Food Stamp nation

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.....
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime......
Give a man food-stamps and he'll dine like a king at your expense.

For all I know this receipt might be a hoax, but the larger picture regarding handouts is valid nevertheless. When you give people access to other peoples' money, they spend it like there's no tomorrow.

Last blue moon until July 2015

Unless you are in the southeast and Isaac is clouding the sky, go outside tonight and enjoy the last "blue moon" we'll see until July 2015.

"But Ed, you wonder, where'd the phrase "blue moon" come from"?

I'm glad you asked. The answer is in two parts. First is why the color blue? Well, when rare seismic or natural phenomena occur such as volcanoes or massive forest fires, they inject into the atmosphere particulate matter of a specific and consistent size. Those particles are usually in the 0.7microns or 700nanometer range. The wavelength of red light is in the 600nm-700nm range. These particles scatter light that is roughly the same wavelength as the particle size, thus most of the light that reaches our eyes after a volcano or forest fire is blue because it's wavelength is far shorter, down in the 400nm-500nm range.

Part two: volcanoes and forest fires are fairly rare at least a few hundred years ago when the phrase was invented. So the blue moon came to be synonymous with rarity. Today, the "blue moon" phenomenon happens when you have two full moons in the same month, also a rarity. Because the lunar cycle is about 29.5 days and a month is a little over 30 days, the monthly and lunar cycles almost match up, but not exactly.  Over time, that small difference accumulates until you have a full moon on the first day of a month and another on on the last day. The accumulation of excess hours combined with a full moon on the 1st day of a month is indeed rare, so that's why the second full moon in a month is called "blue".

Australia's richest person gets it

Gina Rinehart built a $20Billion mining company and is the richest person in Australia. Here she has some sage advice for the handout crowd in the moocher classes.....

"If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain; do something to make more money yourself - spend less time drinking, or smoking and socialising, and more time working."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Sitting around being a lazy asshole with your hand out never created any wealth. If you are poor, it's probably because you made some decisions in your life that made you that way. If you are addicted to drugs, the drugs didn't victimize you, you victimized yourself every time you made the decision to stick that needle in your arm. If you can't keep a job, it's not because your boss is mean, it's because you have no self discipline, motivation, or work ethic. 

Here are the three best indicators of staying out of poverty:

1: finish high school
2: stay off drugs
3: get married and stay married

If you do these three basic, seemingly obvious things, you'll have to be a complete idiot to remain on government handouts. 

Chris Matthews is a one-trick pony

-Before the RNC Matthews accused Newt Gingrich of being racist for calling Obama the "food-stamp President". 

-He accused conservatives of racism by referring to Obama's corrupt Chicago connections, because some black people happen to live in Chicago.

-He accused Ron Paul of being racist because Paul defended property rights and freedom of association, saying that property owners could turn away anybody they like for any reason they like, even race. Not that he agreed with it, just that it is Constitutional.

-He accused Reince Priebus and the RNC of playing subtle race cards against team Obama to gin up support among white racists. 

In short Chris Matthews has run out of reasons to attack republicans and ways of defending Obama, other than race. What a cloying asshole Matthews has become! 

   

Reporter thinks black people can't swim

This idiot reporter, David Chalain, from Yahoo News thought his microphone was off when he had this cackling commentary about Mitt and Ann Romney at the RNC convention.....

 

I wonder if he'll get fired or if the rest of the media will dutifully ignore his racist comment. If they do it'll be because they agree with him.

UPDATE: Yahoo News wisely fired this moron.

Grizzly bear rudely ignores rape whistle and eats hiker anyway

Hiker Richard White of San Diego was killed and eaten by a grizzly bear in Denali National Park in Alaska over the weekend. Most hikers recognize the bear danger and stay in groups and carry pistols or rifles for protection. Mr. White carried only a rape whistle.

Grizzly bears are notorious scofflaws and care not about the legality of killing, eating, or raping hikers. Mr. White should have known that bears are mostly hungry and not so much in the mood for sex as he evidently assumed.

Iraq wasn't worth the trouble

The estimated total cost(not including the cost of lost lives and devastated families) to US taxpayers of our Iraq misadventure will come to about $4Trillion dollars when it's all said and done. And for what, a destabilized power vacuum in the middle east, ripe for invasion by Iran? 

Here's my list of dubious what for's regarding the Iraq war:

1: The American people are nothing if not vengeful and rightly so. Given this, Bush had to attack somebody following 9/11 and he definitely wanted to avenge his father's not being allowed to kill Saddam Hussein, so why not attack Iraq and kill two birds with one stone, even if the links to 9/11 and evidence of WMD's were sketchy at best?

2: America's military-industrial complex likes to purge old weaponry from the stockpiles and test new weaponry on an actual battlefield every 10 years or so and Bosnia and Grenada were receding rapidly in the rear-view mirror. We needed a "real war" to do this. 

3: Because of weeping, bleeding-heart press coverage, Americans get weak in the knees when it comes to human-rights violations in other nations, and we tend to demand our politicians do something about it. Saddam Hussein being a particularly bad character provided Bush with a great bad-guy to go against. Purging Iraq of such a brutal dictator was certainly worth American sacrifices in blood and treasure, right? 

4: Following along the lines of #2, the Pentagon must keep our defense contractors employed, productive, and happy with huge weapons purchases or they'll sell all their good stuff to rogue nations and mercenaries who'll then kill US soldiers with it....not good politically. And you can't justify massive weapons purchases without a war in which to deploy them. 

5: The neo-conservatives, of which Bush was one, believe that it's the US's sole responsibility to police the world for human-rights violations since we're the only nation who can project force anywhere. They think that invading and occupying small but aggressive nations with dictators is practically our manifest destiny....like settling the west or something. Neo-cons love meddling in the affairs of other nations and imposing, by force using our military, our own brand of democracy on them and calling it liberation of the oppressed. We're still so apologetic about slavery that we'll go anywhere to liberate an oppressed people just to prove how virtuous we are now. 

Do any of those reason even come close to rising to the level of war-worthiness? It's all a charade and political kabuki theater. 

America needs the stability that comes with brutal dictatorships in the middle east far more than we need human rights in the middle east.

H/T to regular reader Billy for the picture.

Repent, for the end of the world surely is near

If there was ever an event that caused me to lose faith in the inherent logic of the universe and the meaning of human existence, it would be this.....Snooki is somebody's mother.

War just for the sake of fighting

Over the weekend, a deranged Afghan soldier shot and killed two US troops....again. And also this weekend, the Taliban, to show their disapproval of dancing and even having a good time in general, slaughtered and beheaded 17 people who were dancing at a party.

If somebody would like to offer a coherent, thoughtful argument as to why we are bothering with an absolute lost cause of a country like Afghanistan, I'd be happy to listen.

As little sense as the war on terrorism in Afghanistan makes and though I'm not a conspiracy nut, I'm beginning to believe that this 1984-ish, continuous state of war on the part of the US is not simply political.

In the same way that the EPA passes pointless regulations simply because they are regulators, the Pentagon encourages and counsels Presidents to go to war, over issues that are only distantly related to American interests, simply because they are warriors.

More cynically, I think the US likes to attack some country every 10 years or so, just to test new weaponry in the battlefield and to purge our stockpiles of older stuff so that weapons contractors can get new lucrative contracts to supply us with new stuff. As an ex-military guy myself, I hate to think like that, but doesn't it have the ring of truth to it?

How to stop a massacre

With rampant crime on the streets of your cities, especially if your city is run by democrats, there's almost no where that may be considered safe. The police can only respond to crimes in progress. There is no "Pre-Crime Division". That's why you should consider getting a "concealed carry" permit, like this guy in Florida....


         

Every time I hear about the next mass shooting, my first thought is, "If there had only been a citizen there with a conceal/carry weapon who could have stopped the killing." Don't be a victim. Be the citizen who stops the killing.

Get a conceal/carry permit today, buy a gun, get trained with it, and be part of the solution.