Why I am no longer a religious fundamentalist

Happy Memorial Day ! (30 years later edition)

I LOVE this video, which I found on Harper's site.
When I first started buying KISS 8-tracks in the late 1970's, my father had a good time making fun of the makeup and the costumes.
My mother just made faces, and said she couldn't believe I was enjoying that mess.
Various youth ministers (Hello, Danny White !) warned that KISS had satanic influences, and that there were documented instances of demonic possession during KISS concerts. 

Thirty years later.....
Here's KISS bassist and Lead Growlist Gene Simmons entertaining the troops, and leading a singalong of The Marine's Hymn, The Caissons Go Rolling Along, Anchors Aweigh, and Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder. 
He's backed up by the Marine drum and bugle corps. 
Simmons closes the patriotic medley with "God Bless America".  (Kate Smith made the song famous, but she's dead.  Do you think Gene Simmons will ever be known as the "God Bless America" singer?  Naw....It will never happen.) 
Anyway, this is a fun video.  It's funny how much difference 30 years can make.   
Hope you like it, and have a good Memorial Day. 

Mommy, make the bad men go away !

I found this on the Tom Lewis Blog:



I don't know who Len Britton is, but if he's wins the election I bet he lasts about two months before he starts trying to save and create jobs, earmarking, voting to go overseas and blow shit up, subsidizing, and empire-building.  He is, after all, a Republican.
Funny ad, though. 

Happy Memorial Day !

In honor of my father, his brothers, my father-in-law, and everyone else who was ever asked to fight.
Hope everyone has a good weekend !

Let's Get Caesar Involved

I wrote this one in about 30 minutes last night.  It shows. 
Imagine this song done by an old-time Gospel quartet.  Will try to put up a YouTube if time ever allows. 

"Jesus taught the multitudes one day in Galilee,
Must have been five thousand, and they all got hungry....(fermata)
Disciples came to Jesus, and said "Get those people fed.
Jesus turned toward heaven, and this is what he said:

(bass) And he said

Let's get Caesar involved !
Caesar will get your problem solved. 
Go away and let me relax, that's why I pay all that tax,
You need to get Caesar involved. 

Three men saw a traveller that thieves had robbed and beat.
Two men were too busy, but one man stopped to speak (fermata)
"Buddy that looks painful, yeah sometimes life's a bitch. 
Samaritans no longer pull your ass up out of the ditch !

(bass) And he said

Let's get Caesar involved !
He will get the problem solved.
I used to go the 2nd mile, but in your case I think that I'll
Just try to get Caesar involved.

A wedding feast in Cana had just run out of wine,
One man said to Jesus, make us some moonshine (fermata)
But Jesus had no permits, nor a license to distill,
So he said I can't help you, but I know one who will

(bass) And he said

Let's get Caesar involved !
Government will get the problem solved. 
Give to Caesar what is his, next you'll give him all their is,
So let's get Caesar involved.

So if you're on life's highway, pulled down by sin and shame,
Just call on Big Brother, just call out his name (fermata)
Don't call out for your neighbor, or friends and family,
They will just refer you to Washington, D.C.,

(bass) And they'll say

Let's get Caesar involved !
He will get the problem solved. 
If you find that you can't cope, call on Mr. Change and Hope....
That you can get Caesar involved.

(Repeat chorus forever and ever, praising Caesar and thanking him for his great and glorious works.) 

From the front page of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

From The Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Energy efficiency is on the mind of every homeowner, but the same could be said of Uncle Sam.
Officials at Naval Air Station Fort Worth are increasingly embracing greener initiatives to reduce electricity, gas, water and fuel consumption and use alternative energy sources.

Here's the picture that accompanied the article.  It's one of the green, wholesome electric cars (highly subsidized, I'm sure) that are now running all over Carwell Air Force Base.  (Carswell AFB is the military installation that protects Fort Worth from sneak attacks by Oklahoma.)
These go-carts are manufactured by Daimler-Chrysler, which is now owned by Obama/Reid/Pelosi and the UAW. 

Is there anyone out there who doesn't think this picture is hilarious? 

This is one of my all-time favorite meaningless symbolic gestures.  The boys at Carswell take the mega-planes up once or twice a week, just for the hell of it as far as I can tell, and totally negate any and all justification for these little Tonka Toys.  More fuel is consumed on takeoff...aww...never mind.    
I'd pay $100 for a picture of General Patton going across Europe in one of these.  
This has had me in a good mood all day. 

The most bizarre thing anyone will ever write about The Limits Of Libertarianism

Teacher:  Class, here's a piece that recently ran in The New York Times, called The Limits Of Libertarianism:

By denigrating several of the signal achievements of modern American society, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act, Rand Paul has performed a useful service for voters who are angry at their elected officials. He has helped to illuminate the limits and the hazards of antigovernment sentiment.

Many Americans are sputtering mad, believing that government has let them down in abetting a ruinous recession, bailing out bankers and spending wildly. But is Rand Paul really the remedy they had in mind? His views and those of other Tea Party candidates are unintentional reminders of the importance of enlightened government.

Teacher:  Ok, class, does anyone out there see something wrong in that statement?  Anyone?  Yes, Harry, you had your hand up first.....

Harry Reid:  They said "denigrating", instead of light-skinned with no dialect? 

Teacher: No, Harry, that is not correct.  I won't even say Nice Try.  Let's read some more of the editorial. 

....Under (Rand's) philosophy, the punishment for a lunch counter that refuses to seat black customers would be public shunning, not a court order.

It is a theory of liberty with roots in America’s creation, but the succeeding centuries have shown how ineffective it was in promoting a civil society. The freedom of a few people to discriminate meant generations of less freedom for large groups of others.

Teacher: Now class, is there anyone who can name the largest group to legally discriminate against black Americans prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964?  Yes, Bobby?

Senator Robert Byrd: It was The White Knights Of The Ku Klux Klan ! !

Teacher:  Bobby, take off your Klan robe and sit down.  You're an embarrassment.  We'll all read a little further.  Now children, listen carefully.  This part is funny if you've been paying attention all semester.....

It was only government power that ended slavery and abolished Jim Crow, neither of which would have been eliminated by a purely free market. It was government that rescued the economy from the Depression and promoted safety and equality in the workplace.

Teacher:  Ok, class, I'll make it easy for you.  Which organization WROTE the Jim Crow laws, which made it illegal for Black Americans to attend the same public schools as white kids?  Who made it illegal for Rosa Parks to sit at the front of the bus?  What organization made it illegal for Black and White people to use the same water fountains?  Yes, Barry ?

Barry Obama:  George W. Bush ! ! !

Teacher:  No, Barry.  It was the government.  All of these evil practices were approved and enforced by the government.  So when you read something like this, you should ask yourself if you would congratulate a man for no longer abusing his children.  And then you should laugh at what short memories people have.  Because using the phrase "enlightened government" to describe what happened in 1964 is very funny, isn't it class?  Yes, Barry? 

Barry Obama:  The failed economic policies of the past eight years? 

Barney Frank is going to chair the financial reform committee

Barney Frank is going to chair the financial reform committee. 

Is the logic here the same as "You broke it, you fix it?"

Amtrak: empty trains and empty hotel rooms

From Newsalert:

Citing the distractions of home life, Amtrak spent tens of thousands of dollars on hotel rooms and meals for 10 employees attending classes for train directors in Chicago — despite the fact each of the employees already lived and worked in the Chicago area.

One official said the $75,627 spent through the summer of 2008 was required to "avoid the stress and personal distraction that being at home can create," an explanation that Amtrak's office of inspector general didn't buy.
Investigators also found Amtrak paid for hotel rooms on weekends and that rooms sometimes were left unoccupied for nights at a time, according an inspector general's investigation into the expenditures. A report on the investigation was recently obtained by The Washington Times through the Freedom of Information Act.

My most newest warehouse backs up to one of the highly-touted, green'n'wholesome low-speed rail lines, and the trains go by several times a day. 
Most of the time they're as empty as the Galilean's tomb in Jerusalem. 
But if it makes sense for the government to run empty trains all day, are empty hotel rooms that big of a deal? 

A few Sunday links

Here's Sam Tanenhouse writing in The New York Times on The Perils Of Textbook Libertarianism. 

I don't always agree with our 2008 Libertarian Vice-Presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root (although he is a fun person to drink beer with, and keeps his bathtub well-stocked).  But he NAILS it in this editorial for the Las-Vegas Review Journal. 

Here's Jeremy Lott, explaining why the minority faction of the Republicrat/Demoblican regime always tolerates the blatant gerrymandering that goes on every 10 years. 

You can go here to get tickets to hear His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, explain why he's a Marxist and not a Capitalist.  Ticket prices range from $21.50 to $360.00. 

Here's something interesting on the mainstream media's double standard on coverage of He Who Would Save Us From Our Sins. 



 

"I'm A Marxist" says Dalai Lama

From Australia's News.com site:

'I'm a Marxist' says Dalai Lama, but agrees capitalism has helped China

Capitalism has helped China ???  One need not be the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, to figure that one out. 
According to The Black Book Of Communism, Chinese Marxists killed 100,000,000 people trying to make Brother Karl's system work.  After watching capitalist societies like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan prosper, people got tired of starving for the sake of Marxist ideology. 
People have been moving out of poverty at the rate of one million per month ever since they began (slowly) discarding their Marxist lunacy.  Sorry for the premature rant over nothing but a headline, but I have friends in China whose parents were killed during the Cultural Revolution.  I have other friends who were exiled to the countryside for "re-education" after being labeled Class Enemies.  
And this nutcase in a nightgown says he's still a Marxist.   

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama says he's a Marxist, yet credits capitalism for bringing new freedoms to China, the communist country that exiled him.

Aw, but what about the starvation and class warfare and waiting in long lines for everything and the death camps?  Don't you think people miss it? 

"Still I am a Marxist," the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader said in New York, where he arrived today with an entourage of robed monks and a heavy security detail to give a series of paid public lectures.
"(Marxism has) moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits," the Dalai Lama, 74, said.

Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit.  Piled on high, tamped down, refilled, dehydrated, and refilled again.  Bullshit.  Marxism is based on the ethics of envy.  I want what is yours, what you worked for, or what your parents gave you.  I don't want to work for it, or to give you anything for it, BTW.
The only way to make this happen is through a totalitarian government.   
Free Market Capitalism is about you producing something that other people want, and offering it in exchange for what you want.  The evil, moustache-twirling Free Market Capitalist who produces a really good backhoe at a really good price does more good for humanity than every Marxist wealth-spreader who ever lived. 

However, he credited China's embrace of market economics for breaking communism's grip over the world's most populous country and forcing the ruling Communist Party to "represent all sorts of classes".

And yet, he says he is still a Marxist. 
Why would someone like The Dalai Lama embrace a philosophy that encourages people to mindlessly revere their leaders and devote their lives to serving those in authority and not question anything about the philosophy of those in power? 
Oh.  I get it now.  
Never mind.