Pride blinds the foolish

You know things are bad when the Russians are lecturing us on free markets and pointing at and mocking our "descent in Marxism" at the hands of The One. Seriously, if you read nothing else this weekend, read this short op-ed from the English version of Pravda. Here's an excerpt of Stanislav Mishin's assessment of the US....

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blinds the foolish.

Sadly, he is spot on the money! The American, Marxist welfare state has been deviously advanced by insidious politicians in both parties. Meanwhile, we Americans pretend to hold the high moral ground when it comes to economic and social freedoms but, we are dangerously close to becoming merely serfs, toiling in our crap jobs to support with our taxes the behemoth, voracious, imperial State. How humiliatingly ironic to be lectured by a Russian about free markets, government control of the means of production, and worst of all, our delusional willingness to embrace our enslavement to the State while chirping about how free we are.

Oh, the humanity!!!

In the absence of any other news-worthy epidemics, apparently the CDC is still worried about Swine Flu....who knew?

A U.S. health official said a swine flu vaccine could be available as early as October, but only if production and testing run smoothly this summer.

CDC officials reported more than 8,500 probable and confirmed cases in the United States.

Meanwhile, health officials in an Illinois county said a 42-year-old man has died from complications of swine flu. The officials said the victim had other medical problems. The man is the third person in the state to die from swine flu.

Let's see, they say the vaccine could be ready by October. Well, if my calculations are correct, and I'd like to think they are, that means that at the current Swine Flu mortality rate, like 6 more immuno-compromized Americans could possibly die.....they'd better hurry!

California teachers-----Epic Fail!!!

$10 says this kid will grow up to vote for Obama. Not because he believes in socialism, but because he's too stupid to know any better.

California teachers are among the highest paid union teachers in the country and like all dreadful unions, they extort absurdly high wages from their employers, the taxpayers. Try reading the sign this retard is prancing around with and ask yourself if the California taxpayers are getting their money's worth or do the teachers deserve a pay cut?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, labor unions are bad for the employers who tolerate their ridiculous demands, unions are bad for the labor market which gets skewed toward wage levels that the free, market economy cannot bear, which in turn forces the prices the rest of us pay for union produced goods to go up.

When union teachers are producing idiots like this kid, how do they demand, with a straight face, to have their salaries protected by politicians? Answer: because politicians need dumbed down generations of Americans who don't understand anything other than how to text a vote on Idol. And they need reliable democrat voters. So the teachers agree to teach politically-correct government propoganda, designed specifically to produce the stupidest generation of Americans....ever, and they promise to vote democrat, all in exchange for union wage protection.

What a racket!

Thanks to CaptionThis for the picture.

Some things, the human body just wasn't meant to do

Who aspires to be a contortionist? Was nurse or dental hygeinist not an option?

Contortionist Iona Luvsandorj has smashed an endurance world record by holding her entire bodyweight on her mouth in an arduous backbend.

Iona, who is 28 and lives in West Hampstead, London, held a pose called the "Marinelli bend" for 33 seconds, beating the existing world record by 11 seconds.

The Marinelli is an inverted backbend where the whole body is supported by the mouth by gripping onto a short post that is held between the gums.

Enough morons have attempted this ridiculous stunt that they made up a name for it?

Is there really still a living to be made as a circus freak? If this doesn't work out, there's always room for a contortionist in the porn industry.

TRR Movie Review

I know my opinions on contemporary media carry a lot of weight with you people so here's another TRR movie review for your home entertainment...

My family watched Seven Pounds a couple of nights ago. Will Smith is already known for his action/comedy work but, he deserves some recognition as a serious actor too. The title refers to the cliche' "seven pounds of flesh". In it, Smith is trying to make up for past mistakes by doing nice things for strangers, things that require great sacrifice of himself. The notions of personal pain, responsibility, and sacrifice are explored in an almost Shakespearian tragedy. It's definitely worth a couple of bucks at the video store.

Much Deserved Tribute to Greatness

The other day I watched something I never thought I would see. I saw a young man (20 something) disrespect an old man ( my Dad's age). The older guy was having car trouble and the younger guy was in a hurry to get wherever he was going. Instead of helping, the young guy kept honking and screaming for the car to be moved. I stopped, crossed the road and helped push the vehicle out of the way. At the earliest possible point, this youngster, squealing his tires and screaming obscenities at the old man, sped off. I got his tag number and am copying him on this ( a police friend ran the tag). I called for a tow and waited with this elderly gentleman until help came, I offered a ride and was turned down saying I had done enough. As the Tow truck pulled off with the man riding shotgun, I thought about the guy and his life. I followed to a repair shop and asked. He is a living Marine. He fought in Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Taipei, and other places he didn't/wouldn't mention. He has a Purple Heart and a Congressional Medal Of Honor. This is a man that above should be respected and admired for his contribution to society, yet this snotty nosed youngster was rude and disrespectful to him, without provocation or reason. He didn't even offer to help get the car out of the way for everyone. This Marine is about my Dad's age. I must do this......

This is something I should have posted earlier. I regret its delay, but it needs to be done. Memorial Day is a day set aside to remember the sacrifices for this country, and to remember the men and women that made them. I thank all our service people for their devotion to country ( I am not sure it is returned)and for their dedication to our freedom.

My Dad died on March 6, 2009. He was 85 years old. He was born in Montgomery Alabama. At 18 he started his college education, thanks to a ROTC partial scholarship, and was off to change the world as he knew it. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Hitler had some plans that would alter Dad's life drastically. The Auburn ROTC unit was called up and Dad entered the Army. He became a Lieutenant with around 500 men in his command. He fought through northern Europe and was also in France as the US troops marched on Berlin. He saw countless people die, saw areas destroyed. All of this affected him and his outlook on life from then on. I assume that the other fighting men and women saw and felt similar things, and again were changed from the fun loving folks of their youth into battle-hardened veterans that knew how to get a job done.

What I have learned recently is this. My fathers generation will always be known for their sacrifice. These youngsters left a docile world of farming, family and friends, some had college interrupted, but all left without hesitation and immediately went to do their job. Many, if not most, did not return and get to finish their lives. Those that did manage to come home found this world different because of what they had lived and again managed to find an odd-fit into society and to go about their business. College was finished, marriage, kids and so on but to a man, they just moved on because it was how it was supposed to be done. No fanfare, no parades, nothing.

I thought back to a service they had at my son's elementary school years back. The school asked for military family members to be honored. All branches were represented. Dad, with the rest of the Army folks stood as the Army fight song played. As he sat, the old guy next to him, a Naval aviator leaned in and said thanks, it was returned and that was the end of the conversation. That's how they lived and that is how they should be remembered. Silent, honorable men full of class and character. Honor and devotion to a fault, committed and full of pride, but most of all guys that would, at the drop of a hat, get the job done - regardless. My hat is off to them.

I will always remember the day early last week that started this. I hope we all can learn from this. Ed, David, et al, my thanks for your devotion to country, and for continuing a legacy of giving and sacrifice. We need more people like you guys!

Just how stupid and insidious are democrats?

The economy's in shambles, people are hoarding money already, and The One and his faithful but dumb sidekick, Tiny Tim Geithner think that taking more of peoples' money away from them is the best way to handle the situation....

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Don't believe for one minute that Obama, Emanual, and tax-cheat Geithner think they are handling the economy. They are using Americans' misery to seize more and more control of our lives and permanently expand the behemouth federal bureacracy. They want Americans to be miserable and hopeless. Our dependency is good for them.

Imagine how much less you could purchase each month if everything costs 10% more because of a federal VAT. They are using every tool at their disposal to ruin the economy. First spending money we don't have, and then taxing the crap out of us to pay for it.

I weep for the future.

From the WashingtonPost.

The Blindfold Is Being Removed

Posted by Reid

"Lady Justice" as she has been called is currently under attack. She is under attack by the very country that made her great. You see when our judicial system was born, it was created to give all comers a fair trial. Now we all know that not every judicial decision in the history of the country has been right or fair, but the system was never compromised from the head down. Until now!

President Obama has selected Sonia Sotomayor to be his first Supreme Court nominee. He seems to have followed other of his choices of trying to leave a legacy of "firsts" regardless of ability to do the job. Ms. Sotomayor is a poor choice. Based on comments and previous statements she is biased and will discriminate as she makes nation effecting decisions. She stated earlier that she could make a better decision than a white man, because of her life as a Latino woman and the trials that went along with her upbringing. I couldn't disagree more. All she does, in making statements like this, is to show her true value orienting colors and her limited working knowledge of the US Constitution and how it should perform. I assume she will adopt the Thurgood Marshall philosophy of making rules and letting the law catch up.

It appears that this choice of Obama's is geared towards rendering Gay marriage as acceptable (even though recent polls show that over 65% of Americans don't agree) , taking control of the country, and for the promoting of ethnics in lieu of more qualified white counterparts, at the country's expense.

I don't know what other options Mr. Obama had, but I have to believe that there is someone more qualified and less controversial than she.

The blindfold is coming off, and justice now looks down its biased and racial nose at those it was set to protect. Sex, race, and position in life should always be outside of a judicial decision, not the reason for it. Our new world will be much different. If similar nominees follow, the court will effect lives for generations to come. What's next, shortening her dress or making her look less "white"? When will the madness stop? When will the constituency stand up and realize it is being played for a fool? How far can we let everything go before we take a stand? I don't know, but feel that it better be sooner than later or maybe later won't get here, ever.

It pays(unethically) to be a democrat

If, as a car company, you were going through bankruptcy restructuring, wouldn't you keep the most profitable dealerships and get rid of the unproductive ones? Apparently, Obama has different plans for Chrysler's dealers. There's a rumor going around that the decision on which dealers to close was made based solely on politics rather than productivity. It seems that of the dealerships that were notified that they would be closed, every one of them contributed heavily to GOP candidates. If this is true, it would expose the Obama administration as the craven party zealots they are. First they give control of the company to the union thugs and now they're firing the most productive dealerships and giving the business of selling cars to the least productive, because they are democrat donors.

If this is true, I really hope Chrysler fails completely now. The unprecedented intrusion into markets by this administration is breath-taking in it's hubris and arrogance.

Obama's rubber-stamp appointees to SCOTUS

Ans so it begins, the descent and perversion of the Supreme Court into an activist collection of hard-left liberals, who'll no doubt carve Obama's radical-left political policy into the national stone regardless of constitutionality. Here's some of the empathetic idiocy to which we can look forward...

Judge Sotomayor questioned the famous notion — often invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her retired Supreme Court colleague, Sandra Day O’Connor — that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,”

Her remarks, at the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, were not the only instance in which she has publicly described her view of judging in terms that could provoke sharp questioning in a confirmation hearing.

This month, for example, a video surfaced of Judge Sotomayor asserting in 2005 that a “court of appeals is where policy is made.” She then immediately adds: “And I know — I know this is on tape, and I should never say that because we don’t make law. I know. O.K. I know. I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it. I’m — you know.”

The law respects no man because of his race, life station, economic status, life experiences, and expecially not because of how sorry the judge may feel for him. The Constitution is the law. It should be blind to arbitrary qualifications and favor neither party except as to their legal argument. Look for Obama's appointments to essentially radicalize the court in a far-left direction the same way that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are radicalizing the legislative and executive branches.

The Religion of the Perpetually Outraged

This is what happens when you allow crazed, blood-thirsty savages, or as I like to call them, Muslims, to illegally invade your country(this month it's Greece) and set up shop....

TheAge.com - Dozens of cars have been smashed, 14 people injured and 46 arrested in riots by Muslim migrants over the alleged defacing of a Koran by a policeman.

Police fired tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of protesters outside Parliament in the city centre.

Police said they would investigate the allegation that an officer tore up an Iraqi migrant's Koran while checking his identity papers in Athens last week.

Waves of illegal immigration in recent years have led to an influx of Muslims, mostly from Pakistan and Afghanistan, living in run-down parts of central Athens. Greek rights activist Thanassis Kourkoulas said the protest showed the migrants "have a voice".

It's a good thing Christians and Jews don't riot every time a liberal defaces one of our symbols. There'd be blood running in the streets every week.

Henry Waxman is a dangerous moron

This is the mole-man, democrat Henry Waxman explaining to a collegue that he deosn't know the details of the insidious cap-and-trade bill that he co-sponsors...



Cap-and-Trade will be the single most devestating blow to the American economy since the Great Depression, maybe even worse. Under C-n-T, skeevy government bureaucrats will arbitrarily assign "acceptable" levels of CO2 emissions, and companies will have to limit their productivity in order to comply or purchase carbon credits that allow them to pollute more, from politically favored, "green" companies, or face punitive fines.

Because energy is required to manufacture and transport literally everything we consume, the price of literally everything will increase by dramatic amounts. If they think we're facing recession now, wait until cap-n-trade takes effect. The worst part, I mean other than they're doing this in the name of the completely imaginary, global-warming hoax, is that these idiotic "green" companies are paying millions through lobbyists to degenerates like Waxman to force this upon the country. When traditional energy costs skyrocket because of cap-n-trade, what will the stock prices of companies dealing in ridiculously inefficient energy sources like solar, wind, ethanol, methane, etc, do? The stock prices go up and the owners get rich from fleecing the American people, and the payoffs to Waxman will have been worthwhile.

The purposeful collapsing of the American economy, along with the resulting centralization of power, under The One and detestable sycophants like Waxman, presses forward, unchecked.

Here's the short list of private industries, the control of which Obama desires:
-all manufacturing (Cap-n-Trade)
-health care
-banking/credit
-mortgage
-Wall Street

Do you want your healthcare, personal banking, and retirement investments being micro-managed by the same lazy underachievers who run the DMV and the IRS?

Despite Obama reading from the telepromptor that he doesn't want to control private insustry, his daily seizure of more and more control shows that to be false.

Inconvenience everybody with pretend suicide threat, get shoved off a bridge

Jump already, jump!

(FoxNews/AP) BEIJING — Chen Fuchao, a man heavily in debt, had been contemplating suicide on a bridge in southern China for hours when a passer-by came up, shook his hand — and pushed him off the ledge.

Chen fell 26 feet onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities and survived, suffering spine and elbow injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

The passer-by, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng, had been fed up with what he called Chen's "selfish activity," Xinhua said. Traffic around the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.

"I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest," Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. "They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals."

We ought to have suicide counselors like this in the US. If you hold up traffic for hours with phony suicide threats and generally cause everybody around you to be inconvenienced because you can't handle your problems, and you want some attention from somebody, they you should get 5 minutes from the time the first cop shows up to make up your mind. Pretend suicide jumpers should be given 3 options: 1-jump already, 2-come down, or 3-we'll throw you off the bridge. At least with option 3, the crowd of inconvenienced passers-by will get a show.

Here's the hero who got traffic moving again so people could get to where they were going. He's saluting the cheering crowd.

Fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer money

I'm all for government-funded medical research, it's how I make my living in fact but, is this the sort of thing taxpayers should be funding?

The federal government is spending $178,000 to better understand why drug-abusing prostitutes in Thailand are at greater risk for HIV infection.

Seriously, do we need a research project to answer that? I was in the Air Force with some guys who would gladly shed some light on that question for $20, 15 minutes, and an airline ticket to Bangkok.

Here are some American "researchers" conducting an "interview" with a "study subject".

We're turning into France

Thanks to Obama's example, now other democrats are getting in on the act of meddling in the day-to-day operation of private companies. First they regulated bonuses, then salaries, now it's how much paid vacation they must give to employees....

Rep. Alan Grayson was standing in the middle of Disney World when it hit him: What Americans really need is a week of paid vacation.

So on Thursday, the Florida Democrat will introduce the Paid Vacation Act — legislation that would be the first to make paid vacation time a requirement under federal law.

The bill would require companies with more than 100 employees to offer a week of paid vacation for both full-time and part-time employees after they’ve put in a year on the job. Three years after the effective date of the law, those same companies would be required to provide two weeks of paid vacation, and companies with 50 or more employees would have to provide one week.

Who's business is it besides the board of directors' how much vacation employees of private companies get? It's certainly not for meddling politicians to dictate. Vacation, sick-leave, salary, health care, dental, company cars, expense accounts, etc., are not rights of employees. They are means by which private companies compete for labor. Those that offer the best benefits, tend to get the best employees. But thanks to generations of liberal indoctrination, most Americans think perks like health care and fabulous vacation packages are their birth-right as employees.

Rep. Grayson thinks that more vacationers will stimulate the economy, especially the economy in his home state of Florida. But what about the lost productivity to the companies? As a smarmy liberal, he doesn't care about the health of companies, just the gratitude of it's employees come election time.

Birmingham police beat some guy.....great, that's all we need

Check out this idiot in my home town of Birmingham who tries to run over a cop and then gets his ass kicked when he finally gets ejected from his rolling minivan...



I never mind seeing a criminal get what's coming to him from the cops, but there's just one problem. The dude was unconscious when he received his much deserved beating. What's the fun of beating a criminal who just tried to kill you when he doesn't know he's being beaten? According to the story, 5 cops got fired for this beating, which I can't argue with. I just hope all the cops weren't white. That cop at the end who runs back toward the cruiser was coming to turn off the dashboard camera, so any subsequent beatings were not filmed.

I'm sure there'll be a law suit and the city will wind up paying this dude a couple hundred thou for getting his ass kicked. Plus the national media will run the story in the context of our historical police violence against blacks, claiming that racial prejudice is alive and well in Birmingham....perfect!

Hat tip to Carol Robinson - The Birmingham News

Newsflash: Global warming causes local cooling

Alright, drug-addled, global-warming alarmists at Berkeley are just making crap up at this point....

ScienceDaily (May 19, 2009) — Global warming may include some periods of local cooling, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Results from satellite and ground-based sensor data show that sweltering summers can, paradoxically, lead to the temporary formation of a cooling haze in the southeastern United States.

Or as I like to describe it: the Earth has natural warming and cooling cycles and there's nothing anybody can do to alter them either way. Climate-change hysteria is nothing but a phony, insidious pretext that smarmy bureaucrats use for controlling all aspects of your lives. And they won't be happy until we are all...

-getting killed in stupid, tiny but efficient cars or
-suffering in crowded public transportation,
-shivering in the dark at home because we can't afford heat or light, and...
-paying triple because the cost of energy affects literally everything

All in the name of an imaginary phenomenon....I never thought I would see the day when America caved in to such idiocy. I feel guilty for sending my kids to face a world where abject stupidity and rampant, insidious liberalism rule.

The Holy Grail for evolutionists

One single fossil does not the missing link make...

Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution.

The search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years - but it was presented to the world today at a special news conference in New York.

The discovery of the 95%-complete 'lemur monkey' - dubbed Ida - is described by experts as the "eighth wonder of the world".

These guys naming this fossil the eighth wonder and breathlessly revealing it to the world in a silly news conference is as stupid as Al Gore showing the famous "hockey stick", CO2/global warming graph and exclaiming, "The science is in and the debate is over".

A 50 million year old fossil that shares a couple of bones with humans, while interesting, doesn't exactly "prove" Darwin's theory of the evolution of species, and certainly not the origin of man. Certainly the process of evolution exists and I believe it accounts for much diversity on Earth. But we share gill slits with fish, embryologically, we have a vestigal tailbone, and share countless traits with thousands of species. If this discovery "proves" the evolution of man from ape, why don't our embryonic gill slits prove that we're closely related to the carp?

On the other hand, this guy does sort of remind me of regular reader David.

Rappers reap what they've sown

I'm shocked, shocked to report that a rapper got shot....

A man shot at the Beverly Center mall this afternoon was identified as Atlanta-based Dolla, whose real name is Roderick Anthony Burton II, according to his publicist, Sue Vannasing. She said Dolla was shot in the head around 3:10 p.m. while he and another rapper, D.J. Shabbazz, waited in the area after shopping at the popular Westside mall.

When will the senseless killing of our nation's rappers end?[sarcasm] When will we start seeing these young men for the visionary artists they are?[more sarcsm] I think I have an answer:

How about this? When degenerate rappers stop celebrating, no advocating gang violence, drug use, cop hatred, and every other anti-social perversion you care to name, and start behaving as civilized members of society instead of criminal deviants, then maybe other criminals won't shoot at them.

Failure to launch syndrome

In how many ways is this picture just wrong and/or ironic? Let's list them....

(AP) BEDFORD, Ohio - An Ohio man who argued with his grown son over a messy bedroom says he overreacted when he called 911.

Andrew Mizsak called authorities Thursday after his 28-year-old son — who's a school board member in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford — threw a plate of food across the kitchen table and made a fist at him when told to clean his room.

The son, also named Andrew, lives in a room in his parents' basement.

The father declined to press charges and told police he doesn't want to ruin his son's political career.

The son, who also works as a political consultant, says he's lucky to be living in the house rent free. He also promises to keep his room clean.

WRONG:

1. 28 year old man lives with parents, in their basement.(like who couldn't have guessed that?)

2. 28 year old man keeps his room messy.

3. 28 year old man insolently throws food and threatens father with clenched fist.

4. 28 year old man promises to clean his room after fed-up dad calls the cops.

IRONIC:

5. 28 year old man who lives in parents' basement, won't clean his room, and threatens his father, advises others on their careers.

6. 28 year old man who by all measures is an adolescent, sits on the local school board.

Native Americans join the ranks of the perpetually offended

Native Americans seem ironically proud to be defined by casino gambling where people by the thousands become addicted and destitute. Yet what plague them as a people is alcohol addiction and destitution...that and pretending to be offended by decades of school traditions that honor them....

DICKINSON, N.D. — North Dakota's Board of Higher Education has agreed to drop the University of North Dakota's Fighting Sioux nickname and Indian head logo, a move intended to resolve a decades-long campus dispute about whether the name demeans American Indians.

I think Native Americans have discovered the value in PC America of being an offended minority. Rather than confront directly their peoples' failure to assimilate, get educated, remain unaddicted, and maintain employment, tribal leaders tilt at the offensive-college-mascot windmill. Luckily for them there are plenty of smarmy, liberal bureaucrats who love stomping on any and all long-standing traditions, no matter how benign and reverential.

If it weren't for NCAA schools remembering and honoring the Native American traditions of pride, fighting spirit, and brotherhood, would anybody remember them for anything but gambling?

The totalitarian State is on it's way

Over at RightWingNews, John Hawkins has a short article by McQ which lays out the prophetic words of Herbert Hoover regarding the inevitable move from a free-market society to a totalitarian one when the government starts to believe it knows best about the economy. Seriously, Hoover's chilling description was from 1940 and it's more applicable today than it was when he said it. Click here and check it out.

A fool and his money....

You just had to know some enterprising athiest would find a way to make some money off the second coming of Christ....

There are those who believe in the Rapture prophesied in the Bible.

And there is Joshua Witter, avowed atheist. They need each other.

At least some people think so -- those willing to pay Witter to be their post-apocalyptic postman, delivering cards and letters to their non-believing friends, relatives and neighbors who will be left behind when the Day of Reckoning arrives.

So far, 70 people have each paid Witter $5 to get the last word in to the people who doubted them, and I'll bet every one of the cards reads, "See idiots? I told you! Who's laughing now, and who's facing the misery and despair of plagues, pestilence, famine, and darkness? So long suckers!"

Leave the house with no panties? Flash the world

When stupidity and carlessness get you in trouble, you can bet I'll be there to mock you for it....

A 16-year-old student has learned the hard way that she should always pair panties with a dress - because her yearbook photo reveals a little more than she bargained for.(Green dress, second from right)

Now thousands of copies of the yearbook have been handed out to the students who attend the high school - and while some say the private, revealed 'area' is just merely a shadow, the teen girl says it's the real thing - and it's embarrassing.

I'm sure it is embarrassing to her, but we can laugh at her public humiliation because it didn't happen to us.

How dumb does a girl have to be to leave home wearing a short dress, without panties, and then sit on the front row while her picture is taken from waist-level, and not expect to show the world her goods? Look at all the other girls in the row who are wearing dresses, they all are covering themselves to prevent this very thing.

The hysterical mom is mortified and has stupidly demanded that the school confiscate every yearbook, destroy them, and then re-print every one without this picture. Sorry mom, you should have taught your exhibitionist daughter not to run around in short dresses without panties. I'm sure there will be a law suit filed by some skeevy lawyer against the school and the publisher on behalf of the girl...there always is.

What's wrong with "giving"? Why does it have to be "giving back"?

Nincompoop celebrities and vacuous politicians love to use the term "giving back" because they want you to feel guilty for what you've accomplished, as if you didn't do it on your own, as if you didn't earn what you have....

MERCED, Calif. – First lady Michelle Obama praised graduating students at California's smallest, youngest public university for their determination to succeed, urging them to give back to their communities.

In her debut as a commencement speaker on Saturday, Mrs. Obama evoked the struggles of California's founders — settlers and former slaves, trailblazers and immigrants — to encourage the 493 members of the school's first full graduating class to use their newfound skills to lift up those around them.

"You will face tough times. You will certainly have doubts, and let me tell you because I know I did when I was your age," she said. "Remember that you are blessed. Remember that in exchange for those blessings, you must give something back. You must reach back and pull someone up. You must bend down and let someone else stand on your shoulders so that they can see a brighter future."

What if you made your own way through school and didn't take a penny of public money that you won't be paying back, with interest? What if your community didn't help you do anything? What if you didn't get a leg up by being a politically favored minority? In other words, what if you earned what you've gotten and don't owe anybody anything in return?

"Giving back" is not just a meaningless phrase made popular by American Idol. It's a veiled implication that you don't really own what you produce. It's a subliminal suggestion that you owe others for your thoughts, accomplishments, and earnings. It's an insidious attempt to make you feel guilty for what you've worked for, so that you won't complain when it's taken from you for somebody elses' benefit...somebody who is too lazy, dumb, and unmotivated to do what you've done.

I don't recall anybody but my mom giving me anything, so I give, but I don't give back to anybody but her.

At Newsweek, it's all Obama all the time

Have you noticed as I have that the comically named Newsweek magazine has been getting thinner and thinner every year to the point that, as Laura Ingraham recently observed, it's little more than two covers with an erectile dysfunction ad in between? The problem is that there are too many Obama cheerleaders in the print media already. If Newsweek wants more readers, it should start evenhandedly covering the news. Predictably however, they are taking a different tack....

From the NewYorkPostOnline...

On Monday, Newsweek unveils the most dramatic overhaul in its history -- one that parent Washington Post Co. hopes will take it from a money-losing position in the weekly-news category to a money-making one in the thought-leader category.

Part of the strategy is to shed lower-paying readers, who today pay an average of only 47 cents an issue for a subscription, even though it costs Newsweek at least $1 to produce and mail. Time subscribers pay an average of 34 cents an issue, while the more upscale The New Yorker fetches 98 cents and The Economist garners $1.96.

On the circulation front, Newsweek currently promises advertisers it reaches 2.6 million, but on June 1 that will drop to 1.9 million and by January it will fall again to 1.5 million.

Newsweek hopes to double the price subscribers pay to about 80 cents a copy.

In addition to the lower circ, the mag's content will change, moving away from chasing breaking news stories.

The new Newsweek will have four main sections. Scope will replace the old Periscope section, and The Take will feature all the magazine's columnists.

Features will be long narratives, which Meacham is calling, "The First Draft of History," and photo essays. The Culture will cover TV, movies and books each week, but with fewer reviews.

On the newsstand, consumers will see the cover price go up by $1 to $5.95.

Somehow I don't think rearranging and renaming the far-left slanted articles and op-eds and then raising the news-stand price by almost 500% will lure more readers. Even government-educated econ majors can tell you that if you raise the price of something, fewer people will buy it. It probably never occurred to anybody over there to report in a fair and balanced way the news of the day. That's what'll get readership up....but, and this is a dealbreaker for a liberal, it will make them unpopular with The One. And Newsweek's publishers, being tools of the Left, want to avoid being seen as unfavorable to The One, even if it means utter failure of their mag.

Killing little girls that Americans won't kill

Remember when George Bush told us that illegal aliens were here only to do the crappy jobs Americans wouldn't do? As we've seen countless times since then, that's not all they are doing.....

From Michelle Malkin's site...

Despite repeated trips through Douglas County’s criminal justice system, Eleazar Rangel-Ochoa wasn’t identified as an illegal immigrant until this week, after he was accused of causing a crash in west Omaha that killed 4-year-old Josie Bluhm.

It was unclear exactly how Rangel-Ochoa’s immigration status went undetected after so many court appearances and revocations of his driving privileges. But part of the reason was the inability to thoroughly check his documentation the first time he walked into the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles.

Illegal alien apologists constantly bleat that it's a drunk driving issue and not an immigration issue. My argument is that, but for the government's abject failure to deport illegals when they commit their first crime, little girls like Josie Bluhm would be alive. There are deportation laws on the books that routinely go ignored by authorities because of political pressure. The US is supposed to be a nation of laws...when those laws are intentionally ignored, how is that in itself not a crime? And when that willful disregard for the law results in the death of a little girl, how are those who failed to enforce the laws not responsible?

When it comes to waterboarding terrorists, liberals are all about abiding by the rule of law. When it comes to preventing the senseless deaths of little girls by enforcing immigration law, not so much.

Picture of the day

Stuff like this is why I'm part geek...

The pic — the first ever image taken of a solar transit of a space shuttle and Hubble Space Telescope — was taken by an amateur astronomer from his back garden.

"From his back garden." That ain't nothing but cool!

Heh, heh, stupid solar house didn't get enough sun

Here's what happens when dopey environmentalists try to force "green" technology to work when it's not ready....

Troy -- It was supposed to be a shining example of the green movement -- a completely independent solar-powered house with no gas or electrical hookups.

Seven months ago, officials gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the $900,000 house owned by the city of Troy that was to be used as an educational tool and meeting spot. But it never opened to the public. And it remains closed.

Frozen pipes during the winter caused $16,000 in damage to floors, and city officials aren't sure when the house at the Troy Community Center will open.

So what caused the flood?

Jeff Biegler, superintendent of parks for the city, said the flooding occurred from a glitch in the heater. "The system was designed to kick a heater on to keep water from freezing," Biegler said. "The heater drew all reserve power out of the battery causing the system to back down and the pipes froze."

Look, I'm all for generating power using solar, wind, ocean-tides, or cow-farts... whatever, as long as it saves me money, it works as well as the coal and hydro-powered electricity grid we currently use, and it's competitive in the energy market place without government subsidies. Consumer demand will determine whether it's worthwhile, and judging from this $900,000 waste of space in Troy, Michigan, the technology just isn't market-ready yet. Nobody but drug-addled hippies and liberal politicians intoxicated on power want this technology as it is.

The battery ran out and the pipes froze......hilarious!

Benedict Arlen Specter's final betrayal of America

Arlen Specter is a lying piece of crap! As a republican, he opposed the awful Card-Check Bill which would swell membership in labor unions in every state, effectively handing the democrat party an endless supply of money and thug-enforced votes in every election. (In case you live under a rock and aren't familiar with this bill, Card-Check would remove the private ballot from unionization voting so that burly, mouth-breathing, union thugs will be looking over your shoulder as you vote whether or not to unionize your workplace.)

Specter was against this bill when he was a republican but, now that he's a democrat, he seems to have left the door open to being turned around. What a dispicable, worthless traitor he is!

Look for Obama to fast-track Card-Check before the midterms so they won't have to count on Specter winning to get enough votes to cram it down our throats.

That's all the country needs right now is more lazy, shiftless, union bums doing as little as possible on the job while demanding that their employer pay them far more than they are worth. Did we learn nothing from the auto-maker disaster?

It is bizarre that Obama professes to be working on the economy 24/7 to re-establish the American dream for every American, blah, blah, blah. But every step he takes does exactly the opposite. The banking bailouts, porkulus spending, arbitrary cancellation of GM bond-holder contracts, cap-and-trade, coal-plant construction moratoria, higher taxes, onerous regulations, all depress the economy by raising the costs of living, causing people to worry and stop spending money. Do we really need to hamstring our companies further by making it easy for unions to extort undeserved money from them? Thanks a lot Benedict Arlen.

That sound you hear....Speaker Pelosi's death rattle

I sense the end is near for speaker Pelosi. When the obfuscation and denials sound as contorted as this, you know she's scrambling....and it's hilarious to watch....

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

WASHINGTON (AP) - Under strong attack from Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA and Bush administration of misleading her about waterboarding detainees in the war on terror and sharply rebutted claims she was complicit in its use.

"To the contrary ... we were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used," she told reporters, referring to a formal CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

Pelosi said she subsequently learned that other lawmakers were told several months later by the CIA about the use of waterboarding.

"I wasn't briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it," she said.

So Pelosi's weak, hypocritical excuses for torture having taken place on her watch is either that she was misled by dastardly republicans, which makes her stupid and gullible since she should have been listening to the apolitical CIA and not the administration, or she was just plain derelict in her duties as a congressional leader by not attending briefings. Either way her days as Speaker should be numbered. Let's hope so.

I hope she's not counting on support from Obama once it's clear she lied. I think I hear the Hope-n-Change bus coming down the road like the grim reaper to collect Nancy's career.

"Cross-eyed child molestor" is no way to go through life, son

Helpful tip for cross-eyed, hippie, child molestors: it's probably not a good idea to choose "Pantielover" as a handle when exchanging kiddie porn on the computer with undercover cops. What a sick freak!

Learn to drink Diet Coke

There is no part of Americans' private lives over which the Obama administration will not eventually claim control....

The Senate Finance Committee today is hearing proposals on how to pay for President Obama's proposed universal health care plan, which is expected to cost more than $1 trillion. Among the proposals, as Consumer Affairs reports: A three-cent tax on sodas as well as other sugary drinks, including energy and sports drinks like Gatorade. Diet sodas would be exempt.

Their lame argument about using the revenue to offset the costs of obesity caused by consumption of sugary sodas is a lie. They also promised to use the tobacco settlement revenue, which was in the hundreds of millions, to offset the costs of treating tobacco-related illnesses and to pay for smoking cessation programs but, less than 1% of that money was used for either. It all went into the pockets of skeevy trial lawyers and general funds of politicians to be used to buy votes in the next election. The proposed soda tax is just another money grab by craven politicians who'll use transparently phony concern for our health to tax us for our own good.

Is there any aspect of life in America that busy-body, government bureaucrats don't want to regulate? I swear!

Et tu, Brute?

This is Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader, and the man who would succeed Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House....if she ever got into trouble that is. With that in mind, read this latest development....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House majority leader reluctantly agreed Tuesday that congressional hearings should investigate Speaker Nancy Pelosi's assertion that she wasn't informed, more than six years ago, that harsh interrogation methods were used on an al-Qaida leader.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., called Republican challenges to Pelosi's assertion a diversion from the real question of whether the Bush administration tortured terrorist suspects. Nonetheless, he acknowledged the controversy should be resolved.

Don't think for a minute Hoyer is trying to protect Pelosi. He'll stab her in the back the first chance he gets. Politicians are like sharks in the water who smell blood. If they detect even the slightest weakness, they'll attack even each other. Steny knows that if it's brought out in a nationally televised House hearing that Pelosi flat-out lied about her foreknowledge of waterboarding, she may have to resign as Speaker and he can assume the reigns of power.

I just love it when democrats eat their own. And we couldn't do any worse than Pelosi.

TV's don't kill kids, stupid parents who can't secure furniture kill kids

If you own a flat screen TV, look out. Studies show they are actively trying to kill your kids....

Falling flat-screen TVs a growing threat for kids
Study tracks 41 percent rise in injuries from tipping furniture

To read this, it's almost as if the TV's were jumping off the walls and tipping over their armoirs intentionally to crush toddlers who're watching them. There's no mention of idiot parents who fail to balance their furniture or who cannot screw bolts into walls as the instructions guide you to do.

Morons who write these articles were the same ones who wrote the articles about SUV's that headlined like this, "SUV crashes into crowd injuring dozens". In that article, there was not a single mention of the driver. The SUV killing people on it's own was the story. Liberals, which 95% of the media are, are hisitant to assign blame to individuals who've hurt themselves. It makes them feel judgemental and an evil corporation hurting people makes a more compelling story. But there are more insidius forces at work than just stupid journalists making stories fit their deceptive liberal template.

See, if the blame is properly placed on careless parents as it should be, there are no deep-pocketed TV manufacturers for skeevy lawyers to sue. And if manufacturers are successfully sued, the government, with support from the dumb public, can easily move in to regulate the industry and tax it. Government bureaucrats know that if they demonize a product as dangerous, whether it is or not, the drones in the media will dutifully report it as an evil product from then on, opening the doors for regulation and taxation. They did it with SUV's and now they're about to do it with TV's.

This will be the next target of liberals' tax grab and pointless regulations. When the government gets through regulating our furniture for safety, we can all enjoy sitting around our padded homes with nothing but pillows on the spongy, carpeted floors in rooms painted in soothing colors with kid-safe, eco-friendly paint, reading by candlelight, government-approved stories about giving and sharing, to our helmeted children.

UPDATE: I just read this headline at ABC.com, "Consumer Alert: Children's Deaths Tied to Pet Doors". My gosh, is there no such thing as personal responsibility in America? Trial lawyers are lining up to sue doggy-door manufacturers because stupid parents weren't told that their kids could crawl through them and drown in the family pool. No, seriously, that's the lawyers' argument.

Here's my headline for this story: Parents who're high on drugs and leave toddlers unsupervised, risk losing them to drowning...and deserve to lose them.

Wanda Sykes is an ass-kissing coward!

The White House Correspondants dinner is supposed to be a good-natured roast of the President, consisting of comics poking fun of him and then him poking fun of himself. Wanda Sykes was the headliner and she did not make a single joke about The One....

From Ben Shapiro...

She didn’t utter a single joke about Obama’s out of control spending. Not one joke about his teleprompter. Not one joke about his visit with Chavez, his messages to Iran, his Cinco De Mayo screwup, his mastery of the Austrian language, his “world without nuclear weapons,” his spreading the wealth around, his ownership of the car companies, his tax-cheat employees.
And most of all, not a single joke about Dan Choi, the first gay Arabic linguist fired by Barack Obama under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Not a single joke about Obama’s interracially married parents and his refusal to stump for homosexual marriage. Sykes pledged to “get in their face” about gay marriage, but refused to get in the face of the most powerful man on earth about it. Instead, she chose to go after Rush Limbaugh and oxycontin - a choice for which she will surely be praised by the leftist media.

Wanda Sykes is a self-described militant lesbian. So why didn't she take the opportunity to at least poke fun of Obama for opposing gay marriage? Could it be that with all craven liberals, dutiful Obama-worship supercedes personal convictions, even to the point that one is compelled to deny one's own self in subservient genuflection before The One?

Sykes even attacked Sarah Palin in her absence, though Todd Palin was there and had to endure it. What a reprehensible lowlife Sykes is! If Wanda Sykes wants to be militant, why not be brave and joke about the people she's supposed to joke about...to their faces?

Good grief! Abandon ship already!

Where did all that money go?

A federal report says the U.S. government will loan General Motors Corp. up to $5 billion more to make it through June 1, and Chrysler LLC could get up to $500 million more by April 30.

The report on the bank bailout program released Tuesday by a special inspector general says the money will be made available for working capital as both companies try to meet government restructuring demands.

GM already has received $13.4 billion in government loans, while Chrysler has received $4 billion.

The Obama administration toadies are such slaves to their union masters that there is no length to which they will not go in order to preserve various union's thuggish control over their respective labor forces.

Where did the first $17.5 billion go? Directly into executive bonuses and union coffers where it will be returned to the Obama reelection campaign fund as donations. See how that works? Obama doles out money to favored groups who then promise to give some of it back as political donations. It's practically money laundering.

The three absurdly inefficient, American auto companies needed to die 10 years ago...all of them. But Obama doesn't want that to happen on his watch, because it might cost him otherwise reliable union votes come election time. So there is no amount of money stolen from taxpayers that he won't throw at these utter failures to preserve their political support. Another $5.5 billion down the toilet, give me a break!

You think your family is awkward and weird?

Over at ConservativeGrapevine, John has a link to a funny site called AwkwardFamilyPhotos you might enjoy, as it encourages you to ridicule families that are way weirder than yours. Like this one, is this one of those new triad marriages? Does this kid have two daddies? You can imagine the fun in the comments thread.

So waste some of your employer's valuable work time today, and feel better about your self by putting down others.

Man settles long-standing argument with wife

I have this macabre discussion with my wife everytime the life-insurance topic comes up. The question is, which one of us is worth more dead than alive, to the other one. Well, this dude evidently decided to finally answer that question once and for all....

OTSEGO, Mich. — Michigan authorities say a man working in his yard accidentally killed his wife with a chain saw.

The Otsego couple were trying to cut a tree Sunday when the man hit his wife in the neck with the chain saw.

I have cut trees with a chainsaw numerous times, in the immediate presence of my wife, and I have to say that I have never mistaken her neck for a branch. The authorities should probably check on the life-insurance payout.

The media's embarrassing infatuation with the Obamas continues unabated

For Mother's Day, the Washington Post's Sally Quinn wrote an essay about Michelle Obama's arms and what they mean to America.....no, seriously. Here are a couple of groan-worthy exerpts.....

-Michelle Obama's arms, we determined, were transformational. Her arms are representative of a new kind of woman: young, strong, vigorous, intelligent, accomplished, sexual, powerful, embracing and, most of all, loving.

-Today is Mother's Day. Today we should celebrate Michelle Obama's arms as the arms of a mother.

Am I mistaken, or does the media have a serious job to do when it comes to it's watchdog responsibilities regarding the excesses of an over-reaching government? Sally needs to get over her slightly creepy, homo-erotic infatuation with Michelle's arms, and start reporting honestly, on this administration's push toward a fascist state.

If you have the stomach for it, go here and read the whole article.

Obama's magical apology tour

Obama is planning a trip to Germany to coincide with the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden toward the end of WW-II....

From TimesOnline -

But he will be aware of the sensibilities of his German hosts before the D-Day commemoration and by travelling to Dresden — a city destroyed by ferocious Allied bombing in February 1945 — Mr Obama will also acknowledge how Germany suffered during the Second World War.

"...he will acknowledge how Germany suffered"...that's code for, "he will apologize for the US having kicked the everyloving crap out of Germany".

As if the Germans would have stopped slaughtering the dirty Jooooos anyway, had we not stopped them. What an embarassing spectacle this Presidency has been. He's running all over Europe apologizing for America's perceived past sins, to get what? The Europeans to like us? Yes, the US and Great Britain bombed Dresden toward the end of the war. So what? The problem with liberals is that they judge every historical action by the US through the lenses of modern warfare capabilities and modern conventions regarding rules of combat.

Apologists like Obama believe Dresden was a peaceful sleepy town filled with Jew-loving Germans happily living as artists, writers, and architects. On the contrary, Dresden was a manufacturing and shipping center of military significance, as well as an culturally valuable town. Despite sniveling liberals' yammering about war crimes there, it was a perfectly reasonable military target. Sure, the razing of Dresden came 12 weeks before the end of the war and Germany would have been defeated regardless. But the nuclear weapon we dropped on Nagasaki was pretty pointless too. Sorry, war is hell! If you don't want to have your cities bombed and your civilians killed collaterally, then don't start wars.

The anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are approaching, I wonder how embarrassingly Obama will grovel, prostrate before the Japanese, as he aplogizes profusely for that too?

Heh, heh...Harry Reid betrayed Arlen Specter

Isn't it satisfying when traitors get what's coming to them? A good back-stabbing is exactly what Arlen Specter deserved.....

Despite promises from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) would retain his seniority after switching parties, Specter will be put at the end of the seniority line on all his committees but one under a resolution approved on the floor late Tuesday.

Under the modified organizing resolution, Specter will not keep his committee seniority on any of the five committees that he serves on and will be the junior Democrat on all but one — the chamber’s Special Committee on Aging. On that committee, he will be next to last in seniority.

Arlen must be feeling pretty stupid right about now. Everybody knows Harry Reid is a dirty, rotten, lying sack of crap. Did Specter really think that other senate democrats would give up their committee seniority because he decided to be a democrat, only to save his career? And that's the funniest part, he may not have saved his career. He might still lose in the next election as Pennsylvania democrat voters might decide he's untrustworthy.....which he is.

The wheeles on the HOPE-n-CHANGE bus go thump, thump, thump

It's getting difficult to even count the bodies under the HopeyChangey Bus.....

WASHINGTON - A top White House aide resigned Friday for his role in Air Force One's $328,835 photo-opportunity flyover above New York City that sparked panic and flashbacks to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The sight of the huge passenger jet and an F-16 fighter plane flying past the Statue of Liberty and the tall office buildings in lower Manhattan's financial district sent panicked office workers streaming into the streets on April 27. Obama said it would not happen again.

Louis Caldera said the controversy had made it impossible for him to effectively lead the White House Military Office. "Moreover, it has become a distraction in the important work you are doing as president," Caldera said in his resignation letter to President Barack Obama.

Every President has staff that eventually screw up and some do resign over it, but I've never seen an administration jettison bodies faster than this one. Nobody, nobody had better embarrass The One because everyone is expendable. What a crappy work environment in which dopey, Obama drones must toil.

One possible future for America

With the unprecedented changes in our government and to our country thanks to Obama's monopolization of two, and soon all three, branches of government, as well as the aid and comfort of a deplorable and complicit lapdog media, Constitutional patriots cannot help but wonder when and how it will all end. Because one thing's for certain, this fascistic control of the private sector by one man cannot persist. It will fail at some point. The only question is how will it fail and what might the recovery look like, that is, assuming we haven't been occupied by the Russians, Chinese or Canada....heh, heh.

Regular reader Angie over at WhatFloatsMyBoat, has a chilling take on where the country might be headed and how things might play out when Obama's house of cards finally comes crashing down. You should check it out. I don't know if the descent of America will happen this fast but, if we continue under total control by liberals it will certainly happen at some point.

It's depressing to think about where we may be heading, yet heartening to think about the country on the other side. It's not exactly a MadMax scenario but apocalyptic in it's own way.

Ask not for whom The One is contemptuous, for he is comtemptuous of you.

I think I'll order those Survival Seeds and buy a couple more guns after all.

Do we really need to know more about homosexual bahavior?

I'm all for government funding of medical research. It falls under the umbrella of "promoting the general welfare" part of the preamble to the Constitution but, this is ridiculous....

Government researchers are spending more than $400,000 in taxpayer money to hit the bars in Argentina.

The National Institutes of Health are paying researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk -- and just what can be done about it.

Any college frat boy in pursuit of hot coeds can tell you why people engage in risky behavior when drunk. Alcohol depresses the natural inhibitions humans have. Why would gay men be any different than heteros, I mean besides the definitional obvious? Plus, risky sexual behavior is part of the gay lifestyle. It doesn't take almost a half million taxpayer dollars to figure that out.

The question here is, does studying gays in Argentina promote the general welfare of the American taxpayer? Or is it just some NIH bureaucrat doling out free money to his buddies who can't write worthwhile, fund-worthy grants? My bet's on the latter.

Oh, and the answer to the second question, "what can be done about gays' risky behavior"?......Nothing. Gay men engaging in risky sexual behavior is the same as what straight men would do with women, if only women wouldn't be so stubbornly uncooperative. In other words, it's a man thing, not a gay thing.

There, question asked and answered. Can somebody give me $400,000?