Give Your Purse To the Nice Choirboy...

befo' he shoot yo cracker ass.

Mama Says He's A Choirboy.

Who you gonna believe, his mama or yo lyin' eyes?

Wirecutter Is Getting Married Tomorrow

Story.

All right. We're fucking done here. The house has been cleaned over and over, the yard has been cut, the lists have been checked and double checked, the guest bathroom is sealed off, I got about $100 worth of pig in the icebox to go in the smoker later tonight, we got salad for the token gay couple, and I had the presence of mind to stash quick reloads of various calibers around the house and put a razor's edge on my KA-BAR in case of trouble.
I'm ready to get married tomorrow.

Go, and read the whole glorious thing.

Poem of the Day

I'll credit a YouTube clip for turning me on to this one. Here's David O'Hara (Braveheart's Stephen of Ireland) as the Earl of Surrey from The Tudors:



And here is the poem in full:

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. 1516–47

41. The Means to attain Happy Life

MARTIAL, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:—
The richesse left, not got with pain;
The fruitful ground, the quiet mind;

The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
No charge of rule, nor governance;
Without disease, the healthful life;
The household of continuance;

The mean diet, no delicate fare;
True wisdom join'd with simpleness;
The night dischargèd of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress.

The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
Contented with thine own estate
Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.

Slightly Blasphemous Note In Passing

My commenters, my commenters, why have you forsaken me?

I'd say it in the original Aramaic, but I'm not a scholar of that language, unfortunately.

It's What You Call Escalation

He just got out of jail in January on a common-law robbery conviction, now he's robbed a bank.

Well, banks are a federal offense, so he'll probably get a serious prison stretch this time. He needs it; apparently he's already institutionalized.

Meanwhile, In Seneca, SC...

...we see the MSM's preferred outcome in black/white encounters:

Police have charged six black men with beating a white man outside a Seneca restaurant and have sent information about the attack to the FBI to determine if hate crime charges should also be filed.

Authorities say the victim told investigators that a group of men called him racially charged names as he walked to his vehicle in the parking lot March 17.

The man told police he was hit, and when he tried to fight back, the group attacked him.

But hey, at least he didn't pull out a gun and shoot those animals. Gotta look on the bright side, right?

How About a Little Celeb Oblige?

Noblesse Oblige:The Oxford English Dictionary says that the term "suggests noble ancestry constrains to honorable behavior; privilege entails to responsibility". Being a noble meant that one had responsibilities to lead, manage and so on. One was not to simply spend one's time in idle pursuits.

Well, the United States of America doesn't have hereditary aristocracy, of course, but it does have a cult of celebrity which serves as a substitute; celebrities are fawned over and cosseted, their lives dissected in magazines and on TV shows for the masses to consume.

And yet, these celebs, unlike the hereditary aristocrats of old don't seem to understand the concept of Noblesse Oblige:

Alec Baldwin sics his twitter followers on an internet troll.

Spike Lee publishes what he thought was the address of Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman, not knowing (as if this matters) that it was the wrong address. What purpose is served by publishing the address, other than hoping that the mob lynches Zimmerman?

And now Roseanne Barr has committed the same offense that Spike Lee committed.

If you're going to enjoy great wealth, power and prestige in the US, the very least that we might expect is for you NOT TO SHIT ON THE PEASANTRY.

A Victory For 2nd Amendment In NC

A federal district court judge in North Carolina has just struck down that state’s emergency power to impose a ban on firearms and ammunition outside the home during a declared emergency, ruling that the provision violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

In his opinion, Judge Malcolm J. Howard, senior United States district judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, wrote, “…the court finds that the statutes at issue here are subject to strict scrutiny…While the bans imposed pursuant to these statutes may be limited in duration, it cannot be overlooked that the statutes strip peaceable, law abiding citizens of the right to arm themselves in defense of hearth and home, striking at the very core of the Second Amendment.”

Alan Gura and the Second Amendment Foundation, on the case. Another nail in the coffin of Governor Beverly Perdue, who was instrumental in getting the ban passed.

Read the whole thing. This is a Big Deal for the state of NC.

h/t David Codrea.

Greater Love Hath No Man...

In Afghanistan, a National Guardsman gave up his life...for an Afghan child who was in danger of being run over by a troop transport.

According to the Rhode Island National Guard and the U.S. Army, Weichel was in a convoy a week ago with his unit in Laghman Province, in northeast Afghanistan. Some children were in the road in front of the convoy, and Weichel and other troops got out to move them out of the way.
Most of the children moved, but one little girl went back to pick up some brass shell casings in the road. Afghan civilians often recycle the casings, and the girl appeared to aim to do that. But a Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle was moving toward her, according to Lt. Col. Denis Riel of the Rhode Island National Guard.
MRAPs, as they are known, usually weigh more than 16 tons.
Weichel saw massive truck bearing down on the girl and grabbed her out of the way. But in the process, the armored truck ran him over, Riel said.

Is it likely to cause Afghans (other than the girl's parents) to cease hating Americans? Probably not.

Take up the White man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild --
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Quote of the Day

"Not having blood on your hands doesn’t mean you haven’t helped serve up the scapegoat."

24-Carat Snark From Chris Muir

The Day By Day cartoonist summarizes the Obama gun control and civil rights records in three brief panels in today's strip:



Masterly, Chris.

Bring a Gun To Church?

Down in Boiling Springs, SC, not far from Spartanburg, where the local sheriff made headlines for advocating concealed carry of guns by women for self-defense.

Looks like the sheriff's advice might have prevented a tragedy in a church down there:

A South Carolina sheriff who urged women in his county to get a concealed weapons permit after a rape in a park last year says a congregant with a gun may have kept bloodshed from happening in a Spartanburg County church.

Authorities say 38-year-old Jesse Gates was armed with a shotgun when he kicked in a door Sunday at the Southside Freewill Baptist Church.

Sheriff Chuck Wright says the pastor’s grandson saw Gates coming toward the church with the gun. He pulled out his pistol and aimed it at Gates after he broke in. That allowed the pastor to take the shotgun away.

We're starting to see more of this scenario as more and more law-abiding citizens acquire concealed carry permits. After a while these encounters stop being anecdotes and start becoming statistical data, which can be used to shoot down even more gun control arguments.

Why, If President Obama Had a Son...

...these two LaMarque, Texas, robbery suspects might look just like him!

Then again, maybe this blue-light bandit might look like Obama, too.

Remember Susan Boyle?

Remember Susan Boyle, the frumpy middle-aged woman who shocked the world with her singing on Britain's Got Talent?

Well, this isn't about her. It's about another would-be star on that same show, with the same sort of initial reaction from the judges and audience, only to be replaced by jaw-dropping amazement at the voice that this fat 17-year-old boy conjures forth. He looks like a male Cass Elliot, and has the voice of a Pavarotti.

Click here to see history repeat itself.

h/t Amy Alkon.

I Don't Care How They Do It There

Re-surveying the borderline between North and South Carolina is causing some butthurt:

LAKE WYLIE, S.C. | Relatively small errors by surveyors using stakes, hatchets and mental arithmetic 240 years ago could mean the end of Victor Boulware's tiny convenience store.

For decades, officials thought the land where the store sits was in South Carolina because maps said the boundary with North Carolina drawn back in the 1700s was just to the north.

But modern-day surveyors, using computers and GPS systems, redrew the border to narrow it down to the centimeter. Their results put the new line about 150 feet south of the old one and placed Boulware's Lake Wylie Minimarket in North Carolina, where the gas prices are 30 cents higher and the fireworks that boost his bottom line are illegal.

"If I end up across the line, it is going to shut this business down," Boulware said.

Click the link to read the rest.

The P-47 of Green Swamp, NC

The story of who flew it and how it ended up in a swamp in North Carolina for most of its life.

Together with a gallery of 96 photos.

Well worth reading for you aviation buffs among my readers.

Treasure Blog: 50-Carat Emerald

Up in Hiddenite, NC:

Pic:

I Must Have Had a Premonition

Well, we had a savage thunderstorm pass through the Charlotte area this morning, so we shut down the desktop computer, and when we tried to re-start it, of course it had given up the ghost, the boot files corrupt from years of use and several cleanups after spyware/virus infections. I used to have a Windows XP disc, but I loaned it to my sister to loan to a friend, and that poor soul died while in possession of it, so I never got it back. Since this past Friday was payday I ordered a new disc off of eBay, it should be here next week. In the meantime I'm on my netbook here at home. I'll try to keep up with the blogging, but it's more of a chore on the netbook than it is on the desktop.

Meanwhile, In Lancaster, SC,

...black men are dying right and left, but Jesse and Al and the rest of the race hustlers can't be bothered, because the killers aren't white Hispanic like they are in the Trayvon Martin case.

If You Visited Orton Plantation...

before it closed to visitors in 2010, count yourself fortunate.

Orton's new owner isn't going to reopen the historic rice plantation to tourists after a massive restoration project is finished:

Landowner Louis Moore Bacon is determined to turn back the clock at Orton Plantation.

Bacon, the direct descendent of the plantation's founding family who purchased the Brunswick County property in 2010, is working to restore Orton's 8,500 acres to the antebellum rice plantation it was in the 1700s, Orton's Property Manager, Dillon Epp, said.

Plans for the property, which borders N.C. 133 and the Cape Fear River, include the restoration of about 7,000 acres of longleaf pine forest, removal of invasive species that have overrun the plantation's 320 acres of rice fields, and preservation of the plantation's historic house and gardens, Epp said.

The goal is to create the landscape that Bacon's ancestors knew hundreds of years ago, Orton's Landscape Property Manager Nick Dawson said.

Bacon is a direct descendent of Roger Moore, who built the original Orton residence and established the property as a rice plantation.

"The owner is doing all this because of his family history," Dawson said. "He would like to look at what his ancestors looked at. But the restoration is also benefitting the community because a piece of North Carolina history is being preserved."

Nice thing to say, but the benefit to the public is minimal, since the NO TRESPASSING signs will prevent "the community" from seeing the improvements.