central county smack dab against Missouri. Norfolk’s estimated population is 498, a drop of 2.5% from the 2010 count of 511.

The 2000 demographics showed 96% white, 0.21% black, 1.25% native American and remaining percentage scattered among Asian, two or more races, Hispanic or Latino and Others.

“The median income for a household in the city was $30,192, and the median income for a family was $34,375. Males had a median income of $23,750 versus $19,028 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,671. About 7.5% of families and 13.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18.9% of those under age 18 and 16.5% of those age 65 or over.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfork,_Arkansas

Future Google executive Dan Fredinburg grew up on a farm in Norfork. Google says he left Norfork at age 15 to attend Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs. He died in an avalanche at Mount Everest’s South Base Camp in the April 2015 Nepal earthquake.

Norfork is located “at the confluence of the North Fork River and the White River” and “is one of the oldest settled areas in northern Arkansas. It's* (sic) most famous landmark is the Wolf House, property of Baxter County, which underwent a major historic restoration. It was the first site in Baxter County to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Norfork's bridge over the White River is also on the Register, as is a local bed and breakfast and Horace Mann school buildings.”

http://www.norfork.net/

(*My struggle against bad grammar continues. Note to proofreaders/editors: Read the sentence without the contraction: “It is most famous landmark …”)

I planned on writing more about Norfork, but the “It’s” misuse took me completely out of the mood. Wah, wah, wah.


As was said on the Brady Bunch – Nazis, Nazis, Nazis

They’re everywhere.

The president of Brazil says ‘Calls to impeach me are like Nazi treatment of Jews.’

http://www.timesofisrael.com/brazils-president-likens-impeachment-calls-to-nazi-treatment-of-jews/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=f0e66c5dd0-2016_04_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-f0e66c5dd0-55395173

Dear Madam President Rousseff: No one plans to take you to the outskirts of Brasilia and force you to climb into a hole and then shoot you in the head.

‘North Korean escapee compares work camps to Auschwitz’

http://www.timesofisrael.com/north-korean-escapee-compares-work-camps-to-auschwitz/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=f0e66c5dd0-2016_04_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-f0e66c5dd0-55395173

Dear Mr. Kang: You said “having personal hobbies or showing personal preference is a shortcut to the prison camp.” History does not show a Jew sent to a death camp because of his collection of Russian stamps. Nor do you speak of massive crematoria.

In Molenbeek, “locals predict district’s Muslims will fight back against neo-Nazis on Saturday.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/threat-of-extreme-right-march-stirs-fears-in-tense-molenbeek/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=f0e66c5dd0-2016_04_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-f0e66c5dd0-55395173

Dear Molenbeek residents: If Brussels police are, as you accuse, “unwilling or unprepared to listen to (your) concerns,” here is a solution – Turn in the jihaddists who live in your neighborhood, who build bombs in your neighborhood, who launch attacks from your neighborhood and who recruit other terrorists from your population.


Somebody at Stanford has a sense of humor … and cajones?

Newspaper issues demands, among other things:

“…that Hoover Tower be removed, since its phallic symbolism is not countered by a suitably feminist building on campus.

“… that Stanford expels Panda Express from campus, since its food is culturally appropriative, and celebrates the harvesting of the endangered panda bear.

“… that swimming pools be abolished at Stanford, since their blueness shows implicit support for the Israeli flag, further dehumanizing the Palestinian people.”

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/04/the-stanford-review-is-going-to-get-in-trouble.php

There are more, and each is funny, but also too close to moonbeam demands from the bat guano crazies.

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/

Since writer is Cuban, can he be a racist?

Havana columnist asks Obama “Negro, are you dumb?”

“Days after Fidel Castro went on the offensive against Barack Obama in an editorial questioning the intentions behind the president's Cuba visit, a Havana columnist attacked the U.S. leader for 'inciting rebellion' in an opinion piece titled 'Negro, are you dumb?'”

Fidel Castro exposed to “the risk of a heart attack” by Obama’s speech.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3519379/Negro-dumb-Afro-Cuban-newspaper-columnist-attacks-Obama-inciting-rebellion.html#ixzz44ghgV6eJ

(Could be Obama does not recognize … Well, anything, come to think of it.)


ISIS is 50 miles from me?

“Army Gen. Loyd Austin on Wednesday relinquished command of the U.S. forces fighting the Islamic State in Tampa, Florida …”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/30/white-house-faults-decorated-us-generals-handling-/

Good grief! ISIS is in Tampa! How did the terrorists get that close? Shouldn’t someone call 9-1-1? I guess we’ll now say it’s Islamic State in Tampa. ISIT?