Happiest place on Earth.

Posted by: andy at 03:01 AM | Comments (233)
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

For grammie winger: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:36 PM | Comments (319)
Post contains 20 words, total size 1 kb.

Aw, poor baby. Democrat Jim Moran thinks he's not paid enough.

Aside from the $174,000 base pay these turds get from us, we also give them a generous allowance to cover the cost of housing and staff along with a plethora of freebies like haircuts, office supplies, health insurance, travel and postage.

Most of these clowns become millionaires in their first term in office simply because Congress exempts itself from Stock Market insider trading laws that would send ordinary folks like us to prison.

Then there are the gifts and favors bestowed on these jerkwads by lobbyists and other special interests, particularly on the Democrat side. I’m sure the gun control lobby alone pours buckets of money over his head for his “principled” stand on an assault weapons ban.

I was unable to find out Mr. MoranÂ’s net worth but considering that heÂ’s been a Congress whore for 23 years IÂ’d reckon heÂ’s worth at least several million dollars. Not bad for a poor boy from Virginia struggling to get along on a congressmanÂ’s pay.

Posted by: CDR M at 06:03 PM | Comments (720)
Post contains 578 words, total size 6 kb.

Mozilla: "We Believe In Openness & That No One Should Be Persecuted For The Beliefs They Hold, No Matter What They Are."

Yes, that's an actual quote. It's from the official Mozilla Twitter feed earlier this week.

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to AoSHQ's prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread. Please direct all non-book conversation to Andy's open thread below this one. Thanks.

You May Not Be Interested In Gay Marriage, But Gay Marriage Is Interested In YOU

Now that Brendan Eich has been purged and driven out by the howling mob, I'm remembering these Genesis lyrics from one of their early LPs:

I'll give you the names of those you must kill,
All must die with their children.
Carry their heads to the palace of old,
Hang them high, let the blood flow.
Now, in this ugly world
break all the chains around us,
Now, the crusade has begun
give us a land fit for heroes,
Now

So I guess maybe he's lucky it's just him and not his entire family.

So, the events of this week caused me to start moving away from Firefox. My goal is to dump it altogether. This is something I've been wanting to do for awhile. There's something about how it's installed on my computer, or the add-ons I'm using, or some combination of the two, that causes it to eat up memory like Michael Moore at a Chinese buffet. If I leave the AoSHQ link open all night, the firefox.exe process will be using over 1.2GB of RAM (according to the windows task manager) by morning.

So I'm trying to move everything over to Opera, and we'll see how that goes. Opera uses a lot of memory, too (I guess all browsers are memory hogs), but at least it appears to be stable. Hopefully soon, I'll be able to uninstall Firefox and be done with it.

I'm trying to think of an appropriate book for this, this being the book thread and all. I don't know, perhaps this one. No, maybe not. This book by Ben Shapiro is more to the point, I think.

Literary Hoaxes

Here's an April Fool's quiz about famous literary hoaxes. I scored 5 out of 10, which they say is better than the average, but that's only because I guessed right a couple of times.

Too bad this hoax wasn't included. Of course, 'hoaxes' and 'out-and-out plagiarism' are two different things.

Although it did make it onto this list.

If you found the hoax quiz hard, here's a poetry quiz that's a bit easier. At least it was for me. You should be able to get more than a few. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:00 AM | Comments (187)
Post contains 1375 words, total size 10 kb.

[We Politely Request That All Off-Topic or Political Comments Be Directed to the Open Thread down page, Which Will Serve Officially as the Current "Active Conversation" Thread for All Discussions Not Related To This Topic. Enjoy!]

Welcome again to the Spaced-Out Challenge! Whether you have a question about equipment, a new astronomical discovery you want to expand on, or just want to kick back and enjoy the cosmos above, come one come all on our weekly astronomical journey.

This week, all eyes are on Mars as we get our best view of the red planet in almost seven years. We'll also discuss the upcoming total lunar eclipse, a great new telescope shop in Southern California, and we'll review Baader Planetarium's UHC-S light pollution/nebula filter. So stroll outside, plop into your favorite lawn chair, and look up and out into the vastness above...
more...

Posted by: CAC at 04:42 PM | Comments (27)
Post contains 1880 words, total size 13 kb.

Welcome to the short and sweet edition of the Saturday car thread.

Thanks to the Morons and Moronettes who forward along the fine tips which make it possible.

First up this week, the UAW is still squawking about Chattanooga. The charge: Collusion between Gov. Bill Haslam, Sen. Bob Corker and VW to the tune of $300M in incentives if the plant did not unionize. A couple of thoughts here:

1. Such an offer might explain the differences of opinion which arose between Corker's office and VW with regard to discussions of potential plant expansion. Then again, it is not unusual for any state or locality to offer incentives to get, or to keep, a large jobs-creating company or industry. Aren't conditions a normal part of the incentive/negotiations process?

2. The argument that VW colluded with government officials against the UAW seems a little shaky given the preferential treatment that the union received from VW in their attempts to unionize the plant: access to employees and to the plant as well as support for unionization from the big European unions and, even, VW's own management.

3. I am not an attorney nor am I associated with a union, so I welcome the opinions of those who are and can shed light on the situation yet, as far as I can tell, nobody has alleged that the offer of incentives was communicated to the laborers, and it is the laborers who cast the votes. In fact, VW adamantly denied that there had been any discussions of plant or line expansions when Sen. Corker claimed there had been. Unless the laborers themselves were aware of and persuaded by a big corporate incentive to vote against their own best interests, I can't see how such an offer would be deemed as having influenced the vote.

4. Hey UAW and TN Dems, your desperation is unzipped. You've got it hanging out there for all to see. When so many in the nation are not just indifferent to you, but against you, you might have a problem, and PR is the least of it. The longer you cry and whine and point fingers at the big, bad Republicans the whinier and weaker you appear but, go ahead, spend every last dime you have fighting this fight. Empty your coffers now. Please. Money buys influence with the Dems and I'd love nothing so much as to see you rendered powerless re the 2014 and 2016 elections.

The true story of a classic car found hidden away in a Centre Hall, PA, garage. We're always hearing tales of someone who knew someone who knew someone who found a barely used, highly collectible car sitting in an old barn/garage somewhere, and a little old lady who had no idea of it's value. This is not that tale. And it seems that there's no shortage of skeptics eager to try and debunk the find.

What a beauty.

Thanks to all the other commenters who brought it to my attention.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:23 AM | Comments (199)
Post contains 706 words, total size 5 kb.

For those of you who do not want to talk about gardening, here's some thread-fodder from a report released by the Pew Research Center late last month:

According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, 55% of U.S. adults say they favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. A significant minority (37%) oppose the practice.

While a majority of U.S. adults still support the death penalty, public opinion in favor of capital punishment has seen a modest decline since November 2011, the last time Pew Research asked the question. In 2011, fully six-in-ten U.S. adults (62%) favored the death penalty for murder convictions, and 31% opposed it.

Per their study and trends data, it appears support for the death penalty waxes and wanes a bit, though the support is always there:

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 AM | Comments (383)
Post contains 486 words, total size 3 kb.

Good morning, reprobates and reprobate-ettes.

Posted by: andy at 04:02 AM | Comments (212)
Post contains 13 words, total size 1 kb.

So, it looks like Al Gore may want to make a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth. Sorry Al, that dog don't hunt.

Laurie David believes "everything in that movie has come to pass". Really? Was there an increase in destructive tornadic activity? We're in our third straight year of record low activity. Increase in hurricanes? Nope. Obama has the lowest hurricane frequency of any President. North Pole will be ice free? Nah, multi-year ice is growing. What exactly did come to pass then from that movie? more...

Posted by: CDR M at 06:08 PM | Comments (686)
Post contains 414 words, total size 5 kb.

Karl Lueger was the mayor of Vienna at the turn of the century, whose populist politics were often riven with anti-semtism -- so much so that he was cited as an inspiration by none other than Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.

However, there's a debate about how anti-semitic he actually was, and how much of an anti-semite he pretended to be for the sake of political positioning.

Lueger is famous for an answer he once gave on this issue. He was asked how he squared that fact that many of his policies were anti-semitic, while he counted many Jews among his close friends.

"I decide who is a Jew," he said, apparently creating his own definition of Judaism.

This flexible opinion on "who is a Jew" permitted him to both debase himself (and Vienna) with populist politics of hatred while simultaneously carving out a space for himself to consort with the Hated Other, as he might choose.

Similarly, today, White "liberals" have decided to sell out liberalism to the leftist, totalitarian goons of the Progressive Speech Police. They'll join the Progressives' hate campaigns against free speech and free thought -- but only when those campaigns are directed towards non-liberals.

Playing to the Progressive mobs just like Luegar played to the Vienna ones, White Liberals reserve themselves the power to both traffic in hateful intolerance, and except themselves and their friends from the claims they otherwise inflict on others.

They, and they alone, will decide who the Racists are.

I was trying to figure out my thoughts on the Suey Park/#CancelCobert conflagration on the podcast (and doing a poor job at it). But I think I have now unmuddled my thoughts on this.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:39 PM | Comments (467)
Post contains 2422 words, total size 15 kb.