Author: David

With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien and the members of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Continental Congress, 1777.

Time: December 17, 1777

Place: Valley Forge, PA; tent of General Washington; the commons, before the Standard

Dramatis Personae: General George Washington, commander of the Continental Army; James McHenry, General Washington’s secretary; Grimma Wormtongue, attorney for the ACLU

General Washington [writing]: Tomorrow being the day set apart by the honorable Congress for Public Thanksgiving and praise, and duty calling us devoutly to express our grateful acknowledgments to God for the manifold blessings he has granted us, the general directs … that the chaplains perform divine service…

[a knock interrupts, General Washington’s secretary enters]

McHenry: General, a Mr. Wormtongue insists on seeing you immediately.

Washington: What does he want?

McHenry: He says he has a letter from the Pennsylvania delegates to the Continental Congress declaring that any proclamation of thanksgiving cannot make reference to God.

Washington: [stunned silence, then] Show him in.

Wormtongue: General Washington. Thank you for seeing me. I have here a letter enjoining you—

Washington: Give it to me, sir. [Washington reads] I also have these men’s signatures on a proclamation to be read from the Continental Congress giving thanks to God for our victories and asking The Almighty to intercede on our just behalf. How do you then give me this?

Wormtongue: I met with the gentlemen privately and convinced them it would impose an undue coercion upon those who do not hold your—or their—Judeo-Christian religious beliefs, and persuaded them to urge you to issue a non-religious statement of gratitude.

Washington: Who then would you have us express gratitude to, if not to the Providential Hand of the Most High God? I have my authorization and your plea has no virtue. Mr. McHenry? See this man from the camp.

[December 18, in the commons before the Standard, the army assembled. We laggards come in late…]

Washington: …for solemn thanksgiving and praise. That with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor;… and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them (their manifold sins) out of remembrance… ”

[fade]

As a start. Then we could work on the rest of the year.

CLICK HERE for more.

And be sure to catch Jay’s Thanksgiving post at Stop the ACLU, as well as “Happy Thanksgiving, ACLU” at TMH’s Bacon Bits.

Crossposted at Stop the ACLU

Linked at Diane’s Stuff, TMH’s BAcon Bits, Don Surber’s After Hours’ “Anonymous Open Post” (heh), Pajamas Media/Stuck on Stupid, Robinik.net, Basil’s Thanks Giving” and Cao’s Blog

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 130 blogs already onboard.

THE Quote of the Day is from Jo’s Cafe referring to the flap about N.Z. Bear’s arcane and idiosyncratic ranking system, “spam” filtration, etc. Jo hits the nail on the head and then clenches it tight with:

Amen. Preach on sister!

Some posts I’ve *cough* “noticed” today…

Committees of Correspondence says “I support the Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package [well, I would too, except I’m also waging a small guerilla war against a certain ursine… ] Help curb all the unnecessary spending in Congress.”

The Real Ugly American posts, “From France: What Fires? What Riots? It is a matter of riots in certain neighborhoods around urban centers, those infamous ghettos which one finds in American Cities too. Elsewhere life goes on as usual.”

[The peasants are revolting. Now, if they’d simply bathe more often and eschew their goat-loving, woman-stoning, head-chopping ways… ]

Those Bastards! posts: Man, that’s really not holding your liquor. From MSNBC.com: A 32-year-old Norwegian bartender was sentenced to six months in prison Wednesday for serving a customer so much tequila that he fell into a coma and died..

[Yep. But I’d call this as much a case of Darwinian micro-evolution as anything else.]

Once more, from Committees of Correspondence, an observation about the benefits of violence: “One Tin Soldier-The Rest of the Story. One Tin Soldier also known as The Ballad of Billy Joe had a certain vogue once as a Peace Anti-War Song, whose message is, “Violence is Never the Answer”. I never understood that… Today we have those who genuinely believe that “Violence is Never the Answer”. To the Evil in the World they are like Dodos.” 

[Duh, of course. “But the meek shall inherit the earth!” Yep. About 6’x6’x2′ worth… ]

Those Bastards! proclaims, “Man, that’s really not holding your liquor” and notes the story: “A 32-year-old Norwegian bartender was sentenced to six months in prison Wednesday for serving a customer so much tequila that he fell into a coma and died… “

[A case of Darwinian micro-evolution at work, friends. Charge the bartender with being a practicing Neodarwinist and move it right along...]

[And…]

“Strategic Victory Achieved in the Ongoing War Against Israel …The Rafah Border Crossing Deal… How committed are the Palestinians themselves to preventing weapons from being smuggled from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, or from the Gaza Strip…

[And…]

“Evidence the “Paris Riots” Are Actually the “French Intifada” This entry will be updated regularly, because it may be the only comprehensive documentation of the Intifada-like elements of the French rioting.

[Yeh, and since the French don’t have a Charlemagne—oops! Charles Martel… Chalemagne was the grandson— this time, maybe the Mussie’s desire for a “do-over” of The Battle of Tours will go differently for them this time…]

More as I notice ’em… (and do notice that this includes more actual content from me than any number of comparable citations/link doobies at Instapundit and his groupies.)

Linked at bRight and Early and Basil’s Picnic Lunch

The NYT publised an at least halfway sensible piece on… nuclear energy!

Stop the world. I wanna get off and see if it’s just my head spinning or what.

Can Nuclear Power Become Just Another Business?

Well? Can it? Will loony left moonbats let it? And if it does, will some miniscule element of the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army not shoot it in the back? Perhaps even an element with Momentary Sanity “Disorder” at the NYT?

Let’s see:

Other countries, especially China and India, are likely to build more nuclear plants and to do so sooner. “People are talking about China building 20 to 21 new reactors,” said David M. Schanzer, utility analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott.

Well, in a business piece (in a paper notoriously hostile to any business that doesn’t toe its own political correctness line), this is about as good as it gets. Misses the critical information that the (many more than 20 or 21) nuclear power plants already being built by China are almost all of the ultra safe, ultra low waste pebble bed reactor type, which is also much less expensive and less technically demanding than traditional reactors of the type that Three Mile Island conjures up.

Why does the NYT article still play up the investment (and other) risks of nuclear power and ignore the safety, financial advantage and technical ease of building pebble bed reactors?

Maybe because their business section doesn’t talk to their science/technology guys or even that their sci/tech guys aren’t aware of pebble bed reactors. Heck, here’s an MIT site devoted to modular pebble bed reactors. Downsizing even what the Chinese and others are now doing.

A little homework would have improved the NYT article, but then, research in areas foreign to its political agendas isn’t exactly the NYT’s strong suit.

Heck, I’m not even going to do your work for you, it’s so easy. Just google “pebble bed reactor” now that you’ve heard about it from a long-in-the-tooth musician/comptechie.

Linked at Don Surber’s “Of Course There’s an Open Post” and others later…

Today (Wednesday) is Diane’s Thanksgiving Day, since her husband’s working all day tomorrow and it was either “A day early or six days late”. heh.

Soooo?

So how about everyone links to Diane’s Wednesday Open Trackback Alliance Post and tracksback to her with a (early) Thanksgiving Day greeting, eh? She’ll be busy putting the finishing touches on her cornbread stuffing and all the other trimmings, but when she’s able to sit down for some blogging tomorrow evening, it’s be great to have her Open Trackback Alliance post filled with well-wishers. ‘K?

Post on any topic, of course, but please put a “Happy Thanksgiving, Diane” in there somewhere with a link to her. Then trackback to her… and to here (with a link to this post in yours, of course :-).

Here’s the link to Diane’s Open Trackback Alliance Post for Wednesday.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, Diane!

BTW, here’s the trackback URL to Diane’s post, as well:

http://www.dianesstuff.com/wp-trackback.php?p=258

BTW, Stop The ACLU is running an Open Trackback Post/Contest. Trackback to this post’s URL with something like “Contest” somewhere in the subject line and you might win a Stop the ACLU T-shirt. If I win one off this post, I’m gonna ask that they give it to “Joseph” to wear in a live nativity scene scheduled for display on public property, somewhere.

Open Post info: Edit a post (or posts 🙂 of your own that you want to have featured here to include a link to this post. Trackback to my trackback URI (just right-click on “trackback” at the foot of this post and select “copy link” or “copy link location”–however your browser indicates). If your blog software can’t send trackback pings you can use Wizbang’s Standalone Trackback Pinger. If you have trouble, please leave a comment. I’ll try to help. Be sure to reference the Open Trackback Alliance blogroll and the Open Trackback Provider blogroll in my left sidebar. The more you play, the more folks will see your posts!

Linked at Big Daddy, Rempelia Prime, Don Surber (of course :-), The Political Teen. (And a few more after I get some coffee in me… a few hours from now. Need. Sleep.)

No matter WHAT N.Z. Bear says… 🙂 Hey! Tell ya what. I’ll figure a way to work any trackbacks to this post into a long-winded roundup that oughta sail past N.Z. Bear’s “SPAM” filters until he decides to block alla my stuff for some arcane reason. If your trackbacks AND the roundup post are recognized, cool. If not, you’ll at least get some links counted.

heh

Technorati : Thanksgiving

Well, almost…

via Jerry Pournelle’s mail (again):

“Friday, November 18: Richard Stallman Gets in Trouble with UN Security for Wearing a Tin-Foil Hat” (There’s no permalink to the article, so just page down.)

It seems Stallman, who is-to say the least!-an outspoken proponent of privacy and a strong opponent of privacy invasion of any kind, was detained by U.N. security personnel after he spoke, as a U.N. delegate at a conference in Tunisia last week. Seems he had wrapped his RFID-embedded ID badge in tin foil so they couldn’t track his whereabouts without his permission (which he’d never give, anyway).

“During his keynote speech at our panel today, Richard gave a moment’s talk about the RF ID issue, and passed his roll of aluminum foil around the room for others to use. A number of people in the overcrowded-to-the-max standing-room-only meeting room obligingly shielded their own passes. UN Security was in the room, not only to protect us but because of the crowd issue, and was bound to notice. Richard and I delivered our keynotes, followed by shorter talks by the rest of the panel and then open discussion.”

And then…

“…I was busy with the press for two solid hours. So, I didn’t see what happened with Richard. But a whole lot of the people in the room did, and stayed with Richard for the entire process.

Apparently, UN Security would not allow Richard to leave the room.”

They let him in, all right. Well, he let them scan his ID before entering. But even though he was there as a U.N. rep, carrying a U.N. delgate badge at a U.N. sponsored meeting, apparently because he had thwarted the security guys’ measures that would allow them to track him everywhere, they had to act like TSA goons.

Well, duh. Of course they did. As Pournelle is fond of quoting,

“When a stupid man does something he knows is wrong, he always claims it is his duty.”

heh

From Jerry Pournelle… of course. 🙂

In response to a comment “from the symposium” as it were (his email correspondants):

“Our Cultural Weapons of Mass Destruction will indeed bring down militant Islam; but what they do to us first is a matter of concern. If our schools were what they were when I was young I would not be so concerned. A republic needs citizens with a certain level of understanding, and salable skills so they depend on themselves and not the government. Is the trend in that direction now? I wish I had more cheerful news. But it is not yet too late.”

In. Deed.

But N.Z. Bear calls them SPAM… (Does N.Z. Bear know what SPAM is?)

Don Surber has the poop. (Yes, I said “poop” and I meant “poop”. Ya wanna make something of it? 🙂

Track yourself right on back to THIS post, ‘K?

hat tip to Stop the ACLU and a tip o’ the hat to Mr. Big at The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns

Hey, folks! Did you know that Technoratti counts ALL your links? And it has analogs to the N.Z. Bear “communities” and more info about who’s linking to you than you can shake a stick at. Tried Technoratti tags? Easy as pie, and useful, too. TTLB doesn’t “do” Technoratti-style tags.

I wonder how N.Z. Bear would rank in his own ecosystem if everyone took the TTLB script and links off their pages? heh Who really links his posts, anyway?

Just thinkin’ out loud, here…

🙂

Wants to call legitimate posts “spam”? Maybe this will get around his “spam” filters:

Meanwhile, at Stop the ACLU, NZ Bear Killing the Trac*k*back Parties
“Looks like NZ Bear wants to dampen the fun. Don Surber has the details. “

Big Dog’s Weblog says, No Slack For Trac*k*back Open Trac*k*back Party
“Looks like NZ Bear at TTLB has decided that he will filter out tra*ckb*acks so that the links will not count as part of the ecosystem statistics.”

Diane’s stuff is Hosting Wednesday Weekly Open Tra*ckb*ack Alliance Fest, anyway.“There are other Alliance members holding open tra*ckb*ack posts today, you can find them listed on the blogroll as well.”

The Tra*ckb*ack Parties Will Continue “Don Surber has word that Truth Laid Bear is going to start cracking down on Open Trackback parties and not counting those links towards the TLLB ecosystem standings,” according to Adam.

Technorati : Open Trackbacks, SPAM, The Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem

Yeh, yeh: big stinking deal.

I think perhaps I under-react. heh Don Surber has some interesting observations. (I commented with a conflation of two memes. heh. Mind like a steel trap. Rusted a bit… )

Conservative Cat has typically apt comment and points to a few others’ posts, as well.

Dan Riehl hasthe best-possibly the definitive-roundup of comments and resources I’ve seen. Plan on spending some time clicking through and absorbing the thoughts of others.

My take (unscrambling the conflated memes)? OSM~great plan for making $$:

* Step one: Steal underpants
* Step two: ????????????
* Step three: Profit.

OK, maybe it’s a tad more involved. From all indications so far, step 2 apparently involves lots of infighting, appropriating someone else’s registered “trademark” (or “service mark”) and all other kindsa sophomoric stunts.

It’s the wave of the future, kiddies.

Linked at TMH’s Bacon Bits, The Busniess of America is Business

I haven’t featured a “snark for today” post in a while.

James Lileks Screedblog post yesterday is just toooo inspiring to neglect, though… hop on over and spike his bandwidth usage. Here’s a sample:

I never “got into” Vonnegut, or “dug” his work like my “buds,” several of whom pronounced his work as “intense,” so I am not particularly bothered to find he applauds suicide bombers, and thinks they experience “an amazing high.” In the literal sense, perhaps; it’s possible that skull fragments may reach the third floor before they carom off a balcony and patter back to earth.

“…it’s possible that skull fragments may reach the third floor before they carom off a balcony and patter back to earth…”

Well, since I share his view of Vonnegut (James Joyce Lite, as I was wont to label him in my long ago college days), this has me grinning already. And that’s just his leadoff pitch.

Pure gold. Hit it now.

Linked at: Outside the Beltway, Jo’s Cafe, Basil’s Picnic Lunch, bRight and Early

Technorati : James Lileks, Kurt Vonnegut, snark, suicide bombers
Del.icio.us : James Lileks, Kurt Vonnegut, snark, suicide bombers