Too bummed to blog

The old feeder's personal life has taken a sudden and unexpected hit. I'm too depressed and miserable to do anything.

Happy Father's Day

Free Golf

John 'Magic Fingers' Houghtaling Dead

Magic Fingers Motel Box

News item: John Houghtaling, inventor of the Magic Fingers system, has passed away at age 92 in Florida. May he rest in peace in a non-vibrating coffin.

If you have spent half as much time in seedy motels and cheap hotels as the old feeder, you are familiar with the Magic Fingers box that was often found in them. Put a quarter in the firmly affixed box's slot and you would be treated to an annoying buzz and a vibrating bed that even a dog wouldn't use.

The only time I was ever suckered into trying one I was suffering from jet lag and thought it might help. The only result was to delay my wretched attempts to sleep for fifteen minutes. Jumping immediately out of the bed, I had to sit in the tiny room chair as I waited out the buzzing. I worried that the mechanism was stuck and would never quit.

Some folks must have liked them, since Mr. Houghtaling was able to retire to Florida. I can't help but think that his success might be due in part to the fact that he was selling the miserable contraptions to motel and hotel management, and not to end users. I'll bet none of the hoteliers that bought them ever used one.

Bipartisan Guilt

Republican Senator Sam Brownback and Democaratic Senator Tom Harkin pooled their collective guilt to come up with a senate resolution that apologizes for the slavery of African Negroes by American Caucasians, not unlike a similar measure passed by the House last year.

Consider these words by the writer Zora Neale Hurston:

My ancestors who lived and died in slavery are dead. The white men who profited by their labor and lives are dead also. I have no personal memory of those times and no responsibility for them. Neither has the grandson of the man who held my folks… I have no intention of wasting my time beating on old graves. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negroes who hold that nature somehow has given them a low down dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it… Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and that is worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it.

Cop a Laugh

Grieving Widow Faces Uphill Battle

Iowahawk swats another one!

WASHINGTON -- The widow of the housefly murdered by Barack Obama during a recent CNBC television interview announced this morning that she would be filing a wrongful death suit against the President in federal district court. The plaintiff brief -- citing pain, suffering and loss of income -- seeks a formal apology and compensatory damages, including an unspecified quantity of shit.

You should read the whole piece. The man is a master of satire.

The Republican Party Split

Two factions have emerged in the GOP. The difference is in their election strategy:

• Give the voters what they seem to want, i.e. more liberalism.
• Sell the voters on a more conservative government.

One is a sure loser, the other has a chance. Guess which is which.

Thought for today

Sometimes it is necessary to go hungry to ensure that your enemies starve.

Culture in LA

Happy Lakers Fans Loot Stores - click for more

The old feeder is no fan of Los Angeles. Not the city, not the suburbs, not the people and not the Lakers. The place has changed for the worse since I lived there in the early 1960's.

I don't like basketball either, which has become a contact sport. The LA Lakers won the NBA championship yesterday. What do the fans in LA do to celebrate? Riot, loot and burn their own town.

What the dickens is wrong with these cats? How is it that the grinning idiot pictured above has a vote that counts as much as mine?

I'm leaning more every day toward ceding California to Mexico.
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Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin, who contrasts the pointless violence in LA with another bloody insurrection: the one in Iran.

Today is Flag Day

US Flags

Today is Flag Day. Fly 'em if you got 'em. Let your neighbors know you don't think America needs to be "re-made" by anyone. Them as don't agree ought to tread carefully.

Canada Free Press: Better than Fox

Canada Free Press

The old feeder has been a regular reader of the Canada Free Press online 'newspaper' for several years. Now that the US media is either ridiculously biased in favor of Obama and the Democrat Party's Marxist schemes or else running scared, I find myself turning to the CFP even more.

Even the reviled-by-the-left Fox News feels compelled to clothe their reportage in the guise of being "fair and balanced". Being fair to America's enemies is either stupid or naive. You can't strike a balance with evil. I find Fox's sappy leitmotif "we report, you decide" to be offensive. Fox can't report everything; they decide what gets covered. I suspect Fox is afraid our government will adopt overt censorship, as all Marxist governments are wont to do.

The Canada Free Press proudly puts their conservatism in their banner. I'm more conservative than not, so I like having an unabashedly conservative news source. Give the Canada Free Press a try.
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Caveat: As with anyone else's ideas and opinions, the CFP must be read with a critical eye. I don't agree with everything Judi McLeod and her cohorts publish. Hey, I'm a disagreeable cat by nature.

Risky Recycling

Hot Grater?

The old feeder has always believed that recycling begins at home. I throw away so little trash that my hauling service only stops by the feedlot every other week. Even then, he doesn't get much. The stuff I buy gets used, then used again, then saved for parts.

When recycling systems reach a certain scale, the purity and safety of 'new" products made from recycled goods becomes impossibly difficult to maintain. Was something you wear made from infectious hospital wastes? Did the plastic scraps used to make your chair come from containers that once held toxic chemicals? Who knows? Nobody is minding the store.

Buying goods made of recycled materials from foreign countries only increases the risk. It is bad enough to worry that your toothpaste might be sweetened with poisonous anti-freeze, or that your dog food is laced with melamine. Many third world countries are so poor that they won't refuse to recycle even highly radioactive metals. What do they make out of this melted down mess? The things you buy at WalMart and other stores whose shelves are stocked with Chinese and other third world products.

Here are some examples of radioactive products, including Ekco graters made in China. It isn't only China that does this. Read about how Tennessee, home of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, includes radioactive metals from decommissioned nuclear weapons plants in metal products. Some of it nearly ended up in popular recliners.

They have to get rid of these hot metals, plus tons of radioactive concrete waste, etc. somehow. We aren't supposed to worry that our La-Z-Boy recliners might be X-raying our butts. Why? Because here in America, our all-knowing government is keeping an eye on these things.
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Don't trust anyone unless you know where they live and where their kids go to school.
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Hat Tip: Free Republic.

Remember D-Day

Omaha Beach - Bob Capa photo

If America loses the spirit that rid the world of the threat posed by national socialism in World War II, or relaxes the vigilance that stayed the threat of international socialism during the Cold War, then the next big war will be lost on our soil.

Don't forget the sacrifices our soldiers and our allies made this day. Don't forget the sacrifices all Americans made to the war effort then. Then ask yourself if today's leaders have the any inclination to resist the infectious spread of National Socialism or the threat of Islamic Jihad.

They say that if it weren't for Americans and Brits like those who stormed the beaches of Normandy, we'd all be eating sauerkraut with chopsticks today. In the future, will we all be slaves of the state?
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Fly your flag today.

Grass-Mud Horse

Naughty Grass-Mud Horse

Caught this at Art Diamond's very excellent blog: China's Grass-Mud Horse Has "Made Government Censors Look Ridiculous". Read more about this trick on the Chinese internet censors here at Language Log. I love it when government censors are made to look ridiculous.
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Art Diamond is a Professor of Economics at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. If you don't read his artdiamondblog.com, you should check it out. It is one of my favorites. The old feeder studied at the UNO College of Business Administration back in the 1970's. It is there that I learned about classical liberalism and to appreciate the free market.

Anyone remember Tiananmen Square?

Wounded Demonstrators

It was twenty years ago today that the Tiananmen Square Massacre (referred to in China as the June Fourth Incident was perpetrated by the Red Chinese People's Army. Read a fine post by Michael Laprarie at Wizbang about the incident. Click the photo and the title for more.

Tea party demonstrators and the like here in the US need not be concerned. It can't happen here.

Preposition Choice: No Hope

Hopeful Survivors?

The old feeder used to teach Turks how to use English prepositions. It was difficult because the Turkish language doesn't use prepositions. They use agglutinated postpositions.

I found two internet news headlines that were trying to say the same thing: that there won't be any survivors from the Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic. The editors' choice of prepositions, however, yielded two very different meanings. Read the headlines and see if you can spot the problem:

• Air France says no hope of survivors in Atlantic - AP
• Air France says no hope for survivors - ABC News

I emphasized the operative prepositions. See the difference in meaning?

The first headline says it right, we shouldn't hold out any hope that there were any survivors of the catastrophe. The second headline implies that there were survivors, but that they have no hope of rescue.

Its is sad to see professional users of the English language screw it up so badly. It isn't just the American Way that is dying. Our language is dying with it.
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Sample lesson from my teaching notes:

You are at the firing range. Do you fire your weapon [by - toward - near - at - in - to] the target?
Choose the appropriate preposition.

The Turks generally chose toward or to. With prepositions, there aren't always clear cut rules, only acceped usages which must be learned by rote. Still, nuanced choices DO affect meaning. Click the post title for a preposition quiz.

New Government Motors Cadillac

New 2-seater - Traditional Look

If it looks like chrome, its plastic. In fact, the entire body is blow-molded plastic recycled from pop bottles. Its so light, you won't need a jack to change tires. It runs on apple juice and only fresh air is emitted from the tiny exhaust pipe. You have a choice between carrying a bag of groceries or a passenger. In early road tests, the new Government Motors Caddy was a bit hard to handle in crosswinds. Crash test results aren't in yet.
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I'm glad the Hummer will avoid Obamafication.
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Update: It looks like Red China is taking over the Hummer brand. I wonder if the ChiComs are going to produce the Humvee for the US military now.

Fed IG Elizabeth Coleman and 9 Trillion dollars

Federal Reserve Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman

Click over to RedStateEclectic blog to watch a short video of US Congressman Alan Grayson asking Federal Reserve IG Elizabeth Coleman "where the money went." IG Coleman is clueless.

If you pay federal income taxes, her answers will make you cry. If not, feel free to laugh at her.