Archive for the 'Humor' Category

National Post:

The games children play in schoolyards are famously horrible, if you stop and think about them.

Tag, for example, singles out one poor participant, often the slowest child, as the dehumanized “It,” who runs vainly in pursuit of the quicker ones. Capture the Flag is nakedly militaristic. British Bulldog has obvious jingoistic colonial themes. Red Ass, known in America as Butts Up, involves deliberate imposition of corporal punishment on losers.

But none rouse the passions of reform-minded educational progressives quite like dodgeball, the team sport in which players throw balls at each other, trying to hit their competitors and banish them to the sidelines of shame.

When the Canadian Society for the Study of Education meets in Vancouver at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, a trio of education theorists will argue that dodgeball is not only problematic, in the modern sense of displaying hierarchies of privilege based on athletic skill, but that it is outright “miseducative.”

I never played dodgeball in gym class.  We played only in boy’s gym class, and the coach made the sides get so close to each other that when we threw the ball at each other, it left whelps when it hit.  We played inside a gym, not outside where it could legitimately be called dodgeball.  We were danger-close.  He called it “murderball,” and we obliged him.

I guess these Canadian theorists wouldn’t like that, huh?  Hey, I was wondering, for men who are headed off to the US Marine Corps to learn to defend the country and who are learning to be men when they are boys, and who must survive in the brutality of combat, will those Canadian “theorists” be there to help the sides hold hands and sing Kumbaya?

I noticed that to this post and this one, tfA-t made some remarks.  I sent a note to his posted email address, which of course bounced.  So I have no way to communicate with him.  I don’t concur that he has a “right” to make comments except on his own blog (which probably doesn’t exist).  The First Amendment says no such thing about a right to post comments.  But the note I sent says this.

I want to moderate your comments, I really do.  But I’m having sort of a problem.  I need to know more.

You see, I have no respect for “Gray man.”  I use my real name, I told my readers where I used to work, and I own every post I’ve ever made.  They’re mine, they represent my views, and those views can be connected to a name.  My own.

Now, I’m sure that your real name isn’t tfA-t.  No momma actually names their baby that unless she hates him.  Maybe your momma hates you – I don’t know.

So I need some information from you, and if you give it to me, I’ll moderate your comments, giving you full access after the first one so that you an trash my web site until your heart is content.

[1] Real name

[2] Place of employment

[3] DD214 form (since you claimed to be former military).

I need all of this in a verifiable system, which means that you copy your response to this email to your work email, and then forward the same note from your work email to this address.  Please send me the URL associated with your place of employment so that I can verify you are who you say you are.

Otherwise, you’re just another boy sitting in her momma’s basement.

So are you bold and proud, or are you afraid and cowardly?  Which is it?  Send this information to me and get on board trashing my web site.  Do it.  Just do it.

So let’s get this party rolling, tfA-t.  I can be reached.  You know how to do it.

Elizabeth MacBride:

Shaggy beards are to South Carolina gun shops what man-buns are to Vermont coffee shops. And both places are modern-day town squares, but in different Americas.

[ … ]

As an aside, enjoying the shock value of his statement, he tells me that it’s legal to buy and sell small tanks in South Carolina, too.

Shades of Fort Sumter, I think. If it’s man-buns versus shaggy beards, does the side with the WWI-era tanks win?

I’m not sure what she’s insinuating from the way that question was posed, but she may be too clever by half.

Listen, Ms. MacBride.  The little boys with man-buns don’t want anything to do with those boys with shaggy beards down in South Carolina.

They hunt feral hogs with long knives by jumping on their backs and stabbing them in the gut.  They stay out all night ‘Coon hunting, only to go to work the next day after they’ve had to chase their dogs down.  They can put a 30-06 round on a dime at 100 yards.  They drink corn liquor from a fruit jar, grow their own vegetables, and the man-buns wouldn’t last two seconds with them.

If you know any man-buns thinking of coming down this way, tell them to go buy a frapa-mocha-super-duper-grande and chill for a couple of minutes until they get some sense.

Via Fred Tippens.

Well, whatever.  Don’t expect me to adopt such a beast, and I hope they don’t decide to have a child.

Concerning David Codrea, he is apparently a second amendment extremist.

One example is an essay recently posted on the website of the far-right Oath Keepers militia by Second Amendment extremist David Codrea.

Hey, what exactly do I have to do to catch a break here?  I want some prog to call me something like a “far-right gun nut second amendment extremist wild man,” or some such thing.

I’ll have to leave it to readers.  I wish I could have a contest to see who could create the best caricature of me, the winner claiming prizes of guns and ammo.  I could post it as the comment of the week.  Alas, I have nothing to give away.

Scientific American:

Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.

So, who is buying all these guns—and why?

The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.

These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.

Ooo … a “definitive study!”  That makes it sound oh so scientific and all.  Seriously, do these pinheads think people are going to be honest with them or anyone else on whether they have guns and how many they have?  Really?

And did they think to ascribe this alleged result to the notion that the second amendment is there for amelioration of tyranny rather than wanting to be John Wayne?  God, these people must live in a movie.

Funny, this.  I would have thought Scientific American would focus on STEM, like calculus, trajectory, failure modes and effects, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and Monte Carlo analysis.  Does anyone at Scientific American still know how to do calculus?  Can anyone there solve an integral equation?

Nope, they want to cite definitive studies done at … [ahem] … Harvard.  They want to study white men, or maybe white male privilege, or maybe male patriarchy, or male confusion, or something.

My how things have devolved with time.  I’m not a Darwinist and don’t believe in macro-evolution, but if I was, I’d be hard pressed to explain things like this.

NBC Connecticut:

A 49-year-old Connecticut man has been charged with threatening after his wife told police he stabbed and carved a watermelon in a passive-aggressive manner.

Thomaston Police Chief Jim Campbell said Carmine Cervellino’s wife originally went to police on July 4 to report finding marijuana and drugs in a toolbox at the house. The toolbox was not there when police responded and no charges were filed.

When the woman later returned home, she found a watermelon on the counter with a butcher’s knife in it, police said.

She told police that Cervellino came in soon after and carved the watermelon in a passive-aggressive manner, Campbell said.

The Register Citizen of Torrington, which originally reported the story, said the woman took a photo of the toolbox and the knife and showed them to police.

 

Cervellino was arrested on July 12 and charged with threatening and disorderly conduct, according to online court records.

Because, you know, there are all those laws protecting watermelons.  Family problems, you say?  I don’t know, but there’s only one answer for this situation.  Arrest Jerry Miculek immediately!

Jesse Jackson:

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Hear that? It’s the sound of an assault weapon in the hands of a rogue individual, taking down an airplane flying overhead.

At least, that’s what the Reverend Jesse Jackson thinks assault weapons can do. The Reverend’s misinformed assertion that assault weapons are capable of shooting down airplanes came during a Fox News appearance yesterday.

“These semi-automatic weapons, these assault weapons, can only kill people, and in fact, they are threats to national security … the young man who did the killing in Aurora, Colorado … he could shoot down airplanes, so this is a matter of homeland security as well,” he said while speaking about gun control with anchor Martha MacCallum on ‘America’s Newsroom.’

How about a different challenge.  If anyone takes 800 meter shots trying to knock off that clown nose you’re wearing, instead of 5.56 mm ammunition with an AR (because we aren’t Travis Haley), it’ll be the boys with scoped .27 or .308 bolt action rifles.

What a parasitic moron.

TCJ readers, listen up.   We have had a major, strategic breakthrough in the War against Islamofascism.

It is so unexpected and so unconventional, so inadvertent that it can only be considered something of a Divine intervention.

America has stumbled upon the Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction against the Islamist foe:  cheezy, low-budget films with horrible production and grade-school dialogue launched via that irresistible weapons delivery system known as “YouTube.”

Yes, I am referring to that military masterpiece unleashed upon the unsuspecting Islamists called, The Innocence of Muslims.

Consider just this one example in al Jazeera of its destructive power:

At least one person has died as demonstrations against an anti-Islam video erupt across Pakistan, a day after protesters tried to storm the US embassy in the capital, Islamabad.

Angry demonstrators set fire to two cinemas in the northwestern city of Peshawar, police and witnesses said on Friday, as the country began a day of protests.

One protester was wounded when a cinema guard opened fire as crowds armed with clubs and bamboo poles converged on the Firdaus picture house, “smashing it up and setting furniture ablaze”, according to Gohar Ali, a police officer.

Witnesses said a separate rampaging crowd stormed the Shama cinema, notorious locally for showing films considered to be pornographic.

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis were expected to take to the streets across the country after the government called an impromptu public holiday to let people protest.

****

Friday was designated a “day of expression of love for the prophet” by the government, which called for peaceful protests against the Innocence of Muslims video produced in the US.

All the major political parties and religious groups announced protests, as did many trade and transport organisations.

Large crowds were expected to turn out after Friday prayers.

The previous day, the US embassy became the latest target of protesters angry at the YouTube video. The total number of protesters touched 5,000 with the arrival of protesters carrying the flags of anti-American Islamist groups.

At least 50 people were injured as police fired tear gas and live rounds towards the crowds.

This New Secret Weapon, according to the article, has the mysterious ability to induce widespread madness in the Islamist population, compelling them to irrational behaviors like attacking porno theaters and embassies that are merely obscene for their obsequious behavior.

What’s more, the U.S. government is augmenting the frightful power of this new weapon with a psychological campaign of such cruel calculation that it is almost a crime against humanity.   It’s true.  The Islamist will soon be begging for the merciful Drone Strikes before too long.  Consider this diabolical game of deception and denial waged by the Administration as quoted in the al Jazeera article:

Against this tense backdrop, the US has bought time on Pakistani television stations to run a series of ads in an effort to assuage Muslim feelings of hurt.

The US hopes the ad would show that the country had no involvement with the controversial internet video.

The US embassy in Islamabad spent about $70,000 to run the announcement, which features clips of Barack Obama, the US president, and Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, underscoring US respect for religion and declaring the US government had nothing to do with the video.

Obama is shown saying: “Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.”

Clinton then says: “Let me state very clearly, the United States has absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its contents. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.”

“In order to ensure we reached the largest number of Pakistanis, some 90 million as I understand it in this case with
these spots, it was the judgment that this was the best way to do it.”

Addressing a media briefing on the ad campaign, Victoria Nuland, state department spokeswoman, said the aim was “to make sure that the Pakistani people hear the president’s messages and the secretary’s messages”.

The announcement aired as the US asked its citizens to avoid non-essential travel to Pakistan.

Oh the savagery!  Oh the mental ruin this will visit upon the poor, helpless Islamists!

Imagine the Islamists, weary from the YouTube Bomb-induced fury against porn theaters and embassies, seeking some solace in their television re-runs of “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” only to be bombarded– yes! bombarded!– with relentless messages from Barack Hussein Obama that the U.S. loves and respects all faiths, especially ones that do not have a crucifix that can be plunged into urine or a virgin mother that can be smeared with elephant feces.

This, my friends, is the ultimate in psychological whiplash!  A veritable jiu-jitsu of mental pain!  Surely, the Islamists will think, the President of the United States has the power to stop this horrible YouTube Bomb if he chooses.  But he does not!  Instead he claims respect for Islam while insulting its Prophet!  And, to add injury to insult, he allows the horrible Clinton woman– a woman of all things— to deliver the one-two punch:  the U.S. had nothing to do with the video (when it clearly did) and America believes in “religious tolerance” (when those very words are a red-hot poker in the Islamist soul).

But you may well be asking, How can we be sure that the normally spineless suck-ups in the Obama Administration and the Pentagon will find the courage to continue using a weapon of such fearsome, destructive power?  There is evidence of more bombs in the making.

The U.S. government cleverly brought in the filmmaker for “questioning” based upon “parole violations.” Uh huh.   Wink, wink.  Nudge, nudge.   That ought to throw the Islamists off the scent, eh?  No one suspects (but we know better) that this was a clever ruse for the government to plan and coordinate the next series of YouTube Bombs that will continue to drive the Islamists over the cliff.

Victory is at hand, friends!  All the U.S. need do now is just let the YouTube Bombs wreak their radioactive havoc upon the Islamists until their societies are so riven with mad self-destruction that they collapse in upon themselves like a laptop computer placed upon a wet, cardboard box.  Yes, we here in the U.S. may be called upon to make sacrifices: exposure to these YouTube Bombs has been known to cause fits of derisive laughter and mild nausea in infidels, but we must not shrink back from even these sufferings.

Instead, let us console ourselves with the magnificence of this new Wonder Weapon.   This is the evil genius of the United States of America at its finest.  Stand in awe and fearful amaze.

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan went on the Sunday news shows last weekend to preview Republican plans for the 2012 Federal Budget (not to be confused with the current combat over the 2011 Budget that Democrats refused to pass last year).

Ryan made it clear that the 2012 Budget sets out on a very ambitious path to cut over $4 Trillion from Federal spending over the next 10 years in an effort to reduce the size of the Federal government and get spending back in line with revenue.

My concern here is not to talk about the specifics of Ryan’s budget ideas.  Afterall, the proposed budget is not expected to be released until later this week.  Instead, I want to highlight the preliminary salvos being fired by Democrats attempting to “prepare the ground” for the Budget Battle of 2012.

Here is the Associated Press reporting on Rep. Ryan’s remarks as well as the Democrat response:

In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” Ryan said budget writers are working out the 2012 numbers with the Congressional Budget Office, but he said the overall spending reductions would come to “a lot more” than $4 trillion. The debt commission appointed by President Barack Obama recommended a plan that it said would achieve nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction.

Ryan said Obama’s call for freezing nondefense discretionary spending actually locks in spending at high levels. Under the forthcoming GOP plan, Ryan said spending would return to 2008 levels and thus cut an additional $400 billion over 10 years.

Ryan tells the interviewer, in general terms, that the proposed budget will include things like premium supports for Medicare and Medicaid, a bifurcation of treatment for those 55 and older who would continue under the present approach and those younger who would be put under a new, cost-savings approach.   Ryan previewed ideas such as block grants to the States for Medicare/Medicaid to allow each State to decide how to deal with their citizens on a local level;  a statutory cap on discretionary federal spending;  a revision of the tax code to broaden and simplify its implementation; no new tax increases.

The reaction by Democrats?  About what you would expect:

Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, slammed Ryan’s plan in a press release Sunday. “It is not courageous to protect tax breaks for millionaires, oil companies and other big-money special interests while slashing our investment in education, ending the current health care guarantees for seniors on Medicare, and denying health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans,” Van Hollen said.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia was skeptical that Ryan’s proposal could achieve its targets without damaging social programs. He also questioned whether reductions in defense spending and seeking more revenue through tax reform would be part of the plan.

“I don’t know how you get there without taking basically a meat ax to those programs who protect the most vulnerable in the country,” Warner said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I’ll give anybody the benefit of a doubt until I get a chance to look at the details,” he said, “but I think the only way you’re going to really get there is if you put all of these things, including defense spending, including tax reform, as part of the overall package.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., part of a six-member group of Republicans and Democrats forging their own budget proposal, said that the lawmakers would be looking for “real balance” in Ryan’s plan and wanting all options considered.

“I think we’ll come at it differently,” Durbin said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “The idea of sparing the Pentagon from any savings, not imposing any new sacrifice on the wealthiest Americans, I think goes way too far. We have got to make certain that it’s a balanced approach and one that can be sustained over the next 10 years.”

This knee-jerk reaction by Democrats– that “the Rich” are not paying their “fair share” and must be subject to “new sacrifice” — puts me in mind of that classic scene from Monty Python And The Holy Grail:

Democrats have the very same kind of medieval thinking when it comes to economics and tax policy.  Just as the villagers in The Holy Grail are determined to have their “witch” to burn, even if it means dressing someone up to look like a witch and making the most absurd claims of the woman’s evil deeds, Democrats in Congress are determined to burn the Rich regardless of the efficacy or, indeed, the great harm that it causes to the economy.

In this video by The Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Dan Mitchell explains how this type of witch hunting is so wrong-headed and, ultimately, damaging to our economy:

One thing to highlight in this excellent video is the fact that we live in a global economy that will always favor those who can move their capital elsewhere.   Professor Paul Rahe, in volume 1 of his book series, Republics Ancient & Modern, he notes that eighteenth century writers recognized that, “the invention of the bill of exchange [was] a turning point in world history.” (page 47).  The French philosopher, Montesquieu, noted that the effect of the bill of exchange was to allow the merchant class to avoid the arbitrary and confiscatory policies of the monarchical rulers of Europe by sending their assets to other, less oppressive states.  As a result, a veritable revolution in politics occurred because, for the first time, rulers’ decisions were checked by the ability of these merchants to vote with their movable assets.  (Ibid).

The same phenomenon applies today, but Democrats (and protectionist Republicans) just don’t get it.   They look at factories and jobs moving overseas and, rather than look squarely in the mirror at our anti-business, anti-manufacturing policies fomented by left-wingers still living in the 19th Century as the cause, they vilify the owners as “un-American” or unpatriotic or just evil.   The reality is that America will continue to shed jobs and capital until we stop demonizing “the rich” and start implementing policies that make it easier for businesses to stay in the U.S. and thrive.

Democrats in Congress, if the AP article is any indication, seem prepared to continue on their idiotic quest to “burn the witches” of our economy, not because there are witches, but because they know it offers a grotesque but satisfying spectacle to a constituency that they have carefully cultivated to feed upon envy, hatred, resentment and victim-status.

Congressmen like Paul Ryan and his colleagues in the Senate must not for one moment give in to this vile practice when it comes to hammering out the 2012 Budget and beyond.