End Of The World This Weekend?

Now, I am a fallen human; a sinful and sin-filled man. This I confess. As a Christian I confess and acknowledge my sinful nature, and despite my best and (at times) whole-hearted efforts (but mostly half-hearted efforts) I fall short of correcting it but that’s ok, because the Big Guy through His Grace wubs me anyway. Good stuff; why, some even call it “Great News.”

So I heard on the radio that this weekend will be all about Rapture according to some. Evidently some folks have declared that Scripture tells them that this will occur on Saturday.

Now, Scripture is a great resource and guide: the lessons, stories and parables offer great insights into man’s fallen nature and how pride and arrogance so often lead us into sin and a life that is less than what it could be. It is applicable across all times and places; as such, there really are surprisingly enough relatively few crystal clear unambiguous statements in Scripture. One of them, however, is don’t try to predict when the game is up. That is for the Master to know, not you. We are told to live our lives fully expecting that he could return at any moment and act accordingly. If and when we try to predict the time then we commit the sin of imagining ourselves as the Master, of trying to control Him.

And quite frankly that shit don’t fly.

I mean that in a loving Christian sense, of course.

Oh, and speaking of flying, I’m doing that on Saturday so I do have a question for some of our theologians: what are the odds that during my flight this Rapture occurs, and while it would be perfectly understandable if The Big Guy decides that I’m not Rapture-Ready it would sort of, um, suck if He (in His Infinite Wisdom) decides that but also happens to decide that the Pilot is.

Our Goat

Some of you probably didn’t know we had one. We do.
When we needed to illustrate a scientific point…call in the goat.

“One of these things is not like the other.”

In 2006, we gave al-Reuters a lesson in how, if one is going to completely compromise “journalistic integrity” and manipulate a photograph for maximum emotional impact, TOWACA Press International© PROFESSIONALS with goats do it. Total pwnage.

“Pull your pants up, son.”
Lebanese rescuer attempts to awaken exhausted poser, while Sheik “Six Pack Abs” Ali bin Bingley patiently awaits extraction from the only beam he’s ever been under that wasn’t out of a bottle. -Adinon Haggis, TPI

Then there’s our always popular European…

“Don’t feed (or whatever) the animals, especially the goats, I don’t care how CUTE they are…” sign.

Ah, the Swilling Birthday Goat.

We have a long and storied goat history here on the Swilling, almost from the moment of our inception. And we cherish it, we do. Sure, there’ve been forays into hams, horses and asses, but those have been event driven ~ horsey perversions in Enumclaw, supper support for the Danes and people who simply want to buy bacon unharrassed at a Target in Minneapolis ~ things of that ilk. Through the whole of our time online, our underlying loyalties have always been tied to goats. “Tethered”, if you will. Our humble origins keep us grounded, even while we scale blogging heights we could have never dreamed of six short, stumpy legged years ago.

Why now? Well. This small walk down Swilling Memory Lane is all thanks to Laura extending International Goat Week to a month. Just because she could.

Gave me a chance to go digging and get all misty eyed. Laugh at my own cleverness. Marvel at baaaad Bingley’s lost and wasted youth. Keepin’ it real.

All Those “Great” Jobs

The one’s that Obama is touting. You know, the big private-sector hiring last month that McDonald’s did?

Well, don’t expect a very long career

McDonald’s is to change the way customers order its meals in Europe, partly replacing cashiers and the use of banknotes at its 7,000 fast-food restaurants in the region with touchscreen terminals and swipe cards.

Yes, in a Green Economy Liberal Arts majors won’t even have “would you like fries with that?” as a fall-back option.

I for one welcome our Computerized Burger Overlords.

The White Tree Of Gondor

Last year Rob and I both came up with the idea of adding fig trees to our burgeoning home farms. The only difference was that he happens to live in Louisiana, which has a fig-o-licious climate and I live in NJ which, despite all the Consensus Proven Science claims of the Gorians, had a Winter this year that basically consisted of below freezing temperatures from Thanksgiving through the end of February, including a foot-plus of snow on the ground from Christmas to Lincoln’s birthday.

All of which means that he awoke this Spring to fig trees that were thriving whilst I awoke to, well, basically dead brown twigs

You know, the kind of tree that makes Charley Brown’s Christmas tree look like the one in Rockefeller Center.

So I resigned myself to at least having taken one for Science and proving that the NJ climate was not conducive to fig production. I went out and bought a few Blackberry bushes to replace the fig trees, but when I went to yank the suckers out what to my wondering eyes did appear but GREEN SHOOTS OF LIFE

Both trees have these little shoots popping out of their bases. Let’s see how they fare…

Today’s Posts

Are brought to you by the good efforts of Miss Shilling’s Orifice.

When you really need to go down after the Hun, only Miss Shilling’s Orifice will keep your motor humming.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to My Cosmic Twin!!!!!!!!!

And BFF in the Whole Wide World, Kcruella.

But if you had a chance and didn’t give Bourdain a big, wet one for me today at Les Halles…
I take it all back.

Social Commentary At Barnes And Noble

Daughter and I were killing time at the bookstore today when I came upon these two subject headings in one of the aisles

Sort of says it all, don’t it?

6.0 Near San Jose, Costa Rica

Let’s pray there was not much damage.

It Was Research On The Infidels!

Via Ace, just lookee what was in Osama’s NetFlix queue

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A stash of pornography was found in the hideout of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. commandos who killed him, current and former U.S. officials said on Friday.

The pornography recovered in bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery with Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Kind of puts a new spin on the term “whack job” now don’t it?

They’re Not Serious, Part Oh God I’ve Lost Count

What 800lb gorilla in the room? Congress doesn’t see no steenkeen Gorilla

WASHINGTON (AP) – Congress is putting off changes to Social Security, but the massive retirement and disability program still faces long-term financial problems from an aging population and an economy that has been slow to rebound.

Those problems are getting new attention Friday as the trustees who oversee Social Security and Medicare release their annual reports on the programs’ finances.

We have to cut back on these programs. We have to start now.

Promises made on pie-in-the-sky revenue projections can not be kept. Sorry, life sometimes sucks.

But our budget should not be a suicide pact.

That Explains It! A Good Number of Those Arab Refugees

…(previously discussed here) speak French!

Denmark announces decision to reintroduce border controls ahead of Schengen meeting

…”Over the past few years we have seen an increase in trans-border crime, and this is designed to curb the problem. We will be building new facilities at the Danish-German border, with new electronic equipment and number-plate identifiers,” he said.

…Passport-free travel across the ‘Schengen’ area, which does not include Britain or Ireland, has come under unprecedented pressure after Italy gave residence permits to more than 25,000 Arabs last month, allowing them unfettered access to the rest of the EU.

The European Commission was last week forced to propose the reintroduction of temporary passport controls as “under very exception circumstances” after a conflict between France and Italy threatened to destroy the border-free zone.

France, the most likely destination of the mainly French-speaking Tunisian immigrants, prompted the row by temporarily closing a key railway frontier with Italy and introduced tough extra checks of immigrants’ papers.

Man, those French are something else. Lecture away, my vastly superior E(not-for-much-longer)U friends.

(H/Ts to Maetenloch and Mark “united they’ll fall, but divided a handful might stand a chance” Steyn.)

Whatever Became Of Hubert Biden?

You know things are bad as a Western Infidel when even Osama doesn’t think you’re worth targeting

US officials have revealed that Osama bin Laden’s diaries contain the rather startling conclusion that he didn’t think Vice President Joe Biden was worth bumping off (hat tip: a tweet from my New York colleague Jon Swaine).

According to ProPublica, the Obama administration is briefing that Barack Obama was bin Laden’s the “top target” (no surprise there) while “military chiefs like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the defense secretary” were also major scalps.

But Joe Biden’s scalp (hair plugs and all)? Apparently, not so much. A counterterrorism official said: “There is a note indicating that the vice president is not an important target because that position has less weight.”

A far cleverer fellow than I wrote a song about this very topic.

Spend Spend Spend

Why not? It’s the only thing they can be said to be good at

Treasury Auctions To Take US Over Debt Ceiling On Monday

By Jeffrey Sparshott and Jeff Bater, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Treasury Department auctioned $56 billion in new debt Tuesday and Wednesday, enough to take the U.S. over its federal debt ceiling when the three- and 10-year notes settle on Monday.

Treasury officials last month flagged May 16 as the day the government would hit the $14.294 trillion debt limit.

The U.S. is selling $72 billion in new debt over three days this week. The Treasury auctioned $32 billion in three-year notes Tuesday and $24 billion in 10-year notes Wednesday, and will sell $16 billion in 30-year bonds Thursday. All of the auctions will settle Monday.

As of Tuesday, total debt subject to the limit was $14.274 trillion, according to the Treasury Department.

…The federal budget deficit widened in April, with the government spending $ 40.49 billion more than it collected last month, a Treasury Department report said Wednesday.

April April April. There’s something about that month which rings a bell somewhere.

Oh yeah: it’s when all of us suckas pay our taxes. So in the month when government “income” is highest…they still managed to spend $1.35 BILLION dollars per day more than they took in.

They are not serious in DC.

Boned, we are boned.

Spam Of The Day

It sounds like someone has sampled a tad too much of their product

Escalating grass isn’t any when hard neither of them tricky as much experienced farmers help it become trying to come to be in the event that 1st getting involved. After getting the basics lower a person will begin to polish any method for the increased weed yield and then level of quality. In case needs to learn to evolve dope, suggest quite simple should you have an important guide.

I get the munchies just reading that.

Italians Fear The Big One

And we ain’t talking Gina Lollobrigida

Italians evacuate Rome over ‘big one’ fears
Italians are fleeing Rome todayover fears a giant earthquake is coming following a seismologist’s 1915 prediction that “the big one” will strike on May 11, 2011.

Businesses have reported requests from one in five people to have time off work and many are also keeping children away from school and heading to the beach or country for the day.

Romans are taking it so seriously that local newspapers have even been publishing survival guides with tips of what to do – if – the ground starts to tremble.

The panic has been fanned by Facebook, Twitter and text messages around a prediction by Raffaele Bendani, a seismologist who forecast in 1915 that a “big one” would hit Rome on Wednesday.

For those Dear Readers from Italy who may be unsure, please note the following illustration is not an earthquake:

Don’t Think This Can’t Happen Here

Lots of folks in DC would love to see the Irish get away with this

The Irish government plans to institute a tax on private pensions to drive jobs growth, according to its jobs program strategy, delivered today.

Without the ability sell debt due to soaring interest rates, and with severe spending rules in place due to its EU-IMF bailout, Ireland has few ways of spending to stimulate the economy. Today’s jobs program includes specific tax increases, including the tax on pensions, aimed at keeping government jobs spending from adding to the national debt.

The tax on private pensions will be 0.6%, and last for four years, according to the report.

“Ireland has few ways of spending to stimulate the economy.” Never mind the fact that it was the rampant spending that totally hosed their economy; no, no, the idea is always that Government spending is this magical elixir that “stimulates” the economy.

And if the Government has to literally reach into your cookie jar or under your mattress and steal from you to keep it going, well, by gum that’s what they’ll do.

Because that’s what they do.

Mad Stylin Skillz

As some of our more astute readers have noticed the Style Sheets have been, um, feisty over the past day or so. I had updated one of the cache plugins (the one that allows us to weather all those Instalanches) and it evidently wasn’t so polished. So I ixnayed it and when a few hours later the author released an “improved” version I loaded that.

Only it wasn’t quite ready for prime time either.

So for the moment we are a cache-free society.

Another Slice of Doom

The Mississippi goes past a lot of refineries.

And a lot of oil uses the river to get to those refineries.

Hopefully for all of us, the river doesn’t get to those refineries first. Or stop the oil from getting there for very long. Or $6 gal is gonna look like a gift.

“Private GDP, Where You and I Live, Hasn’t Grown in 14 Years”

A Very Special Graduation

Jeanna Giese graduated from college on Sunday. Well, a lot of kids graduate this time of year, and frankly unless it’s your kid you just kind of smile and move along.

But allow me to suggest that Jenna is different. You see, on September 12th, 2004 she was bitten on the finger by a bat. The small wound was cleaned and forgotten about and she went on with her life.

One month later she had blurred double vision and was taken to the hospital with slurred speech and she began salivating profusely. On October 18th the CDC confirmed that she had full-blown rabies. She had not received the standard course of vaccine shots immediately following the bite back in September, and she was going to die a horrible death within 24, maybe 48 hours.

At the stage her disease was at the survival rate was 0%. No one had ever EVER survived rabies without being vaccinated immediately after the infection.

Until Jeanna.

Read the full remarkable story of science, trust and faith here and here and here.

Recovery Doom!

Gosh, things are just going swimmingly

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — If you thought the housing crisis was bad, think again.

It’s worse.

New data just out from Zillow, the real-estate information company, show house prices are falling at their fastest rate since the Lehman collapse.

Average home prices are down 8% from a year ago, 3% over the quarter, and are falling at about 1% every month, according to Zillow.

And the percentage of homeowners in negative-equity positions — with a home worth less than its mortgage — has rocketed to 28%, a new crisis high.

Yay! Good things the Really Smart Adults are in charge!

What a foolish boondoggle those tax breaks for home buyers have turned out to be. The government spent an estimated $22 billion between 2008 and 2010 on tax breaks to prop up the housing market. All it achieved was a brief suckers’ rally that ended last summer.

Of course, the standard Government reaction will be “if only we’d spent more then the Program would have worked…”

Boned, we are boned.

Britain and France Start the Whole Libya Thing

Bombs flying, people dying, “Kill Qadaffi”, blahblahblah, Senator John McCain praises “heroic” rebels, probably gets knocked in the head by flying debris again, blahblahblah.

Understandably, people want OUT.

Apparently, in scenes vaguely reminiscent of the Mariel boatlift, they’re trying ~ packed into anything that’ll sort of float.

Italian coast guard sailors rescued more than 500 refugees from Libya after their boat had crashed against a rock off the island of Lampedusa, where the migrant crisis continues.

The boat was steaming toward the harbor of Lampedusa Sunday when its steering failed, causing it to turn sharply and sending it crashing into the rocks, Agenzia Giornalistica Italia reported.

The problem is, EVERYBODY wants out, thanks to the upbeat nature of the NATO campaign:

…”The bombs forced us to flee. Right now the situation in Libya doesn’t leave us any choice,” a refugee from Pakistan was quoted as saying by Italian news agency ANSA.

Lampedusa is an itty bitty, teeny tiny Italian island south west of Sicily that’s getting really crowded REAL fast.

…An estimated 30,000 migrants have arrived on the tiny island of Lampedusa since January, when a wave of pro-democracy revolutions began to sweep North Africa and the Middle East. In April, Tunisia agreed to take back migrants who had fled the country following the revolution there.

Italy needs help and is looking to the EU. Aid agencies are understandably forecasting a humanitarian crisis. And you’ll never guess what. The French are horrified ~ sacré bleu fromage HORRIFIED, mind you ~ at the very thought of ANY of the filthy, great unwashed heading their way, even though…they sort of caused the migration of desperation to begin with. BUT NEVER MIND!

…The refugee crisis has alarmed European politicians and led to conflicts between Italy and neighboring France over a possible migrant influx. Several European politicians have called for temporarily suspending the Schengen free-travel agreement and reinstate border checks because of the migrant wave.

Oh, God bless those vaunted, superior beings, the Europeans. People crashing onto rocks and dying, or being dumped into the ocean and paddling until they can paddle no further and they sink beneath the waves doesn’t “ALARM” European politicians. What “ALARMS” them is the fact that they MIGHT actually be successful in their attempt to flee and LIVE!!! MAKE IT OUT ALIVE, as it were. Yes, our brethren to the East are indeed the civilized folks we have long been regaled with in tales of old. Don’t sweat the sufferer, François ~ dread the SURVIVOR! ‘Tis he who sows the seeds of your discomfort.

So swing into action, old guard. That’s the answer then! Bottle them up in the old boot and feed the Italians some coin to allay the cost. The EU’s something to be proud of.

Let’s go get us some Muammar ass, shall we?

Now, who will stand on eizer hand and hold zees bridge…and have a beaujolais and baguette afterward wees moi?

I can’t wait for the next lecture on Human Rights from the Across the Pond Scum Club.

There IS a Homer Simpson Twin in Congress

I just never noticed ’til now.

Kucinich (D-OH)

Lonely Days and Lonely Nights

Praying to Allah for a Bass-O-Matic infomercial.

EVERY ONE of Them Deserves a Head Shot

Principally Muslims in Thailand have an issue with Buddhists amongst everyone else they don’t like, which is pretty much everyone who isn’t muslim. In this particular case, they beheaded a 9 year old boy.

That wasn’t enough for these psychopathic lunatics, they hung the rest of his family too.

Savages all working out of that same, delightful little book.