Friday, February 27, 2015

Follow-up

I’m happy to learn that charges have been dropped in the case of Gordon Van Gilder and the flintlock of mass destruction.

Mr. Netanyahu sends his regrets

The Israeli prime minister has declined an invitation to meet with Democrats privately.

Let the revolution spread

Nigel Farage of the UK's Independence Party has some words of wisdom for American conservatives at this year's CPAC conference:
“And if I can say one thing about American politics, an observation, and I accept that I’m a foreigner, I accept that I’m a guest, and I don’t want to meddle. But let me say this. If the Republican party is going to win the next presidential election, I think the Republican party needs to get the kind of people voting for it that were voting for it 30 years ago. Do you remember the Reagan Democrats? These were people who worked hard. These were people who were patriotic. These were people who aspired and wanted to get on. And I don’t think at the moment the Republican party is actually attracting those kind of people."
(Videos at the linked site).

Happy Feet Friday

Some mellow tones from the Nat King Cole Trio, with Shy Guy.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

I really like this guy

Via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, some great stuff from Senator Ted Cruz. A taste:
Cruz reminded everyone that Ronald Reagan didn’t lead a political revolution by worrying about positioning on a political spectrum to strategize how to fragment the electorate. He stood on principled conservatism unapologetically, drew a line in the sand, and attracted new voters and crossovers by drawing a sharp contrast. To paraphrase, if the choice is between two candidates who are almost indistinguishable, voters will choose their party’s nominee every time. Only by providing a real choice — and a commitment to stick to those principles — will Republicans win another presidential election.
Or, the GOP can just nominate plush RINO toy Jeb Bush and get whacked again.

Forget about Guantánamo

How about closing Homan Square, Chicago?

Has anybody questioned mayor Rahm Emanuel about Chicago’s version of the Lubyanka? I mean, how does an interrogation facility - where the violation of civil rights is a feature, not a bug - fit in with all the traditional liberal blather about police brutality and due process?

I have mixed feelings about this

The ruling class, and its bureaucratic army, that runs the federal government is a clear and present danger to America as we know it. So, would we be better off or worse off if they were all stoned? Discuss among yourselves.

Black lives matter

Unless, apparently, they're extinguished by illegal aliens.

Translation: Give us your gold

Joe Biden would like to "emancipate" wealth.

Scott Walker must be doing something right

Because the prospect of his presidential candidacy is causing lefty heads to explode.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Jerusalem’s mayor takes down a terrorist

Hizzoner tackled a knife-wielding terrorist who was trying to stab a young man on the street.

Elsewhere, ISIS has taken 90 Christians hostage in Syria. White House Communications director Jen Psaki has threatened to create a sternly worded hashtag.

Seriously, may God preserve them.

Global warming Luddites

When it comes to scientific knowledge, who's better informed, warmistas or warming skeptics?

Take a guess.

No surprise, there. Climate alarmism is deeply rooted in emotionalism, not factual knowledge. I remember having an argument with a colleague years ago about the actual likelihood of danger from warming, and, in the end, her "reason" for believing that we were all at risk pretty much literally boiled down to "Because!"

Senator Empty Gesture strikes again

Mitch McConnell is arranging another one of his elaborate caves, this time on DHS funding.

Monday, February 23, 2015

I’m not sure the Washington Metro will last until I retire

Problems, problems.

Sorry for the slack posting over the last few days; just been very busy. Reality keeps intruding into my cozy little cyber life.

Very different, and with far worse consequences, is the way that reality tends to get altogether edited out of the pronouncements made by this administration and its circle of dubious friends.

Friday, February 20, 2015

You’d have thought that Giuliani had just shot Bambi’s mother

Former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani said out loud something that is not only true but obviously so – Barack Obama does not love America – and was instantly savaged by every Obama fan-boy in the country. Ace and Kevin D. Williamson are all over this phony controversy.

I agree wholeheartedly with Rudy. America is a dish that Obama has sent back to the kitchen, with some sharply-worded criticism and elaborate instructions for improvement intended for the cook’s immediate attention (along with a thinly veiled suggestion that he wouldn't have been served this slop if he hadn't been black). Doesn’t sound like love to me.

Picture, thousand words

Another great NY Post cover.

For sale

One slightly used Democratic congresswoman and wannabe Senator .

Happy Feet Friday

Ella Mae Morse sings a song about a weight-challenged fellow.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

President Hep Cat offers advice to foreign squares

I guess there’s no way to shut this guy up, so we might as well highlight his staggering ignorance, his paltry intellect, his sophomoric oratory, in the hope that, someday, an honest historian will be able to tell the true story of one of the most lamentable chapters in American history: the presidency of Barack Obama.

Here he is, at his bizarre summit on Random Extremism That Absolutely Has Nothing To Do With Islam, lecturing the old geezers in the Middle East, as if they were simply typical uncool parents who couldn’t compete against the exciting lifestyle offered by their children’s peers:
President Barack Obama has warned that Muslim community leaders are in danger of losing the propaganda war with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and are often too “boring” to prevent their young people from getting radicalised.

“By the way, [to] the older people here - as wise and respected as you may be - your stuff is often boring,” he told a White House summit on combatting the rise of extremism, “compared to what they're doing. You're not connected. And as a consequence, you are not connecting.”
So it’s all about doing cool stuff, is it, Barry? Being a merchant or pursuing a career in medicine or farming or serving as an officer in the regular Army or designing a water-treatment plant or teaching school or even becoming a non-sanguinary imam– it’s all just so lame compared to chopping off people’s heads or burning them alive in cages. How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve experienced the thrill of pillaging, raping and murdering their way across the Levant? Indeed, how does one…connect with these high-spirited youngsters? And – Gawrsh! Hate to have to point it out – not all of the ISIL militants are simply dusky James Deans, trying to find themselves in the midst of their parents’ sterile, bourgeois world; their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is a not-all-that-youthful 43, and many of the self-appointed Allah-botherers who have incited the rise in violence throughout the Middle East, Africa and Europe are quite literally gray-beards.

Permit me to think outside of the box for a moment and suggest that the best way to “connect” with these bloodthirsty fanatics is with bombs and bullets. Connect hard enough, and frequently enough, and we might just hasten a return to the “boring” occupations of their elders by these wayward specimens of flaming youth – er, and their graying colleagues.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Unindicted sexual offender at it again

Really, what is it with Joe Biden? He’s gotten into the habit of pawing women, young and old, at press conferences and other public events. The latest episode features the wife of new Defense Secretary Ashton Carter getting a neck rub and (apparently) a whispered invitation for a ride in the backseat of the Vice Presidential limo the next time her husband’s out of town.

It continues to amuse me that many of the same people who were worried about the prospect of a Vice President Palin can look upon the unseemly behavior of this very foolish man and not raise an eyebrow. I still maintain that his principal contribution to the administration is as a form of assassination insurance.

Not Manchurian so much as Mandarin

Roger Simon is tempted to think of Obama as a Manchurian candidate, but ultimately dismisses the notion:
Barack Obama is not the Manchurian candidate. That’s just an excuse. The only problem is…

He’s worse. He’s far worse. Barack Obama doesn’t have to be a Manchurian candidate. He can and is doing more damage without being one. A Manchurian candidate could be exposed (yes, and possibly could not). Barack Obama doesn’t need that. He and the media and the brainwashed public that elected him are destroying our country (and the West) all by themselves. They don’t need any secret conspirators in the back room. They’re all there in public view. And how.
Surely this is the tell-tale sign of a dying republic: a society secure in the knowledge of the value of individual freedom and alive to the difference between good and evil in the world would have shaken off the progressive disease like a mild cold long ago. The gradually growing belief that the state is now a kind of primary caregiver to which we should yield up our patrimony of liberty in return for promises of security from every need and against every danger (unfulfillable promises, inevitably - Surprise!) indicates that our country’s political immune system is perhaps fatally damaged.

Has the imbecilariat finally taken over? We shall see (and I do not believe it will be a particularly long wait).

"ISIS adherents have legitimate grievances but Republicans can piss off."

Some indignant (and hilarious) comments on Twitchy in response to various moronic administration statements coming out of the President’s Anti [Non-Islamic] Extremism summit.

Underneath the levity, however, one senses the inescapable, ominous truth: the biggest existential threat to America, our clearest present danger, is Obama. And, more broadly, of course, the media/academic/Democratic Party complex, aided and abetted by large numbers of uninformed voters and ineffectual Republican establishment invertebrates.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Boy, do I love snow

Not really; I hate it. But kids love it, including granddaughter Maggie, so as long as she's having fun, I guess I can tolerate it.

As always, click to enlarge.







Guy's going to need the deluxe rubber donut

"An American man is recovering in the intensive-care unit of a Spanish hospital after a bull gave him the ‘biggest goring wound’ the doctor who performed emergency surgery on him had ever seen."

H/T: Captain Heinrichs

Barack Obama: feckless as a chief of state, useless as an ally

"Obama Refused to Give Jordan, Egypt Information on ISIS Targets".

Note the photo that accompanies the linked post: all those trucks filled with ISIS terrorists - a parade, for cryin' out loud - and not a rocket or bomb in sight.

Update: More militant Muslim savagery folks committing random acts of violence, as ISIS psychopaths reportedly burn 45 people alive in Iraq.

New Jersey still a sink hole for liberty

A 72-year-old retired teacher faces up to 10 years in prison for being in possession of a freakin' flintlock pistol that's now in its third century. It gets more ridiculous:
A Cumberland County Sheriff’s Deputy pulled over Gordon for a traffic violation, but wanted to search his car. Upon discovering a flintlock pistol in the glove compartment, VanGilder said that another deputy wanted to let him go since he knew the firearm was an antique. The Sheriff disagreed. VanGilder was arrested the following morning, and faces up to ten years in prison; three and a half to five years of that sentence must be served before parole can be considered.

To make things more absurd, the prosecutor in the case told VanGilder’s lawyer­–Evan Nappen–who’s in the video, that ballistics test will be run on the firearm.
Right. To make sure that it hasn't been used in any of the stagecoach robberies that have lately plagued the state.

So, Governor Christie, you gonna pardon this guy or what?

Update: This story is so outrageous that, er, a guy I know ordered a Tanfoglio semi-automatic pistol; steel frame, chambered in .38 Super, with a 17-round magazine. I understand that his new life's ambition is to have a photo taken of himself holding the gun, while leaning against a "Welcome to New Jersey" sign.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Land of the free update

Glad to see law enforcement in Florida has its priorities in order: "Florida man arrested for illegal taking of valuable 'deadhead logs'".

Happy President's Day



We've come a long way, baby. A long way down...


"Hey, I resemble that remark!"

Nonetheless, have a good one. And bundle up, friends; it's freezing out there!

Monday movie

In honor of Lizabeth Scott, who died on January 31 of this year at age 92, here is a clip from one of her first film appearances, The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers, a fine specimen of film noir from 1946.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Louis Jourdan, RIP

Suave ladies' man Louis Jourdan has died at the age of 93. While the French actor starred and/or appeared in many famous films - most notably Gigi - I will remember him best as...Swamp Thing.

Sunday funnies

I guess it's nice to have a hobby.

Just a thought: maybe you shouldn't go into teaching if you have a phobia about children.

There's drunk, and then there's really drunk.

You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes when criminals make it this easy.

So, the reverse gear in your truck is on the fritz? No problem!

Best GIFs of the day.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

The perfect gift for the Narcissist-in-Chief

The preshizzle gets a selfie-stick.



Say, Barry, why don't you do something useful with that thing? Like scan yourself for colon polyps.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Happy Feet Friday

Hot Lips Page and company rock the house in Page Mr. Trumpet.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Good to see that the feds are finally doing something about illegal aliens

Wait. Illegal alien...Land Rovers?

So, you’re saying that Scott Walker has more in common with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln than with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?

Personally, I find that rather more reassuring than otherwise. Howard Dean, on the other hand, sneers at Walker's lack of a college degree; C.W. Cooke sneers at Dean in turn.

College man...

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Jeb Bush, man of the people

At least, well-heeled, Wall St. people:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will raise money on Wall Street on Wednesday at an eye-popping $100,000 per-ticket Park Avenue event hosted by private equity mogul Henry Kravis and his wife. The price of admission to the event, which will raise funds for Bush’s “Right to Rise” super PAC, surprised even Wall Street veterans used to high-dollar fundraisers.
”Right to Rise”? Somebody needs to slam the oven door on that soufflé pronto.

And absolutely no surprise here:
Bush is moving quickly to consolidate financial support in the wealthy enclaves of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, in many cases squeezing out New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Needless to say, these are the kind of establishment Republicans who think Tea Partiers are the personification of characters from the old Li’l Abner cartoon strip (no wonder Al Capp once created a story line that featured a tycoon who wanted to demolish the town of Dogpatch because it cast a shadow on his breakfast egg).

The American electorate screwed up twice in electing Barry the Hapless. That doesn’t mean we can expiate our political sins by electing somebody whose principal strength is likely to be greater competence in furthering the aggrandizement of power by the state.

Bush needs to be defeated (call it an “act of love”).

Barack Obama: the Darth Vader of American leftism

He has struck blows against our traditions and liberties on numerous fronts, from health care to immigration, and now, apparently, his minions are targeting political speech on the internet.

Today’s Democrats: putting the “SS” back in progressive.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

More and more revolting

Neither Obama nor his media Janissaries are capable of grasping how contemptible his so-called "gaffe" on the targeted killing of Jews in that Parisian deli is.

More Obama history...


Asians conduct random bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941.


German troops wander into France in June of 1940.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Random justice

I hope, after he departs the White House for good, a group of folks who have lost their health care coverage randomly kick Obama's ass.

Thinking of Jon Corzine

No particular reason.

These days, I'll take what I can get

Attorney General Eric Holder has gotten away with a lot of things, from the unethical to the illegal, but at least, as he acknowledges, he failed at one big thing: gun control.

Update: First they came for the guns. Then they came for the magic rings...

Monday movie

Ben Johnson misjudges his man in this scene from Shane.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

From the shelves of the Paco library

Not long ago I was delighted to receive a book in the mail from the far off Antipodes. It is a new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, by artist, poet and novelist Marilyn Peck, a long-time friend of this blog (and this blogger). Strikingly illustrated by the author, this is a tale from the mythic period of King Arthur, and a splendid yarn of chivalry it is, telling with a fresh view the story of that strange knight who approached the Round Table "One Christmas night at Camelot" and issued one of the most renowned challenges found in English literature (and the book is available on Amazon!).

Beautiful prose and vivid reproductions of Marilyn's paintings make this a book to savor. And if you are fortunate enough to live in Australia, don't miss her art exhibition at Anthea Polson Art from February 21 through March 21 (a sample of her works can be seen here).

Sunday funnies

Jim Treacher bids a bitter-sweet farewell to Radio Shack. I'll miss the place, myself. When I was younger (much younger), it was my go-to place for batteries, stereo earphones, car speakers...just about everything connected to consumer electronics.

Devastating typos.



Now hiring: new protocol officer, Romanian Embassy in Paris.

Don't try these tricks at home (not your own home, anyway).

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Amen!

Bishop E.W. Jackson - who's neither an inquisitor or a Templar, as far as I can tell - has some good advice for amateur theologian, Barack Obama (wasted on him, of course).

Friday, February 6, 2015

Obama, the Islamophiliac

I do not believe, as some do, that Obama is a Muslim, for the simple reason that I do not think he has any deeply-held religious beliefs at all (he claims to be a Christian, of course, but I assume that is one of those “If you like your doctor…etc.” inexactitudes he is so famous for).

But he is obviously favorably disposed toward Islam, partly for sentimental reasons (his stepfather was an Indonesian Muslim, and he, himself, attended a madrassa in his youth), and partly for ideological ones having to do with Islam’s incompatibility with Western ideals – which dovetails nicely with his own hostility to many of those same ideals.

Hence, his ridiculous speech at the National Prayer Breakfast which I mentioned yesterday. Jonah Goldberg has a fine piece on that same event at NRO. A sample:
When Obama alludes to the evils of medieval Christianity, he fails to acknowledge the key word: “medieval.” What made medieval Christianity backward wasn’t Christianity but medievalism.

It is perverse that Obama feels compelled to lecture the West about not getting too judgmental on our “high horse” over radical Islam’s medieval barbarism in 2015 because of Christianity’s medieval barbarism in 1215.

Haw!

A friend of mine at work suggests that NBC’s Brian Williams – who the whole world knows, by now, lied about coming under fire during a helicopter ride in Iraq – will next try to excuse himself by claiming to have PTSD.

Meanwhile, legacy media zombies tie themselves in knots trying to explain Williams' "mistake".

Update: Conan weighs in; hilarity ensues.

Benny Goodman at his most exuberant with Get Happy.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

The Anti-Winston Churchill

Churchill knew a thing or two about existential threats. He was not slow in sounding the alarm on the rise of Nazism, and was prompt in rousing the English to fight German aggression when Hitler commenced his war on Britain and its empire (to be precise, when the Germans attacked British ally, Poland).

Now, imagine if Churchill, instead of leading the charge against Hitler, had stood up in Parliament and started wallowing in moral equivalence. “Certainly Hitler is a bad egg, and his Nazi Party is repugnant, but other men and other forms of government have committed similar crimes. I would even say that Hitler’s National Socialism isn’t real socialism at all, but in reality a betrayal of socialism. And when it comes to Anti-Semitism, let us not forget that England expelled its own Jews in 1290.”

No, I can’t imagine Winston Churchill (or anybody else, for that matter) saying anything like that. Fast forward 75 years or so to the President of the United States. Islamic terrorists have attacked Americans on their own soil, jihadists are burning, looting, raping and killing their way through large swaths of the Middle East and Africa, and are undermining governments allied with the U.S. And what does the President of these United States have to say at a national prayer breakfast? Behold:
“Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Obama also denounced Islamic State terrorists for professing to stand up for Islam when they were actually “betraying it.”
This knee-jerk, instinctive, congenital impulse of Obama’s to (a) put religious violence in historical “context” in order to soften his criticisms of Islam-rooted savagery, and (b) somehow try to deny that the savagery is Islam-rooted altogether, is not surprising, but increasingly it does grate on the nerves.

And for the record, Barry, if you’d like some real context:

a) Based on modern scholarship, the number of executions carried out at the direction of the Spanish Inquisition are estimated, on the high end, to have been approximately 5,000 over the institution’s 350+ year history; the last execution occurred in 1826 (compare with 2,000 people murdered in Nigeria in one town by Boko Haram over a couple of days late last year, and the nearly 3,000 people who perished as a result of the terrorist attacks in the United States on 9/11/2001).

b) The Crusades at least began as an attempt by Christian Europe to recapture large sections of the Middle East that had been conquered by your peace-loving Muslims.

c) It can’t be said too often: Jim Crow laws were put in place and maintained for decades by your political party, and the motivation for these laws was not grounded primarily in religious belief but in pure racial bigotry.

Above all, Muslim radicals are killing thousands of people today, and are a clear and present danger. How many people have been slaughtered in the last year by hordes of Methodist marauders? How many heretics have Catholics burned since Vatican II? What’s the latest news on Baptist suicide bombers? For cryin’ out loud, have more than a dozen Unitarians even gotten a parking ticket since Obama’s re-election?

As usual, Obama is just propping up another straw man in his disingenuous search for moral equivalence.

Dude, where's my country?

Bob Belvedere laments the virtual extinction of the American spirit of fortitude and self-reliance.

You know, the kind of spirit that animated these guys: "The 7 Most Badass Founding Fathers".

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Sun rises in east

David Axelrod lies.

In fiction, there has long been the tradition of the whore with the heart of gold. Real-life political whores, on the other hand, all seem to have hearts made of hog poop.

Update: Mainstream media talking airheads frequently lie, too.

Based on what I've seen at the office, there's some truth in this

Nigeria commiserates

Amusing Tweet via Instapundit.

Two can play at that game

Actually, the number of players is potentially unlimited.

In response to Iran's Holocaust cartoon competition, Elder of Ziyon has announced his own contest: the Ayatollah Khamenei Cartoon and Poster Contest.

(H/T: Captain Heinrichs)

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Savages

ISIS pigs have reportedly burned their captured Jordanian pilot, Muath al-Kasaesbeh, alive.

Jordan set to retaliate.

More illegal alien skullduggery from the Obama administration

"The Center for Immigration Studies released a report Monday that said the Obama administration has operated a 'shadow' immigration system for years, one that has handed out millions of work permits to illegal aliens and aliens with unknown legal status."

Confidence level in current crop of yapping Republican ankle-biters to do anything to stop this? Approaching zero.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Bad president, bad!

Roger Kimball has the quote of the week (and it's only Monday!)

It's a longish quote, but well worth time:
If you can’t dislodge people from their attachment from so ostentatious a failure as the Great Society welfare project, how do you suppose you can dislodge them from their allegiance to a half-black international man of mystery with no visible qualifications to be president but who is the very incarnation of every leftist aspiration from the gospel of environmental economic suicide and hatred of the United States to an “evolving” metrosexual affirmation of polymorphous eroticism (has any other president dilated an “transsexuals” in his State of the Union speech?) to his embrace of an ideology—I mean Islam—diametrically opposed to America’s traditional commitment to limited government and individual liberty?

That’s a long-winded way of saying “good luck, it can’t be done.” Partisans of Obama will be with him to the bitter end no matter how ostentatious his lawlessness, how flagrant his incompetence, how surreal his proclamations, how disastrous his policies.

Monday movie

Cary Grant makes like a tailor to get close to Ginger Rogers in Once Upon a Honeymoon.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Sunday funnies

The War on Error.

Modern engagement announcements (click to enlarge)...



Turn your bowels into a cash-makin' machine!

You always suspected it was true...



I guess Fayette County, Pennsylvania had a very small pool of candidates for this position.

Ah, if only all police work was this easy.