Elvis introduces the band

h/t lost melodies

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Maggie’s Notebook, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, Faultline USA, third world county, McCain Blogs, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, , Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, OTB Sports, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Midweek Open

Presenting the 60 cal hand canon.

h/t FHK

4/30/75

Thirty-three years ago today, communist North Vietnamese troops entered Saigon and seized control of the government that was once the democratic South Vietnam.

The Fall of Saigon (in Vietnamese: Sự kiện 30 tháng 4 – or the “April 30 Incident” is also called by many Vietnamese Ngày mất nước – literally, “The Day of losing the nation”) started a decades long tragedy that impacted millions of Vietnamese and reached into other Southeast Asian nations. The “Killing Fields” of Cambodia were made possible by the communist domination of the region.

The scene in Saigon on April 30, 1975, was one of total chaos.

John E. Carey has a great read….Thirty-three years ago today

See also: SYM: Welcome Home GI

Paris declares war on rats

from BBC

The city, with its canals, river and restaurants is something of a rodent paradise, experts say.

There are four times as many rats as humans in Paris – perhaps eight million in total, according to the council.

A city-wide information campaign, followed by inspections, aims to reduce the numbers of rats on the streets ahead of the lucrative tourist season.

The article doesn’t mention what the plans are to do with the rats once they are caught, however, according to the Larousse Gastronomique, rats are still eaten in some parts of France. For example, this classic example of French cuisine:

Grilled Rats Bordeaux Style (Entrecote à la bordelaise)
Alcoholic rats inhabiting wine cellars are skinned and eviscerated, brushed with a thick sauce of olive oil and crushed shallots, and grilled over a fire of broken wine barrels.

Yum, yum.

Bert Christensen brings us these interesting rat-facts:

In West Africa, however, rats are a major item of diet. the giant rat (Cricetomys), the cane rat (Thryonomys), the common house mouse, and other species of rats and mice are all eaten. According to a United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization report, they now comprise of over 50 percent of the locally produced meat eaten in some parts of Ghana. Between December 1968 and June 1970, 258,206 pounds of cane-rat meat alone were sold in one market in Accra! This is a local recipe that shows the South American influence on West African cuisine.

Stewed Cane Rat
Skin and eviscerate the rat and split it lengthwise. Fry until brown in a mixture of butter and peanut oil. Cover with water, add tomatoes or tomato purée, hot red peppers, and salt. Simmer the rat until tender and serve with rice.

Stuffed Dormice / Ancient Rome
Prepare a stuffing of dormouse meat or pork, pepper, pine nuts, broth, asafoetida, and some garum (substitute anchovy paste.) Stuff the mice and sew them up. Bake them in an oven on a tile.

Roasted Field Mice (Raton de campo asado) / Mexico
Skin and eviscerate field mice. Skewer them and roast over an open fire or coals. These are probably great as hors d’oeuvres with margaritas or “salty dogs.”

Does J. Wright Remember the Zebra Killings?

Rev J. Wright has been all over the news for the past few days, and the following was just one of many very revealing comments. His defense of the Nation of Islam, and Louis Farrakhan, at the National Press Club was vintage left-wing “victim politics”…. (HotAir has the clip)

“Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery …”

Chains? Slavery? No, Farrakhan is not guilty of these crimes. Nor is anyone else, for that matter.

But, just in case anyone needs a reminder of some of the things which do qualify Farrakhan and the NOI as an enemy of liberty, here is something which is much more dangerous than Louis’ notorious hate-speech.

Remembering the Zebra Killings

The Zebra Killings occurred in the San Francisco bay area between 1972 and 1974 and left 71 people dead. They were dubbed the Zebra Killings because of the radio channel used by the police investigating the case (channel Z). The name would take on a more sinister meaning as it became apparent that a group of blacks was systematically stalking and killing whites simply because of the color of their skin….

The majority of the attacks were carried out by five members of a group within Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam called the “Death Angels.” Jesse Lee Cooks, J.C. Simon, Larry Green, Manuel Moore and Anthony Harris were part of this group which believed that whites were created 3,000 years ago by a black mad scientist named Yacub who wanted a race of inferiors to rule over. Death Angels believed they could earn “points” towards going to heaven when they died if they killed whites. For them, whites were not human beings but “grafted snakes,” “blue-eyed devils” and “white motherf—–s.”

Is there political strategery by the Obama campaign involved in Wright’s looney-tunes rant?

Probably. The more Wright speaks, the more he makes it all about himself, and his ego. His speaking tour puts everything in the present tense, quite possibly making it easier for Obama to distance himself from him.

The interesting part of all of this is seeing how many on the left, and in the media, actually agree with, or are sympathetic to Wright’s lunatic ravings.

See also: MM–Wright’s security provided by NOI

Chocolate reduces pregnancy complication risk

Chocolate, Nature’s perfect food.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Indulging in chocolate during pregnancy could help ward off a serious complication known as preeclampsia, new research suggests.

Chocolate, especially dark chocolate, is rich in a chemical called theobromine, which stimulates the heart, relaxes smooth muscle and dilates blood vessels, and has been used to treat chest pain, high blood pressure, and hardening of the arteries, Dr. Elizabeth W. Triche of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and colleagues write.

Preeclampsia, in which blood pressure spikes during pregnancy while excess protein is released into the urine, has many features in common with heart disease, the researchers add.

Sunday Vids

A couple of Lone Star themes, from Delbert McClinton, and Gary P. Nunn.

Serial killer targets young college men?

Could there be a calculated, cross-country plot to kill young college men? It seems a little hard to believe, but two New York detectives say they can prove it.

The stories are the same all over the country–an athletic, intelligent, well-liked college student goes missing.Family and friends launch a massive search. Weeks or months later, the young man is discovered drowned. In more than 40 cases, the deaths are blamed on a drunken accident–except for one.

The death of Chris Jenkins in Minneapolis is the only one where the cause of death was changed from ‘undetermined’ or ‘drowning’ to ‘homicide.’

The two detectives from New York, Gannon and Duarte, have done something that no other law enforcement agency has ever done in this case — they looked at the big picture and visited each site where the young men disappeared. While most local investigations focused on where a body was recovered, Gannon and Duarte tried to figure out where the body went into the river.

City after city, when they’d find the spot where the body went into the water, they would find something else: The symbol of a smiley face. “It’s very disturbing,” Duarte said.The paint color and size of the face varies, but the detectives are convinced that it’s a sick signature the killers leave behind.

Source: kstp.com via nukegingrich

NowPublic

Tags: college | JENKINS | minneapolis | Minnesota | New York | calculated | Chris | connects | cross-country | deaths | Detectives | dozens | eyewitness | including | murder | Plot | seems | World

Beetlemania

First it was cow farts, then it was moose belches. And now, it is … drumroll, please …
beetles. No, not the Lennon/McCartney variety.

An outbreak of mountain pine beetles in British Columbia is doing more than destroying millions of acres of lodgepole pines: By 2020, the beetles will have done enough damage that the forest is expected to release more carbon dioxide than it absorbs, according to research published in the journal Nature this week. Bark beetles also have killed swaths of pines in the western United States, including about 2,300 square miles of trees in Colorado.

The study, led by Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service, estimates that over 21 years trees killed by the beetle outbreak could release 990 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — roughly equivalent to five years of emissions from Canada’s transportation sector. source

We’re Dooooooooomed.

h/t boortz

Black Conservatism

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing in the Atlantic, has penned an article that will leave me in a reflective mood for some time.

It’s about race. It’s about culture. It’s about America. And, it is an honest appraisal of our unfinished business as a uniquely American culture — a frank and unflinching glimpse into the inner ticking of an African-American writer who takes a close look at Bill Cosby and the message (and the messengers) of black self-reliance.

I’ve written several times about growing up in the 60’s Deep South, believing that this experience gives a unique perspective on the subject of racism. But, as I mentioned previously, growing up on the white side of the divide, I really have no idea of what it was like for the blacks, and I want to thank Mr. Coates for granting some much needed perspective.

Here are a three excerpts:

the liberal notion that blacks are still, after a century of struggle, victims of pervasive discrimination is the ultimate collective buzz-kill. It effectively means that African Americans must, on some level, accept that their children will be “less than” until some point in the future when white racism miraculously abates. That’s not the sort of future that any black person eagerly awaits […]

Part of what drives Cosby’s activism, and reinforces his message, is the rage that lives in all African Americans, a collective feeling of disgrace that borders on self-hatred. As the comedian Chris Rock put it in one of his infamous routines, “Everything white people don’t like about black people, black people really don’t like about black people …

the “organic” black conservative tradition: conservatives who favor hard work and moral reform over protests and government intervention, but whose black-nationalist leanings make them anathema to the Heritage Foundation and Rush Limbaugh. When political strategists argue that the Republican Party is missing a huge chance to court the black community, they are thinking of this mostly male bloc—the old guy in the barbershop, the grizzled Pop Warner coach, the retired Vietnam vet, the drunk uncle at the family reunion. He votes Democratic, not out of any love for abortion rights or progressive taxation, but because he feels—in fact, he knows—that the modern-day GOP draws on the support of people who hate him. This is the audience that flocks to Cosby: culturally conservative black Americans who are convinced that integration, and to some extent the entire liberal dream, robbed them of their natural defenses.

A couple of points: First, the statement that conservative black men “know” that the GOP draws on the support of people who hate them is a straw man argument. Who are these haters and bigots? Being labeled a racist, bigot, homophobe by liberal writers does not make one a racist, bigot, or homophobe. There is no shortage of liberal bloggers and reporters who love nothing more than the opportunity to label a Republican as a racist. Of course, “gotcha” journalism is not the exclusive arena of liberal writers, but this is one area that truly deserves some introspection.

Because, in the end, it’s not so much a matter of the lack of respect, as Mr. Coates asserts, but rather, a lack of trust. Embracing the likes of Farrakhan and the NOI does nothing to build trust. Nor does the embrace of Black Liberation Theology. I do not trust these particular people, or these particular institutions, nor do I have any use for many of the words and ideas they promote.

The excerpts really don’t do justice to this fine essay. Please read it all. Also, in the vodpod sidebar, please take a look at the video featuring Coates and Bill Cosby.

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This is the World Famous Friday Open Thread: a Free Speech Zone.
Comments, questions, linkage, trackbacks, are all welcome.

WFFOT: Be the thread.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Maggie’s Notebook, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, D equals S, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, third world county, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, , Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Stocking up

I admit to being surprised at the reports of Sam’s Club and other retailers limiting bulk sales of rice. Panic-buyers, breathlessly reported by mass media, generating concern among the public of possible food shortages, and skyrocketing prices of basic food staples. Is this the next crisis we must face in these bizarre times, or is this just another sign of the times?

In fact, WSJ’s Brett Arends opined the other day that “maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food.”

Maybe it is.

9/11, Katrina, H5N1 preparation, …. If these events didn’t get America’s attention, then maybe a potential problem with food supplies will do the job.

We have been buying a few extra cans all along, trying to get to the point that we can go for ninety days — like FEMA has recommended to our hospitals — but 90 days of self-sufficiency is a tall order. That’s a lot of cans.

Kind of like filling the Strategic Petroleum reserve. If it’s there when you need it, it really doesn’t matter what you paid for it.

Previously: “What’s in your emergency kit?”

Nuke the North Pole?

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut. He is also part of the “tiny minority” of flat-earth, knuckledragging, mouthbreathing deniers of The World According to Gorp.

Phil’s piece in The Australian looks at the lack of recent sunspot activity, and draws a plausible correlation to global cooling, resulting in a coming ice age. Great read. Hope it’s not too scary for the chicken littles.

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is http://www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth’s temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn’t happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth’s climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

Read more: “Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh”

See Also: “Nobody Listening to The Goracle”

Obama’s terrorist buds

”I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.” Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970’s as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago.

Dinitia Smith’s NYT article (published 9/11/01) is saved in the JKN database.
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3

The more I find out about Barack Obama, the more convinced I become that he must be defeated.

Doritos promotes anti-gun activitist

From GunsNet forums, via FreeRepublic …

Frito-Lay/Doritos advertises the anti-gun actions of Vox Populi, along with the cliched “for the children” reasoning, to market this special promotion of Doritos chips.

Be sure to drop Frito Lay a line to let them know what you think.

See also: “Ban guns? I don’t think so”

Obama: soft on crime, weak on defense

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Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, 123beta, Maggie’s Notebook, Right Truth, Shadowscope, Oblogatory Anecdotes, The Amboy Times, Phastidio.net, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Chuck’s Place, D equals S, third world county, Wake Up America, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, , Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, and OTB Sports, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Iran will defend “oppressed muslims”

From Breitbart…

A high-ranking Iranian cleric on Friday said the country should grow into a military super power to defend all Muslims, following an army parade at a time of mounting tension with the West.”In a not so distant future, we should reach a point to have the most powerful military equipment in the world so that no one even think about invading our borders.” Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in his Friday prayer sermon carried live on state radio.

“And not only that of the Islamic republic, but also the borders of Islam … We must defend oppressed Muslims everywhere so that the enemies do not dare to attack Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq.”

On Thursday’s annual Army Day celebration in Tehran, dozens of fighter jets and other aircraft flew over the parade ground in a bid to show the power of the air force.

Also on display was Iran’s Shahab-3 missile, whose range includes Israel and even the fringes of Europe.

The hardline cleric also vowed to cheering worshippers, who chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” that their slogans will materialise.

“I tell you that the death of the United States has come. You shouted Death to the Shah and he died,” Jannati said, referring to the monarch overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution and who died in exile.

“You say Death to Israel and it is dying. You say Death to America and it does not take so long that its death prayer will be said.”

I’ve got a few Iranian friends, and none of them seem as wacky as this fellow.

This type of language just feeds the “Bomb-Iran” feeling that has been around since 1979. I hate to think the normal, every-day Iranians are going to allow themselves to go over the cliff with the mullahs, but that is exactly where they are being led.

And, there won’t be too many tears shed when it happens.

To bring peace to the Afghans, talk to the Taleban

Adam Holloway says that Britain’s strategy in Afghanistan is misconceived. Nato’s military presence should be reduced and the battle for hearts and minds fought more imaginatively

They do not like the F-word in Whitehall, but failure stares us in the face in southern Afghanistan. For three years we have deluded ourselves that we can defeat the insurgency in the Pashtun tribal belt through our much talked-about plan for a ‘comprehensive approach’ — security, governance and development. But in Helmand province and across the Pashtun lands, violence is greatly increased, governance is distinctly patchy and development is barely noticeable.

The government tells us that we are there to stop it becoming a failed state in which our enemies can regroup. Around 50,000 Western soldiers would drive away the Taleban, al-Qa’eda and their friends. But there are other failed states in the world, other areas where extremists are organising against us. Apart from the experience of 11 September 2001, Afghanistan is no more special than the tribal areas of Pakistan or several other places. Surely we can keep tabs on al-Qa’eda without the deployment of tens of thousands of troops, hundreds of lives and billions of dollars? It is not a case of either this, or nothing.

Source: spectator.co.uk via nukegingrich

From Michael Yon … “The United Kingdom is a critical partner in the Afghan war. Mr.Holloway’s controversial article deserves serious consideration and discussion. Furthermore, this Member of Parliament is willing to open a direct line to citizen-voices from the United States, and so with his permission, Mr. Holloway’s email address: hollowaya@parliament.uk ”

NowPublic

Tags: afghanistan | battle | belt | Britain | Helmand | HOLLOWAY | AFGHANS | areas | barely | becoming | defeat | deluded | Development | distinctly | ENEMIES | F-word | failed | failure | FOUGHT | governance | greatly | hearts | imaginatively | increased | Insurgency | Lands | M | minds | World

Blogbreakus interruptus

We interrupt this Blog Break to bring you this special post, The World Famous Friday Open Thread.

Here is the WFFOT Reading Assignment, courtesy of Boortz:

Apparently John McCain is gearing up to run one of the most unconventional campaigns in recent history.

Here we go with these single women voters again. In this election, single women are supposed to be for Democrats what evangelical Christians were for Republicans in 2004. Did you know that single-parent households cost our economy over $12 billion a year?

The House Ways and Means Committee has passed legislation that would give unemployed workers an additional 13 weeks of jobless benefits. There’s a name for this. Vote buying.

This can’t be good news … an Afghan legislative committee is drafting a bill to introduce Taliban-style Islamic morality codes, which include banning women from wearing makeup in public and forbidding men from wearing female fashions.

Chevron is being sued by environmental activists for committing “environmental sins.” I guess they read that stuff from the Vatican a few months ago.

A government middle school teacher in Ohio has been told that he must remove a Bible that is sitting on his desk because the children might see it.

Mexicans spent almost $3 billion in bribes in 2007 … that’s almost two bribes for every living Mexican.

We have a picture of Jesus that is being taken down from a Louisiana court house.

Apparently this is how kids are bullied in schools nowadays … they bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hope their classmates swell up with peanut allergies.

The world’s oldest tree has been discovered in Sweden … and guess why that really matters? Because it has rewritten the history of the climate in the region where it used to be a lot warmer.

I’m surprised a government school would let a student do a science experiment to test whether Chinese water torture would produce a fear response. This kid will be featured on America’s Most Wanted someday.

Great Britain is alarmed because one out of every five killings in Britain is committed by a foreigner. What do you want to bet that the vast majority of these “foreigners” are Muslims.

Cell phones on public transportation are really becoming an issue lately and many places are cracking down.

And now for the world’s smallest dog … a 4 inch Chihuahua named Dancer.

And, finally, from WSJ, an excerpt from the Dem debate in Philly, “Obama’s Tax Evasion“…

But Mr. Gibson had noted that higher rates yield less revenue. So the news anchor tried again: “But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up?” Mr. Obama responded that this “might happen or it might not. It depends on what’s happening on Wall Street and how business is going.” And then he went on a riff about John McCain and the housing market.

The more I learn about Obama, the more convinced I become that he must be defeated…

WFFOT: “Those who ignore the lessons of the thread are doomed to repeat them” … Nuke Santayana

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Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, Wake Up America, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, Maggie’s Notebook, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, , Right Voices, and D equals S, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Romney’s Top 10 Reasons He Dropped Out of Presidential Race

No. 10: There weren’t as many Osmonds as he thought.

No. 9: Got tired of the corkscrew landings of his campaign plane while under fire.

No. 8: As a lifelong hunter, I didn’t want to miss the start of varmint season.

No. 7: There wasn’t room for two Christian leaders in the presidential race.

No. 6: I was upset that no one bothered to search my passport files.

No. 5: I’d rather get fat, grow a beard and try for the Nobel prize.

No. 4: When my wife realized I couldn’t win the GOP nomination, my fundraising dried up.

No. 3: Got tired of wearing a dark suit and tie, and I wanted to kick back in a light colored suit and tie.

No. 2: I took a bad fall at a campaign rally and broke my hair.

And the No. 1 reason Romney dropped out: His campaign relied on a flawed campaign strategy that as Utah goes, so goes the nation.

Home is Where Again?

My mom and I saw my youngest brother off at the airport this morning. It had been a long time between visits (where does the time go?) and mom was very affected by her baby leaving.

“I told Steve that when Bob (stepdad, who has end-stage COPD) dies, I’m going to move up there near him.”

I looked over at her in surprise. “Uh, you HATE the cold and ice. You have Raynaud’s, and your hands and feet get all purply in the cold.”

“But I can’t stand the heat, either, anymore, and we have 9 months of it!”

“You can turn the A/C on and drive to the store in your car. You have more like 9 months of winter there. You really want to drive around in the ice and snow?”

“Well, I just can’t keep the place up. I might only have a couple of years left before it gets to be too much for me.”

“What’s to keep up? A coat of paint every couple of years? I can do that!” (If she would mention to me that she wanted it done, which she hasn’t.)

“There’s your middle brother, too. I don’t think he’ll ever have a place of his own.  I can go up there, buy a place, and we’ll live together.  It will give him a home.”

I was glad I wasn’t drinking anything so I didn’t snort it out my nose.  My mom is a super Baptist.  She prays loud and long at every meal.  She has bible readings (aloud).  The brother that she is concerned about, the one we (she and I) haven’t seen in years, is a genuinely nice and gentle guy. He’s a carpenter and (very accomplished) tattoo artist.  He has friends in (very) low places.  He is no stranger to illicit substances and is a practicing alcoholic.  I love him to death, but……I just don’t see it happening.  Oh, mercy.  I’d kinda like to be there, though, when she prayed for the souls of him and all of his buddies.  Road trip?

I suggested to her that maybe, just maybe, before she went and put the (paid for) house on the market, she might want to fly up in the winter and give it a trial run for a month or so.  Just in case.

blog break

I need a few days. See y’all next week.

Europe or Eurabia?

Daniel Pipes says,

“I foresee potentially one of three paths for Europe: Muslims dominating, Muslims rejected, or harmonious integration.”

Great read.

The bitterness gaffe

Obama’s bitterness gaffe, released by a still unknown attendee at a San Francisco fundraiser, revealed as much in that short, static-filled recording as any expose written by the finest of “outside” writers. It was the candidate’s own words that convicted him. As much as a photo expose’ by ZombieTime News, the Obama recording gave us confirmation that these people think they are somehow better than the rest of the world, snug in their own cocoon of superiority, oblivious to anything that doesn’t fit their preconceived notions of “truth,” and ignoring the true source of bitterness that our country has endured since Florida 2000.

Peter Wehner presents the duality this way:

He presents himself as post-racial — which is harder to accept than it once was, given his intimate, longtime relationship with a pastor and church that harbor deep and obvious racial anger toward whites. Obama presents himself as post-partisan — even though in his time in the Senate he has done nothing to bridge the partisan divide, which explains why he has been endorsed by the rabidly partisan MoveOn.org. Obama presents himself as post-ideological — even though he was named the Senate’s most liberal member in 2007 by the respected National Journal. Obama is a public critic of free trade — yet his chief economic adviser is quoted by a Canadian official as saying that Obama’s position on NAFTA is politically motivated and insincere. Obama speaks about the importance of religious faith in his life and the life of the nation — yet when speaking to a group of rich liberals, he implicitly denigrates people of faith, pairing them with people who have “antipathy to people who aren’t like them” and who harbor “anti-immigrant sentiment[s].” He paints religious believers as folks clinging to crutches to better deal with their desperate lives — only to insist last night that his words were actually a tribute to people of religious faith. NRO

You have to go back to former Atlanta Braves loudmouth John Rocker to offend as many categories of people as Obama smeared in his ugly pronouncement. source

UPDATE: It’s no longer a mystery.  The Huffpo reporter who broke this story, recorded Obama’s comments herself.  There were also video cameras at the event.  Hopefully, it will turn up on youtube.

Church of Oprah

Have you heard about the largest church in the world?

Barry Obama’s biggest supporter, The Oprah, and the New Age Church…..

(hat-tip, Melissa)

Sunday Open

“Bitter Democrats?”

Who would have thunk that? Heh. Democrats have raised the bitterness bar to new heights with each passing news cycle ever since Florida 2000.

This story has legs on steroids.