Conservatives vs. Liberals...

Via Jim M.:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he feels that no one should have one.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is, he wants to ban all meat products for everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy. A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life. If a liberal is homosexual, he loudly demands legislated respect.

If a black man or Hispanic are conservative, they see themselves as independently successful. Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God or religion silenced.

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping  for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

This is an old one that's been floating around in various forms for years.  As I reread the note from Jim, it occurred to me that I've never seen the equivalent sort of thing from a liberal's perspective.  Have you?

God Bless...

YouTube philosopher Pat Condell takes on organized religion:


I particularly enjoyed his parting line...

Uh Oh...

A Canadian study shows that there is an increased chance of catching H1N1 (the “swine flu”) if you have had this year's seasonal flu shot.  The study is credible enough that Canadian provinces are re-thinking their vaccination plans:

Distributed for peer review last week, the study confounded infectious-disease experts in suggesting that people vaccinated against seasonal flu are twice as likely to catch swine flu.

The paper is under peer review, and lead researchers Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Gaston De Serres of Laval University must stay mum until it's published.

Met with intense early skepticism both in Canada and abroad, the paper has since convinced several provincial health agencies to announce hasty suspensions of seasonal flu vaccinations, long-held fixtures of public-health planning.

Flu vaccinations have been controversial for a while because they're not very reliable.  There's also a bogus controversy about the safety of the flu vaccine from the loonies who are convinced that vaccines (in general) are linked to autism, but this has been thoroughly debunked.  But the controversy about the effectiveness of flu vaccines seems to be well-founded.  For example, last year in San Diego the seasonal vaccine missed every flu variant we actually experienced – so the flu shot was worthless.

But this study shows something much more concerning: that getting a flu shot is worse than worthless – it actually increases the likelihood that you'll come down with H1N1.

I think I'll skip the flu shot again this year...

DMV-Style Healthcare...

This is great!

Little Israel Is Still Leading the Way...

As Uri Dromi points out:

A uranium enrichment facility nobody knew of suddenly emerges in the sacred city of Qom, Iran launches missiles that can threaten not only U.S. targets in the Persian gulf, but also Israel and southern Europe, and now the world panics.

Surprised? Not if you're an Israeli. For years we have been sounding the alarm, only to be told to stop crying wolf. Now we are asked to lie low and let the responsible leaders of the world take care of the situation.

It must be tremendously frustrating for many Israelis to watch obvious world-threatening problems develop – while most of the world ignores them.  Repeatedly the Israelis have acted when other nations would not or could not, to the benefit of us all.  The most recent example is their discovery and destruction of a nuclear facility in Syria.

My cynical bet is that the world will do nothing effective to stop Iran before Israel feels the need to take unilateral action.  Past experience suggests that when they do, the action will be effective – and they'll be publicly denounced by the entire world, while private nearly all countries will breath a huge sigh of relief.

We're lucky the Israelis are here to do the dirty work for those – like us – don't have the balls to do it themselves...

On Roman Polanski...

Me, I'm just tickled pink that the shithead is on his way back here to face the court.  It's a foregone conclusion that his punishment will be light, unless a miracle happens and the court decides to punish him for skipping the country.  I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, the disgusting spectacle of the Hollywood “elite” (and I put that term in scare quotes, because, well, in that context it is scary) defending Polanski goes on and on, endlessly.  Mark Steyn notes (in the middle of a typically excellent column):

One sympathizes. Except that there are millions of children of the Holocaust struggling under the burdens of the past – and only one who deals with them as Roman Polanski does. Working on the film "Chinatown," the writer Robert Towne found it hard to concentrate at the director's pad, what with "the teenyboppers that Roman would run out and take Polaroid pictures of diving off the f***ing diving board without tops on. Which was distracting. With braces."

Braces. Cute.

Which leads directly to this:

Rope.
Tree.
Amoral Hollywood scum.
Some assembly required.

Isn't it amazing how many problems we can solve with a few feet of rope and a convenient tree?

Obama Administration FAIL...

At right is the chart originally published by the Obama administration earlier this year, with a red line added to show the actual unemployment rate.

They used this chart to sell the “stimulus package”, saying that without it unemployment would rise to about 9%, and with it unemployment would drop to below 7.5%.

Well here we are at 9.8% (as of September) and still climbing.

I don't think that even the Obama administration believed this chart.  Anybody with even the slightest understanding of economics and experience with government knew that there was no way in hell the stimulus package could have an effect that fast.

Even so, the sorry bastards used this chart to sell our descendants into debt.

Rope.
Tree.
Stimulus-supporting politician.
Some assembly required.

Viewer for Lyons Peak Cameras...

I've got a new viewer page up for the HPWREN cameras on Lyons Peak (permanant link on the sidebar at right).

This page makes it easy and convenient for anyone to view the cameras, and includes the ability to zoom and move around the image.  On the north and east facing cameras there's even the ability to identify the features you point to on the picture (I haven't finished them for the other two cameras yet).

Enjoy!

Exactly Right!

Glenn Reynolds (aka The Instapundit) succinctly expresses one of my feelings about the Obama administration:

Meanwhile, with this gang in charge who would be surprised to find that under ObamaCare your chances of a liver transplant really will depend on your politics? Not me.

Exactly right.

And isn't that scary?

NJ: The Loser State...

The fellow at right is Robert Melia, Jr., a former Moorestown, New Jersey police officer.  He has an interesting hobby:

MOUNT HOLLY, NJ -- A former police officer accused of having a moonlight tryst with a group of cows will not be facing animal cruelty charges after all.

As it turns out bestiality is not a crime in New Jersey.

Former Moorestown police officer Robert Melia Jr. was charged last year with sexually assaulting three girls.

During the investigation, police say they found a video in the man's home that showed him sexually molesting cows.

But that didn't have any consequences, being that it happened in New Jersey (aka “The home of contented cows...”).  His assault of three young girls (with his girlfriend?!?) will hopefully have more.

And now everyone knows that if oral sex with cows is your thing, then New Jersey is the place to be...

Quote of the Day...

By Charles Krauthammer:

When France chides you for appeasement, you know you're scraping bottom.

Heh!  Read the whole thing...

MESSENGER Does Its Last Slingshot...

The MESSENGER spacecraft successfully made the last of three planned “slingshot” maneuvers in preparation for Mercury orbital insertion on March 19, 2011.  On each of these slingshot flybys MESSENGER has gathered images (click to enlarge) and other science data.

MESSENGER is a great science and technology success story, for a tiny fraction of the cost of a manned space mission...

African Ingenuity...

Fascinating story about a African kid creating a wind-powered lighting system from scrounged materials such as shock absorber pistons, bicycle dynamos, and old engine fans...

Political Cartoonists Are Figuring Out Obama...

A nice collection via my nice cousin Mike D.  As always, click to enlarge.

My personal favorite: “The Great Financipator: Four score and seven hundred billion dollars ago...”:

Break in Our Weather...

And very welcome it is!  We had a couple of brief rainstorms last night, just enough to wet the surface and to produce that wonderful “rain smell” that we haven't had for a long while.  This morning I walked the dogs in crisp, cool air that reminds me of winter.  And to think just a few days ago we were in the hundreds!

A Sense of Humor...

...even in wartime.  Via my mom:

Quote of the Day...

Mark Steyn lays it out for us:

When you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn’t that they'll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters, seven-eighths of the way. That’s what happened in New York last week. Barack Obama is not to blame for whichever vagary of United Nations protocol resulted in the president of the United States being the warm-up act for the Lunatic-for-Life in charge of Libya. But it is a pitiful reflection upon the state of the last superpower that, when it comes to the transnational mush drooled by the leader of the free world or the conspiracist ramblings of a terrorist pseudo-Bedouin running a one-man psycho-cult of a basket-case state, it’s more or less a toss-up as to which of them is more unreal. To be sure, Colonel Qaddafi peddled his thoughts on the laboratory origins of “swine flu” and the Zionist plot behind the Kennedy assassination. But, on the other hand, President Obama said: “No nation can or should try to dominate another nation.”

Read the whole thing to find out how dog-feces ice cream factors in.  Then read Gerson's piece...

The Birds and the Bees...

Via my cousin Mike D.:

A father asked his 10-year old son if he knew about the birds and the bees.

“I don't want to know!” the child said, bursting into tears.  “Promise me you won't tell me!”

Confused, the father asked what was wrong.

“When I was six,” the son replied, “I got the ‘There's no Easter Bunny’ speech.  At seven, I got the ‘There's no Tooth Fairy’ speech.  When I was eight, you hit me with the ‘There's no Santa’ speech.  If you're going to tell me that grown-ups don't really get laid, I'll have nothing left to live for!”

World's Shortest Fairy Tale...

Jim M. continues his theme from last week:

Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl 'Will you marry me?' The girl said, 'NO!' And the guy lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and went fishing and hunting and played golf a lot and drank beer and scotch and had money in the bank and left the toilet seat up and farted whenever he wanted.

Pocket Taser...

Don G. passed along this little story:

Pocket Taser Stun Gun, a great gift for the wife. A guy who purchased his lovely wife a pocket Taser for their anniversary submitted this:

Last weekend I saw something at Larry's Pistol & Pawn Shop that sparked my interest. The occasion was our 22nd Anniversary,  and I was looking for a little something "extra" for my wife.

What I came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket/purse-sized taser. The effects of the taser were supposed to be short lived, with no long-term adverse affect on the assailant, allowing her adequate time to retreat to safety...WAY TOO COOL!

Long story short, I bought the device, and brought it home. I loaded two triple-A batteries in the thing, and pushed the button. Nothing! I was disappointed. I learned, however, that if I pushed the button AND pressed it against a metal surface at the same time; I'd get the blue arc of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs.

Awesome!!! Unfortunately, I have yet to explain to the Wife what that burn spot is on the face of her microwave.

Okay, so I was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn't be all THAT bad, with only two triple-A batteries, right?!!! There I sat in my recliner with my cat, Gracie looking on intently (trusting little soul) while I was reading the directions, and thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh & blood moving target.

I must admit, I thought about zapping Gracie, (for only a fraction of a second) and then thought better of it. She's such a sweet cat. But, if I was going to give this thing to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised. Am I wrong? So, there I sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top, with my reading glasses perched delicately on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, and taser in another. The directions said that a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant; a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms, and a major loss of bodily control; a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water. Any burst longer than three seconds would just be wasting the batteries.

All the while, I'm looking at this little device measuring about 5" long, less than 3/4 inch in circumference; (pretty cute really, and loaded with two little bitty, itsy, bitsy triple-A batteries) thinking to myself, "NO possible way!"

What happened next is almost beyond description, but I'll do my best. I'm sitting there alone, Gracie looking on with her head cocked to one side as if to say, "Don't do it master," reasoning that a one-second burst from such a tiny little ole thing couldn't POSSIBLY hurt all that bad...

I decided to give myself a one-second burst, just for the heck of it. I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION @!@$$!%!

I'm pretty sure Jessie Ventura ran in through the side door, picked me up in the recliner, then body slammed us both on the carpet, over, and over, and over, and over again.

I vaguely recall waking up on my side, in the fetal position, with tears in my eyes, body soaking wet, both nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position, and tingling in my legs.

The cat was standing over me making meowing sounds I had never heard before, licking my face, and undoubtedly thinking to herself, "do it again, do it again!"

Note: If you ever feel compelled to "mug" yourself with a taser, one note of caution: there is NO SUCH THING as a "one-second burst", when you zap yourself. You will not let go of that thing until it is dislodged from your hand by a violent thrashing about on the floor. A three second burst would be considered conservative. SON-OF-A-%#&**%#... that hurt!!!

A minute or so later (I can't be sure, as time was a relative thing at that point), I collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up, and surveyed the landscape. My bent reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. (How did they up get there???) My triceps, right thigh, and both nipples were still twitching. My face felt like it had been shot up with Novocain, and my bottom lip weighed 88 lbs. I'm still looking for my testicles. I'm offering a significant reward for their safe return.

Hah!

That image of Gracie saying “Do it again!” will ring true to any animal owner. I'm positive that all of our seven cats and four dogs would do exactly that!