Author: David

[Note: MMPA=”Mass Media Podpeoples’ Army”]

In yesterday’s best of the Web, James Tarranto cites this lil graph that lends itself to some morbid amusement:

“In the original version of this report, Newsweek misquoted Falwell as referring to ‘assault ministry.’ In fact, Falwell was referring to ‘a salt ministry’–a reference to Matthew 5:13, where Jesus says ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’ We regret the error.”–Newsweek online, Feb. 6 issue

Yep. Newsweak. Assigning culturally illiterate (let alone biblically illiterate) reporters with no grounding in the memes* of Western Civilization or the Bible to write about comments of someone who is steeped in the single greatest influence on the English language: the Bible. But never fear, as Rolling Stone’s Jeff Sharlet is equal to the task of matching Newsweak’s cultural illiteracy by accusing Senator Sam Brownback of homosexual-bashing with a reference to Matthew 7:20.

(7:19) Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.(7:20) Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. (KJV)

BTW, ABCNews online doesn’t fare much better in reporting the incident. Apparently no one at ABCNews could find a Bible to check the reference, so they said Brownback’s comment, “”You’ll know them by their fruits,” was a reference to Matthew 7:19, instead of correctly noting it was a close paraphrase of verse 20. If this were an exam, I’d have to mark ABCNews’ article wrong on the facts. Close, but no cigar.

Ahh, it’s just a sign** of the ever-growing cultural illiteracy of American society. Perhaps even of functional illiteracy as well-at least among the members of the MMPA. Who can check the facts when reading is so haaaaarrrrrrd?

h.t. to John at Powerline, who note also that Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University debate team took the Harvard debate team to the cleaners a month ago… *heh*

[*Heck, everyone’s heard of the meme “salt of the earth” haven’t they? Here’s its origin, in context. Makes a difference, doesn’t it?

**Sign, not symptom. A symptom is something a patient can describe to a physician. These folks are so clueless it takes an outside observer to see the signs of their subliteracy in their grunts and squeals.]

A shot across the bow gone awry at Diane’s Stuff and TMH’s Bacon Bits and Basil’s Blog

About that State of the Union address last night… I didn’t watch this one, just as I have not watched the SOTU for several years, now. Instead, I read the transcribed address at the Whitehouse.gov site. I find the “sizzle” factor to be a distraction. How someone delivers a speech has some significance, but I just want the meat. On average, I’d probably give the speech a solid “B.” An “A” tending toward “A-” for the foreign policy section. A Solid “C” for the domestic section, IMO. Read it for yourself and judge the contents.

Good things: Explaining the need to take the fight to the terrorists (for those who simply haven’t been listening since 9/11-apparently just about half the pols in the room. *sigh*). Hitting the old Gray Whore and her pimps with a bitch-slap on the so-called ‘domestic surveillance lies, as in,

…to prevent another attack — based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute — I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America. Previous Presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have, and federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed. The terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

Exactly.

This is an Open Trackback Alliance-affiliated Open Post. Link here and trackback.

See for more linkfests, as well as the Open Trackback Alliance

For an acid spoof of “Brokeback Mountain” (the movie about two homosexual sheepherders—duh, who’d-a thunk o’ that?) see WHYGRR’s “‘Walk the Line’ Re-write Features Bi-Curious Johnny Cash; Earns 9 Oscar Nominations”

Pure snark. And rightly so.

OK, so I’ve resisted moving off blogger for quite some time. Rich, The English Guy, generously offered me hosting and a WordPress setup. Romeocat, of CatHouse Chat, nearly bowled me over when she offered me a Typepad account.

Diane, of Diane’s Stuff managed to do the impossible: she struck me senseless speechless (I had the sense to accept her offer, so it wasn’t “struck senseless”) by sending me the keys to a fully-hosted, already set up WordPress account, complete with the kinds of plugins, etc., that I use. Told me to “…feel free to use any of the features that are available… Or use none of it and tell me to go to hell…”

Like the tag’s an option!

*sheesh!*

When are people going to start living down to my estimation of the human race? I figure it this way: three times excessively generous folk have offered to relieve me of the cross I bear in fiddling and fooling around with Blogspot. Diane went so far as to present me with a fait accompli—just dumped a fully-hosted WordPress site in my lap, ready made, and left it to me to spurn her gracious gift or not.

The people just blow me away! Where does such gracious and generous behavior come from in a race so seemingly bent on self-destruction (after all, consider: in the U.S. alone, nearly half the electorate voted to commit suicide in ’04!)?

It’s darned near enough to fan the embers of hope for human decency! No! It is enough.

Thank you Rich. Thank you Kat. And thank you Diane for compelling me to face my churlishness in turning down their generosity.

OK, it’ll be a little work, and I may lose some linkage and maybe even one of my readers (OK, one of four ain’t that bad). I’m not tickled pink with the WordPress publishing interface, but I have been testing it out enough on the wordpress.com site to know it’s workable, and Diane has populated the plugins folder with some cool things, so…

Over the course of February, I’ll slowly move things over to that site, probably break the (very nice) template she’s loaded two or three times *heh* and finally end up migrating there until I settle on hosting I want permanently (or perhaps even take over that package, if that’s the option she’d like).

Thanks for moving me off top dead center, Diane. I’ve been looking at hosting packages off and on for the last month and just not wanted to drag my sorry [self] outa my comfort zone (yeh, some of the Blogger stuff hurts, but it’s a comfortable, familiar ache, ya know? :-).

I’ll let folks know when the time comes to turn off the lights here, ‘K?

Things are definitely NOT open for business, but here’s a peek: Sucker punched!

Every now and then PCMag has a really good collection of tips on one or another area of computing. Today, my inbox had an e- from PCMag with a link to “80 Super Security Tips “. Well they’re not really “super” but most of them aren’t half bad. Here are links to the first eleven, but watch out for the last one in this list. While having good password cracking software can save your bacon on a Win2K/XP/2003 system where the admin password has become lost or corrupted, there are other less expensive ways (that don’t necessarily offer password cracking temptation or the danger of you appearing to have unethical software–whether your intent is pure or not–in your arsenal. E- me if you need to legitimately crack into a Win2K/XP/2003 system where YOUR admin password’s become corrupted or lost and I’ll point you in the right direction. (Hint: Linux boot CD and password changing utility–free and It Just Works–for most legitimate uses.)

Slapped up on the BB at Conservative Cat

From John Stephenson at Stop the ACLU, this lil heads up:

The newest full page ad from the ACLU over the NSA stuff is released on the eve of the State of the Union. Here is a little sample of their news release. “The State of Our Union Cannot be Strong if the President Continues to Violate the Law,” Says Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU…

Yeh, well, the truth of the matter is that “The State of Our Union Cannot be Strong if…” people can’t see through lying pussbags like Anthony D. Romero. His idiotic assumption of the false antecedent “the President has violated the law [in the commie-created NSA kerfuffle]” meme.

Anyone who has done their homework knows it is the NYT that has definitely vilolated the law, the ACLU and its ilk that continues to aid and abet in the criminal activities of the Old Gray Whore, and a dumbass population that let’s ’em get away with it.

Rick, over at The Real Ugly American gave me a laurel cap to wear as one of his blog picks for January. He’s also tapped a coupla my fav blogs in his “Blog(s) of the Month” post.

Thanks, guy!

Found this via a link over at Woody’s News & Views States of the U.S. I’ve visited or lived in.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Added Note: of those 44 states plus DC, I’ve only actually lived in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. The rest were visited during family forays as a child, other family visits as an adult, vacations and a three-month-long tour with a music group *mumble-mumble* years ago.

Not gonna do the worldmap visits. Heck, that’d only be Canada (a few days), Mexico (too many time to count, including a h.s. band trip) and the Bahamas (once) for me. Not such a much.

Give it a shot. Kinda fun to see 44 states (and DC!) become “red” states for me… 😉

This is an 0pen Post. Link here (especcially with anything that disses John Kerry) and trackback.

Here’s the post link: http://thirdworldcounty.blogspot.com/2006/01/dissing-jean-fraudop.html

And here’s the trackback link: http://www.haloscan.com/tb/mnmus/113871316786467012/

Let’s set aside, for today, my usual Tuesday dissing of Jean Fraud sKerry for his pathological lies, his insulting proclamations, his complete lack of any moral fiber and instead blow a great big fat juicy raspberry his way for his lame filibuster attempt to block the confirmation of Alito.

Did I say “filibuster”? It should be “filibLuster” instead, shouldn’t it? Indeed, if global warmists want to “blame America first” for their pet bugaboo, they need look no further than their own kind’s continued election of Jean Fraud sKerry, Teddy “Swimmer” (Mary Jo Kopeckne could not be reached for comment) Kennedy, Nancy “Harridan” Pelosi, Harry Dumbass Reid and their ilk for a proximal cause.

For some fine dissing of Jean Fraud, see the Free Kerry’s 180 Blogburst, founded and ably managed by Cao. As Cao points pout today, it’s been a year since Jean Fraud promised on national TV to sign an AF-180 and release his records. It’s been 255 days since he purportedly signed an SF-180. But still no public release. Cao started the Free Kerry’s 180 blogburst to keep this lying scumbag’s feet to the fire, to keep this issue continually alive.

Wanna play? Go to Cao‘s and pick up on the game.

Check here for more open posts. (Also good info on doing trackbacks if you need help. Or just drop me a comment or an e- if you need help.)

Technorati : John Kerry, John Kerry’s SF-180, global warming, hot air, liar liar pants on fire

You’ll grin.

Dian’es first foray into sync-ing music and “slideshow” is a real winner!

Enjoy!

I figger Bloggin’ Outloud is a good place to make note of this…