Thank Goodness Our Standing In The World Has Risen

And that via clear and intelligent articulation of our position we are able to rally a large number of nations to join us in our cause.

I mean, just compare Chimpy McHitlerstein’s pathetic “Cowboy Diplomacy” with Obama’s broad-based, consensus-driven nuanced intelligent approach.

Gosh we are so lucky to have Him.

Summer Is Fast Disappearing

And that means we need to glutinate ourselves now on yums like grilled scallops and swordfish

and also on vitamin-packed beverages

Health Food!

Miley Cyrus, Take Note

Actual on-stage pornography at the VMAs gets you lots of publicity and some well-deserved scorn.

Rumors of pornography in North Korea gets you an appointment with the wrong end of a machine gun

Hyon Song-wol, a singer, rumoured to be a former lover of the North Korean leader, is said to have been arrested on Aug 17 with 11 others for violating laws against pornography.

The reports in South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper indicate that Hyon, a singer with the Unhasu Orchestra, was among those arrested on August 17 for violating domestic laws on pornography.

All 12 were machine-gunned three days later, with other members of North Korea’s most famous pop groups and their immediate families forced to watch. The onlookers were then sent to prison camps, victims of the regime’s assumption of guilt by association, the reports stated.

“They were executed with machine guns while the key members of the Unhasu Orchestra, Wangjaesan Light Band and Moranbong Band as well as the families of the victims looked on,” said a Chinese source reported in the newspaper.

Here’s the Moranbong Band, who got to watch the execution and then were imprisoned themselves

What a horrible, soul-sucking place North Korea is.

Well I Guess I Have To Change This Weekend’s BBQ Menu

Fear the marmot, my friends

Health officials fear an outbreak of bubonic plague in central Asia after a teenage boy died from the disease and three more were admitted to hospital in Kyrgyzstan.

Temirbek Isakunov, a 15-year-old from a mountain village near the border with Kazakhstan, reportedly died from the disease last week after eating an infected barbecued marmot. Kyrgyzstan’s emergency ministry said a young woman and two children from a different village who came into contact with Isakunov were hospitalised on Tuesday with the high fever and swelling around the neck and armpits characteristic of bubonic plague, local news outlets reported.

A total of 131 people, including 33 medical personnel, have been quarantined, although none of them have yet exhibited symptoms of the disease, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in Kyrgyzstan reported. The health ministry continues to find and quarantine people who came into contact with the teenager, according to its director.

Kyrgyzstan?

Judging by the picture that headlines the article

I’d say it was actually Caddyshackistan…

I Have A Dream

Fifty years ago today a real inspiring leader gave his most famous speech. Very few of us know it only by its oft-quoted lines about his children but it is very very much worth reading in its entirety.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

That, my friends, is true eloquence and inspired rhetoric. Who of these pathetic excuses we currently have in national office or public prominence could conceive, let alone give, a speech like that?

Consider again these two key paragraphs that never quite seem to get discussed:

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

Temperance, restraint, acknowledgement that we are all fallen men and no one has a monopoly on virtue.

Thank you, Dr. King, for all you packed in to those short 39 years you were allotted. You made mistakes, as we all do, but you lived.

Syria

There is no reason for us to do anything there. None. Helping either Assad or the rebels does nothing for us and will only shift blame to us.

Oh and cost us billions.

There is nothing there worth a single US life.

France is upset? The UN is upset?

Go to town, boys.

How Dry I Am

No bourbon for you!

(no matter what Julie says)

So They’ve Arrested the Other “Teenager” Who Beat Sweet Delbert Belton to Death

The comments are illuminating.

Some August Sipping Juice

Kind of an odd duality running through this. The nose is full and sweet but also hot and these all show up in the sipping: full caramel sweetness tempered with a forward hot alcohol that cleans off the palate for the next sip. Yum. And I think it was only $28 or so…

A Blast From the Past

Frack THAT.

From NASA, a Sappy, Folk Songy Neil Armstrong Remembrance

**sniffle**

I’m a Smidge Peeved

I REALLY hate that RINO label. Sure it’s appropriate for asshats like Maverick, but he should have been put out to pasture SO long ago, it hardly seems worth squawking about him. No, what I HATE is this hard-core, conservative asshat side of the Republican Party that just seems entitled to shriek that at anyone who offers an opinion which ~ God forbid ~ differs ONE IOTA in substance from their biblical interpretation of whatever the effin’ crisis at hand is.

I have BUSTED MY ASS ~ and surprisingly enough kept my jibs hauled close ~ in the service of Republican causes and campaigns since Maverick himself ran, ALL in the cause of party unity and, ultimately, VICTORY. Certainly not because he was “my guy”. Or that I believed every single effin’ thing with all my heart and soul that they warbled from onstage at the convention.

I just believed that we would be in estimately better hands if the Republicans were in charge. I can stand with MOST of their core principles and that’s how party “affiliation” works. Being an adult, I also know that we are a big umbrella and not everyone is going to think like I do, but I believe that makes us richer.

I am up to my effin’ eyeballs with the conservative, evangelical, RINO-hatin’ hardasses, however. Don’t you DARE shoot your mouth off, Fred Know-It-All, when I’VE been doing the party heavy lifting at campaign time. I vented a little on Instapundit the other day, when someone said oh, they HAD voted for Romney, but it was no wonder people decided not to vote and someone called him on it:

That is SO damn true. I am up to my eyeballs with conservative “Republicans” who stayed home because “my guy didn’t win”, “he belongs to a cult”, or “these RINOs deserve what they get”. HEY (fill-in-the-blank)-holes! NO ONE deserves what your NOT voting got us! And I find a large majority of the folks who squawk the loudest about “their” guy losing never actually spilled a drop of sweat on the ground in an effort for their guy to win. Did you make phone calls? Did you walk a precinct? Did you man his office for shifts to hand out literature? Volunteer for ANYTHING? And, if he WAS bested in a fair primary, what did you do to ensure his challenger bested the Democrat? Besides piss and moan online, I mean?

We have to get out and WORK our beliefs, AND ~ when we FAIRLY lose to another GOP candidate (HEY! It’s a CONTEST!) ~ marshall our forces and WORK FOR THEM!

But DON’T OPEN YOUR MOUTH and say “don’t see a problem with gay civil unions“, “no, commanders shouldn’t be proselytizing in any military unit ANYWHERE, EVER“, or “That’s the closest to a conservative you’ll ever see from New England” and it’s RINORINORINO in your face. Like a Medieval shunning.

I always talk about ancient history ~ Pat Buchanan and that hateful hag sister of his ~ their taking over of the GOP plank and convention totally disgusted me. They were claiming to be the “life” party, but it was just hate, hate, hate, sneer, sneer, sneer and good Lord! (Played right into Bubba’s “Ah feel yo pain” hands. What a shellacking.) And it’s that same, lovely, tolerant group-think RINOing their name-calling way around now, but keeping it IN the party.

The Tea Partiers, had they stuck PURELY to fiscal issues, would have had much more success and much better candidates, vice the flame-outs. But a lot of far-right social conservatives saw the movement as a change to glom onto something which gave them an outside run at offices they would normally be frozen out of by party faithful. It also gave your freak-show candidates their fifteen minutes of legitimacy. I don’t see them as a candidate force this time around. The dilution/distraction factor is something we simply can’t afford. They can be a HUGE asset if they throw their substantial support behind a candidacy (witness Marco Rubio’s win), but they can SURE fuck up a winnable race if they go veering off the track with a witch of their own. Or a fat duck.

I really don’t know what we’re going to do. But Republicans HAVE to get their collective heads out of their asses and quit condemning each other the second someone says something the big bully on the block (or blog) doesn’t like. The absolute WORST offenders are online, as I said. They will RUN THEIR MOUTHS like the all time experts and NEVER pick up a phone, walk a precinct, lick an envelope, NOTHING for a candidate, but they can sure tell YOU what a RINO you are.

And then sit home on their fat, Cheeto stained hands, because their “guy” isn’t on the ballot. Some RINO is, so YOU ALL deserve what YOU get.

So I told some RINO spewing Twitter creature ~ who Tweeted “RINO’S are the statist’s fifth column” ~ to kiss my ass. I’ve done my time on campaigns auld sod and feel like I have the right to tell these guys to piss off. And now that I’m GOP executive level proper, I’m fer SURE going to let fly. It’s a BIG, damn, wonderful country, a BIG damn tent and I am so tired of listening to the little pissants in the corner snarling at everyone. EVERYONE that WE need helping us move the REAL problem children OUT of power.

I mean, the door should be open.

ths update: I’ve just finished a long, lovely chat with my Twitter antagonist and we’ve parted friends, I believe. I like that.

Peace, out…for now. 🙂

I THOUGHT I’d Lost ALL Respect for Him LONG Ago

Turns out I STILL had a teensy little bit left for the pandering douchebag that could dribble away this morning:

Powell: Martin verdict ‘questionable’

History will record as “questionable” a Florida jury’s decision to find George Zimmerman not guilty in the death of Trayvon Martin, Colin Powell said Sunday.
But Powell, the nation’s first black secretary of state, said he didn’t think the decision would have long-term staying power.

What an ass.

Mike Rowe Eviscerates Newspaper Writer

…who made the mistake of using Mike’s picture to illustrate an article on “BAD” jobs.

A sample below, but DO read the WHOLE thing.

YOUR HEADLINE, MY FACE

From: Mike Rowe
Re: Your Headline, My Face.

Hi Steve,
Mike Rowe here, Dirty Jobs. Thanks to the necromancers over at Google, I’ve been alerted to your most recent Question of the Day: “Are Bad Jobs Good for the Economy and the People Who Work Them?” Immediately under your headline I noticed a photo of me, taken on the Mackinac Bridge while filming a segment on Dirty Jobs.

Given the juxtaposition of my face with your headline, a reasonable person might conclude that a “Dirty Job” and “Bad Job” are one and the same. This sentiment is not only inconsistent with my own view of hard work, it’s completely at odds with the Dirty Jobs Code of Conduct, a collection of life lessons painstakingly compiled from the men and women I’ve met on Dirty Jobs.

…SK – The Muskegon Chronicle and Mlive just finished the second segment in a months-long series of articles about jobs in the Muskegon area. In the most recent segment, we wrote about low-paying jobs, and the “shadow” economy of people who hack out a living by mowing lawns, scrounging odd jobs, and anything else that comes their way.

MR – I read it. Nowhere does the writer congratulate anyone for their resourcefulness or self-reliance. Instead, you wrote that “desperate times call for desperate measures,” a clear infraction of the Hyperbole Restriction. According to the DJCC, desperation means selling a kidney to ransom your wife and kids.

Desperation is not a $10 an hour construction job with no benefits, as you suggest. That’s just work.

SK – Not all, but some, employers of low-wage workers give their employees opportunity to advance, we wrote.

MR – I have never seen a job that didn’t come with the opportunity for advancement. Union, non-union, high pay, low pay, part-time, full-time, freelance or salaried.

Any worker who consistently shows up an hour early and stays late will quickly become indispensable on any job site. That’s still a great truth in the wide world of work.

Unfortunately, you didn’t mention that. Instead, you implied that a worker’s only hope of advancement lies with the employer, another screaming inconsistency with the Personal Responsibility Clause.

SK – People working odd jobs or doing day labor for money under the table sometimes do so because it’s the only option they have, we wrote.

MR – Agreed. But nowhere do you suggest that having one option is better than having no option. Certainly, these people are struggling, but they have not given up. They have not become wards of the state. They are looking for and in many cases finding a way to get by in a brutal economy. Certainly not ideal, but the Glass-Half Empty Restriction and the Context Clause of the DJCC both prohibit my endorsement of all “one-sided comparisons that fail to illustrate how things could always be much, much worse.”

SK – Some people might take an optimistic view of these jobs.

MR – Of course.

Some people still see hard work as something to be respected in all its forms.

The point is, fewer people share that view than ever before. The majority of people in your poll voted “no” to every question. They believe that whole categories of jobs are “bad” for the worker and “bad” for society at large. That’s a clear infraction of the Work Is Not the Enemy Clause of the DJCC, and a radical departure of the attitude I encountered in my previous visits to the great state of Michigan.

Someone Asked if Chuck Norris Owned the Store

Considering how the would-be robber comes flying out the window…

Was He Texting While Driving?

Why wouldn’t that surprise me?

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner has emerged unscathed from a minor car crash on a busy Manhattan highway.

Weiner’s spokeswoman says the car he was riding in was involved in a chain-reaction crash Saturday morning on the FDR Drive, which runs along the borough’s east side.

It wasn’t immediately clear where Weiner was headed or if he was doing his on official business.

Thank God The One The Professionals Are In Charge

And they are focused like a laser on er, well, stuff

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS SAMANTHA POWER? – UN Ambassador Samantha Power was on a personal trip when she missed this week’s emergency Security Council meeting on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, U.N. diplomats have told Fox News. Power, who tweeted a call for U.N. action after news broke of the gas attack and has long advocated military intervention in the ongoing Syrian civil war, was said to be in a location where no travel arrangements could be made.

Unbelievable.

Actually, in a way I’m rather glad they are so incompetent; imagine the damage these people could do if they actually got their act together.

YIKES! Bingley? You Okay There?

El sky estan so darko yo quiero to stop y frisko it.

— Miguel Bloombito (@ElBloombito) August 22, 2013

Spam Of The Day

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Who said that entrepreneurial spirit was dead?

Not so sure about the concrete floor part though…

Oh, Well ~ Just File This Under

…“What Difference Would It Make?”

Tapper: “The Obama Administration Is Holding No One Responsible” For Benghazi

TAPPER: As of today, it’s official, the Obama administration is holding no one responsible for what happened before the deadly attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Last fall, it was only a matter of days after those four Americans were killed in Benghazi before evidence started appearing indicating that State Department officials paid insufficient attention to requests from diplomats and security personnel in Libya desperately asking for additional security. Around that time, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put four State Department officials on administrative leave. But, as of today, those four have been invited back to work. Secretary of State John Kerry decided that the four do not deserve any formal disciplinary action, and a State Department official tells me that there was no breach of duty for these officials and that they are not returning to their previous positions.

Way to go, Lurch.

I’ve Got Two Tickets To Paradise

From the state that gave us Harry Reid: “Greyhound Therapy”

Nevada Allegedly Gave Hundreds Of Mental Patients One-Way Bus Tickets To California

The city of San Francisco is considering a lawsuit against Nevada for allegedly releasing and providing hundreds of psychiatric patients one-way bus tickets into California, KTVU reports.

The possible action stems from a separate federal civil rights suit filed by James Flavey Coy Brown in Nevada, who alleges the state put him on a one-way bus to northern California after discharging him from a treatment facility. He’s seeking class-action status for as many as 1,500 others.

I’m so glad Harry and Co. is in charge of my health care now.

Aren’t you?

I Might Have Been Too Trunk To Notice

This may be next on Bloomberg’s agenda

Thai police seize 14 elephants with fake IDs

BANGKOK (AP) — Police in Thailand have seized 14 elephants in raids after busting a gang that allegedly provided the animals with false identification papers.

So they could work in restaurants or as maids?

We do have a problem here with underage pachyderms sneaking into bars and just getting out of control…

Fukushima Just Keeps Getting Worse

As does the apparent incompetence of TEPCO

In a sudden escalation of the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the Japanese nuclear watchdog has announced that it is raising the danger level of the radioactive water leak.

After 300 tons of highly radioactive water was found spreading near the storage tanks in the plant, the government had declared that it was a level 1 incident – called an ‘anomaly’ – on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES). Now it will be raised to level 3 which is called a “serious incident”, a spokesperson for Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA)said, according to Reuters.

… Contaminated water with dangerously high levels of radiation is leaking from a storage tank at Fukushima, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday. The leak, which has not been plugged, is so contaminated that a person standing 50 cm (1.6 feet) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.

After 10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood cells.

Really, I trust them when they say that nothing is leaking into the ocean…

I Know NOTHING!!

REALLY!

Cumberland Farms clerk hurt chasing David Hasselhoff thieves

Don’t even THINK about Hassling the Hoff!

A Connecticut Cumberlands Farms store clerk was critically injured while desperately trying to thwart the theft of two ad signs featuring “Baywatch” star David Hasselhoff.

But I WISH I did…

The Florida Democrats Seem to Have Lost EXACTLY the Kind of Guy Who Understands Where They’re Coming From

Allie Braswell got into the race for Florida CFO just last Thursday to a very enthusiastic Democratic drum. Here’s the OFFICIAL cheerleading statement from the party:

FDP Statement on Allie Braswell’s Campaign for Chief Financial Officer
“From the Marines to the corporate boardroom to the communities across Orlando, Allie has always served his country and his community,” said Allison Tant

Tallahassee, FL – The Florida Democratic Party is excited to welcome Allie Braswell to the race for Florida’s Chief Financial Officer. A thirteen-year Marine Corps veteran and Fortune 100 executive, Braswell will return the focus of Florida’s CFO to where it belongs — middle class Floridians who lack a voice in Tallahassee.

“I am thrilled that Allie Braswell is running for Florida’s CFO, because he’s exactly the kind of leader we need in Tallahassee. We need a leader who will fight the politicians who are giving taxpayer money to their donors and friends. Floridians deserve a leader who will fight to hold government accountable, and attract new jobs to our state,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Allison Tant.

“Floridians deserve better than Jeff Atwater, who is looking out for the big special interests — not middle class Floridians. From the Marines to the corporate boardroom to the streets of Orlando, Allie has always served his country and his community. While an executive at Disney, Allie cut budgets without cutting jobs. As the CEO of the Central Florida Urban League, Allie turned around a struggling organization. I’m proud he’s running for CFO.”

Everything a Democrat could want, right? Especially up against popular Jeff Atwater, our current Republican ~ and extremely POPULAR ~ CFO, he’d be PURE Democrat: right down to an understanding of how finance works, from a Democratic perspective…

…On Friday, a day after Braswell opened his campaign, The Florida Times-Union reported that Braswell had filed for bankruptcy in Orlando in 2008, after having done so twice in South Carolina in the 1990s.

….Last Thursday, Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Allison Tant praised Braswell as “exactly the kind of leader we need in Tallahassee.”

…According to the Times-Union, Braswell said the first bankruptcy filing in South Carolina was dismissed because of a mistake, leading to the second.

Braswell said he “used bankruptcy as way to responsibly pay my debt” and that his financial problems would allow him to empathize with voters.

“Honestly, my story is of a regular guy,” Braswell told the Times-Union. “I’ve felt the pain that a lot of people feel.”

Bankruptcy is “THE RESPONSIBLE WAY TO PAY” YOUR DEBTS. See? I never knew that! I always thought it was the LEGAL way to unload as many of them as you possibly could. But then, I’m a Republican and don’t understand these things, although I am often considered a ‘regular guy’ sort.

And now he’s dropped out, more’s the pity. The Republican Party of Florida (RPof) is circling like sharks (“unvetted”, “desperation”), and it’s pretty hilarious because it’s just a warm-up for the main event.

What’s that, you say?

So far, our state Dems ONLY HAVE ONE GUY with enough star power to challenge Rick Scott and its KILLING them.

Let the games begin.