Free Republic

If they won’t carry guns, then cyclists need to wear helmet cams. A few good videos might wake people up.

Well, money ain’t everything.

I am staying away from Disneyworld this summer.

“Well, we know what the future looks like without the Evil Whitey”

Stunning photos.

American Orthodox Jewish community is growing

So are the Amish, but if they won’t pick up arms, then it is all for naught.

Brawndo: It’s Got What Plants Crave. It’s Got Electrolytes!

Coming soon.

Imbecile, moron, and idiot are technical terms describing various levels of mental retardation. Not knowing that Bill Mahar using the word “retarded” in this context is an insult probably makes you a moron. Maybe an imbecile. I would not go as far as idiot.

For all of you law-enforcement-can-do-no-wrong types:

http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2013/06/10/man-charged-with-dui-despite-blowing-000-during-breathalyzer-test/

“What do you do when you come to a detour, a parade, a town crazy days celebration, etc., continue on through?”

I expect to not be questioned by the police for simply showing up.

Last week it was 150.

Rules for Radicals number 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”

“I encountered them years ago when college students were doing tourism surveys”

If you like this stuff, fine. Make sure they take your name off the Do Not Call list and knock yourself out. Maybe they will set up a special “Call ME! ME! ME!” list for all of you who love to “share”. As for me, do not unnecessarily obstruct traffic. Keep your nose out of my business.

“They’re looking for someone.”

I’ll wager they are looking for YOU. Perhaps the PRISM DNA module is up and ready to be populated with data. They have to get it somehow.

“Why are you working so hard to defend roadblocks?”

I have been noticing lately that a lot of lurkers are coming out of the woodwork and offering opinions that are, shall we say, not “liberty friendly”. It’s almost like we a 5th column here.

“When a yellow or orange vested highway worker blocks traffic, is it voluntary? Does an off duty policeman have more authority than a highway flagman?”

Highway flagmen have an obvious and transparent reason to block traffic. This is far from transparent. Since when do we in the US use roadblocks to conduct surveys? And since when do surveys involve gving a blood or saliva sample? I don’t care if they will allow you decline - this time. Nobody should be stopped at all for this sort of thing. They are trying this in AL because they would never get away with it in San Francisco or New York. It is very disturbing that this is going on, especially in light of the IRS and NSA scandals.

Q: How does an engineer get a humanities major off of his front porch?

A: He pays her for the pizza.

I though meth was only for knuckle-dragging hicks in flyover country

I'll bet he doesn't do that again.

That is a great Dilbert. This agile stuff is not going to end well. It is going to take some people getting killed before they decide it might make sense to sit down and figure out what you are going to do before you do it.

If you could suggest someone else who can fix it, that would be good. I would like to hear about it too. All you want to do is complain bitterly about the old mechanic, and that is getting us nowhere.

I’m stocking up on popcorn.

“You’re like a do it yourself ‘handy man’, tinkering on my car. It runs worse than it did before, you are spending lots of money because you don’t know how to fix the car, and in the end, I’m sitting here still waiting to get my car fixed.”

Stop sitting around waiting for someone else to fix the car.

“Man I don’t envy you guys, the country’s going to collapse. You missed out.”

I remember 20 years ago thinking about how lucky a friend of mine was who was retiring. I wondered if that would ever be possible for me. I suppose it is natural to look ahead into the unkown and be a little scared. All I can say is that I have made it to 57, and barring a health crisis I will probably be able to retire comfortably.

“We’re trying to make it by, a lot of us want to have families and not live in a debt ridden lifestyle, which means putting off houses and cars.”

Putting off buying those houses may well have been a great move. Your generation now has an unprecedented opportunity with the low fixed interest rate and the depressed housing. I wish we had 3.5% mortgages 30 years ago. Do some leg work and find a distressed property that will appeal to you in the long haul (preferably, IMHO, on a few acres). Buy it with a fixed rate mortgage and don’t worry about paying it off early. In the early 80’s the banks were offering people who had 5% mortgages from the 60’s big discounts to pay them off. Inflation is coming, probably sooner than later. You will not regret making this move.

When you say “we”, I assume you mean the Boomers kids. They would have started entering the workforce around 1985. I think there have been some very good years since then. There were some very bad years in the ‘70s that you never had to deal with.

“I would just like it if Boomers were honest and admitted that they didn’t want their kids to have the same lives that they themselves had growing up.”

I think the big mistake Boomers made was coddling and indulging their kids to a much greated extent than their parents did, and therby making them (for them most part) a bunch of whiny self centered wusses. But, that is a trend that has been in place for a long time. Look up Benjamin Spock. People naturally try to make it better for their kids than they had it. Their efforts may be wrong headed, but they try.

“A truly heroic challenge can help produce a heroic generation, though I wouldn’t bet on it this time.”

I the heroic challenge is the key. The Greatest Generation was great because their challenge was one that the entire country was 100% behind. If a young man was not in the service, he pretty much was a social outcast. Even when I was a kid in the 60’s, everyone in that generation knew who did not serve. They talked about it, and not kindly. It was a lot eaiser to be a hero under those circustances.

I think the guys how served in Vietnam were in a way much more heroic. They served despite the conflicting messages and the abuse they took. The best thing we as citizens have done for the gulf war vets is absolutly refusing to let leftists treat vets like they did on Vietnam.

The article says that driving rate anomg the you are the lowest since 1963. Lets remember that all those kids in 1960’s finally grew up an bought cars and houses. I suspect it will not be any different with these kids.

The seattle weekly must be one of those ubiquitous leftist free tabloids that survive by accepting ads for topless bars and "escort services" (yea right). Is there anything being done about them? Boycott businesses that advertise? Boycott the businesses where they distribute them? They are 100% for the Dems. Does this support by a business constitute an illegal campaign contribution? What is to stop you from picking up a whole pile and recycling them? They are one of the ways the hard core leftists communicate with each other. They deserve more of our attention.

We need a special prosecutor to investigate this.

I am looking forward to the Stratasys earnings call on Monday. 3D printing has had a good run lately.

“we are all human beings, all alcoholics, and all in AA together”

AA has had sex segregated meetings for a long time. If they can keep it segregated/along gay straight lines, then there should not be a problems. If a few gay activists take over every meeting and try to make it all about them, then there will be a problem.

“I’d hate to be a “low level” government employee of any kind under this “administration”

I’ll bet good money the people who did this love it.

I wonder it would have come out had they put “Praise Jesus” on the CFL?

You have to wonder how many “low level IRS employees” check OpenSecrets.org to see if and to whom their next appointment makes political donations. Wait until they have the power to grant or withhold lifsaving medical treatment.

I have a makerbot cupcake. The most amazing thing to me about it is the fact that it could have been built 25 years ago. It's all hardware store stuff. The magic is in the CAD software, the software that renders models into G-codes, and the modern computers need to run that software. Unless they outlaw laptops, they are not going to be able to control it.

Flame retardants are government mandated. This is a fine example of the law of unintended consequences.

“We recognize that most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.”

How about the machetes they use to chop each others heads off? Are we responsible for those, too?

In a way, she sounds like a Korean Maggie Thatcher. She has a personal ax to grind with the Norks. That little snotball better watch his step.

Why was this not brought up during the Elian Gonzales affair?

We’ve had one of those for a while now - “it”.

I can think of a few females in Congress that would be a good candidate for “it”.

“the Tinkerbell of national charters”

What does he mean by that? That it is physically impossible for Canadians to ignore the Canadian Constitution? How is theirs any less dependent on the consent of the governed that ours in the US is? What a maroon.

Any form of humane government ultimately depends on a good majority following the rules, in our case, the Constitution. If you do not follow the rules, or have no rules, or they get made up as you go along, or they come down by decree, then you have despotism or anarchy. How they not see this? The only way they can be in favor of this is if they think their despot will never have to cede power. They can't possibly believe they will run the country forever. They don't even have the power to run it their way right now. Lunatics.

There is no credible effort being made to amend the constitution to either change the apportionment of senators or repeal the 2nd amendment. Let them whine.

I read somewhere that iOS is BSD under the hood. Everyone does this stuff.

There is a big difference between debate club rules and real life. 60’s radical Mark Rudd said it best, “The issue is NOT the issue!”

Dummycrat from what I can find. No mention of party is always a dead giveaway. If instead he cured cancer in his spare time, the party affiliation would be mentioned in every sentence. This is our lot.

“a lot of systems are now put together with a minimum of forethought”

You can say that again. The Internet has made it worse by allowing people to push buggy software out and fix it later. This is going to go on until something really bad happens, and a bunch of people are killed or hurt. When that happens, there will be an investigation not unlike the one after the Challenger disaster, and the haphazard, ego driven methods used to slap code together will come under much needed scrutiny.

I am a firmware developer, and I understand that mindset. But every “upgrade” is not better than it's predecessor, especially wholesale changes to user interfaces. You made an analogy to automobile improvements. What if they decided that the car should go left when the steering wheel is turned clockwise, and vice-versa, on the theory that clockwise is "Forward"? Extrapolating current practices, they would put a switch somewhere under the dashboard that changes the behavior according to user preference and ship it with the new setting as default so people would have to try it out and see how great it is. You would have to look on the internet to see how to change it back, and every time you removed the battery it would resume the default.

“They want their computer to be like the old TV’s.”

Up until the 60’s, you had to turn on the radio and wait a minute for the tubes to warm up before you could listen. Then we got transistors - turn it on and listen immediately. Now, the radio has a computer. Turn it on, wait a minute or 2 until it boots up, and if they don't force an immediate FW upgrade on you, you can listen to the radio. Seems like we are going in the wrong direction.

“The article is 100% spot on when he says users do not like change.”

This user agrees wholeheartedly. It takes a while to learn all this stuff, and when it changes you do not get training or time to relearn it. And when you are done, it is usually just different, not better. Instead of putting all the new stuff as the default and making the user roll it back, they should bury the new interface somewhere and let the persons so inclined “discover” it. They will have a good old time doing it, and if it really is better, the rest will come over in good time.

“I currently run XFCE on Fedora. It’s a great GP distro.”

I have been a redhat man since the 90’s, but it seems like fedora is going downhill. I have fedora 17/Gnome3.4.2 on my desktop. I can't get vmware player to run - moved to virtual box ( not that that is bad!!). Tried to get USB running with vitualbox and failed - now I get occasional system hangups. You have to go out and hunt down codecs. The list goes on and on - a lot of little things like that bugging me. I am thinking about moving to Linux Mint.

Notice that they call it “missile defense” now, and not Star Wars.