Prime Minister of Hungary: All the terrorists are migrants

“Of course it’s not accepted, but the factual point is that all the terrorists are basically migrants,” says Viktor Orbán. “The question is when they migrated to the European Union.”

Thinking of Paris and its aftermath, the Hungarian leader posits an “overwhelming logical” connection between terrorism and the movement of Muslims into Europe — in the last few months as well as over recent decades — that to him and many Europeans is “an obvious fact,” whether “you like it or not.”

“The majority of our leaders in the West deny the fact,” he adds. That denial of the “obvious” — which the Hungarian leader blames on political correctness run amok — destabilizes European politics by increasing “the gap between the leaders and the people.”

I guess this guy is not counting on the migrant swing vote.

Vocabulary "a" words

Decades ago I kept index cards as bookmarks and wrote words I didn't know, or didn't know for sure, along with the source sentence, then looked up the words later if not needed immediately. Some books were great for card accumulation. Everyone hated me and my words, nobody could stand me. Much later after the words were internalized and used for thinking, used as pathways of thought, I'd look back at the cards and wonder how I managed without them. They all seemed so elementary and stupid, and I mean stew pud.

It's embarrassing.

The same thing happens now online with all these lawyers all over the place except the index cards are mere files and now they never get looked at anymore as the cards did once they're typed, and not handwritten as before. The file on the desktop titled "words" has ... oh, only 1,300 files. Seemed like more than that.

It happens with the files, as it did with the index cards, thousands of them, that more than one entry is made for the same word, meaning some difficulty there sinking in from one encounter to the next and some words get looked up twice. The pattern was that negative words did not sink in so readily but positive words are eagerly adopted and used.

Here's your chance to prove to yourself how much smarter you are than I.

These are the "a" words encountered in English reading. Indented means I'm embarrassed to show them, but there they are. You're going to think, what a dummkopf. The unindented asterisks I still don't know very well and do not use those words for thinking. Here goes.

Pop quiz.

*aut inveniam viam aut faciam
     * abattoir
     * abject
     * absolve
* absquatulate
* abstemious
     * abstruse
* acedia
     * ad finem
* addlepated
     * adduce
* adianoeta
     * adumbrated
*  advertorial
* Aebleskiver
* agglutination
     * agnomen
* agonal
* arorism
* ajouré
     * Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
* alluvion
* alopecic
* Amalek
* Amanuensis
     * ambit
     * amduat
* Amicus Curiae
* amour propre
* amyloid plaques
* anacoluthon
* analyte
* anaphora
* anaphore
* anatid
* anatine
* andante
* animadversion
     * annuity
     * anodyne
*anole
*anomic
*anomie
* anorak
* anosma
* Anosognosia
* antinomian
* antinomy
* aperçus
     * aphorism
* aphotic
     * apologia
* apophasis
* aporia
     *apotheosis
* apotropaic
     * apparatchik
     * apposition
* approbation
* aprioristic
     * arancini (little oranges) (filled rice balls)
* Arbalist
* architectonic
     * architrave
* archon
     * argent
     * argumentum ad misericordiam
     * arpeggio
* arriviste
* asceticism
     * aspergic
     * assortative
* aston
* asymptote
     * attainder
     * au fait
     * auf wiedersehen
     * auteur
     * auto-da-fé
* Autochthon
     * autogyro
* autophagy
* autotroph
     * ave ataque vale
* avout

The Rifleman

Lucas McCain was in town when the Sheriff called him over to talk to him.
"Lucas Boy there is a problem in town. This woman has shown up and is demanding that we listen to what she has to say. But she is isn't saying anything really. It's got me stumped."
"I don't reckon that can be too much of a problem Micah. Let's go talk to her."
"Howdy Ma'am.  My name is Lucas McCain and I hear you have a problem."
"I don't have a problem big boy. In fact I am not a Ma'am chico. I am a woman born into the body of a man so I have to wear my petticoats to feel right. Your sheriff has the problem. He won't let me go into the ladies out house. Now that is not fair. Or right."
"Well here in Northfork a man is a man and the sheep are nervous. Errr... what I mean is that you have  to pick one sex and stick too it. You can't go from being a mare to a stallion. It just ain't natural."
"Well I don't know. You look like a stallion that might like to take a ride without worrying too much about how the horse started out in the corrall chico."
"Now now Miss that has to wait until later in my career. Right now I have to set a good example. Now please go back to your room and change into your chaps. The regular ones. Not the assless ones. Comprende?"

Assimilation headphones.

From the Assimilation Project. For hard landings in Western civilization, new hip headphones with special eyesight adaptors, introducing the Western Civilization Flirtation Device.

Source pic, somewhere around here.

Trump: Not so fast there Mohamed....how about some water?

WASHINGTON – Republican front-runner Donald Trump refused Sunday to rule out a third-party presidential run, as he vowed to bring back waterboarding as an interrogation technique for suspected terrorists.

Backing away from a signed pledge he made in September to support the Republican nominee, Trump told “This Week,’ that’s he’s now taking a wait and see approach on whether to run as an independent.

“I will see what happens. I have to be treated fairly,” he said.

His comments comes as fresh polling shows Trump is the undisputed Republican front-runner — even as establishment Republicans are plotting attacks to take him down.

“If I’m treated fairly, I’m fine,” Trump said. “All I want … is a level playing field.”

Adele enters an Adele impersonation competition

"Adeles meet your Adele"

If you can't stand the heat....they give you the job anyway...because....err...because....err..affirmative action.

New York Post, November 22, 2015 by Susan Edelman

A firefighter who was allowed to graduate the Fire Academy despite failing physical tests has already gone out on medical leave — just 10 days into the job, The Post has learned.

Probationary firefighter Choeurlyne Doirin-Holder injured herself Monday while conducting a routine check of equipment at Queens’ Engine 308 in South Richmond Hill. Getting off the truck, Doirin-Holder missed a step and landed on her left foot, suffering a fracture, sources said.

It was her second shift after a transfer from Engine 301. In training for a hazmat assignment, officers found her struggling to perform the required tasks.

Firefighters called the tripping incident embarrassing — and alarming.

“If you’re going to get hurt in the firehouse checking a rig, what would happen at a fire?” an insider asked.

On Nov. 6, Doirin-Holder celebrated her FDNY graduation as one of four new female Bravest, bringing the number of women to 49 — an all-time high in the FDNY’s 150-year history.

But Doirin-Holder’s competence was questioned by sources familiar with her training. They said academy instructors let her pass the Functional Skills Test, a rigorous obstacle course of job-related tasks, even though she had failed to complete it in the required 17 minutes and 50 seconds or under.

In addition, when she failed to finish a 1.5-mile run in 12 minutes or less — even after the course was shortened — she was allowed to demonstrate aerobic capacity on a StairMaster machine under watered-down requirements enacted by FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro.

Edible Ebony and Ivory

"Swiss bank will go where no retail lender has gone before"

"...will begin applying negative interest rates on individual clients."

The Alternative Bank Schweiz (ABS) caused shockwaves with a letter sent to all clients in mid-October informing them that it would begin imposing interest charges on deposits in 2016.

For current accounts, the bank said it would impose a -0.125-percent rate, while slapping a -0.75-percent rate on client deposits higher than 100,000 Swiss francs ($98,650, 92,420 euros).

So far individual depositors have been shielded from the burn of decisions by several central banks, including Switzerland's, to introduce negative interest rates to light a flame under growth or ward off unwanted currency investors.

ABS, which grew out of the ideals the 1960's protest movement, justified the unprecedented development by saying it would provide manoeuvering room for financing "meaningful projects".

The move did not go unnoticed in Swiss financial circles as banks in the wealthy Alpine nation search for ways to deal with the negative rates imposed on them by the central bank in January.

"This decision on negative rates is costing us a lot of money -- pretty much the equivalent of our entire annual profit last year," ABS chief Martin Rohner told AFP.

The Swiss central bank introduced a negative deposit rate in January after it abruptly abandoned its three-year effort to hold down the franc's exchange rate to protect exports.

The -0.75 percent rate is meant to dissuade foreign investors buying and holding Swiss francs as a safe haven investment, which had been putting upward pressure on the currency.

The American Foreign Policy

"Free Ottawa yoga class scrapped over 'cultural issues'"

And then they came for the yoga instructors?

Student leaders have pulled the mat out from 60 University of Ottawa students, ending a free on-campus yoga class over fears the teachings could be seen as a form of "cultural appropriation."

Staff at the Centre for Students with Disabilities believe that "while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students ... there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice," according to an email from the centre.

The centre is operated by the university's Student Federation, which first approached Scharf seven years ago about offering yoga instruction to students both with and without disabilities.

The centre goes on to say, "Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced," and which cultures those practices "are being taken from."

The centre official argues since many of those cultures "have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy ... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga."

The concept of cultural appropriation is normally applied when a dominant culture borrows symbols of a marginalized culture for dubious reasons -- such as the fad of hipsters donning indigenous headdresses as a fashion statement, without any regard to cultural significance or stereotype.

But Scharf, a yoga teacher with the downtown Rama Lotus Centre, said the concept does not apply in this case, arguing the complaint that killed the program came instead from a "social justice warrior" with "fainting heart ideologies" in search of a cause celebre.

"People are just looking for a reason to be offended by anything they can find," said Scharf.

"There's a real divide between reasonable people and those people just looking to jump on a bandwagon. And unfortunately, it ends up with good people getting punished for doing good things."

There were about 60 students who participated in the free program.

Wait A Minute!

Overheard at Forbes:

Though these elite actresses are still well remunerated, the Hollywood pay gap has been well publicized. Lawrence made headlines this year when Wikileaks revealed she and her female American Hustle costar received a lower cut of profits than their male counterparts. The leaked Sony correspondence relayed Lawrence’s representatives complaining that male actors (Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale and Jeremy Renner) received a 9% cut of profits, while Lawrence and Amy Adams pocketed just 7%. Link to source

I read this in two different ways, neither of which I like:

(1) Cooper, Bale and Renner each got 9% of the profits, while Lawrence and Adams each got 7%.

(2) Cooper, Bale, and Renner split 9% three ways or 3% each, while Lawrence and Adams split 7% two ways or 3.5% each.

The first reading is blatantly unfair to the women; the second reading is blatantly unfair to the men. There isn't enough information given in the cited Forbes article to decide between the two.

But my biggest problem with the first scenario is why the hell does nearly 41%* of the profit go to just five people?  That right there is the Hollywood problem in a nutshell: overly-paid actors. There are plenty of other people involved in filmmaking who deserve a piece of that pie. Do actors take it in the shorts when a film loses money? I suppose they do over time if they continually act in flops.

I would like to see numbers on how much profit went to actors in the decades past.

Actors and actresses need the shit taxed out of them because they mostly give those ill-gotten gains to bad causes.**
__________________
* 9 + 9 + 9 + 7 + 7 = 41

** Here's to you, Ike

[added] I just read that Jennifer Lawrence's newest film "Mocking Jay: Part 2" has severely underperformed expectations. I was a big fan of that series and even went to a theater to see the last one. Her loudmouthed antics are enough to keep me away this time.

I'm Not Scared - Pet Shop Boys

Take a tour of River Styx, let Charon be your guide and go where Dante went.