Yeah Right, actions speak louder than words...

BERLIN — The French say they need the largest condoms in Europe while Greeks get by on smaller ones, according to a Europe-wide study by a German consultancy that provides advice on condoms.

The study by the Singen-based Institute of Condom Consultancy was done by asking 10,500 men in 25 countries to measure their penis and enter the number into a database.
The results show Frenchmen on average claim to need 15.48 centimeters (6.09 inches) long condoms, about 3 centimeters longer than Greeks, whose condom size requirement was the most modest.
Jan Vinzenz Krause, the Institute's director, told Reuters on Friday the data was collected over a period of eight months.
He did not want to comment on how honest he thought the Frenchmen had been in reporting the data.
The survey was aimed at educating youngsters about the importance of effective contraception.
The institute also offers online condom-size advice and hosts "Pimp Your Condom" — an annual fair organized in cooperation with the national AIDS Trust — with the aim of educating teens about sexually transmitted diseases.

Lies, more lies and damnned lies...

COMPLETE MILITARY

HISTORY OF FRANCE

Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian.

Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when NOT led by a Frenchman."

Italian Wars - Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars -- when fighting Italians.

Wars of Religion - France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots.

Thirty Years War - France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.

War of Devolution - Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flower pots as chapeaux.

The Dutch War - Tied.

War of the Augsburg League / King William's War / French and Indian War -Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.

War of the Spanish Succession - Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved ever since.

American Revolution - In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare; "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."

French Revolution - Won, primarily due to the fact that the opponent was also French.

The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.

The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

World War I - Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.

World War II - Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.

War in Indochina - Lost. French forces plead sickness, take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu.

Algerian Rebellion - Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare; "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux.

War Against Greenpeace - Lost. 1985, the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior prepares to sail for Moruroa Atoll for a major campaign against French nuclear testing. Agents of the DGSE [secret service] bomb and sink the ship in Auckland Harbor. I tree-hugger sans tree drowns. Six weeks later agents Prieur and Mafart plead guilty to charges of manslaughter and willful damage. They get sentences of 10 years and 7 years. French Prime Minister Fabius admits to state terrorism on TV.

War on Terrorism - France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.

A joke I heard recently:

Q: Why did the new French navy buy glass bottom boats?

A: So they can see the OLD French navy...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Open Thread. Enjoy!

FDR prolonged depression

By Meg Sullivan

8/10/2004 12:23:12 PM

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

"President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services," said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. "So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate

It seems the free market works best when unhindered by government regulation, and most problems occur BECAUSE of government regulation. Of course if you want to know how it started this time around just ask Barney Frank , Christopher Dodd and Maxine Waters...

Interesting comment at Pat Dollard's place...

Friends,

Will you please take the time to read this, and if you think it worthwhile, pass it along to your email list, and ask them to read it? Even if they voted, with all good intentions, for Mr. Obama?

I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten - fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?

We learn just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the 700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is medicare and our entire government, our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about)–the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more imporant.)

Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change.

Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.

This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

And I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission. And then, he was duly elected to office, a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world.

He did it with a compliant media–did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and . . . change. And the people surely got what they voted for.

(Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.)

Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years–a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency–it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe–and why I believe it.

I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.

Best regards

tps

Looking at the future with an eye to the past

Time to rebuild. Rebuild our party AND the media...

I said this on February 8,

"Well once again the RNC has handed us a shit candidate for president.

From this point on I am no longer a Republican. I am now an Independent, still conservative, but Independent. Being a conservative means having principles, and one of those principles is NOT "winning at any cost". And a "win" with McCain is a cost to dear to pay. And I cannot consider that event a "win".

I now know how Reagan must have felt when he said, "I didn't leave the Democratic party, they left me". And so has the Republican party left me."

McCain. The one who tried to sneak amnesty for illegals past us in the dark of night. The one whose traitorous gang of 14 made us let go of the dems throats when we had them pinned against the wall. The one who tried to defund the Republican party with McCain/Feingold, the bill that limits free speech and aids incumbents.

"This SHOULD be a major wake up call for Conservatives. The blame is to be placed squarely on the RNC. They have allowed our candidates to be filtered through the left before we even get to vote on them. A MAJOR shakeup is required at the RNC. Even in spite of Republicans repeatedly getting elected when they stick to conservative values, they somehow STILL think the way to get elected is to emulate liberals."

You'll note that almost ALL the Rino's lost Tuesday. Gone are the northeast liberal Republicans.
Mitch McConnell is still there, as is Michelle Bachmann. Prop. 8 in California passed. Conservatives or conservative ideas WON everywhere they were available choices.

Now the finger pointing and backstabbing are coming to a fore. AND not only from the libs as one might expect, but from the insiders and politicos in our OWN party. They're trying to blame Sarah Palin for McCains loss claiming she drug down the campaign.
You remember the pictures of the absolutely HUGE turnout at McCain events before Sarah don't you? You don't? That's because his miserable excuse for a campaign didn't have any turnout before Sarah. And what's more, the accusations being flung are not even issue oriented, they're PERSONAL attacks. Pesonal attacks by "unamed sources" in McCains campaign staff. And so far, I still haven't heard McCain condemn them. They were roundly condemned when they tried to bring up Obama's associations and past statements, why is Sarah fair game for personal attacks when Obama was not on legitimate issues? If McCain does not condemn these people he's even a bigger asshole than I thought he was.

Let these people man up and grow a pair. Lets see them put their NAMES behind what they're saying. They're cowards plain and simple.

Well it's over...

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Once again the world will love us.

Chavez, Castro, Putin, Dear leader etc...

Not to mention we get to join Europe in the slow swirl down the toilet.

Like the woman on CSPAN said, now I won't have to buy gas or pay my mortgage anymore.