"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
From Stop the ACLU:
Separation Clause Invoked over Postal Contractor
by Nathan Bradfield
U.S. District Judge Dominic J. Squatrito, in a case in Manchester, CT, has ruled that the nearly 5,200 facilities run by contractors that they cannot promote religion through pamphlets, displays or any other materials.
Vicente Fox’s lapdog is, of course, now Felipe Calderon’s lapdog. You know the Republic’s in for hard times defending its sovreignty when discord breaks out between the White House and Teddy Kennedy, because Kennedy’s proposed legislation is too tough on illegals…
*sigh*
As Fred Thompson said recently while sitting in for Paul Harvey,
I think its time for a little plain talk to the leaders of Mexico. Something like:
hey guys, you’re our friends and neighbors and we love you but it’s time you had a little dose of reality. A sovereign nation loses that status if it cannot secure its own borders and we are going to do whatever is necessary to do so, although our policies won’t be as harsh as yours are along your southern border. And criticizing the U.S. for alternately doing too much and too little to stop your illegal activities is not going to set too well with Americans of good will who are trying to figure a way out of the mess that your and our open borders policy has already created.My friends, it’s also time for a little introspection. Since we all agree that improving Mexico’s economy will help with the illegal-immigration problem, you might want to consider your own left-of -center policies. For example, nationalized industries are not known for enhancing economic growth. Just a thought. But here’s something even more to the point that you might want to think about: What does it say about the leadership of a country when that country’s economy and politics are dependent upon the exportation of its own citizens?
Mexico is phenomenally wealthy in natural resources–at least as wealthy per capita as the U.S., and perhaps even more so. So why is it still an “emerging country”? Quite simply because of the4 greedy ricos who run the place. It’s time we stopped playing Daddy Warbucks for the ricos who run Mexico and practice a little “tough love” by letting them know, “No more free lunch, bubbas. It’s time you stopped sitting on that gold mine and started really working it.”
But that’s not a message you’ll hear from the tax (everyone but our class) and spend (on everyone except those who produce) politicians *spit* or from Vicente Fox’s lapdog now that he’s found a new master.
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…and almost said (OK, thought) when confronted with my broken blog this a.m. and while fiddlin’ with the thing…
1. #$%*& #*%^�$!!!
2. *sigh*
3. *heh*
4. What?!?!
5. WTF?!?!?
6. *profound sigh*
7. More coffee!
8. ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!
9. Are you KIDDING me?
10. *LOL*
11. Oh, well…
12. *sigh* I’ve been meaning to clean up this mess anyway…
13. *slaps head* Was THAT all it was?
“Confession is good for the soul and bad for the reputation.”–W.W.ÂÂ
Cofessed at the Thursday Thirteen Hub and Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Allie Is Wired, basil’s blog, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, High Desert Wanderer, Pursuing Holiness, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
[NOTE: twc is devolving to limited functionality and probably extreme wonkiness, perhaps all the way to complete DOA today as I attempt to TS the issue outlined below… as I have time.]
At a loss. At sea. Baffled.
If you’re looking for some trenchant commentary on the passing scene, you CLICKed in on the wrong day.
Returning readers know my side columns don’t ordinarily have as much white (OK, yellow) space as they’re showing today. At least it’s better than yesterday, when the entire right column was blank… because the right column was superimposed over the left column.
And I’m stumped. I’ve compared my .css and .php files now in place to known good archives, line by line, and they’re the same, as far as I can determine.
I removed the post immediately previous to this one, since the problem manifested immediately after posting it*, and that seemed to fix things… until I let the site fully reload and… Capn Bob’s animated graphic is missing on the left (it’s there in the leftcolumn.php) and darned near all of my right column is just… not loading.
So, what have I missed, folks?
Helpful answers get a cookie. No, sorry: not one you can eat. I’ll send you a virtual cookie.
😉
Update: As you can see, it’s getting there, slowly. Patience. Still have to input all the blogrolls and other sidebar info, a bit at a time between other (mostly ofline, so-called “RW” *heh*) chores. Patience.
Update 2: *sigh* The little foxes are at work. Presenting problem fixed (and may not even have been my problem to begin with–see comment #2), and now I have all the little glitches introduced by upgrading WP and switching themes to stomp out. Eventually. I hope. Probably. Maybe. *heh*
*Yeh, yeh, “post hoc ergo propter hoc“–but even when I found nothing in the post source code to indicate it was the problem and removed it anyway, at least the right column moved back over to the right side… though it’s still not displaying properly. Usually this sort of thing is due to a misplaced “div” tag or some such, but, as I said, I simply cannot find any changes in my template files from known good archive copies, and I find nothing amiss in recent posts (and yes, bad code in posts can screw things up pretty weirdly on the whole front page), so, as I said, I’m stumped… And I’m repetitiously and redundantly repeating myself again. *heh*
[Yeh, this is a repost of one I took down… and as it turned out, didn’t need to. And I know all the tb pings to the folks listed below are now invalid/broken, but hey, ya know, they were kind enough to provide me with some flogging, so they deserve the linkage from here. And yeh, Perri, I lost your insightful comment. ‘S’way it goes…]
But, but Macs are inherently secure, aren’t they? I mean, don’t the recent Mac ads tout the lack of a need to be security-conscious?
*heh*
Mac Hacked by QuickTime Bug “As Serious as ANI”
Researchers have confirmed that a QuickTime bug was the Achilles heel that felled a MacBook Pro last week in the Pwn-2-Own contest at the CanSecWest security conference…
…the vulnerability affects not only Safari but also Firefox on Mac OS X. Firefox on Windows may also be at risk…
Oooo, so Macs share a vulnerability with Windows. *heh* Don’t tell the Macrophiles; they’ll be afraid they’ll get cooties. Much as it pains me to admit it, here’s one place where Internet Exploder, in its most recent evil incarnation, betters some of the competition:
…Terri Forslof, manager of security response at TippingPoint, confirmed with me today that any Java-enabled browser is potentially vulnerable. Internet Explorer is not, she said, given its sandbox feature, which “does handle the vulnerability appropriately,” she said.
Opera 6 and 7 had a similar vulnerability in the way they handled Java (patched by Opera almost immediately when discovered), but so far, I think Opera 9 is clear. Any folks know differently? At any rate, the root problem is… QuickTime itself. And, as everyone knows, that makes it a Mac OS problems…
Because Quicktime is installed on the Mac operating system by default, turned on and ready to go, it’s comparable to a Windows media player [sic] bug, she [Forslof] said. “Even though it’s not the main system you compromise, you still own the whole system when you do compromise it. It’s every bit as serious.”
I’ve always hated QuickTime for its rude pre-empting of system preferences and annoying insistence that IT be the default media player, etc., but with multiple security holes discovered in the thing just this year coupled with Apple’s rude, obscurantist and unnecessarily complex patch procedure–unless one is a Mac user, as are about, oh, maybe 1/10 of QuickTime users–has made my move to having a different media player default for playing movs even sweeter.
So, Apple: :-p
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Random Yak, Adam’s Blog, Maggie’s Notebook, basil’s blog, The Pet Haven Blog, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, The Magical Rose Garden, Faultline USA, stikNstein… has no mercy, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, , CORSARI D’ITALIA, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Apparently the going-outa-business prices at ComUSA for Vista are attractive to some:
Vista Home Basic Upgrade just $59.99 instead of $99.99
Vista Home Premium Upgrade just $99.99 instead of $159.99
Vista Business Upgrade just $119.98 instead of $199.98
Vista Home Premium (full version) just $143.99 instead of $239.99
The article linked above asks, “What would you pay for Vista?”
My answer, about $3.00. After all, I do live in America’s Third World County…
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Miss America 1944: Armed and Dangerous… and rightly so.
Kudos, well deserved (ALL 122 Boy Scout Merit badges? WTG!).
“I am jogging outside in 40 degree freezing cold.”–Envirowhacko Laurie David demonstrating that she doesn’t know the meaning of “freezing cold” or how to use tenses in English–no wonder she’s a member of the irrational cult of AGW. In the same article, not to be outdone in the search for whacko pronouncements, Sheryl Crow opines, “I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit…”
Wipeout!
You can’t make this stuff up.
Leftards: ardent believers that the Fourteenth Amendment means the feds can meddle in anything they want… except when federal law means actually protecting the citizens from invasion.
Finally” something from the Left Coast that isn’t a Hivemind concept: girl doesn’t get to be prom king. Gee, you’d have thought someone, somewhere down the line, would have told her, “Honey, you can’t pass the physical.”
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Arose this a.m. to find the day already eaten by locusts. “Write your own twc post” day. *sigh* See below the cautionary note for today for details.
“A Servant When He Reigneth”
Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book —
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.
An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and mend;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Is Confusion to the end.His feet are swift to tumult,
His hands are slow to toil,
His ears are deaf to reason,
His lips are loud in broil.
He knows no use for power
Except to show his might.
He gives no heed to judgment
Unless it prove him right.Because he served a master
Before his Kingship came,
And hid in all disaster
Behind his master’s name,
So, when his Folly opens
The unnecessary hells,
A Servant when He Reigneth
Throws the blame on some one else.His vows are lightly spoken,
His faith is hard to bind,
His trust is easy boken,
He fears his fellow-kind.
The nearest mob will move him
To break the pledge he gave —
Oh, a Servant when he Reigneth
Is more than ever slave!Rudyard Kipling
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“I think I really hate Vista: it doesn’t know how to network properly at all.”–Jerry Pournelle
Or, from another source, perhaps this is the definitive comment:
*heh*
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe. 😉
When I first heard of the VA Tech shootings, my response was sadness tinged with horror. Knowing full well the tendency of the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind and politicians *spit* to descend on such events as packs of jackals and hyenas (you choose which class is characterized by which animal–I’ve made my choices *sigh*), I decided to severely limit my exposure to pronouncements made or promoted by those creatures. Still, whiffling around the fringes, reading commentary by folks I do have some degree of confidence in and respect for, I’ve arrived at an interim position on the shootings. (My “final” position–itself subject to change based on more information–will not firm up until a more settled set of information’s available.)
Some perspective in advance, if you’ll follow along. Yes, the shootings were horrible, eveil acts, but they are certainly not the first such, nor are they the most horrific acts of a single person in mass murder in this country’s history. Not even the most horrific acts of mass murder by a single person against students and teachers. Far worse was the school bombing in Bath, Michigan in 1927 that claimed 45 lives and wounded 58 other people, an act planned, apparently over the course of a year, and carried out by one man, Andrew Kehoe, acting alone. In that instance, there was little, compared to today, media ravaging of the victims’ families and the community, and the only politicians I find mention of were local officials, with the exception of the governor, who worked carrying rubble away during the rescue and recovery operation–behavior we’d cscarecely see from our political rulers today (Do something useful? Not on your life!).
A horrible event in the early 20th century that is one data point in perspective on the VA Tech shootings.
But what of the larger setting wherein the VA Tech shootings took place? What of our society today, and particularly, the subset in our nation’s colleges and universities? Consider the contrast between mass shootings in schools and other violent deaths:
Fatal mass shootings in our nation’s elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and colleges number just over 250 killed in the past 80 years. While shooting violence is worsening, it does not approach the toll of other violence on our college youth.
We all seem unable to assimilate the fact that thousands of college students are dying violently each year. About 1,100 students each and every year will commit suicide, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and four of every five young people who attempt suicide exhibit clear warning signs.
The rate of drug overdoses among teens and young adults more than doubled over the five-year period from 1999 to 2004, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. And each year, on average, there are 1,400 drinking-related deaths among college students nationwide, according to the Task Force on College Drinking. The Task Force estimates that binge drinking by college students also contributes to 70,000 cases of sexual assault or rape each year.
Placed in this setting, almost 80 times as many college and university students are killed each year as a result of our sick society as were killed in the VA Tech shootings. Almost 80 times as many.
Let that sink in. Is that a sign of a sick society or what?
From the same article cited above, this:
Richard Arum, professor of sociology and education at New York University, offers one opinion on the root causes: “I would argue that discipline in our schools earlier is not working. And young men, in particular, are not internalizing the norms and values of our society. And periodically, you get acute manifestations of this, as in these rampage school shootings.”
Well, Richard Arum is wrong. It is precisely because young men are internalizing the norms of our contemporary society that these things take place. Both from the perspective of the perpetrators of these horrific acts and from the perspective of responses to these horrific acts. Youth culture is pervaded with celebrations of nihilistic, brutal, degrading violence. Just listen to all the hip-hop or rap you can stomach if you don’t believe me.
Contemporary youth culture is also pervaded with the “no responsibility” ethos. WATCH others being shot (knowing full well you could be next) and do nothing except perhaps run away or hide. Imagine that happening in a college or university filled with young men back from WWII or Korea. Not an easy task, eh? (Well, it’s not easy for folks who were there in that day to imagine… )
A different school shooting in a different Virginia institution of higher learning five years ago turned out quite differently… perhaps because two students there went to their cars when they heard the first shots… and returned armed.
Let me take this a step further. I can NOT imagine ANY “gunman” entering the west Texas schoolhouse where my grandfather and eight of his brothers were in class, succeeding in getting off more than a couple of shots before being put down. In fact, any “gunman” entertaining such thoughts would be doing so with nothing but suicide in mind from the get-go. Sure, the boys’ long guns would all have been stored in the back of the room, but I have no doubt whatever that even the youngest (whose hunting knife I still have and treasure) of the brothers would have been all over such a suicidal “gunman” even if armed with nothing so much as a writing slate. And as for them dutifully lining up like sheep for the slaughter? Not a chance. Not a snowball’s chance in hell.
After all, each one of them was in training to be men.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Right Pundits, 123beta, Maggie’s Notebook, basil’s blog, The Pet Haven Blog, Shadowscope, MONICA, Stuck On Stupid, Phastidio.net, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, Pet’s Garden Blog, Faultline USA, Sujet- Celebrities, Woman Honor Thyself, Stageleft, , stikNstein… has no mercy, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, and Dumb Ox Daily News, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.