A Poll

Should Lem Remove All Trans-Fats From His Blog?
	Lem owns a Trans Am? Is it the one from Smokey And The Bandit?
	No, keep the trans-fats. Half of us are circling the drain anyhow.
	How fats identify themselves is a private matter.
	I support fats marriage.
	What, no dog pictures?
	No, we need fats diversity on the blog. Too many commenters are poly-unsaturated.
	Lem who? I thought this was Ace of Spades HQ.
	Where's my donut?
pollcode.com free polls

"New hipsters fight old hipsters in Bushwick"

"CastleBraid, an upscale rental complex marketed for artists, was adorned last month with crime-scene tape reading “Occupy.”

The “perps’’ were first-generation hipsters calling themselves “Occupy Bushwick.” They say they are “in solidarity” with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“It’s like Neverland over there,” fumed Angelina Dreem, 27, a yoga teacher who’s lived in Bushwick for four years and owns Body Actualized yoga studio across the street from the complex.

“It’s an adult children playground,” Dreem said. “They’re all, like, subsidized.”

CastleBraid is stacked with amenities designed to appeal to the aspiring hipsters — including a recording studio, a wood shop, a screening room, a gym, a game room and even a digital-media lab.

For more click over to The NY Post

Missing at Thanksgiving (Part II or...The Other Side of Things)

I sent my older siblings the paragraph about them from my post, and I thought you all might enjoy the response I got from my sister:

Happy Thanksgiving to you, too! I was invited to John’s, and he showed me your email and said isn’t that nice? And then he said he remembered that too, the excitement of coming home, and then he said, “and half the time you were pissed!” I said OMG, I remember that! I was! I would be so excited to come home and see everybody and I would be all warm jelly when I got off the plane, and I’d see everyone greeting each other, and I’m smiling, waiting, walking, and then realize there’s no one at the plane anxious to hug poor me. I’d have to walk down to the baggage area, find my bags, pull them out to the curb and wait, generally in the cold, while Mom or Dad circled the airport until they saw me. Too much trouble, or too cheap, to park. All my warm jelly was gone, and I felt very un-special, and pissed again. Like Charlie Brown with the football, I never seemed to modify my expectations and every holiday I’d stick out my chin again! It’s hilarious that John remembered me being pissed! When you guys were old enough to drive, though, I always got the royal treatment, and later you’d bring your kids, and those were extra special homecomings that absolutely delighted me. You trained your kids to anticipate Aunt Dale with joy and it has been my greatest joy to love them.

"Howard Dean says healthcare.gov is 'apparently functional,'"

“I think the president can right this ship. This website is now apparently functional,” Dean said. “I haven’t tried the website, but if this program works – and I think it will – three months from now a huge number of people who didn’t have health insurance are going to have it and mostly at a better price.”

Crowley pointed out to Dean that polls show Americans increasingly believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, especially since Obama's recent foreign policy blunders like Syria and the Obamacare rollout disaster. Dean, however, brushed off the poll and the idea that Obama's presidency would suffer lasting damage from the missteps.

For more click Washington Examiner link, which includes a video

For a daily rundown of ObamaCare news check out this website.

Dubinushka

Rocking out on a folk song

Dubinushka, little oak stick

I have heard a lot of songs
in my native place,
they sang of joy and sorrow.
But one of all these songs
has sunk into my mind,
this is the song of the working people:

Hey, oaken cudgel, come on!
Hey, the green cudgel moves by itself!
Let's pull, let's pull
together!

From the grandfather to the father,
from the father to the son
this song has been handed down.
And always when
the work became too hard
we reached for the cudgel, our true help.

Hey, oaken cudgel, come on!
Hey, the green cudgel moves by itself!
Let's pull, let's pull
together!

The Englishman is cute:
To make the work easier
he invented machine by machine.
But our poor Russian peasant,
when his work gets too hard,
still sings the song of the cudgel:

Hey, oaken cudgel, come on!
Hey, the green cudgel moves by itself!
Let's pull, let's pull
together!

If he has to tow a barge with wood,
or if he has to forge iron,
or if he is mining ore in Siberia:
With strain, and with pains in his chest
he sings this song again and again
and thereby remembers the cudgel:

Hey, oaken cudgel, come on!
Hey, the green cudgel moves by itself!
Let's pull, let's pull
together!

And on the towing-paths along the Volga,
nearly sinking in the sand,
breaking his legs and his spine,
chafing his chest,
only to tow a bit easier
he keeps singing the song of the cudgel:

Hey, oaken cudgel, come on!
       

Hey, oaken cudgel, come on!
Hey, the green cudgel moves by itself!
Let's pull, let's pull
together!

And along the big road,
along the big post road,
which is named after Vladimir long since,
there the sound of chains is to heard,
dull, fateful,
and in the same rhythm the song of the cudgel:

Hey, oaken cudgel, come on!
       

Hey, oaken cudgel, come on!
Hey, the green cudgel moves by itself!
Let's pull, let's pull
together!

But the time has come,
and the people rose,
and it straightened its mighty spine,
and it shook off from its shoulders
the heavy yoke that had been there for centuries,
and now it raised the cudgel against its enemies:

Hey, oaken cudgel, come on!
Hey, the green cudgel moves by itself!
Let's pull, let's pull
together!

sonic rock on ice

Is that a chilled drink or something? No, it is the sound of tossing a rock on ice.

More of this sort of thing.

But the delightful sonic activity could be bad for we do not fully understand the affect that our idle amusement has upon the cweetures of the dip.   

Amazon; When I Positively Have to have it Today?

"Amazon’s CEO said Sunday night that the company plans to use drones to make deliveries, offering the possibility of a massive domestic surge in a technology now best known for gunning down Islamic militants in Pakistan and Yemen."

The company suggested delivery drones could reduce shipping time to a mere 30-minutes after an online order. But the buzzy announcement will require, first of all, a massive reworking of regulations around unmanned aviation.

The online retailer’s chief executive officer and founder, Jeff Bezos, introduced the delivery mechanism, Prime Air, which is in development, on 60 Minutes. Immediately after the piece, Amazon put up a video showing a delivery via the drone, and a portion of its website describing Prime Air.

More at BuzzFeed. Video demonstration at this link 

"Who Is Watching the Watch Lists?"

"GOVERNMENTS wade into treacherous waters when they compile lists of people who might cause their countries harm."

“If you’ve done the paperwork correctly, then you can effectively enter someone onto the watch list,” said Anya Bernstein, an associate professor at the SUNY Buffalo Law School and author of “The Hidden Costs of Terrorist Watch Lists,” published by the Buffalo Law Review in May. “There’s no indication that agencies undertake any kind of regular retrospective review to assess how good they are at predicting the conduct they’re targeting.”

For people who have landed on these lists, the terrorist designation has been difficult to challenge legally — although that may be about to change. On Monday, a lawsuit brought by a traveler seeking removal of her name from the no-fly list, or at least due process to challenge that list, is going to trial in Federal District Court in San Francisco, after almost eight years of legal wrangling.

Read more at the NY Times and San Francisco Gate.

"Now That's A Jazz Walking Line...

...you knew this kid was into something really really great."

Carol Kaye comments on playing bass for Brian Wilson. The bass line is hard to hear so turn it up!

  

The video is from "The Wrecking Crew"

In the comments, John says:

Wow, my heroine.
Carol Kaye is one of a large group of real women who the left wing grievance-meister feminists would never acknowledge. There is no place for accomplishment in the modern feminist canon. 

Maybe it had something to do with those boots...made for walking:

"U.S. airlines give China flight plans... "

(Reuters) - "U.S. airlines United, American and Delta, have notified Chinese authorities of flight plans when traveling through an air defense zone Beijing has declared over the East China Sea, following U.S. government advice."

The United States said on Friday it expected U.S. carriers to operate in line with so-called notices to airmen issued by foreign countries, although it added that the decision did "not indicate U.S. government acceptance of China's requirements.

A spokesman for Delta Airlines said it had been complying with the Chinese requests for flight plans for the past week.

In contrast, two major airlines in Japan, the United States' close ally, have agreed with the Japanese government that they would fly through the zone without notifying China.

Read more here

"Robert Carr defies authorities and seizes ‘abandoned’ Ohio homes"

"A family Ohio were in for a nasty surprised after they returned from a visit out-of-town visit to a dying relative to find someone else had moved into their house."

Their outrage has now turned into a court battle, pitting them against a man who says he has the court documents to prove the house is now his.

Robert Carr moved into the home that had been occupied for 21 years, changed the locks and emptied the house.

When the family confronted Carr, he showed them a document he filed with the the County Court.

It's called a 'quiet title' and lays claim to the property because Carr says the family abandoned the house and gave up all their rights.

Read more at the Daily Mail

JP Morgan announces a scheduled Q/A for the public on Twitter

And the questions come pouring in.

JP Morgan twitter account is a joy to read. That is just the beginning. It goes on and on and on. The "back to the drawing board" announcement expands so much it takes screen after screen, I dare not attempt copying it. The calumny on JP Morgan's Twitter  begins with "Pussies." 

She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap

to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.

-- Chris Wieloch, Brookfield WI

As the sun dropped below the horizon, the safari guide confirmed the approaching cape buffaloes were herbivores, which calmed everyone in the group, except for Herb, of course. 

-- Ron D Smith, Louisville, KY

Seeing Mrs. Kohler sink, Detective Moen flushed as he plugged the burglary as the unmistakable work of Cap Fawcet, the Mad Plumber, for not only had her pool of assets been drained, but her clogs were now missing, and the toilet had been removed, leaving them with absolutely nothing to go on.

-- Eric J Hilderman, Greenfield, WI 

thesmokinggun bulwer-lytton 2013 Winners

The day Barney died.

Oddly compelling. Die, Barney, die.

And when your child ask you Daddy why did this happen, answer, "Son, this Barney had penises for hands. It had to be so." 

Needs more velociraptors tearing apart the remains and running off.