David – Page 387 – third world county

April 13, 2007April 18, 2007

“Thank You” Card to Sponsors of Al-Qaeda!

Now, most readers of this blog know I hold a contrarian view of the Iraq adventure, but let me restate it here: We can put this one in the “Win” column fairly quickly, but it would require some common sense, some (not even much, to tell the truth) knowledge of the history and culture of the area and a little simple honesty.

1.) Acknowledge the simple fact of the matter that NO ONE in nearly the past millennium and a half has managed to “peacefully” rule that region without either separating the barbaric inhabitants who nurture generational tribal and religious feuds (partitioning) OR ruling them with a bloody fist of iron. We are unlikely–for many reasons–to be bloody-minded enough to accomplish the latter, so partitioning the area is the only historically proven method left to us, but how to do it?

2.) Allow the Kurds to rule their own traditional homelands and give them all the help–materiel and personnel–needed to assure their safety and independence. They are the ONLY peope group in the region who are likely to be not only allies but actually friends to the U.S., for many reasons, not the least of which is their exceptional (for the area) tradition of religious and political tolerance.

3.) Send the savage kiddies to their rooms–separate the Sunnis and Shiites (since those religious distinctions also would allow separating almost all the tribal rivalries as well). Let ’em know that any fighting amongst themselves thereafter is on their own heads, but they are NOT to touch the oil-producing regions on pain of death. Period. Sure, allow fair oil revenue sharing, but messing about with the oil production would result in the Wrath of God (or at least His iron fist in the form of American bombs) descending upon the silly little savages.

There you have it: the prescription for a Win in Iraq… a bitter pill to the Jacobian lotus eaters in the Bush administration, and utterly unacceptable to the Defeatocrats, as well. Therefore, completely unworkable for purely political reasons.

The story of contemporary American politics: if it makes sense, it is verboten.

April 13, 2007April 13, 2007

Imus, Youmus, Wemus–can’t we all just get along-us?

I have resisted the Don Imus brouhaha, not because I don’t have a dog that wants to be in the fight, but because I’ve been vacillating between amusement and disgust at how it’s unfolded.

As it turns out, Imus was rightly cancelled (in both his main gigs), but for the wrong reasons. I’ve read and listened to (yeh, I even watched some fluff heads on TV) as much of the commentary as I could stomach, and the general consensus is that he was “fired” for his racist remarks that were in some way ioffensive to a broad group of people, a whole “race”.

And that’s just plain flat the wrong reason. He ought to have been forced to grovel before the people he had insulted, then “fired”. And by “people he had insulted” I mean the women of the Rutgers basketball team and thenm alone. (Ann Coulter is the only talking head I read who seemed to come close to making sense on this. In fact, she agreed with my comments to my Wonder Woman the other day, almost right on downthe line. :-)) Imus did NOT insult all black women (or even all blacks–I’m not going to call ’em “Afro-Americans because I despise all such hyphenated-American designations. Heck, the number of “Afro-Americans” approaches zero. Most are “Afro-Americans” to the same degree that I’m a “Celtic-American”. Fuggedaboutit.). He insulted a specific group of women who were not a fair target for such. “Public people”–those with egos the size of Texas–make fair targets for all kinds of insults (think darned near any politician *spit*, media celebrity, etc.) The Rutgers women are not in that class and should have been afforded the common decency dur the common man (yeh, and if some sexist woman out there dislikes my generic use of “man” then just bite me).

BTW, I have just one major disagreement with Coulter’s take on the issue, and that’s with her tag line:

Now, if Imus had called the basketball players “fat, race-baiting black men with clownish hairstyles,” well, then perhaps Sharpton would be owed an apology.

Ann’s pooed the scrooch with that sentence. Better would have been,

“Now, if Imus had called Al Sharpton–that race-baiting, lying racist— ‘a nappy-headed ho’ then nappy-headed hos everywhere whould have been owed an apology.”

Of course ALL this Imus flap, especially the argument that he insulted ALL black women– begs the question, “Where’s the outrage over all the trash talk in ‘rap’?” Oh, that’s right. I forgot. Double standard and all that. Just as blacks can say the “N” word with impunity (while anyone else is stripped bare, smeared with honey and staked out on an ant bed, then dragged behind a boat in shark-infested water as chum for doing so), so is it just fine and dandy, hunky dory for black rap “artists” *spit* to heap vile vituperation on the heads of women, because, well, they’re black, right?

That’s what the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind apparently thinks.

(Update: Oh, BTW, I’ve never felt Imus was anything but a bag of noxious hot air, a worthless waste of oxygen. I never understood how anyone could listen to his line of B.S. for more than five minutes, and became convinced that those who did suffered brain damage resulting in an ability to continue to listen to his line. Ditto for Howard Stern and half a ditto for O’Reilly. Am of about the same opinion about Rush Limbaugh as O’Reilly: both arrogant air bags with appeal to some, but blind pigs who do manage to find an acorn now and then, which still makes them better than 99.999% of Mass Media Podpeople.)

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Jo’s Cafe, Faultline USA, Allie Is Wired, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, The Yankee Sailor, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

April 13, 2007April 13, 2007

Six of one…

…half a dozen of another.

This is a sorta halfway almost compgeeky post, so if that’s not to your taste, read on down the page… And yeh, yeh, I know: two days in a row for computer-related posts. What can I say except, “[I] don’t get around much any more… ” *heh*

Oh, it’s also the weekend linkfest post, so I hope you know how to handle that. If not, read the foot of the post.

So, Lovely Daughter dropped off a discarded computer a friend of hers was trying to dump. Not much of a comp, frankly. 450Mhz box that doesn’t even have a couple hundred megs of memory, a 20GB HD and an apparently 8-year-old AGP 1X vidcard. And someone had loaded WinXP Pro on it… IOW, it’s a tad of a slug, but in a nice way. ;-).

“Well,” thought I, “Why not try to see if it can be made usable?”

First off: scrubbing the former user’s personal data. It looks like they made a stab at deleting personal documents, but lots was left behind, and a quick check reveals the empty space was NOT erased with a good DoD or other compliant eraser software, so… overwrite the empty/slack space, etc., as well as erase other pieces of personal data left behind.

Blow out the dust bunnies. Some brought to mind the recent feast North Korea’s high pandjandrum made of a prize-winning rabbit LOANED to North Korea for stud purposes. The thing weighed in at around 23 pounds. Yep. These reminded me of that. BIG, scary dust bunnies.

*heh*

Hmmm… Doesn’t look like the WinXP Pro install has ever been updated. Dozens and dozens (and DOZENS!) of security patches missing. Ahhh! Perhaps this is why! “Windows Geniune Advantage” (AKA “Microsoft Genuine ‘Screw You'” *heh*) says it’s not a legit copy of Windows. Let’s see… Yep. It’s an install of a “volume licensing” copy that’s had the license key invalidated by Microsoft (presumably because of improper usage). “Of course,” thought I, “there were plenty of legitimate uses of that license before it was invalidated, and surely Lovely Daughter’s friend was one of those!”

Still, I had to update everything using Bigfix (because Shavlik Netchk Protect was just too big and memory hungry to install and use on this machine) just to make it as “secure” as Microsoft Windows XP can be, installed a complete (ad hoc) suite of security products as well, of course. Then…

Aw heck, why not… Used a spare volume licensing key I have for WinXP Pro and changed the license/registration info in the Registry. Downloaded the full XP-SP2 and IE7 (because whoever gets this will probably wanna surf using IE, unless I can drum Opera into their heads. :-)). Sure enough, SP2 installed just fine. IE7 ran the validation tool and then installed (though it took forEVer!). Not bad.

But it sure does need more memory! *sheesh!*

Somehow, I kinda think I’d be doing the eventual user a favor to scrub the thing and install Linux or BSD. I dunno. Add memory and another hard drive and set it up to dual boot? I dunno… 512MB of memory for the thing might set me back $50, and the whole box is almost worth that, as it is. (Well, parting it out might yield more. The CDRW drive is not bad, but nice DVDRW drives are in the $30 range now, and the rest of it… I dunno. $50 more bucks for some decent memory might not be good sense.)

On this “old” computer (well, slightly older and more underpowered than my venerable 500Mhz Win2K comp with 512MB and five times the storage, LOTS better graphics, etc.–a computer that is still usable), the “essentials”–IMO–for a WinXP comp:

Continue reading “Six of one…”

April 12, 2007

Stop the ACLU: Parents Can Stop ACLU Lawsuit Against Wilson Co. Schools

Thanks to Lobo for this week’s blogburst!

April 11, 2007 10:08 PM
NewsChannel5.com

A federal judge has granted permission to a group of parents to try to stop a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

The suit claims Wilson County schools violated constitutional separation of church and state.
It alleges Lakeview Elementary school in Mt. Juliet and the Wilson County school board endorsed and promoted religious activities on campus that led to constitutional violations.

Very short article, lacking much information, but here is an Oct.2006 piece from Alain’s Newsletter that gives a bit more detail.

Old Hickory, TN Ã¢â‚¬â€œ

U.S. Senate candidate Bob Corker today said the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is woefully wrong to have filed what he called a “frivolous liberal lawsuit” against the Wilson County School District alleging a morning prayer endorsed by Lakeview Elementary School officials is a constitutional violation of church-state separation.

“When the President declared September 14, 2001 Ã¢â‚¬â€ just two days after the attacks of 9-11 Ã¢â‚¬â€ a National Day of Prayer, no one sued him for crossing some arbitrary line between church and state,” said Corker. “We just bowed our heads and prayed. When a school in Wilson County or anywhere in our country allows children to do the same on the National Day of Prayer, or at a gathering at the flagpole, the courts ought to stay out of the way.”

Corker said he supports the efforts of Mt. Juliet Commissioner Glen Linthicum, who said it was time for the community to take a stand against the ACLU lawsuit recently filed against the Wilson County School District. Linthicum co-sponsored a resolution unanimously approved last Monday night by the Mt. Juliet City Commission that encourages the elementary school and the Wilson School District to fight for their rights to religious expression.

“Like many parents across our state, I pray for my family everyday,” Corker stated. “We should never force anyone to believe a certain faith or pray a certain way,” Corker continued, “but if a school decides to set aside some time to allow children who wish to pray to do so, we ought to support that school and community. That is precisely what it means to protect our freedom of religious expression Ã¢â‚¬â€ and I will fight to do just that in the U.S. Senate if elected.”

It appears that the ACLU has set it’s sights on this school district…The ACLU Targets Christians

This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 240 blogs already on-board.

April 11, 2007April 11, 2007

Wednesday OTA/Bits ‘n’ Pieces

Bits n pieces below the linkfest slug

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A hodge podge of things I’ve tripped over CLICKing around recently:

From Chaos Manor View,

There are two parts to education. One is learning what one must know to get along in life. This is often fairly dull work, but necessary. Among these are the ability to read, write, and cipher; the traditional goals of the first six grades of public school at a time when fewer than half the children were expected to go beyond six grades. We can have some debate on what “read, write, and cipher” mean, but not a lot. By read one means at least read and understand newspapers, job application notices, neighborhood flyers, and most popular books: in other words, to be able to read any word one already knows or has heard often. By write one we usually mean at least the ability to write coherent letters to one’s friends and families, and we usually hope for more than that. By cipher we mean being able to make change and do simple calculations: in other words, to know basic arithmetic…

Alien invasion as bio war? Duh. Chief among the reasons for controlling our borders, for requiring everyone who enter do so within our legal strictures are disease control, exclusion of known criminals, etc. President Bush’s reiterated aspirations of open borders and amnesty for illegals is just plain flat irresponsible and contributing to public harm in more ways than simply economic.

Shame on him.

And,

Is there any point in pretending that CO2 increases will be catastrophic? Or could they be modest and on balance beneficial? India has warmed during the second half of the 20th century, and agricultural output has increased greatly. Infectious diseases like malaria are a matter not so much of temperature as poverty and public-health policies (like eliminating DDT). Exposure to cold is generally found to be both more dangerous and less comfortable…

…The conclusion of the late climate scientist Roger RevelleÃ¢â‚¬â€Al Gore’s supposed mentorÃ¢â‚¬â€is worth pondering: the evidence for global warming thus far doesn’t warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate.

Read the article, even if it is in NewsweAk…

Just stop it! Opening yourself to hacking at insecure hotspots, that is. Easily-accessible article at PCMag online. Your laptop will thank you. *heh*

I sent this to my favorite children’s librarian. Orson Scott Card’s review of what sounds like a very interesting juvie, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Sounds like it’d be interesting to young readers, so if you have some in your family, CLICK on over and see if you come away thinking the same.

Oh, and while you’re at it, check out OSC’s production of Taming of the Shrew. (Just click on the link on the Hatrack page.) Be patient. Each “half” is about 150+ MB, so a thick pipe is pretty much required.

Do you believe the U.S. system of taxation is fair? Take the survey.

More Kelo fallout. *sigh* THIS is why the Framers wrote the Second Amendment… And more takings in the wind: the Army set to seize land homesteaded in the 19th century and continually in use since that time.

April 9, 2007

Free Speech, NOT “Free Beer”

Leaning Straight Up has an interesting post (tracked back here over the weekend) dealing with a case of misunderstanding of “free speech”. I thought it might be useful to expand on that post a little here, so here’s the key piece I thought missing there:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Now, the language seems very clear, but lawyers being what they are, politicians *spit* being what they are and people in general being what they are, the clear meaning of the words–especially as filtered through the ill-thought-out and often improperly-applied (IMO) 14th amendment–has not survived to this day.

The clear context of “freedom of speech” noted in the amendment is protection of religious and political SPEECH. (The exercise of one’s religious beliefs must include speaking about it, you know). Press and assembly rights covered too, but I’m concerned here about speech. And by “speech” I do NOT mean anything other than actual speech or its obvious analog–given a hat tip by the Framers–of the written word.

Of course the courts have found it necessary to validate their existences by “explaining” speech to mean darned near anything some loony tune can vaguely conceptualize, and so most folks now think of grunts and squeals and thrown excrement as constitutionally protected speech.

But such things are NOT constitutionally protected speech in any world in which a rational reading of the constitution or the debates about the Framing or the amendments is taken to account. No, such things are only constitutionally protected speech is a world dominated by “reality-based” fantasy.

Go read the Leaning Straight Up post. Apply these words to the situation he outlines. Heck, the situation he outlines–folks crying “Wolf” about a boycott of The View sponsors as a way of reining in Rosie O’Donnell’s wild and irresponsible antics–wouldn’t even exist if a society of adults were to actually apply the First Amendment…

Of course, such a society would lack a few other things, like BOTH the Republican’t and Democrappic parties, the ACLU and nearly the entire apparatus of the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind.