OBAMA and ACORN, Sitting in a Tree

From Big Government:

ACORN employees have been nailed time and time again for fraudulently registering voters (including Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys football team) — allegedly for the purpose of sweeping Democrats into office. They were caught on tape advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration, and child prostitution laws.

So why is ACORN still receiving taxpayer dollars in defiance of the funding ban? That’s what we’d like to know.

Judicial Watch investigators recently discovered that the Obama Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has issued a $79,819 grant to the Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) — an offshoot of ACORN — in apparent violation of the ACORN funding ban passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2009.

Moreover, this grant was provided to the organization less than a year after ACORN/ACHOA was criticized by HUD’s inspector general in two separate investigations for misappropriating funds from federal grants.

You remember the funding ban, right? It was a signature moment for Barack Obama (dubbed the “ACORN President”) when he signed a law on October 1, 2009, known as the Defund ACORN Act, which effectively prohibited the federal government from funding “ACORN and any ACORN-related affiliate.”

Shameful and illegal. You know, I find myself saying that more and more about President Barry...

Oh, The Irony...

From Austin Eater.com:

Gerald Birkelbach of City Meat Market in Giddings on how to tell if you're eating good barbecue: "You want to know the real flavor? Taste it first without the sauce on it, and if you gotta put sauce on it, then it isn't worth shit anyway."

It's ironic because I've never eaten at the meat market precisely because their logo looks like a steaming pile...



He's right, though, even if he does have a crappy logo.

So Awesome It Hurts

The final space shuttle launch as seen from cameras on the solid rocket boosters - all the way until splashdown:



I never thought there would be a time in my life when there would be no more space missions in the foreseeable future. Even when the Challenger and the Columbia exploded, it always seemed like a given that it would only be a matter of time until there was another shuttle launch - once the bugs were worked out.

I think the space program will happen again, but I suspect it won't be for a decade or so. Thanks, Obama, you short-sighted piece of trash. Thanks for killing the space program. The space program is one of those things that gives our country hope. And, as in so many other ways, you sucked the hope right out of the country.

So it seems to me that once the bugs are worked out that the United States will be in space again. Once the bugs are worked out of the White House, that is...

Video Geek Porn

To me, this is porn.

BTS Shooter's Commentary // Joann + Donald NDE from VisualMasterpiece on Vimeo.

Oh, yeah.....

Aggie Joke Safe Haven

When I was little, I remember hearing Aggie jokes galore. My dad and granddad and aunt were all draftsmen (no PC draftswomen back then), and it seems like they always had an Aggie joke to share. But since then, political correctness has taken hold and people don't tell Aggie jokes much anymore for fear of OFFending somebody. But not here in Destructoville. Destucto decrees this to be a "making fun of Aggies if you want to" zone. So here's a great Aggie joke I got this morning from my grandma:

A Texas Aggie won a bass boat in a raffle drawing. He brought it home; his wife looks at him and says, "What are you gonna do with that. There ain't no water deep enough to float a boat within 100 miles of here."

He says, "I won it and I'm a gonna keep it."

His brother, also an Aggie, came over to visit several days later. He sees the wife and asks, where my brother?

She says, "He's out there in his bass boat", pointing to the field behind the house.

The brother heads out behind the house, sees him sitting in a bass boat with a fishing rod in his hand down in the middle of a big field.

He yells out to him, "What the hell are you doing?"

His brother replies, "I'm fishin, What the hell does it look like I'm a doing?"

His brother yells, "It's people like you that give us Aggies a bad name, makin' everybody think we're stupid. If I could swim, I'd come out there and whip your ass!"

You got your joke. Now get the hell off my lawn!!!

Is ISO 640 cleaner than ISO 100?

Testing Canon's ISO noise in Video mode on the 60D from Andrew Schär on Vimeo.

WTF of the day

Seen at the local Wal-Mart.

Is that a ... Reindeer?????

... And back to the bad

I wish bad design wasn't so easy to find. This is just one sign at our local dump. Every sign there has stretched type like this.

The good stands out

I post examples of bad design all the time. Here's an example of some really nice looking design by a company called Fastlane.

What is this again?

Dear Sam Houston State,

You never ever, EVER put the word "brochure" on the front of your brochure. #designfail

Back at the Ranch

Yesterday Kristi, the kids and I headed out to Washington-on-the Brazos State Park to cap off our Independence Day celebration. Normally, they would have one of the best fireworks displays around, but due to the burn ban the fireworks were cancelled and there was a laser light show, instead. Before the light show, local band Back at the Ranch played music for the crowd as they arrived.

I'm honored to know Clover and Rachel Carroll, two members of the band, so I picked up the camera and tried to get some shots of them on stage. The evening sun was hot, but it was setting really nicely to the right of the stage, which allowed me both some really good light and the opportunity to practice playing with lens flares. I've recently switched to full manual shooting and have only recently found the joys of shooting beautifully sun-washed photos that, frustratingly, were almost impossible on the semi-automatic modes I was accustomed to using.

I shot over 600 frames in all, but these are a few of my favorites. A couple of them are going in my portfolio. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed shooting them.

The Way I Shot It

I love it when I see people using photos I shot in a way that I had in mind when I shot them. This image is part of this shoot of Keith Warren for his new show, "Ranch Properties TV."