Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Obvious poll says that Southern accents are the sexiest in America

Via Susan
 Image result for Obvious poll says that Southern accents are the sexiest in America


Well, I declare!

According to a poll published on YouGov.com, Americans believe Southerners have the sexiest accents in America.

Which means if you're fortunate enough to be cuddled up next to someone who actually likes you, then there's no need to slip into something more comfortable. You can slip in a little "Y'all come back now, y'here!" and spice up your relationship just fine!

Respondents to the poll say around one-third of Americans believe they have an accent, with 18-percent of them saying that "Southern coastal" accents are most attractive. Additionally, 12-percent of those surveyed said Texas accents get them going the most.

I'll be darned! Talk Southern to me baby.

You can read the full results of the study here, which includes reflections on the way Americans feel about foreign accents and the god-awful Boston accent. And, you can also brush up on some of our favorite Southern phrases before your next hot date.

Vietnam Sets Guinness Record for World's Largest Bowl of Instant Phở

 


Unlike Vietnam's previous food-related stunts, this time the giant food dish didn't go to waste.

On Saturday, July 21, Vietnamese instant food company VIFON organized a public instant phở cooking event, which featured 55 workers making a gigantic instant phở bowl containing 1.35 tons of instant noodle soup, Nguoi Lao Dong reports. It was officially recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world's largest bowl of instant phở.

The ingredients that went inside the bowl included 1,963 instant noodle blocks, 1,200 liters of broth, 100 kilograms of organic beef, 22 kilograms of seasoning, six kilograms of chili sauce and eight kilograms of oil. Most of the ingredients are VIFON products.

The soup was made in an enormous bowl with a diameter of 2.1 meters and the bowl contained two layers of stainless steel. According to VIFON's chairwoman, Bui Phuong Mai, the company followed strict requirements during the procedure of setting the record. Adjudicators from Guinness World Records were invited to the event to evaluate the instant phở bowl.

After the record was officially set, the bowl was then divided into 1,963 portions and served to people attending the event inside the company compound.

With this new title, the gigantic instant phở bowl has joined two other Vietnamese food-related records on the Guinness book — the largest sticky rice Tet cake in 2004 and the longest spring roll in 2015. [Photo via Nguoi Lao Dong]

Time for the South to Ban Affirmative Action


The leading authority on this aspect of affirmative action is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (2014), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (by a plurality) that it is permissible for a state to ban affirmative action.  The case arose out of a voter-approved initiative amending the constitution of Michigan that made affirmative action illegal in public education, public employment and public contracting (with the exception of actions mandated by federal law or where federal funding is needed).  The plurality opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, and with the concurrence of Justices Scalia and Thomas.

The Republican Party Endangers the Union

Image result for (President James Buchanan: a Biography, Philip S. Klein, American Political Biography Press,

The Republican Party which formed out of the ashes of the Whig Party and combined with the Know-Nothing and Free Soil political organizations, was seen as a harmless fringe lunatic in 1856. But by the national election of 1860 it appeared to many that their broad support in the North might enable them to win. And if they were victorious, their platform pledged them to arrest, jail and possibly execute anyone who disagreed with their views on the Kansas Territory. This purely sectional party never promoted a peaceful or practical solution to the African slavery they found in their midst, and claimed was the reason they hated the South with such intensity.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.org   The Great American Political Divide

The Republican Party Endangers the Union

“Buchanan stated the keynote of his campaign in these words: “The Union is in danger and the people everywhere begin to know it. The Black Republicans must be, as they can be with justice, boldly assailed as disunionists, and this charge must be reiterated again and again.”

Forget the past, bury the bank, the tariff, and the rest of the historic fossils. The Democrats must publicize the statements of “the abolitionists, free soilers and infidels against the Union,” to show that the Union was in danger. “This race ought to be run on the question of Union or disunion.”

The Democratic press generally adopted this campaign them, and devoted columns to the antiunion pronouncements of prominent Republicans. Ohio’s Representative Joshua R. Giddings had announced “I look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection in the South; when the black man . . . shall assert his freedom, and wage a war of extermination against his master; when the torch of the incendiary shall light up the towns of the South, and blot out the last vestige of slavery; and though I may not mock at their calamity, nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet I will hail it as the dawn of the millennium.”

New York’s Governor William H. Seward asserted that “there is a higher law than the Constitution,” and hoped soon to “bring the parties of the country into an aggressive war upon slavery.” Speaker of the House Nathaniel P. Banks said frankly that he was “willing . . . to let the Union slide.” Judge Rufus S. Spalding declared that if he had the alternatives of continuance of slavery or a dissolution of the Union, “I am for dissolution, and I care not how quick it comes.”

Editor James Watson Webb predicted that if the Republicans lost the [1860] election, they would be “forced to drive back the slavocracy with fire and sword.” A Poughkeepsie clergyman prayed “that this accursed Union may be dissolved, even if blood have to be spilt.”

O.L. Raymond told an audience in [Boston’s] Fanueil Hall, “Remembering that he was a slaveholder, I spit upon George Washington.”

(President James Buchanan: a Biography, Philip S. Klein, American Political Biography Press, 1962, excerpts pp. 257-258)

Nose Art

Via Jeffery

Image result for cover of life magazine artist painting bomber WWII sprenger  

The artist in the photo directly below above is Marine Randall Sprenger, Sr. He was one of several talented young men who "decorated" fighting aircraft for U.S. airmen/bomber crews during the Second World War. This photo ended up on the cover of Life magazine. The rest are examples of some of the nose art painted by such men. 

More @ The Feral Irishman


Who Were Donald Trump's Voters? Now We Know

Via Red 

 

Dated 

 In 2016, the Democracy Fund, a Washington, DC-based foundation, gathered a group of nearly two dozen academics and polling practitioners with diverse political points of view to take a deeper look at important currents in the 2016 election. The ongoing project included a large original survey with many questions about political beliefs, economic and social concerns, as well as basic demographic information. Many people in the sample were first interviewed in 2012, permitting a unique kind of analysis of the 2016 vote. The first four papers from the project, of which I am a part, have just been released. One paper, “The Five Types of Trump Voters,” by the impressive young research fellow at the CATO Institute Dr. Emily Ekins dispels the notion of Trump voters as a monolithic bloc. “Far from there being only one type of Trump voter, there were five unique clusters of them,” she says.

Ekins’s analysis identified Staunch Conservatives as the largest cluster of Trump supporters at 31 percent. They are loyal Republicans, solid fiscal conservatives, have traditional values, and are politically aware. They worry about legal and illegal immigration. They are a little older, more likely to be male than female, and have higher socio-economic status than some of the other groups. They are the group most likely to be NRA members.

More @ Forbes

Former GM Exec: President Trump’s Trade Policy Will Make U.S. ‘Winner’ on Trade

 Bob Lutz kicks-off the Los Angeles Auto Show by delivering the Motor Press Guild (MPG) keynote address, replacing Fritz Henderson, who has resigned as president and chief executive officer of General Motors on December 2, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. The Los Angeles Auto Show will be open to the …

 Breitbart

Former General Motors Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz on Wednesday told CNBC that President Donald Trump’s trade policies will make the United States a “winner,” on trade.

A transcript follows: 
QUINTANILLA: On these input costs now – the guidance today about from GM and Chrysler – I’m looking at some analysis out of Bloomberg that says the additional cost to these metals is outpacing Q1 benefits from tax cuts. How far can this go? 
LUTZ: Well, that may be – but – that change in guidance was nearly precautionary so that they don’t have to explain it later. In my judgment, we are in the midst of a trade negotiation. There’s nothing finalized, there’s nothing that’s going to stay yet. We’re in the middle of a war with tactical moves here, tactical moves there, offensives here, our resistance lines built up over here. We won’t know anything for another couple of months.
What President Trump is trying to do is eradicate decades of trade inequity, where the U.S. has almost no tariffs on certain things and other countries have gigantic tariffs to where we have ongoing, monumental trade deficits, which are just sucking the wealth of our country and it’s time for somebody to put an end to that.
President Trump has decided this is the time and by George, I’m with him 100 percent. Now, is that going to cause some problems, some dislocation, some trouble in a system that’s been based on cheap imports of just about everything? And nevermind if we export anything or not. Yeah, yeah, trade deficit doesn’t matter.
That’s all not true. It does matter and it’s time to get things in balance. I guarantee you the U.S. will come out of this trade war as a winner, with other countries cutting tariffs on key American commodities. I’ll bet you Europe eliminates the automotive tax. It’s too early to get upset about all of this. We’re in the midst of a negotiation.

Dem Congressional Candidate: Tax Parents With More Than Two Kids, ‘Irresponsible Breeders’

 

"The privilege of irresponsible breeding"

A millionaire Democrat running for U.S. Congress in Pennsylvania is a population control zealot who believes in taxing families with more than two kids for being "irresponsible breeders."

As a challenger to U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick for the 1st Congressional District of Pennsylvania, Scott Wallace has received endorsements from both Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women (NOW). According to PJ Media, Wallace has donated close to $7 million to population control groups over the past 20 years through his Wallace Global Fund. Some of the groups Wallace has donated to advocate for taxing families with more than two children. More from PJ Media:

LEAKED: Trump Sent Plane To Bring Home Otto Warmbier Without Asking North Korea's Permission

 Otto Frederick Warmbier, a 21-year-old undergraduate student of commerce from Virginia University of the U.S., speaks during a news conference in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Feb. 29, 2016. Warmbier, held by the DPRK si

An anonymous State Department official said the president sounded like a "dad" when learning of the news.

When President Donald Trump learned of American college student and North Korean prisoner Otto Warmbier's dire medical condition, he immediately sent a plane to land in Pyongyang and bring home the 22-year-old without asking North Korea's permission first, says a report from GQ.

In early June of 2017, Trump-appointed U.S. special representative for North Korea policy Joseph Yun learned that Warmbier was unconscious. "I was completely shocked," said Yun of learning the news. "I came back immediately, and I told Secretary Tillerson ... and we determined at the time that we needed to get him and the other prisoners out as soon as possible, and I should contact Pyongyang and say I wanted to come right away."

The Battle of Kham Duc & a MOH

Via Giang Ky
Image result for 10 Incredible Aerial Rescues
 Having landed under intense enemy fire, a stranded Air Force combat control team sprints to the safety of Col. Joe Jackson's C-123.



Amid the wreckage of one of the U.S. Army’s worst defeats in Vietnam—the Battle of Kham Duc—acts of heroism shone, none more brightly than Lt. Col. Joe Jackson’s rescue of three otherwise-doomed American airmen. Kham Duc was an isolated Special Forces camp with a single short, narrow runway, and in May 1968 the base was overrun by the NVA. A thousand U.S. and South Vietnamese troops and many civilians were evacuated from the beleaguered strip by a stream of Air Commando C-123 Providers and C-130s. Their rescues included extracting the three-man Air Force combat control team (CCT) that had been on the ground coordinating the evacuation.

In a baffling display of desk-jockey stubbornness, Saigon ordered the CCT back into Kham Duc to finish their job, despite the fact that nearly everybody had already been evacuated. The team was back in Kham Duc just in time to hear the airborne command post declare the evacuation finished.

Fortunately, the C-130 crew that had emplaced them made it abundantly clear that three Americans were still on the ground. A C-123 landed to pick up the abandoned CCT, but mortar, rocket and machine-gun fire turned the landing into an immediate touch-and-go. (Eight aircraft had already been shot down or destroyed on the ground.) Colonel Jackson, also piloting a Provider, was next in line, and it never occurred to him to say the rescue was too risky. To give the North Vietnamese the least possible opportunity to target him, Jackson used what we’d today call a tactical approach and assault landing, diving from 9,000 feet with gear and flaps down, power at idle, and then touching down short and hard. The runway was blocked by a wrecked helo, allowing only 2,200 clear feet for takeoff, but the CCT scrambled aboard and Jackson was off moments later—as a 122mm rocket landed just 25 feet from the Provider’s nose, but thankfully didn’t explode. For his selfless heroism, Jackson was awarded the Medal of Honor.