Communist Party USA says Smash Capitalism and Be Sure to Vote Democrat!!

No shit, they want you activists out there and in defense of activist government.
They're NOT really hiding it anymore - or they're REALLY not hiding it, you decide:

If the grand alliance that elected Barack Obama comes out in full force to vote we can stop the Tea Party/Republican takeover and continue moving forward.

Even using their favorite ooga-booga scare of "Corporations":

Hundreds of millions more dollars are being pumped into smear ads on TV, radio and internet in an attempt to defeat progressives and suppress voter turnout. The money is coming from shadow groups funded by unlimited corporate contributions.

As if their own corporate structure and tax-free status isn't being used to their and the cadres benefit, and who knows, maybe along with TARP money diverted from corporate banking alliances? Here's the list. Vote Communist, vote AFL-CIO, vote MoveOn, vote Rock the Vote and more:

Resources to help get out the vote:

AFL-CIO Labor 2010
One Nation Working Together Events
MoveOn — Stop the Takeover
Organizing for America Call for Change
Hip Hop Caucus — Respect My Vote
Rock the Vote / Register to Vote
Election Protection... Right to Vote
NCLR — Vote for Respect

Political Action Commission
Communist Party USA

And from Rick Nagin(tags: video, Communist Party USA, ultra-right, socialism, elections) at the CPUSA’s 29th Convention in New York we get this:

The Democratic State Assemblyman representing the district where the convention was held gave a great speech welcoming the convention as did several local union presidents. We also heard from Communists holding local office in a number of states.

So closely allied, so many mutual benefits derived. Transparency at last?

Inadvertant Skylight

To get at possible mold contaminated areas that were out of immediate view, the Techs opened-up the drywall a bit more. Whoa! I see daylight.
Contents removed from the gap included a large amount of pine-nuts and needles where a squirrel had made his nest - turds too big to indicate a rat.

The flashing was put-on all cockeyed, no wonder it got chilly in there - and leaked a bit. Sheesh. Meanwhile we now have a guy coming out here to put a patch on this hole before it rains a bunch more.
I can't wait for the new roof.

The Rain in Spain

Into each life some rain must fall. In this instance it was about four and a half gallons. A lot of it seeped in later in the afternoon when the rain had already stopped, after sneaking through a crack and soaking through the insulation and rendering the drywall not-dry. We collected it, a nasty tea-stained color, to show-off with pride our victimhood.
I had our guys tear out the wet and musty stuff and open up the ceiling to dry. We are required to get a mold remediation specialist in to clean off some of the beams, sand and wire brush with a HEPA vacuum - the deck seems ok and the air-quality is also good. The concentration of nasty-stuff from repeated leaks and earlier events is mainly in the corners - that is where the scrubbing is most needed.
Curiously a pair of early steel 2x4's were discovered being used as drywall nailers. They have no distance or torsional load carrying ability - they rely on compression alone for strength and must stand vertically. I wonder if the construction crew 30-years ago was running out of materials, and just had them lying around.
With more weather on the way I called our roofer to have his guys come out and throw a patch on the roof, and it has since stayed dry inside. He came himself to inspect the situation and for that I was grateful.


Forget Solar Power, it's a narrow-gap application of limited opportunity that is only intermittently available with about a 10% viability and requires Government subsidies to compete. I used to believe otherwise, back when it was all about believing, before I knew how things actually worked.
Mold is the REAL new-energy renewable income stream and it isn't going away.
"Green" jobs are never going to amount to much except to play on certain people's ecological vanity and distorted view of reality, but musty-gray-greenish-purple jobs can put dinner on the table in style. The bill for the toxicologist, sampling, and report came to over $1000. The remediation efforts will be equal at least I'm sure. Mold will always be with us, and thanks to heavy Government regulation it now costs more than ever to handle and eliminate. I would recommend it to any young man starting out.
Meanwhile the new kitchen floor has been laid of some cool stuff called Marmoleum.

The Cheating Begins: Teacher's Union Sponsored Voter Fraud

I really don't know what to say about this, I'm a bit flabbergasted but sadly not too surprised. To say, "It's New Jersey" is shallow and callous because it could just as easily be California - and it's very likely more widespread than we care to think.

A concerted effort to manipulate elections, abetted by the Teachers Union leadership.
Meanwhile in Illinois, there's a "glitch" in the absentee vote-by-mail ballots that were sent by the Illinois Democratic Coordinated Campaign.
In Daytona Beach an assistant principle at Mainland High School who has worked there for 18 years was arrested and charged with committing absentee ballot fraud during his 2010 re-election campaign as City Commissioner.
In Bucks County outside Philadelphia, residents say they have evidence linking a Democratic Congressman's campaign to a scheme to flood the county voter registration office with fraudulent applications for absentee ballots.
In Nevada there are reports that some Teachers' Union representatives were offering Starbucks cards to get people to vote for Harry Reid, while some Nevada voting machines were found automatically checking Harry Reid's name on the ballots.

Thugocracy and Kleptocracy - The Socialist Way

Remember, they can't win if they don't cheat, lie and steal. From The Real Cuba blog.

Oct. 25 - Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez ordered Monday night the expropriation of a plant owned by Owens Illinois, a US corporation that employs more than 800 workers in that country.

The plant produces most of the glass bottles and plastic containers that are used by Venezuelan manufacturers to pack their products and has been operating in the country for more than 50 years.

According to Chávez, he was stealing the company because it was "exploiting the workers."

However, on Tuesday morning Owens Illinois workers protested the takeover measure saying that they were very satisfied with the salaries and benefits they were receiving and one of the workers told a Venezuelan newspaper that they will "use the bottles produced by the plant to defend the company."

And H/T Babalu Blog, more Venezuelan hi-jinks:

High ranking chavista arrested in Miami accused of extortion

Oct. 25 - Venezuelan media is reporting the arrest in Miami of Rafael Horacio Ramos, who Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez put in charge of the country's largest brokerage firms, after they were expropriated in May of this year by the Venezuelan regime.

Ramos was named director of Banvalor Casa de Bolsa, Italbursatil and UnoValores.

According to those media reports, Rafael Horacio Ramos was arrested by the FBI on Saturday night, when he was having dinner with a Venezuelan banker who used to own one of the brokerage firms stolen by order of Chávez.

The banker was wearing concealed microphones which allowed FBI agents to listen to the conversation.

Allegedly, Ramos was asking the banker for money in order to help him regain control of his company.

Owens Illinois has been there for 50 years, Chavez has been there only for 11 years, and he keeps taking since no one will stand up to him...

University, Meritocracy, and the Planned Economy = GIGO

Wholly from Instapundit, this blog-comment by Jim Bennett is right up there with the best of them, including the 5-Year Plan that is most popular with the Credentialed Class, the Graduation Plan. (Disclaimer: I are one too.)

Jim Bennett emails:

I’ve been thinking about this, and I am starting to think that the problems with a meritocratic elite are essentially the same as those of a centrally planned economy. Every meritocratic system is ultimately dependent upon some set of metrics to judge merit. But just as no centrally planned economy can create metrics that adequately describe the needed outputs of industry, no one meritocratic system can create metrics that adequately describe all of the characteristics needed to be, collectively, the decsion-makers of a society. Inevitably, the young people start performing to the metrics rather than the desired characteristics themselves.* The university system has now created a truly bizarre set of success metrics (e.g., pleasing a professor of critical theory) and it is little wonder that many kids graduate after an expensive education and have almost no capabilities that fit them for work in the real world. To the extent that we make a graduate degree a necessary qualification for any real work we are getting the intellectual equivalent of the slop that Soviet factories churned out toward the end.

Any single meritocratic system that uses a single set of metrics will suffer from this version of the fatal conceit. America has historically been run not by any sort of meritocratic system but rather by a reasonably open system with multiple paths to the top, with many competing sets of metrics along the various paths. Making a lot of money has always been one of those metrics, and frankly, it’s not such a bad one. I’d hate to be in a society in which is was the only one. Still, even that is better than the current system, of which the ultimate product is Barack Obama.

The old American system wasn’t perfect. There were categories of people who had no good path to the top, or even the upper strata, and that was a waste of good talent. But we would be much better off if we could go back to something like an improved version of the old system before the current system becomes entirely entrenched.

My various emphasis added such as *when privileged and entitled classmates I knew asked, "What do I have to know to pass the test?" No matter how well you pass the notational behavioral tests: paper or plastic, glass in one bin and plastic in another - it's still Garbage In, Garbage Out.
C-ya!

ATF's Guatemala Grenadefest

H/T Uncle, from the blog Borderland Beat we get a story about the supposed US arms supplying Mexican drug cartels:

Bill Newell, regional director for Arizona and New Mexico A.T.F., said there are indications that several of the explosives seized in the State were acquired through connections with corrupt officials in Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador.

"These sales are part of a legal trade, and we have seen that the vast majority of grenades that have been seized (in Nuevo León), and were of American origen, were sold between 1988 and 1990 to countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Belize -- and what happened in those years? The civil wars ended. We began seeing more and more connections with Los Zetas last year, for example, in Guatemala there were several grenade seizures in Zeta training camps."

Meanwhile confused Leftys in the BB comments section drool, burble, and froth allegations of racism and Capitalism and other -isms as usual, bending the narrative to fit their worldview.

Dave? Dave's Not Here - No on CA Prop-19

As a Libertarian of sorts, I'd be more for this crap if only it wasn't so obviously written by some Stoner in the Stupidslature and his Stoner Lobbyist buddy because it's really poorly written, like most everything put before us in CA.

People often complain that California has some serious systemic problems created by the process of citizen-lead Propositions, and this is a good example of that.  The problem with Prop. 19 is that it goes way beyond Medical toe-in-the-door allowances and the Stoners overreach the peanut-butter and potato chips by insisting that, "no person shall be discriminated against or denied any right or privilege" for pot use -- that invites a lawsuit any and every time an employer tries to require a drug test or screening.  It's a serious failure to imagine the far reaching consequences of your own pot-drenched writings that is typical of impulse-driven stoner-social activity.  It only seems creative and brilliant within the smoky bubble of the bong.

And frankly I just don't care about Stoners anymore, as far as I can tell they're stuck in High-School, literally.

The Closing of the Politically Correct Mind

How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Liberal:

Another case-study in intellectual suicide, NPR fires Williams and benefits from George Soros' $1.8 million gift (or grift) to NPR so that it can hire political reporters across the country. Politically-correct reporters that is, wholly owned by Soros and reflecting his agenda-driven Leftist ideology.  To paraphrase and steal a bit from the Islamist book:

The Liberal's conception of Gaia as pure will, unbound by reason and purely knowable through the visible sensate world, rendered any search for cause and effect in nature irrelevant to Liberal societies over centuries, resulting in slipshod, dependent cultures where in a heated battle over the role of reason, the side of irrationality won.

Song Sung Sharia - British Muslims Call for the Death of British Muslims

From the Independant UK:  Hardliners call for deaths of Surrey Muslims - By Jerome Taylor, Religious Affairs Correspondent, Thursday, 21 October 2010

Left: The Ahmadiyya Muslim community during Friday prayers at Baitul Futuh Mosque in Morden, London 

Islamic extremists have started openly calling for the destruction of a controversial Muslim sect in a major escalation of sectarian conflict within British Islam, an investigation by The Independent has revealed.

Hardline Islamists in Britain have been distributing leaflets calling for the murder of AhmadiMuslims in Kingston-upon-Thames whilst mosques have been vandalised in Newham and Crawley. Preachers in south London have also been orchestrating a boycott of Ahmadi businesses and Ofcom has had to reprimand an Islamic satellite channel for repeatedly calling the sect "Wajib-ul Qatal" - an Arabic phrase used to describe those who digress from mainstream Islam that translates as "liable for death"....

Police in Kingston-upon-Thames have opened a hate crime investigation earlier this summer when an Ahmadi woman was handed a leaflet by a man which stated: "Kill [an Ahmadi] and the doors to heaven will be open for you." In Tooting, meanwhile, some mainstream Sunni preachers have urged follower to boycotts Ahmadi businesses.

Somebody hasn't adopted much of the British love for fair-play and all that, but more to the point it reflects the intellectual suicide and hermetic closure of the Islamic mind as shown by the Religoons of Pieces.

From Amazon, Product Description

Islam’s Intellectual Suicide—and the Threat to Us All

People are shocked and frightened by the behavior coming out the Islamic world—not only because it is violent, but also because it is seemingly inexplicable. While there are many answers to the question of “what went wrong” in the Muslim world, no one has decisively answered why it went wrong. Until now.

In this eye-opening new book, foreign policy expert Robert R. Reilly uncovers the root of our contemporary crisis: a pivotal struggle waged within the Muslim world nearly a millennium ago. In a heated battle over the role of reason, the side of irrationality won. The deformed theology that resulted, Reilly reveals, produced the spiritual pathology of Islamism, and a deeply dysfunctional culture.

Terrorism—from 9/11, to London, Madrid, and Mumbai, to the Christmas 2009 attempted airline bombing—is the most obvious manifestation of this crisis. But Reilly shows that the pathology extends much further. The Closing of the Muslim Mind solves such puzzles as:

·        why peace is so elusive in the Middle East

·        why the Arab world stands near the bottom of every measure of human development

·        why scientific inquiry is nearly dead in the Islamic world

·        why Spain translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years

·        why some people in Saudi Arabia still refuse to believe man has been to the moon

·        why Muslim media frequently present natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina as God’s direct retribution

Anyhow, check it out.

Religoons of Peace Prostelytize by Killing

H/T Gateway Pundit, They're at it again in Grozny, where the Religion of Pieces actively proselytized in 2008 and ultimately killed 334 hostages, including 186 children.

Islamic insurgents including a suicide bomber stormed Chechnya's Parliament on Tuesday, leaving six people dead and 17 injured in one of the most brazen attacks on the provincial capital in months, officials said.

One attacker blew himself up at the gates of the complex while two others stormed the building shouting "Allahu Akbar," said a Chechen police spokesman.
From Ghana's PeaceFMOnline:

Moscow is struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, a strip of poor, ethnically mixed provinces along Russia's southern border.

Sounds a bit like the way our southern border is trending.

Hateful UN Ecotard Scare Tactics

Bio-di...bibbidy-babbidy-boo. Biocide? Diversicide? The UN has decided 10:10's threats of merely killing children isn't enough and apparently wants to extinguish all life on Earth. "We are destroying life on Earth," said the head of the U.N. Environment Program. Is that an adjective, or just another 5-Year plan they have?

Despite the U.N.'s fear that biodiversity may be at risk, scientists over the past decade have identified new species at an unprecedented rate. The 2008 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) study First Contact in the Greater Mekong reported that 1,068 species were discovered or newly identified by science between 1997 and 2007 -- averaging two new species a week. And the Census of Marine Life -- an ambitious, 10-year project to catalog the diversity of the world's oceans -- recently concluded, having identified more than 6,000 potentially new ocean-going species.

Sheesh. Blah-blah-blah. Why are we bothering to fund in any way these useless psychotic sociopaths, dictators, kleptocrats, and bureaucratic thugs?

Plants Hurt

It's Fall and the poison oak is turning crimson. There are fire warnings for the dry grasslands - burning poison oak can be a real problem when smoke carries the volatile irritants on the wind and it gets inhaled.

Plants Stink

Bicycling out on The Trail you are met with the odors of nature.
Some are nice or at least pleasantly receptive, like this one with the breath of anis.
Others kinda stink and leave a dark stain on the ground where their berries fall or they drip some plant-goo.

This one has a whiff of nasty - maybe it's a self-defense mechanism.

10/10/10 10:10 - Hope you all had a good weekend.

Meg Whitman and Gun Control

Pajamas Media wonders, "Why would the union that represents LAPD officers even think of endorsing liberal Jerry Brown to reprise his disastrous turn as California's governor? Because politics is full of compromising positions." And moreso, because it's also about Cops being Cops.

About a year ago while on vacation in Hawaii I was talking guns and stuff to a just-married young California cop who said he was definitely going to vote for his Boss, Attorney General Jerry Brown. Not too surprisingly his newlywed was a Teacher and member of that Union too.

As a gun-owner, Meg Whitman has proved that besides being ignorant about guns, she was perwepared to be entirely hostile to 2nd Amendment issues also, and she takes a Ruling-Class approach that the serfs and little people should be disarmed. She is just as arch, elitist, and uncivil as her Democrat foes and definitely lacks the common-man touch. IMO she's about as conservative as any Menlo Park hausfrau, they all hire their maid-service from the East Menlo Park and Redwood City barrios.

In her autobiography she describes her decision to ban guns as one of her “least difficult decisions,” even though eBay users were largely opposed to the ban. She later rationalized her decision with her belief that gun owners would “cut corners” and let firearms fall into the hands of criminals.

Jerry Brown, for all his inanity, has been a gun-rights supporter. In fact he has disappointed death penalty foes and gun control proponents who hoped he would support their causes, so much so that they complained noisily when Brown filed his own friend-of-the-court brief re: HELLER, asking that Chicago's gun ban be overturned - arguing that if the court doesn't act, "California citizens could be deprived of the constitutional right to possess handguns in their homes."

IMO Whitman's recent re-badging and new identity as a Republican is simply a Rhino "R" badge that gets her into the Big Country Club in Sacramento alongside the "D" badges. It gives her access to power and that's something very motivating. Records show that in 2003 she endorsed Barbara Boxer and in 2004 she signed an "open-letter" appealing for support from California technology executives, touting Boxer as a "dynamic and courageous leader" on the tech front. She claims that her executive and leadership skills will let her will run California "like a business" - but California is NOT a business, and it's structurally almost too far gone to be run that way. How will she deal with an un-elected entity like the Air Resources Board that knowingly produced a wildly fraudulent, erroneous, and unscientific report in an effort to influence National Policy, produced by a member with a fraudulent degree, a liar who is defended by State Officials and remains a member of the Board - while doing severe damage to businesses in the State? The level of miscalculation that they continue to defend at %340.

Whitman reportedly says she will suspend the law - for a year - but she can't really do ANYTHING about CARB. Arnold hasn't either, nor anything about the illegitimate "lead scientist" with the fake degree either. - Some kind of executive, that. The fact that she's in a battle with Brown to secure Union support shows that maybe she knows it can't be done her way, and if she tries she'll get pwned like Arnold was by the Unions that run Sacramento and who are allied to the Left. Also it shows how quickly she might sprint to the power of the Left once she's in office.
Bah.

The Scientific Fraud of Global Warming

From Borepatch, The eminent physicist Hal Lewis resigns from The American Physical Society:

"It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."

Perhaps the single dumbest argument presented in support of Global Warming is that "the scientific consensus is that it's true" - that is of course a lie and as untrue as it is stupid. In an effort to control the debate and expell Heretics from the Church of Global Warmingism, we get Priestly statements like, "you're not qualified" or "we only look at peer-reviewed scientists" - which another lie.

That's breaking down.  Hal Lewis is one of the Senior Statesmen of American Physics.  He's been a member of the American Physical Society for 67 years (!).  His bio lays out his bona fides:

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making).

Hal Lewis thinks that Global Warming is an anti-scientific, money-grabbing scam by scientists, and says so in a brutal resignation letter sent to the president of the APS:

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

This is a huge media story that our biased press is unlikely to print, so RTWT and pass this around to your friends and family.  Professor Lewis is pointed in calling out filthy lucre as the heart of the corruption, even accusing the APS president himself:

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

And from Watts Up With That?

This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.

http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html

Red-dot range-time redux

C-S Tactical who were Mike & Mason at the Gunblogger Rendezvous V, has a tutorial post on choosing a carbine scope, with lots and lots of pictures, video, and informations.

I went through this earlier for my M1 Carbine project with the Ultimak rail. That was an easy and fun project that brought me up to speed on red-dot sights.


I didn't have enough money for a Trijicon (and still don't, even less) so I bought an Aimpoint 9000SC because I liked the size-profile relative to the M1 Carbine.

That transitioned to the AR when I completed that build, which is when I added the ARMS quick-detach rings...

That's about it. As always, click the pics to embigulate.

Hope and Change and Brassknuckles

H/T Say Uncle:
GOP takeover of Congress would mean 'hand-to-hand combat,' Obama warns. Stay classy Mr. Big Cheese.

A Republican majority would threaten policies to stabilize the economy, the president says during a radio interview, part of an effort to rally key Democratic constituencies.

I wonder which madly spending printing-money and bagman-to-Wallstreet policy has helped stabilize the economy? The destruction of the Insurance sector policy that has stabilized the rubble? The takeover of Government Motors policy that bailed-out the UAW policy?
A Modest Proposal:  The Senate Circus Maximus:
If we're going to have fist-fights in Congress then can we please place bets and watch it on C-SPAN and help generate some fiscal rewards? I suggest Senate Cage-Match Fridays. This could be bigger than Monday Night Football, and change political races around the country. People would vote for the politician with the biggest biceps and longest reach, and we could truly acknowledge that we simply have meatheads in Congress.  Put boxer Harry Reid into the ring and see what he comes up with.  Let gap-toothed Al Franken finally air his political hostilities.

More Political Signs

Say it aint so, Joe - there's Commies in the White House...and Senate and Congress.  Now more than ever.

Truth is not a Commodity

There are some fundamental things that Politicians who are elastic with the Truth simply don't get about Business and work, as illustrated by this dialog between two CEO's I know.
The political commitment to elastic truth is a corrosive solvent that destroys relationships, it doesn't build them, and they have lost it with The People.

This morning I turned down a 9.2 million dollar deal, because of the politician involved. My brain kept me focused on the feasibility implementation, my heart the veterans and my gut told me THEY could not be trusted. My gut warned me that my soul was getting sucked out, as I wrestled with the ends-justifies-the-means mentality of one of the key players. The funny thing is my withdrawal from the group left only one player left, the politician. (Should be an interesting month to see what repercussions happen from the "breakup" of our group.)

Which was replied-to with:

Actually in business (just to get this out of the way), the ends utterly justifies the means, and we all have back stories where we went there when it was in our best interest. Your company doesn't serve any part of the role of a Supreme Court Justice, and has no responsibility beyond two things: make money and act legally.

Everything after that tries to complicate the simple function of business with Utopian thinking. When you examine a business decision to partner or not close-up, ethical considerations enter in to things differently than they do for an individual decision. "Trust is the foundation and fuel that propels every alliance to mutual success", and I make sure every potential partner knows that before we go very far. For your business decision to have any chance of succeeding, you don't just have to have good fundamentals, you have to trust that you won't get fucked by an unscrupulous person. You have to trust your decision-data so you can trust that your decisions are sound. You have to trust the rules won't change. Trust, trust, trust.
What I hope you walked away with is a clear understanding of the true nature and benefit of the extremely good thing you just did, that you made a sound and appropriate BUSINESS decision and that you not waste your time trying to rebuild it in some ethical/moral/philosophical neighborhood.

A real businessman brings two things to the table: reputation and business sense. If someone has a reputation as incompetent you might get fucked. If someone has a reputation as a liar (just one lie), you can't believe ANYTHING they tell you, and even having the conversation is a full on waste of time, because there is nothing you can actually DO with what you hear from them.

The actual application of ethics in these everyday partnering situations is 100% practical and doesn't need to be confused with philosophy. Business isn't about philosophy.

If it makes you feel any better, I just had to step away from a fairly large deal myself for similar trust issues.
Way to go, you acted like an uncommonly rare kind of person, a BUSINESSman. If you can't trust what the other person says, if "backpedal" comes to mind when you think of your history or future with them, run. Stop thinking about the 9.2 mil, the lottery is giving away a lot more this week, and the odds are better.

This is where the Tea Party is at with the so-called Ruling Class and especially the Political Class who view lying simply as a means of communication. This is where the tar-and-feathers comes in. If you go to DC and lie to Senator you can get 10-years in jail, but when a Senatroid or Congressweasle comes to you and lies over and over again they suffer no consequences - and they are our servants. Who would employ a known liar, thief and cheat? Nobody, they get fired, end of story. Why they should serve in Congress or the Senate is beyond me.

Happy Tiki!

Happy Birthday Kon-Tiki dude Thor, you crazy Norwegian Viking nature-boy.

In 1947 after fighting Nazis, a world weary of war awoke.


You sailed a balsa boat from Peru to the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands, and made it safe for dreamers, beachcombers and bikinis - and drinks of frightful intensity in strange cups and large flaming bowls.



You spread the word, and the word spread like wildfire and there was painting put upon black velvet of naked women in the tropic night.

Rock on, Thor, you are one Badass dude.

Secret Agents

This is the Roosevelt drop, by the bridge or under a rock, in the trash-bin or from a string in a tree...

Boxer Campaign Hires Day Laborers to Protest Fiorina

H/T Existingthing:


From Breitbart's BigGovernment: A citizen journalist interviewed sign-holding protesters at a Barbara Boxer rally outside of KPCC radio station where Boxer was debating Carly Fiorina.

As one commenter said, "Meg Wittman hires one cleaning lady that she may or may not have know was an illegal immigrant and that is BIG-newsworthy? But Boxer's people KNOWINGLY hire illegals to protest against Fiorina???"

NOooo!! CA Gerrymander Proposition 27 - Lies, Fakery, and Falsity

From Ballot☆Pedia

At first I was enamored by the surface of this protest, to see the reflection of my own handsome face in the mirror-pond, wearing my old Youth Brigade beret and flowing hair - and feel the immense rippling power of my collective awesomeness.

Then the waters actually did ripple and with consciousness I saw my balding Earthworm Jim visage, the thin gray chest hair, and my delusion of grandiosity died.

If there was ever a DoubleTalk-DoubleSpeak award this might get it.
If the googly-eyed pinchy botox-faced Nancy Pelosi, the sad-clown Communist Barbara Lee, and psychotically deranged Lynn Woolsey gave money to it, it must be self-serving.

If scumbucket George Soros is for it, beyond simply being bad it is very likely to be evil.

The Incumbents and Political Master-Class want their power back and the will pay millions in their effort to return control to themselves. They want to eliminate the little people who are on the Commission and return it to the untrustworthy, lying fat-cats of Incumbistan.  For the greedy stupid Pasha's to get their power back they preform Jihad on the electorate and Taqiyya. The lying.

Donor	Amount
Haim Saban	$2,000,000
AFSCME	$1,250,000
Working 4 Working Americans	$500,000
Democratic State Central Committee of California	$250,000
Judy Chu TruPAC	$125,000
Charles Calderon for State Assembly Committee	$100,000
George Soros	$100,000
Peter Angelos	$100,000
Louise Gund	$100,000
Edith Wasserman	$100,000
Zenith Insurance	$100,000

Note: "Working 4 Working Americans" is described by Capitol Weekly as "a Washington, D.C.-based, labor-backed group."

17 Democratic congressmen either gave money directly to the campaign or whose campaign committees gave money:

Howard Berman Lois Capps Judy Chu* Anna Eshoo Sam Farr Mike Honda

Barbara Lee Zoe Lofgren Doris Matsui Nancy Pelosi Laura Richardson Lucille Roybal-Allard

Linda Sanchez Adam Schiff Jackie Speer Diane Watson Lynn Woolsey

Mike Honda, shame on you!
And it's entirely partisan, no members of the Republican Party have made any move to support this bayotch, while members of the Democratic Party are bankrolling it either personally through their state senate or state assembly campaign committee, or through a ballot measure campaign committee set up with their name on it:

Politician	Office held	Party	Amount
Charles Calderon	State Assembly, District 58	Democrat	$100,000
Mike Eng	State Assembly, District 49	Democrat	$100,000
Bob Blumenfield	State Assembly, District 40	Democrat	$85,000
John Perez	State Assembly, District 46	Democrat	$49,000
Alex Padilla	State Senate, District 20	Democrat	$34,000
Felipe Fuentes	State Assembly, District 39	Democrat	$30,000
Nancy Skinner	State Assembly, District 14	Democrat	$30,000
Karen Bass	State Assembly, District 47	Democrat	$20,000

Bastards! No to 27 - this stuff is the ugly sausage-factory of politics.

Demolition Kitchen

The refrigerator is plugged-in out in the dining room, keeping beer and wine chilled while microwave hiding in the background is our sole oven. We have no sink except in the bathroom. It's paper plates and napkins for a while. We are keeping all the appliances since they still have good life remaining and the stainless steel is modern-o-istic - and also we can't afford to replace them.
The counter-tops are an older (earlier) slab of Volga Blue with some green among the black and iridescent blue mica flakes. It's kinda extreme, so the boxes are plain slab-fonts and without a lot of surface grain, in a finish-color called Truffle.
The question that comes to mind now is door-hardware and we initially thought of the classic and industrial stainless-steel T-handle - make it look like a professional kitchen. Everyone's doing it. Hmmm. Remember the pink, aqua and sand colors of the late 80's? The fact that you can get them in contractor bulk-packs at Lowe's means they are truly ubiquitous, and what is ubiquitous soon becomes old and passe. How will that sell in 10-years? The holes in the wood are permanent. We will opt for something more conservative and less trendy. Plus it's not going to look like some kind of pro-Chef kitchen anyhow, that's impossible, it's a one-butt kitchen with increased efficiencies.

More Green Fascism

Enviroshitbags can't resist their totalitarian impulses to kill people who disagree with them. Like Islamists they depend on terrorizing people to bend them to their small-minded, narrow-focus, death-oriented, zero-sum worldview.



H/T Rick - The creeps at something called 10:10 are mostly funded by some asinine Governmental boobs who steal taxes, but in addition have a couple real sponsors, namely O2, Sony and Kyocera, who ought to find that their commercial interests among living breathing and exhaling people are not furthered by funding murderous Eco-Nazi will-fulfillment propaganda:

• Sony Corporate
• O2 contact
• Kyocera