Yard Sale Heaven!

***The U.S. 40 yard sale is still going on this weekend. Mom & I hit a couple yesterday, but dang, it was cold! I hope it's warmer today. We're taking off this morning to go to as many as we can get in before my aunt's birthday party this afternoon. Then when I get home I'll have to hit my transcription. Gonna be a busy day!

***"Solyndra! Solyndra!" I am so glad Romney is proving he can hit back and not be cowed by the Left's lies, distortions, and cries of racism. This hasn't been a good week for the President, therefore it's been a good week for America.

Drudge Report calls yesterday "Hell Day" for Obama.

***Dillon Burroughs  is copying the Bible by hand, writing one chapter a day. That's an interesting idea.

***"Cow spying" by the EPA. You gotta be kidding.

***        "I sit on this AbLounger every day. It doesn't seem to be working..."

***Elizabeth Warren: Lie after lie after lie. How does she still have supporters? Well...come to think of it, Obama still has supporters. Probably the same ones. The DUH crowd.

***Franklin Graham is holding a "Festival of Hope" in Budapest, India.

***Wonderful. DC Comics' "Green Lantern" is now gay.

The original Green Lantern - a DC Comics mainstay for the past 70 years - will be revealed to be a gay man in next week's issue of "Earth 2."
Alan Scott - formerly a married father of two who first appeared in 1940 - tips readers off to his sexuality early on in the comic when he gives his boyfriend a welcome home kiss.
"He's very much the character he was. He's still the pinnacle of bravery and idealism. He's also gay," "Earth 2" writer James Robinson told The Post.

Ew.

***Conservative bloggers being targeted, by Lefties, no doubt, in "SWAT-ing" pranks. This is not funny, and could be very dangerous. But what do they care? When you can't fight back with ideas, you fight back with idiocy.

***

 
***

A local policeman had just finished his shift one cold November evening and was at home with his wife. "You just won't believe what happened this evening, in all my years in the force I've never seen anything like it."

"Oh, yes dear, what happened?"

"I came across two guys down by the canal, one of them was drinking battery acid and the other was eating fireworks."

"What did you do with them?"

"Oh that was easy. I charged one and let the other off."

Ar ar ar...

***Retro candy on the comeback trail. Remember Nik-L-Nips?

***Coolest grandma ever?

***

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty” ~ Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England during WWII 

Double Standard

***If you pay attention at all you understand the media's infatuation with Obama. All is fair, no matter how nasty it is, if it's Obama doing it. Fight back like Romney has, though, and the handwringing begins.

Reid J. Epstein, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush of Politico decided that today, of all days, was "2012's nastiest day," because after being heckled Occupy-style by Obama-organized protesters last week, Romney fought fire with fire today:

Welcome to the schoolyard slap-fight that is the 2012 campaign to lead the most powerful nation on Earth.
Barack Obama’s top strategist David Axelrod giddily trespassed on Mitt Romney’s backyard here on Thursday to hammer the newly anointed GOP nominee for his shortcomings as governor of Massachusetts governor.
Then Romney, a continent away — but occupying a similar head-space — got good and even, personally visiting Solyndra, the defunct California solar panel manufacturer that has become a conservative poster child for misguided federal spending. ...
The twin scrums capped off the nastiest 24 hours of the campaign so far, a record almost surely to be exceeded in a season of bile and tit-for-tat.

Oh, shut up.
Where was Politico's hand-wringing over "nastiness" last week when this went on:

Outside, meanwhile, some brick row houses across from the school were boarded up. Police had cordoned off a full city block to protect Romney and his entourage. Residents, some of them organized by Obama’s campaign, stood on their porches and gathered at a sidewalk corner to shout angrily at Romney. Some held signs saying, “We are the 99%.” One man’s placard trumpeted an often-referenced Romney gaffe: “I am not concerned about the very poor.”

A good faith search shows Politico didn't even report that story. Furthermore, the quote above is from the Washington Post, who buried the news about the Obama campaign being behind the protests. Gee, I wonder why.

The whole campaign's gonna be like this. Get ready.

***A Republican wins state senate race in Brooklyn, NY?? Wow.

***John Edwards case ends in mistrial. Geez, he's sleazy. It's chilling to think he was almost Vice President...but then what we have now is an embarrassment, too.

***Microsoft Windows 08 is coming! I still use XP.

***Restaurant chains adding tabletop screens. I dunno...I think I like having a server.

***GOP takes big lead on economy. This has got to be worrying the Obama team.

***RUSH: The lesson in Wisconsin is that conservatism works.  Scott Walker has done everything that Obama says is impossible to do.  He cut spending and expanded the economy while lowering taxes and laying off no one.  It's amazing.

***McDonald's and Coke fire back at Bloomberg's proposed large drink ban. Wish McDonald's would be as forceful against the perpetually offended Muslims.

***14-year-old wins spelling bee, correctly spelling "guetapens." I'm a good speller, but I would have missed that one for sure!

***Boy gives away Disney World trip to family of fallen soldier. This is awesome.

***In case you didn't know...

***"Amateur" at the top of New York Times bestseller list.

“He promised that he would bring us together. He promised that he would not be partisan,” Klein responds. “He promised that he would reach out to the other side, the Republican side.

“Instead, he and his small little group of people in the White House hunkered down, have not reached out, not compromised, making it impossible for Washington to work.

“It’s not Republicans who are at fault here, it’s the president, who does not know how to use the leverage of power and his powers of persuasion. He’s the anti-Lyndon Johnson in that he doesn’t know how to get things done.

“And so he’s been more divisive, more partisan than any president we’ve seen in modern history.”

***

***"By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail." Benjamin Franklin

***Have a great day!

 

Alarming and Undemocratic!

***Anyone who raises more money than Obama MUST be racist!!

David Axelrod is purporting to be alarmed by a Politico story on how Republican super PACs are planning to spend $1 billion on the election.

This election aside, anyone who cares about our democracy should be appalled by this:bit.ly/LedsqA
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) May 30, 2012

It's quite all right, though, for Democrats to collect millions from Big Labor.  Geez, these people...

***You gotta be kidding...Media Matters is claiming journalistic bias against Obama? Gimme a break.

***RINO NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg is at it again. Now he wants to ban sodas over 16 oz. Yeah, that'll work.

New York City mayor Bloomberg is looking to extend his precious nanny state to unprecedented proportions. He’s now trying to snatch frosty cold sodas from the hands of millions of parched New Yorkers. Any soda over 16 ounces could soon be banned from the shelves of NYC stores.

No more Venti Starbucks, Big Gulps, etc. Tell me again why this jerk calls himself a Republican? More here.

***Walker holds edge ahead of recall vote this Tuesday. Too bad the Democrats haven't been able to suppress the news of the success his policies have been. 

Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker leads Democratic challenger Tom Barrett 50 percent to 44 percent, according to a poll released ahead of the state's high-profile recall election Tuesday.
The independent Marquette University Law School telephone survey released Wednesday surveyed 720 registered voters and had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.

***

***The Tiger, by William Blake

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 

They quote the first part of this on The Mentalist, so I looked it up to read the whole poem. I like it.

***Bush returning to White House.

This is a little awkward.

President Barack Obama can't seem to stop bad-mouthing the record of former President George W. Bush. But on Thursday, Obama is going to welcome his predecessor and proudly preside as Bush's image and legacy are enshrined at the White House forever.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will join Bush and his wife, Laura, as their official portraits are unveiled. The incumbent is keeping up a presidential tradition typically defined by cheer and graciousness, but not without some uneasiness.

Hardly a day goes by without Obama or his aides talking about the mess they inherited — meaning, from Bush.

Bush, being the class act that he is, will handle it gracefully. The Obamas, on the other hand, probably won't. Because they don't have any class.

***Another Obama gaffe on foreign soil. Honestly, liberals, and you called Dubya an embarrassment?

***Summer blockbusters through the years.

***

***

"Faith is unseen but felt, faith is strength when we feel we have none, faith is hope when all seems lost." Catherine Pulsifer ***Have a great day!

Really??!!

***Okay, I guess 3:00 a.m. isn't early enough. I woke up at 2:00 a.m., and that was it. Couldn't go back to sleep, so I figured I might as well go ahead and get up and be productive.

***Teaching dependency.

Today, predictably, the New York Times criticized Congress for limiting unemployment benefit extensions -- that is, 99 weeks of assistance:
The checks are stopping for the people who have the most difficulty finding work: the long-term unemployed. More than five million people have been out of work for longer than half a year. Federal benefit extensions, which supplemented state funds for payments up to 99 weeks, were intended to tide over the unemployed until the job market improved.
The NYT calls these cuts "premature."
But the article also points out:
...unemployment benefits prolong joblessness and simply transfer wealth from one area of the economy to another without contributing to growth.
Exactly. Government handouts undermine job growth. They reward dependency.

And that is *exactly* what the Democrats want. Dependency on the government for our every need. When the government is sending you goodies, you vote for the people who'll keep them coming. 

***No surprise here: Romney clinches GOP nomination. We gotta get behind him now, people. It's either him or Obama.

***Texas mother to receive first ever double arm transplant.

***Beware the zombie bees.

***

***Brace yourself, this will come as quite a shock: Obama Administration stonewalling corruption investigation.

***How to start running. Yeah, like that's gonna happen. I did get out and walk yesterday. I've really been lax with my exercising, gotta get back into it. I'm hoping I can get a break to lap swim today. Hope I don't fall asleep in the water...

***The 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. I'd love to see that someday. 

***Facebook freefall. Maybe that IPO thing wasn't such a great idea after all...

***10 books every Christian should read.

Basic Christianity, by John Stott

The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Desiring God, by John Piper

How Now Shall We Live?, by Chuck Colson

Knowing God, by J.I. Packer

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis

The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan

The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence

The Pursuit of God, by A.W. Tozer

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis

I've only read a couple of those...need to get a move on!

***                                                Yo! What up??

***Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.  ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Life's Little Instruction Book

***Have a great day!

 

McDonald's Caves Again

***Y'know, stuff like this is enough to make me get my sugar free lattes somewhere else. The perpetually offended Muslims have succeeded in telling an American business what to do yet again:

According to a report appearing today (5/27/12) on the Arabic news website, Kermalkom.com, the McDonald’s fast food restaurant “abused the Prophet Muhammad by placing his name at the base of a toy that is being distributed as part of the Happy Meal, a toy which steps on the name ‘Muhammad.’”
The toy consists of a blue superhero figurine… It stands on one leg, and, when the lever is pressed, it pounds on the base with the other leg. According to the Saudis, the designs that appear all around the base, where the figurine stomps its foot, is really the name “Muhammad” written several times in circles…
Saudis, “demanding the strongest possible punishment for the restaurant” and insisting that “they will not be silent until this is realized,” further complained how such an obvious insult could pass the supervision of the management at McDonalds.

Oh please. You can see for yourself the Power Ranger obviously insulting the Prophet here.

In response, McDonald’s issued a statement saying, “Get a life, you losers.” Whoops, I mean, of course, McDonald’s has immediately withdrawn the Islamophobic toy from all its restaurants.

***Gonna have to make this fast. I couldn't sleep last night, so I got up for a while to type at about midnight, then reset my alarm. At least that's what I thought I did. Apparently I turned it off instead. Woke up at almost 7:00, darnit.

***Romney has commanding lead over Obama with veterans. Well duh.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee led the incumbent president 58-34 percent among U.S. veterans polled by Gallup over the past two months. The polling firm noted in its latest report that veterans, which make up 13 percent of the adult population, are mostly older men -- who have tended to support Romney in this race. 

***                                      RAWR!! I Scare You?

***Obama continues to refuse to release his college transcripts. Sure makes you wonder what's in there, doesn't it?

***What an idiot: Al Sharpton says GOP wants to "wipe out innocent people like Hitler's Germany."

***That oughta do it...

***

There was a story of a little girl named Liza who was suffering from a disease and needed blood from her five-year-old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying,
"Yes, I'll do it if it will save Liza."
As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away?" Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give her all his blood.

***The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

***Have a great day!

The Home of the Free, Because of the Brave

***Never forget it!

***President Reagan's 1986 Memorial Day speech.

And we owe them something, those boys. We owe them first a promise: That just as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither, ever, will we. And there are other promises. We must always remember that peace is a fragile thing that needs constant vigilance. We owe them a promise to look at the world with a steady gaze and, perhaps, a resigned toughness, knowing that we have adversaries in the world and challenges and the only way to meet them and maintain the peace is by staying strong.

***As you head to the beach, take a moment to remember this one.


***Flower Power: Donated roses honor freedom's heroes at Arlington Cemetery.

Great story.

***Of course, a twit from MSNBC is "uncomfortable" calling our fallen soldiers "heroes." 

Yep, you read that headline right. Chris Hayes, of MSNBC's Sunday morning show "Up with Chris Hayes," says he's uncomfortable ascribing valorous terms to fallen military because it's "rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war."

I'm uncomfortable calling you a human being.

***Athletes killed in action. We all remember Pat Tillman. Here are some others who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.

***CIA remembers those lost in covert War on Terror.

***
Here is "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as written by Julia Ward Howe when she published it in February, 1862, in the Atlantic Monthly:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

***And when you've carefully examined every feature of that soldier's face, stand up
straight and tall and smile your best smile. Thank that soldier, because it does what
some cannot or will not. It defends what it believes to be right with
it's very life.
But more important, it defends a perfect stranger - you.
And when you see a flag covered casket, stand in memorium of all the soldier's faces
you've examined. For when one of them falls, they all fall. And when one of them
stands, they all stand.
Shouldn't we stand with them?

Lilian Leader
June 2, 2006

***The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree.  ~Thomas Campbell

***Have a great day!

Great Start!

***Yesterday was a great start to the holiday weekend. Had a houseful for dinner, cornhole, presents, etc for Emily's birthday. We had a great time! Peter helped me at the grill, he's a really good grillmaster. What a week last week, though, my entire body aches. Getting the painting done and the house back in order before yesterday was really hard work, but worth it. The rest of my holiday weekend will be spent here in front of my computer, but that's okay. I'm thankful for the work.

***Brett Kimberlin, Scum of the Earth. If you haven't heard about him, you really need to pay attention. He's the equivalent of William Ayers - guilty as sin, free as a bird. Lefties love guys like him.

Kimberlin is, as Mark Tapscott writes at the Washington Examiner, a sinister enemy of free speech. The question is, how did Kimberlin go from convicted bomber and perjurer to free man receiving funding for leftwing activism. Sweetness and Light’s Ed Barnes clears that up: Kimberlin was the man who falsely claimed that he sold marijuana to Dan Quayle in the 1970s.

Kimberlin, a convicted bomber and drug dealer, learned that lesson in 1988, when he claimed from his prison cell that he had been Dan Quayle’s marijuana dealer in college. The claim got a lot of attention because Quayle was running for vice president of the United States at the time.
Now, 22 years later, Kimberlin has taken that lesson and made unfounded accusations a profession of sorts. Using two popular leftist blogs, the 56-year-old from Bethesda, Md., has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public and left-leaning foundations by promising to put conservatives he disagrees with in jail, often with offers of large rewards. So far — without success — he has called for the arrest of Karl Rove, Andrew Breitbart, Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue, Massey Energy Chairman Don Blankenship and other high-profile public figures.

More here.

***Choomaquiddick?

***German teen solves 300 year old mathematical riddle posed by Sir Isaac Newton.

***George Clooney's prom picture:

I only draw your attention to this so I can draw your attention to the first comment:

"What? Barack Obama wasn't his date??"

***Love this picture...

***340 lb woman pepper sprays and spits on workers trying to stop her from shoplifting. Charming.

The Georgia woman, 26, was so determined to shoplift beer, bacon, cheese, and chicken wings from a Piggly Wiggly that she punched, spit at, and pepper-sprayed store workers who confronted her as she tried to flee the supermarket Wednesday afternoon, according to cops.
Appling, pictured in the adjacent mug shot, allegedly hid items worth $88.27 in a canvas bag. She “attempted to check out, only putting one item on the counter,” according to a worker quoted in an Athens-Clarke County Police Department report.
When a Piggly Wiggly employee--who had been tipped to the pilfering by a shopper--asked Appling about the concealed items, she tried to exit the store. After worker Jonathan Orr tried to stop Appling, she “pulled out some pepper spray and sprayed him in the face.”
Appling kept spraying as several workers tried to keep her from fleeing. The 340-pound Appling also allegedly punched Orr in the face and spit on the 28-year-old employee. As she successfully bolted from the Athens store, Appling “was dropping beer cans out of her purse.”

***Teach them why they died so that we might live.

And there are so many things to teach our children these days, from being careful on the Internet to making wise choices in music and television.  Back in my day, watching too much TV may have turned minds mushy, but an overdose of Gilligan’s Island didn’t compromise morals like much of the fare threatens to do to kids today.

So there are a lot of new things to teach our children. Important things. Critical things. But I would urge every parent to teach their children one more thing this weekend and emphasize it all the year through:

Teach them about the meaning behind Memorial Day.

Teach them about the men and women who died so that all of us could live in freedom.

Teach them that what we have in America is rare, an all-volunteer military who willingly risks everything on our behalf.

Teach them that Memorial Day is more than the traditional start of summer. It’s a day to remember that over one million Americans have died in wars on behalf of those in this nation.  These numbers are astounding, but even more sobering is the reality that behind every number is a name, and an entire world that was changed when that soldier didn’t come home.

***                                           Perfect Landing!

***

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it
William Arthur Ward

 

***Have a great day!