…I might just live forever!
As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly-funny,
And those who are very well hung.
Plunder Day Postponed by Celebration of Fraud
OK, by now almost everyone and their pet goats know that the IRS has delayed the sack and pillage of the middle class to April 18. Why? Because Washington D.C. is scheduled to have a holiday that day, whether an unscheduled “holiday” from budget disagreements is on or not.
And what, pray tell, are the Beltway Bandits celebrating? That great fraud, the Compensated Emancipation Act, which president Abraham Lincoln signed on April 16, 1862, and which D.C.ers celebrate annually on April 16. Since April 16 is a Saturday this year, in order to give the suckers-at-the-public-teat another day off, the “holiday” was moved to the 15th.
And why do I call both the celebration and the object of celebration a fraud? Read the thing sometime. The Emancipation Proclamation which announced its signing didn’t note the provisions of the act (another of Mr. Lincoln’s frauds), which were the abolition of slavery in the Southern States (where Congress exercised no authority at the time) but a strange silence about continued legally practiced chattel slavery in Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and West Virginia.
Neither Lincoln nor the Congress “freed” a singe solitary slave with the the Compensated Emancipation Act or Mr. Lincoln’s disingenuous “Emancipation Proclamation”. They were frauds from the get-go. Pure propaganda. Lies.
NATURALLY, such a massive and pervasive historical fraud deserves celebration in Washington D.C.!
How Are Congresscritters and Slinkys Alike?
They’re both useless, but it is fun watching them fall down the stairs.
Note that I did not form the plural of “Slinky” as “Slinkies”. Why? Because Slinky is a proper noun, of course. “Congresscritters,” OTOH, is just about the most UNproper noun in existence… Just about.
“Bacon makes the best Koranic bookmark… “
These videos speak for themselves. My only quibble is the waste of perfectly good bacon. After all, mere contact with the toxic waste that is the Koran would make otherwise perfectly good bacon useless for anything but feeding to “good” Muslims.
and
It’s Probably Just Me…
…But, has anyone else noticed a growth of “life incompetence” in the population in general here in these (Dys*)United States? OK, time to back up and expand on my understanding of “competence”. I’ll let Robert Heinlein’s words stand in place of my very likely less competent *heh* attempt to do so:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Well, I’ve not butchered a hog (though I’ve butchered other animals), conned a ship or died gallantly, yet, but the rest of the list isn’t really all that hard, and I’d want to add a few things to it, were I to be its author. But Heinlein gives the flavor of my attitude toward “life competence” with the idea behind the list, ending with, “Specialization is for insects.”
A couple of simple examples should suffice.
The Sears Auto Hammer. Now, confession time: I own one of these. I’ve never used it, but I bought it to loan to some folks who just could not get the basic idea of using a hammer. Nothing against them; they’d not had anyone teach them how when they were tadpoles, nor had they had any life experience swinging a hammer, and they had a time-constraint they were working with that pretty much disallowed time to practice with a hammer to get their skills up to snuff (and so avoid ruining a bunch of trim on their house). So, a “Hammer for Dummies” approach was my assessment of the quickest, easiest solution for the situation, used by some really bright folks who are anything BUT “dummies” but were simply cursed with a decidedly narrowed skill set.
But the very fact that there is such a thing as an “auto hammer” speaks to a widespread incompetence with one of the most basic of hand tools. Anyone should be able to master the use of a weighted object attached to the end of a stick. And darned near everyone (save for the idle rich who can afford to pay folks to swing such weighted sticks for them) ought to at least master such things before moving on to power tools. (The idle rich probably should move right on to power tools… complete with not reading the directions or taking proper safety precautions. They can afford the multiple surgeries that would likely result.)
(BTW, I believe those folks have since mostly repaired their skill set, so the $100 auto hammer sits unused in one of my tool boxes, now. Anyone want? It’s going cheap. ;-))
And then there’s “righty-tighty/lefty-loosey”. (*huh*?!?)
Yeh, it’s almost universally standardized that turning whole classes of things to the right (clockwise) tightens and turning those same classes of things left (counter or anti-clockwise) loosens them. Light bulbs, screws and nuts, almost all kinds of threaded devices (save for threaded comments *heh*) with very, very few exceptions follow this rule.
And yet… *sigh* About every third loaf of bread I buy has the twist tie tightened on backwards. Once in a while I am called on by some cultural illiterate to help open a bottle or jar, because the cultural illiterate is tightening the lid by twisting the wrong way.
This doesn’t take literacy, folks, just basic functional competence.
The list can go on and on: folks who can’t solve simple problems because they have no concept of relationships between various weights and measures, people who are NOT tone deaf who nevertheless think they are reproducing pitches in their abominable attempts to “sing,” people who write letters to editors proving they didn’t understand the editorial they read and cannot write coherent sentences in English, etc., etc.
The new normal seems to be subliterate, incompetent, highly specialized morons.
BTW, apropos of nothing in particular *heh*, my collection of hammers (which includes four slightly different framing hammers–two of them “heirlooms”–a 2# machinist’s hammer, a small selection of ball peens, etc.) doesn’t see as much use as in days of yore, but a small range of differently purposed hammers should be among the first things acquired and mastered by anyone who owns a home. Screw that new big screen: get some hand tools and learn how to use them well! This is especially important nowadays as our political masters seem intent on creating an inflation/depression situation where fewer resources will be available to the average citizen and what resources there are will be much more expensive. Knowing how to use basic hand tools to effect home repairs could well be one of the things that lets you keep the wolf from the door in these growing-ever-darker days…
*(Dys)United States: bad, abnormal, ill.
Oh, *yawn*–Dog Bites Man
Is anyone surprised?
“The United States now ranks near the bottom of the list of advanced economies for its high school dropout rate — 23.3 percent of American students do not receive a high school diploma.”
The really distressing thing is that at least 70% of those who do graduate probably shouldn’t have. After all, if 70% of college grads don’t have the literacy skills to read their way out of a paper bag, what does that say for prior “education accomplishments”? What? Most high school grads only go to college to get lobotomies?
Nah. They got those while in pubschool.
Note: I’m not asserting they had their lobotomies performed by the pubschools alone. No, students’ parents, the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind and many other elements all work together to accomplish this task. With the full cooperation of the students, for the most part.
All You Really Need to Do Is Just Pay Attention
Seriously. Recall The Zero’s blather last week wandering around in search of a justification for his Libyan adventure? The key comment was buried in the toxic fecal matter that issued from his pie hole:
“I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us.”
In order to discern what those “core principles” he refers to are, we need to ask a few questions:
WHO is The Zero saying that “we” share these “core principles” with?
Answer: Islamic savages on one side of a conflict to decide which set of Islamic savages will be in power in Libya.
WHAT are the “core principles guiding the Islamic savages on both sides of the conflict?
Well, let’s see: both sides profess to revere as the perfect man to emulate in all manner of life a man whose life and teachings demonstrate (and teach as proper) the rape and brutalization of women, mass murder, that it is right and proper to steal anything not nailed down (as long as it is the property of “unbelievers”), applaud pedophiles, and believe the “kafir” (which means anyone who’s not an Islamic savage, including almost all those idiots who voted for The Zero) is good only for butcher sport and plunder, etc.
WHO is this “we” The Zero refers to?
Surely not you and I? Do you and I share the “core principles” that guide Muslims? Do you revere a “prophet” whose life and teachings DEMAND that his followers commit mass murder, rape, pillage, abuse of women, slavery, and such like? Well, I can’t be absolutely sure about you, but I’m not a part of any “we” that shares those values. Obviously the “we” The Zero refers to does share those “core principles” with the group of Islamic savages The Zero has aligned himself with, so that “we” must be Muslims.
Then again, since Mohamed also taught–both in word and deed*–that lying to “unbelievers” to advance his cause is not only permissible but required if force alone cannot advance the aims of Islam, then he could also just be blowing smoke up our skirts by asserting the “we” part of the statement. He could be standing alone in his siding with one group of Islamic savages against another group of Islamic savages.
Or he could be using a “royal ‘we'”.
Or maybe he had a mouse in his pocket.
*Remember: The Butcher of Medina earned that sobriquet via his first “great victory”–the massacre of the Jews of what is now Medina after he had drawn them out, unarmed, under a flag of truce. Then, of course, he rewarded his band of thugs by sharing the rape of the women and the plunder with them.
Sweet guy.
h.t. to TF for reminding me of The Zero’s lil slip up.
Dredged From the Archives: The Crux of the Matter
What matter is that? The essential difference between decent human beings and those who deem themselves our political, social and intellectual betters among the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, politicians *spit* as a general class, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and Loony Left Moonbats.
I know of no one who has not done stupid things or behaved dishonestly at some point or another in their lives. And I specifically include myself in that assessment. Only a pathological liar could live past the age of two and say that they’ve never done something stupid or dishonest with a straight face.
That said, what’s the difference between a common, ordinary decent person and the typical Mass Media Podperson, politician *spit*, Academia Nut Fruitcake or Loony Left Moonbat?
It’s this: an ordinarily decent person experiences genuine guilt when they catch themselves lying or deceiving others and will repent and attempt to remediate their lie. An ordinarily decent person who does something stupid will make every effort to make whole anyone harmed by their stupidity and seek for ways to do better next time.
Just keep that in mind, would you?
Lieberman and McCain Beclown Themselves
I’d write the analysis myself, but Jerry Pournelle has already done a much better (though much, much less snarky than I would have done) job of it.
What fools these congresscritters be…
More “Global Warming”
Yeh, yeh, I know the fallacy of arguing weather conditions to counter blather from The Cult of Anthropogenic Global Climate Scare-ism, but since the cult regularly fakes “data” and turns a blind eye to the elephants in the room (we don’t even know what the solar constant is anymore, not that we ever really did, and only Ian Pilmer, once a well-respected geologist who is now vilified by the CAGCS for raising inconvenient facts, seems to be seriously addressing the role of volcanism in climate), I feel in no mood to play fair with The Cult of Anthropogenic Global Climate Scare-ism. So there.
So, on the first week and a bit of “Spring” here in America’s Third World County, we’ve had freezing temps overnight, every night, and temps only today began climbing into the plus 50 degrees Fahrenheit range.
Gotta be that Global Warming, eh, since these temps are unusually cool for early Spring around here.
*feh*
Do note that some CAGCS cultist loonies are actually asserting anthropogenic causes for increased volcanic activity. Roll that one around for a while, would you? Your CO2 “contamination” of the atmosphere is, according to these “maroons” (to use Bugs Bunny’s label), causing volcanic eruptions!
Oh, they have long, convoluted, irrational “explanations” for their assertions, but it all boils down to an assertion of mankind’s power over geologic formations to such a degree as to make the mythic Greek gods envious.
*headdesk*
I dread to ask what more these cultists can do to discredit their religion.