I almost got thrown out of my sister-in-law's house one year at the holidays. I told them that I was thinking of opening a restaurant (I did this with a straight face, so they thought I was serious). Her and her family at the time was vegetarian, but I said I was going to open a restaurant that specialized in venison dishes. I was going to call it, "The Buck Stops Here."
*.*
Army Unveils Pink Camouflage Uniform For Breast Cancer Awareness Month
THE PENTAGON — The Army unveiled a new uniform today, the result of a newly-announced partnership with the National Football League to promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The pink camouflage uniform, dubbed Pink Camouflage Pattern (PCP), will be made available to all soldiers within the next week.
“We’ve previously partnered with the NFL in promoting research for traumatic brain injury, and are pleased to again partner with them for another noble cause,” said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey.
It’s not yet clear what role the pink camouflage uniforms will play in Army combat operations. The uniforms have been undergoing field testing with a Special Forces unit on a mission in Nigeria training troops to combat Boko Haram. Even though the unit’s role is limited to training and support and not direct combat, the unit has suffered 70% casualties in the first two weeks of wearing the uniform.
“It’s too early to conclude if this will be the most effective combat uniform for the Army,” said Dailey, “but I’m sure it won’t be any worse than the Universal Camouflage Pattern.”
While some have criticized the NFL for promoting breast cancer awareness as a cynical public relations stunt aimed at increasing female viewership, senior leaders are quick to dismiss such criticism.
“I don’t believe the NFL is doing this to increase ratings by attracting female viewers to their testosterone-laden gladiator sport, or to counter negative publicity from their rash of players using women as punching bags. I believe they genuinely care about women’s health issues,” said new Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.
“As does the Army. We definitely aren’t doing this as part of a public relations campaign aimed at increasing female recruitment to a professional culture of violence that has been accused of having unequal opportunities for women and sexually assaulting women at an alarming rate. Our only aim is combatting the scourge of breast cancer.”
The NFL has also been the subject of criticism because very little of the proceeds from its pink ribbon campaign actually supports breast cancer research.
“The Army will contribute fifteen cents from every uniform sold to breast cancer research,” said Dailey. “It’s the least we can do. Literally.”
*.*
As a surprise, I bought some of those fancy new glow-in-the-dark condoms for me and my girlfriend.
Boy, you should have seen her face light up when I showed them to her.
*.*
Oneliners:
Why are all of the a's in 'Australia' are pronounced differently?
Looking at your cell phone after sex is the new cigarette.
When self-driving cars are common place, in conjunction with the prevalence of smart phones, Google will be able to kill anyone, anywhere, while making it look like an accident.
Whenever we describe a number of anything of an amount greater or lesser than exactly one (or negative one,) we use the plural (e.g. 1.5 apples, .73 bananas, -.6 oranges)
"National Geographic" should be called "International Geographic".
The literal act of catfishing would be incredibly easy. Cats will chase and eat anything attached to the end of string.
I wonder how many rappers are just playing GTA and writing about it.
Apple headquarters in Cupertino should have been named Apple Core.
*.*
As the judge said, "Let this be a warning: Three strikes and you're out."
I was sure glad he didn't know I had an 0-2 count when I pummeled that stupid umpire with my bat.
Issue of the Times;
How Salman Khan Has Smashed 3,000 Years of Classroom Education Mythology by Gary North
Ever since the days of ancient Egypt, priesthoods of various denominations have had an alliance with the state. They trained the next generation of literate bureaucrats.
The state wanted literate bureaucrats. The priesthood wanted state support. It was a convenient alliance. It still is. In our day, the priests are priests because they are certified by the state to do the training. This is called academic accreditation. The priests are agents of the state.
All of this has rested on a myth: the myth of classroom education. In less than 10 years, the Khan Academy has undermined this myth beyond repair.
According to its website, the Khan Academy now has 26 million registered students. Registered. Not just dropping in to see videos, but actually registering.
The Khan Academy went online in 2006. This means that, in just nine years, it has grown to the largest educational institution in the history of mankind. This growth is accelerating.
One man, with no formal training as a teacher, single-handedly has taken over the education of at least 26 million students.
Think about what this means for the educational establishment. They have claimed for over a century that a teacher must have specialized training in order to become an effective teacher. He must spend years in specialized classes in state-accredited universities in order to be sufficiently competent to teach a roomful of 30 students at a time. But Khan is teaching 26 million students at a time.
It is now too late to stop him. There have been too many people who have come on board to praise the operation. There have been no major critics who have gained an audience. Nobody inside the educational establishment has been able to stop this avalanche which is rolling down the side of tenure mountain.
The videos are now being used in public schools. He is going to be training a generation of high school science students. He will add other courses soon enough.
He has proven that by paying somebody nothing, that person can become the primary teacher in 100 classrooms, 10,000 classrooms, or 100,000 classrooms. If the students can speak English, he becomes the primary teacher. He has turned the entire teaching establishment into the equivalent of teachers' aides.
What does this do to the myth of the certified teacher? What does this do to over a century of progressive education?
CLASSROOM EDUCATION AS REDEMPTIVE
My father-in-law R. J. Rushdoony wrote a classic book, The Messianic Character of American Education (1963). It is a history of two dozen of the major figures in the coming of tax-funded education. He went back to the primary sources, as nobody else ever had, to show exactly how the founders of progressive education believed that the public schools would serve as an alternative to the Christian church. They saw it as redemptive institution.
Now, one man, with no financial backing initially, has undermined the entire theology of progressive education.
He is not dumbing down the material. Anybody can get online and master the material. You can watch a video 10 times. The educational establishment has nothing to do with the project, other than employing specialists in testing. There is no ideology to this program. There is no theology of redemptive state funding. The state had nothing to do with this program. It is a one-man show.
Basically, in less than one decade, one man undermined the entire theology of the progressive education movement. Critics of progressive education have come and gone, and they have had zero effect in rolling back the system. Now one man has obliterated the entire theology.
His videos have infiltrated the public schools of America. Every time a student watches one of his videos, another pillar of progressive education is knocked down. That student is being taught by someone who never went through this screening process of state licensure and certification.
In the next recession, when public school budgets come under fire again, what are the tenured bureaucrats going to say when the local school board calls for a doubling of the size of the high school classrooms, with one teacher and one low-paid teacher's assistant doing little more than taking roll? The teachers have already abdicated. What will all the graduates of the teacher institutions do then? If they teach kindergarten through fifth grade, they may have jobs, but high school teachers can forget about careers.
The myth of the tenured teacher goes back to ancient Egypt. The priests controlled the supply of literate people. This is a major source of control by priesthoods, which were always in alliance with the state. Now there is no way to control the flow of information into the households of the masses.
PASSING THE EXAM
I have been contacted by a graduate of medical school about the possibility of creating a one-year course in the Ron Paul Curriculum on the basics of medicine. In other words, it would be an introductory course that we might call a pre-pre-med course. He is willing to do it for free, but of course we will pay him if he produces the course, and if students want to take the course. He is dedicated. He wants to get the message out. He could do it himself online if he really wanted to.
There are going to be innovators in every field who do this. The secrecy associated with ancient guilds is going to be broken.
At some point, some law school graduate who got all A's and who passed the state bar exam is going to start putting on free courses for the general public on the intricacies of the legal system. Others will imitate him. Students are going to be able to get an education that is better than most state law schools. They will be able to pass the bar. On what basis can they be stopped? Why is it necessary to go through the classroom training, if the online training is just as good, and the students can pass the bar? How will the tenured bureaucrats secure their position under these conditions?
Then it goes to medicine. Then it goes to architecture. It goes to every field.
If a student can come out of a free online curriculum on YouTube, and he can pass whatever entry exam is required, what becomes of the justification for the modern university system, which absorbs half a trillion dollars of mostly public money every year?
The myth of classroom education is dying. Classroom teachers have always insisted that you cannot learn in the context of distance learning. There has never been any statistical evidence to show this. But the tenured bureaucrats want to spread the gospel of the necessity of classroom performance. Salman Khan has single-handedly destroyed that mythology. It's basically gone. This has never happened in human history. In less than one decade, he destroyed the foundations of this myth.
This is going to undermine the state. This is going to undermine the whole state certification system. As long as free online videos train a person to pass a competitive exam, there is no justification for the public support of the infrastructure that enables people to pass the exam.
It will become clear soon enough that the whole policy of screening by means of a costly classroom is no longer valid from an educational standpoint. The classroom screeners are going to have to find another line of work. As long as any profession screens in terms of a final entrance exam, it will not matter how the person who passes the exam got the training to pass the exam. If the exam is valid as a screening device, then the entire classroom empire is an exercise in the reduction of supply of qualified candidates to pass the exam.
Anyone whose income is dependent upon the screening device of a graduate school program to reduce the supply of future competitors had better wake up and smell the coffee.
Quote of the Times;
“The story of life is quicker than the blink of an eye, the story of love is hello and goodbye, until we meet again.” - Hendrix
Link of the Times;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=299&v=8U36fCE_vCE
Khan?
Uber?
Oneliners:
Quiche is just omelet cake.
Charlize Theron's last name always sounds like an element to me.
I can't ever read a haiku without counting out the syllables on my fingers.
If ice gets stuck in your throat, are you choking or drowning?
You should be able to double press elevator floor buttons to cancel a mistaken choice.
Water is recycled, so technically we've all showered with each other at some point or another.
North Korea is the face tattoo of countries.
Marijuana is a performance enhancing drug for competitive eaters.
A "wrap" is what you get when you ruin a burrito with healthy shit.
What if zombies don't want to eat brains, they're just telling us how to kill them?
People with 3D printers should make replacement tupperware tops and sell them.
*.*
Things change after you've been married for a while. I used to walk around the house naked and my husband would say, "Come over here, sexy."
Now it's "Hey! Please, I'm trying to eat here."
*.*
Education experts are worried that major world events like 9/11 and the war in Iraq are happening too quickly for college students to get a chance to study them properly.
But the major universities say there's no need for alarm, as they promise to continue hiring professors with no idea about what's going on in the real world anyway.
*.*
Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater.
If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby.
If you give her a house, she'll give you a home.
If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal,
If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart.
She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.
So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit.
*.*
On a flight from Cuba to Canada, a man threatened to shoot flight attendants after they stopped serving him drinks. He has been charged with making death threats and if convicted, he could lose his pilot's license.
Issue of the Times;
5 Priceless Tips I Gave My Uber Driver by Richard Lorenc
Big ideas most people don’t understand about the economy
I was in an Uber car the other day, returning from a conference. I love Uber and used it for years in Chicago before returning to my hometown, Atlanta. There are a lot of amusing exposés out there contending that the majority of Uber drivers hate their jobs and feel enslaved by corporate overlords.
Virtually every driver I encounter tells me they love working with Uber; an off-duty Uber driver once overheard me saying something about the company over lunch, and he volunteered enthusiastically that he loves his job. There was no driver rating at stake in that exchange.
I’ve had interesting discussions in Uber cars. One driver told me he had walked a young woman into the ER minutes before picking me up (he thought she had overdosed). Another driver explained how he had escaped New Orleans just hours before Katrina hit, only to return to complete destruction. And there have been quite a few who’ve told me they drive to earn money to build other businesses. Uber drivers are by definition entrepreneurs. And many see driving as a stepping-stone to something bigger.
Occasionally, Uber drivers will volunteer economic views as they relate to their business. My driver the other day — his name was Chris — even identified himself as a "free-market guy" while talking about Uber.
Naturally, this got my attention, but I decided not to spill the beans until he asked what my colleague and I do. I explained that we work for an organization called the Foundation for Economic Education, which teaches young people about the free market.
Chris is a big guy, and on hearing my words, he shook the car with laughter as we drove on the interstate.
Then he asked for tips.
"Stock tips?" I asked.
"No, big ideas that most people don't get about the economy."
I gave him those tips. I thought I would share them with you, too.
Big idea 1: Trade is win-win.
My colleagues and I teach our students that trade is win-win by saying, "Trade is made of win."
I asked Chris to imagine being a customer at Starbucks. He wants a venti café au lait so much that he's willing to part with $5 to get it. For the customer, the coffee is worth more than the money; why would else would he surrender his cash at the register? The opposite is true for the seller: $5 is worth more than the coffee. The buyer and seller exchange property rights, and each says, "thank you." (This is sometimes called the "double-thank-you phenomenon.") The transaction makes them both better off — they have created value for each other through trade.
Big idea 2: Entrepreneurs create value.
Entrepreneurs create massively greater value for society generally than they create in profits for themselves.
An estimated 98 percent of the innovators profits generated by nonfarm businesses in the United States between 1948 and 2001 were never captured directly by the individual innovators or firms. Innovators profits — or "Schumpeterian profits" —vary by industry. Apple did not fully capture the Schumpeterian profits generated by the debut of the iPhone, for example. Instead, the iPhone created entirely new business categories and lowered the consumer price of supercomputers that fit into your pocket. But Apple captured enough of its innovators profits that it has an incentive to continue to innovate — and potential competitors had an incentive to enter the market. Competition lowers prices, benefitting consumers.
Big idea 3: Everything has a cost.
This idea is the lynchpin of what we call economic thinking: that is, the application of economic concepts to help explain why people and groups make the choices they do.
Normally, we introduce this concept by calling it an opportunity cost. If all of us understood clearly how the choices we make today necessarily limit the choices available to us tomorrow, we would solve 95 percent of the problems caused by economic illiteracy.
At FEE’s seminars, many students are deciding whether to go to college. Not only is there a direct cost to college, but there is also the opportunity cost of spending time cloistered in academia when you could be launching the next Facebook. In many cases, college is worth the cost, but not in every instance.
We take pains at FEE to practice what we preach. We've gotten away from advertising that our seminars are free to attend and offer free accommodations and meals. Instead, we say they are offered at “no charge.”
After all, TANSTAAFS — there ain't no such thing as a free seminar. You have to sit and take it for three whole days. And that carries a cost.
Big idea 4: Emergent order rules.
The world we live in is the product of countless interactions among individuals, not the result of some master plan. Even if there is a plan, the traditions, mores, and informal institutions that guide behavior dominate. F.A. Hayek named this phenomenon spontaneous order, but I prefer contemporary economist Russ Roberts's term emergent order. The concept goes back to Scotland, to Adam Ferguson, and later to Adam Smith’s invisible hand metaphor.
The invisible hand, by the way, is probably one of the most misunderstood concepts in economics. It's as if those who mock it as some sort of supernatural occurrence have never heard of a metaphor, which depicts how individuals working in their own interest also create value for others.
The idea boils down to this: The world we live in is the product of human action, not human design.
Big idea 5: Markets are moral.
Finally, we have what is perhaps the most important tip of all when talking to young people: commerce makes us better people.
It civilizes us. It permits us opportunities to practice politeness with strangers. FEE’s founder, Leonard Read, captured this concept in his famous essay "I, Pencil," and Milton Friedman popularized it in the Free to Choose TV series.
The market is a process of ever-growing interconnectedness. As the market grows, our individual opportunities for specialization grow with it, and we each become wealthier through our access to goods and services we could never fathom creating ourselves. By creating value for others, we tend to become less concerned with the nationalities or races or religions or sexual orientations of those who bring to market the goods we depend on. A deal is a deal, and the more we become acclimated to making deals with those who are different from us, the closer we grow as human beings.
This last concept is vital, because students today are looking for ways to explain the world and their places in it through dimensions beyond material efficiency. Certainly, the coordination of market activities through the information conveyed by prices is superior to the commissar’s desk-bound decision-making, but advocates of economic freedom must first listen to the concerns of those undiscovered libertarians who are fundamentally idealistic and decent people, and whose only hang-up with the free market is that it sometimes appears irrational.
Why, for instance, would GM, a hallmark of American ingenuity and industry, be more valuable if it were closed? Why can't the government just give spoons to all of the unemployed so they can stay busy constructing roads? Why shouldn't fast food workers make $15 per hour? Why can't everyone have inexpensive health care?
Appealing to personal values is the gateway to economic thinking that helps to explain our complex world.
Uber redux
The Uber phenomenon represents something important happening now in the human consciousness, and millennials (people born between 1980 and 2000, roughly) may be noticing it the most.
Individuals are now free to exchange goods and services with each other around the world. They are able to take innovations such as the concept of ride sharing and the proliferation of apps to use otherwise unproductive capital — their cars — to serve others.
This is great news for our world as millennials begin to assume positions of influence and leadership and are now beginning to see a real choice between the philosophy of control versus the philosophy of freedom.
Quote of the Times;
“A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.” - Heinlein
Link of the Times;
http://www.firstthings.com/
Quiche is just omelet cake.
Charlize Theron's last name always sounds like an element to me.
I can't ever read a haiku without counting out the syllables on my fingers.
If ice gets stuck in your throat, are you choking or drowning?
You should be able to double press elevator floor buttons to cancel a mistaken choice.
Water is recycled, so technically we've all showered with each other at some point or another.
North Korea is the face tattoo of countries.
Marijuana is a performance enhancing drug for competitive eaters.
A "wrap" is what you get when you ruin a burrito with healthy shit.
What if zombies don't want to eat brains, they're just telling us how to kill them?
People with 3D printers should make replacement tupperware tops and sell them.
*.*
Things change after you've been married for a while. I used to walk around the house naked and my husband would say, "Come over here, sexy."
Now it's "Hey! Please, I'm trying to eat here."
*.*
Education experts are worried that major world events like 9/11 and the war in Iraq are happening too quickly for college students to get a chance to study them properly.
But the major universities say there's no need for alarm, as they promise to continue hiring professors with no idea about what's going on in the real world anyway.
*.*
Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater.
If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby.
If you give her a house, she'll give you a home.
If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal,
If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart.
She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.
So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit.
*.*
On a flight from Cuba to Canada, a man threatened to shoot flight attendants after they stopped serving him drinks. He has been charged with making death threats and if convicted, he could lose his pilot's license.
Issue of the Times;
5 Priceless Tips I Gave My Uber Driver by Richard Lorenc
Big ideas most people don’t understand about the economy
I was in an Uber car the other day, returning from a conference. I love Uber and used it for years in Chicago before returning to my hometown, Atlanta. There are a lot of amusing exposés out there contending that the majority of Uber drivers hate their jobs and feel enslaved by corporate overlords.
Virtually every driver I encounter tells me they love working with Uber; an off-duty Uber driver once overheard me saying something about the company over lunch, and he volunteered enthusiastically that he loves his job. There was no driver rating at stake in that exchange.
I’ve had interesting discussions in Uber cars. One driver told me he had walked a young woman into the ER minutes before picking me up (he thought she had overdosed). Another driver explained how he had escaped New Orleans just hours before Katrina hit, only to return to complete destruction. And there have been quite a few who’ve told me they drive to earn money to build other businesses. Uber drivers are by definition entrepreneurs. And many see driving as a stepping-stone to something bigger.
Occasionally, Uber drivers will volunteer economic views as they relate to their business. My driver the other day — his name was Chris — even identified himself as a "free-market guy" while talking about Uber.
Naturally, this got my attention, but I decided not to spill the beans until he asked what my colleague and I do. I explained that we work for an organization called the Foundation for Economic Education, which teaches young people about the free market.
Chris is a big guy, and on hearing my words, he shook the car with laughter as we drove on the interstate.
Then he asked for tips.
"Stock tips?" I asked.
"No, big ideas that most people don't get about the economy."
I gave him those tips. I thought I would share them with you, too.
Big idea 1: Trade is win-win.
My colleagues and I teach our students that trade is win-win by saying, "Trade is made of win."
I asked Chris to imagine being a customer at Starbucks. He wants a venti café au lait so much that he's willing to part with $5 to get it. For the customer, the coffee is worth more than the money; why would else would he surrender his cash at the register? The opposite is true for the seller: $5 is worth more than the coffee. The buyer and seller exchange property rights, and each says, "thank you." (This is sometimes called the "double-thank-you phenomenon.") The transaction makes them both better off — they have created value for each other through trade.
Big idea 2: Entrepreneurs create value.
Entrepreneurs create massively greater value for society generally than they create in profits for themselves.
An estimated 98 percent of the innovators profits generated by nonfarm businesses in the United States between 1948 and 2001 were never captured directly by the individual innovators or firms. Innovators profits — or "Schumpeterian profits" —vary by industry. Apple did not fully capture the Schumpeterian profits generated by the debut of the iPhone, for example. Instead, the iPhone created entirely new business categories and lowered the consumer price of supercomputers that fit into your pocket. But Apple captured enough of its innovators profits that it has an incentive to continue to innovate — and potential competitors had an incentive to enter the market. Competition lowers prices, benefitting consumers.
Big idea 3: Everything has a cost.
This idea is the lynchpin of what we call economic thinking: that is, the application of economic concepts to help explain why people and groups make the choices they do.
Normally, we introduce this concept by calling it an opportunity cost. If all of us understood clearly how the choices we make today necessarily limit the choices available to us tomorrow, we would solve 95 percent of the problems caused by economic illiteracy.
At FEE’s seminars, many students are deciding whether to go to college. Not only is there a direct cost to college, but there is also the opportunity cost of spending time cloistered in academia when you could be launching the next Facebook. In many cases, college is worth the cost, but not in every instance.
We take pains at FEE to practice what we preach. We've gotten away from advertising that our seminars are free to attend and offer free accommodations and meals. Instead, we say they are offered at “no charge.”
After all, TANSTAAFS — there ain't no such thing as a free seminar. You have to sit and take it for three whole days. And that carries a cost.
Big idea 4: Emergent order rules.
The world we live in is the product of countless interactions among individuals, not the result of some master plan. Even if there is a plan, the traditions, mores, and informal institutions that guide behavior dominate. F.A. Hayek named this phenomenon spontaneous order, but I prefer contemporary economist Russ Roberts's term emergent order. The concept goes back to Scotland, to Adam Ferguson, and later to Adam Smith’s invisible hand metaphor.
The invisible hand, by the way, is probably one of the most misunderstood concepts in economics. It's as if those who mock it as some sort of supernatural occurrence have never heard of a metaphor, which depicts how individuals working in their own interest also create value for others.
The idea boils down to this: The world we live in is the product of human action, not human design.
Big idea 5: Markets are moral.
Finally, we have what is perhaps the most important tip of all when talking to young people: commerce makes us better people.
It civilizes us. It permits us opportunities to practice politeness with strangers. FEE’s founder, Leonard Read, captured this concept in his famous essay "I, Pencil," and Milton Friedman popularized it in the Free to Choose TV series.
The market is a process of ever-growing interconnectedness. As the market grows, our individual opportunities for specialization grow with it, and we each become wealthier through our access to goods and services we could never fathom creating ourselves. By creating value for others, we tend to become less concerned with the nationalities or races or religions or sexual orientations of those who bring to market the goods we depend on. A deal is a deal, and the more we become acclimated to making deals with those who are different from us, the closer we grow as human beings.
This last concept is vital, because students today are looking for ways to explain the world and their places in it through dimensions beyond material efficiency. Certainly, the coordination of market activities through the information conveyed by prices is superior to the commissar’s desk-bound decision-making, but advocates of economic freedom must first listen to the concerns of those undiscovered libertarians who are fundamentally idealistic and decent people, and whose only hang-up with the free market is that it sometimes appears irrational.
Why, for instance, would GM, a hallmark of American ingenuity and industry, be more valuable if it were closed? Why can't the government just give spoons to all of the unemployed so they can stay busy constructing roads? Why shouldn't fast food workers make $15 per hour? Why can't everyone have inexpensive health care?
Appealing to personal values is the gateway to economic thinking that helps to explain our complex world.
Uber redux
The Uber phenomenon represents something important happening now in the human consciousness, and millennials (people born between 1980 and 2000, roughly) may be noticing it the most.
Individuals are now free to exchange goods and services with each other around the world. They are able to take innovations such as the concept of ride sharing and the proliferation of apps to use otherwise unproductive capital — their cars — to serve others.
This is great news for our world as millennials begin to assume positions of influence and leadership and are now beginning to see a real choice between the philosophy of control versus the philosophy of freedom.
Quote of the Times;
“A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.” - Heinlein
Link of the Times;
http://www.firstthings.com/
Goodbye?
Best Fan Theories
The Joker does have a superpower
The Joker in the batman universe does have a superpower. No one could pull off half the random things Joker does unassisted, all the near deaths, convoluted plots and inevitable escape attempts, impossible without some other force at work. But really, it’s his name that gives it away. He has got a power any comedian, class clown or joker would kill for.
He has a supernaturally good sense of timing.
That’s why all his schemes can work and why the only times he gets caught are when he can safely get away later. Because even if he’s unaware that he’s doing it, he’s always in the right place at the right time. Joker probably isn’t aware he even has this power, but it’s part of the reason he never gets over his insanity. Because everything always works out for him, he’s never confronted with facing reality aside from the chaos he creates.
Bender wasn’t a criminal until he met Fry
When we first meet Bender, he’s ready to commit suicide because he found out he was helping to make suicide booths. This doesn’t tally with the Bender that we get to know throughout the course of the series. In fact, nothing he says before they run from Leela in the first series suggests that he’s nearly as bad as the Bender we love.
When they try and escape from Leela in the head museum, Bender gets shocked via an old light fitting. Maybe in doing so, it caused Bender to reboot. In the penguin episode, we see that Bender resets into a mode relevant to his surroundings. He sees penguins, he boots into penguin mode. Therefore, since he rebooted in the hall of criminals, the first thing he sees is the heads of famous criminals, and therefore reboots into the lovable but highly-illegal rogue.
Snape’s first words to Harry
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first thing Snape asks Harry in Potions class is, “Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”
According to the Victorian Language of Flowers, asphodel is a type of lily meaning ‘my regrets follow you to the grave,’ and wormwoood means ‘absence’ and symbolizes bitter sorrow. The entire question has a hidden meaning of “I bitterly regret Lily’s death.”
Robin is a potential weapon against his own mentor
What Batman fears more than anything is turning evil. He is perfectly aware he is capable of doing so, and just about no-one would be able to stop him if he was a villain.
But what if there was a person who knew his fighting style and weaponry inside out and back to front? What if there was another person with his skill and similar life experiences, yet far more young and optimistic than Batman?
Robin is the one who will take Batman down if he goes rogue, as he is not just a protégé, but Batman’s planned countermeasure for a set of circumstances that may never arise.
Spongebob is a tampon
If you think about the facts it all kind of pieces together. Spongebob is a super absorbent sponge like product. He lives in a place called bikini bottom. He is on the other side of town to a girl named sandy cheeks. He works in the krusty krab with squidward an anamorphic squid that looks strangely enough like a giant penis. Squidward likes to avoid run-ins with spongebob whenever possible. Squidward thinks that he is good at something despite the fact that we all know that he isn’t no matter how hard he practices in his home by himself. Patrick is maybe a tattoo that gets viewed a lot. Plankton is an insecure little thing with one eye who is married to a computer and is envious of what the krusty krab has and wishes to have it to himself, or at least the ingredients on how to make one, aka: a pervert.
Single Tarantino Universe
So now you know why Christoph Waltz stopped practicing dentistry in Django.
It is well known that all of Tarantino’s films take place in the same universe. This is established by the fact that Mr. Blonde (Reservoir Dogs) and Vincent Vega (Pulp Fiction) are brothers, everybody in his movies smoke Red Apple cigarettes, Mr. White (Reservoir Dogs) worked with Alabama from True Romance.
As it turns out, Donny Donowitz, ‘The Bear Jew’ (Inglourious Basterds), is the father of movie producer Lee Donowitz from True Romance, which means that, in Tarantino’s universe, everybody grew up learning about how a bunch of commando Jews machine gunned Hitler to death in a burning movie theater, as opposed to quietly killing himself in a bunker.
Because World War 2 ended in a movie theater, everybody lends greater significance to pop culture, hence why seemingly everybody has great level of knowledge in movies and TV. Likewise, because America won World War 2 in one concentrated act of hyperviolent slaughter, Americans as a whole are more desensitized to that sort of thing. Hence why Butch (Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction) is unfazed by killing two people, Mr. White and Mr. Pink (Reservoir Dogs) take a pragmatic approach to killing in their line of work, Esmeralda (Pulp Fiction) the cab driver is obsessed with death, etc.
You can extrapolate this further when you realize that Tarantino’s movies are technically two universes. He has gone on record saying that Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn take place in a ‘movie movie universe’; that is, they’re movies that characters from the Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, and Death Proof universe would go to see in theaters.
Basically, it turns every Tarantino movie into alternate reality sci fi.
Everyone in the Simpsons family is a genius
Everyone in the Simpson family is a genius, but Lisa is the only one who embraces it.
Grandpa may be senile now but his flash backs show him doing a number of things that require a variety of skills such as being a fighter pilot and an accomplished pianist, that suggests that he has at least an above average intelligence. Marge was an excellent student but choose a life as a house wife because it is what made her happy. This is important because everyone besides Lisa chooses happiness over intelligence.
Homer would be one of the smartest men to ever live except for the crayon he had lodged in his brain at an early age. When the crayon was briefly removed, he becomes a genius, doing such things as proving god doesn’t exist, but he put it back in order to avoid ostracism from his friends and community. Unlike Marge his choice is more serious; miserable but a genius or happy but a moron?
Bart essentially makes the same decision as his father but at a much younger age and without having to alter his brain. In one episode he is shown to have been incredibly gifted when he was younger but his grades steadily declined. Why? That episode would have you believe it was the “Simpson gene” which makes male Simpsons idiots. But the removal of the crayon from Homer’s brain and his boost in intelligence proves that to be wrong. Instead Bart witnessed that despite his father’s many faults and crippling stupidity he is happy. This was proof for him that ignorance is indeed bliss. He decides to follow his father’s path but his intelligence leaks through on several occasions when it comes to pranks, which are original and clever. Yet his denial of his intelligence stops him from succeeding at school even when he wants to, and he torments Lisa because he feels bad for her and wants her to make the same decision he did.
Lisa only reinforces his decision because of how unhappy she is. Her intelligence will never bring her happiness. She is by far the saddest and mopiest character but for better or worse has decided to stick it out.
Maggie, being an infant, has not been forced to make this decision yet but seems as intelligent as the rest of her family, one time rescuing Homer from a crazed tow truck driver. She will have to make the same choice with two examples, her brother and sister, to guide her.
Jack was a Time Traveler
Jack, from Titanic, was a time traveler, that was only there to save Rose from committing suicide and altering the timeline. If Rose jumped to her demise, then the ship would have had to stop to look for her. The temporary delay would have lead to warmer weather and the Titanic never would have hit the ice burg. This is also why Jack spent so much time with Rose, it was his job to ensure her survival.
Let’s look at the evidence. Jack doesn’t have any money from this time period, so he has to gamble in order to get the ticket in the first place. He mentions fishing in Lake Wissota, which is a man made lake, created in 1917, 5 years after the Titanic sank. His haircut seemed completely out of place for the era, furthermore, that rucksack wasn’t common till the late 30’s. He claims he will take Rose on a roller coaster on the Santa Monica pier which wouldn’t be built till 1916. How else would he have knowledge of all these things?
*.*
Oneliners:
Because of my dog, I flinch every time I hear a doorbell on TV.
Does "do not touch" exist in Braille?
Tinder should make an app for people to find platonic relationships and call it Friender
The funniest joke for me might be hidden behind a different language that I will never learn
If alternate universes exist, wouldn't a universe exist where they have destroyed all the other alternate universes?
The opposite of SpongeBob SquarePants is TowelWeave CircleShorts
If an illegal immigrant had a fight with a child predator, would that be Alien vs Predator?
Identical twins are probably the only people who will see their own dead bodies
How important does a person have to be for their murder to be called an assassination?
Life is just one big freemium game. Everyone gets a chance to play, but unless you have money, your experience is extremely limited.
When you're deaf, every video is a GIF.
Yoga pants are like billboards for teenage boys.
The reason why Apple updates aren't called iPatches is that it would inspire to piracy
I bet ventriloquists can respond perfectly when the dentist ask them questions while cleaning their teeth
*.*
Marine In Japan Regrets Confusing ‘Kabuki’ With ‘Bukakke’
CAMP SMEDLEY D. BUTLER, Okinawa — Lance Corporal Timothy Braithwaite and his wife, Melanie, were dismayed last weekend to discover that they had confused the word “kabuki” and the word “bukakke,” leading them to attend a show very different from the one they’d meant to see.
“It was pretty awful,” said Braithwaite. “Melanie and I haven’t been here long, haven’t gotten out to see the sights since I signed in last month. So now that we’re all settled and I’m in a nice predictable schedule at work, I wanted to take advantage of being stationed here. So I got tickets to this show from my staff sergeant, but must have got my terms mixed up.”
The Marine and his wife ended up sitting through a show which made them very uncomfortable. Unfortunately, when they tried to return the tickets for a refund, the establishment refused. The budget-conscious couple decided to return to the show and try to enjoy it rather than waste the money.
Soon they found themselves witnessing a wild, loud and frenetic display rarely seen back home in America, outside of internet videos and little-known parlors in immigrant quarters of large cities.
“There was all this noise, yelling and grunting at whatnot,” Mrs. Braithwaite said. “It was hard to follow exactly since I only speak English, but I got the general idea. Ladies and men were wearing elaborate costumes that they tore off without warning, the music only served to make it more alien. There was, ah, stuff … flying all around.
She said some members of the audience got involved, contributing and even helping. And even the audience members that weren’t “part of the, ah, proceedings got pretty rowdy.”
Braithwaite and his wife were mildly traumatized by the mix-up, but don’t intend to let one bad experience ruin an exotic foreign posting for them. They already have plans for more outings in the near future, including an attempt to attend the show they meant to see last weekend.
*.*
Sometimes when I'm in a difficult situation I ask, "What Would Jesus Do?"
And always a little voice inside me answers, "Well, he probably wouldn't try to cram *another* corpse into the crawl-space, moron."
*.*
The Dumbest Deaths in Recorded History
Attila the Hun
One of the most notorious villains in history, Attila’s army had conquered all of Asia by 450 AD-from Mongolia to the edge of the Russian Empire-by destroying villages and pillaging the countryside.
How he died: He got a nosebleed on his wedding night.In 453 AD, Attila married a young girl named Ildico. Despite his reputation for ferocity on the battlefield, he tended to eat and drink lightly during large banquets. On his wedding night, however, he really cut loose, gorging himself on food and drink. Sometime during the night he suffered a nosebleed, but was too drunk to notice. He drowned in his own blood and was found dead the next morning.
Tycho Brahe
An important Danish astronomer of the 16th century. His ground breaking research allowed Sir Isaac Newton to come up with the theory of gravity.
How he died: Didn’t get to the bathroom in time. In the 16th century, it was considered an insult to leave a banquet table before the meal was over. Brahe, known to drink excessively, had a bladder condition-but failed to relieve himself before the banquet started. He made matters worse by drinking too much at dinner, and was too polite to ask to be excused. His bladder finally burst, killing him slowly and painfully over the next 11 days.
Horace Wells
Pioneered the use of anesthesia in the 1840s
How he died: Used anesthetics to commit suicide. While experimenting with various gases during his anesthesia research, Wells became addicted to chloroform. In 1848 he was arrested for spraying two women with sulfuric acid. In a letter he wrote from jail, he blamed chloroform for his problems, claiming that he’d gotten high before the attack. Four days later he was found dead in his cell. He’d anaesthetized himself with chloroform and slashed open his thigh with a razor.
Francis Bacon
One of the most influential minds of the late 16th century. A statesman, a philosopher, a writer, and a scientist, he was even rumored to have written some of Shakespeare’s plays.
How he died: Stuffing snow into a chicken One afternoon in 1625, Bacon was watching a snowstorm and was struck by the wondrous notion that maybe snow could be used to preserve meat in the same way that salt was used. Determined to find out, he purchased a chicken from a nearby village, killed it, and then, standing outside in the snow, attempted to stuff the chicken full of snow to freeze it. The chicken never froze, but Bacon did.
Aeschylus
A Greek playwright back in 500 BC. Many historians consider him the father of Greek tragedies.
How he died: An eagle dropped a tortoise on his head According to legend, eagles picked up tortoises and attempt to crack them open by dropping them on rocks. An eagle mistook Aeschylus’ head for a rock (he was bald) and dropped it on him instead.
Jim Fixx
Author of the best selling “Complete Book of Running,” which started the jogging craze of the 1970s.
How he died: A heart attack….while jogging Fixx was visiting Greensboro, Vermont when he walked out of his house and began jogging. He’d only gone a short distance when he had a massive coronary. His autopsy revealed that one of his coronary arteries was 99% clogged, another was 80% obstructed, and a third was 70% blocked….and that Fixx had had three other attacks in the weeks prior to his death.
Issue of the Times;
Goodbye Middle Class by Michael Snyder
51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year
We just got more evidence that the middle class in America is dying. According to brand new numbers that were just released by the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $30,000 a year. Let that number sink in for a moment. You can’t support a middle class family in America today on just $2,500 a month – especially after taxes are taken out. And yet more than half of all workers in this country make less than that each month. In order to have a thriving middle class, you have got to have an economy that produces lots of middle class jobs, and that simply is not happening in America today.
You can find the report that the Social Security Administration just released right here. The following are some of the numbers that really stood out for me…
-38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.
-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.
-62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.
-71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.
That first number is truly staggering. The federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, and yet almost 40 percent of all American workers do not even bring in $20,000 a year.
If you worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you would make approximately $20,000. This should tell you something about the quality of the jobs that our economy is producing at this point.
And of course the numbers above are only for those that are actually working. As I discussed just recently, there are 7.9 million working age Americans that are “officially unemployed” right now and another 94.7 million working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force”. When you add those two numbers together, you get a grand total of 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.
So many people that I know are barely scraping by right now. Many families have to fight tooth and nail just to make it from month to month, and there are lots of Americans that find themselves sinking deeper and deeper into debt.
If you can believe it, about a quarter of the country actually has a negative net worth right now.
What that means is that if you have no debt and you also have ten dollars in your pocket that gives you a greater net worth than about 25 percent of the entire country. The following comes from a recent piece by Simon Black…
Credit Suisse estimates that 25% of Americans are in this situation of having a negative net-worth.
“If you’ve no debts and have $10 in your pocket you have more wealth than 25% of Americans. More than 25% of Americans have collectively that is.”
The thing is– not only did the government create the incentives, but they set the standard.
With a net worth of negative $60 trillion, US citizens are just following dutifully in the government’s footsteps.
As a nation we are flat broke and most of us are living paycheck to paycheck. It has been estimated that it takes approximately $50,000 a year to support a middle class lifestyle for a family of four in the U.S. today, and so the fact that 71 percent of all workers make less than that amount shows how difficult it is for families that try to get by with just a single breadwinner.
Needless to say, a tremendous squeeze has been put on the middle class. In many families, both the husband and the wife are working as hard as they can, but it is still not enough. With each passing day, more Americans are losing their spots in the middle class and this has pushed government dependence to an all-time high. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans now live in a home that receives money from the government each month.
Sadly, the trends that are destroying the middle class in America just continue to accelerate.
With a huge assist from the Republican leadership in Congress, Barack Obama recently completed negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Also known as Obamatrade, this insidious new treaty is going to cover nations that collectively account for 40 percent of global GDP. Just like NAFTA, this treaty will result in the loss of thousands of businesses and millions of good paying American jobs. Let us hope and pray that Congress somehow votes it down.
Another thing that is working against the middle class is the fact that technology is increasingly taking over our jobs. With each passing year, it becomes cheaper and more efficient to have computers, robots and machines do things that humans once did.
Eventually, there will be very few things that humans will be able to do more cheaply and more efficiently than computers, robots and machines. How will most of us make a living when that happens?…
The robopocalypse for workers may be inevitable. In this vision of the future, super-smart machines will best humans in pretty much every task. A few of us will own the machines, a few will work a bit… while the rest will live off a government-provided income…the most common job in most U.S. states probably will no longer be truck driver.
For decades, we have been training our young people to have the goal of “getting a job” once they get out into the real world. But in America today there are not nearly enough good jobs to go around, and this crisis is only going to accelerate as we move into the future.
I do not believe that it is wise to pin your future on a corporation that could replace you with a foreign worker or a machine the moment that it becomes expedient to do so. We need to start thinking differently, because the paradigms that worked in the past are fundamentally breaking down.
Quote of the Times;
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants. – Camus
Link of the Times;
http://www.infowars.com/video-13-year-old-black-kid-lays-the-smack-down-on-obama-in-epic-rant/
The Joker does have a superpower
The Joker in the batman universe does have a superpower. No one could pull off half the random things Joker does unassisted, all the near deaths, convoluted plots and inevitable escape attempts, impossible without some other force at work. But really, it’s his name that gives it away. He has got a power any comedian, class clown or joker would kill for.
He has a supernaturally good sense of timing.
That’s why all his schemes can work and why the only times he gets caught are when he can safely get away later. Because even if he’s unaware that he’s doing it, he’s always in the right place at the right time. Joker probably isn’t aware he even has this power, but it’s part of the reason he never gets over his insanity. Because everything always works out for him, he’s never confronted with facing reality aside from the chaos he creates.
Bender wasn’t a criminal until he met Fry
When we first meet Bender, he’s ready to commit suicide because he found out he was helping to make suicide booths. This doesn’t tally with the Bender that we get to know throughout the course of the series. In fact, nothing he says before they run from Leela in the first series suggests that he’s nearly as bad as the Bender we love.
When they try and escape from Leela in the head museum, Bender gets shocked via an old light fitting. Maybe in doing so, it caused Bender to reboot. In the penguin episode, we see that Bender resets into a mode relevant to his surroundings. He sees penguins, he boots into penguin mode. Therefore, since he rebooted in the hall of criminals, the first thing he sees is the heads of famous criminals, and therefore reboots into the lovable but highly-illegal rogue.
Snape’s first words to Harry
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first thing Snape asks Harry in Potions class is, “Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”
According to the Victorian Language of Flowers, asphodel is a type of lily meaning ‘my regrets follow you to the grave,’ and wormwoood means ‘absence’ and symbolizes bitter sorrow. The entire question has a hidden meaning of “I bitterly regret Lily’s death.”
Robin is a potential weapon against his own mentor
What Batman fears more than anything is turning evil. He is perfectly aware he is capable of doing so, and just about no-one would be able to stop him if he was a villain.
But what if there was a person who knew his fighting style and weaponry inside out and back to front? What if there was another person with his skill and similar life experiences, yet far more young and optimistic than Batman?
Robin is the one who will take Batman down if he goes rogue, as he is not just a protégé, but Batman’s planned countermeasure for a set of circumstances that may never arise.
Spongebob is a tampon
If you think about the facts it all kind of pieces together. Spongebob is a super absorbent sponge like product. He lives in a place called bikini bottom. He is on the other side of town to a girl named sandy cheeks. He works in the krusty krab with squidward an anamorphic squid that looks strangely enough like a giant penis. Squidward likes to avoid run-ins with spongebob whenever possible. Squidward thinks that he is good at something despite the fact that we all know that he isn’t no matter how hard he practices in his home by himself. Patrick is maybe a tattoo that gets viewed a lot. Plankton is an insecure little thing with one eye who is married to a computer and is envious of what the krusty krab has and wishes to have it to himself, or at least the ingredients on how to make one, aka: a pervert.
Single Tarantino Universe
So now you know why Christoph Waltz stopped practicing dentistry in Django.
It is well known that all of Tarantino’s films take place in the same universe. This is established by the fact that Mr. Blonde (Reservoir Dogs) and Vincent Vega (Pulp Fiction) are brothers, everybody in his movies smoke Red Apple cigarettes, Mr. White (Reservoir Dogs) worked with Alabama from True Romance.
As it turns out, Donny Donowitz, ‘The Bear Jew’ (Inglourious Basterds), is the father of movie producer Lee Donowitz from True Romance, which means that, in Tarantino’s universe, everybody grew up learning about how a bunch of commando Jews machine gunned Hitler to death in a burning movie theater, as opposed to quietly killing himself in a bunker.
Because World War 2 ended in a movie theater, everybody lends greater significance to pop culture, hence why seemingly everybody has great level of knowledge in movies and TV. Likewise, because America won World War 2 in one concentrated act of hyperviolent slaughter, Americans as a whole are more desensitized to that sort of thing. Hence why Butch (Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction) is unfazed by killing two people, Mr. White and Mr. Pink (Reservoir Dogs) take a pragmatic approach to killing in their line of work, Esmeralda (Pulp Fiction) the cab driver is obsessed with death, etc.
You can extrapolate this further when you realize that Tarantino’s movies are technically two universes. He has gone on record saying that Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn take place in a ‘movie movie universe’; that is, they’re movies that characters from the Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, and Death Proof universe would go to see in theaters.
Basically, it turns every Tarantino movie into alternate reality sci fi.
Everyone in the Simpsons family is a genius
Everyone in the Simpson family is a genius, but Lisa is the only one who embraces it.
Grandpa may be senile now but his flash backs show him doing a number of things that require a variety of skills such as being a fighter pilot and an accomplished pianist, that suggests that he has at least an above average intelligence. Marge was an excellent student but choose a life as a house wife because it is what made her happy. This is important because everyone besides Lisa chooses happiness over intelligence.
Homer would be one of the smartest men to ever live except for the crayon he had lodged in his brain at an early age. When the crayon was briefly removed, he becomes a genius, doing such things as proving god doesn’t exist, but he put it back in order to avoid ostracism from his friends and community. Unlike Marge his choice is more serious; miserable but a genius or happy but a moron?
Bart essentially makes the same decision as his father but at a much younger age and without having to alter his brain. In one episode he is shown to have been incredibly gifted when he was younger but his grades steadily declined. Why? That episode would have you believe it was the “Simpson gene” which makes male Simpsons idiots. But the removal of the crayon from Homer’s brain and his boost in intelligence proves that to be wrong. Instead Bart witnessed that despite his father’s many faults and crippling stupidity he is happy. This was proof for him that ignorance is indeed bliss. He decides to follow his father’s path but his intelligence leaks through on several occasions when it comes to pranks, which are original and clever. Yet his denial of his intelligence stops him from succeeding at school even when he wants to, and he torments Lisa because he feels bad for her and wants her to make the same decision he did.
Lisa only reinforces his decision because of how unhappy she is. Her intelligence will never bring her happiness. She is by far the saddest and mopiest character but for better or worse has decided to stick it out.
Maggie, being an infant, has not been forced to make this decision yet but seems as intelligent as the rest of her family, one time rescuing Homer from a crazed tow truck driver. She will have to make the same choice with two examples, her brother and sister, to guide her.
Jack was a Time Traveler
Jack, from Titanic, was a time traveler, that was only there to save Rose from committing suicide and altering the timeline. If Rose jumped to her demise, then the ship would have had to stop to look for her. The temporary delay would have lead to warmer weather and the Titanic never would have hit the ice burg. This is also why Jack spent so much time with Rose, it was his job to ensure her survival.
Let’s look at the evidence. Jack doesn’t have any money from this time period, so he has to gamble in order to get the ticket in the first place. He mentions fishing in Lake Wissota, which is a man made lake, created in 1917, 5 years after the Titanic sank. His haircut seemed completely out of place for the era, furthermore, that rucksack wasn’t common till the late 30’s. He claims he will take Rose on a roller coaster on the Santa Monica pier which wouldn’t be built till 1916. How else would he have knowledge of all these things?
*.*
Oneliners:
Because of my dog, I flinch every time I hear a doorbell on TV.
Does "do not touch" exist in Braille?
Tinder should make an app for people to find platonic relationships and call it Friender
The funniest joke for me might be hidden behind a different language that I will never learn
If alternate universes exist, wouldn't a universe exist where they have destroyed all the other alternate universes?
The opposite of SpongeBob SquarePants is TowelWeave CircleShorts
If an illegal immigrant had a fight with a child predator, would that be Alien vs Predator?
Identical twins are probably the only people who will see their own dead bodies
How important does a person have to be for their murder to be called an assassination?
Life is just one big freemium game. Everyone gets a chance to play, but unless you have money, your experience is extremely limited.
When you're deaf, every video is a GIF.
Yoga pants are like billboards for teenage boys.
The reason why Apple updates aren't called iPatches is that it would inspire to piracy
I bet ventriloquists can respond perfectly when the dentist ask them questions while cleaning their teeth
*.*
Marine In Japan Regrets Confusing ‘Kabuki’ With ‘Bukakke’
CAMP SMEDLEY D. BUTLER, Okinawa — Lance Corporal Timothy Braithwaite and his wife, Melanie, were dismayed last weekend to discover that they had confused the word “kabuki” and the word “bukakke,” leading them to attend a show very different from the one they’d meant to see.
“It was pretty awful,” said Braithwaite. “Melanie and I haven’t been here long, haven’t gotten out to see the sights since I signed in last month. So now that we’re all settled and I’m in a nice predictable schedule at work, I wanted to take advantage of being stationed here. So I got tickets to this show from my staff sergeant, but must have got my terms mixed up.”
The Marine and his wife ended up sitting through a show which made them very uncomfortable. Unfortunately, when they tried to return the tickets for a refund, the establishment refused. The budget-conscious couple decided to return to the show and try to enjoy it rather than waste the money.
Soon they found themselves witnessing a wild, loud and frenetic display rarely seen back home in America, outside of internet videos and little-known parlors in immigrant quarters of large cities.
“There was all this noise, yelling and grunting at whatnot,” Mrs. Braithwaite said. “It was hard to follow exactly since I only speak English, but I got the general idea. Ladies and men were wearing elaborate costumes that they tore off without warning, the music only served to make it more alien. There was, ah, stuff … flying all around.
She said some members of the audience got involved, contributing and even helping. And even the audience members that weren’t “part of the, ah, proceedings got pretty rowdy.”
Braithwaite and his wife were mildly traumatized by the mix-up, but don’t intend to let one bad experience ruin an exotic foreign posting for them. They already have plans for more outings in the near future, including an attempt to attend the show they meant to see last weekend.
*.*
Sometimes when I'm in a difficult situation I ask, "What Would Jesus Do?"
And always a little voice inside me answers, "Well, he probably wouldn't try to cram *another* corpse into the crawl-space, moron."
*.*
The Dumbest Deaths in Recorded History
Attila the Hun
One of the most notorious villains in history, Attila’s army had conquered all of Asia by 450 AD-from Mongolia to the edge of the Russian Empire-by destroying villages and pillaging the countryside.
How he died: He got a nosebleed on his wedding night.In 453 AD, Attila married a young girl named Ildico. Despite his reputation for ferocity on the battlefield, he tended to eat and drink lightly during large banquets. On his wedding night, however, he really cut loose, gorging himself on food and drink. Sometime during the night he suffered a nosebleed, but was too drunk to notice. He drowned in his own blood and was found dead the next morning.
Tycho Brahe
An important Danish astronomer of the 16th century. His ground breaking research allowed Sir Isaac Newton to come up with the theory of gravity.
How he died: Didn’t get to the bathroom in time. In the 16th century, it was considered an insult to leave a banquet table before the meal was over. Brahe, known to drink excessively, had a bladder condition-but failed to relieve himself before the banquet started. He made matters worse by drinking too much at dinner, and was too polite to ask to be excused. His bladder finally burst, killing him slowly and painfully over the next 11 days.
Horace Wells
Pioneered the use of anesthesia in the 1840s
How he died: Used anesthetics to commit suicide. While experimenting with various gases during his anesthesia research, Wells became addicted to chloroform. In 1848 he was arrested for spraying two women with sulfuric acid. In a letter he wrote from jail, he blamed chloroform for his problems, claiming that he’d gotten high before the attack. Four days later he was found dead in his cell. He’d anaesthetized himself with chloroform and slashed open his thigh with a razor.
Francis Bacon
One of the most influential minds of the late 16th century. A statesman, a philosopher, a writer, and a scientist, he was even rumored to have written some of Shakespeare’s plays.
How he died: Stuffing snow into a chicken One afternoon in 1625, Bacon was watching a snowstorm and was struck by the wondrous notion that maybe snow could be used to preserve meat in the same way that salt was used. Determined to find out, he purchased a chicken from a nearby village, killed it, and then, standing outside in the snow, attempted to stuff the chicken full of snow to freeze it. The chicken never froze, but Bacon did.
Aeschylus
A Greek playwright back in 500 BC. Many historians consider him the father of Greek tragedies.
How he died: An eagle dropped a tortoise on his head According to legend, eagles picked up tortoises and attempt to crack them open by dropping them on rocks. An eagle mistook Aeschylus’ head for a rock (he was bald) and dropped it on him instead.
Jim Fixx
Author of the best selling “Complete Book of Running,” which started the jogging craze of the 1970s.
How he died: A heart attack….while jogging Fixx was visiting Greensboro, Vermont when he walked out of his house and began jogging. He’d only gone a short distance when he had a massive coronary. His autopsy revealed that one of his coronary arteries was 99% clogged, another was 80% obstructed, and a third was 70% blocked….and that Fixx had had three other attacks in the weeks prior to his death.
Issue of the Times;
Goodbye Middle Class by Michael Snyder
51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year
We just got more evidence that the middle class in America is dying. According to brand new numbers that were just released by the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $30,000 a year. Let that number sink in for a moment. You can’t support a middle class family in America today on just $2,500 a month – especially after taxes are taken out. And yet more than half of all workers in this country make less than that each month. In order to have a thriving middle class, you have got to have an economy that produces lots of middle class jobs, and that simply is not happening in America today.
You can find the report that the Social Security Administration just released right here. The following are some of the numbers that really stood out for me…
-38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.
-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.
-62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.
-71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.
That first number is truly staggering. The federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, and yet almost 40 percent of all American workers do not even bring in $20,000 a year.
If you worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you would make approximately $20,000. This should tell you something about the quality of the jobs that our economy is producing at this point.
And of course the numbers above are only for those that are actually working. As I discussed just recently, there are 7.9 million working age Americans that are “officially unemployed” right now and another 94.7 million working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force”. When you add those two numbers together, you get a grand total of 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.
So many people that I know are barely scraping by right now. Many families have to fight tooth and nail just to make it from month to month, and there are lots of Americans that find themselves sinking deeper and deeper into debt.
If you can believe it, about a quarter of the country actually has a negative net worth right now.
What that means is that if you have no debt and you also have ten dollars in your pocket that gives you a greater net worth than about 25 percent of the entire country. The following comes from a recent piece by Simon Black…
Credit Suisse estimates that 25% of Americans are in this situation of having a negative net-worth.
“If you’ve no debts and have $10 in your pocket you have more wealth than 25% of Americans. More than 25% of Americans have collectively that is.”
The thing is– not only did the government create the incentives, but they set the standard.
With a net worth of negative $60 trillion, US citizens are just following dutifully in the government’s footsteps.
As a nation we are flat broke and most of us are living paycheck to paycheck. It has been estimated that it takes approximately $50,000 a year to support a middle class lifestyle for a family of four in the U.S. today, and so the fact that 71 percent of all workers make less than that amount shows how difficult it is for families that try to get by with just a single breadwinner.
Needless to say, a tremendous squeeze has been put on the middle class. In many families, both the husband and the wife are working as hard as they can, but it is still not enough. With each passing day, more Americans are losing their spots in the middle class and this has pushed government dependence to an all-time high. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans now live in a home that receives money from the government each month.
Sadly, the trends that are destroying the middle class in America just continue to accelerate.
With a huge assist from the Republican leadership in Congress, Barack Obama recently completed negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Also known as Obamatrade, this insidious new treaty is going to cover nations that collectively account for 40 percent of global GDP. Just like NAFTA, this treaty will result in the loss of thousands of businesses and millions of good paying American jobs. Let us hope and pray that Congress somehow votes it down.
Another thing that is working against the middle class is the fact that technology is increasingly taking over our jobs. With each passing year, it becomes cheaper and more efficient to have computers, robots and machines do things that humans once did.
Eventually, there will be very few things that humans will be able to do more cheaply and more efficiently than computers, robots and machines. How will most of us make a living when that happens?…
The robopocalypse for workers may be inevitable. In this vision of the future, super-smart machines will best humans in pretty much every task. A few of us will own the machines, a few will work a bit… while the rest will live off a government-provided income…the most common job in most U.S. states probably will no longer be truck driver.
For decades, we have been training our young people to have the goal of “getting a job” once they get out into the real world. But in America today there are not nearly enough good jobs to go around, and this crisis is only going to accelerate as we move into the future.
I do not believe that it is wise to pin your future on a corporation that could replace you with a foreign worker or a machine the moment that it becomes expedient to do so. We need to start thinking differently, because the paradigms that worked in the past are fundamentally breaking down.
Quote of the Times;
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants. – Camus
Link of the Times;
http://www.infowars.com/video-13-year-old-black-kid-lays-the-smack-down-on-obama-in-epic-rant/
Gruesome?
It's back to court again this week.
Oh joy.
I was thinking the lawyer could get me off on an insanity plea.
It worked.
When I saw his bill I went insane.
*.*
Syrian Teen Builds Clock, Beheaded For Witchcraft
DAYR AL-ZAWR, Syria — Syrian teenager Sami Halaseh was beheaded for witchcraft yesterday after he built a clock and and brought it into his bomb-making school, according to The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The 9th grader at former Ali Ibrahim Mohammad Secondary Madrasa was accused and convicted of creating a digital clock from a U.S. Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) box at his English-speaking jihadi academy, sources said.
Witnesses — who did not wish to be identified — claimed that that it was a simple but unfortunate misunderstanding after the “jihadi prodigy” brought a revolutionary new IED to school — an invention he called a “time-bomb.” Sources report that Halaseh had been working on it since the U.S. Air Force over-shot a Sinjar Mountain resupply drop by over 250 miles last year.
“They immediately reacted as if it were a clock,” one source said. “He just kept saying: ‘It’s not a clock. It’s a bomb!’ But they didn’t believe him.”
Instructors originally grew suspicious after Halaseh did not publicly denounce the “whiz-kid” title his classmates bestowed upon him in their “Basic IED” class. For his tacit usurpation of Allah’s rightful authority as “the one, true God,” instructors imprisoned Halaseh for his insolence. It was at the end of many torture sessions instructors finally analyzed the otherworldly device, and noticed numbers moving sequentially, when they assumed the worst.
“Even when they hung him from the ceiling and beat him with broomsticks, he was adamant that it was a bomb all the way until the end,” the source said.
The Islamic State, which beheaded four other heretics for witchcraft earlier this summer, officially stated that they will not tolerate any device that attempts to understand or quantify the will of Allah, even if it means measuring the span of events or periods between them.
“Unless it somehow furthers our interest of crushing the Zionist state of Israel or the Western devils of the United States, the Islamic State views all deviations from jihadism, whether of an artistic, technological, or scientific nature, as the highest form of apostasy,” said ISIS spokesman Jussain Al Zahabi. “We draw a literal and figurative line in the sand when it comes to individuals under ISIS rule ‘trying to play God.'”
“Except Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” said Al Zahabi. “He gets to do whatever he wants.”
In related news, Al-Baghdadi expressed his sincere condolences via Twitter after 35 ISIS fighters were killed in the jihadi teacher’s lounge when Halaseh’s clock detonated as scheduled.
*.*
Customer: There's something wrong with my dog. Every time the doorbell rings he runs and sits in the corner.
Veterinarian: That's normal, he's a boxer.
*.*
There is no "i" in team.
There is however an "i" in 'win', 'achievement', 'prevail', 'triumph', 'first place', 'gold medalist' and 'champion'.
*.*
Just before the funeral services, the undertaker
Came up to the very elderly widow and asked,
'How old was your husband?'
'96,' she replied: 'Two years younger than me'
'So you're 98,' the undertaker commented.
She responded, 'Not hardly worth going home, is it?'
Issue of the Times;
The Gruesome Story of a Murdered Tennessee Couple You May Have Never Heard: But That You Will Never Forget by Jason Howerton
After a radio caller made him aware of the extremely disturbing story of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian in Knoxville, Tenn., Glenn Beck researched the case and was horrified at what he found. Though the details are hard to hear, Beck told the couple’s story in excruciating detail during his show on TheBlaze TV Tuesday. The killings occurred in 2007; however, Beck says the media failed to give the case adequate coverage due to special interests or negligence.
On January 6, 2007, the couple made plans to watch a movie at a friend’s apartment, but they never made it. They would never be seen alive again. When Christian didn’t show up for work the next morning, family members immediately grew worried and reported them missing, Beck explained.
“It turns out that the couple had made it to dinner, but when they arrived at the apartment complex where Christian’s best friends lived, they were carjacked by multiple assailants,” he said. “What followed was one of the most heinous, gruesome, senseless hate crimes, ever.”
It was at this point in the program that Beck advised parents to have their children leave the room or pause the show and watch it at a later time due to the graphic details of the story.
Newsom was gagged with a sock in his mouth, his ankles were bound with his own belt, his hands were tied behind his back, his face was covered with a bandana and his head covered with a sweatshirt that his five assailants had tied around his neck with shoestrings. He was then violently raped with an object and beaten.
“One can only imagine the horror Christopher experienced as he was then forced to walk barefoot to the nearby railroad tracks, where he was shot in the neck in the back,” Beck said solemnly. “But the shots didn’t kill him — he fell to the ground and was paralyzed.”
“That’s when the assailants stood over him, placed the gun against his head and fired, killing him execution style,” he added. Newsom was shot a total of three times.
But not even that was enough. The attackers then poured gasoline on his body and set him on fire.
Unfortunately, the horror of this tragic story is not over. Beck went on to speak of what also happened to Christian on that night.
The woman was forced into a back room of the house where she was hog-tied with a strips of fabric from a bedding set. She was brutally raped “in every possible way imaginable” for several hours as the assailants beat her viciously with several objects, including a broken chair leg.
By the time Christian was taken into the living room, the five attackers realized they had left their DNA on their victim. In an attempt to cover their tracks, they poured bleach down her throat and on her body before they wrapped her body in black garbage bags and covered her head in a plastic grocery bag.
“She was then placed in a garbage can in the kitchen of the house — all of this while she was still alive,” Beck noted.
“Channon Christian’s last minutes on earth were spent slowly suffocating in a garbage can after she had been savagely beaten and raped for hours,” he added.
Beck slammed “so-called” civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for failing to demand justice in the brutal case. He criticized the media just as harshly for failing to give the story the coverage it deserved.
Meanwhile, the pursuit of justice for the family of the victims has also been elusive.
All five suspects in the case had been charged and convicted for the crime when it was discovered that the judge had a drug addiction, allowing the killers to take advantage of the justice system. “All but one has been repeatedly pursuing retrials and appeals,” Beck explained. “The lone female attacker had her sentence reduced by a third.”
Beck continued: “This miscarriage of justice is forcing the family to live this horror over and over and over again each time they are dragged back into a court battle.”
Real “social justice,” the host added, will only be achieved when justice is truly blind.
The five attackers are Lemaricus Davidson, Letalvis Cobbins, George Thomas, Vanessa Coleman and Eric Boyd. All of the previous state convictions, except for Coleman’s, were allowed to stand and the defendants remain in prison pending appeals. Coleman had her sentence reduced by a third after a retrial.
Quote of the Times;
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome." - Churchill
Link of the Times;
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/64915/
Oh joy.
I was thinking the lawyer could get me off on an insanity plea.
It worked.
When I saw his bill I went insane.
*.*
Syrian Teen Builds Clock, Beheaded For Witchcraft
DAYR AL-ZAWR, Syria — Syrian teenager Sami Halaseh was beheaded for witchcraft yesterday after he built a clock and and brought it into his bomb-making school, according to The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The 9th grader at former Ali Ibrahim Mohammad Secondary Madrasa was accused and convicted of creating a digital clock from a U.S. Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) box at his English-speaking jihadi academy, sources said.
Witnesses — who did not wish to be identified — claimed that that it was a simple but unfortunate misunderstanding after the “jihadi prodigy” brought a revolutionary new IED to school — an invention he called a “time-bomb.” Sources report that Halaseh had been working on it since the U.S. Air Force over-shot a Sinjar Mountain resupply drop by over 250 miles last year.
“They immediately reacted as if it were a clock,” one source said. “He just kept saying: ‘It’s not a clock. It’s a bomb!’ But they didn’t believe him.”
Instructors originally grew suspicious after Halaseh did not publicly denounce the “whiz-kid” title his classmates bestowed upon him in their “Basic IED” class. For his tacit usurpation of Allah’s rightful authority as “the one, true God,” instructors imprisoned Halaseh for his insolence. It was at the end of many torture sessions instructors finally analyzed the otherworldly device, and noticed numbers moving sequentially, when they assumed the worst.
“Even when they hung him from the ceiling and beat him with broomsticks, he was adamant that it was a bomb all the way until the end,” the source said.
The Islamic State, which beheaded four other heretics for witchcraft earlier this summer, officially stated that they will not tolerate any device that attempts to understand or quantify the will of Allah, even if it means measuring the span of events or periods between them.
“Unless it somehow furthers our interest of crushing the Zionist state of Israel or the Western devils of the United States, the Islamic State views all deviations from jihadism, whether of an artistic, technological, or scientific nature, as the highest form of apostasy,” said ISIS spokesman Jussain Al Zahabi. “We draw a literal and figurative line in the sand when it comes to individuals under ISIS rule ‘trying to play God.'”
“Except Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” said Al Zahabi. “He gets to do whatever he wants.”
In related news, Al-Baghdadi expressed his sincere condolences via Twitter after 35 ISIS fighters were killed in the jihadi teacher’s lounge when Halaseh’s clock detonated as scheduled.
*.*
Customer: There's something wrong with my dog. Every time the doorbell rings he runs and sits in the corner.
Veterinarian: That's normal, he's a boxer.
*.*
There is no "i" in team.
There is however an "i" in 'win', 'achievement', 'prevail', 'triumph', 'first place', 'gold medalist' and 'champion'.
*.*
Just before the funeral services, the undertaker
Came up to the very elderly widow and asked,
'How old was your husband?'
'96,' she replied: 'Two years younger than me'
'So you're 98,' the undertaker commented.
She responded, 'Not hardly worth going home, is it?'
Issue of the Times;
The Gruesome Story of a Murdered Tennessee Couple You May Have Never Heard: But That You Will Never Forget by Jason Howerton
After a radio caller made him aware of the extremely disturbing story of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian in Knoxville, Tenn., Glenn Beck researched the case and was horrified at what he found. Though the details are hard to hear, Beck told the couple’s story in excruciating detail during his show on TheBlaze TV Tuesday. The killings occurred in 2007; however, Beck says the media failed to give the case adequate coverage due to special interests or negligence.
On January 6, 2007, the couple made plans to watch a movie at a friend’s apartment, but they never made it. They would never be seen alive again. When Christian didn’t show up for work the next morning, family members immediately grew worried and reported them missing, Beck explained.
“It turns out that the couple had made it to dinner, but when they arrived at the apartment complex where Christian’s best friends lived, they were carjacked by multiple assailants,” he said. “What followed was one of the most heinous, gruesome, senseless hate crimes, ever.”
It was at this point in the program that Beck advised parents to have their children leave the room or pause the show and watch it at a later time due to the graphic details of the story.
Newsom was gagged with a sock in his mouth, his ankles were bound with his own belt, his hands were tied behind his back, his face was covered with a bandana and his head covered with a sweatshirt that his five assailants had tied around his neck with shoestrings. He was then violently raped with an object and beaten.
“One can only imagine the horror Christopher experienced as he was then forced to walk barefoot to the nearby railroad tracks, where he was shot in the neck in the back,” Beck said solemnly. “But the shots didn’t kill him — he fell to the ground and was paralyzed.”
“That’s when the assailants stood over him, placed the gun against his head and fired, killing him execution style,” he added. Newsom was shot a total of three times.
But not even that was enough. The attackers then poured gasoline on his body and set him on fire.
Unfortunately, the horror of this tragic story is not over. Beck went on to speak of what also happened to Christian on that night.
The woman was forced into a back room of the house where she was hog-tied with a strips of fabric from a bedding set. She was brutally raped “in every possible way imaginable” for several hours as the assailants beat her viciously with several objects, including a broken chair leg.
By the time Christian was taken into the living room, the five attackers realized they had left their DNA on their victim. In an attempt to cover their tracks, they poured bleach down her throat and on her body before they wrapped her body in black garbage bags and covered her head in a plastic grocery bag.
“She was then placed in a garbage can in the kitchen of the house — all of this while she was still alive,” Beck noted.
“Channon Christian’s last minutes on earth were spent slowly suffocating in a garbage can after she had been savagely beaten and raped for hours,” he added.
Beck slammed “so-called” civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for failing to demand justice in the brutal case. He criticized the media just as harshly for failing to give the story the coverage it deserved.
Meanwhile, the pursuit of justice for the family of the victims has also been elusive.
All five suspects in the case had been charged and convicted for the crime when it was discovered that the judge had a drug addiction, allowing the killers to take advantage of the justice system. “All but one has been repeatedly pursuing retrials and appeals,” Beck explained. “The lone female attacker had her sentence reduced by a third.”
Beck continued: “This miscarriage of justice is forcing the family to live this horror over and over and over again each time they are dragged back into a court battle.”
Real “social justice,” the host added, will only be achieved when justice is truly blind.
The five attackers are Lemaricus Davidson, Letalvis Cobbins, George Thomas, Vanessa Coleman and Eric Boyd. All of the previous state convictions, except for Coleman’s, were allowed to stand and the defendants remain in prison pending appeals. Coleman had her sentence reduced by a third after a retrial.
Quote of the Times;
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome." - Churchill
Link of the Times;
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/64915/
Iraq?
In an effort to cheer up Hillary, someone should reminded her that Nelson Mandela wasn't elected president until after he had served 27 years in prison.
*.*
Seniors.
Wouldn't it be great if we could put ourselves in the dryer for ten minutes; come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller!
I don't need anger management. I need people to stop making me mad!
Old age is coming at a really bad time!
The biggest lie I tell myself is..."I don't need to write that down, I'll remember it."
Lord grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can & the friends to post my bail when I finally snap!
The kids’ text me "plz," which is shorter than please. I text back "no" which is shorter than "yes."
I'm going to retire and live off of my savings. Not sure what I'll do that second week.
Why do I have to press one for English when you're just gonna transfer me to someone I can't understand anyway?
*.*
World Begs U.S. To Use Military Force in Syria So They Can Bitch About It Later
NEW YORK — World leaders met at the United Nations today to beg the United States to use military force to stem the ever-growing humanitarian disaster in Syria, knowing full well they will then turn around and blame the US shortly thereafter.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, “We call upon the world’s greatest nation — the United States — to help bring peace to this terrible civil war, because, fuck it, none of us want to.”
“And the best part is, when this whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket — which, quite frankly, happens almost every time you intervene in a multi-sided civil war in a God-forsaken third-world country — none of us are responsible for it!” Ki-Moon added.
The “Blame America First” policy is a time-honored tradition in international relations, dating back to the outrage over the US Air Force’s targeted bombing campaign against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, followed by consternation over America’s idleness while the same Khmer Rouge murdered millions of their own countrymen.
“It’s pretty shameful, but hey, it got me a Pulitzer prize,” said Sydney Schanberg, whose two-faced coverage of the war in Cambodia in the New York Times inspired the Oscar-winning film, The Killing Fields.
“Amateurs tend to blame America first and then they’re done with it,” said anti-war MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. “Just this past week, Vox’s Amanda Taub blamed the U.S. for the entire Syrian Civil War instead of blaming, well, the Syrians themselves.”
“But that’s the type of ‘Blame America First’ coverage that gets you a few thousand clicks at best,” Chomsky continued. “If you really want Oscars, Pulitzers, and charity donations, you have to sucker the US into intervening, then blame America!”
“Just look at Somalia: Send the U.S. military to help deal with a famine, then, boom! A firefight, a downed Black Hawk helicopter, and before you know it, a blockbuster movie from Michael Bay!” he concluded.
Schanberg pointed to the fact the “Blame America First” strategy hasn’t always mired America in pointless tribal conflicts.
“We thought we had a real winner with the whole ‘Stop Kony’ campaign, and even the whole ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ thing. But the US just responded with a whole bunch of Twitter hashtags,” Schanberg said.
“Which just goes to show you, for Obama, black lives just don’t matter, I guess.”
British Labour Party candidate Jeremy Corbyn had already prepared a statement denouncing U.S. actions should it, indeed, be suckered into sending military forces to resolve the Syrian refugee crisis.
“The U.S. has flagrantly placed its flag all throughout the world: invading Iraq, Afghanistan,” Corbyn said. “Just who do they think they are? Britain?”
*.*
I'm Glad I'm A Man
I'm glad I'm a man, you better believe.
I don't live off of yogurt, diet coke, or cottage cheese
I don't bitch to my girlfriends about the size of my breasts
I can get where I want to - north, south, east or west
I don't get wasted after only 2 beers
and when I do drink I don't end up in tears.
I won't spend hours deciding what to wear,
I spend 5 minutes max fixing my hair
and I don't go around checking my reflection
in everything shiny from every direction.
I don't whine in public and make us leave early
then when you ask "why", get all bitter and surly.
I'm glad I'm a man, I'm so glad I could sing
I don't have to sit around waiting for that ring.
I don't gossip about friends or stab them in the back
I don't carry our differences into the sack.
I'll never go psycho and threaten to kill you
or think every guy out there's trying to steal you.
I'm rational, reasonable, and logical too
I know what the time is and I know what to do.
And I honestly think its a privilege for me
to have these two balls and stand when I pee
I live to watch sports and play all sorts of ball
It's more fun than dealing with women after all
I won't cry if you figure out it's not going to work
I won't remain bitter and call you a jerk.
Feel free to use me for immediate pleasure
I won't assume it's permanent by any measure.
Yes, I'm glad I'm a man, a man you see
I'm glad I'm not capable of child delivery
I don't get all bitchy every 28 days
I'm glad that my gender gets me a much bigger raise
I'm a man by chance and I'm thankful it's true
I'm so glad I'm a man and not a woman like you!
*.*
I'm Glad I'm A Woman
I'm glad I'm a woman, yes I am, yes I am
I don't live off of Budweiser, beer nuts and Spam
I don't brag to my buddies about my erections
I won't drive to Hell before I ask for directions
I don't get wasted at parties and act like a clown
and I know how to put the damned toilet seat down!
I won't grab your hooters, I won't pinch your butt
my belt buckle's not hidden beneath my beer gut
and I don't go around "readjusting" my crotch
or yell like Tarzan when my head-board gets a notch
I don't belch in public, I don't scratch my behind
I'm a woman you see -- I'm just not that kind!
I'm glad I'm a woman, I'm so glad I could sing
I don't have body hair like shag carpeting
It doesn't grow from my ears or cover my back
When I lean over you can't see 3 inches of crack
And what's on my head doesn't leave with my comb
I'll never buy a toupee to cover my dome
Or have a few hairs pulled from over the side
I'm a woman, you know -- I've got far too much pride!
And I honestly think its a privilege for me
to have these two boobs and squat when I pee
I don't live to play golf and shoot basketball
I don't swagger and spit like a Neanderthal
I won't tell you my wife just does not understand
stick my hand in my pocket to hide that gold band
or tell you a story to make you sigh and weep
then screw you, roll over and fall sound asleep!
Yes, I'm glad I'm a woman, a woman you see
you can forget all about that old penis envy
I don't long for male bonding, I don't cruise for chicks
join the Hair Club For Men, or think with my dick
I'm a woman by chance and I'm thankful it's true
I'm so glad I'm a woman and not a man like you!
Issue of the Times;
In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided Me By Alex Horton
Alex Horton is a member of the Defense Council at the Truman National Security Project. He served as an infantryman in Iraq with the Army’s 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.
I got home from the bar and fell into bed soon after Saturday night bled into Sunday morning. I didn’t wake up until three police officers barged into my apartment, barking their presence at my door. They sped down the hallway to my bedroom, their service pistols drawn and leveled at me.
It was just past 9 a.m., and I was still under the covers. The only visible target was my head.
In the shouting and commotion, I felt an instant familiarity. I’d been here before. This was a raid.
I had done this a few dozen times myself, 6,000 miles away from my Alexandria, Va., apartment. As an Army infantryman in Iraq, I’d always been on the trigger side of the weapon. Now that I was on the barrel side, I recalled basic training’s most important firearm rule: Aim only at something you intend to kill.
I had conducted the same kind of raid on suspected bombmakers and high-value insurgents. But the Fairfax County officers in my apartment were aiming their weapons at a target whose rap sheet consisted only of parking tickets and an overdue library book.
My situation was terrifying. Lying facedown in bed, I knew that any move I made could be viewed as a threat. Instinct told me to get up and protect myself. Training told me that if I did, these officers would shoot me dead.
In a panic, I asked the officers what was going on but got no immediate answer. Their tactics were similar to the ones I used to clear rooms during the height of guerilla warfare in Iraq. I could almost admire it — their fluid sweep from the bedroom doorway to the distant corner. They stayed clear of one another’s lines of fire in case they needed to empty their Sig Sauer .40-caliber pistols into me.
They were well-trained, their supervisor later told me. But I knew that means little when adrenaline governs an imminent-danger scenario, real or imagined. Triggers are pulled. Mistakes are made.
I spread my arms out to either side. An officer jumped onto my bed and locked handcuffs onto my wrists. The officers rolled me from side to side, searching my boxers for weapons, then yanked me up to sit on the edge of the bed.
At first, I was stunned. I searched my memory for any incident that would justify a police raid. Then it clicked.
Earlier in the week, the managers of my apartment complex moved me to a model unit while a crew repaired a leak in my dishwasher. But they hadn’t informed my temporary neighbors. So when one resident noticed the door slightly cracked open to what he presumed was an unoccupied apartment, he looked in, saw me sleeping and called the police to report a squatter.
Sitting on the edge of the bed dressed only in underwear, I laughed. The situation was ludicrous and embarrassing. My only mistake had been failing to make sure the apartment door was completely closed before I threw myself into bed the night before.
I told the officers to check my driver’s license, nodding toward my khaki pants on the floor. It showed my address at a unit in the same complex. As the fog of their chaotic entry lifted, the officers realized it had been an unfortunate error. They walked me into the living room and removed the cuffs, though two continued to stand over me as the third contacted management to confirm my story. Once they were satisfied, they left.
When I later visited the Fairfax County police station to gather details about what went wrong, I met the shift commander, Lt. Erik Rhoads. I asked why his officers hadn’t contacted management before they raided the apartment. Why did they classify the incident as a forced entry, when the information they had suggested something innocuous? Why not evaluate the situation before escalating it?
Rhoads defended the procedure, calling the officers’ actions “on point.” It’s not standard to conduct investigations beforehand because that delays the apprehension of suspects, he told me.
I noted that the officers could have sought information from the apartment complex’s security guard that would have resolved the matter without violence. But he played down the importance of such information: “It doesn’t matter whatsoever what was said or not said at the security booth.”
This is where Rhoads is wrong. We’ve seen this troubling approach to law enforcement nationwide, in militarized police responses to nonviolent protesters and in fatal police shootings of unarmed citizens. The culture that encourages police officers to engage their weapons before gathering information promotes the mind-set that nothing, including citizen safety, is more important than officers’ personal security. That approach has caused public trust in law enforcement to deteriorate.
It’s the same culture that characterized the early phases of the Iraq war, in which I served a 15-month tour in 2006 and 2007. Soldiers left their sprawling bases in armored vehicles, leveling buildings with missile strikes and shooting up entire blocks during gun battles with insurgents, only to return to their protected bases and do it all again hours later.
The short-sighted notion that we should always protect ourselves endangered us more in the long term. It was a flawed strategy that could often create more insurgents than it stopped and inspired some Iraqis to hate us rather than help us.
In one instance in Baghdad, a stray round landed in a compound that our unit was building. An overzealous officer decided that we were under attack and ordered machine guns and grenade launchers to shoot at distant rooftops. A row of buildings caught fire, and we left our compound on foot, seeking to capture any injured fighters by entering structures choked with flames.
Instead, we found a man frantically pulling his furniture out of his house. “Thank you for your security!” he yelled in perfect English. He pointed to the billowing smoke. “This is what you call security?”
We didn’t find any insurgents. There weren’t any. But it was easy to imagine that we forged some in that fire. Similarly, when U.S. police officers use excessive force to control nonviolent citizens or respond to minor incidents, they lose supporters and public trust.
That’s a problem, because law enforcement officers need the cooperation of the communities they patrol in order to do their jobs effectively. In the early stages of the war, the U.S. military overlooked that reality as well. Leaders defined success as increasing military hold on geographic terrain, while the human terrain was the real battle. For example, when our platoon entered Iraq’s volatile Diyala province in early 2007, children at a school plugged their ears just before an IED exploded beneath one of our vehicles. The kids knew what was coming, but they saw no reason to warn us. Instead, they watched us drive right into the ambush. One of our men died, and in the subsequent crossfire, several insurgents and children were killed. We saw Iraqis cheering and dancing at the blast crater as we left the area hours later.
With the U.S. effort in Iraq faltering, Gen. David Petraeus unveiled a new counterinsurgency strategy that year. He believed that showing more restraint during gunfights would help foster Iraqis’ trust in U.S. forces and that forming better relationships with civilians would improve our intelligence-gathering. We refined our warrior mentality — the one that directed us to protect ourselves above all else — with a community-building component.
My unit began to patrol on foot almost exclusively, which was exceptionally more dangerous than staying inside our armored vehicles. We relinquished much of our personal security by entering dimly lit homes in insurgent strongholds. We didn’t know if the hand we would shake at each door held a detonator to a suicide vest or a small glass of hot, sugary tea.
But as a result, we better understood our environment and earned the allegiance of some people in it. The benefits quickly became clear. One day during that bloody summer, insurgents loaded a car with hundreds of pounds of explosives and parked it by a school. They knew we searched every building for hidden weapons caches, and they waited for us to gather near the car. But as we turned the corner to head toward the school, several Iraqis told us about the danger. We evacuated civilians from the area and called in a helicopter gunship to fire at the vehicle.
The resulting explosion pulverized half the building and blasted the car’s engine block through two cement walls. Shrapnel dropped like jagged hail as far as a quarter-mile away.
If we had not risked our safety by patrolling the neighborhood on foot, trusting our sources and gathering intelligence, it would have been a massacre. But no one was hurt in the blast.
Domestic police forces would benefit from a similar change in strategy. Instead of relying on aggression, they should rely more on relationships. Rather than responding to a squatter call with guns raised, they should knock on the door and extend a hand. But unfortunately, my encounter with officers is just one in a stream of recent examples of police placing their own safety ahead of those they’re sworn to serve and protect.
Rhoads, the Fairfax County police lieutenant, was upfront about this mind-set. He explained that it was standard procedure to point guns at suspects in many cases to protect the lives of police officers. Their firearm rules were different from mine; they aimed not to kill but to intimidate. According to reporting by The Washington Post, those rules are established in police training, which often emphasizes a violent response over deescalation. Recruits spend an average of eight hours learning how to neutralize tense situations; they spend more than seven times as many hours at the weapons range.
Of course, officers’ safety is vital, and they’re entitled to defend themselves and the communities they serve. But they’re failing to see the connection between their aggressive postures and the hostility they’ve encountered in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and other communities. When you level assault rifles at protesters, you create animosity. When you kill an unarmed man on his own property while his hands are raised — as Fairfax County police did in 2013 — you sow distrust. And when you threaten to Taser a woman during a routine traffic stop (as happened to 28-year-old Sandra Bland, who died in a Texas jail this month), you cultivate a fear of police. This makes policing more dangerous for everyone.
I understood the risks of war when I enlisted as an infantryman. Police officers should understand the risks in their jobs when they enroll in the academy, as well. That means knowing that personal safety can’t always come first. That is why it’s service. That’s why it’s sacrifice.
Quote of the Times;
Most things which are urgent are not important, and most things which are important are not urgent. - Eisenhower
Link of the Times;
http://madworldnews.com/blue-strip-curb-reason/
*.*
Seniors.
Wouldn't it be great if we could put ourselves in the dryer for ten minutes; come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller!
I don't need anger management. I need people to stop making me mad!
Old age is coming at a really bad time!
The biggest lie I tell myself is..."I don't need to write that down, I'll remember it."
Lord grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can & the friends to post my bail when I finally snap!
The kids’ text me "plz," which is shorter than please. I text back "no" which is shorter than "yes."
I'm going to retire and live off of my savings. Not sure what I'll do that second week.
Why do I have to press one for English when you're just gonna transfer me to someone I can't understand anyway?
*.*
World Begs U.S. To Use Military Force in Syria So They Can Bitch About It Later
NEW YORK — World leaders met at the United Nations today to beg the United States to use military force to stem the ever-growing humanitarian disaster in Syria, knowing full well they will then turn around and blame the US shortly thereafter.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, “We call upon the world’s greatest nation — the United States — to help bring peace to this terrible civil war, because, fuck it, none of us want to.”
“And the best part is, when this whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket — which, quite frankly, happens almost every time you intervene in a multi-sided civil war in a God-forsaken third-world country — none of us are responsible for it!” Ki-Moon added.
The “Blame America First” policy is a time-honored tradition in international relations, dating back to the outrage over the US Air Force’s targeted bombing campaign against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, followed by consternation over America’s idleness while the same Khmer Rouge murdered millions of their own countrymen.
“It’s pretty shameful, but hey, it got me a Pulitzer prize,” said Sydney Schanberg, whose two-faced coverage of the war in Cambodia in the New York Times inspired the Oscar-winning film, The Killing Fields.
“Amateurs tend to blame America first and then they’re done with it,” said anti-war MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. “Just this past week, Vox’s Amanda Taub blamed the U.S. for the entire Syrian Civil War instead of blaming, well, the Syrians themselves.”
“But that’s the type of ‘Blame America First’ coverage that gets you a few thousand clicks at best,” Chomsky continued. “If you really want Oscars, Pulitzers, and charity donations, you have to sucker the US into intervening, then blame America!”
“Just look at Somalia: Send the U.S. military to help deal with a famine, then, boom! A firefight, a downed Black Hawk helicopter, and before you know it, a blockbuster movie from Michael Bay!” he concluded.
Schanberg pointed to the fact the “Blame America First” strategy hasn’t always mired America in pointless tribal conflicts.
“We thought we had a real winner with the whole ‘Stop Kony’ campaign, and even the whole ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ thing. But the US just responded with a whole bunch of Twitter hashtags,” Schanberg said.
“Which just goes to show you, for Obama, black lives just don’t matter, I guess.”
British Labour Party candidate Jeremy Corbyn had already prepared a statement denouncing U.S. actions should it, indeed, be suckered into sending military forces to resolve the Syrian refugee crisis.
“The U.S. has flagrantly placed its flag all throughout the world: invading Iraq, Afghanistan,” Corbyn said. “Just who do they think they are? Britain?”
*.*
I'm Glad I'm A Man
I'm glad I'm a man, you better believe.
I don't live off of yogurt, diet coke, or cottage cheese
I don't bitch to my girlfriends about the size of my breasts
I can get where I want to - north, south, east or west
I don't get wasted after only 2 beers
and when I do drink I don't end up in tears.
I won't spend hours deciding what to wear,
I spend 5 minutes max fixing my hair
and I don't go around checking my reflection
in everything shiny from every direction.
I don't whine in public and make us leave early
then when you ask "why", get all bitter and surly.
I'm glad I'm a man, I'm so glad I could sing
I don't have to sit around waiting for that ring.
I don't gossip about friends or stab them in the back
I don't carry our differences into the sack.
I'll never go psycho and threaten to kill you
or think every guy out there's trying to steal you.
I'm rational, reasonable, and logical too
I know what the time is and I know what to do.
And I honestly think its a privilege for me
to have these two balls and stand when I pee
I live to watch sports and play all sorts of ball
It's more fun than dealing with women after all
I won't cry if you figure out it's not going to work
I won't remain bitter and call you a jerk.
Feel free to use me for immediate pleasure
I won't assume it's permanent by any measure.
Yes, I'm glad I'm a man, a man you see
I'm glad I'm not capable of child delivery
I don't get all bitchy every 28 days
I'm glad that my gender gets me a much bigger raise
I'm a man by chance and I'm thankful it's true
I'm so glad I'm a man and not a woman like you!
*.*
I'm Glad I'm A Woman
I'm glad I'm a woman, yes I am, yes I am
I don't live off of Budweiser, beer nuts and Spam
I don't brag to my buddies about my erections
I won't drive to Hell before I ask for directions
I don't get wasted at parties and act like a clown
and I know how to put the damned toilet seat down!
I won't grab your hooters, I won't pinch your butt
my belt buckle's not hidden beneath my beer gut
and I don't go around "readjusting" my crotch
or yell like Tarzan when my head-board gets a notch
I don't belch in public, I don't scratch my behind
I'm a woman you see -- I'm just not that kind!
I'm glad I'm a woman, I'm so glad I could sing
I don't have body hair like shag carpeting
It doesn't grow from my ears or cover my back
When I lean over you can't see 3 inches of crack
And what's on my head doesn't leave with my comb
I'll never buy a toupee to cover my dome
Or have a few hairs pulled from over the side
I'm a woman, you know -- I've got far too much pride!
And I honestly think its a privilege for me
to have these two boobs and squat when I pee
I don't live to play golf and shoot basketball
I don't swagger and spit like a Neanderthal
I won't tell you my wife just does not understand
stick my hand in my pocket to hide that gold band
or tell you a story to make you sigh and weep
then screw you, roll over and fall sound asleep!
Yes, I'm glad I'm a woman, a woman you see
you can forget all about that old penis envy
I don't long for male bonding, I don't cruise for chicks
join the Hair Club For Men, or think with my dick
I'm a woman by chance and I'm thankful it's true
I'm so glad I'm a woman and not a man like you!
Issue of the Times;
In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided Me By Alex Horton
Alex Horton is a member of the Defense Council at the Truman National Security Project. He served as an infantryman in Iraq with the Army’s 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.
I got home from the bar and fell into bed soon after Saturday night bled into Sunday morning. I didn’t wake up until three police officers barged into my apartment, barking their presence at my door. They sped down the hallway to my bedroom, their service pistols drawn and leveled at me.
It was just past 9 a.m., and I was still under the covers. The only visible target was my head.
In the shouting and commotion, I felt an instant familiarity. I’d been here before. This was a raid.
I had done this a few dozen times myself, 6,000 miles away from my Alexandria, Va., apartment. As an Army infantryman in Iraq, I’d always been on the trigger side of the weapon. Now that I was on the barrel side, I recalled basic training’s most important firearm rule: Aim only at something you intend to kill.
I had conducted the same kind of raid on suspected bombmakers and high-value insurgents. But the Fairfax County officers in my apartment were aiming their weapons at a target whose rap sheet consisted only of parking tickets and an overdue library book.
My situation was terrifying. Lying facedown in bed, I knew that any move I made could be viewed as a threat. Instinct told me to get up and protect myself. Training told me that if I did, these officers would shoot me dead.
In a panic, I asked the officers what was going on but got no immediate answer. Their tactics were similar to the ones I used to clear rooms during the height of guerilla warfare in Iraq. I could almost admire it — their fluid sweep from the bedroom doorway to the distant corner. They stayed clear of one another’s lines of fire in case they needed to empty their Sig Sauer .40-caliber pistols into me.
They were well-trained, their supervisor later told me. But I knew that means little when adrenaline governs an imminent-danger scenario, real or imagined. Triggers are pulled. Mistakes are made.
I spread my arms out to either side. An officer jumped onto my bed and locked handcuffs onto my wrists. The officers rolled me from side to side, searching my boxers for weapons, then yanked me up to sit on the edge of the bed.
At first, I was stunned. I searched my memory for any incident that would justify a police raid. Then it clicked.
Earlier in the week, the managers of my apartment complex moved me to a model unit while a crew repaired a leak in my dishwasher. But they hadn’t informed my temporary neighbors. So when one resident noticed the door slightly cracked open to what he presumed was an unoccupied apartment, he looked in, saw me sleeping and called the police to report a squatter.
Sitting on the edge of the bed dressed only in underwear, I laughed. The situation was ludicrous and embarrassing. My only mistake had been failing to make sure the apartment door was completely closed before I threw myself into bed the night before.
I told the officers to check my driver’s license, nodding toward my khaki pants on the floor. It showed my address at a unit in the same complex. As the fog of their chaotic entry lifted, the officers realized it had been an unfortunate error. They walked me into the living room and removed the cuffs, though two continued to stand over me as the third contacted management to confirm my story. Once they were satisfied, they left.
When I later visited the Fairfax County police station to gather details about what went wrong, I met the shift commander, Lt. Erik Rhoads. I asked why his officers hadn’t contacted management before they raided the apartment. Why did they classify the incident as a forced entry, when the information they had suggested something innocuous? Why not evaluate the situation before escalating it?
Rhoads defended the procedure, calling the officers’ actions “on point.” It’s not standard to conduct investigations beforehand because that delays the apprehension of suspects, he told me.
I noted that the officers could have sought information from the apartment complex’s security guard that would have resolved the matter without violence. But he played down the importance of such information: “It doesn’t matter whatsoever what was said or not said at the security booth.”
This is where Rhoads is wrong. We’ve seen this troubling approach to law enforcement nationwide, in militarized police responses to nonviolent protesters and in fatal police shootings of unarmed citizens. The culture that encourages police officers to engage their weapons before gathering information promotes the mind-set that nothing, including citizen safety, is more important than officers’ personal security. That approach has caused public trust in law enforcement to deteriorate.
It’s the same culture that characterized the early phases of the Iraq war, in which I served a 15-month tour in 2006 and 2007. Soldiers left their sprawling bases in armored vehicles, leveling buildings with missile strikes and shooting up entire blocks during gun battles with insurgents, only to return to their protected bases and do it all again hours later.
The short-sighted notion that we should always protect ourselves endangered us more in the long term. It was a flawed strategy that could often create more insurgents than it stopped and inspired some Iraqis to hate us rather than help us.
In one instance in Baghdad, a stray round landed in a compound that our unit was building. An overzealous officer decided that we were under attack and ordered machine guns and grenade launchers to shoot at distant rooftops. A row of buildings caught fire, and we left our compound on foot, seeking to capture any injured fighters by entering structures choked with flames.
Instead, we found a man frantically pulling his furniture out of his house. “Thank you for your security!” he yelled in perfect English. He pointed to the billowing smoke. “This is what you call security?”
We didn’t find any insurgents. There weren’t any. But it was easy to imagine that we forged some in that fire. Similarly, when U.S. police officers use excessive force to control nonviolent citizens or respond to minor incidents, they lose supporters and public trust.
That’s a problem, because law enforcement officers need the cooperation of the communities they patrol in order to do their jobs effectively. In the early stages of the war, the U.S. military overlooked that reality as well. Leaders defined success as increasing military hold on geographic terrain, while the human terrain was the real battle. For example, when our platoon entered Iraq’s volatile Diyala province in early 2007, children at a school plugged their ears just before an IED exploded beneath one of our vehicles. The kids knew what was coming, but they saw no reason to warn us. Instead, they watched us drive right into the ambush. One of our men died, and in the subsequent crossfire, several insurgents and children were killed. We saw Iraqis cheering and dancing at the blast crater as we left the area hours later.
With the U.S. effort in Iraq faltering, Gen. David Petraeus unveiled a new counterinsurgency strategy that year. He believed that showing more restraint during gunfights would help foster Iraqis’ trust in U.S. forces and that forming better relationships with civilians would improve our intelligence-gathering. We refined our warrior mentality — the one that directed us to protect ourselves above all else — with a community-building component.
My unit began to patrol on foot almost exclusively, which was exceptionally more dangerous than staying inside our armored vehicles. We relinquished much of our personal security by entering dimly lit homes in insurgent strongholds. We didn’t know if the hand we would shake at each door held a detonator to a suicide vest or a small glass of hot, sugary tea.
But as a result, we better understood our environment and earned the allegiance of some people in it. The benefits quickly became clear. One day during that bloody summer, insurgents loaded a car with hundreds of pounds of explosives and parked it by a school. They knew we searched every building for hidden weapons caches, and they waited for us to gather near the car. But as we turned the corner to head toward the school, several Iraqis told us about the danger. We evacuated civilians from the area and called in a helicopter gunship to fire at the vehicle.
The resulting explosion pulverized half the building and blasted the car’s engine block through two cement walls. Shrapnel dropped like jagged hail as far as a quarter-mile away.
If we had not risked our safety by patrolling the neighborhood on foot, trusting our sources and gathering intelligence, it would have been a massacre. But no one was hurt in the blast.
Domestic police forces would benefit from a similar change in strategy. Instead of relying on aggression, they should rely more on relationships. Rather than responding to a squatter call with guns raised, they should knock on the door and extend a hand. But unfortunately, my encounter with officers is just one in a stream of recent examples of police placing their own safety ahead of those they’re sworn to serve and protect.
Rhoads, the Fairfax County police lieutenant, was upfront about this mind-set. He explained that it was standard procedure to point guns at suspects in many cases to protect the lives of police officers. Their firearm rules were different from mine; they aimed not to kill but to intimidate. According to reporting by The Washington Post, those rules are established in police training, which often emphasizes a violent response over deescalation. Recruits spend an average of eight hours learning how to neutralize tense situations; they spend more than seven times as many hours at the weapons range.
Of course, officers’ safety is vital, and they’re entitled to defend themselves and the communities they serve. But they’re failing to see the connection between their aggressive postures and the hostility they’ve encountered in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and other communities. When you level assault rifles at protesters, you create animosity. When you kill an unarmed man on his own property while his hands are raised — as Fairfax County police did in 2013 — you sow distrust. And when you threaten to Taser a woman during a routine traffic stop (as happened to 28-year-old Sandra Bland, who died in a Texas jail this month), you cultivate a fear of police. This makes policing more dangerous for everyone.
I understood the risks of war when I enlisted as an infantryman. Police officers should understand the risks in their jobs when they enroll in the academy, as well. That means knowing that personal safety can’t always come first. That is why it’s service. That’s why it’s sacrifice.
Quote of the Times;
Most things which are urgent are not important, and most things which are important are not urgent. - Eisenhower
Link of the Times;
http://madworldnews.com/blue-strip-curb-reason/
Several animals were savagely beaten in the making of this page, including but not limited to; kittens, rabbits, zebu, skunks, puppies, and platypus. Also several monkeys where force fed crack to improve their typing skills.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.