The modern internet.  If you foul up and make yourself look foolish, better hope nobody has it on film, cause if so everyone world wide is going to see it.

Mondays, they're like that.

Next time some Prog tells you the Bush tax cuts caused the deficit, tell them that they actually caused tax revenue to jump 47%.

Just like President Kennedy knew, dropping tax rates raises revenue, because people quit trying to avoid taxes and concentrate on making money.

As they say, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

The gunshot rang out Sunday night at the downtown restaurant, and the culprit brazenly remained in the kitchen in plain view of police: a deep fryer.

Much remains unclear in the bizarre incident that occurred shortly after 9:30 p.m. at El Diamante Restaurant, 2830 E. Charleston Blvd., near North 28th Street.

The biggest question of them all: Who threw the biscuit - slang for gun - in the deep fryer?

"It was discovered the gunshot was a result of a firearm being tossed into a deep fryer and exploding," a Las Vegas police report said. No one was hurt." 

It appears the Beretta involved, however, will never be the same.  Secondly, what idiot tosses a loaded pistol in a deep fat fryer?  Low IQ doofus involved for sure.

Unknown Yakama man.

Via David McElroy and Bayou Renaissance Man, read Ron Paul's 31 questions politicians don't want to answer.

The questions, and they are thought provoking.  How would you answer them?

• Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?

• Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?

• Why can’t Americans manufacture rope and other products from hemp?

• Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?

• Why is Germany concerned enough to consider repatriating their gold held by the FED for her in New York?  Is it that the trust in the U.S. and dollar supremacy beginning to wane?

• Why do our political leaders believe it’s unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own gold?

• Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?

• Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?

• Why should there be mandatory sentences—even up to life for crimes without victims—as our drug laws require?

• Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?

• Why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize AIPAC ?

• Why haven’t we given up on the drug war since it’s an obvious failure and violates the people’s rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can’t even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?

• Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world-the one between Mexico and the US?

• Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?

• Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?

• Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?

• Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?

• Why do so many accept the deeply flawed principle that government bureaucrats and politicians can protect us from ourselves without totally destroying the principle of liberty?

• Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?

• Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a “kill list,” including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?

• Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.

• Why is it is claimed that if people won’t  or can’t take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?

• Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?

• Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?

• Why do some members defend civil liberties but not free markets? Aren’t they the same?

• Why don’t more defend both economic liberty and personal liberty?

• Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?

• Why does the use of religion to support a social gospel and preemptive wars, both of which requires authoritarians to use violence, or the threat of violence, go unchallenged? Aggression and forced redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the teachings of the world great religions.

• Why do we allow the government and the Federal Reserve to disseminate false information dealing with both economic and  foreign policy?

• Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority?

• Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there’s such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?

• Is there any explanation for all the deception, the unhappiness, the fear of the future, the loss of confidence in our leaders, the distrust, the anger and frustration?   Yes there is, and there’s a way to reverse these attitudes.  The negative perceptions are logical and a consequence of bad policies bringing about our problems.  Identification of the problems and recognizing the cause allow the proper changes to come easy.

Cabin porn.

"And if longing seizes you for sailing the stormy seas,

when the Pleiades flee mighty Orion

and plunge into the misty deep

and all the gusty winds are raging,

then do not keep your ship on the wine-dark sea

but, as I bid you, remember to work the land."

(Works and Days 618-23)

Radial engines - a thing of beauty.

An "uh-oh" moment.

Quoted in full, and with charts.  Via El Borak.

Thus saith Across the Street.  A couple of thoughts on what is in the whole a very good article.

1. The likelihood that China will grow over the next decade like it did the last is nil. China has rapidly transformed itself into an economic power, but lots of that was a combination of a) population and b) low-hanging economic fruit. China has an enormous reserve of workers, but like South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, and other Asian tigers, will soon run headfirst into the concept of decreasing marginal utility. It is easy to hire starving farmers at decent* wages to assemble products.  It is far more difficult to make those now-experienced workers - and their children - settle for the same wages for decades. 

2. Japan is toast. It does not matter what they do going forward: they face a demographic, financial, and industrial cataclysm because of what they have done in the past.  However, it was a mere generation ago that Japan was widely believed to be the power that would overtake the US. That error ought to illustrate the folly of straight-line extrapolation over time. 

3. Russia is a first-world nuclear arsenal bolted to a third-world economy. India is a third-world nuclear arsenal bolted to a third-world economy.  

4. The lack of theoretical economic replacements to the US is a bad thing, not a good thing. And the reason it's bad is that the world economy works best when one nation is far and away its leader, its organizer, and the one who keeps the sea lanes open.  In the 19th century, that was the British empire. As other European nations finally caught up to Britain's position of leadership, two World Wars finished the lot of them. But the US took the torch and was able to pick up the pieces, thru Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and various other mechanisms. There is no similar up-and-coming nation today - the American Century will not be followed by the Chinese Century or the Indian Century or the German Century. So as the US continues its Japanese-style slide into debt-hell and possible disintegration, accompanied by an ever-shrinking piece of the economic pie, and as we look forward to our inevitable war with China, which will likely result in China breaking into a million little pieces, we look forward to a world with no nation economically capable of keeping the peace, and given billions of hungry, angry people, maybe no nation that really wants to.

You don't need a chart to tell where that combination leads.

A San Francisco woman, tired of neighborhood packages being stolen, lured the thief with a fake package and then attacked him with bear spray and a wooden sword.  Minutes later the perp was arrested by police.  Good work from beginning to end, especially the wooden sword part.

Below, Sonya Yu, wooden sword master and neighborhood protector.

Freckles, they are good.

Ha.  I wonder what the WPI is according to the AMA guides (inside joke)?

Teen attacks mom's live in boyfriend when he discovers that mom's beau ate the Thanksgiving leftovers.

  "According to a Winchester Police Department report, Miller became enraged late Sunday when he realized that his turkey was poached from the refrigerator by Christopher Teer, his mother’s 35-year-old live-in boyfriend. Miller had returned to his Winchester home with the leftovers after celebrating Thanksgiving at his grandmother’s house."

Really, is this not totally understandable?  Leftovers are nearly the best thing about Thanksgiving.  Moral: never mess with a man's leftovers.

The "victim":