Today In History: This is the end...

On this date in 475AD, Romulus Augustulus was parked on the imperial throne by his dad, who was the commander of the armies of the Western Empire and who therefore felt up to a little politicking. Roughly a year later, Odoacer bumped off his father, captured Romulus, and FedExed the imperial tchotchkes back to Constantinople, marking the generally accepted end of the Roman Empire. (Although the Byzantines beg to differ.)

What bugs me about my friend Marko...

...is the way he just casually hits one out of the park every month or so. I'd be tickled to death to sweat out an essay like that just once, and he goes and does it on a regular basis. I know the guy; he's just some human; he talks like regular folks, but park him in front of a keyboard and the Clark Kent glasses come off.

Overheard at work...

G: "You should have seen K's daughter dressed up for Halloween last year. She was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz; little gingham dress, ruby slippers, the works. She was precious!"

Me: "A basket with a stuffed dog?"

G: "Yup. Her little dog Toto, too."

Me: "Too cute! If I dressed up as a Wizard of Oz character, I'd need to find a stuffed flying monkey."

G: "You and me both."

Will someone please explain to me...

...what significance Halloween has to anyone over the age of twelve? I mean, WTF?

"What are you dressing up as for Halloween?"

"A grownup. You should try it sometime."

This is me, rolling my eyes.

The Unforgiving Year.

Happy first Blogiversary to TD over at The Unforgiving Minute!

May there be plenty more to follow.

Blog Stuff: That worked out nicely.

Got home last night around midnight and surfed teh intarw3bz briefly. I then toddled back down the stairs, built a fire in the chimenea, and settled in on the porch with some Snake Dog IPA and my umpteenth re-reading of Heinlein's To Sail Beyond The Sunset. I went off to bed at three and no alarm was set, so when I awoke at 10:00AM, I was feeling nice and rested. This would make for a nice routine.

*pirouettes* How'd it work? Do I look snarkier?

We'll see how this plays out, with the inevitable speedbump of Saturday morning looming in the middle distance.

Holy (rock and) Roller.

Courtesy of a secret email informant, what I want for Christmas.

"Now you citizens of Boston, don't you think it's a scandal..."

"...to be held hostage by poultry?"

I mean for the love of Pete, people! First Lite Brites, now this?

Look, when the turkey gets up in your face, you kill it and eat it. Stuffed with cornbread. Don't you people know anything? There are ol' boys down here that hit their knees every night praying for a turkey so unwary as to allow itself to be glimpsed at shotgun range, let alone approached and throttled by hand.

That whole Kennedy/Kerry thing is starting to make a lot more sense to me now...

Dear Lazyweb: Help me cope.

The one thing I miss, getting older, is the boundless energy I used to have. Strolling out of a nightclub at 7:30AM to pull on my Ray-Bans and mutter "My God, are those people jogging?" I thrived on my bad girl image; hopping out of the Porsche and bouncing into the office three hours later, still wearing the Wayfarers, my co-worker's whispers of "How does she do it?" were worth four hours of sleep right there. As recently as seven years ago I was working a full-time job at night, another part-time job during the day, and commuting 100 miles a day round trip on a sportbike year 'round, and loving it.

It's not like I've become narcoleptic as I've gotten older; I still get by just fine on five or six hours' sleep, but it seems like a certain... regularity has become a necessity. These days my body likes to know that it's going to be put to bed and woken up at or near the same time most days, and it gets cranky if it's not, and now my brain seems to have joined the revolt. And there's the rub: For the first time in my life, I find I have to deal with swing shifts.

The closing on Mo/Tu/We isn't bad at all; given my natural rhythms and left to my own devices, I'd go to bed at three or four and wake up at nine or ten anyway. It's the opening on the weekends that's going to be the death of me: 0400 on a Saturday is no time for an alarm clock to be going off. I compound it by trying to force myself to wake up early on weekdays because the Blog Monster must be fed, and you need to have content up... something, anything... in time for folks to sneak their reading in when they get to work (Check your SiteMeters, fellow bloggers; I'll bet 20-25% of your daily hits come between 0900-1200EST...)

The end result after a month is a surly, apathetic Tamara... Okay, an even surlier and more apathetic than usual Tamara ...who just sits and stares sullenly at her monitor on weekdays, bereft of creative spark, and types bupkis until she finally gets dressed and goes to work at 3:00PM. This can't go on. There has got to be an optimum way to build a schedule around this that will allow me to return to my perky, snarky self of yore.

I'm all ears.

Today In History: Huh?

The Second Schleswig-Holstein War ends, answering the Schleswig-Holstein Question and giving rise to one of my favorite amusing quotes:

"Only three people understood the Schleswig-Holstein Question. The first was Albert, the Prince consort and he is dead; the second is a German professor, and he is in an asylum: and the third was myself - and I have forgotten it." -Lord Palmerston

As best I can tell, it proves (along with the Futbol War and the War Of Jenkins' Ear) that people will always be able to find a reason to gather in large groups and shoot hell out of each other.

Oh, my.

"Sheriff's Investigator Tom Johnson said the 15-and 16-year-old sons got into a confrontation with Powell over his drinking and drug use. When the father attempted to drive away, the older son threw the [tent] pole through the open window of his father's vehicle, hitting him in the head, Johnson said."

I suppose it's too late to burn the nest?

Boomsticks: Maybe I should start calling it...

...the "Monday Smith"?

For the .05% of my readership...

...that doesn't also read the 'Dog, you need to read this.

Bring a hankie. You've been warned.

Politics: Stumping from the grave.

The Giuliani campaign, fearful that voters might realize that their man is actually a Democrat, now has dead GOP presidents endorsing him.

Before his death, Ford also expressed his opinion that Guiliani would be the GOP's strongest presidential candidate in 2008.

"He said at one point that if the Republicans wanted to win and stop Hillary Clinton, Giuliani would be their best bet," said DeFrank.

Translation: "If you don't vote for our liberal Democrat, then their liberal Democrat might win!"

This better have been free.

Squeaky informs us that the Department of Central Intelligence's Counterterrorism Center is sporting a spiffy new logo:

Apparently they are the new "Slightly Anthropomorphic Black Space Android Busters", although why a Space Android is armed with an AK-47 remains unclear. Please tell me that some agency employee doodled this on a napkin for free, and that my tax dollars were not actually spent on the creation of this, er, "logo".

What have I become?

4AM on a Saturday morning is when right-thinking people are coming home from nightclubs, not heading to work.

Today In History: Grudges.

On this date in 1806, in a seeming reversal of the natural order of things, Napoleon's armies entered Berlin.

The Jerries have since held a bit of a grudge.

We're all terrorists now.

The House of Representatives has passed H.R.1955, the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007". One of the bill's sponsors, Rep. Harman (D-CA), said

"We must intervene before a person crosses the line separating radical views from violent behavior, create an environment that discourages disillusionment and alienation, and instill in young people a sense of belonging and faith in the future."

Do you have any radical views? Said any radical things on a blog or forum? Belong to any radical organizations? Maybe one that advocates private citizens patrolling the border or calls the 2nd Amendment the "Reset Button"? Call yourself a "People of the Gun"?

Just think what a second Clinton administration is going to be able to do with all these cool new toys left hanging in the toolshed. We're all terrorists now, baby.

Today In History: St. Crispin's Day.

On this date in 1415, the Frogs got their crepes folded after the most rousing pre-battle speech ever fabricated ex post facto by a playwright:



(H/T to rightwingnation)

Confession of a heartless weasel.

Regarding the whole Children's Health Care flap: Where is it written that just because you're short and cute, I owe you money? Puppies are short and cute, too, but I'm not obligated to pay my neighbor's vet bills.

Books: Today's read...

...is Old Man's War, by John Scalzi, and it is fun. It's the illegitimate love child of Starship Troopers and Cocoon with a dash of cyberpunk sensibilities, as if written by Bob Heinlein's ghost.

Loving it immensely. Best freshman SF effort in the tradition of The Master since Freehold.

Yay! My Triangle Of Death shirt came in the mail!

You have ordered your cool Triangle Of Death gear, right? All the cool kids are doing it.

Quoting myself:

It makes one look like a savage to say so, but if your house burns down, blows over, or floats away, it's not the job of the federal government to fix it for you. Charity is one thing, but federal tax dollars coerced at 1040-point from a single working mother of two in Dubuque (and then filtered through a morbidly obese federal agency) to rebuild your bungalow in Destin Orange County is not charity, okay? It's extortion.

The problem with your "New Socialist Man", Pugsley...

...is that nobody wants to wear the ugly clothes.

In Venezuela, anti-Pugsley demonstrators expressed their joy at his intention to declare himself Maximum Leader For Life by throwing rocks and bottles until they were teargassed into submission.

(H/T to Insty.)

As the world burns...

South Park Pundit would like everyone to know that, despite living in San Diego, he remains unincinerated.

Meanwhile, the Governator's office has released statements to the effect that damages in the googlebuck range are expected ($500 million? Isn't that, like, two crackerbox-size bungalows in LA County?), so be prepared for an orgy of paycheck-raping government proposals to bail out needy fire victims and insurance industry lobbyists with the hard-earned tax dollars of people who elected not to live in tinder-filled wind tunnels located on fault lines.

SemiNatural disasters like this do have an upside, however, in the comedy unleashed afterwards when 90% of Americans flock to their computer keyboards to display their lack of knowledge of exactly what insurance is or how it works. See, most folks believe that insurance companies are some sort of fairy godmothers that exist to shower free money on them if something bad happens. Nothing could be further from the truth. Insurance companies are legal bookies.

For instance, say I want to bet an insurance company that I wouldn't run into an immovable object with the Zed Three this year. They look at me, plug a bunch of factors into a computer (single chick, sports car, but pushing 40 and no moving violations), squint, poke a calculator, and offer to bet me $XXX dollars that I will keep my car out of the ditch for the next twelve months. If the sum seems reasonable, I take the bet. If there are no car/tree interfaces over the time period, the insurance company wins and keeps the money. If they lose, well, too bad for them.

In this case, insurance companies have bet a bunch of people in SoCal that their houses wouldn't burn down. To return to the auto insurance analogy, everybody in LA and San Diego just put their Beemers in a ditch, all at once. Sucks for the insurance companies, but that's the nature of the game; they don't call it "risk" for nothing...



UPDATE: Oh, goody. My prediction has come true. Looks like I'm chipping in, whether I want to or not.

President Bush on Wednesday boosted federal aid to the fire-ravaged area by signing a major disaster declaration. The move will speed federal dollars to people whose property losses aren't covered by insurance.

Why should anyone waste money buying insurance in the first place? Uncle Sugar will just shake you suckers down for the cash if I need it.

Dude, where's my cash?

So Mr. GAO is strolling down the street, and he sees his buddy Mr. State Department chatting with some guy named Mr. DynCorp. And he walks up to Mr. State Department and says "Hey, man, wassup? How're things going with that $1,200,000,000 I gave you?"

And Mr. State Department kinda looks at his shoes and scuffs his toe in the dirt and says "Well, uh, I gave it to my bro, Mr. DynCorp here, 'cuz he said he knew someone who could get the job done."

And Mr. GAO looks at the other guy, and says "'Sup with my cash, bro?"

Mr. DynCorp looks like a deer caught in the headlights, makes a big production of fishing through his pockets, and comes up with some lint, a Swiss Army knife, an Aerosmith concert ticket stub, and some dried chewing gum wrapped in a couple of old Blackwater and Triple Canopy receipts, and stammers defensively "Uh, dude, Baghdad is its own arena. Contract control has been a major shortcoming across the board."

On most any street corner in America this lame excuse would result in Mr. GAO's fist activating Mr. DynCorp's dental plan. We'll see how it plays out inside the beltway.

Books: It's a William Gibson evening...

So I've been reading Spook Country, the latest from William Gibson, and here it is my normal bedtime and I'm about eighty pages from the end and the plot has, in the best Gibson style, reached terminal velocity and there's zero chance of me going to sleep before the denouement. Guess I'll settle in for the duration.

Book report in the morning.

Lord bless Site Meter...

...I find more stuff from there.

Today's hilarious blog title is "Fire Mission: Hippies In The Open".

Today In History: The Long War.

Twenty-four years ago today, in what will someday probably be looked back upon as an early salvo of a very long war, 299 soldiers and marines of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, United States Marine Corps and the 6th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the French army were killed in two nearly-simultaneous suicide bomb attacks while they slept in their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.

Blog Stuff: Charity begins at home...

...and should probably stay there. Preferably with the shades down and the drapes drawn.

In a statement made through her publicist, Paris Hilton noted that poor Rwanda suffered from serious shortages of bulimia, substance abuse, public indecency, and trashy celebrity behavior, and so she was going there to help.

Be warned that clicking on the following link will make you laugh hard, but only after you've scrubbed your corneas clean with a wire brush: You have been warned.

Boomsticks: Mea Culpa.

The Sunday Smith, which has remained in an open window, half-typed since about 6:00PM on Sunday, is now up...

Sorry!

(At least the gun is interesting.)

The strangest craving...

I don't know why, but suddenly I'm craving a McShawarma with cheese.

(You know you're living in the future when a snap of the fingers click of the mouse can summon up an old TeeVee ad from halfway 'round the world. Oh, and the international McDonald's menu is fascinating. Les Jones cost me about five hours of my life by pointing me in that direction; I WikiWandered all morning.)

Today In History: Happy Birthday!

According to Archbishop Ussher, the universe turned 6011 years old today.

Color me skeptical.

It's a good start.

I cannot begin to describe the song in my heart as I read this headline:

Report: Monkeys attack government official

I find myself reading it aloud, just to savor the words coming off my tongue; their sound, their texture, their absolute perfection.

The article starts off with "Wild monkeys attacked a senior government official who then fell from a balcony at his home and died..." and just keeps getting better from there. I mean, really, in this case is it possible for a humorist to improve on the raw data?

I found myself wondering "What exact species of monkey is this? Are they importable? What in their evolutionary heritage compels them to attack bureaucrats, and can it be reinforced through selective breeding?" I want grant money. I want to hire LabRat from Atomic Nerds and put her in charge of the research effort. I want investors. Think of the unfulfilled market out there in politician-attacking simians! Picture a tribe of these things hooting their way across the stage in the middle of the next presidential debate... oh, please gawd let it happen.

Knuckle jousting at the Waffle House?

You stay classy, Kid Rock.

UPDATE: Abby, who totally beat me to the punch, referred to it as "a 'perfect storm' of tackiness".

News: Dry season.

Lake Lanier is looking pretty grim. I really want to see a current picture of the area around Bald Ridge Marina, where I had the houseboat tied up (Slip F13.)

Elsewhere in the Southeast, the well I'm on isn't sucking air. Yet.

Blog Stuff: Gee, you're tall.

So I was at the outpost of the Vast Petroleum Conspiracy yesterday morning, when this guy fills the doorway...

Let me break off for a minute and mention that behind the counter is a raised platform about ten inches high, so add that to my five-twelve and I get plenty of "Gee, you're tall!" every day. (Actually, my favorite is "It must be nice to be tall!" To which I reply "Only when I'm not trying to buy jeans.") Anyhow...

...when this guy fills the doorway. I glance involuntarily at the height-measuring tape by the door, and it says he's close enough to seven feet as to make no nevermind. And I don't mean basketball seven feet, either; I'm talking cave troll seven feet. The dude is just flat huge.

And he glances behind the counter and there I'm standing, and seeing me has the same effect on him that seeing a pony has on a five-year-old; he just lit up. "How tall are you? Dang you've got pretty hair! What color is that? Hey, you're not wearing a wedding ring. We could make NBA babies! Lemme see how tall you are; step down here. You're real cute when you blush like that." I've never stood that close to someone who was 6'10" before; I felt downright petite. Anyhow, it made my morning.

Books: Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Children's books (or perhaps children) have obviously become far more sophisticated since my curtain-climbing days. For example, I never wondered for whom Gandalf had the hots, and although it was readily apparent that Mowgli was straight, it was in a fairly chaste and Victorian manner for someone who grew up in a cave and ate raw meat with his fingers.

Thanks, Ms. Rowling; I'm sure Dumbledore's sexuality was a burning question in the minds of every twelve-year-old on the planet.

Blog Stuff: ZZzzzzzz...

I hate snooze buttons. If you have a creative-type mind, all they do is provide you a chance to tell fantastic lies to yourself about why it would be okay to hit the button just one more time.

Today In History: He returned.

On this date in 1944, Dugout Doug turned a beach in Leyte Gulf into a soundstage.

Shoe poisoning.

Biologist James Watson must love the taste of shoe leather, because his foot's apparently spent more time in his mouth than on the ground. When a guy's already talked about

links between skin color and sexual prowess and between a person's weight and their level of ambition

and parents aborting gay babies, what's a little garden variety racism on the side?

Over at Volunteer Voters...

...a thimble-headed gherkin replied to my post on Chairman Phil's smoking ban with

The ban is in place. It’s popular and good for the public health, not to mention the tourism industry. Th[sic] restriction is not going anywhere - and will surely be expanded in coming years. Get over it.

This must be some new definition of "popular" with which I am not familiar...

Alas, it was not to be...

Marko had a few spare 256 meg sticks lying about that he was willing to donate to the cause, but VFTP Command Central only has 2 slots... ...both already occupied by 256 meg sticks. Que sera, sera.

The Hardee's Super Coronary Burrito, on the other hand, was pretty good. I'll say this, though: The only item McDonald's has on its breakfast menu that totally pwns Hardee's is their sausage/sausage gravy; Hardee's is a little bland by comparison. If these burritos were made with Mickey Dee's sausage & sausage gravy, they would rock out hard.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging...

We interrupt this broadcast...

VFTP Command Central is going to be taken offline for maintenance.

(What that means is that I'm taking the box over to Marko's, where he will throw some more RAM in it in exchange for a tasty Hardee's Myocardial Infarction Burrito. Back shortly after noon.)

Don't panic, Boston...

...that was just Ted Kennedy falling out of bed.

You're doing it wrong.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

...and I don't feel fine.

Welcome to sunny Pedophile Acres in FL, USA; the happy trailer park (go figure) where every other neighbor is a convicted sex offender.

I'm snarkless. I mean, my first thought was "Let's just take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure," but this gets so much more complex than that...

1) What does it say about our society that, in order to make room for more pot smokers, tax evaders, and cigarette smugglers (but I repeat myself) in our jails, we have to parole whole trailer parks full of baby rapers?

2) If you've done the time, have you paid for the crime? Or are you still in jail on the outside? If so, why bother with the whole cells'n'guards'n'walls thing in the first place?

3) Are convicted sex offender support groups as intrinsically creepy as, to steal a phrase from P.J. O'Rourke, "Rottweilers Against Child Mauling"?

4) Parole? Are you mad? How can anyone look at a parole board and say "Yeah, I did horrible things to that six year old, but I'm sorry and I'm all better now," and be believed?

If this was Marko's blog, this would be posted in his category "Sick Sad World".

Off to the laundromat.

May Thor bless whichever entrepreneurial soul came up with the idea of pay-by-the-pound Wash 'n' Fold.

Two weeks worth of laundry: $20
Gas to get there and back: $2.79
Being able to use laundry time to run other errands: Priceless

One Hundred Favorite Guns.

KdT recently listed his hundred favorite guns, an effort that seems predisposed to memery. Should be a doddle, so I'll play along:

1) Colt M1911A1 pistol.
2) S&W Military & Police revolver.
3) Mauser Gewehr 98 rifle.
4) Ummm.... Maybe this is going to take more work than I thought...

No soul searching or painful reflection was required for that list, however. As a matter of fact, if we made the 1911 one with a modern carry setup, the M&P a 3" round-butt Model 13, and the Mauser a Brazilian 08/34 in .30-'06, I could probably muddle through just fine on the three.

The Law of Unintended Consequences...

...is alive and well in Knoxville, where a good chunk of the staff of the Charlie Peppers restaurant down on Cumberland Avenue suddenly found themselves unemployed.

Under the new statewide workplace smoking law, the only way a fern bar like C Peps could continue to allow smoking was to go 21-and-over, and this meant 86ing six of their employees.

"It's rough when you lose your job any time, especially when you weren't fired, you didn't quit, and you weren't ready to lose it," says Andrew Sayne, 20. "I put my heart and soul into the job."

Hey, sorry 'bout that, Andrew. Write to Chairman Phil and tell him how much you love his stupid law. And don't forget to vote.

See, the state considers you old enough to buy cigarettes and smoke them. Until very recently, the state also considered you an adult smart enough to look at a business and say "Hmm. They allow smoking there, but I'd like to work there anyway," and voluntarily enter into an employer/employee relationship with that business. But not any more. The state changed its mind and thinks you're a child again, so back into the bubble-wrap suit with you. No more Charlie Peppers, but Chairman Phil says you can work at Chuck E. Cheeze, which is safely non-smoking.

You gotta love the Perpetually Offended...

Okay, the movie is called "The Ten Commandments". You would have to be extraordinarily dense to not realize, from the title alone, that there might be a bit of religious content. Seeing as how the ten commandments (actually a couple of versions thereof, but we'll not quibble) are found in The Bible, and the main character in that book is God, a bit of religious content would seem to be unavoidable.

The movie appears to be about the Exodus which, for those of you who did not grow up in a Baptist concentration camp or those who did but doodled during Sunday school (*cough*), is when the Hebrews packed their stuff and split from Egypt. They, like most people, considered themselves Chosen By God, and were setting out to find some real estate more amenable to being occupied by Chosen People; specifically, real estate that wasn't already full of heavily-armed Egyptians with lousy labor-management relationship skills. So the whole "Chosen By God" theme is kind of central to the Exodus tale.

Except that some folks apparently don't want it mentioned.

I don't get it. Do some folks wander through life looking for things to make them feel offended?

Um, who?

From the NY Daily News via Michelle Malkin:

Fellow host Jon Elliott said on the liberal network that Rhodes was attacked at 39th St. and Park Ave. on Sunday night while walking her dog, Simon.

Elliott, who said Rhodes lost several teeth in the attack, waxed about a possible conspiracy.

"Is this an attempt by the right-wing hate machine to silence one of our own?" he asked on the air, according to the Talking Radio blog. "Are we threatening them?"

I have a question. Who is Randi Rhodes? I mean, I thought he was dead. I have Ozzy's tribute album, after all.

It's new "Triangle of Death Barbie".

So I went to order my official "Proud Member of the Triangle of Death" tee this morning, and I noticed that someone should have probably taken more thought before ordering the whole CafePress merchandise package set up. Either that, or they have a fine sense for the off-color double entendre.

Like I said, I bought a tee shirt.

Whine.

I accidentally woke up too dang early this morning for someone who didn't fall asleep 'til ohmygod-thirty AM. I'm going back to bed. No blog 'til later.

In the meantime, a totally gratuitous Russell Crowe picture:

How very... American.

Ha! Look what that silly commie dictator is doing now:

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) -- The price of sin rose Monday in Venezuela where President Hugo Chavez is on a campaign to make Venezuelans cut back on drinking and smoking.
...
The Venezuelan government is placing a higher tax on alcohol and cigarettes in an effort to cut consumption and prevent what it views as the social, economic and moral consequences of drinking and smoking, said Jose Vielma Mora, superintendent of Seniat, the government body that oversees the collection of taxes.

Listen to those sanctimonious socialist prigs! They sound like... like...

Well, like Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, actually.

Mmmmmm. Grease!

Just looking at this picture makes my left arm hurt. But in a good way.

Why Mommy Is A Fricking Bedwetting Socialist.

Breda shows off some loverly propaganda that she apparently got all over her hands stumbled across in her cover identity as a mild-mannered librarian:


Each page tells of the wonderful things that Democrats, in the guise of mommy, do. "Democrats make sure we all share our toys", "Democrats make sure we are always safe (except from god-bothering terrorists and homicidal dictators)", "Democrats make sure we are always broke because they give all our money to people like the asshats at the NEA" et-frickin'-cetera.

Look, Democrats need to understand that I don't want to share my toys, and that if I decide to take up nekkid' bungie-jumping while juggling chainsaws tomorrow, it's none of their business whether or not I wear a helmet while doing it. They also need to understand that if they want to propagandize today's youth, a First-Person Shooter would be a lot more effective than a dead-tree book with anthropomorphic Trotskyite tree rats.

Quick, someone call the emo kid...

...and tell him that the cops won't leave Britney alone!

Note to self:

Next time I'm preflighting my Boeing 777, I need to remember to check the gear wells for stray Palestinians.

Now, I don't want to cater to prejudices here, but raise your hand if the first thought that went through your head on reading that was "Wow, good thing Osama forgot to wear his Semtex Underoos that day." You can let dogs sniff every suitcase and give every boarding passenger a colonoscopy, but if your landing gear wells are full of Hadjis, well, you've got problems.

Rust never sleeps...

Courtesy of Grant Cunningham, self-professed alpha geek by virtue of his Ham license, I've seen pictures of what may be the coolest decaying outdoor technological artifact I've yet laid eyes on. Can you imagine wandering around there? Think how much fun it would be climbing those gigantor tripod-shaped antennae! Think about Soviet building codes! Think about staying on the ground.

The post also contained the creepiest picture. I don't know what it is about that scene that gives me the creeping willies like it does; it's just uncanny.

...aaaaaaand now.

The Sunday Smith is up at the other place. I plead out-of-town company for the delay.

Rare, please...

I just returned from dinner at the Chop House with a friend. While there, our server expressed concern that I make sure my steak wasn't "too rare". After I parsed what those words signified, I assured her that such a condition was unlikely, and indeed, my filet was just right.

I did, however, come up with a fantastic new restaurant idea: I call it "Adventure Dining".

Picture this: You enter the steakhouse and pay $2,000 and sign the waiver form. You're then directed to the changing rooms where you strip from street clothes into a loincloth (provided gratis, of course; this is a classy establishment). The hostess then gives you a lasso and a Ka-Bar, and your steak is turned loose to charge freely up and down the aisles. You lasso it, bring it down, slit its throat, carve dinner free from the part that interests you, howl to the moon in bloody triumph to the cheers of your fellow diners (or at least the ones that weren't trampled by your free range prime rib) and then eat. Or take your meal to the grill, if you're some kind of wimp.

People would line up for the chance of getting trampled or gored trying to lasso dinner! Of course, we'd probably need to build the place in some godforsaken country that ends in "-stan" and has sketchy liability laws with plenty of loopholes, but still! This would be the must eat dining experience of the decade! It makes poisonous Japanese blowfish look like Cream O' Wheat by comparison!

Interested investors may email me at their leisure.

We interrupt this broadcast...

I love you folks to death, all of you. I mean that. I'd like to drive all across America giving each and every one of you a great big misanthropic hug.

Or at least write something smartassed for you to read.

But... further bloggery is going to have to wait 'til I can crawl around a Ruination. That, and I am totally absorbed in David Weber's In Fury Born.

Plus, I also totally need to take a picture for this Sunday's Smith before I forget.

More later...

News: Well, that explains why they didn't complain much...

Usually, if you're playing the sovereign nation game and your next-door neighbor violates your airspace and bombs the bejabbers out of you, killing your soldiers all out of the blue, you raise a stink about it.

Unless what they were bombing was destined to be your secret nuke facility.


EDIT: I really wish the Syrians had gone to the UN in a snit, however, because "Officer! Sumdood stole my dope!" stories are my favorite dumb crook yarns.

A post is up...

...at the other, other blog.

Today In History: I think Claudius said it best when...

...he said "Do these mushrooms taste funny to you too, honey?"

Time to make the donuts.

Getting up at this hour for any reason other than catching fish or shooting critters should be against the law.

Normal bloggery will resume around noonish, assuming I'm not hanging on my chin strap by then. I see a few Full Throttle Blue Demons in my immediate future.

Boomsticks: It's so cute when...

...fanboys get all gunsnobby.

You have got to be dumber than an acre of fungus to say

"Well Mr. Correia, just how much is your life worth to you? If you valued your life, you’d see that HK was worth the price."

to a guy who owns a whole store full of machineguns...

As for me? My life is only worth the price of the beat-to-hell Springfield on my hip.

Now hold on a minute!

Lawdog notes the actual requirements of the Nobel Peace Prize from old Alfred's will, and goes on to question Gore's suitability, stating (among other things):

While Mr. Gore has done nothing to abolish or reduce any standing army

Now wait just a cotton-pickin' minute, there! He did everything he could to reduce at least one standing army between 1/93 and 1/01. Give him a chance again, and I'm sure he could reduce it more!

Today In History: You did what?

On this date in 1915, the Imperial German Army displayed its fine grasp of Public Relations by executing English nurse Edith Cavell.

Bwahahahahaha!

Courtesy of stolen from Paul Simer. Sweet Vishnu, that's funny.

Will someone please explain to me...

...just what environmentalism has to do with peace?

Why couldn't they just make a special Nobel prize? Maybe call it the "Nobel Prize to Tweak the Bush Administration's Nose"? Finding an excuse to give the Peace Prize to Gore kinda cheapens the award, which had previously been reserved for noble peacemakers like Yasser Arafat.

Yay! I am a People Of The Gun!

Best of all, with the Mossenbergers of the Trainer on one side and Kevin S. from Brown Valley Kingdom on the other, my old N-frame revolver looks downright pacifistic. :)

Thanks, Jeff!

And the verdict is...

Yum.

Just enough added smoky bitterness relative to the original Arrogant Bastard to make it appealing to a fan of bitter beers like myself.

I like the fact that it's available in 12oz. bottles, too. With the big 22oz. bombers, one usually isn't enough for an evening on the porch, and two is often too much. Much better this way.

Fairly bright-ish.

Am-I-Dumb.com - Intelligence Test

Since I got 25 of 25 right, either...

1) 1.7% of people are quantum physicists who figured out how to score 26/25, or
2) I was docked points for admitting to being a girl, or
3) The test itself is a little dense.

I found it here.

WWMMD?

[A] dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot. -R.A. Heinlein

So I stopped by work to grab my paycheck while running errands this morning. The outpost of the International Petroleum Conspiracy is co-located with an outlet of Mega Fast Food, and the joint was packed with the breakfast crowd. I nosed the Zed Three into the conga line snaking towards the parking lot's egress and patiently inched along.

Just as I was only one car away from making my escape, the van immediately ahead of my car shifted into reverse and began to twitch backwards, obviously intending to reverse into a parking spot just off my starboard bow. Since his current course was plotted right through the center of my engine compartment, I glanced in my rearview to ascertain that I had room between me and the Essyouvee astern, selected reverse myself, and tapped my horn to warn the approaching van of my presence.

He altered neither speed nor course, and continued rearward. I hopped the Bimmer adroitly out of his path and tapped the horn again to make him aware of the fate that had been so narrowly averted. Leaning out the driver's window, toothpick firmly clenched in his prognathous jaw, he yelled "Hey! You gotta f*%#$in' problem?" in the mellifluous accent of one of those Northeastern Megalopolii known far and wide for their manners. A problem? Me? With some ill-bred jackanape attempting to park his dented '79 Econoline in my passenger seat? No, no problem at all. I smiled politely at the poor, benighted lout and continued on, serenaded on my way by an ever-fainter string of obsceneties sung in the dulcet tones of his native land.

What would Miss Manners do? The fact that I am typing this from home and not a prison cell will tell you that I didn't do what I wanted to do. But only because I keep forgetting to put my seconds on speed dial.

People Of The Gun picture.

Here you go, Jeff. Thanks! :)

As his cheese slides slowly off his cracker...

Jimmy Carter was a man never blessed with an overabundance of gravitas. He was the first US President habitually referred to by his diminutive nickname, even in the press. When he wasn't being attacked by swamp rabbits or lusting in his heart, he was giving away canals and urging Americans to put on their sweaters and declare war on their thermostat. Now he seems determined to play the national "Crazy Uncle Jimmy". As he slides further from the spotlight and into his dotage, his comments take on an ever-shriller edge:

"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights," Carter said on CNN.

Hyperbole much, Jimmy? I liked you better when you were keeping yourself busy building houses for poor folk.

Please don't feed the stereotypes.

LabRat unleashes her snark-fu and kicks holy hell out of a Women's Health article. I wish I could snark like that.

Politics: Oh, that is good!

For the record, Robb Allen is da man.

Boomsticks: ph33r the k3wt!

It is my belief that the 20ga shotgun would be a lot more popular with Law Enforcement were it not for the 12 gauge's versatility with Less Lethal rounds and breaching rounds and so forth. Honestly, to really wring effectiveness out of an 18" barreled twelve-bore fowling piece loaded with full-steam buck loads, you need to be a physically strong, well-trained shooter, or a liar. (Believe me, I've seen some of y'all shoot. You'd do better with lighter loads. I know I do.) This is why 99% of the police departments in America have gone to reduced-recoil (usually called "Tactical", in deference to the manhood of their users) 8-pellet loads.

Remington's 20ga 870, made on a smaller receiver than their 12ga model, is what I'd pick if I were going to go buy a new home defense shotgun. It's slimmer, lighter, and all-around more handy than the 12ga model, follow-up shots are easier, it won't beat you senseless when training (you do train, right? I mean other than with a keyboard,) and at across-the-room distances with buck or slug it will cancel a birth certificate every bit as effectively as its larger sibling. And I need Less-Lethal or breaching rounds like I need a hole in my head. Many other shooters, even those of the big, manly, experienced variety, have expressed similar sentiments to me.



Plus, as everyone in the blogosphere has now mentioned, it is available in terminally kewt (get it?) pink. I want one. If you tell anybody, I will come to your house and shoot you in the kneecap.

Boomsticks: Truer words...

Once upon a time, the phone rang at CCA, and the person who answered it called out "Trevor, there's a guy on line one from HK. He says he's returning your call."

Instant silence. I felt a little light headed, the way you would on seeing a ghost, or if your dog suddenly started talking. That was the first time in my life I'd ever heard those words used in that order in a gun store.

From the office: "Really?"

Calling HK and leaving a message is like the neolithic tribesman sacrificing a goat to the moon god: You're not really expecting a response, but you go through the ceremony anyway.

Larry Correia has a new ad slogan they should think about using: HK. Because you suck. And we hate you.

You might be in New Jersey if...

...your mayor goes on the lam.

Good.

(CNN) -- A sheriff's deputy who killed six young people at a house party in Crandon, Wisconsin, apparently died after shooting himself three times in the head with a .40-caliber pistol, the state attorney general said.

I hope he shot himself in the back a few times, too.

Today In History: The wave broke on a steel beach.

On this date in 732, Frankish and Burgundian troops under the command of Charles Martel routed an Umayyad army invading from Al Andalus at the Battle of Tours. Paris was safe from the Sons of the Prophet. At least for then.

"Need" has got nothing to do with it...

Bored by your .338 Lapua? .585 Nyati just not making enough *BANG!* anymore? Everybody and their brother in your neighborhood has a .50 BMG rifle?

The solution is simple: Spend the dough for the $200 Destructive Device tax stamp and get a 20mm rifle!

What's it good for? Hell if I know; probably useless for anything except turning money into noise, but that's never stopped me from dropping a wad of cash at the fireworks store.

(H/T to the AtomicNerds.)

Today In History: Commies Aren't Cool.

To the eternal sorrow of hippies and the eternal delight of tee shirt makers, on this date in 1967 Ernesto "Che" Guevara began his new career as a commie martyr and capitalist marketing icon.

Sticks and stones.

Yes, it was a glitch in the selection process.

The fact that someone so disturbed as to respond to name-calling with gunfire was able to do so with a department-issued rifle does not bode well for the future fiscal well-being of Forest County, because I guar-on-tee that the sky over Crandon, Wisconsin is about to turn legal-pad yellow with lawsuits.

While the only really guilty party is already taking a dirt nap, I do wonder what has become of a society where a young man can grow up... scratch that last, as he obviously had not grown up... where a boy could make it to the age of twenty thinking that lethal force was an appropriate response to taunting.

I wanna be a People of the Gun!

Maybe Jeff blocks losers who still have AOL email addies.

(Of course, me complaining about not getting a response to an email should set off gales of laughter across this fair land.)

I just want my picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone People Of The Gun page. That's not too much to want, is it?

Dammit.

Woke up early to blog and...

...

...

Bupkis. A head full of snark and not a bit of it coming out my fingertips.

I'm about to give it up for a bad idea, go take an hour's nap, and see if my muse decides to wake up with me this time.

Loved her to death.

A bit of a glitch in the screening process apparently allowed a gun and a badge to be handed to a young psycho in Wisconsin. When his girlfriend had the temerity to break up with him, he indicated his displeasure by walking into a party she was at and shooting most everybody dead, including the girl he claimed to love. Funny way of showing it he had, there.

Anyway, remember kids: Only cops and soldiers should have guns!

Tippy-tappy on the keyboard and...

...the Sunday Smith is up.

One of Smith's more interesting efforts...

Gummi earworms.

Marko on one of the little-known hazards of parenting:

One of the most annoying things of being a stay-at-home parents is the inevitable fact that a.) kiddie tunes are catchy and easy to remember, and b.) your kids will listen to a lot of them. Even with limited TV intake, most of what will be watched is going to be saturated with cutesy little songs, and in the age of cheap and plentiful electronics, many toys for kids have their own catchy tunes.

You can. not. get. them. out. of. your. head.

I have lost count of the days when I had an endless loop of the Doodlebop song, a Baby Signing Time tune, or the ABC song from Quinn's little Alphabet Train Station playing in my head all day long. It's enough to slowly and surely chip away at parental sanity, more so than any number of poopy diapers or wall murals painted with momentarily unattended samples of diaper rash cream.

TD talks about his dating history:

In fact, looking back at my alternately hilarious and disastrous dating history, I can’t think of anyone I’ve dated who WASN’T very, very pale. And there were only a precious few who weren’t flat-out batshit crazy. I’m not saying the two always go together, but the pattern is there.

You might live in a trailer park if...

...you have a sign on your barbecue smoker saying "See the smoker where the severed leg was found! Adults $3, Children $1."

If there isn't a primered '77 Camaro at least peripherally involved with this story somehow, I'd be shocked. Or maybe an El Camino.

You don't really mean that, though, do you?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- About 100 demonstrators rallied outside Myanmar's embassy in Washington on Saturday, joining an international day of action in cities around the world to "free Burma."

...and if the Shrub came on TeeVee tomorrow and said, "You know, we've heard the protesters and have decided to free Burma. The airstrikes start in 15 minutes." the protesters would have been all aghast and saying "But we didn't really mean it!"

In their world, you "free" something by carrying a sign and thinking happy thoughts, not by risking your life in fighting oppression. Soon enough, "Free Burma" will be like "Free Tibet", a way to put some content-free good karma points on the bumper of your Volvo.

I really don't know where to start with this one.

I mean, when the headline states "Police find ecstasy in Mr. Potato Head", my work here is at least half done. Don't get me wrong, I've gotten a giggle out of the Hasbro toy myself, but whatever floats your boat. In the accompanying photo, Mr. Potato Head sure looked like he was having a good time.

You know, now I'm wondering...

What's the best gun for brain-eating amoebas? Could a ninja defeat a brain-eating amoeba?

Obviously the killer space robots would have no problem with brain-eating amoebas, but would they have an effect on zombies?

This is important stuff to know...

Why didn't they title the article...

..."Chimpy McHitlerburton Kills Twelve-Year-Old Boy"?

After all, the brain-eating amoeba has claimed a record number of victims this year, and

Health officials cannot explain the spike in cases this summer, except that weather plays a factor.

"Because it's been such a hot summer, that has contributed to warmer water temperatures and lower water levels and that makes an ideal environment for the amoeba," said Dr. Rebecca Sunenshine of the Arizona Department of Health, which is investigating a death last month there tied to the amoeba

And we all know that the warm weather this summer was caused by the Republicans so therefore it follows that Chimpy ate (or caused to be eaten) people's brains, no?

Hey, that was fun! Maybe I should start a more leftie blog; I think I'd be good at this kind of stuff.

Hey, cool!

Super-cool Breda, formerly of LiveJournal fame, has gone and opened up shiny new digs at Blogger while I wasn't paying attention.

Go check it out!

Boomsticks: Turnabout is fair play...

...or so a federal judge in Atlanta ruled, by allowing a defamation suit by Adventure Outdoors against Mikey Bloomberg and his Mayors Against Guns crowd to proceed.

Hey, Mikey, y'all aren't the only people who can file nuisance suits. Of course, Adventure Outdoors can't just leech money from the public to finance his, like you can, but you know that the Triangle Of Death will probably just rally the People Of The Gun to support Adventure Outdoors...

(H/T to Unc.)

Today In History: Baby Steps.

On this date in 1957, a Soviet R-7 booster lofted a small pressurized sphere, containing a radio transmitter that beeped and not much else, into orbit. Sputnik I became the first man-made satellite of planet Earth.

On the same date, 47 years later, Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne collected the Ansari X-Prize with its third trip to space.

Sodom, Gommorah, and... Johnson City?

From the "Get A Room, Y'all!" Department comes the news that apparently Johnson City, TN had a... how to phrase this delicately? ...vibrant subculture, some elements of which kept engaging in vibrancy after dark in public parks with strangers, which is not only against the law, but tacky as all get out. Police claim that the 40 arrestees came from three states. Idaho was not among them.

Ah, the Bubble Wrap Generation.

Paint.

Traces of lead. In paint.

That's what toys are getting recalled for these days. Well, that, and having small parts that could theoretically be swallowed by children. This sounds a little bizarre to those of us who grew up in an era when Sears would sell you half-inch high toy soldiers that were actually made entirely of lead. Toxic, inhalable, and for the hat trick, they also depicted guns, making them the perfect kryptonite for the modern toy world; I've never owned any lead soldiers, but now I want to buy some just for that reason.

Our grandparents survived the Depression and gave Hitler a stomping. Our parents invented Woodstock and made the cops invent tear gas. We watched TeeVee and played Atari, and our children are swaddled in bubble wrap. Devolution in four generations; sic transit gloria mundi.

This one's for 7.62x54r:

Michael Silence points us to the headline of today's dead-tree edition Knoxville News Sentinel: Government Guilty.

Just seeing those two words next to each other warms the cockles of my heart, it does. :)

Today's Google search.

Probably looking for my essay "Sycophants Through the Ages"...

Messing with the locals...

So after work tonight I needed to run across the street to Big Grocery Store and grab some essentials for me and the cats. I got my stuff and went to the open register; the guy manning it had been through my store earlier in the evening. "Ha-HA," he said, "you're on my turf now."

The supplies scanned, and I went to swipe my card through the reader. After I did so, it asked "$10.74. Is total OK?"

"No," I blurted, all appropos of nothing.

"What?" said the young cashier.

"It asked me if the total was OK. It's not. $10.74 is just whack for some TP and a bag of cat litter. I'll give you $6.25."

"What that means is..."

"Okay, I can go $6.75."

"No, what it's aski..."

"Alright, $7.15 and not a penny more. That's my final offer; take it or leave it."

"But that's not what it means!"

And this after I'd scanned my Customer Tracking Device. Oh well, once they plug the data into the computer, they'll probably figure out that there is no "Seymour Butts" living at "1122 Boogie Woogie Avenue"...

Boomsticks: This has got to be a mistake.

In a big story on how the "AK-47" (or semiauto guns that are shaped like AK's, at any rate) is the favored weapon of thuggish criminal types, a big spread of confiscated crime guns shows... uh... one gun that is vaguely-AK-related.

Good job, CBS. I can see you've been hard at work on that "credulousness" "credibility" thing.

Things that make me go "Hmmmm."

Chris Muir sure has tossed out a lot of revelations of late, and now Jan and Damon are touring Baghdad in separate Humvees. I smell Major Plot Development. I'm not liking this; I fear change.

Breaking from Knoxville...

It looks like you really can fight city hall.

And win.

More posts about buildings and food.

They finally got the sidewalk put back in out front of the Giant Petroleum Conspiracy Outpost where I'm sporting a nametag these days. It needed to be torn out (all of it, natch) because about six square feet of it between the wheelchair ramp and the door had subsided less than 0.5", which rendered it out of spec for Americans with Disabilities Act compliance. I loves me some government. (And by "love", I mean "hope packs of rabid wolverines tear apart".)

Yesterday I went to lunch with longtime e-Friend and everyone's favorite Hessian gunblogger, Thorsten, who's winging (or "rental econoboxing", as it were,) his way through Tennessee on his '07 American Tour. We put the top down on the Zed Three and went to the Chop House via some twisty backroads, where we devoured one-pound slabs of prime rib, which leaves you feeling like you accomplished something when you've finished, and which nearly left me in a food coma for the rest of the evening at work. Hopefully I'll get to see him again before he continues west to Nash Vegas and the tender mercies of Oleg's cameras.

And yet more dumb laws....

So Tennessee's ill-conceived and poorly-written smoking ban took effect yesterday. The law was sold, as these things often are, as being "for the children". The Guv has let some real motives slip in interviews and statements, however: it seems he's concerned about my health. He thinks I should use this ban as a chance to quit.

Hey, Phil, if I decided to take up setting myself on fire tomorrow, arguably even more hazardous to my health than smoking, it would still be none of your damn business.

News: Greed hits a speedbump.

Straight from the catalogue of Dumb Government Ideas is the intarw3bz sales tax. See, the states, desperate for money to finance all kinds of stupid government projects, have been watching the e-Commerce goose lay a steady stream of golden eggs without any real way to get their fingers into the pie. Before the internet, revenue from catalog sales was small enough to safely ignore, but Amazon and eBay have dollar figures dancing in every politician's eyes. All that cash flow? Untaxed? Inconceivable!

So the politicians have been trying and trying to pass a law to tap the vein of all this e-Cash, and with the usual grace of politicians, too. Implementation? Heck, that's someone else's problem, as long as they get their money.

The problem is thus: Say I start an online business selling widgets. I'm going to have to somehow find out the sales tax laws of all fifty states, (which I'd call "Byzantine" except that I've read a lot of ancient history and never come across anything so complex in Constantinople,) and every month, mail off a check to the .gov in every single state that had a subject citizen try to save a dime by buying something online. Bear in mind that some states would have tax rates that varied by county, and others might tax widgets at a different rate, or not even tax widgets at all because of heroic petitioning by Colonial widget farmers. If it was a one-woman shop, I'd be spending all my time memorizing tax laws and mailing checks.

Apparently lobbyists have gotten that through to elected critters in at least a few states. I'd also like to think, although I don't hold out much hope for it, that at least one or two politicians realize that this would kill the goose laying the golden eggs. That would be a first.

Can't resist the snark...

"Children ordered to leave Britney. Alone."


I saw the shot; it was a clean shot, so I took it.

Today In History: Molon Labe, Y'all!

The Texans show their dim view of Mexico's new cannon-confiscation program by shooting up some Mexican dragoons at the Battle of Gonzales, leaving at least one looking like a rural road sign and marking the start of the fight for Texan independence.

Okay, I don't mean to sound skeptical...

...but how in the hell do you strangle yourself to death accidentally with handcuffs? I keep trying to game it out, but I can't seem to picture the requisite contortion.

Boomsticks: I miss the thirty-two.

Actually, to say "I miss the .32" would be a little inaccurate, as back in the dying days of the .32 S&W Long cartridge I was all absorbed with whizbang super-tactical 9mm semiautomatic pistols. Revolvers, if they were acknowledged at all by me, needed to be in at least .38 caliber and weigh nothing.

As I've gotten old and cranky matured, guns no longer need to fill some "tactical niche" and can be owned and shot merely for the joy of owning and shooting, and I find that the .32 S&W Long in an all-steel I- or J-frame is an immensely pleasurable cartridge. You get just enough sturm und drang to let you know you're not shooting a .22 rimfire, enough recoil to let you know the gun went off but not enough to raise objections in even the most gun-shy novice, and the holes are enough larger than a .22 (especially when shooting wadcutters) that there's no need to pull targets every thirty seconds to see where you're hitting. Also, the round is freaky accurate, which is why it lingers on in (of all things) semiauto target pistols.

Unfortunately, once the .38 Special became available in J-frames, the .32 S&W Long entered its death spiral. Fewer guns were sold, which meant fewer rounds were loaded, which meant higher ammunition prices, as the production costs had to be amortized over fewer case lots. With the ammunition being more expensive, it didn't make sense as a centerfire plinker, and the now-cheaper-to-shoot .38 Spl took the job by default. By the early '80s, .32 S&W Long was largely relegated to cheaper revolvers from H&R or outright junk guns like the Clerke, and S&W finally dropped all its offerings in the caliber in the early '90s.

My .32 J-frame has served as an introductory centerfire revolver for more than one new shooter, and its small size combined with its four inch barrel make it easy for a novice to get comfortable and make good shots. I've never fired a .32 S&W Long K-frame, but I'll own one someday, I'm sure. It'll have to be an older one, though, and not just because I like older Smiths. In this case, they really don't make 'em like that anymore.

(Incidentally, shooting the .32ACP Colts, I've discovered I miss a whole different kind of .32, as well, but that's for a different post...)

Better late than never.

The Sunday Smith squeaked in just under deadline at the other blog.

Those who do not remember history...

As a matter of fact, to one who aspires to power the poorest man is the most helpful, since he has no regard for his property, having none, and considers anything honorable for which he receives pay. -Sallust, On Clinton's Campaign The War With Jugurtha lxxxvi.3