Oh, You Can MAKE Your Filthy Money…If You REALLY HAVE To

Just don’t you DARE go spending it on anything “nice”, as in “nicer crib than the guy down the street’s dump”, because IT HURTS FEELINGS!!!

Visible wealth makes economic inequality worse, experiments show

The economic gap between the rich and poor becomes even wider when the inequality is made visible, a new Yale University study says.

Researchers from the Yale Institute for Network Science (YINS) found that when people didn’t know their neighbors’ financial status, they cooperated and interacted much better with each other. But when people were able to see a significant gap in wealth between themselves and their neighbors, the social fabric began to unravel — and the gap in wealth became wider than when the economic inequality was invisible.

Rich bitch face is NO WAY to live. Get you a bag o’ cans.

I Guess It’s Over

Yogi Berra has died.

#StripedLivesMatter

These two upstanding young citizens belong in JAIL and may they NEVER see the inside of a football uniform again. They also need to FIRE the athletic director, who could only call the vicious assault his players perpetrated “disturbing”, especially coming, as it did, after two OTHER civic minded John-Jay players had been ejected from said game for THEIR behavioral issues.

On the brighter side of Saturday: IRISH!!!

Shaping Up To Be An Ugly Monday

Markets down sharply around the world

and the Dow is currently due another 350 lower.

My bourbon stocks at home will be sorely tested over the next few days I reckon.

Point Pleasant Beach 

…is pretty damned pleasant 

26 Years Of Bliss

Well, for me at least.

For my Dear Bride I’m not so sure…

Two People Shot At PNC, 1 Dead

Must be some of those crazy Taylor Swift fans or for sure it was some of those barbaric redneck Toby Keith fans

HOLMDEL — State Police were scouring the woods for a suspect in a multiple shooting outside the PNC Bank Arts Center late Monday night, an agency spokesman said.

The two victims were taken by helicopter from the scene following the shooting, which occurred shortly after 11 p.m., Sgt. First Class Gregory Williams said. K-9 and other units were searching the surrounding woods for a suspect as of 11:45 p.m., Williams also said.

A concert, part the Forest Hills Drive Tour featuring artists J Cole, Big Sean, YG and Jeremih, was held earlier that night.

Oh, it was a rap concert.

And the guy ran off into the woods.

Yay.

What A lovely Day At Monmouth Park

Weather was perfect, and everything was just…charming

the paddock

and as they were loaded in to the gate

and they’re off!

American Pharoah pulls away! The roar in the stands was nothing short of amazing.

What a lovely, pleasant day.

The NewsHour Gets a Gun Violence

…reality check last night before, of course, bringing in Mark Kelly.

…JUDY WOODRUFF: And yet we saw — and in fact what we saw in the last week, killings that didn’t get the kind of publicity that the shootings in Chattanooga, this one in Louisiana, there were family — families involved.

MEGHAN HOYER: Exactly. Yes.

There were five mass killings this week. That doesn’t include the shooting in the theater last night. Again, the majority of those were family killings, a family found dead in Modesto, a woman and her children, a family in Oklahoma where two teenagers have been arrested and the rest of their family has — was stabbed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, again, these are the kinds of things that often don’t get the kind of attention.

MEGHAN HOYER: Right, they might get the regional attention, but they don’t get the national buzz.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the guns that are used? What did you learn about whether they are gotten legally or not?

MEGHAN HOYER: Well, in terms of mass killings, about three-quarters of them are committed with guns. That means the other quarter of them are not gun-related at all.

Of the gun killings, what we have seen are that most guns are handguns. They are not these high-capacity assault rifles or high-capacity assault weapons that we hear so much about. We looked a little bit at legal vs. non-legal acquisition. In a majority of cases, they’re acquired legally.

And even in cases where they’re not, what experts say is that these are people who tend to be very determined. And where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Even if they have been banned from getting guns, if they have a prior record, generally, they find a way to find a weapon.

THIS!

Rubio's line of "Are you coming here to live in America or are you coming here to be an American?" is going to stick.

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) July 18, 2015

Ah, The Port Authority 

They’ve worked so hard to clean you up, but sometimes your old self comes through.

Like a few minutes ago when I saw a condom in a urinal.

Happy Bastille Day!

  
We’ll always have Paris 

And The Rocket’s Red Glare!

The bombs heads bursting in air

CALAIS, Maine (AP) — A 22-year-old man who was drinking and celebrating the Fourth of July tried to launch a firework off the top of his head, killing him instantly, authorities said Sunday.

Devon Staples and his friends had been drinking and setting off fireworks Saturday night in the backyard of a friend’s home in eastern Maine, said Stephen McCausland, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.

Staples, 22, of Calais, a small city on the Canadian border, placed a reloadable fireworks mortar tube on his head and told his friends he was going to light it, McCausland said. But his friends urged him to stop.

“Apparently, he thought that was a great idea,” McCausland said. “His friends they thought dissuaded him from doing it, and the next thing they knew, he ignited the fireworks and he was killed instantly.”

Staples’s brother Cody told the Daily News of New York that he was a few feet away when his brother lit the firework and was the first to come to his side after it exploded.

“There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there,” said 25-year-old Cody Staples, who called it an accident.

My goodness.

Checking My #WhitePrivilege for Culpability: Nope

Wasn’t me.

Sun-Times Breaking UPDATE: 7 dead, 38 injured in July 4th weekend shootings.

ths update:

Fourth of July weekend shootings have left EIGHT people dead — including a 7-year-old boy — and at least 42 others injured since Thursday evening.

ths update redux: WHAT was that I was saying below…?

Supt. McCarthy: Slain Boy’s Dad A ‘Ranking’ Gang Member, Not Cooperating With Authorities

Including a seven year old, precious baby boy, shot in the chest while watching fireworks.

This is ONE. Frickin’. WEEKEND. In the city.

But let’s all piss and moan about cops, as if this carnage happened every weekend at the hands of police officers, shall we? Let’s totally abrogate our responsibility as a community to look in the mirror and act, instead of blame the world for what happens in your own household, in the street in front of your house and to your children. Let’s blame every white person in the United States for the fact that the predators in your community prey on you and yours unimpeded, while the perpetual, professional victim grievance committees point everywhere but in the mirror.

No cop killed those people this weekend. Or the weekend before. Or the one before that. No confederate flag flew as they gunned down a child. And, once his family wails in anguish and the sobs subside, no one will remember that baby boy at all. Because I guarantee you, there will be another shortly to take his place.

And no one will march for them, nor will their names become a national symbol of the disgrace that this violence against each other truly is, yet many of you will jump yet again behind the usual attention whores when a police shooting goes horribly wrong. Or the rare nutcase goes on a rampage. Without ever demanding of those bombastic, self aggrandizing “leaders” of yours accountability for their absence in the face of the internecine war in your own front yard.

It STILL Is the Most Wonderful Country on Earth

Happy Fourth of July

A Confederate Flag Flying History Lesson From Ebola

So, over the past three days I’ve had to rebut some pretty stretched logic, repeatedly, so screw it, here’s my take on the South Carolina (SC) bit:

First, history lessons, the colloquial “Confederate Flag” is not, nor has ever, represented the Confederate States of America (CSA), in fact it was proposed as a replacement for the Stars and Bars and rejected. The battle flag, that saw use from the Battle of Manassas onward as the CSA battle standard, was the Southern Cross, the colloquial modern day “Confederate flag”. There is a large difference between battle standards and national flags, battle standards allow you to find, follow or recover position with the rest of your group, which is the reason it replaced the Stars and Bars on the battle field, as the original CSA flag, the Stars and Bars, looked too much like Union colors, which caused confusion within the ranks during pitched battles.
Why did the Southern Cross become the colloquial “Confederate flag”? The answer is a combination of general ignorance, which is on rampant display currently in both social and corporate media, and it’s adoption by a number of less than savory groups in the South, from the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), directly after the war, to the Democratic Dixiecrats, who tried to make sure that the mistakes of the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case, Plessy v Ferguson, remained the norm in the 1940s. Arguing that the Southern Cross doesn’t have negative connotations is as equally ignorant as arguing that the Southern Cross is indeed the national flag of the Confederacy, but we’ll get back to that.

While the Dixiecrats effectively lost their push to make sure that “separate, but equal” from Plessy v Ferguson remained in effect, effectively co-mingled property segregation, their remnants were successful in 1962 of getting the Southern Cross flag flown over the capitol dome of the SC Statehouse. It would remain there for just shy of forty years. In 2000 it was removed, under a compromise, and place next to the Confederate monument; the compromise itself required a two-thirds majority to remove it from grounds. Keep in mind, this is a battle standard, not a national flag, not put in place to honor the individuals concerned with the monument. The flag is not lowered while the United States national flag flies at half-staff, which is nothing short of atrocious.

Make no mistake, the Southern Cross has very negative post-war historical connotations. I’ve seen it repeatedly stated that this is about “heritage” the past few days, but if that were true, there’d be no issue with removing the battle standard and instead putting one of the actual three CSA national flags in it’s place: none of which have an iota on the Southern Cross for negative impact, even with fighting a war partly about slavery. Personally, I’d say the Blood-Stained Banner, the last of the three, is quite likely the most accurate as it was the flag under which the Confederacy lost and was one of the flags surrendered at Appomattox. While both the Stainless and Bloodied Banners bear the Southern cross, they are not the Southern Cross which was adopted by a multitude of blatantly racist groups for more than 150 years of American history. Though, I doubt the multitude of people on the other side arguing racism would see a difference, so the actual Stars and Bars might be a better choice to fly.

This is a State decision, regardless of how much anyone argues it: it’s statute, SC will do as it does. However, let’s not pretend there aren’t better options than the hyperbole of either side of either restoring it to the State capitol statehouse or the absolute removal of a historical remembrance, from State grounds or personal property. This particular flag that is being argued over, is not a part of the war memorial, but added to the lower State grounds to remove it from the dome.

Personally? Replace it with the Stars and Bars, solves most of the issues on both sides. The actual one, not the one that talking heads keep claiming is the CSA battle standard. Plessy vs Ferguson might be one of the worst decisions in the history of any non-tyranical, statutorily guided nation in the history of human kind. I hope the members of the Justice Brown SCOTUS are turning in their graves.

As Hard as Dylann Roof and Now the National Media Are Trying to Gin Up a Race War…

…Charleston is having none of it.

15,000 unite in Charleston! #CharlestonShooting pic.twitter.com/wuiybwnJOT

— YBR (@YoungBLKRepub) June 22, 2015

God bless them, every one.

#America

I’m With The Firemen

I really really hate these obnoxious douches with these drones

As drones become more prolific, people are starting to form two camps: those that love them, and those (like this chimp) that think they’re privacy-stealing, hazardous nuisances. Guess which side a group of firefighters from upstate New York were on?

As the firefighters from Montgomery and Coldenham in New York were working to put out a house that had caught fire on June 4, a local man named John Thompson decided to fly a drone over the scene to film the proceedings. The firefighters put up with the drone for about 10 minutes and then turned their fire house on it, in what looks to me like annoyance. They send another blast its way about a minute later.

I see one anywhere near my property and I will do what I can to knock it out.

Ebola Gives the HuffPo a THOROUGH Fisking

…as they agitate to liberate Guam.

“Guam–the only occupied U.S. territory in the Pacific–was the first island to be invaded by the Japanese and the last to be liberated by the United States.”

The only occupied US territory in the Pacific? If you’re looking for civilian US territorial populations during WWII, why not mention the Philippines? I notice it is mentioned only in passing, which suggests some ignorance of Philippine history, especially during the time period being discussed. The Philippine islands were attacked at virtually the same time as Guam, ironically in the midst of seeking their independence from the United States, and weren’t liberated from Japanese forces until March of 1945, almost a year after the liberation of Guam. The Philippines may have departed as a US territory in 1946, but let’s not pretend that they weren’t one and that we didn’t lose American and Filipino lives over that area to make a facile appeal to emotion case that purposely or ignorantly devalues lives lost.

Philippine (civ/mil) and United States military deaths were between half a million and a million and a half, by most estimates. Guam losses were between one to two thousand dead, with the census at the time placing the population at 20,000; while “10%” might be statistically correct if we assume the most extreme estimations, it is absolutely feckless to insinuate that our honored dead matter more or less than some other grouping of our dead, only relative to the landmass on which they are killed or that their impending status as a non-territorial organism of the United States somehow made their lives worth less.

“The United States, however, continuously disregards Guam’s sacrifices….not only did the act fail to provide meaningful citizenship rights, it explicitly stated that the president could still dispose of Guam’s land for military purposes at will.“

The Organic Act and subsequent Acts until 1952 gave the exact same citizen rights as other territories enjoy to this day. Here on Guam individuals have all the benefits of being an American citizen, except for voting for President; the population of which could move towards becoming an associated free state, like Micronesia, an incorporated territory or remain an unincorporated territory. The 14th Amendment assures individuals of citizenship rights in territories, and the Organic Act incorporated Guam as a territory, rather than a military rule. It is well within the power of the people of Guam to incorporate, move for independence or remain, if that is their wish. The fact that author implies they are simply being stripped of their due rights is blatant victimization, as though they had no say in their relation to the United States. This is vaguely ironic to put forward; especially given the absence of nearly any mention of the Philippines, a now independent self-governing body that peacefully achieved that independence, directly after WWII, from the U.S. and then booted the remaining U.S. military out 1991.

“Guam’s veterans receive inadequate medical services and communities adjacent to military bases generally obtain the least investment of any community under the U.S. flag.“

As the U.S. Naval hospital on Guam cares of retirees, active duty and more, while also working with Guam Memorial Hospital to take on emergency care of the local population, when and where they can, I’d love to see some backing of this statement that actually makes a legitimate comparison to contiguous US services offered to my fellow veterans, much less citizens surrounding those bases.

“Now, a proposed military buildup is opening old wounds as it aims to bring 35,000 additional military personnel to Guam and take up 2,500 more acres of land.“

The author is overshooting that number by 30,000 additional military personnel. Only 5,000 Marines and their families are planned to be moved to Guam. The 2,500 acres are on Northwest Field, which is military land already. The effects of that are the installation of a range and possible impacts to the Ritidian Wildlife Refuge, near it, which is a separate argument based on environmentalism.

If the author wants to make the case that US territories, or even specifically Guam, as Puerto Rico has had a number of votes on the matter, should be encouraged to vote on their status as a territory? That’s fine, I’m all for it. However, the author chose not to bother actually examine history, because it would have been inconvenient to an appeal to emotion fallacy she wished to propagate. The author appears to seek value and devaluing the lives of US military, citizens and territorial citizens lost and impacted by the war, based on where they were lost, to further add emotional emphasis to that fallacy. That includes the lives of a great number of people on this island and even my own family members, who fought through this island chain to push the Japanese back from US territory.

TL;DR The author should be ashamed. The Huffington Post should have invested at least an iota of effort in fact checking.

~ Ebola

The contents of this rebuttal are the personal views of the poster, not the views of the Government of Guam, United States Government, military or any of its components.

June 6th, 1944

“The tide has turned.

6:30 And The Butts Are On

  
Take a moment to remember and thank all those who have given so much so that we can enjoy so much.

At The Shore

The Inlet Cafe in Highlands: cold beer and fried seafood.

May you spend time with those you love this weekend.

Next Time Use A Sippy Cup

This reads like a scene in “Airplane”

(Reuters) – Blamed initially on ‘engine failure’, it emerged on Tuesday that a government jet carrying Serbia’s president to Italy last week was forced to turn back when the co-pilot spilled coffee on the instrument board.

Advisers to President Tomislav Nikolic described being “thrown around the cabin” when the plane — a 34-year-old French-built Falcon 50 — began tumbling through the air on Friday.

…An investigation determined that the co-pilot, Bojan Zoric, had spilled coffee on the instrument board “due to ongoing turbulence”.

“I began wiping the board and accidentally activated the ’emergency slat’ button,” which automatically turned off the automatic pilot and the plane began losing altitude, Zoric said in the report by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate .

Oops.

What An Angel Girl She Was

Caught our hearts when we first saw her on Steve Hartman’s CBS Evening News “On the Road” feature.

But I guess her game is over now.

College basketball player Lauren Hill dies of brain cancer

Lauren Hill, the 19-year-old college basketball player whose fight with terminal brain cancer put her on the national stage, died early Friday morning, Local12.com reported.

The Mount St. Joseph student gained international attention when she decided to play on the freshman basketball team even as her inoperable brain tumor was sapping her of coordination and energy. She played the team’s opener against Franklin College and scored two points before being replaced in the first quarter.

“This was my dream, to score on this floor, and it felt amazing,” Hill told WLWT.

Hill set a goal of $2.2 million for research and treatment of the type of cancer she developed more than a year ago, Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG). Hill fundraised for The Cure Starts Now Foundation. According to The Cure Starts Now’s Facebook page, Hill’s efforts raised more than $1.4 million for DIPG research.

Tears my heart out.

I LIKE The Cut of His Jib

And that jab.

Michigan Football will watch "American Sniper"! Proud of Chris Kyle & Proud to be an American & if that offends anybody then so be it!

— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) April 9, 2015