Author: David

A few of the interesting reads that cropped up over the weekend…

Pray for Kender. Seriously. Saw this at Cathouse Chat. Stop a moment and pray for the guy, would ya?

The Tar Pit wrote my Monday “Guard the Borders” post (I just have to improve the security around here! 🙂 when he featured, “Fred Barnes pimps the Bush Amnesty”. Gee. Now do I go ahead and post, “Don’t Read His Lips” for my GTB post or just refer everyone to The Tar Pit? heh

And, how did I miss this important news embedded in Pirates! Man Your Women!’s Thanksgiving Day post???

“You know its [sic] Thanksgiving when the SciFi channel is showing Army of Darkness.”

*sigh*

Found via a link in a post featured in a linkfest that linked to another post that linked to (convoluted enough for ya?): The Neo Con Blogger(TM)’s: “Young Drinkers Thinner Than Non-Drinkers”. His conclusion” “Enter LSU when you’re 20 and drink your butt off for 18 years and you’ll end up skinny, drunk, and stupid!”

Just caught up with this one: Rich Casebolt liveblogging Thanksgiving Day. Okaaaayy… (But really, some good stuff.)

With the upcoming Christmas season, many folks’ll just be too busy to lay back with old favs. Lotsa people like  to catch “It’s a Wonderful Life” (for some reason that has yet to reveal itself to me). For those who like the flick but may run short on time, be sure to save this link to “Frank Cappra’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ in 30 Seconds (and re-enacted by bunnies)”. I can’t tell much difference between it and the original except that it’s shorter and doesn’t have Donna Reed. 😉

Sam’s begging for votes. Help out a tad, ‘K? Meanwhile, check out her post on an activity I could never quite get a handle on.

Diane comments on a “How-to” article written by a speech-impaired piscine. heh And her post on the Asian Bird Flu pretty well reflect my own views (apart from her musical selection :-).

S’all for now. Maybe more later. Time for more coffee.

N.B. The Maryhunter dropped me a note to say his trackback to Guard the Borders: What Is “Practical” Interior Enforcement, Anyway? hadn’t shown up. Hmmm, I’ve heard rumbles of not-talking-nice between Moveable Type(??? Or was it another??) and Haloscan, so that might be the culprit. Anyone else attempting to TB and having no success let me know in comments, ‘K?

Today’s featured blog, introduced to me via a linkfest/tb party, is Liberal Common Sense. More about that is a second, but first, let me point you to the Open Trackback Alliance and Open Trackback Provider blogrolls on my right sidebar. Hit up those blogs listed as Monday (or daily) Open Post bloggers for links to some fine reads you might otherwise miss, won’t you? It’s how I found Liberal Common Sense, and there may be others you’ll enjoy discovering either here, on this open post or elsewhere today. And do trackback posts to this one that you want to bring to others’ attention, eh?

On to Liberal Common Sense. Some folks who have read here for a while might think I dislike liberals, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s just that real liberals can’t be found among the Mass Media Podpeople and Loony Left Moonbats I so often deride for their faux liberal blather.

Lisa Renee, at Liberal Common Sense doesn’t talk “reality based fantasy” but reality based reality, apparently grounded in the kind of liberal thinking John Stuart Mill would recognize, you know, the real thing. Take “Ramsey Clark, Saddam Hussein and the Media”—a post where she sensibly and calmly argues that both the AP and Worldnet Daily twist or selectively report news according to apparent bias. (Granted, she does score the WND article more highly for quantity and quality of info—by a hair. 🙂 Good commentary. As is this, while this whimsical piece is typical of other posts.

So, now you know why Liberal Common Sense is in my blogroll.  It earned a place there.

Open Post. Trackback with a post linked to here, and I’ll work it into an “Around and About” later on today.

And do note open posts at OTA member sites, Committees of Correspondence, The Land of Ozz, Pirates! Man Your Women!, Don Surber, Bloggin’ Outloud, and others as I get around to it or they get their Monday Open Posts up.

For this Open Post, link here and trackback to this link.

Cathouse Chat’s Romeocat has long been a fav “voice” among bloggers for me. Ever since I first visited Cathouse Chat, I’ve known her “voice” was special, and as I grew to know the person behind that voice, I became aware of just how great was the honor to be called her friend.

Thanks for joining the voices, here, Romeocat.

There are two central problems I see facing the preservation of true civil liberties in America today. No matter how committed to preservation of liberty or resolute in defense of liberty anyone might be, commitment and resolution fail in the face of these issues.

1. Most Americans are historically subliterate, if not illiterate and have no idea what the civil liberties the Founders and Framers wrought for us are. That being the case, these historically sub- or illiterate folk fall prey to every manipulation of the media, academia, politicians and such organizations as the ACLU use to poison the well of liberty.
2. The same historically sub- and illiterate folk can vote. *shudder* And do. (Though fortunately, not in as great a number as they could.)

And the problem is exacerbated by the simple fact that so many people grow up in these United States not only historically ignorant but unable to reason. Witness: just about any evening news program or major newspaper, where strings of fallacies are presented as “news” and sheeple eat it right up, completely unaware—as I do not doubt most of the media folks who perpetrate the crimes against reason are—that what they are hearing/seeing/reading is drivel.

Of course, sheeple are not born; they are made. Made by a process of government interference, parental stupidity and laziness, educrats’ “academia nut” theories used as child abuse in the classroom (e.g., “new math”, “look-say”) and increasingly lazy and indifferent students. Add to that an ever more removed-from-reality educational system, and it’s no wonder so many adult Americans are truly functional illiterates, and masses are culturally, historically and even literarily subliterate._1_, _2_, _3_ (Linked: three pdf files comprising the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey, and folks, the news hasn’t improved since then.)

Yes, moral fibre is essential to preserving liberty. But absent the knowledge of true liberties, the enemies of liberty will win over even an “upright” and  fervent, but ignorant, populace.

So, what shall we do? Depending on public education is a recipe for disaster. Even good teachers are stifled, blocked, prevented from, well, teaching by stupid, entrenched bureaucracies and generations of mistaught students who are now… parents. And stupid, entrenched bureaucracies (and by at least one objective criterion—GRE scores—educrats/school administrators are the stupidest people working in the education sector) will NOT “go gently into that good night.”  

*sigh*

We must do it. It would be nice (“‘Nice,’ he says… ” heh) if the words of the song were more substantive, but at least one line rings truer all the time as we travel the road that leads to preservation of true liberty for our children… or not…

“Teach your children well.”

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick’s, the one you’ll know by.

Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can’t know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children’s hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick’s, the one you’ll know by.

Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

Powered by Castpost“Teach your children well… ”

*sigh* (And as I learned when attempting to explain the Fair tax to an older voter recently, “Teach your parents well” also applies.)

They are NOT going to learn what they need to be good citizens of a democratic republic in school. Count on it.

It is up to us. Our children and grandchildren (yes, and in some cases, parents) must learn somewhere if the friends of liberty are  to have the fundamental tools and knowledge—and numbers!—necessary to defeat the foes of liberty.

(Yeh, I expanded on this post in “Comments”. So? 🙂

Linked at: Otimaster, Peakah’s Pub, the rather racy, Where Are My Socks?, Choose life! and Don Surber After Hours… for now. 🙂

[Yes, that is the lyrics and an instrumental cover of the Crosby Stills & Nash piece. Recorded from a midi file collected years ago from… I don’t know where. If you know who created the midi file this mp3 is based on, let me know. Meanwhile, sing along if you have the hankerin’ to. 🙂 ]

I’ve finally, partly because of some recent comments and partly because, well, I guess about time, decided to post a “Commenting/Trackback Policy” CLICK the link if you’re interested. There’s also a “permapost” link in my right sidebar, if anyone cares (or if anyone doesn’t care–so? 🙂

Have fun, folks.

Tripping my blogroll this a.m., I naturally stopped off at my fav “coffee shop”—Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea—for a lil eye-opener. (heh—I typoed “sys-opener” a sec ago. Actually took me a sec to realize it. Need. More. Coffee.) Christine actually hasn’t posted anything new in the past coupla days, but this time I followed a link she provided to…

Cubicle Coffee, but not to the neat Bodum French Press. No, I went straight for the philosophy cubicle.

Rick Lee shows what can be done with Thanksgiving Dinner leftovers. What an eye!

And, of course a stop at Kat’s for a lil weekend music is in order. How ’bout this one from John Prine and Iris Dement? Great Saturday morning fare! Not to your taste, try the Bill Morrissey she has posted.

Kris links to a near death experience at WallyWorld… heh. Oh, and a real nice after action report on her week, too. Don Surber links to a WallyWorld mayhem video. Funny, Don. “The Next Wal-Mart Millionaire” indeed. heh. And another “indeed” just for the heck of it. And,

I oppose the death penalty but it would be awful tempting to pass a law that would allow the people of the United States to elect each year a celebrity to be pelted to death with US magazines.

Droll, Don. But… just for good measure, (three is and even number, right? 🙂 let’s round out the “After hours” posts with, “Christmas 1, PC 0”. heh

Nothing new since Wednesday at Jerry Pournelle’s, but in a mail post that starts with a tomatoe bazooka and ranges through intellectual property rights, computer security, ID and the once (and future??) USSR, there’s plenty for everyone there. I thought about the “Scotch tape foils Sony copy protection” notice in his Current View section for my “Around and About” the other day, but didn’t carry it through… of course, I would never defeat copy protections schemes. No, not I! heh

Carol Platt Liebau rips into a grade school teacher for propagandizing his students. Justifiable ripitude. heh And her succint summation of the Boston “Holiday Tree” flap is bang on, too.

Dan Riehl has commentary on Sir Elton and “Lady David”. Feelin’ a tad snarky, Dan? 🙂 He also includes a link to another video of Wal-Mart Mayhem.

Bret Rogers over at Beat Canvas has already painted his Christmas card for this year. Next step, reproduction/printing… Good job, Brett!

I’m looking forward to The Conservative Cat’s exposés: “What makes John Murtha a better expert on Iraq than Michael Yon” and “The Truth about the Truth Laid Bear thing”, but until then, I can click through the wealth of links he offers on really important topics…

Grab a cuppa joe, sit back and dig into a recent history lesson with Cao’s October 1998: Military Analyst Goes Where Spies Fail to Go, but Her Efforts Are Rejected. Significant stuff, folks.

And check her post on the Padilla indictment (and how the ACLU is attempting to interfere) over at Stop the ACLU.

That’s about it for now. RW stuff needs doing.

Linked at Don Surber After Hours, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, and Stop the ACLU’s Weekend Open Trackbacks..

A few pings from some interesting reads the last coupla days. Check out:

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Due to blogger error (mine, I think, not Blogger’s :-), somehow a trackpack ping to Committees of Correspondence was “etherized”. DO READ: it’s a big deal. In “When I was Ten Years Old” he links to a story you really ought to hear.

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Pajamas Media / Stuck On Stupid Blog The True Meaning Of Thanksgiving, “Christmas Season starts this week beginning with Thanksgiving. While I was looking for something to post this Thursday I ran across this article and decided now is a good time to share it. From The Branson Courier: Thanksgiving is all about to whom the thanks is given…”

[On target]

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T F Stern’s Rantings brings Having an Attitude of Gratitude to the Thanksgiving table. “I’ve heard some demean this truly American holiday by calling it ‘turkey day’, which may well be the reason I decided to write my thoughts about having an attitude of gratitude.”

[I’ll not refer to Thanksgiving Day as “turkey day” either, thanks. 🙂 ]

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Small Town Veteran’s collection of Holiday Quick Hits is a concise list of good reads, and I say that not just because he linked my “An ACLU Thanksgiving”— “Some things I’d excerpt and link to individually if not for the holiday: An ACLU Thanksgiving Wilsongate: Motive, Means, and Opportunity More Mistakes by the Washington Post on the Foreign Fighters Debate General calls Iraq pullout ‘destabilizing’ M.. ”.

[Some good reads. Not a turkey in the bunch]

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Another history lessn, this one from Peakah’s Provocations— Thanksgiving 2005 “Our Founding Father, George Washington, Proclaimed Thanksgiving Day an Official American Holiday… click on picture to read his words…”

[The text of Washington’s 1789 proclamation. Worth reading in its entirety. More than once a year. Out loud. With a bullhorn. In front of an ACLU office.]

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History lesson #3 from California Conservative: The History & Meaning of Thanksgiving “Why and to whom are we giving thanks? There’s more to Thanksgiving than family, feasting and football. All too often the significance of our cherished holidays is forgotten, and replaced by a rewriting of new intentions. As we celebrate this special American holiday, may we also remember the history and be reminded of the true meaning behind it.”

[Another perspective—with depth and a link to a History Channel video]

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Freedom Folks  could repost this for a guard the Borders blogburst: The Toll of Illegal Immigration  â€œMJ shares a horrifying account of the hidden costs and dangers of illegal immigration…”

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More as I see ‘em.

Nah, it’s not because the FEC or some other government weenie bureaucraps might dump on ya. It’s not even because NZ Bear might decide every link to Instapundit is worth 10 links to anyone else (heh–just kidding Bear). No, It’s because this guy is covering every single topic he touches better than anyone else.

Yep. Anyone.

In fact, linking to him in such a way as to open the link in a new window is probably an exercise in futility. You’ll click the link, read posts like this one and never come back.

Oh. Wah.

Not that I’d feel the pain, cos if you did click on over there and get lost in the wealth of good blog and never come back here for my mediocre stuff, I’d feel that I’d served you well and be pleased.

Seriously: that’s one fine blog. I’d love for you to come back, but if I lose your readership to someone like this, I’ll feel that the service I’ve done you was well worth it.

Just noticed. Concurrent with Blogwriter starting to delete portions of posts when uploading or saving locally, posts originally posted via Blogwriter (as of today’s latest bug session) apparetnly canNOT ne edited to apply to the variable-width center column any more…

So, Opera, naturally, sees things correctly, and no other browser I’ve tried does.

I’ll explore this carnage wrought by my used of a beta blogging product as I have time. Meanwhile, it looks like hash is all I have to offer nonOpera users. Either that, or go back to raw html editing in Editpad.

*sigh*

[UPDATE: See The Real Ugly American’s take on Open Trackbacks. Good post. Meat on those bones, bubba. AND due to blogger error (mine, I think, not Blogger’s :-), somehow a trackpack ping to Committees of Correspondence was “etherized”. DO READ: it’s a big deal. In “When I was Ten Years Old” he links to a story you really ought to hear.]

My Wonder Woman’s a children’s librarian, so for our anniversary, we caught “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” I had to wait until the end of the flick for something besides the typical “Harry Heroics” and boffo special effects. That was when Dumbledore spoke to Harry of a time approaching when everyone they knew would be called upon to choose between doing what’s right… or what’s easy.

And then, following the tracks of one linkfest to another to another late last night,—just kinda casually cruisin’ n perusin’—until I lost track of the links in the chain, and I ended up at Alexandra von Maltzan’s All Things Beautiful. There, I found a post to end my evening with: “Loyalty To The Truth on Thanksgiving.” She refers to Hugh Hewitt’s article on how to have a political argument with family (just read it) and then builds a powerful “tribute” to genuine bloggers she knows. From her leadoff:

“The loyalty and integrity we should have as bloggers is to the Truth and liberation of that Truth, and not to the Truth we assign to the political denominations we belong to. And above all to the good old fashioned family values of integrity and loyalty to that Truth which we celebrate at Thanksgiving. Respect for each other as bloggers no matter what we believe in is paramount, and no amount of self gratifying echo chamber rhetoric should come in the way of a good upbringing, and manners, above all being grateful today that we have a voice.”

And you know, the truth she’s talking about applies whether it’s bloggers who are devoted to so-called “important” issues or to personal journaling—or even to food and recipes (“Do YOU credit the sources of your recipes every time, David? Well, do you?”) It’s a post I believe well worth reading in its entirety. In fact, I archived the text just in case her permalink should ever prove less than permanent, so I can return to that one statement from time to time.

The quote the other day from Jo’s Cafe? It’s worth repeating in this context:

“What is most important is who you are and does your blog reflect you… ”

There are the hard choices… and the easy ones. When we’re blogging, the hard choices sometimes demand introspection… just to know they really are there. “Where is my bias? What do I believe and why?” If we ever allow our biases or our egos to persuade us to shade the truth, to twist it or even to outright lie, then we become the little people who populate the boob tube opinion programs calling themselves “news”.

Just a thought. Read the two posts linked above for better presentations.

In a strangely related post dealing metaphorically with blog ethics, The Crazy Rants of Samatha Burns reports, Source Code Stolen From NZ Bear.

heh

Indeed.

Consider this my Friday “Open all weekend” Open Post with The Open Trackback Alliance

Link to this URL:

http://thirdworldcounty.blogspot.com/2005/11/riffing-off-dumbledore.html

Trackback to this URI:

http://www.haloscan.com/tb/mnmus/113293642547681487/

See Ferdy’s Open Trackbacks Pingposters List here.

I’ll try to do a frontpage post rounding up interesting pings posted here, later.

PingLinked at: NIF, Is It Just Me?, The Blue State Conservatives(apparently not: MT seems to be having trouble accepting trackback pings–but go to BSC and read up, anyway, ‘K?), Conservative Cat, Don Surber After Hours, Right Wing Nation, Stray Dog, Blogin Outloud, TMH’s Bacon Bits