I hate to laugh at others' misfortune, but…….

….this is hilarious.  Sad, but hilarious!  Lest you think this is parody, it's not.

Zimbabwe Is Down to Its Last $217 

There are cash-strapped governments and there are broke governments. And then there's Zimbabwe, which, after paying last week's government salaries, has just $217 left in the bank. No, we didn't forget any zeroes to the end of that figure. Zimbabwe, the country that's home to some of the world's largest plutonium and diamond reserves, literally has the same financial standing as a 14-year-old girl after a really good birthday party. The country's finance minister admitted as much in a press conference on Tuesday. "Last week when we paid civil servants there was $217 [left] in government coffers," Tendai Biti told reporters. "The government finances are in paralysis state at the present moment. We are failing to meet our targets."

Later today, you'll likely see them ahead of you in the convenience store buying Malt Liquor, Cheetos and a stack of scratch-off lottery tickets.

About Those "Low Information Voters"

From Istook.Com

Whining about the number of voters participating has become de rigueur over the years, but sans information, larger voting blocs are no more than more formidable mobs. 

It’s increasingly clear that the current regime sees this as a net positive in society’s current configuration, but that they cannot see this trend is antithetic to the continued survival of the Republic is either suicidally cynical, or malevolently cunning. 

Helluva damned choice.

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

Monty Python: 

“I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am”

I can’t speak for anyone else, but this describes me perfectly. Sometimes, however, you just become sick and tired of being sick and tired and, at that point, it’s best to walk away and enjoy life’s wonders both great and small. 

Don’t worry, the madness, outrage and tumult will be anxiously awaiting your return.

More of the Whiney Bitches of Islam

McDonald's settles $700,000 suit over Islamic diet in US

McDonald's and one of its franchise owners agreed to pay $700,000 to members of the Muslim community to settle allegations a Detroit-area restaurant falsely advertised its food as being prepared according to Islamic dietary law. 

McDonald's and Finley's Management Co. agreed Friday to the tentative settlement, with that money to be shared by Dearborn Heights resident Ahmed Ahmed, a Detroit health clinic, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn and lawyers. 

Ahmed's attorney, Kassem Dakhlallah, told The Associated Press on Monday that he's "thrilled" with the preliminary deal that's expected to be finalized March 1. McDonald's and Finley's Management deny any liability but say the settlement is in their best interests.

They don't call it Dearboristan for nothing.

The afternoon of 9/11/01, having watched the horror on TV at my office for hours, some friends and I decided to get out and get some lunch. We instinctively chose McDonald's, not because the food was that great, bit because we all agreed that it was quintessentially AMERICAN. Were I to live that moment again (God forbid), I may not make that choice.

Prostrating themselves before the Muslim hoards was their primary mistake; Muslims have it rigged in their favor and I suspect they had this in mind from the beginning. They're incessant whiners and conflict gives their lives meaning. Screw 'em, close up the restaurant and let 'em eat elsewhere.  

Pardon me if the constant drone of cruelty, inhumanity and senseless death emanating from the Muslim world makes me less than sympathetic to their customs are anything else about their miserable death cult masquerading as a "religion".

The Leaders We Deserve, 2.0

Well, America, you wanted four more years and you'll be getting everything that's coming to you, beginning today.

Quite a Stunning Sunset Last Night

Emotions Are Not A Basis For Law

I'm sure that today's White House push for sweeping gun regulation will be a spectacle worthy of Frank Capra with fresh faced cherubs pleading for their President to protect them from the wave of violence the way that only Barack Obama can.

It's a fools errand of epic proportions, regardless of your stand on gun ownership.

We need to get back to dispassionate governance and leave the emotional heat of the moment out of it. Everything Obama has done has dripped with emotion and immediacy, both of which preclude studied debate and the intellectual exercise that should accompany consideration of any law or regulation. The very worst mindset in approaching legislation is, in fact, the whole of his playbook.

Emotions are fleeting, law is not.

My heart aches for the families of these 20 children, but that doesn’t mean they should have any more influence on law than should any of us here. That’s another BS hallmark of the liberal argument; “moral authority”.

I’m sure that he’ll pull out all the stops this afternoon, pulling at our hearts and ignoring our heads. I’ll be halfway surprised if he doesn’t douse the children in blood, just to drive the point home.

Obama, the Oligarch of Outrage

The shear number of sources for outrage isn this administration almost precludes the success of any of the individual outrages because the opposition is portrayed “obstructing virtually everything” -- clearly this is a planned strategy. In short, if everything is outrageous, then nothing is outrageous.

Obama’s far more interested in discrediting the Republican Party than he is in surrounding himself with competence, and by keeping the level of controversy at a fever pitch he’s effectively casting the Republicans as a party of perpetual naysayers. As a bonus, it keeps the spotlight on the controversy du jour and off of the growing list of administration failures.

Alas, fully aided and abetted by the Entertainment Information Complex, it’s working extraordinarily well.  If you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, then President Obama has you just where he wants you.

Gun Control And The Question Of Motivation

"Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg

Both crime and murder are down by nearly half in the last 20 years, while gun ownership is up by half, yet the liberals are frantic to enact sweeping gun restrictions as though impending doom will surely consume us if it’s not done immediately.

The fervor with which they are selling “gun control” of late should give even non- gun owning “moderates” pause.

Even if one discounts that this is part of a pernicious and wide-ranging conspiracy on the Left to “disarm and oppress”, It’s hard to discount that it’s about authoritarianism, and that every left-of-center politician in the country seems to be eaten up with it.

They’re not trying to save us, they’re trying to control us, whether it be in the form of guns, french fries, big gulps, or Vicodin in emergency rooms and that’s quite pernicious enough for me, thank you.

Tigers and Hummingbirds

39% Say Government Should Do Nothing For Long-Term Unemployed 

Gawd, what an annoying grin!

More Americans than ever (39%) now think that if people can’t find work for an extended period of time, the government should do nothing at all to help them, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.  

Only eight percent (8%) feel their unemployment benefits should be extended indefinitely, down four points from October and tying the all-time low finding in over two years of regular surveying.  (To see survey question wording, click here. 

Thirty-two percent (32%) of Adults believe the government should pay for their retraining, tying April’s high.  Just  12% think the government should hire the long-term unemployed.

Hmm. A little more than two months ago, Obama was handily reelected and now more than a third say we should just hang the long-term unemployed out to dry.

The disconnect is pretty obvious, and significant.

The President is intoxicated with "mandate" but, as is the case with all intoxicants, what he's seeing may not be reality at all. Were I he, I'd tread lightly…but he won't, of course. As my father was wont to say, he may well be "letting his tiger mouth outweigh his hummingbird ass".

Don't Blame The Messenger

Trailer pulled for reality show starring rapper who fathered ELEVEN children by TEN women after it is branded 'an attack on African-American families' 

A yet-to-air reality show documenting a rapper, who has fathered eleven children by ten different women, has been slammed by critics who have branded it 'disgusting' and 'negative'. 

Do these people look like they're being coerced?

All My Babies' Mamas, set to air this spring on the Oxygen network, follows Carlos 'Shawty Lo' Walker, 36, as he navigates family life in an affluent suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. 

But after a preview of the one-hour, fly-on-the-wall hit the internet thousands of viewers called for it to be scrapped, with many suggesting it plays on racial stereotypes. 

Change.org petition, which has more than 20,000 signatures, states that the show 'stereotypes and demeans black children, mothers and dads'. 

New York-based Sabrina Lamb, who launched the initiative explains: 'This is not just an attack on African-American parents and children….but all parents and children.
…….

Gawd, the sanctimony of these people is annoying, the people that are most frequently trafficking in "black stereotypes" are black people themselves!  Personally, I despise reality TV, but maybe something like this could shed some light onto a generations-long cultural descent that's all but been ignored.  A cultural descent that even talking about can cause you to be branded a "racist".

The "black community" has given this behavior a wink and a nod for decades and now that there are plans to put it on TV for all to see they claim it's "an attack on African-American families"?

Let's remember that the reprehensible behavior inspired the TV show, not the other way around.

Passing Thought; Should America Be a Global Cop?

If not us, who?

There’s too many people on BOTH sides that want the U.S. to become a version of “Fortress America” and divorce ourselves from our role as the preeminent superpower. We simply must be involved, at some level, in the daily havoc lest it become catastrophe. 9/11 happened not at a time of heavy military involvement, but only eight months after the Clinton administration during which such involvement was eschewed. I don’t want direct action in every shitty little war that flares up, but the serious threat of such action can be cause for reflection.

The United States is one of, if not the only country on earth whose very existence owes to specific, and universal principles, and when these principles are violated we have a moral obligation to act by virtue of being who we are.

So, You Think It's Bad Now?

Don't forget the ultimate penalty on the young and the poor - inflation:

As is clear by this chart, inflation was virtually unheard of until the Creature from Jekyll Island (the Federal Reserve) took over.  However, more importantly, things didn’t really start to get bad until the 1970?s right after Nixon took the nation off the gold standard in 1971.  Since that time, America has seen a period of non-existent real wage growth and a huge gap grow between the rich and the poor ever since.  Nothing like livin’ the debt slave dream!

Chart and quote from www.zerohedge.com 

Truly, We Get The Leaders We Deserve

Politics is just the symptom, the malady goes far deeper. Over the past 50 years or so, the basic underpinnings of our culture have been questioned then refracted to mean anything we want them to mean thus rendering the very concept of “principles” worthless. We’ve become so open-minded that our brains have fallen out, our “tolerance” has reached a point where nearly anything is acceptable and even that which is unacceptable is “explainable”. A civilization without limits is no longer a civilization.

As a people, we want profligate spending, if it’s on us, and we want higher taxes to pay for it, as long as we’re not the ones being taxed. We want peace, but we’re not prepared to do what it takes to defeat those who live for war -- we’re not even prepared to call them by name. As a nation, we’re much like Scarlett O’Hara before the war; secure in our own little egg, actually believing we can stave off reality forever. We can’t.

It’s oft said that we get the leaders that we deserve and that’s never been so true as it is today -- faithless pols to represent a faithless constituency. We, as a people, have gotten precisely what we asked for. 

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not within our stars, but within ourselves”