Well things are starting to look up around here. Notre Dame finally won a game beating Michigan State decisively and without it being a comedy of errors game. Mean time Saturday we were graced with not one but two significant thunder storms lasting roughly 45 minutes each and producing out first seriously appreciable rain in a long time. While it basically didn’t make a serious impact on the drought situation here it did ease the grass and wild faire dangers in the area some and hopefully relax the ground a little so that the follow on showers they are promising for this week will soak in and not run off as a large part of the first shower did.

Update: I’m, writing this on Tuesday now as I prepare to send this to auto post. Not only did it rain for us on Saturday but twice Sunday and once very early yesterday morning as well and as with Saturday while not extremely long in duration when it did rain it went about it in a serious fashion. This has resulted in a 3 day total of over 2.36 inches of rain across the Houston area! Green is beginning to reassert itself as a predominate landscape cover  color once again.

Couple this with noticeably lower temps (high 80s to low 90s)which is significantly drier than it has been and  tings are actually becoming quite pleasant around here. If this trend keeps up I may have to start taking my morning coffee out on the patio again.

Ok well we have a very full issue today and a HUGE unveiling besides so lets get to it shall we?

 

Good To The Last Holy Hand Grenade!

JUMPSTART YOUR MORNING: Your daily java jolt can rev up your metabolism by 5 to 8%—about 98 to 174 calories a day!

With some misgivings, we left a young baby-sitter in charge of our three energetic youngsters.

When we returned a few hours later, she was sitting alone watching TV. I went to check on the children, and found them in our narrow hallway.  By bracing their arms and legs against the walls, two of them had climbed up to the ceiling.

“The baby-sitter taught us how,” they said gleefully.

The sitter joined me, her face a deep red.  “Since they had me climbing the walls, I figured they might as well be too,” she stammered.

We kept the same girl for the next two years.

Here’s that huge unveiling I promised you! How big a deal is this? Even Impish has not seem most of these final products and is getting to see them the same time you are!

We understand that our limited edition September 1tth Tenth Anniversary Memorial Mug is not to everyone’s tastes. I have come to find that unless you are from the  Mid to North Atlantic area its not all that big a deal anymore to most people. In fact the reaction is not unlike hearing California had another earthquake. it’s not effecting you and has no bearing on you so you simply move on.

While we are grateful to those of you who did buy then its clear the preponderance of you are looking for something else when it comes to DragonLaffs memorabilia. So today we are expanding our offerings. With several new items and graphic designs. All items shown can been seen and purchased at our DragonLaffs Store:

http://www.zazzle.com/dragonlaffsstore*

Our DragonLaffs.com  magnet bares our blog philosophy and is available round or square in 3 sizes to suit every need. It’s also available as a keychain for you keychain collectors and is exactly the same as the magnet.

Speaking of magnets, for you (all too few) Leprechaun fans we have:

And for you Readers who claim to love us both equally (yeah right!) or just plain can’t decide:

OK! OK! I hear you grumbling out there! Where are the coffee mugs Lethal? Give us the mugs!

PLEASE NOTE: The actual mug will differ slightly in that it has a powder blue handle and rim. The view in the store is correct and will be as the mug ships.

As if we had to ask and you didn’t already know

Impish has always said he loves our reader..its just not exactly how you thought he meant it. 

Lethal expounds his simple view on coffee and coffee drinkers.

One of our proudest and most popular graphic sentiments. Drink if you dare!

PLEASE NOTE: Trim color in incorrect here. The Maroon color shown in the store is how mug will ship.

I should note that many of these items have the customization option left on on their sale page. This means unlike out Sept 11th mug you can change the size and style of the mug to suit you. You might prefer a 15 oz mug over the 11 oz., a travel mug or a beer stein.

Undoubtedly the muse shall again afflict one or the other of us in the future and there will be some new things periodically and some old ones taken down. To lazy to scroll back up and find the link to the DragonLaffs store? Here it is again” :http://www.zazzle.com/dragonlaffsstore*  as soon as Impish gets to it a permanent link will appear on the upper right of the homepage for the blog with the others for the store.

Two men accused of barhopping with dead friend

It’s straight out of a popular movie, only police say it really happened in Denver recently.

Two men accused of driving around with a dead friend, using his ATM card and visiting a strip club are charged with abusing a corpse, identity theft and criminal impersonation.

Robert Young and Mark Rubinson are free on bond but they couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.

It’s unclear how Jeffery Jarrett died, but the men are not charged in his death.

The Denver Post reports that in a less amusing real-life version of the film “Weekend at Bernie’s,” an affidavit accuses Young and Rubinson of leaving Jarrett’s body in the car while they drank at a bar on his tab Aug. 27.

Investigators allege the men stopped at a restaurant, returned Jarrett’s body to his home, used Jarrett’s ATM card and withdrew $400 at a strip club before reporting Jarrett’s death.

– The Associated Press

Seems to me they left out charges of Disrespecting the Dead, Criminal Tastelessness and Imbecilic Impersonation of a Movie by Idiots.

 

“It is possible to do something in an instant that will give you heartache for life.”

Getting married, having children or partnering with a Dragon being three cases in point.

 

 

So last week we saw you can get your cremated ashes mixed into hunting cartridges and shot shell for one final hunting trip. Today we’ll check out a bunch of options on what you can do with your cremated remains for you non hunter~gather types .

12 Weird Things to Do With Your Cremated Remains

1. You Can Be Shot Into Space

Celestis made headlines in 1997 when they launched the cremated remains of 60’s icon Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry into space. For a fairly reasonable fee (starting at $695), you can send a “symbolic portion” of yourself on the next available mission, riding alongside a commercial or scientific satellite.

You can come back to Earth after the flight, or pay more to remain in orbit. You’ll stay there for an estimated 10 to 240 years before reentering the atmosphere in a blaze of fire. In the future, Celestis plans to launch cremated remains into the moon’s orbit, to the surface of the moon, and possibly into deep space.

2. You Can Be Exploded With Fireworks

Yes, you can literally “go out with a bang.”

Companies like Heaven’s Above Fireworks can pack a small portion of your ashes into professional-grade fireworks and stage a memorial display for your survivors. You can choose a big, noisy, colorful display or a quieter, more understated event.

For a smaller fee, you can have your ashes stuffed into small, self-fired rockets, so your family can have their own private fireworks ceremony at home.

3. You Can Be Mixed Into a Coral Reef

Environmentalist? Ocean lover? You can create your own “living legacy” by having your ashes turned into an artificial coral reef. Your remains will help restore damaged reefs and create a nurturing marine environment for fish and other forms of sea life.

Starting around $4,000, Eternal Reefs will mix your cremated remains into concrete, shape the artificial reef and place the reef out on the sea floor. Larger personal reefs can hold up to four people and include pets. If that’s too pricey, you can have your remains mixed together with others and as part of a complete reef system.

4. You Can Be Crushed Into a Diamond

Jewelry from human remains? It sounds ghoulish, but we’re not talking about necklaces made from bones or teeth.

With companies like LifeGem, your carbon remains (or a lock of your hair) can be crushed into a gemstone that is identical to a natural diamond on a molecular level. Using modern technology, this process only takes a few months instead of millions of years.

It’s not cheap, though. Expect to shell out a few grand for the smallest gems, and that doesn’t include the cost of the setting.

5. You Can Be Fired In Hand-Blown Glass

Can’t shell out a small fortune to be crushed into a diamond? For a fraction of the price, you can still be turned into bling at Memory Glass.

Starting around $150, the artists at Memory Glass take a small portion of cremated remains and infuse them into hand-blown glass keepsakes and jewelry. Each member of your family can get their own colorful glass pendant to wear on a chain or leather cord.

6. You Can Be Painted Into a Work of Art

The professional artist at Ashes to Portraits creates oil paintings of the deceased with traces of cremated ashes mixed in. If you like this idea, make sure you leave behind a large, close-up photograph to work from (at minimum, 4″ x 6″, but the bigger the better). They’ll also do portraits of your cremated pet.

If you prefer something less literal, you can send a bit of your ashes to Art in Ashes. Their staff painter creates colorful modern abstract art mixed with cremated remains. You can choose one of their pre-made compositions or let them know what colors you want to see.

7. You Can Be Launched in a Helium Balloon

Scattering cremated remains by airplane is fairly common these days, but it can be expensive and difficult for family members to participate. The Eternal Ascent Society makes aerial ash scattering more accessible and affordable by placing the ashes inside a large helium balloon and launching it into the clouds.

The balloon itself is 5 feet wide and comes in red, green, blue and yellow. About 6 miles up into the sky, the atmosphere gets so cold that the balloon will freeze and shatter, and your ashes will disperse into the clouds. It’s biodegradable, so you don’t have to worry about damaging the environment.

8. You Can Be Stuffed Into a Teddy Bear

Huggable Urns are stuffed animals with a lined velvet compartment inside to hold a person’s cremated remains. You can choose from a number of teddy bears, plush dogs and cats or just a simple, soft pillow.

You can send in a loved one’s clothing or special blanket to have a small outfit or accessory made for your Huggable Urn. They also make customized stuffed animals, if you’d like one that looks just like a deceased pet.

In Impish’s case a taxidermist would probably be preferable to an army of menacing teddy bears clad in dragon scales.

9. You Can Be Mounted to a Vehicle

Some people are happiest when they’re behind the wheel, and now you can be there permanently after your demise. A Mobile Cremation Urn can be mounted on a motorcycle, motor home, car, truck, police cruiser, cruise ship or pretty much anything else that moves.

You can personalize your mobile cremation urn with engraving, and add your picture to the mobile urn with your name or a favorite quote. You can also choose a commemorative disc for the end cap based on your religion, profession, military service or social organization.

10. You Can Be the Sand in an Hourglass

An interesting twist on the typical urn is the Hourglass Keepsake Urn. This hourglass is filled with cremated ashes instead of sand, creating a lovely symbol of the passage of time in every person’s life.

If you and your spouse or loved one would like to share an hourglass, your ashes can be mixed into a single urn.

11. You Can Be Turned Into a Box of Pencils

With this project, artist Nadine Jarvis is exploring the idea of turning a deceased person from “ashes to ashes.” She estimates that about 240 pencils could be made from the carbon of human cremains.

The pencils would be stored inside a specially designed box, with a sharpener in its side and a viewing window on top. When the pencils are sharpened into the side of the box, the pencil shavings turn into a new kind of ash, and the box becomes a kind of urn.

12. You Can Be Built Into a Pyramid

In ancient Egypt, the pyramids were built to hold the remains and worldly goods of the royal deceased. Unfortunately, these “permanent” monuments have deteriorated under the stresses of time, weather and incessant grave-robbing.

In modern times, a company called PYRA Development wants to build pyramids out of a high-impact polymer that would last over a million years. Each building block of the pyramid would contain the remains and memorabilia of a deceased person.

There’s no evidence that this project ever got off the ground, but it’s a fascinating idea nonetheless.

Finally two others not listed here I am aware of.

Your remains (or your entire urn) can be mixed with concrete (encased in it in case of the urn) and poured into a statue mold of your or your survivor’s choice.

Lastly, I knew this gay fella in San Francisco (surprise surprise) that wanted his ashes mixed as the thickening agent in a really spicy pot of chili ( hey at the temp they are subjected too they are sterile) and given to his life partner so he could rip up his partners ass one final time.

If you are offended by that last comment/joke please note the following BEFORE you voice your complaints~

1. Scroll back up to the top and re~read the warning posted there, particularly the fine print portion.
2. Direct ALL your complaints to Impish because I cleared it with him in addition to our censors.
3. If you are a chili head and writing to complain about the use of the ashes in place of masa flour as a thickening agent…Dude its not MY idea or recipe so stuff a scotch bonnet in it already!
4. If you’re gay, a liberal (but I repeat myself), a member of the P.C. police or a certain female Rodney King disciple from Israel recent taken to leaning to the far left,  you should know that while Don’t Ask ~ Don’t Tell may have been repealed in the U.S. military it has NOT been repealed in this blog! Nor is it EVER likely to be!
5. If you are gay, recently bereaved and writing for the chili recipe…I’ll see what I can do for you but no promises.
6. If you are Andrew Zimmer and looking for the next Bizarre Food feature…contact me directly as I have some of my Dad’s ashes and a killer South Texas chili recipe.

 

 

 

The Ways of Love

My grandmother told me how she ended up marrying Grandpa.

She was in her 20s, and the man she was dating left for war.

“We were in love,” she recalled, “and wrote to each other every week. It was during that time that I discovered how wonderful your grandfather was.”

“Did you marry Grandpa when he came home from the war?” I asked.

“Oh, I didn’t marry the man who wrote the letters. Your grandfather was the mailman.”

 

 

http://www.campbellkitchen.com/coupon.aspx?fbid=FaWvZnYM3JW

Arby’s Extras Coupon -Shroom & Swiss sandwich

 

Select >> Print>> Redeem>> Save>> Repeat. ‘Nuff Said?

 

 

 

Retrieve lost product keys and serial numbers

Many of the programs you purchase require serial numbers. Even software that came preloaded probably had an identifying registration key. That’s how software makers curb piracy of their programs.

At some point, you’ll need access to those keys. Maybe you’ve just bought a new computer. Perhaps you’re fixing a problem with your current one. Whatever the reason, it’s important you have those numbers. Unfortunately, they often get lost.

It happens to the best of us. Luckily, many of those numbers are stored securely in the computer’s registry. The bad news: With the massive size of the registry, you could spend hours looking for them.

That’s why License Crawler is so valuable. It will quickly retrieve any product key or serial number stored on your computer. This makes it easy to transfer or reload your favorite programs. It’s also wise to keep those numbers handy before you need them. Go give License Crawler a try.

Cost: Free

Link: www.klinzmann.name   << For those (stifling a giggle) technically minded of you.

Down Load Page: http://www.freewarefiles.com/LicenseCrawler_program_44343.html  << For those who just want the program

System: Windows XP, Vista, 7

as seen@ Kimkommando.com

 

When It’s Okay To Fart In Public

A Helpful Guide Line for Flatulent Dragons and Other Butt Bassoonists

In your boss’ office as you are turning to leave.
Tip- Make sure it’s a silent one (Note to Impish: it reads BOSS’S Office NOT partners Office!)

In a bathroom (preferred location at all times ESPECALLY for Dragons )

In a cashier’s line – it might help to speed up things (Note to Impish: This does NOT refer to the cashier’s line in the company cafeteria!)

In an empty elevator before you get off ( Note to Impish: NOT our private executive elevator to our offices either!)

Next to an occupied changing room – it may quickly become unoccupied

In someone else’s unoccupied cubicle at work (Note to Impish: Some one who doesn’t sign your checks OR carry a Dragon Hunting Rifle!)

While parachuting (Note to Impish Flying is an acceptable substitute for parachuting, just stop trying to light them and call it JATO)

While scuba diving ( DO NOT play with the bubbles! Also this is not recommended if you are wearing a full body wet suit as it will radically alter your buoyancy causing you to rapidly shoot up and breach like a whale!)

In the back seat of a patrol car if you are arrested.

During interrogation if you’re the one being interrogated.

In your car if you’ve been carjacked.

In the changing room when you’re sure someone else is waiting his/her turn

In your car once you’ve been pulled over … the cop may let you go quicker

During a pie eating competition to distract your competitors

While walking down a crowded hallway. Nobody will know whom to blame ( Note to Impish: We automatically blame you even if we cannot see you in the immediate area so this one obviously does not apply to you while you are in the corporate offices.)

In one of those bomb sniffing cabinets in the airport security line. (Please write us from GITMO and let us know what happened after you let “the big one” go in the cabinet as this one is unconfirmed and the feedback will be valuable

 

 

10 Features of The Company Car

— Accelerates at a phenomenal rate.

— Has a much shorter braking distance than the private car.

— Can take speed humps at twice the speed of private cars.

— The battery, radiator water, oil and tires never have to be checked.

— It can be driven up to 60 miles with the oil warning light flashing.

— It needs cleaning less often than private cars.

— The suspension is reinforced to allow for the weekend loads of

Bricks, concrete slabs and other building material.

— Unusual and alarming engine noises are easily eliminated by turning up the radio.

— It needs no security system and may be left anywhere, unlocked and with the keys in the ignition.

— It is especially sand and waterproof for barbecues and fishing expeditions on remote beaches.

Southern jokes ‘y’all

Couple weeks back I responded to some disparaging comments about us Yankees made by some anonymous Son of (a bitch from) the South. Well today I figure as long as they fired the first volley it would be impolite of me as a True Blue Bellied Yankee not to return fire.

Alabama

A group of Alabama friends went deer hunting and paired off in twos for the day. That night, one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under the weight of an eight-point buck.

“Where’s Henry?” the others asked.

“Henry had a sprained ankle. He’s a couple of miles back up the trail,” the successful hunter replied.

“You left Henry layin’ out there and carried the deer back?” they inquired.

“A tough call,” nodded the hunter. “But I figured no one’s gonna steal Henry!”

Georgia

The owner of a golf course in Georgia was confused about paying an invoice, so he decided to ask his secretary for some mathematical help.

He called her into his office and said, “Y’all graduated from the University of Georgia and I need some help. If I wuz to give yew $20,000, minus 14%, how much would you take off?”

The secretary thought a moment, and then replied, “Everthang but my earrings.”

Louisiana

A senior citizen in Louisiana was overheard saying …. “When the end of the world comes, I hope to be in Louisiana.”

When asked why, he replied, “I’d rather be in Louisiana ’cause everythang happens in Louisiana 20 years later than in the rest of the world.”

North Carolina

A man in North Carolina had a flat tire, pulled off on the side of the road, and proceeded to put a bouquet of flowers in front of the car and one behind it. Then he got back in the car to wait.

A passerby studied the scene as he drove by, and was so curious he turned around and went back. He asked the fellow what the problem was.

The man replied, “I got a flat tahr.”

The passerby asked, “But what’s with the flowers?”

The man responded, “When you break down they tell you to put flares in the front and flares in the back. I never did understand it neither.”

Tennessee

A Tennessee State trooper pulled over a pickup on I-65. The trooper asked, “Got any ID?”

The driver replied, “Bout whut?” 

Texas

The Sheriff pulled up next to the guy unloading garbage out of his pick-up into the ditch. The Sheriff asked, “Why are you dumping garbage in the ditch? Don’t you see that sign right over your head.”

“Yep,” he replied. “That’s why I’m dumpin’ it here, ’cause it says: ‘Fine For Dumping Garbage.’

And to add the final proof/insult…

Southern Donut Seeds

 

 

The Israelis and Arabs realized that, if they continued fighting, they would someday end up destroying the whole world. So they decided to settle their dispute with an ancient practice: a duel of two, like David and Goliath. This “duel” would be a dog fight. The negotiators agreed each side would take 5 years to develop the best fighting dog they could. The dog that won the fight would earn its people ‘the right to rule the disputed areas. The losing side would have to lay down its arms for good.

The Arabs found the biggest, meanest Dobermans and Rottweiler’s in the world. They bred them together and then crossed their offspring with the meanest Siberian wolves. They selected only the biggest, strongest puppy of each litter, fed it the best food and killed all the other puppies. They used steroids and trainers in their quest for the perfect killing machine. After the 5 years were up, they had a dog that needed steel prison bars on its cage. Only expert trainers could handle this incredibly nasty and ferocious beast.

When the day of the big dog-fight finally arrived, the Israelis showed up with a very strange-looking animal, a Dachshund that was 10 feet long! Everyone at the dogfight arena felt sorry for the Israelis.. No one there seriously thought this weird, odd-looking animal stood any chance against the growling beast over in the Arab camp. 

All the bookies took one look and predicted that the Arab dog would win in less than a minute. As the  cages were opened, the Dachshund slowly waddled toward the center of the ring.

The Arab dog leaped from its cage and charged the giant wiener-dog.  As he got to within an inch of the Israeli dog, the Dachshund opened its jaws and swallowed the Arab beast whole in one bite. There was nothing left but a small puff of fur from the Arab killer dog’s tail floating to the ground.

The stunned crowd of international observers, bookies and media personnel let out a collective gasp of disbelief and surprise. The Arabs approached the Israelis, muttering and shaking their heads in disbelief. “We do not understand,” said their leader, “Our top scientists and breeders worked for 5 long years with the meanest, biggest Dobermans, Rottweiler’s and Siberian wolves, and they developed an incredible killing machine of a dog!”

The Israelis replied. “Well, for 5 years, we have had a team of Jewish plastic surgeons from Boca Raton working to make a crocodile look like a Dachshund.

The moral? Never trust anything or anyone in the Middle East to be what they appear!

 

DOUBLE CHOCOLATE CHUNK COOKIES

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups uncooked quick-cooking oats
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (11.5-ounce) package semisweet chocolate chunks
2 (1.55-ounce) milk chocolate candy bars, grated
1 cup chopped pecans, toasted
Beat butter and sugars at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla, beating until blended.
Pulse oats in a food processor to a fine powder.
Combine oats, flour, and next 3 ingredients in a large bowl; gradually add to butter mixture, beating well. Stir in chocolate chunks, grated chocolate bars, and pecans. Drop dough by 1/4 cupfuls onto lightly greased baking sheets.
Bake at 375° for 10 to 14 minutes or until desired degree of doneness. Remove cookies to wire racks to cool completely. Makes about 2 1/2 dozen.

Quick Minestrone Soup

Ingredients

•  3 14-ounce cans beef broth
•  1 15-ounce can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
•  1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
•  1 14-1/2-ounce can low-sodium stewed tomatoes
•  1 11-1/2-ounce can vegetable juice
•  1 6-ounce can low-sodium tomato paste
•  2 teaspoons sugar
•  1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning, crushed
•  1 1/2 cups loose-pack frozen mixed vegetables (such as an Italian blend)
•  2 cups fresh spinach leaves, cut into strips
•  2 cups cooked pasta (1 cup uncooked), such as small shells or mostaccioli
•  1/4 – 1/3 cups finely shredded Parmesan cheese (optional)

Directions

In a large kettle combine broth, beans, stewed tomatoes, vegetable juice, tomato paste, sugar, and Italian seasoning. Bring to boiling. Add mixed vegetables. Reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Add spinach and cooked pasta; heat through. To serve, ladle into bowls. If desired, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Makes 8 main-dish servings.

Total time to prepare: 25 min

8 Servings

Nutritional Information

1 serving:Calories 214;Fat 2g(Saturated 0g);Cholesterol 0mg;Sodium 975mg;Carbohydrate 41g(Dietary Fiber 9g);(Protein 12g)

Make-Ahead Tip:

Prepare soup up to the point where frozen vegetables are cooked until tender. Remove from heat; cool quickly. Refrigerate, covered, overnight. To serve, reheat soup over medium heat. Stir in spinach and cooked pasta. Heat through. If you like, serve it country-style over thick slices of toasted Italian bread.

 

WILL USA SURVIVE?

The folks who are getting the free stuff, don’t like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.

The folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop, and the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!

Now… The people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff, that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff, are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.

So… The people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff, and giving them the free stuff in the first place.  We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.

Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them.

The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 235 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff. We have one chance to change that. In 2012.

Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it.

ELECTION 2012 IS COMING A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves!

I’M 100% for PASSING THIS ON!!! Let’s take a stand!!!

Obama: Gone!
Borders: Closed!  Immigration: severely limited! Automatic citizenship for being born here: No Longer!
 Language: English only
Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights!
Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare!
NO freebies to: Non-Citizens!

We the people are coming… and we are PISSED!

 

 

Good Morning Campers… today is garage sale day 2.  Started yesterday, continues today, and possibly tomorrow.  Lord, I hope it doesn’t continue in to tomorrow…I’ve got other things to do than just sit outside and … hang on, Mrs. Dragon is talking …
…
We made HOW much yesterday???!!!
Okay campers! Gotta get moving here, garage sale awaits!
And no Lethal, the garage is not for sale, that’s just what it’s called.

Here’s probably the final reminder folks.  Our charity driven 9-1-1 mugs are still on sale for a little longer.  If you’d like to order one for $19.95 here’s the link: http://www.zazzle.com/dragonlaffs_sept_11th_memorial_mug-168351425205007069

Keep your Zazzle account open and watch for more Dragon Laffs stuff coming soon!

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There are hard working dragons everywhere:

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Very Wise Words from Ginny

People say there is no difference between
COMPLETE & FINISHED.
But there is.
When you marry the right one, you are COMPLETE.
And when you marry the wrong one, you are FINISHED.
And when the right one catches you with the wrong one,
you are… COMPLETELY FINISHED

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There’s a technical term for a sunny, warm day
which follows two rainy days. It’s called Monday.

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The General went out to find that none of his G.I.s were there. One finally ran up, panting heavily.

“Sorry, sir! I can explain, you see I had a date and it ran a little late. I ran to the bus but missed it, I hailed a cab but it broke down, found a farm, bought a horse but it dropped dead, ran 10 miles, and now I’m here.”

The General was very skeptical about this explanation but at least he was here so he let the G.I. go. Moments later, eight more G.I.s came up to the general panting, he asked them why they were late.

“Sorry, sir! I had a date and it ran a little late, I ran to the bus but missed it, I hailed a cab but it broke down, found a farm, bought a horse but it dropped dead, ran 10 miles, and now I’m here.”

The General eyed them, feeling very skeptical but since he let the first guy go, he let them go, too. A ninth G.I. jogged up to the General, panting heavily.

“Sorry, sir! I had a date and it ran a little late, I ran to the bus but missed it, I hailed a cab but…”

“Let me guess,” the General interrupted, “it broke down.”

“No,” said the G.I., “there were so many dead horses in the road, it took forever to get around them.”

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iPhone Auto-Correct Love Song
http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/iphone-autocorrect-love-song/

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Okay, this one is WAY COOL!  So cool, in fact, that the store that makes them is sold out and off line because of such high order volume, but I found them on Amazon for $35.  How about one of these on a kid’s ward at the hospital?

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Sent in by Ginny!

BIG PEOPLE WORDS

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This is the BEST (and most complete) photo collection of  U.S. military airplanes that I have ever seen.


http://bobshermanspage.com/USAFPlanes.html

Today’s Last Word…is an opinion piece that comes to us from the Register Citizen:

SUSAN STAMPER BROWN: Why the rush to pass the American Jobs Act?

As the Democratic National Committee (DNC) launches an ad campaign in battleground states to promote rapid passage of President Barack Obama’s “American Jobs Act,” I cannot help but to ask, “Why the rush, Mr. President?”

While proposed payroll tax cuts would be useful to hard-working coupon-clipping Americans, common sense suggests that something is wrong, if, during a Joint Session of Congress, the president demands 14 different times to “pass this bill now.”

My father taught me well; high-pressure sales pitches never end well for the consumer. Another wise father, Lord Chesterfield, also taught his child well in 1749, when he said, “Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about to do is too big for him.”

Considering the abject failure of the administration’s previous mammoth-sized stimulus “jobs” bill, why would anyone with common sense consider a similar bill, about half the size, could create jobs? In what can only be perceived as a slick Chicago-style political maneuver, the administration is attempting to divert attention away from past failures and place the responsibility of excessive debt and unemployment in Congress’ corner.

Americans should think twice before hopping on the Democrats’ bandwagon bound for bankruptcy, and instead urge elected representatives to pass a bill to disable regulations that are strangling business owners and entrepreneurs. Much like the “jobs saved or created” in the previous stimulus bill, the American Jobs Act, will only put a bandage over the gushing artery that is our economy; a frightfully expensive gimmick to drive down unemployment numbers temporarily, and thereby bolstering Obama’s re-election chances in 2012.

America learned the costly lesson of jumping headlong into a cement pond before checking first to see if it had water. Taxpayers (and future taxpayers) have not yet recovered from injuries suffered from the last Stimulus bill which was supposed to settle unemployment at or below 8 percent. And, only heaven knows the economic ramifications of Obamacare.

The original Stimulus bill has proven to be a “gift that keeps on taking.” The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) August 24, 2011, Annual Summer Update, reported that the unemployment rate “will remain above 8 percent until 2014.”

Nearly $800 billion was “invested” chasing shiny objects to no avail. A prime example is the recipient of a $535 million U.S. Treasury loan guarantee who just went belly up — sending upwards of 1100 workers to the unemployment lines and leaving taxpayers with the tab. The solar panel company, Solyndra, was the third U.S. solar company to go bankrupt in recent weeks due to apparent subsidized competition from China.

Back in 2010, Obama stood in Solyndra’s plant avowing the “future is here.” If it is, the future looks a bit dismal. And, once again, we are expected to trust the president’s judgment and blindly march to cliff’s edge as mindless lemmings. It may be a better time to slow down to consider the danger of haste and the value of deliberateness. And, maybe pause to pray — before we plunge.

© Copyright 2011 Susan Stamper Brown. Susan’s weekly column is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at 800- 696-7561 or email cari@cagle.com. Email Susan at writestamper@gmail.com

Here’s the REAL problem with the American economy!

John Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN) for 6 am.

While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG). He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRI LANKA), designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE) and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA).
 
After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE IN INDIA) he sat down with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to the radio (MADE IN INDIA) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY) filled it with GAS (from Saudi Arabia) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.
 
At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his computer (made in MALAYSIA), John decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL), poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA), and then wondered why he can’t find a good paying job in AMERICA!
 
AND NOW HE’S HOPING HE CAN GET HELP FROM A PRESIDENT MADE IN KENYA!

And now, one final point:

The National Debt In Terms Anybody Can Grasp:

This below states the USA financial position succinctly:

U.S. Tax Revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal Budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New Debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National Debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent Budget Cut: $38,500,000,000

Now, let’s remove 8 zeroes from each row …

U.S. Tax Revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal Budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New Debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National Debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent Budget Cut: $38,500,000,000

And now pretend it’s your household budget:

Annual Family Income: $21,700
Money the Family Spent This Year: $38,200
Money you had to put on the credit card to make up the difference: $16,500
Total Outstanding Balance on the credit card: $142,710
Total Budget Cuts to bring your budget in line: $385

So, at this rate, you will only put $16,115 on your credit card next year.  Sure, that will help!

 

(With the way Notre Dame has been playing plus the talk of them being ‘no longer relevant’ to college football, they need all the support and press space they can get!)

Morning readers~

First I’d like to thank everyone who commented on our September 11th 10th Anniversary Issue, e~mailed me privately or sent me copies of your forwarding the issue to others in your address book. According to the sole gnome we have left in our circulation department we have picked up 8 new subscribers since the posting of that issue on Labor Day.

I happy to be able to finally say it appears as though our prolonged 100+ degree heat wave may well finally be at an end. We has a very nice abet extremely windy Labor Day weekend where the temps were only in the high 80s. In fact as I sit here writing this my weather widget informs me that while it is in fact 91 outside it only feels like its 88. A far cry from the days of ’ yo buddy its 103 and feels like 114 sorry pal!’ the last several night the temps have actually dipped low enough at night as to give our A/C unit a much needed rest too. The problem how ever is we have become used to it blowing across our bed and w/o it not only were we able to hear a host of other little noises that kept waking us up but we were hot besides!

Well last week my external hard drive arrived and I have sent the last week organizing things, consolidating them, removing duplicates, dumping piles of stuff I didn’t even know I had or why I had it as well as cleaning out my Inbox. My in box had never quite recovered from my last two bouts with my reoccurring illness, the demise and resurrection of D.L.E. or the failure of my lap top and having to revert to my ancient desk top. As a result this issue is a somewhat of a ‘clean out Lethal’s electronic garage and attic’ issue. Some stuff might be repeats, some of it a bit dated and we might even be a little subject heavy in some areas.

I don’t mind if you whine and complain about it, assuming its not covered by the disclaimer at the top. However to get your “Piss & Moan About the Issue Ticket” you’ll have to deposit a minimum of $5 in the help Lethal buy a new desktop fund. If you expect a personal response or apology ( yeah right! Good luck with that!) that will be a minimum of $25.

”Are You guys ready?… Let’s Roll!”

 

  However I’d still be willing to put this theory to the test!

Mrs. Impish Dragon wasn’t too thrilled to open Impish’s Bible and discover penciled-in Commandment 7a:

“(However, when thou art traveling on business, thou shalt heed the sage advice of My musical apostle, Stephen Stills.)”

For those of you too young, too slow, too dim memory or who simply spent the Seventies in an alcohol and drug induced fog to get this gratuitous rock reference here’s a little help:

 

Unique rare maybe even one of a kind? 

TAKING THE (LEMON) LAW INTO YOUR OWN HANDS:

David Cross’s wife bought a van from the Portsmouth (N.H.) Used Car Superstore. “It was a piece of
crap,” Cross said. He says the van had multiple issues including a broken odometer and damage from a previous wreck, so he took it back to the dealer.

The dealer not only refused to refund his money, but wouldn’t even negotiate the price on another van. So Cross returned
that night and drove the van onto the lot — and into multiple vehicles. “I hit the first $25,000 car I could see,” Cross said. “I
didn’t hit a car under $20,000. Then I moved a van that they wouldn’t come down on the price for. I moved it with the lemon they sold me. I just held it to the floor until I couldn’t move it any more.”

In all, he says, “I took out seven vehicles, including my own.” He then flagged down a police cruiser and turned himself in. “I woke up this morning and wondered if it was a dream,” he said, “but then I looked over and there’s my bail papers.” (MS/Portsmouth Herald) …Getting the answer to “Was it worth it?” might take awhile.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Cremated Ash Ammo

Has someone you loved recently passed on to that great trap field in the sky? Is deer hunting with Grandpa one of your fondest childhood memories? Or would you just like a way to make sure your trusted Labrador can continue to help you bring in those ducks once he’s gone? If you’re struggling with how to appropriately memorialize that certain someone, the creative folks at Holy Smoke may have just the solution for you…

Holy Smoke will load the cremated remains of your special someone into live ammunition, either shotgun shells or cartridges. How and where you fire your loved one’s remains is up to you.

I can imagine that indoor range owners may not be thrilled with you spreading your best buddy’s ashes around their facility. And there seems to be a certain ‘ick’ factor to shooting a deer with a 30-06 bullet that’s carrying Grandpa’s essence along with it. But maybe that’s me.

This kind of uniqueness doesn’t come cheaply, however. A box of 250 Fido-infused shotgun shells will run you $1,250. Cartridges are even more expensive on a per-launch basis. You can add a “mantle-worthy, finished, wooden handcrafted box” with labels for an additional $100.

So if you’re trying to figure out how to provide the right kind of closure to the loss of that special someone, Holy Smoke ammo could be just the send-off you’ve been looking for.

 

Jobs are out there

This girl could be sitting at home drawing unemployment.  Instead she’s established a business with unlimited potential for expansion. A creative entrepreneur who has developed a business idea.

 

She is selling margaritas on the beach (clearing $1250.00 per day)…

The jobs ARE out there!

 

Ain’t it the sad sad truth?

I watch some of these people on the Food Network and Cooking Channel and wonder how they can prance about week after week as suggest we serve some of the slop they dole out and call food. Last week I watched Nigella Lawson whom I usually adore place day old stale egg dough bread ripped up in a bowl sprinkle grated nutmeg and a pinch of brown sugar over it and then pour the heated English equivalent of whole milk in which a pat of butter had melted and a vanilla bean has steeped over it and pronounce that a “recipe”.

Seriously? Molly’s 3 year old nephew does this sort of thing every morning (a bet in his highchair) and his mother calls it a mess not a recipe! Now what do you say we actually cook something real?

CREOLE CHICKEN

1 pound boneless chicken thighs, skin removed, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 can (14.5 ounces) tomatoes with juice
1 & 1/2 cups chicken broth
8 ounces fully cooked smoked sausage, sliced
1/2 to 1 cup diced cooked ham
1 cup chopped onion
1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 teaspoons Creole seasoning
A few dashes of Tabasco sauce or other hot pepper sauce
2 cups instant rice, uncooked
1 cup chopped green bell pepper

In Crockpot, combine chicken, tomatoes, broth, sausage, ham, onion, tomato paste, water, seasoning, and Tabasco. Cover and cook on LOW for 5 to 6 hours. Add rice and green pepper to Crockpot and cook for 10 minutes longer, or until rice is tender and most of the liquid is absorbed.
Serves 6

I prefer to use a “flavored” dice tomatoes for this, either garlic and onions, fire- roasted or something with a little backbone, also if you really like spicy in place of the 1/4 cup water use a half a can of Snappy Tom Tomato Juice Cocktail. It should be in the same aisle as the rest of the tomato juice products and comes in a 6 pack of individual 4 or 6 ounce cans. If fancy is your thing use white wine in place of the 1/4 cup of water.

Lastly being this is a Creole dish I either use green onions/scallions in it if I have enough or garnish it with then if I only have a few. I even made it once using leeks because some one stopped to pick up green onions at the store for me and though that Leeks were just giant green onions!

 

CIVIL WAR “IDIOT’S” DELIGHT

This recipe dates from the Civil War, each side credits it to the other…or, ‘tuther,’ as they said back then. It is fool-proof: even an idiot can make it! It is more coffee cake than doughnut.

Fried-boiled-Doughnut-Coffee-Cake.

1 c. brown sugar
1 c. raisins
1 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
4 c. water
7 tbsp. butter
1/2 c. white sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 c. milk
1 c. flour
Boil together the first 5 ingredients. Make a batter of the second 5 ingredients. Drop the batter in a greased pan by spoonfuls. Pour first mixture over it and bake in a moderate oven until golden brown.

The paragraph above was typed by the original sender…NOT me! I do NOT consider anyone an idiot! Well… except for Liberal, Democrats, most politicians, Janet Napolitano, jackasses talking smack back at me in my personal Inbox when I take my time to respond to them and explain why something was done in one of my issues and it turns out they meant to comment for the Dragon but couldn’t be bothered to address it as such. Them I do consider idiots.

 

Little Johnny the Movie Trailer

thx to:  bullyboy our “down~under” regular commenter and contributor for this bit o’ naughtiness

 

A picture is worth a 1,000 words

We’ve gotten this from so many of you I’m posting it in self defense so it will stop clogging our in boxes!

Please note this should NOT be interpreted as an endorsement by me of Rick Perry

 

Find your phone

We all misplace our keys or wallet now and then. In the same way, we’ve all hunted for a misplaced cell phone. The easiest way to find a cell phone, of course, is to call it. You follow the ring to find it in a couch cushion or in another room.

That’s getting harder to do. So many of us have abandoned landlines and rely solely on a cell phone for communicating. If no one else is there and you have only one cell phone, it can seem that you are out of luck. But you aren’t!

Make a quick online visit to WheresMyCellPhone. Enter your number, and your mobile will begin ringing. It’s just the helping hand you need!

The site does not share or store your phone number. You can, however, block your number if you decide not to use the site anymore. Just click “Stop Calling!” located at the bottom of the page. If someone enters your number for any reason, your phone won’t ring.

Also if you have a smart phone capable of it and have the app (don’t know why you wouldn’t with a smart phone) capture the QR tag in the upper right corner and install the app on your android phone. What the app does is silently monitor incoming calls looking for the number that WheresMyCellphone calls you from when it detects that number the application overrides the current ringer and volumes settings incase you have it set to silent vibrate or the ringer down low making it easier for you to find your phone. I know the app is available at the Android Market but I cannot say for Windows or Apple based OS phones.

Look! I discovered a long lost short run feature I had stock piled to do! It’s amazing the things you find when you clean your Hard Drives out! 

Learn how a few of the former presidents treated the Secret Service. (3 minutes)

All the democrat presidents were rude. The Republican ones were caring and respectful.
This man graduated from the Federal Law Enforcement Academy. He shares what his DC Secret Service friends shared with him about the former presidents – and their wives!

(Who was rude, who was caring, and Michelle HATES white people).  Very interesting.

 

 

 

  As if we didn’t already know….

To those who think retired people are causing the social security system to go broke……………………………

Look at this picture and see if you can find one retired person in the place. Read to the bottom

Social Security Office In Austin , TX

A friend went to the social security office this week to file for Medicare because it is the only way to keep medical insurance when you turn 65. He took a picture of the waiting room. Please tell me if you can find a retired person in the place!!!! It’s called “disability” insurance!!!! You no longer have to wonder why SS is broke!!! These people do not pay into the system, nor are they disabled!!! Please spread this picture to everyone you know. Our country is going broke on this fraud!!! Please also go down to your SS office and take a picture and post it on the Internet. It just might wake up the country as to what is going on!!!

 

Hard to come up with anything to say after a statement that accurate and unusually honest from our government!

 

Tea Party Zombie game? Really?

We’ve got liberal sleaze balls pulling crap like this and making a buck off it but it’s “Republican Barbarians” right? Amazing how this crap is only not cool when its the Liberals and Dems on the receiving end of the slops pail!

Ok, we know this will probably upset some people. If you are NOT a fan of the Tea Party and love first-person shooters, this may be the game for you. For everyone else, you may want to skip these next few paragraphs.

A new video game is giving players a chance to explore a post-apocalyptic Fox News studio and kill off zombies that resemble famous conservatives including Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.

The game, called “Tea Party Zombies Must Die,” is project by StarvingEyes Advergaming, a website that provides games for online viral campaigns.

But well-known figures aren’t the only ones the game sets its sights on, as the Huffington Post notes:

Other characters in the first-person shooter include the “Generic Pissed Off Old White Guy Zombie,” the “Pissed Off Stupid White Trash Redneck Birther Zombie” and the “Express Racist Views Anonymously On The Internet Modern Klan Zombie,” who dons the remains of a KKK robe as he wanders around with a sign that describes President Barack Obama as a Muslim.

The game is a Flash-based, online shooter that’s free to play.

Tea Party Zombies is filled with several conservative talking points, including Obamacare, the birther issue and Americans for Prosperity.

This isn’t StarvingEyes’ first foray into the political video game world. According to Politico, the company released a game in 2004 that allowed characters to fight monsters that represented members of the Bush administration.

As far as controversy, the head of the group responsible for the game told MRC TV the game was a personal project and downplayed the criticism coming from conservative circles.

“I am not worried about it affecting business,” Oda said.

Really? Take your company company public and watch what the Centrist, Conservative, Republican, Brokerage houses due to your little company pal! It’ll happen faster than a zombie can moan “Obama!”

You know what’s most shocking, here? The fact that Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Newt Gringrich and Michele Bachmann are considered part of the “tea party.” Pretty much shows that “tea party” has lost any of its original meaning (or principles, for that matter) and become wholly co-opted by the Republican party.

Personally I am forced to concede I find the thought of shooting Bill O’Reilly, Newt Gringrich, Rick Santorum, or the uber evil hatemonger Glenn Beck somewhat of an appealing idea, even if it is only in video effigy. I wonder if I could sweet talk them into working in a zombie dragon?

For those of you who missed the link above here’s a link to the game for you to check out for yourself: http://teapartyzombiesmustdie.com/

This product image courtesy of Ben & Jerry’s shows their new ice cream flavor, “Schweddy Balls.” The new flavor is a homage to an old “Saturday Night Live” skit featuring Alec Baldwin as bakery owner Pete Schweddy

I have to say this would be a vast improvement over what the dragon usually is found licking!

Ben & Jerry’s reveals new flavor: Schweddy Balls

By JOHN CURRAN – Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Ben & Jerry’s has Schweddy Balls. Would you like a taste?

Chill out, it’s only the name of their new flavor.

Schweddy Balls ice cream is an homage to a 13-year-old “Saturday Night Live” skit featuring Alec Baldwin as bakery owner Pete Schweddy, whose unique holiday offerings included a delicacy called Schweddy balls.

The company’s not worried about offending people with the name, said spokesman Sean Greenwood.

“We’re the caring company,” Greenwood said Thursday. “We never want to do anything that is upsetting for people. We think it’s congruent with our values, in terms of having fun. One of our principles is ‘If it’s not fun, why do it?'”

Other flavors with edgy names — like Karamel Sutra and Half Baked — were irreverent double-entendres, too, he said.

True. But Schweddy Balls?

The new flavor, which was unveiled Wednesday and is being offered in a “limited batch,” consists of vanilla ice cream, a hint of rum, fudge-covered rum balls and milk chocolate malt balls. It’s being sold in Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops and supermarkets.

The “SNL” skit, which first aired Dec. 12, 1998, starred Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer as hosts of “Delicious Dish,” a National Public Radio program interviewing Baldwin’s Pete Schweddy character.

“For a long time, I thought that ‘Here Lies Pete Schweddy’ would end up on my tombstone,” Baldwin said in a statement released by South Burlington-based Ben & Jerry’s. “Now, thanks to Ben & Jerry’s, the goodness of the Schweddy family recipe won’t go with me to the great beyond.”

The ice cream flavor aims to cash in on the nod-and-a-wink premise of the skit, and on the cache of the show.

Ben & Jerry’s, a division of consumer products giant Unilever, has been down this road before. Earlier this year, the ice cream maker came out with “Late Night Snack” with late night comic Jimmy Fallon on the label.

Will consumers bite this time?

http://news.yahoo.com/ben-jerrys-reveals-flavor-schweddy-balls-214550438.html

 

Been a while since we had a Dragons Last Word or a Leprechaun’s Parting Shot from a reader. Recently due to reader feed back we have been keeping them few, far between and on topics different than our normal want of political, liberals and the Obamination Presidency. However occasionally you get the mandatory exception you just have to post. This one comes from reader Paul B. an under praises sung frequent contributor to the piles of material we sift through. Often so many things get combined together or read and condensed that it’s not easy to say who sent what or when and where it was used. This however is pure Paul B. send.

 Nero in the White House

Posted: August 08, 2011 5:20 pm Eastern © 2011

Three significant historical events have been eclipsed by Obama: 1) Jimmy Carter will no longer be looked upon as the worst president in American history; 2) Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton will no longer be recognized as the greatest liars in presidential history; 3) Clinton’s stain on Monica’s dress, and what that did to the White House in general and the office of the president specifically, will forever pale in comparison to the stain and stench of Obama.

I need not spend much time on the failure of Obama as president. His tenure has been a failure on every measurable level. So much so, in fact, that some of the staunchest, most respected liberal Democrats and Democratic supporters have not only openly criticized him – some even more harshly than this essayist – but they have called for him to step down.

Richard Nixon’s words “I am not a crook,” punctuated with his involvement in Watergate, and Bill Clinton’s finger-wagging as he told one of the most pathetic lies in presidential history, in the aftermath of Obama, will be viewed as mere prevarications.

Mr. Nixon and Clinton lied to save their backsides. Although, I would argue there are no plausible explanations for doing what they did, I could entertain arguments pursuant to understanding their rationales for lying. But in the case of Obama, he lies because he is a liar. He doesn’t only lie to cover his misdeeds – he lies to get his way. He lies to belittle others and to make himself look presentable at their expense. He lies about his faith, his associations, his mother, his father and his wife. He lies and bullies to keep his background secret. His lying is congenital and compounded by socio-psychological factors of his life.

Never in my life, inside or outside of politics, have I witnessed such dishonesty in a political leader. He is the most mendacious political figure I have ever witnessed. Even by the low standards of his presidential predecessors, his narcissistic, contumacious arrogance is unequalled. Using Obama as the bar, Nero would have to be elevated to sainthood.

As the stock markets were crashing, taking with them the remaining life saving of untold tens of thousands, Obama was hosting his own birthday celebration, which was an event of epicurean splendidness. The shamelessness of the event was that it was not a state dinner to welcome foreign dignitaries, nor was it to honor an American accomplishment – it was to honor the Pharaoh, Barack Hussein Obama. The event’s sole purpose was for the Pharaoh to have his loyal subjects swill wine, indulge in gluttony and behavior unfit to take place on the property of taxpayers, as they suffer. It was of a magnitude comparable to that of Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski’s $2 million birthday extravaganza for its pure lack of respect for the people.

Permit me to digress momentarily. The U.S. Capitol and the White House were built with the intent of bringing awe and respect to America and her people. They were also built with the intent of being the greatest of equalizers. I can tell you, having personally been to both, there is a moment of awe and humility associated with being in the presence of the history of those buildings. They are to be honored and inscribed into our national psyche, not treated as a Saturday night house party at Chicago’s Cabrini-Green.

The people of America own that home Obama and his wife continue to debase with their pan-ghetto behavior. It is clear that Obama and family view themselves as royalty, but they’re not. They are employees of “we the people,” who are suffering because of his failed policies. What message does this behavior send to those who today are suffering as never before?

What message does it send to all Americans who are struggling? Has anyone stopped to think what the stock market downturn forebodes for those 80 million baby boomers who will be retiring in the next period of years? Is there a snowball’s chance in the Sahara that every news program on the air would applaud this behavior if it were George W. Bush? To that point, do you remember the media thrashing Bush took for having a barbecue at the White House?

Like Nero – who was only slightly less debaucherous than Caligula – with wine on his lips Obama treated “we the people” the way Caligula treated those over whom he lorded.

Many in America wanted to be proud when the first person of color was elected president, but instead, they have been witness to a congenital liar, a woman who has been ashamed of America her entire life, failed policies, intimidation and a commonality hitherto not witnessed in political leaders. He and his wife view their life at our expense as an entitlement – while America’s people go homeless, hungry and unemployed.

Read more: Nero in the White House http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=331497

 

 

Got your mug yet? So far we can only donate roughly $50 to the FEALGOOD FOUNDATION. We’d like to try and make that $100 minimum. Get yours today they are available for a limited time only. http://www.zazzle.com/dragonlaffs_sept_11th_memorial_mug-168351425205007069

 

This is all things that arrived/were published/discovered too late to be included in our Labor Day published September 11th Tenth Anniversary Memorial Issue.

Please remember to display the flag today in support of our troops fighting the war on terrorism we never asked for and out of respect for the memories of all the victims.

Before

During

10 Years After

9/11 Commission Recommendations On First Responder Network, Civil Liberties Unmet 10 Years After Attacks

Huffington Post 9/9/11 08:55 AM ET Updated: 9/9/11 11:35 AM ET

NEW YORK — On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Glen Klein, an officer with the New York Police Department’s elite Emergency Service Unit, found himself at a command post just down the street from the World Trade Center, engulfed in dust from the collapse of the south tower.

Hundreds of firefighters and police officers remained in the burning north tower as responders on the ground struggled to reach them with urgent warnings to evacuate.

“It was like Armageddon on the radios,” Klein, 53, said in an interview near his home on Long Island. “We couldn’t get through.”

NYPD helicopters hovering over the north tower observed fires raging on its top floors and advised commanders on the ground to immediately evacuate the building. Those transmissions successfully reached police officers in the tower — but not firefighters, whose radios were not linked to the NYPD network. As police officers hurried downward, many firefighters lingered on low floors or continued to climb upward toward certain death.

“I truly believe that if the firemen were able to listen to our frequency, a lot of guys would have got out of the building,” Klein said.

The communication breakdown between the police and fire department cost many firefighters their lives, the bipartisan commission on the terrorist attacks concluded in 2004. Commissioners recommended a major initiative to bolster emergency communications nationwide and called for the creation of a mobile broadband network dedicated exclusively to first responders.

Yet 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the construction of an interoperable wireless network for first responders has not been approved by Congress. The failure to create the network is just one of nine major recommendations by the 9/11 Commission that Congress, the executive branch or federal, state and local authorities have either not acted on at all or only partially implemented, members of the panel said in a report in early September. Among the other outstanding business: streamlining congressional oversight, setting up an effective board to balance civil liberties with security and instituting a standardized national ID system.

“Overall we’re much better off, but we still have glaring vulnerabilities and they need to be addressed,” John Lehman, a 9/11 commissioner and Navy Secretary under President Reagan, said in an interview.

Some of these shortcomings involve security measures to protect Americans from future attack. The failure of foreign terrorists to successfully carry out another significant terror attack on U.S. soil since 2001 — despite repeated attempts — is a clear indication of the nation’s broad success in the battle against al Qaeda and other terrorists, commissioners said.

The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. forces also represents a major achievement by the country’s intelligence agencies and military in taking the offensive in the fight against terrorism.

But thwarted attacks by homegrown extremists and foreign cells in the past several years indicate that, despite the weakened capabilities of al Qaeda, terrorist threats on American soil will remain a reality for years and decades to come.

Chaos On Capitol Hill

Oversight of security and intelligence policy falls largely to Congress, and in their original report, the 9/11 commissioners found that authority over these concerns was splintered among 88 different committees and subcommittees. The panel recommended streamlining oversight and review under one committee.

Since then, the jurisdictional mess over security and intelligence has only deepened. “We railed against 88 committees. Now it’s up to 106 committees,” Lehman said. “It’s just a terrible plague.”

Commissioners also urged federal agencies to pursue better technology to detect explosives in baggage, cargo and on passengers’ bodies. The threat of explosives on airliners remains a potent one, illustrated by near-miss attacks by the Christmas 2009 “underwear bomber” and the foiled plot by Yemen-based terrorists to plant bombs in the cargo holds of airliners last year.

In the area of disaster response, recommendations by the 9/11 panel to strengthen and streamline command-and-control procedures during major disasters had mixed success, commissioners found.

While no major terror attacks have tested the nation’s first responders since 9/11, several large-scale natural and man-made disasters in intervening years have exposed serious flaws in the coordination of response efforts among local, state and national authorities.

After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, overwhelmed state and local responders turned for help to the federal government, which was harshly criticized for a slow and disorganized rescue and relief effort.

Communication breakdowns and turf battles over command and control of response efforts — a problem seen in the aftermath of 9/11 — were also repeated during Katrina.

“There should be someone in charge at the site of a disaster,” Lee Hamilton, the commission’s vice chairman, said in an interview. “Someone has to be calling the shots.”

Command-and-control problems resurfaced during the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, Hamilton said. Although communication between response agencies and government entities was improved, state and local authorities, particularly in Louisiana, at times bucked centralized control and set up competing command structures.

States Balk At National ID

Hamilton added that many state governments have failed to enact one of the most controversial recommendations of the commission: the creation of federally-approved state driver’s licenses. The commission found that the 9/11 hijackers obtained at least 30 pieces of state-issued identification, including multiple driver’s licenses, which aided them in evading law enforcement scrutiny for traffic violations.

The commission urged Congress to address the vulnerability of state ID systems to fraud by terrorists and other criminals by creating a single national standard for driver’s licenses. The House and Senate mandated these requirements with the passage of the 2005 Real ID Act.

But the prospect of a national ID outraged privacy and civil liberties advocates and raised fiscal concerns, as bringing state IDs in line with national standards would cost states billions of dollars. Its full implementation has been delayed until 2013 by the Obama administration.

Not all the shortcomings identified by the 9/11 commissioners relate to national security or emergency response, however. The aftermath of the terror attacks was marked by an extraordinary growth in data gathering and surveillance powers by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

To protect against the erosion of Americans’ constitutional rights, the commission recommended the formation of a civil liberties and privacy board within the executive branch to act as a counterweight to the expanding powers of the national security state. The board was created by Congress in 2004, but has been ineffectual under both the Bush and Obama administrations, according to 9/11 commissioners.

The civil liberties and privacy board has been “dormant” for the last three years, commissioners wrote in their September 2011 report. During that period, federal authorities continued to exercise powers granted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, such as the use of roving wiretaps against terrorism suspects and special subpoenas compelling businesses to turn over financial records without specifying the nature or subject of the inquiry.

Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, the Republican chairman of the 9/11 commission, said that while Bush appointed a board, “they weren’t, frankly, the best.” While Congress strengthened the board by making it bipartisan and having its be members subject to Senate confirmation, Kean said, Obama has failed to fill its seats. Two members of the five-person board nominated by Obama await confirmation by the Senate, while the other three positions are simply unfilled.

“I don’t know why,” Kean said, adding that whenever he and Hamilton have brought up the issue, “the answer is always, ‘It’s on the way.'”

Proponents of civil liberties and privacy within the government wield little authority in debates over federal policy, Hamilton said. “The security people win every argument,” he said, adding that “the capabilities they have in terms of intrusions into privacy and civil liberties are awesome.”

The issue of terrorist detention and the legal rights of Guantanamo detainees also remains unresolved, despite a campaign promise by Obama to close the detention center and try most detainees in civilian court. Republicans in Congress have bitterly fought the administration’s attempts to transfer detainees to civilian custody and pushed for military commissions for terrorism suspects.

Still A Failure To Communicate

Even some seemingly straightforward tasks proposed by the commission have been delayed by unforeseen complications. The creation of a national mobile broadband network for first responders — dubbed a “no-brainer” by commission members and its boosters in Congress — has proven anything but simple for those attempting to bring it into being.

Few in Congress have argued against the utility of a nationwide system allowing emergency responders from disparate agencies to communicate with each other during a disaster. But questions about cost and squabbles over the network’s design have created a series of stumbling blocks that have so far frustrated its backers’ efforts.

Earlier this year, a bipartisan bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee that would set aside 10 megahertz of broadband spectrum, known as “D Block,” that was voluntarily returned to the government by television broadcasters several years ago for the first responder system. The bill allocates $11.75 billion for the construction of the responder system, which would be paid for through the auction of additional broadband spectrum to the private sector.

The auction of broadband spectrum would generate an additional $6.5 billion in revenue that could be dedicated to deficit reduction, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

In an interview, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the bill’s strongest advocates, called the failure of Congress to authorize the construction of the broadband network a decade after the terror attacks “unacceptable.”

“Any kid with a Smartphone has better technology to download data than our first responders who are rushing into burning buildings,” Gillibrand said. “That needs to change.”

The Senate bill, authored by Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), is co-sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas), the committee’s ranking Republican member.

In an August letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, both senators cited the effects of the recent East Coast earthquake on communications networks as a prime example of the need for a dedicated first-responder broadband system. The earthquake caused little structural damage but led to significant disruptions in cell phone service for millions of people, including some emergency workers, the senators noted.

“Our bill addresses one of the last outstanding recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, promises to save lives, would create hundreds of thousands of jobs without costing taxpayers a dime, and provides billions for deficit reduction,” the letter concluded.

President Obama has already endorsed the creation of a dedicated first responder network, but whether the Senate bill will find backing among Republicans in the House is unclear. At a hearing in May, Republican members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology indicated voiced opposition to the allocation of the D Block spectrum to first responders.

Several Republican lawmakers observed that the nation’s public safety sector was granted roughly 25 megahertz of broadband spectrum in 2005 that has not been totally utilized and expressed skepticism that apportioning an additional 10 megahertz of spectrum for a dedicated first responders broadband network would be cost-effective.

“We have provided public safety with nearly 100 megahertz of spectrum for their exclusive use,” said Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the subcommittee. “Six years later, that spectrum lays woefully underused. Clearly something in our approach is not working.”

Other Republicans questioned whether the billions required for constructing the public safety broadband network would be spent effectively.

Democrats on the panel, however, argued that the Rockefeller and Hutchinson bill addressed concerns about funding, governance and accountability raised by Republican lawmakers.

“I appreciate the fact that doing this right is complex and challenging,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). “But with the 10th anniversary of 9/11 fast approaching, we need to settle on a path forward and move quickly.”

In New York City, the creation of the broadband network is no longer essential to allow police and firefighters to communicate over the same frequency as that problem was largely resolved by city authorities several years ago. Other major cities, like Los Angeles and Chicago, have also deployed interoperable networks. But for many other U.S. cities, a critical communications breakdown that costs lives may be just one major disaster away.

It is a thought that troubles men like Glen Klein, whose NYPD unit lost 14 men in the Sept. 11 attacks. “If we did have that system and it saved only one life, it would have been worth every penny,” he said.

 

Sarasota, Fla., reading students who were with Bush on 9/11 share memories

SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) — The 16 children who shared modern America’s darkest moment with President George W. Bush are high school seniors now — football players, ROTC members, track athletes, wrestlers and singers.

They remember going over an eight-paragraph story so it would be perfect when they read it to the president on Sept. 11, 2001.

They remember how Bush’s face suddenly clouded as his chief of staff, Andrew Card, bent down and whispered to him that the U.S. had been attacked. They remember how Bush pressed on with the reading as best he could before sharing the devastating news with the nation.

“It was like a blank stare. Like he knew something was going on, but he didn’t want to make it too bad for us to notice by looking different,” said Lenard Rivers, now a 17-year-old football player at Sarasota High.

What the students can’t say for sure is how that moment changed them. They were just second-graders. Their memories were only beginning.

“I think we all matured maybe a little bit,” said Chantal Guerrero, now a 17-year-old senior at Sarasota Military Academy. “But since we were only 7, I’m not sure what kind of impact it had, because we didn’t know how things were before.”

Lazaro Dubrocq, now a 17-year-old senior and captain of the wrestling team at Sarasota’s Riverview High School, said it wouldn’t be until middle school that he started seriously pondering his place in the chaotic events of Sept. 11. “I was too young and naive to fully understand the gravity of the situation,” said Dubrocq, who is headed to Columbia University to study chemical engineering next year. “As I began to age and mature, it helped me gain a new perspective of the world, and it helped me mature faster as I began to understand that there are politics and wars and genocides that occur daily throughout the world. It helped me come to a realization that the world is not a perfect place.”

Sept. 11, 2001, was a steamy Tuesday in southwest Florida. The children were sitting in two neat rows in room 301 of Emma E. Booker Elementary School. Bush planned to sit in the classroom with them before moving to the media center to talk about a national reading initiative.

Booker Elementary, in a low-income area of Sarasota, was chosen for the Bush visit because Principal Gwen Tose’-Rigell had turned it into a high-performing school. As presidential trips go, it was routine, mundane even. The children were chosen because they were some of the best readers.

Tose’-Rigell, who died of cancer in 2007, told The Associated Press in 2002 that Bush knew when he arrived at the school that some kind of plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. But the news was sketchy, and the decision was made to proceed with the program at Booker.
The moment when Card whispered to the president about the terrorist attack came when the children were reaching under their desks for a book called Reading Mastery II. On Page 153 was “The Pet Goat,” the story the children read aloud as the president followed along with his own copy.
As they began the story, some of the children sensed something was different about the president.
“One kid described his face as (like) he had to use the bathroom,” Guerrero said. “That’s how we saw it in second grade. He just looked like he got the worst news in the world.”

Teacher Kay Daniels was sitting next to Bush and knew something was amiss when Card came out of the adjoining classroom and approached the president. Everything about the day was so choreographed, and that wasn’t supposed to happen.
“I had 16 little ones sitting in front of me, the media in the back of the classroom, and I had to keep going,” said Daniels, now a reading teacher at a Sarasota middle school. “Emotionally, (Bush) left us, but he came back. He did come back into the lesson, and he picked up the book and for a moment he stayed with us.”

Bush dissected those moments recently in an interview with the National Geographic TV channel.
“At the back of the room, reporters were on their cell phones. They were getting the same message I got, which meant a lot of people would be watching my reaction to this crisis,” he said. “So I made a decision not to jump up immediately and leave the classroom. I didn’t want to rattle the kids. I wanted to project a sense of calm.”

After the story, Bush quickly shook hands with the children and left each with some M&Ms in a box bearing the presidential seal. Then he disappeared into the adjoining classroom, which had been set up as a command center for the visit. Minutes later in the media center, he stepped up to the podium and told the country about the attacks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America,” Bush began. Teachers and students standing closest to him could see tears well in his eyes.

Just behind him, visible in most of the photos and video footage of the speech, stood Stevenson Tose’-Rigell, the principal’s son. He was a fifth-grader whose class was chosen to be on the riser with the president during the speech about the reading initiative.

Now a 20-year-old college student, Tose’-Rigell said his mother had staunchly defended Bush against criticism that he didn’t get up and act quickly enough after being told of the attacks. Filmmaker Michael Moore used the classroom footage in 2004 documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” showing Bush continuing to sit after getting the news from Card.

“She knows kids, obviously, and she knows how kids react, and Bush did the best that he could by remaining calm, not going hysterical or anything like that, and really just making a smooth transition,” Tose’-Rigell said. “Overall, she was pretty much content with the way things happened.”

The rest of the day at Booker was a flurry of activity. Frantic parents came and scooped up their children, thinking the school might be a target for an attack because Bush had been there. Daniels, the teacher, made the remaining second-graders sit down and watch news coverage of the attacks and tried to explain what had happened.

“I just remember watching it on TV over and over again and being confused about what was going on,” said Mariah Williams, now a senior at Sarasota Military Academy. “Because, when I first saw it, I thought it was an accident and I thought, ‘How could this happen?’ Then I find out it was done intentionally and that just made me more confused. Like, why would someone do that?”

Today, the media center at Booker bears Gwen Tose’-Rigell’s name. Prominently displayed there are photos and memorabilia from Bush’s visit, including the storybook the president held that day as he listened to the children read. A plaque outside Room 301 recognizes its place in history.

Bush videotaped a greeting for the faculty and students of Booker Elementary for a day of remembrance at the school on the fifth anniversary of the attacks in 2006. “All Americans remember where they were when they first heard about the terrible attack on our nation,” Bush told them, “and I will always remember being with you.”

 

John Feal, a demolitions supervisor seriously injured during the cleanup of Ground Zero, took a lead role in organizing 9/11 first responders to advocate for the passage of a Ground Zero health care bill, which was signed into law earlier this year. Now he says his top priority is pushing Congress to allocate funds for a nationwide wireless broadband network for public safety.

As you can see he is also the founder of the charity that 1/2 the proceeds from our limited run memorial mug sales will benefit.

9/11 from space: Astronaut shares pictures and thoughts

When the towers of the World Trade Center fell on September 11, 2001, one American was not on the planet.

Astronaut Frank Culbertson had been aboard the International Space Station for a month when the 9/11 attacks occurred, joined only by two Russian cosmonaut crew mates. He could only monitor the events of the day from 300 miles above the Earth.

On Friday, NASA released letters Culbertson wrote and images he took as the space station passed over the New York City area after the 9/11 attacks.

Culbertson wrote that he first heard of the attack via radio from a NASA flight surgeon.

“I was flabbergasted, then horrified. My first thought was that this wasn’t a real conversation, that I was still listening to one of my Tom Clancy tapes,” Culbertson wrote. “It just didn’t seem possible on this scale in our country. I couldn’t even imagine the particulars, even before the news of further destruction began coming in.”

And he closed his letter on that first day:

“Other than the emotional impact of our country being attacked and thousands of our citizens and maybe some friends being killed, the most overwhelming feeling being where I am is one of isolation.”

A day later, after having time to reflect on what was happening below, Culbertson continued his writing.

“It’s horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point. The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are,” he wrote.

And he continued to feel his isolation.

“It’s difficult to describe how it feels to be the only American completely off the planet at a time such as this. The feeling that I should be there with all of you, dealing with this, helping in some way, is overwhelming.”

The destruction of 9/11 also became more personal for him that  day.

“I learned that the Captain of the American Airlines jet that hit the Pentagon was Chic Burlingame, a classmate of mine” at the U.S. Naval Academy, Culbertson wrote. “What a terrible loss, but I’m sure Chic was fighting bravely to the end. And tears don’t flow the same in space … ”

Read Culbertson’s letters in full.

See a NASA video and more satellite images of 9/11.

 

 

ESSAY: After 9/11, searching for American optimism

TED ANTHONY AP National Writer Friday, September 09, 2011

NEW YORK (AP) — Before the towers crumbled, before the doomed people jumped and the smoke billowed and the planes hit, the collective American memory summoned one fleeting fragment of beauty: a clear blue sky.
So many of those who remember that day invoke that detail. Last week, New York magazine, which has been running a 9/11 “encyclopedia” ahead of the 10th anniversary, added an entry for “Blue: What everyone would remember first.” It chronicled nearly a dozen of the ways that Americans recalling 9/11 anchor their looks back with a reminiscence of blue sky.
No coincidence that the power of such an image endures. Blue sky is a canvas of possibility, and optimistic notions of better tomorrows — futures that deliver endless promise — are fundamental to the American tradition. In the United States, to “blue-sky” something can mean visionary, fanciful thinking unbound by the weedy entanglements of the moment. Off we go into the wild blue yonder.

But the years since 9/11 have dealt a gut punch to four centuries of American optimism. A volley of cataclysmic events — two far-off wars, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath and, for the past four years, serious economic downturn — has worn down the national psyche. It’s easy to ask: Is optimism, one of the defining pillars of the American character, on the wane?
“Some of the really big challenges we are facing are really starting to sink in with people,” says Jason Seacat, who teaches about the psychology of optimism and hope at Western New England University. “You talk about that can-do spirit that used to exist, and it still can exist. But what I get a lot of is, ‘This is such a huge problem, and there’s really nothing I can do about it.'”

Welcome to the rest of the human race, some might say. Europeans, who can enjoy their fatalism, have been known to poke fun at American optimism. And why not? You could argue that the virus of optimism was spread to this continent by supplicants beguiled by the vision of a land that promised brighter futures — presuming you left the Old World to pursue them.
Since the 1600s, when one of America’s first Puritan leaders cast the society that would become the United States as a “shining city upon a hill,” the notion that one can will a better future into existence has been a central thread of the American story. The Declaration of Independence enshrined as national mythology not happiness itself, but the pursuit of it — the chasing of a dream alongside life and liberty as the ultimate expression of self-definition.

It took root. This became the nation where getting bigger and better was a right granted by God, where the Optimists Club was founded and “The Power of Positive Thinking” became a bestseller, where you could bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun. “Finish each day and be done with it,” American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson exhorted. “Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
Old nonsense, alas, has a way of loitering around and gumming up the works.

Last year, as we began a new decade, a Gallup poll found that 34 percent of Americans were pessimistic about the country’s future – the highest number at the start of a decade since the 1980s began. Numbers from Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index late last month were the lowest since March 2009. Most tellingly, perhaps, a majority of Americans — 55 percent — said this year they found it unlikely that today’s youth will have better lives than their parents.

More anecdotally, when was the last time that popular culture produced a strong vision of an optimistic American future? We got those all the time in the mid-20th century, era of the World’s Fair “Futurama” and promises of jet-packing your way to the office in the morning. But the Jetsonian view of tomorrow has become quaint, and today forlorn narratives like “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” the zombie apocalypse drama “The Walking Dead” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” dominate the American futurescape.

In the weeks directly after 9/11, optimism seemed on the rise for a time. The trumpet had summoned us again, and some people expressed a renewed sense of purpose. A high-stakes seriousness settled in. We spun tales of freshly minted heroes, gave blood, held benefits, told each other that hey, don’t worry, things will get better. A national coming together and the accompanying resoluteness were, it seemed, feeding hope.

“In an odd way, for all its tragedy, 9/11 reinvigorated the sources of American optimism at a very particular time,” says Peter J. Kastor, a historian at Washington University in St. Louis. “The problem now is recapturing that.”

Today, politicians struggle to project the all-important optimistic outlook that will help them win elections and govern a cranky citizenry. Yet optimism is a must-have narrative for any politician looking to lead. And the most effective among them – the Roosevelts, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan – have built their images around optimism. “Morning in America,” Reagan called it.
Political consultant Bob Shrum, who wrote Ted Kennedy’s famous and optimistic speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention (“The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die”), says successful politicians deploy optimism as a tool to “expand America’s vision of itself.” The ones who endure, he says, “are people who help define and enlarge the American spirit.”

The “Audacity of Hope” president used the meme Thursday night in his jobs speech to Congress after cataloguing employment problems and putting forward his solutions. “We are tougher than the times that we live in, and we are bigger than our politics have been,” Barack Obama said. “So let’s meet the moment. Let’s get to work, and let’s show the world once again why the United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth.”

Not everyone finds salvation in positive thinking. The cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich wrote an entire book in 2009 on the country’s excessive optimism. In “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America,” she assessed it this way: “Positivity is not so much our condition or our mood as it is part of our ideology — the way we explain the world and think we ought to function within it.”

Ehrenreich identified an important point: There is a big difference between unfettered hope and the American brand of optimism. Hope, she asserts, is an emotion; optimism is “a cognitive stance, a conscious expectation.”

And what, after all, is more American than a conscious, supremely confident expectation that things will turn out OK? That if we visualize the future, and are simply American enough as we forge forward, bright tomorrows will happen.
That may be the central challenge for American optimism at the dawn of the second decade after 9/11: figuring out how much of the dream should be about the clear blue sky, and how much should be about wrestling with the problems that percolate beneath it. A balance, in effect, between the promise of our tomorrows and the reality of our todays.

It’s not like the future is going anywhere, though. It’s been our comforting companion for too long, and blue-sky dreams have a way of clawing to the top of any American story. Even after 9/11 and the uneasy decade that followed it tested the optimism of so many, that’s the thing about tomorrow: No matter what, it’s still always a day away.

With Bowed Head, Heavy Heart and Still Thirsty for Vengeance,

Lethal Leprechaun

Good Morning Campers.   Welcome to Saturday!

I’d like to thank all of you who’ve bought one of our limited edition 9-11 mugs.  We’ve sold a total of 20 mugs so far.  There is still time to order.  They will only be on sale about another 3 weeks and then they will disappear forever!  Here’s the link to go to: http://www.zazzle.com/dragonlaffs_sept_11th_memorial_mug-168351425205007069 
And in today’s Last Word you can see a picture of my own mug (which I’m drinking out of as we speak) in action!  More to come on this at another time.

Today is my littlest dragon’s birthday!

Happy 10th Birthday, Izzy!

Now, let’s get on with today’s issue!

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What is this?

 

 

Why. it’s a Space Bar of course!

(Don’t get mad at me, I don’t make this stuff up!)

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If this doesn’t put a smile on your face, then you need to report to the morgue, you’re dead!  Thanks Dad, this is great!

This was so addictive that I ended up searching for the Jive Aces for over an hour.  Lots and lots of good videos out there.

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Yeah, we’re all cute and cuddly until we grow up to eat your wives and daughters!

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I hate all this terrorist business. I used to love the days when you could look at an unattended bag on a train or bus and think to yourself “I’m going to take that.”

I’m not sure if this is more funny or scary….you can decide…
http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/gmale/

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Military Shorts…

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Got any pictures of Irene from your area?  Send them in and see them printed right here in your favorite e-zine.

Fleischmanns, NY.

Ocean City, Maryland.

Route 100 in Vermont

Margaretville, NY.

Billy Stinson comforts his daughter, Erin, as they sit on the steps where their cottage once stood in Nags Head, North Carolina. The home, built in 1903 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was destroyed by Hurricane Irene.

Tannersville, Greene County, NY

Mendon, Vermont along Route 4.

Windham, NY.

Windham, NY.

Wilbur’s Point in Fairhaven, Mass.

Jackie Sparnackel has to abandon her van and her belongings after she ventured to check out the storm-damaged pier in Frisco, N.C.

The hurricane-force winds of Irene rip the siding off of homes in Nags Head, N.C.

Windham, New York.
Is it my imagination, or did Windham, New York get their asses kicked?  Seems to be a place with a lot of pictures taken.

Harwington, Connecticut.

Damaged water tower in Cary, North Carolina.

All this water, everywhere, and now we don’t have any fresh water to drink.

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Dennis Miller in one of the funniest scathing speeches ever taped:

http://ezralevant.com/2011/01/wonderful-video-probably-illeg.html

Flash mob symphony

http://www.flixxy.com/symphony-flash-mob-copenhagen-central-station.htm

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U.S. officials say Al Queda’s number two operative was killed in

Pakistan. Apparently that is the world’s worst job as we have

killed eighty people in that position by now.

 

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Okay, okay, I know it’s politically incorrect, but it’s still funny as hell:

How do you starve an Obama supporter?

Hide his food stamps under his work boots.

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President Obama walks into a Bank of America Branch to cash a check. As he approaches the cashier he says “Good morning Ma’am, could you please cash this check for me”?

Cashier: “It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID”?

Obama: “Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn’t think there was any need to. I am President Barack Obama, the president of the United States of America!!!!”

Cashier: “Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the new regulations, monitoring of the banks because of impostors and forgers, etc I must insist on seeing ID”

Obama: “Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am”

Cashier: “I am sorry Mr. President but these are the bank rules and I must follow them.”

Obama: “I am urging you please to cash this check”

Cashier: “Look Mr.. President this is what we can do: One day Tiger Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he pulled out his putting iron and made a beautiful shot across the bank into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and cashed his check. Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and made a fabulous shot whereas the tennis ball landed in my cup. With that shot we cashed his check. So, Mr. President, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you, as the President of the United States?”

Obama stood there thinking, and thinking and finally says: “Honestly, there is nothing that comes to my mind. I can’t think of a single thing.”

Cashier: “Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?”

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NASA says the International Space Station may have to be evacuated in

November. How bad is it when you owe so much money to other countries

that you actually get evicted from space?

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Today’s Last Word… 
What can I say?  Tomorrow is the 10th Anniversary and everything was already said most eloquently by our own LL earlier in the week and because today is my daughter’s birthday, we’re going to stay on a positive, up-beat note. 

But, I do want to caution everyone, especially those of you in large cities…the government has said that they have “credible intelligence” (personally, I don’t believe you are allowed, in good taste, to use the words “government” and “intelligence” in the same sentence, but I digress) they have “credible intelligence” of the plans for some sort of terrorist act tomorrow.  Specifically, they call for VBIEDs, Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device, or car bombs to be exploded in New York, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. 

I know that all military installations, government facilities and others have ramped up security, just in case, and I believe, as good Americans we should do the same.  Ramp up our security, keep our eyes open and report any suspicious activities to the local authorities. 

My wish for you all is a happy, safe and blessed weekend.  Anyone who wants to fly in for some cake and ice-cream is welcome.  When asked what she wanted for her birthday, Izzy was heard to say, “Gold coins are always a good gift, but diamonds are still a girl’s best friend.”  Personally, I think she’s been hanging around her Uncle Leprechaun a bit much.