Dogs Are the Smartest Pets

A lost dog strays into a jungle. A lion sees this from a distance and says with caution: "this guy looks edible, never seen his kind before". So the lion starts rushing towards the dog with menace. The dog notices and starts to panic but as he's about to run he sees some bones next to him and gets an idea and says loudly "mmm...that was some good lion meat!".

The lion abruptly stops and says " woah! This guy seems tougher then he looks, I better leave while I can". Over by the tree top, a monkey witnessed everything. Evidently, the monkey realizes the he can benefit from this situation by telling the lion and getting something in return. So the monkey proceeds to tell the lion what really happened and the lion says angrily "get on my back, we'll get him together".

So they start rushing back to the dog. The dog sees them and realized what happened and starts to panic even more. He then gets another idea and shouts "where the hell is that monkey! I told him to bring me another lion an hour ago..."

via

Eric Holder

-didn't realize he had dressed like Steve Urkel until he read about it in the Washington Post.

Another Cute Tuesday

 

A Break From the IRS Scandal

I posted this a year ago. So now it's after the election....

Goldberg Nails It

There is no reason to believe anyone who keeps changing their story.

h/t: the corner

Our Prez

I won't reproduce the photo because it screams 'copyright protected' but Time has a photo of the Bamanator on prom night in Hawaii. It looks like a fun night, two best friends and their girls, out to have fun.

But what jumps out at me isn't the picture, it's what Barry wrote in his friend's girlfriend's yearbook. This is your prez:

Kelli,
It has been so nice getting to know you this year. You are extremely sweet and foxy, I don't know why Greg would want to spend any time with me at all. You really deserve better than clowns like us; you even laugh at my jokes! I hope we can keep in touch this summer, even though Greg will be gone. Call me up, and I'll buy you lunch sometime. 979-[smudged number]. Anyway, good luck in everything you do, and stay happy.
Your friend,
LOVE [heart sign]
Barry Obama

That's the kind of guy he is and was: the best friend who will move in on your girl while you're away at college. Too cynical? Nah, "even though Greg will be gone" and a phone number sort of say it all.

"Maybe we can all get together when Greg comes back" would be different but what Barry was saying was: "call me when his plane takes off." Nice guy.

***update:

Maybe I'll Start Another Blog

I've been toying with the idea of starting another blog filled with just PNGs for photoshopping. What's great about the PNG format is that you can have a transparent background. You can then just copy and paste them over whatever comes into your head. The original picture will peek through the transparent parts.

Like here for instance. I just happened to have a picture of our (Yes we CAN!) President on the desktop so I thought I'd see if he'd fit behind a PNG I'd made of someone behind bars. And bazinga! he fit just perfectly. What a silly idea. I'm like that sometimes. Silly, silly, silly, and in no way deserving of an audit.

***Update: So here's the behind-bars PNG that I made:

See? And you could put it over any image with a dark background. I searched my HD for images with a dark background and only found one other: 

Who Could Have Predicted?

NBC Worldnews:

First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities — toilet paper.

Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the embattled socialist government says it will import 50 million rolls to boost supplies.

That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday....

Socialists take note. The old Soviet cliché, standing in line to buy a loaf of bread, isn't an aberration - it's a predictable outcome.

h/t: wetdry 

Crisis: Averted

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report):

President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has “played no role whatsoever” in the U.S. government over the past four years.

“Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.”

The President’s outrage only increased, he said, when he “recently became aware of a part of that government called the Department of Justice.”

“The more I learn about the activities of these individuals, the more certain I am that I would not want to be associated with them,” he said. “They sound like bad news.”

I knew he was blameless.  I expect he was on vacation when all the bad things happened. Which, now that this silliness has been explained, now I think he's overdue for another one. Go ahead Big Sir, you've earned it.

Weird Happenings

From News of the Weird:

Henry Gribbohm, 30, admitted in April that he had blown his $2,600 life savings trying to win an Xbox at a rigged ball-toss game at a Manchester, N.H., carnival, lamenting to WBZ-TV, "For once in my life, I happened to become that sucker." (Gribbohm complained to the operator, but was given only a large stuffed banana as consolation. However, when news broke, an Internet website took up a collection and purchased the banana from him for $2,600.)

and

 As Bloomberg Business Week reported step-by-step in April, Torres was recruited by a "Defense Intelligence Agency operative" to rob a Virginia bank in order to test first-responder reaction times. If caught, Torres's arrest would be removed, said "Theo," the operative. The skeptical Torres asked advice of various authority figures, including two bemused lawyers, but "Theo" was able to calm them all with a dazzling display of CIA jargon and procedures. Torres was indeed arrested, and "Theo" indeed sprang him (but with a judicial order that was forged). Ultimately, "Theo" was revealed to be frustrated computer-techie Matthew Brady, 26, who lives with his mother and grandmother in Matoaca, Va., and despite his obviously world-class bluffing skill, he pleaded guilty in May and was ordered treated for his paranoid schizophrenia and delusional disorder. [Bloomberg Business Week, 4-18-2013]

Now It's Coming Into Focus

Frankly I was bewildered that the DHS and military would name Christians as possible terrorists. It caused me to wonder if those people had ever set foot inside an American church. Sure we have idiots like the Westboro Baptist Church, but they're idiots, not revolutionaries. Why fear Christians and patriots? Why dry up the ammunition supply?

But it becomes a little clearer when you find out that those in power have been using the power of government to punish citizens who would limit government. They weren't afraid of the tea party, they were afraid of what the tea party would become once they found out what the government was doing. They feared what would happen if the media ever lost its infatuation and started reporting that favored groups would be spared Obamacare pain while the unfavored saw their premiums double and their old plans vanish. When a corrupt IRS begins enforcing oppressive healthcare laws will the Tea Party still be optimistic reformers easily controlled by the government and and a compliant media?

But the administration doesn't need to fear bullets. They need to fear what would happen if suddenly a significant portion of Americans decide that the IRS is the corrupt beyond redemption. What happens if half of us decide that the game is rigged and we no longer want to play?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating a tax revolt. I'm just noting it as a far more likely outcome than armed insurrection.  Refusing to pay taxes would bring the whole system down but it would land on everyone's head.  So it's not desirable, or likely.

Remember that Commencement Speech?

James Taranto helpfully reminds us of the president's May 5 commencement speech at Ohio State University:

Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.

See what he did there? First he builds the straw man, then he pretends to be patriotic.

What the voices are warning about is an excess of power in government. And it's not that "we can't be trusted." It's that you can't be trusted.

Within a week he'll hear "for the first time" that his people have been using the most powerful, and least accountable, law enforcement agency in the country to attack his opponents. You'll have to travel to the FSU to find a better example of tyranny.

Before the Shooting Started

That Tea Party license plate seemed like such a good idea at the time.

***Update:

A Break From the Scandals

Course, it's only a break if you don't speak Spanish. What he is singing about is the shameful use of the IRS as a political bludgeon... OK, not really. He's actually singing a resume. Not sure if it's his resume or someone elses.

Scandal #2

"They want what? tax-exempt status? I know, send them a landfill operation 

application. Oh, and tell them we expect an environmental impact statement.

And you have their address? Lets have Domino's deliver a dozen pizzas."

Obamacare and You

Washington Examiner:

Internal cost estimates from 17 of the nation's largest insurance companies indicate that health insurance premiums will grow an average of 100 percent under Obamacare, and that some will soar more than 400 percent, crushing the administration's goal of affordability.

New regulations, policies, taxes, fees and mandates are the reason for the unexpected "rate shock," according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released a report Monday based on internal documents provided by the insurance companies. The 17 companies include Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kaiser Foundation.

 Affordable Care Act? Thank goodness birth control is free.

Shamed Not So Much Is

What Giraffes Do When We're Not Looking

5m80 by lesateliersOrange

Drudge Page Fixed

(clickabiggen)

Benghazigate

As more information is coming out, the White House has had to admit that there were references to terror in the first CIA report on the attack at Benghazi, and that those references were taken out, supposedly because there wasn't yet proof that it was a terror attack. But if being accurate was important, why did they identify the cause as an enraged crowd protesting a YouTube video? Most evidence said it was terror. The idea that video protesters were involved was only speculation based on a protest going on in Cairo. The enraged film critic scenario was untrue, yet it was repeated again and again.

But all that is coming out, and I'm sure there will be more when the White House finally stops obstructing witnesses. What I'm not hearing anyone explain is why we were being misled as to the nature of the attack. I don't buy the idea that this was to continue the Obama fiction that terror organizations were on the run and barely operational. The nature of the beast is that no American president can wipe them out. It's hard enough even finding them. We could never kill them all.

No, I think the reason for the Benghazi fiction is to hide another Obama failing: the failure to send help to Americans who were clearly in danger. I think Obama froze because the election was eight weeks away and he feared a failed rescue would cost him reelection. So rather than risk failure he decided to do nothing. Rather than risk failure he gave the order to stand down.

The disorganized protest fiction was put forward to excuse Obama's inaction. After all, it sounds bad to admit that you did nothing while a terror attack was carried out over hours and hours. 

What Obama did was despicable. He put his reelection interests ahead of his duty as president, and Americans died as a result.

And what of the military commanders who claim that "you don't send assets into an area before you know what is going on"? They were in contact with the Americans under attack. They had a drone in the sky. They knew the situation on the ground. They were told to stand down and they should have the balls to point out who gave that order.

Bottom line: the Americans in Benghazi were denied help because our president was afraid of a Black Hawk Down on his watch.

Two Things

First one explains itself.

Secondly, it's not true that Randy Jackson threatened 

to poke out his own eyes if I didn't stop singing.

Har

bizarro

Interesting Tool

Out of the University of Texas comes a new tool that is supposedly able to de-noise images taken with digital cameras. I will try running some of the family photos through at a later date, but first I wanted to see what it wouldn't do. It won't improve blur or rogue compression pixels, and I didn't expect it to. Still, checking that gave me an excuse to play with it. Original:

"no soup for you"

The age of this image would tend to indicate that it came from a scan of a paper photo. So, no digital camera noise was involved. Is there such a thing as scanner contributed noise? Let's see:

This was run through the "denoise: high" filter. As you can see, not much difference. (click to enlarge) It can't do anything about the low resolution or the compression fuzziness. Also note, you still can't tell if that's an Uzi magazine or a remote control in Obama's right hand. The smug seems to be present in the same concentration. The stoned also.

 tip on the tool via

Redline

Here's the thing, we still don't have HD video of Assad tossing the canisters of nerve gas in Syria. No DNA evidence, fingerprints, ditto.

Plus, we don't know if this might have been a reaction to an anti-Islamic video.  (for which we are so terribly sorry) Just, you know, people out for a walk encountering a protest, and they just happened to have chemical weapons...

So anyway, at this point all we can say is that a line, that may have been red, may have been crossed. But at this late date... What difference does it make?

Antibiotics Cure Back Pain?

Who knew?:

Up to 40% of patients with chronic back pain could be cured with a course of antibiotics rather than surgery, in a medical breakthrough that one spinal surgeon says is worthy of a Nobel prize.

Surgeons in the UK and elsewhere are reviewing how they treat patients with chronic back pain after scientists discovered that many of the worst cases were due to bacterial infections.

The shock finding means that scores of patients with unrelenting lower back pain will no longer face major operations but can instead be cured with courses of antibiotics costing around £114.

One of the UK's most eminent spinal surgeons said the discovery was the greatest he had witnessed in his professional life, and that its impact on medicine was worthy of a Nobel prize.

So once again we see that knowledge advances, and nothing in science is etched in stone. (except for the inarguable fact that everyone knows: one hundred years ago the climate was Just Right and now everything is ruined)

Ready for Your Closeup Ms Fonda

Re: That Red Line

I'm a kidder, it's what I do.

It's Not What it Seems

Some staged, others just coincidental: more here

h/t: Lumberbrudi

Reality be Damned

Didja hear the President saying that most Mexican gun violence is done with weapons obtained from American gun shops? This, coming from the administration that deliberately "walked" thousands of those weapons across the border. It's more crazy than ironic. It only misses Kafkaesque by virtue of its simplicity: The administration says it was going to trace the weapons to the Mexican drug gangs, then it made no effort to trace them. I think the gun walking had only one goal -- to allow the President to say that most Mexican violence was done with American guns. But this irresponsible program, Fast and Furious, was found out when one of those weapons killed an American border patrol agent.

Well it's amazing that he still tries to harvest talking points from his evil little gun adventure.

Along those lines, VDH has noticed that the non sequitur is becoming an Obama staple:

When President Obama virtually ceases all new federal oil and gas leasing on public property, why would he then brag that despite his efforts, private companies on private land increased U.S. oil and gas production to new highs? Is the logic something like, “Thank God, my opponents ignored my efforts and therefore lessened the country’s dependence on energy imports”? When he embraced or expanded almost all the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols he once blasted as unnecessary or unlawful, did his logic run thusly: “Guantanamo, renditions, detentions, drones, tribunals, and the Patriot Act were so bad that I was obligated to keep them in force”? Or why would he boast that illegal entries into the United States had at one point dipped to new lows — obviously not due to his various orders limiting deportations, but rather due to the static American economy. Is that logic, “Thanks to my near-record long economic slowdown, illegal aliens now prefer to stay home”? Now in Mexico he is assailing his domestic opponents while on foreign soil, describing the Second Amendment as a sort of quaint oddity, while blaming his own country for the gun violence in Mexico. Is the logic here, “I know very well that American guns find their way into the hands of Mexican  killers, because my administration took elaborate efforts to sell such weapons to such criminals”? Is Joe Biden writing these speeches?

The Eagle Has Landed

Experience the moon landing.

For those of us that watched the Apollo 11 moon landing live on TV, we had to be content with the voices of Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra along with simulated models and radio traffic. Here, thanks to this award winning new website, we can experience the landing as if we are in the cockpit of the LEM and listening in the live communications loop (both Air-to-Ground and Flight Director’s audio loop) from the beginning of the descent, to the touchdown, and the STAY/NO STAY decision making afterwards.
This website even keeps track of the pitch angle of the LEM from telemetry data, and tracks what console at Houston Mission Control is speaking. You can even watch the heart rate of Neil Armstrong.

via

Break Out the Cute

baby-bull-dog  pictures here