Under the Fedora: Showers, Culture & Ebert

An amazing thing happened at the Supermarket yesterday.

I was in the 12 items or less line when a family of three were behind me started talking to the cashier. I tend to hear all kinds of things that I store away but when the young lady named Catlin told her friend about her father talking about putting a TV in the shower for her it stopped me cold.

I had to turn and inquire:

“What about water on the set”

“It would be high”

“The water is going to splash off of you and up”

“We’re going to put plexiglass over the screen.”

As my head continued to spin I finally turned to this young 15 year old girl standing with her parents and asked the following question:

“Young lady, can you tell me one thing that is going to be on your television set that is so important, so critical and so unavailable in repeats that it can’t wait for a time when you are not wet and naked in the shower?”

She silenced me in three words:

“Red Sox Games”

How does any New Englander answer that?

It is totally impossible to explain Red Sox fandom to a person from outside New England but let’s put it this way…

When you’ve lived in New England in General and Massachusetts in particular there is one fact that is incontrovertible.

No matter how bad things get in Massachusetts and their pretty bad, when the Red Sox open with two wins in Yankee stadium all is right in the world.

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Totally unrelated, next time you feel sorry for a career minor leaguer just remember if they have at least one day of MLB experience the minimum wage is $67,300.

Don’t tell Elizabeth Warren

Weasel Zippers reports on a new FATWA out of Saudi Arabia:

a Saudi cleric, Sheikh Abdullah Da ‘ud, took it a step further on live Arabic TV by insisting that “it is forbidden to be around handsome youth, those beardless boys who have a touch of temptation in them [fitna].”

No word on if this is going to be extended to homely teen boys. I can imagine the teen insults now:

You’re so ugly the ban on “handsome” beardless boys doesn’t apply

April Fools day I only tweeted out jokes or things I considered funny.

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Michael Graham had an event this week to try to figure out what the GOP should do in the state.

The thing is the GOP voter has already figured it out, they left and became powerful elsewhere. Why do you think Massachusetts has lost 5 electoral votes since they took control of the state legislature and never lost it?

Maryland has decided they want to pass tough guns laws even though Baretta may have reached their limit and is thinking of pulling a magpull on them.

Who Knew Maryland was doing so well they could spare the jobs? Then again they abut DC so since Obamaconomy is all about growing government they might have a few extra jobs to spare

I wonder if CPAC will consider moving as well?

Speaking of CPAC it’s been two weeks since CPAC and I’m still posting video, boy I shot a lot down there.

The sudden re-definition of acceptable belief concerning Gay Marriage is putting a defacto religious test on all sorts of walks of life. That nobody in the media seems to have a problem with this tells you how disconnected the media has become with the other have of US culture.

In fact we’re already seeing it:

Two homosexual students at George Washington University have announced a coordinated campaign to try to rid the campus of its Catholic chaplain, the GW Hatchet, the school’s independent newspaper reports.

Seniors Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen said they can no longer tolerate what they describe as Father Greg Shaffer’s anti-homosexual and anti-abortion beliefs. They say they are upset that Fr. Shaffer counsels homosexual students to lead a celibate lifestyle.

As this IS the official belief and doctrine of the Catholic Church this complaint if upheld would effective bar Catholic teaching and Catholic chaplains at George Washington University

Well at least Catholic Universities aren’t doing this, I mean you wouldn’t see a Catholic University like Gonzaga for example refuse to recognize the Knights of Columbus or something:

“The Knights of Columbus, by their very nature, is a men’s organization in which only Catholics may participate via membership,” says a letter obtained by The Cardinal Newman Society written by Sue Weitz, Vice President for Student Life. “These criteria are inconsistent with the policy and practice of student organization recognition at Gonzaga University, as well as the University’s commitment to non-discrimination based on certain characteristics, one of which is religion.”

I wonder how much money Gonzaga gets from endowments and donations from Catholics who think it is a Catholic University?

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There are two ways to look at this story, the first is the idea that political correctness has gone crazy

There’s a good reason the city is hiring lifeguards that can’t swim. Public pools are largely used by Latino and African-American kids, but most of the lifeguards are white and this creates a huge problem. “The kids in the pool are all either Hispanic or black or whatever, and every lifeguard is white and we don’t like that,” says a Phoenix official quoted in the story. She added that “the kids don’t relate; there’s language issues.”

The second is more incredible, the idea that officials care so little about the lives of their own citizens they are willing to put Latino and black children in danger of death in order to shut them up.

Words can’t adequately describe this.

Finally film critic Roger Ebert has died. There are three movie reviews he did that should be read by everyone. The first is his review of the Passion of the Christ:

This isn’t a movie about performances, although it has powerful ones, or about technique, although it is awesome, or about cinematography (although Caleb Deschanel paints with an artist’s eye), or music (although John Debney supports the content without distracting from it).

It is a film about an idea. An idea that it is necessary to fully comprehend the Passion if Christianity is to make any sense. Gibson has communicated his idea with a singleminded urgency. Many will disagree. Some will agree, but be horrified by the graphic treatment. I myself am no longer religious in the sense that a long-ago altar boy thought he should be, but I can respond to the power of belief whether I agree or not, and when I find it in a film, I must respect it.

The Brown Bunny (the re-cut version):

Chambers might in fairness have explained that I was responding to Gallo calling me a “fat pig” — and, for that matter, since I made that statement I have lost 86 pounds and Gallo is indeed still the director of “The Brown Bunny.”

But he is not the director of the same “Brown Bunny” I saw at Cannes, and the film now plays so differently that I suggest the original Cannes cut be included as part of the eventual DVD, so that viewers can see for themselves how 26 minutes of aggressively pointless and empty footage can sink a potentially successful film.

And Birth of a Nation:

Some of the film’s most objectionable scenes show the Ku Klux Klan riding to the rescue of a white family trapped in a cabin by sexually predatory blacks and their white manipulators. These scenes are credited with the revival of the popularity of the Klan, which was all but extinct when the movie appeared. Watching them today, we are appalled. But audiences in 1915 were witnessing the invention of intercutting in a chase scene. Nothing like it had ever been seen before: Parallel action building to a suspense climax. Do you think they were thinking about blackface? They were thrilled out of their minds.

Today, what they saw for the first time, we cannot see at all. Griffith assembled and perfected the early discoveries of film language, and his cinematic techniques that have influenced the visual strategies of virtually every film made since; they have become so familiar we are not even aware of them. We, on the other hand, are astonished by racist attitudes that were equally invisible to most white audiences in 1915

Politically I disagreed with Ebert a LOT, but in his field, which was movie reviews and analysis he was a master and no amount of disagreements on other subjects will ever change that.

Rest in peace.

There will be no Under the Fedora next week in honor of my 25^th Anniversary. Thanks Val.

How the “STIMULUS PACKAGE” WORKS!

It’s a slow day in the small town of Pumphandle and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.

A tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the hotel, and lays down a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night. As soon as he walks upstairs, the hotel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. (Stay with this, and pay attention)

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Co-op. The guy at the Co-op take the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her “services” on credit. The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner. (Almost done, keep reading.) The hotel proprietor then places the $100 bill back on the counter so the traveler will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town now thinks that they are out of debt and there is a false atmosphere of optimism and glee.

And that, my friends is how a “stimulus package” works!

Federal Framework Being Set Up To Arrest Sheriffs … book on Hitler’s Third Reich. Book….parallels pre-WWII Germany. It’s unbelievable.

This article was written by Ken Jorgustin and originally published at Modern Survival Blog
Colorado, and apparently Texas (next) are being targeted with an attempt to set up a federal authority framework that will enable Secret Service agents (not just those guarding the president), and others of the U.S. Secret Service including uniformed division officers, physical security technicians and specialists, and other ‘special officers’, to arrest and remove an elected sheriff for refusing to enforce the law (or anyone breaking the law).

The bills being introduced defines law as including any rule, regulation, executive order, court order, statute or constitutional provision.
Why are they doing this? Here’s why…

It would establish federal authority police powers in a State, enabling an enforcement arm reporting directly to the president (Secret Service).

It would enable the president / executive branch to theoretically override the actions and preventative measures that are now being taken by many States throughout the country who are trying to preserve 2nd Amendment gun rights and who are prohibiting the enforcement of unconstitutional law passed by Congress or pushed by executive order.

As some of you may know, a growing list of sheriffs (more than 340 so far) across the country have expressed that they will not enforce a Washington mandate that clearly violates the Second Amendment.
Many State laws to preserve gun rights are gaining momentum. States include Montana, Ohio, Kentucky, Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Michigan, Utah, and New Mexico.

However, in Colorado, Senate Bill SB-13-013 has evidently just passed, and is now ready to be signed by the governor, giving police powers and arrest authority to the federal/executive branch of government (Secret Service) within the State. In Texas a similar bill has just been introduced in the State legislature.

The president and vice-president Biden have been actively pursuing state legislatures and pushing for passage of the bills. Obama is scheduled to visit Colorado in just a few days. “Colorado is a pawn for the Obama-Biden plan,” and then on to the next… at least those that won’t fall into line.
It is a full court press by the federal government to empower themselves even further by inserting themselves as police authority within the state, to eliminate opposition.
…thought you’d like to know

Help for Low Information Voters

Hi Conservatives,
Didn’t want you to wait to benefit from the following helpful advice!
Best,
Len
Op-Ed Submission “As I See It” to the Worcester Telegram

Help for
Low Information Voters
Forward this to spread the conservative word. To be removed from this list, just hit RETUTRN and put REMOVE in the subject.
March 27,2013
By Len Mead

Get most of your information from local newspaper front pages? From TV news? You may be a “Low Information Voter!” You’re not stupid. You’re just not well informed.

Fortunately, as your conservative watch-dog and friend, I’m here to help. So brace yourself. Here comes the ugly truth you don’t get from the “main street” media. The average “family” on welfare takes home about $61,000 a year compared to the working stiff median family income after taxes of about $48,000 (from a December, 2012 report of the Weekly Standard.) Wonder why welfare recipients aren’t anxious to work?

This tragedy began in the 1950s. That’s when misguided Democrat welfare programs started paying fornicating teenagers money for bearing illegitimate children. Teens qualified under “Aid to Families with Dependent Children” if there was no father or husband around! Go figure.

After 50 plus years, the American Family with a loving father and mother has been destroyed by these welfare incentives. Dear Reader, 40% of today’s births are to single mothers with no acknowledged father. A population of 315 million today has only 113 million American taxpayers but 100 million on welfare (excluding social security and Medicare), 47 million on food stamps, and 23 million desperate Americans who can’t find work.

You’re told that your government will take care for you — that you’re a victim— that the rich aren’t paying enough taxes. That too many guns, not untreated mental illness threatens schoolchildren. You’re told cutting our military won’t threaten your safety while Iran proclaims it is now a nuclear power with its first stated goal to launch a bomb wiping out Israel.

While millions of illegals invade our country you’re told these criminals are just “undocumented.” Your healthcare – once the best in the world — is collapsing with higher rates, bureaucracy, mandated fines and jail if you don’t buy Obamacare insurance. Lastly, you’re told that when the current Democrat regime in DC spends $1.40 for each $1.00 they collect, this is not a problem. $17 trillion in US debt now and trillions of overspending each year as far as the eye can see – no problem? Click on the US Debt Clock.

Getting the picture? See — you are getting “low information” news. Daily front page and TV “reporting” of these problems is non-existent and actually suppressed. Why? Because struggling regional publications don’t have the resources to have reporters in DC or around the world. So they meekly claim they must depend on national wire services such as the Associated Press (AP) for national stories.

But AP “news” stories preach that all goodness comes from government, that self-reliance is foolish, that limited constitutional government is passé, that whatever Obama does must be celebrated and mistakes protected! (Criticism is racist!) Continually ingesting this hogwash has produced generations of “low information voters” who now vote foolishly for “more government” against their own best interests. Regional TV and newspapers’ professional role demand that they actually verify what they print or show. Most don’t. And those that don’t shouldn’t be bought, viewed, or used by advertisers.

So what now? Re-read our Declaration of Independence and Constitution so you re-learn that our rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness come from our creator – GOD – not from government. Discover that our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms exists NOT so we can shoot squirrels but so we can shoot government tyrants as we did fighting off King George’s troops.

Friends, start getting your information from internet news sources – the Drudge Report, Yahoo News, Google News, talk radio, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine and Fox News. Acknowledge that the lies and deceptions from the Associated Press or wire service broadcasts boil down to: life on “government” welfare is better than success on your own.

Our great wealth and freedom has come from low taxes, limited government, self-reliance, freedom, a strong military and a strong private system of charity through neighbors and faith organizations. Becoming a “High Information Voter” means you will start returning to elected office individuals who agree with these principals.

What’s a great first political step? Demand that your taxes stop going to new pregnant teenagers for each new illegitimate birth. This will finally stop the cancer of welfare which is destroying the traditional family– the building block of any society. Continue in the low information mode, and your future and that of your children will be dismal at best – serfs to the cruelest of masters – entrenched government.

Len Mead is a Tea Party Activist, past “Citizen of the Year” award winner from Citizens for Limited Taxation and can be reached anytime at mead1720@gmail.com

We need more people like this guy to voice their opinions against this Regime. Please share this one!

Seems time for Congress to act, before it’s too late.

Retired Army Officer: DHS Must Surrender Their War Weapons to Dept. of Defense
Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, March 24, 2013, 10:51 AM

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/03/retired-army-officer-dhs-must-surrender-their-war-weapons-to-dept-of-defense/

On Saturday March 23, Terry M. Hestilow, a retired Army officer with nearly 30 years of service under his belt, posted this letter he sent to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) this week. Hestilow wants DHS to hand over their war weapons to the Department of Defense.

The Honorable Senator John Cornyn, State of Texas
United States Senate
517 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Re: Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and that agencies preparation for war against citizens of the United States of America
Dear Senator Cornyn,

It is with gravest concern that I write to you today concerning the recent appropriation of weapons by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that can only be understood as a bold threat of war by that agency, and the Obama administration, against the citizens of the United States of America. To date, DHS has been unwilling to provide to you, the elected representatives of the People, justification for recent purchases of almost 3,000 mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armored personnel carriers, 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition (with associated weapons), and other weapons systems, when, in fact, the DHS has no war mission or war making authority within the limits of the United States of America.
Significant is the fact that at the same time the Obama administration is arming his DHS for war within the limits of the United States against the People of the United States in accordance with his 2008 campaign speech claiming,

�We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we�ve set. We�ve gotta (sic) have a civilian national security force that�s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded [as the United States military]��Candidate Barack Obama, 2008.

The Obama administration is deliberately defunding, overextending, and hollowing the Department of Defense; the only legitimate agency of the U.S. government with a war mission.

This act of the Obama administration stands as a glaring threat of war against our nation�s citizens! This act of the Obama administration can only be understood as a tyrannical threat against the Constitution of the United States of America! If left unresolved, the peace loving citizens who have sworn to defend the United States Constitution �against all enemies, both foreign and domestic� are left no option except to prepare to defend themselves, and the U.S. Constitution, against this Administration�s �coup� against the People and the foundations of liberty fought for and defended for the past 238 years. We have no choice if we honor our oaths.

The only proper response to this threat against the American people is for the representatives of the People, the members of the U.S. House and Senate, to demand in clear terms that the Administration cannot ignore, that the Department of Homeland Security immediately surrender their newly appropriated weapons of war to the Department of Defense (DoD). Further, since the DHS has assumed a position in the Administration to enforce the tyrannical acts of this president against the People of the United States against the limits of the United States Constitution, it remains for the United States Congress to exercise its limiting power in the balancing of powers established by our founding fathers, to disestablish and dissolve the DHS as soon as possible. One needs only to look to the rise of Adolf Hitler, and his associated DHS organizations, the SA and the SS, of 1932-1934, to see the outcome of allowing an agency of government this kind of control over the f ree citizens of a nation. The people of Germany could not have imagined, until it was too late, the danger of allowing a tyrant this kind of power. We must not be so na�ve as to think it will not happen to us as well if we remain passive toward this power grab by the Marxist Obama administration!

Finally, for more than two centuries the nation has lived in peace at home because of the protections of our legitimate military and the many appropriate state and federal law enforcement agencies, supported by Constitutional courts. We stand today at a cross-road. Will we allow this present Administration to overthrow our United States Constitution and its legal processes to amend injustices, or, will we honor our obligations to defend the Constitution against a �domestic� enemy? Our Constitution lays out the proper methods of resolving our differences; and it does not include its overthrow by a rogue agency of a Marxist leadership at home. You, sir, are our constitutionally elected agent to defend our Constitution at home. We are counting upon you. We remain aware, however, of this present threat and will not expose ourselves as an easy prey to the authors of the destruction of our nation.

I know that this letter demands much of you. We elected you because we, the citizens of the State of Texas, believe that you are up to the task at hand and will, against all threats, honor your oath and office. We are also writing to your fellow members of the House and Senate to stand in integrity with the Constitution and against this present threat by the Obama administration and his DHS.

We refuse to surrender our Constitution or our nation!
Resolved,
Captain Terry M. Hestilow
United States Army, Retired
Fort Worth, Texas
March 23, 2013