Just call me Harry Samson.

Cool flight video.

How's your cereal this morning, dear?

Moral: don't drink and drive.

Wow, two TSIB posts in as many days! The stupid might burn, but it apparently doesn't result in learning, at least with some groups. These public union people ought to educate themselves on the use of a spellchecker, especially before they spend their dues on expensive signage.

Look, it's Barry Poppins.

President and leader of the free world, but can't figure out how to get an umbrella through a gate.

tammybruce.com/2010/08/a-village-in-kenya-is-missing-its-idiot.html

A tiger escapes from it's enclosure in Miami jungle park, sending visitors on a mad scramble for the exits.

Honestly, if I knew one of these was loose, I'd be moving at top speed for the exit too!

www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/2010/08/29/Miami-park-empties-when-tiger-escapes/UPI-17881283094651/

Hahahahahahaha! What are the odds?

Ok, look at the screen grab below, and count the errors that CNN's top notch, world class team has made. I see three majors: that is not Sarah Palin, her name is spelled wrong, and she was the vice presidential candidate. The MSM has beclowned itself again.

insidecablenews.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/the-hazards-of-livetv-25077/

Our current president out for a vacation ride on what is perhaps one of his daughter's bikes. Please. This is not how the leader, the president of the most powerful nation on earth, should ride a bike. Revoke this dude's man card.

On the other hand, here is how a president does it. A man bike can be both ridden and used, as here, to work on your "guns." Notice it is a bike built for serious riding, off road, where things can get dicey fast. No fear. Extra man points.

President Bush, below and on the far left, shows how it is done. This is a man in his sixties, remember.

Hat tip: americandigest.org/

When the MSM wants to report that a liberal event drew a lot of attention when in fact it did not, they always publish a closely cropped shot of the speakers with no view of how many people were actually there.

Today, Glenn Beck's Restore Honor rally drew a crowd estimated at from 300 to 500 thousand people.

Meanwhile, Al Sharpton, race baiter and demagogue extrodinaire , held a counter rally that drew a mere 2 to 3 thousand, a more than 100 to 1 ratio. Looks like the real America is being heard. And what picture does the media show from Slick Al's rally? Only one of the Reverend at the podium. No embarrassing crowd shot, of course.

Oh, and Al, you know what? Martin Luther King was a Republican.

Can't wait for November.

Skies on fire.

Something that needs to be remembered about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is that the Republicans were sounding the alarm beginning in the early 90's, while the Democrats were resisting any reform at all. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, who do you think was prudent and correct on this issue, and who was reckless and destructive? Remember in November.

Saturday porch picture, with a little breakfast thrown in for good measure.

Friday night hot rod.

Harvest time! The scraggly old peach tree is ready to harvest, so here is the first bowl of peaches. There are about ten more bowls full like this on the tree. The issue now is to get them made into something before they go bad.

The youngest daughter and I have decided to learn to take night time shots with our cameras. This one is probably the best of the bunch, but I can see the need for a couple of additional pieces of equipment. First and foremost, a remote shutter release is necessary, as even with a tripod there is a strong tendency to jiggle. Next, and likely not for some time, a wide angle lens, even perhaps a fisheye, would make the photos much better.


Finally, a night without a full moon would work better, and if we had done our homework during the perseid meteor shower, we could well have captured some impressive shots. The photo below was taken at 10 o'clock at night.


This is going to be excellent fun, I can tell.

Sean Connery, the ultimate James Bond, is 80 today.

Good ol' boy amuses himself wading in oeey gooey water catching snapping turtles. Good eat'in!

And in follow up to this video, in case you think it just can't be true, "Keith" posted this narrative that gives a comprehensive primer on hunting snapping turtles, complete with amusing anecdotes:

It is a sport in the South...under 6 lbs they are great fried, larger ones are put in stews.

When I was growing up, we went to the Greenville, Tn area up in the Hills. We would catch over 100 in three days in traps. After we had set all the traps, we would go catch them in the small cow ponds.

We would feel under the edges of the banks. The turtles would have a slick spot at the edge of their hole. You gently(slowly) move your hand in, feel the shell. There are 3 notches on the back of the shell, the tail ALWAYS curls to the left. You grab the tail then start pulling.

The only down side to feeling the slick spots was if there was no turtle in the hole but a muskrat or a snake instead, things get real interesting, real quick!

Some of the turtles were so large, I would have hold of the turtle's tail with both hands, dad would have one REAR leg while brother had another Rear leg. The turtle's claws are huge, they are digging in with their front claws. When you get the turtle out of the hole, you are dealing with one mad SOB!

We caught several turtles that were so large, a 4th guy would have to dig the hole out with a shovel to get them out of the pond's bank. Their heads were as large as the calf of your leg. These giant turtles would turn a wire trap inside out in minutes.

We would throw the turtles in the back of the pickup, just let them run around and do what Snapping turtles do. I swear, it looked like Turtle Gladiators trying to kill each other!

To butcher the turtles, we had a huge pot of boiling water. You poke the head with a stick, the turtle bites the stick. You slide a small piece of plywood under the head/neck and stab the turtle through the top of the head with an ice pick. The ice pick penetrates the head and anchors the head to the plywood. Then you pull on the turtles feet stretching his head/neck out, wack off the head with a a sharp ax. Next you dunk him in the boiling water, he comes out as White as Casper the Friendly Ghost. Cut around the shell, pull the bottom of the shell off, then just cut him up like a chicken.

We usually camped on a farmer's property. The farmer could not believe that we would eat the turtles, he said he just shot them with buckshot. We put on a "feed" for the farmer and his family one night in our appreciation. We fried up half a dozen small ones, those folks ate till they could not walk!

After a couple of years of going to this farm, it became an annual event. Then the locals learned to catch turtles, and our harvest went down to about 125, then one of them got bit and lost three knuckles on a finger, another guy lost a chunk out of the palm of his hand. I met These guys and they liked to play rough with each other and women...turtles got revenge...you have got to play nice with those big turtles. Turtles like a slow hand. Our catch went way up after the two bad Azz's got bit.

By the way, different parts of the turtle taste different, very good eating! Many farmer's ponds have several of these snappers in them. These turtles will clean out a fish population.

As an antidote to all that red neck craziness, this video will definitely raise the tone and tenor of the blog. Go fullscreen on this, or don't go at all.

Time Lapse Tour of Yosemite National Park from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo.

See it fullscreen. Enjoy the goosebumps.

Never rent to a guy/gal who wants to bring their bike inside. I love the smoke, but just imagine the sound.

It's at this time of year that the massive fig tree at my place puts on it's crop. This year has been a heavy one, so I snagged a bowl and got to picking.

Pretty quick I had that bowl filled up with figgy goodness, as you can see.

Then, the next step was to make some wild, weird fig jam, my favorite! It is just as great on French vanilla ice cream as it is on your morning toast. Thanks to Jennifer for whipping some up!

58.9% of Iraqis say they want the US forces to stay, for now. Gee, I wonder if that is because since we defeated the insurgency, they have had a safer, more prosperous and freer life than ever before? Think maybe?

news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100824/wl_mideast_afp/iraqusmilitarypullout_20100824133725

And this! Good tax paying businesses leaving California for a business friendly, right to work state. I fear California, once truly the golden state, is well on it's way to being Detroit with good weather. As liberals/progressives/Democrats (whatever they call themselves today),planned and did to Detroit, they are now repeating the performance in our once fair state. November cannot come soon enough.

gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/08/ebay-adobe-ea-games-leaving-california-for-utah-over-confiscatory-tax-rate/

Hugh Hendry, our favorite cranky Scotsman, has handily won Bloomberg's macro hedge fund YTD return contest. Oh aye, Hugh!

Also, as one of the commenters noted, you could make the top ten with a 4% return. And they call themselves professionals! If only they had panicked when Hendry told them to, they might all be in better shape.

www.zerohedge.com/article/congratulations-hugh-hendry-achieving-best-macro-hedge-fund-ytd-return

The state of California has now delayed a 2.9 billion payment to the state's schools, in order to make sure that they can make their scheduled bond payments. By law, when there isn't enough money the bondholders are paid first, but this sort of financial triage augers very ill for the fiscal health of the state. Next up will be a downgrade of the state's creditworthiness. During and because of all this, property prices are going to trend down, putting further pressure on state income due to lower property taxes. It's a spiral that will only stabilize when the state gets it's financial act together, if that's even possible.

Hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-23/california-delays-2-9-billion-school-county-payments-amid-budget-impasse.html

Sunset on the Sierra crest and Half Dome, 7:16, August 24.

The Hindenburg Omen's creator has now exited the stock market. That man, Jim Miekka, is free and clear of his long positions in equities. That in itself is an omen. Think very carefully about any long position that you might have, but don't take too long about it, because there might not be that much time left to move.

blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2010/08/23/yes-folks-hindenburg-omen-tripped-again/

Within just a few yards of my front door, I can see this:

Oops!

Isn't this in reality a state issuing it's own currency? If you can pay taxes with this "scrip," how far different is that from a federal reserve note? Thank goodness I have a job that pays in real money .... a greenback is real money, isn't it?

www.zerohedge.com/article/iou-part-two-california-issue-ious-second-year-row

Update: Perhaps this is the reason the idiots running the Golden State are out of the usual recognized kind of money:

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100823/ap_on_bi_ge/us_taj_mahal_schools

Honestly, these fools should have all their personal assets seized and used to repay the state's debts, and then they need a good tar and feathering, and then they need to be taken in that condition to the border and told never to come back.

Without a doubt, the post of the day. A clear exposition of the difference between them and us, and by "them" I also mean the liberal elites that are bidding fair to screw our country so badly that it will never recover.... with a little help from their allah worshiping friends.

thehostages.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/open-letter-to-moderate-muslims/

This is a deleted scene from Terminator 3 that explains why the terminators all look like Arnold. As far as I am concerned, this one should have been left in. It's funny, it has Arnold talking with an Alabama accent, and it closes the circle with the first movie in a small way.

Via curmudgeonlyskeptical.blogspot.com/

www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/iraq_the_war_that_broke_us_not.html

As the article says, deficits were declining even with the war, until Democrats took over Congress. The real explosion occurs when both Congress and the Presidency are in the hands of the Democrats. The cost of the wars are simply not a factor in our current financial embarrassment. Do you think this chart and the information it reveals would ever see the light of day in the MSM?

Timescapes Timelapse: Learning to Fly from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

More Timescapes. Be sure to watch this fullscreen.

Nice

Saturday porch.

Beyond awesome. Just click to full screen and watch.

Timescapes: "Death is the Road to Awe" from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

In Pakistan, they don't make you walk the plank, they make you cross the cable.

The much feared Hindenburg Omen receives confirmation. This, coupled with market action today, will make the technical traders very, very nervous. Better not be long for a while.

www.zerohedge.com/article/hindenburg-omen-confirmation-1

The Dollar Project invited proposals to redesign the currency. The results are here. Some work better than others, some look like tickets, and some honor those that haven't earned it. What would you have in your wallet?