Ummm. It appears that there is no ONT ready tonight.

Comment below. I will add stuff and update. more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:41 PM | Comments (678)
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As some of you may know and as most may appreciate, data is key to establishing metrics and metrics is key to supporting data. I know this may sound like a paradox if not absurd... but in the end it is what it is.

We are always watching for trends and are ever compiling organic data points to assist us in our ultimate goal of assisting you. That's just who we are.

I can boil all of this down to one word, "Kaizen." It is Japanese for "continuous improvement."

And after listening to you and crunching the numbers, we have determined the blog will get more of what you all want...

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:07 PM | Comments (143)
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Masked burglar caught on video below the fold. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 02:17 PM | Comments (441)
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"Reagan is a conservative. An extreme conservative. All the blockheads
and dummies are for him, and when he says that something is necessary,
they trust him."

--Bush, as quoted by Mikhail Gorbachev in a 2009 interview in The Nation.

I and others touched on the monumental Bush hubris here and in the comments. Bush was so arrogant, he felt he could dispense with the very thing that got him elected. He then deliberately set out to destroy the limited government groundwork laid by Ronald Reagan. Why? Because he. knew. better. Reagan winning landslides and himself sitting in the Oval Office wasn't enough evidence for him to consider a different outlook.

Because dummies and blockheads are immune to proof.

Open thread. Follow me on Twitter.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:04 AM | Comments (608)
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Another glorious cool Saturday in November, if you live here. I don't know what your weather is today, I don't think about it a lot.

Top tens, all times EST. Eastern Time is important if you're a foppish dandy.

Florida State (10) at Maryland: noon
Western Carolina at Alabama (4): 12:21pm
Jacksonville State at Florida (6): 1pm
Wofford at South Carolina (9): 1pm
Georgia Southern at Georgia (5): 1:30pm
Wake Forest at Notre Dame (3): 3:30pm
Ole Miss at LSU (7): 3:30pm
Sam Houston State at Texas A&M ( : 3:30pm
Kansas State (1) at Baylor (not 1): 8pm
Stanford (13) at Oregon (2): 8pm

No disrespect to Western Carolina or Wofford, but when did these big dogs start scheduling "easy" games late in the season?

I blame the Aggies.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:52 AM | Comments (129)
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This is a good item to re-read, vis-a-vis how leftists in academia steer the young generation wrong, every chance they get.

...the educational establishment not only indoctrinates students, but also openly discusses the best way to do it...

And here of course, the article from last week about teachers flocking to a marxist conference.

We keep talking about how this is cultural, not political. Oh really? We have a much longer-established cultural history as rugged individualists than squishy collectivists.

You say the culture has fallen; ok, yeah, but it was pushed!

They've been at this for fifty years. Our ace in the hole is that their ideas do not work outside academia, as most people learn- including former radicals- when they get out into the job force.

And certainly business schools do not promulgate this pap, by and large. And we have an advantage where local and state governments tend to be more conservative.

We have to find ways to encourage entrepreneurship and business education at the grassroots level. We have to encroach physically with these programs, into geographic areas currently hostile to conservative thought.

We do not need to overtly proselytize with a political message. We can be sneaky, just as leftists have been sneaky. They don't talk openly about collectivism, they try to hide it! They attract by pretending to be the elite, and by living off someone else's dime, and talking about eating the rich. These things are attractive.

Well, self-reliance and prosperity are also immensely attractive, as a cultural and practical matter, and carry natural economic theory and political payloads with them.

We can push back, guys. Ideas plus action. That parallel-institutions thing Breitbart was talking about. It's brilliant.

Posted by: LauraW at 08:22 AM | Comments (250)
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I got nothin'.

Take it, Vic.

Posted by: andy at 03:09 AM | Comments (555)
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So, yeah, we dropped the ball on this. CDR M should know better than to think he can actually take a vacation or something.

So on with an abbreviated ONT!

First up, it's that time of year again. Mailboxes all over the US are being stuffed with junk mail, as the USPS goes deeper into the red delivering crap like this:

So just for you, morons and moronettes, The HaterÂ’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog

Item #02-496059 Bourbon Cranberry Relish

Williams-Sonoma says: "Sauteed cranberries, bourbon, shallots and herb with a hint of orange. 16oz."

Price: $40

Notes from Drew: That's 40 bucks for a bowl of cranberry sauce that everyone will pass up because we all prefer the shit that costs two bucks and comes plopping out of the can in the shape of the can. The second ingredient is LEAD. For 40 bucks, you should get the bourbon on its own.

An annual favorite at the HQ - the turkey frying PSA:

Don't burn your house down next week, okay.

CDR M phoned this one in, literally: The first 40 minutes of BSG: Blood & Chrome

[Update:] There was a call for boobehs. I thought I had you people trained to go to The Hostages for that. Or those. You know what I mean.

And don't feel left out, 'ettes.

That's it. Enjoy your Friday night a-commentin', and I'll catch you fine folks in the morning.

Posted by: andy at 07:05 PM | Comments (842)
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Hm.

The hell of it is, the party is actually currently considering most of Meghan McCain's prescriptions.

Second look at Meghan McCain?

I know there are many out there, especially in the more conservative sphere, that regard me with disdain. I donÂ’t fit into the traditional Republican box that the wingnuts who have hijacked my party think all Republicans should. For the last four years, IÂ’ve been calling for Republicans to stop concentrating on social issues. I am a single woman in my 20s and that fact alone gave me the perspective that I donÂ’t want to regulate a womanÂ’s right to choice. I am pro-life, but because life is complicated, that choice is between a woman and her idea of a higher power. I believe if Roe vs. Wade were repealed, abortion would still go on. I care more about my economy, national security, and fiscal conservatism than I do about what other woman do with their bodies. ItÂ’s not my place, and I donÂ’t believe itÂ’s the governmentÂ’s place, to make such decisions.

I also don’t believe it’s the government’s role to tell gays and lesbians that they can’t be given the same opportunities in American just because of who they love. I think America needs a better immigration policy and immigrants who were brought here illegally as children shouldn’t be deported. I have said all of these things over the past four years and these issues have been important to the demographics that the Democrats carried on Election Day—single women, minorities, and young people.

...

And if we donÂ’t move forward, adapt, and become relevant again, the Republican Party isnÂ’t going to survive. It will just continue to alienate more moderate voters like myself. If I donÂ’t see some changes in the next four years, IÂ’m going to consider registering as an Independent in 2016.

Posted by: Ace at 03:25 PM | Comments (933)
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There's a backstory on this theory. The FBI has scrubbed virtually all references to Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim terrorism, etc., from their training manuals. Instead, they refer vaguely to "violent extremism."

This was not any accident. It's institutionalized policy. As the FBI once pretended the Mafia didn't exist, it is now the policy of the FBI that references to Al Qaeda or Muslim terrorism should be rare. For example, the FBI's Counter-Terrorism Analytical Lexicon -- a standardization of definitions of important words used in counter-terrorism -- does not define "Muslim terrorism" or "Islamic extremism" or "Jihad." Apparently these words are not part of the analytical lexicon -- although less terms which do not implicate Islamism, such as "terrorism" or "violent extremism," are part of the lexicon.

So did the Administration just scrub all references to Al Qaeda as part of its Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella strategy?

I doubt it. I think this goes beyond simple fidelity to PC bureaucratese. I think they scrubbed Al Qaeda, and pushed the false "spontaneous protest" narrative, as a matter of pure political deception. However, it could be that they relied upon their policy of never saying "Islamic terrorists" as a pretext for the scrub.

Posted by: Ace at 01:12 PM | Comments (462)
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