And now for something completely different

Heh heh, I found this particularly hilarious because Spider Man was my favorite comic-book character growing up. I never considered the perils of upside-down urination until now. I'll have to remember this if they ever invent spidey-boots for ceiling walking.

Tom Harkin is a moron

Craven democrat Tom Harkin has introduced a senate bill that would raise the federal minimum wage to $9.80 in two years. 

The very existence of a minimum wage in the first place is sheer economic lunacy. As you can see in this graph, millions of jobs will be lost if they pass this. But then that's the idea for democrats...to get as many people on the government unemployment dole as possible. 

How miserable and incompetent of a stinking employee do you have to be to still be making minimum wage after 6 months on the job? If you can't impress your boss enough after 6 months to earn a raise, then he should probably fire you and hire somebody who's worth a damn. 

Here are the 4 indicators of staying far above poverty in America even if you are temporarily in a minimum wage job: finish high school, stay off drugs, get married and stay married, do not have kids you cannot afford. But I guess that's too much to ask of an entitled generation that idolizes Jersey Shore and the Kardashians, and got a trophy for graduating 5-K.

Terrance Ganaway's work ethic

Former Baylor Bear and current rookie running back for the St. Louis Rams Terrance Ganaway isn't squandering his off-season getting high, chasing skirts, hanging out in strip clubs, or funding the activities of his 30-man, dingle-berry posse from the neighborhood like typical rookies with newly-found money.

Terrance jokingly tweeted that he needed something to fill the time in the off-season to keep him out of trouble, and the owner of the Jimmy John's sandwich shop in Waco offered him a job....which Terrance graciously accepted. Now he schleps drinks, cuts meat, operates the register, and make sandwiches three nights a week. His reasoning is consistent with what responsible parents try to instill in their kids....discipline, delayed gratification, work ethic, long-term goal orientation, and I would add to that list: no matter how lowly the job seems, gainful employment is a virtue in and of itself and nobody is above working menial labor jobs.

Good for Terrance! If I played fantasy football, I'd pick him for my team on principle. I'll be watching his career from now on.

The most transparent administration ever....heh heh

Obama campaigned on transparency like no other candidate has ever done, yet his is probably the least transparent administration since the Watergate cover up of the Nixon white house. Here's Obama meeting with a bunch of governors and he's about to take some questions. You'd think that in a room in which every single person is accountable to voters somewhere, there'd be a obvious need for transparency....but you'd be wrong......

                        

I'll bet the media will go quietly out the door and grumble to each other in the corner and idiot Jay Carney will get an earful tomorrow. The white house press would never dare seriously question any action taken by the object of their collective swoon.

It's ridiculous and embarrassing how this media lays down for Obama. It is more important to the members of the press that the first black President be successful and popular and that his legacy be stellar, than it is for them to be reporters. They see their jobs as reporters to help this President, not report on him. They consciously refuse to do their jobs if doing their jobs is in conflict with their undying support of Obama and his collectivist agenda.

Chuck Todd - "I'm shocked, shocked to find gambling going on here."

Here's MSNBC clown Chuck Todd being surprised to find that Obama is as corrupt as the decrepit town from which he hails.....

 

What's that you say, "But Ed, every President sells access one way or the other. You can't hold Obama to a higher standard."

Why yes I can because he campaigned specifically on this, promising not to do this very thing....sell access to big donors in exchange for money. This is no different than the Clinton's establishing a revolving door to the Lincoln bedroom for big donors to stay in.

Todd seems genuinely surprised to find that Obama is a lying, corrupt, Chicago politician. I knew this when he was a senator, but then I'm not a gullible democrat like Todd.

God didn't cause the crash at Daytona

Unless you don't own a TV, no doubt you saw the horrific crash in the Nationwide Series crash Saturday at Daytona. Dozens of people were injured when tires, debris, and parts of one engine came flying into the stands. Luckily nobody died but many are still hospitalized and the need for safer fences coming off the turns(where crashes tend to happen most) at NASCAR races is now part of the national conversation.

This morning a local radio talk-show host here in Birmingham remarked thusly: "Well, sometimes God has interesting ways of making sure things get done that need to get done."

So, God cares so much about the turn-4 fence safety at Daytona that to bring this to the attention of track managers, he causes scores of fans to be injured, some critically? I've never heard anything so stupid. I get that people need to feel comforted by believing that bad events are part of a bigger "master plan" that is beyond their understanding. People are very childlike, but who could revere a God that randomly injures, kills, maims, infects, or otherwise harms people He loves just to make points? It makes no sense, even if you believe that there is a master plan.

Sure God is in control of all things, if he wants to be. What's more likely the case is that he passively allows all things to happen and then might use them for good. We humans have free will, and we have created for ourselves a very dangerous world where disease, injuries, horrific deaths both intentional and accidental, take place through no action of His.

God didn't create 195mph stock-car racing. We did that all by ourselves and accidents will happen, but that doesn't mean God caused this one in order to point out to Daytona officials that their fencing needs updating.

Oregon's anti-gun overreach

Oregon House Bill 3200 reads like a prequel to George Orwell's scarily predictive "1984". Not only would it  dramatically raise the penalties for illegally being in possession of an assault rifle or large capacity magazine, it also forces you to, as a condition of ownership of such a weapon, allow an in-home inspection of your home by a federal thug to insure storage and safety compliance.

So to recap, if HB 3200 passes in Oregon, in order for a private citizen acting lawfully to exercise his/her 2nd amendment rights, they must first forfeit their 4th amendment rights to not be unreasonably searched or their property seized without a warrant authorized by a judge who has probably cause to sign such a warrant.

When otherwise lawful Americans submissively stand aside while jack-booted government thugs enter their homes for no other reason than they own a gun, then the America we read about in the history books no longer exists and whether it's worth fighting for comes into question.

The media's ostrich-like lack of curiosity

When Obama played golf with Tiger Woods last week, the media were outraged that they weren't included and got the vapors over missing some tidbit of information.

If only they were this curious over Fast-and-Furious, Benghazi, national debt, jobs, impending Obamacare damage, the failed Arab Spring which Obama touts, statutory rapist Robert Menendez, drone attacks on American citizens without due process, dozens of Solyndra's, unconstitutional bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler, the intentional destruction of the coal industry, gas prices, etc........you get my drift?

My other job is kind of demanding

Sorry for the light posting the last couple of days. I moonlight as a field technician with a traffic data company that performs traffic studies of intersections, signal timing, and we put those black tubes out that you run over sometimes....and no, they are not in communication with the police, but they do record your speed very accurately and can even determine what kind of car you're driving based on the inter-axle distance.

Anyway, I was in St. Tammany parish, Louisiana for the last three days doing traffic studies and just wrapped it up this morning.

On the 5 hour drive back, I cross the Pearl River(sadly not near the casino) and because of all the rain, it was totally flooded. Fortunately La. DOT had the forethought to elevate the interstate and I had no problems, but the houses and roads that I could see were almost completely under water. At one point, I saw the top half of a 15mph speed limit sign....the rest under muddy flowing water. YIKES!

But it's good to be back home and I'll be posting some more stuff over the weekend so check back when you get a chance.

Noted Hollywood dingbat weighs in on Keystone

Apparently this is some Hollywood dingbat named Rosario Dawson, of whom I've never heard. But as socially conscious Hollywood dingbats are wont to do, she attends a rally and finds the nearest camera and reporter to enlighten the masses as to why she's attending. In this case it's a protest about corporations in general and the Keystone Pipeline specifically. She opposes the pipeline for the standard environmental reasons but she threw in another curious reason. Here's what she said.....

"This pipeline is so that we can start selling to China and other places. Which they would say was about creating some jobs and it’s about bringing in money, but most of that money isn’t trickling down to anybody....

"What is trickling down to us is leakages, spills, bad health, um, contaminated water, contaminated air, radioactive materials, property values dropping, our health. That’s what’s being trickled down to us, and we have to say no to that."

Heh heh.....I adore stupid chicks who insist on pretending they understand anything deeper than their bath water. 

Government readies itself for martial law

While the government tries to disarm the populace, it simultaneously arms itself with billions of rounds of hollow-point, armor-piercing rounds of ammunition.....WHY, why would DHS and the Social Security Admin. need that much ammo? 

Mark Levin thinks the government is readying itself, not for a Tea Party revolution, but for the pandemonium, chaos, and lawlessness that'll accompany a very real possibility of a total collapse of the US economy under the weight of national debt....a collapse the government itself is causing. 

Controlling the citizenry with martial law under those conditions will be easier if we don't have guns. 

I know what you're thinking, "Ed, you're just paranoid." 

Why yes, I am paranoid about the bad intentions of government, but that doesn't mean the government isn't out to get me and my guns just the same.

 H/T to TPNN.

Media shill for Obama, unashamed of themselves

CNN ran Rubio's swig of water over 200 times in the 24 hours following the SOTU-speech response and was obsessed with Manti Te'o's lie about his imaginary girlfriend, but have they dedicated even a cursory question to the President's rampant drug use as a teen and adult? Or even asked in passing about his record at Columbia? Or even wondered casually about the nefarious characters from Chicago's utterly corrupt political culture with whom he surrounds himself?

No! They care more about destroying Marco Rubio because he presents a serious threat to Hillary's winning the presidency in 2016.

Laugh-line of the day from Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that she opposes the sequestration cuts that would apply to congressional salaries because cutting legislators' pay would diminish the dignity of the job.

{{snicker}}

She quickly pointed out that the cuts would include staffers' pay, but she could make up the difference out of her budget. When cuts are necessary, democrats always point to police, teachers, and firemen as the first ones on the chopping block as if the thousands of absurdly over-paid administrative bureaucrats in government are too vital to be cut instead.

Citing police, teachers, and firemen, just as she's citing her staff, as victims of budget cuts is a craven tool democrats use to make the public feel guilty and panic about not letting them spend more money.

The dignity of the office......gimme a break!

Oscar Pistorius shoots girlfriend mistakenly

South African paralympic star Oscar Pistorius has been charged with murder after he accidentally shot dead his model girlfriend at his luxury South Africa home when he mistook her for an intruder. 

Apparently home invasions are a rampant problem in Pretoria and Oscar was terrified of being the victim of one. It is believed that she came over to surprise him for Valentine's Day. 

What a tragedy. I hope that it was a horrible mistake and not murder. In a country where home invasions are the rule rather than the exception, you should probably announce each visit.

Guppies, an apt analog for human behavior

Researchers studying "the obvious" in London have spent millions to conclude what anybody who's ever been in a bar can tell you anecdotally: people hang out with people they think are less good looking than them, in order to appear more attractive to the opposite sex by comparison.

Using guppies as human analogs, they showed that brightly colored male guppies, when exposed to a female in an adjacent tank, would swim nearer to a dull-colored guppy rather than hang out with another brightly colored one.

From an evolutionary standpoint, every human behavioral choice can be explained by asking, "Which is more likely to make my DNA included in the next generation"? There is a symbiosis that occurs between an attractive female and an comparatively unattractive female of the same species in the presence of males. The perceived "pretty" female benefits by insuring she gets the most attractive/successful male, while the "less pretty" female receives more attention from other attractive males by hanging out with the "pretty" female, than she would on her own.

It's probably unromantic to point out the dry evolutionary basis for amorous human behavior the day before Valentine's Day, but the science doesn't lie.

Pro golf replaces wrestling at Olympics

After the 2016 Olympics, wrestling will not be an Olympic sport. Instead golf, that's right GOLF, will take its place. And lest you think only amateur golfers will be competing, you know, for the love of the game, think again. All the pro's will make it their next PGA stop and it'll be every bit as boring as watching the Dream Team kicking the crap out of whatever third-world team they get to victimize next.

And I swear if I have to hear Costas hype the drama of a golf gold medal won by a bored US pro the way he does with the basketball team, I'll just stop watching altogether.

Tiger, Rory, and Phil don't give a damn about an Olympic gold medal. Nor should they. The Olympics would be less important to them than the golf majors, the TPC, or any tournament at Pebble Beach. Golf already has its Olympics.....it's called the Ryder Cup. It's the US against the world, which let's be honest, is what the Olympics amounts too anyway.

The Olympics is supposed to be about the world competing in sports that all the world enjoys, not just watching 125 privileged white guys with Q-cards plus Tiger doing what very few people around the world have ever done.

Rand Paul for President

In case you missed it, here's Libertarian Rand Paul's response to Obama's socialist SOTU speech....

 

If Rand Paul runs in 2016, somebody else will have to convince me to vote for them because Paul will get my vote otherwise.

Global warming idiots are just that, idiots. Over at the propaganda arm of the democrat party, CNN, ditsy leftist tool Deb Feyerick hilariously wondered if the asteroid coming near Earth on Friday might have been drawn here by global warming......

 

This shows you just how dumb you can be and make it on American news channels. They smugly hold themselves up at experts in all things while belittling those who actually are experts.

She's been reflexively blaming any phenomenon on non-existent global warming for so long, she never bothers to stop and think for 2 seconds if what she's saying makes any sense at all. But she knows that it doesn't make any difference if she makes sense or not, because it's her intention of attacking global warming that will earn her credit, not the validity, in spite of the preposterousness, of what she actually says.

There's fraud in the Obama-phone program? Say it ain't so!

 

 

As a policy, the Obama administration wants as many Americans dependent on government handouts as possible, whether it's welfare, foodstamps, housing, unemployment, etc. If a majority of Americans are dependent on government, democrat politicians may never lose another election because indigent(democrat) voters always vote for who promises the fattest goody bag stuffed with other peoples' money. To achieve this goal, they lowered the standards of proof of poverty across the board to make it easier for more people to abuse the handout system. This included the Obamaphone give-away.

Of the $2.2Billion taxpayers spent giving phones to democrat voters, 41% was fraudulently claimed. You're shocked I know, to hear that there's fraud, waste, abuse, and graft associated with government welfare programs. But it's true. There are actually people who will lie in order to get more benefits from other taxpayers in exchange for their democrat votes.

What kind of a country accepts this as standard operating procedure? Answer: the kind of country who'll, not once but twice, install into the presidency a two-bit community agitator whose resume' was as thin as the tie I used to wear to New Wave bars in 1981, that's what kind.

Pope resigns, wants to collect some sweet retirement benefits

For the first time in 600 years the Pope will resign. Really? So every Pope since 1415 has died in the Papacy?

I'm not sure why I'm surprised. I mean let's be honest, John Paul II had died two years before his "death" and the Cardinals were basically operating his waving hand with a long stick from behind his chair, weekend-at-Bernie's style, until they were ready for a new guy.

Additionally let me point out that the Pope is really just a figurehead of the men who really wield the power in the Catholic church, much as Valerie Jarret is the puppet-master at the White House and Obama is merely the puppet. There is a cabal of Cardinals who attend to the Pope, and it is they who write the speeches, set the travel agenda, establish political positions, and most importantly, make sure the money keeps coming in. They, and not the Pope, basically operate the vast empire that is Catholicism. So what difference does it make who the Pope is, really?

The Benghazi story still has legs

Sec. Def. Leon Panetta testified yesterday that President Obama was nowhere to be found on 9/11, 2012 when the embassy in Benghazi was attacked and four Americans lost their lives including our ambassador to Libya. Further, he preposterously claimed that Obama had time for an hour-long phone call to Israeli PM Netanyahu, but was not briefed until the next day about Benghazi.

We are to believe that while a US ambassador is being murdered in Libya, on 9/11 of all days, the President's advisers didn't tell him until the next day?

Something's very fishy here. I know it's fishy because not telling the President that an ambassador is being murdered is a lie. I think Panetta is distancing Obama from Benghazi because there's some information that hasn't come out yet. I don't know what it is, but it must be bad for the Sec. Def., who is otherwise a very serious person, to make claims that are simply inconceivable.

Here's Panetta yesterday on the stand indicating just how far he can be trusted to tell the truth about Benghazi and Obama's role that night.....

Drone strikes on Americans and constitutional authority

Just to clear up the whole drone/civilian issue: I don't care about killing US ex-patriots who're plotting against the US. it's not about the civilians. It's about the questionable constitutional authority of the executive branch to do that without due process. 

Once you start tugging at strings of the constitutional fabric that underpins the country, then at some point the whole thing comes unraveled and then what does the term "constitutionality" even mean? 

Do these people deserve to be killed? Yes, kill them! And I understand that they are in Yemen or where ever and cannot be arrested and tried....I get that, but I want to know under what constitutional authority the executive branch assumes the unilateral authority to execute American civilians with little more than a second-hand intelligence report about suspicious activities and acquaintances. No civilian panel of judges or jurors is involved to confer evidence-based guilt in absentia.....as a libertarian, I sort of have a problem with that.

Tony Bennet, incoherent as always

Among the collection of brain-dead celebrities who stupidly believe that gun control will decrease gun violence, Tony Bennet's statement stood out as particularly incoherent......

TONY BENNETT: It's the kind of turn that happened to the great country of Germany, when Nazis came over and created tragic things, and they had to be told off. And if we continue this kind of violence and accept it in our country, the rest of the world's going to really take care of us, in a very bad way.

"...when Nazis came over and created tragic things"? What does that even mean?

It was gun control in Germany, plus a touch of national insanity, that allowed the Nazis to do what they did without resistance. Tony Bennet should get back on his meds.

Karl Rove is dead to me

Karl Rove is trying mightily to stay in favor with DC's elite insiders by attacking the Tea Party. It seems that even "conservatives" in Washington are tilting against whatever windmill keeps them on the A-list cocktail circuit and the popular windmill this year is the Tea Party.....it's what Obama detests and fears the most.

Ben Shapiro has a terrific synopsis of Rove's treachery over at Breitbart.

Newtown, Conn. parents vote for safety rather than agenda

When push comes to shove, parents will always choose on the side of common-sense safety for their children and the Newtown, Conn. parents are no different, despite what he verminous media would have you believe.

For all the posturing and grandiose rhetoric from the gun-hating left we've heard, they cannot point to a single new proposed anti-gun law would have stopped Adam Lanza from slaughtering those 26 people. But there is one very simple thing that would have.....an armed person at the school. Newtown parents voted to place armed guards at the various school campuses in their town.

Whether they believe personally in private gun ownership or not, they do know, as does any thinking person not in the Obama administration, that had an armed person, cop or not, been at Sandy Hook Elementary that day, far fewer if any people would be dead today.

Te'o prankster takes the Hollywood way out

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo is the jerky boy who catfished over-rated, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o, for like 18 months. Ronaiah went on Dr. Phil's new show called, My Trainwrecked Life to blame the prank on his having been molested as a child.

If you're scratching your head and thinking what could one possibly have to do with the other, don't feel like the Lone Ranger. Everybody is doing the same thing. I'd like to see the peer-reviewed journal article in which pranks are linked to child molestation. But that's the Hollywood go-to excuse for bad behavior isn't it? "I was molested as a child."

I'd have a tad more respect for Ronaiah if he had just said, "Hey Dr. Phil, I'm an asshole."

The real unemployment rate under Obama = 13.3%

The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised it's previous estimates and now reports that 8,500,000 people left the work force during Obama's first term. When people leave the work force, the unemployment rate goes down because they aren't counted any longer among "those looking for work". (The unemployment rate is the percentage of those unable to find work, but who are still looking)

Imagine what the actual unemployment rate is if you include all those who gave up in despair and quit looking. The BLS says that there are 12.2million people equaling a 7.8% unemployment rate. That means that the newly dropped out 8.5million equal an additional 5.5%, which brings the actual unemployment to 13.3%.

These people are on welfare, food stamps, unemployment benefits, etc and there are far fewer of us working to support them and the government keeps raising our taxes to pay for it all. At what point does the economy collapse under the weight of entitlement spending? I'd say it isn't far off.

Lisa Jackson, worst bureaucrat ever

Lisa Jackson might be worst non cabinet-level bureaucrat in US history. Under her reign of terror at the EPA, the verminous agency thugs have done more to damage the US economy, stifle production, and extort bogus fines from businesses than any EPA before her. And the absurd "cellulosic biofuels" mandate is no exception.

From FoxNews -- New standards announced by the Environmental Protection Agency require production of 14 million gallons of so-called cellulosic biofuels made from grasses and woody material. That's up from an 8.7 million-gallon requirement in 2012 -- when actual production was near zero.

It matters not to the bloated, maniacal Jackson that cellulosic biofuels don't even exist as a usable fuel supplement, she's legally allowed to extort ridiculous fines for non-compliance, so that's exactly what she'll do. 

The EPA needs to be shut down completely for one year, then re-opened as a part-time agency with 1/10th the budget.