Archive for the 'Duncan' Category

i dunno, I am impressed. Glenn doesn’t always come across the right way in his delivery, but this impassioned speech was pretty darn good IMHO….

I’ve personally seen some of my progressive friends throw their own temper-tantrum and lament the filibuster rule in the Senate, openly proclaiming that “since when is 41 greater than 59″ and that the European’s parliamentary system doesn’t suffer from the problems our system does. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Well, Arnold Kling has a pretty good article over at the Library of Economics and Liberty entitled “The Progressive Tantrum“.

A quick taste:

Everyone agrees that the Republicans are just throwing sand in the gears of good government and not offering any ideas. What that means is that they are not offering ideas to enlarge government.

(snip)

My point here is not to champion Republicans. It is not to champion democracy. My point is that the ones throwing the temper tantrum right now are the Progressives. They think that the 2008 election gave them the right to operate like China’s autocracy, and they are lashing out hysterically at those they perceive as preventing them from doing so On the one hand, the villains are a small minority in the Senate. Or maybe the villains are the incoherent majority of the people.

The important point is that Progressives are never wrong.

Kling also has some examples of the Progressives lamentations (from a Thomas Friedman column) that we don’t have more of an authoritarian system that would allow us to bypass this troublesome system our Founders set up:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.

Seriously. Expect more of this, especially as the progressives start to see their greatest opportunity evaporate into a dissipating mist….

Chances are Marisa Miller didn’t quite know what she was getting herself into when she signed on to compete in DIRECTV’s 4th Annual Celebrity Beach Bowl during the Super Bowl festivities in Miami on Saturday. The itty bitty beauty was knocked to the ground when actor Tom Arnold (on the opposing team) out-of-nowhere decided to jump her in the early portion of the friendly game.

“All of a sudden this big, sweaty guy was on top of me,” Miller, who snagged Most Valuable Player, lamented after the game.

Ma’am, Mr. Arnold wasn’t doing what any other big, sweaty guy hasn’t thought about doing a thousand times before, he just simply had the opportunity. Lucky bastage…. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the sad part. Audi is really slamming the eco-movement in this country, and especially its influence on our government. And it is a bout time some other car company pushed another TDI onto the market as opposed to leaving Volkswagen as the only company with a viable product here in the States.

Anybody who knows me knows I am HUGE fan of Thomas Jefferson. In fact, I might be his #1 Fan!!! Anyways, I thought this was an interesting take on a popular song from one or two years ago. Besides that, who knew Jefferson could play that mean of a fiddle, plus work the crowd. Nice work on the bass Ben Franklin, BTW..

Hat tip to Ace’s Overnight Thread

“Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom, It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves” – William Pitt, before the House of Commons, Nov 18, 1783

Remember this as we deal with ObamaCare, Medicaid/Medicare, and Social Security…. amongst the plethora of social welfare programs that were “for the people”…

So perhaps Terri Schiavo did feel some extreme pain as she slowly starved and dehydrated to death at the wishes of her “husband”.

NEW YORK — Scientists have detected glimmers of awareness in some vegetative brain-injury patients and have even communicated with one of them — findings that push the boundaries of how to assess and care for such people.

The new research suggests that standard tests may overlook patients who have some consciousness, and that someday some kind of communication may be possible.

In the strongest example, a 29-year-old patient was able to answer yes-or-no questions by visualizing specific scenes the doctors asked him to imagine. The two visualizations sparked different brain activity viewed through a scanning machine.

“We were stunned when this happened,” said one study author, Martin Monti of Medical Research Council Cognitive and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England. “I find it literally amazing. This was a patient who was believed to be vegetative for five years.”

Ever since a research paper four years ago showed apparent signs of awareness in a vegetative patient — one who was included in the new study — families of patients have been clamoring for brain scans, said Dr. James Bernat of Dartmouth Medical School, a spokesman for the American Academy of Neurology.

So the “experts” said that he was in a “vegetative state”, and I’d say 5 years is pretty persistent. Yet he was able to communicate, albeit on a pretty basic “yes”/”no” level. Sounds like the brain, despite having severe damage that makes doctors believe that the person is little more than a vegetable, still can hold some form of consciousness.

Unreal, and this will hopefully lead to doctor’s being able to save the lives of patients who might otherwise meet a quite painful death at the hands of intentional negligence….

President Abraham who?

He may be the president who governed during the Civil War, freeing the slaves, but under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877.

State education leaders say this may help students learn about more recent history in greater depth.

“We are certainly not trying to go away from American history,” Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told Fox News. “What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it, where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day.”

As the North Carolina curriculum stands now, ninth-grade students take world history, 10th-graders study civics and economics and 11th-graders take U.S. history going back to the country’s founding.

Under the proposed change, the ninth-graders would take a course called global studies, focusing in part on issues such as the environment. The 10th grade still would study civics and economics, but 11th-graders would take U.S. history only from 1877 onward.

Emphasis mine.

Let me get this straight. When North Carolina Students are 16 to 17 years old, and 1 year from going out into the world, and not only that, are 1 year from VOTING, you want to take away their freshest and most adult study of our country’s history, and in fact, its founding? When they can be taught what Jefferson and Hamilton, Madison and Adams, fought for and won? What those men believed would be the best form of government?

Un. Real. But to be expected.

My favorite quote was from “Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction”:

“The students are in school for 13 years,” said Garland. “They certainly are taught U.S. and North Carolina history in middle school.”

I am sure that the 6th grade history curriculum discusses the Declaration on a Highlights for Kids level, which is pretty much where you damned hippies want to leave them. Any discussion of the Federalist Papers (noticably missing from the Highlights archives….) won’t be necessary at the 11th grade level, you see, because it was studied earlier… trust us.

This is exactly why public schools are failing. This is why one of the most important things parents can do is to be active in PTAs, be active in knowing the decisions local school boards are making, what the states boards of education are doing, and in fact, perhaps even running for one of those seats to prevent these revisionists from taking the next generation and teaching them that their exhalations are killing Mother Gaia.

I am so glad that my children are not becoming dumber by attending North Carolina schools.

A plan to take back the GOP:

We need more than feel-good Tea Parties. Do not get me wrong; the Tea Parties are great for networking and for physically demonstrating our numbers and wrath to the existing officeholders. The April 15, 2008 Tea Parties affected Obama and his minions. They first tried to ignore them. After the Tea Parties received media coverage, Obama and those who write his teleprompter scripts started to bad-mouth them. Obama’s friends in the mainstream media ridiculed the Tea Partiers. But, we need more than rallies and choir-preaching on internet blogs and web sites. Let’s face it – no Tea Party on April 15, 2008, had the numbers that Obama had at many of his rallies. Not one of those Tea Parties would have even filled up half of a Major League ball park. Those are the facts. With Twitter and Facebook, etc., those numbers increased, as we saw on 9.12.2009 in Washington, DC and around the country. But, here’s the bottom line: unless those Tea Parties translate into election victories in 2010, they are worthless.

A pretty good way to take back our country. Lets takeover the GOP and turn it into the Party of Jefferson, with the irony that the GOP inherited the reigns from the party of Adams and Hamilton. I’m going to explore this some more. Perhaps you should as well…

To unleash your inner Wolverine!

Yes people, today’s buy is the Tomahawk Skull Gauntlet!

The Product Description:

Product Description

“With this gauntlet strapped to your arm there is no question you are the man in charge! The three piercing spikes stretch 11 1/2″ long and are constructed from solid stainless steel. The palm cover is cast metal construction with unique details down to each “bone”. With an overall length of 17″, this monstrous handspike will not only protect your grip but will send your foes running in the other direction. “

Unfortunately, one reviewer (the only one that is) had this to say about the 30 bucks (plus shipping) he spent on this necessity of surviving the apocalypse:

“Its kinda cool, for a while. the skulls are so cheap and you can see how they were put on with gorila glue. A good grip… but the blades are pretty crapy. There made of stainless steel and there are just many better products. this might be cheap and great for a halloween party but not going to help you survive a zombie invasion or anything.”

Well, if it is not going to help me survive a zombie invasion…. then what good is it??!? Sheesh.

Guess I’ll just be stuck using this then

for the zombie invasion/apocalypse… or when I’m in my Shaolin temple surrounded by evil ninja assassins…

It got this review:

You need this.
To simply call it a bargain is not only an understatement, but practically an insult to my family and the shaolin temple. When innumerable henchmen are circling you in some martial arts tournament on a remote island, you aren’t going to be wondering whether your seven bucks might have been better spent on a Belle and Sebastian record or the latest Stephanie Meyer paperback. No! You’re going to be delivering an unbroken chain of perfectly placed blows as you wreck enemy after enemy in a prolonged series of one-on-one battles! You’re gonna be fighting enemies until you think your arm is gonna fall off and Super Saver shipping will be the last thing on your mind!

Although if you order five of these, you do qualify for free Super Saver shipping.

And at $6.97…. its a STEAL! Hurry. While supplies last!