Category: Blogroll

Linkfest info below

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I’ve found Newsmax to be pretty consistently lax with the facts. Oh, the facts are there, but I have to dig for them to remove the dlant of Newsmax’s “reporting”–just a right-wing version of typical left wing media tactics.

That’s not smart of Newsmax, IMO. Immitating liars to counter their lies just doesn’t work well.

Here’s an example from a recent email:

“NewsMax Poll: Americans Want Fred Thompson in ’08”

Oh, really? And how do you know that, Newsmax?

“An Internet poll sponsored by NewsMax.com reveals that Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of Fred Thompson running for president in 2008.

Our “Should Fred Thompson Run for President” poll of nearly 100,000 people also disclosed that the former senator from Tennessee and “Law & Order” star would trounce all leading Republican candidates in a primary.”

Look, lefties are NOT going to get Newsmax mail (I’m not sure why I do, since I don’t consider myself a “righty”), let alone participate in a poll that is run by Newsmax. So the results were (nearly all) all self-selected Newsmax right-wing readers, OK? I didn’t take the poll (never do participate in their things). I don’t fit their demographic all that well.

So, what else did this poll of self-selected right-wingers determine? That among this self-selected (NOT random sample) group of about 100,000 the Q/A went something like this:

1) What is your overall opinion of Fred Thompson?
Favorable: 94 percent
Unfavorable: 2 percent
No Opinion: 4 percent

2) Is Fred Thompson your candidate for president in 2008?
Yes: 77 percent
No: 23 percent

3) In the following field, who is your 2008 candidate?
John McCain: 1.66 percent
Condi Rice: 2.64 percent
Mike Huckabee: .99 percent
Miss Romney: 4.14 percent
Rudy Giuliani: 7.53 percent
Fred Thompson: 62.54 percent
Tom Tancredo: 2.78 percent
Ron Paul: 1.25 percent
Newt Gingrich: 12.25 percent
Duncan Hunter: 1.23 percent
Sam Brownback: .97 percent
Other: 1.99 percent

4) In a Republican primary of the following, who would you vote for?
Rudy Giuliani: 7 percent
John McCain: 2 percent
Newt Gingrich: 13 percent
Fred Thompson: 78 percent

5) If the 2008 President race was between Fred Thompson & Hillary Clinton, who would you vote for?
Fred Thompson: 98.7 percent
Hillary Clinton: 1.3 percent

Now, it’s certainly encouraging that Fred Thompson is so popular among a list of Republican candidates/potential candidates, cos he’s among the best of a bad lot (Tancredo beats him hands down on the MAJOR issue of border control, but Thompson’s still better than any of the others on that issue, too, from what I can tell).

But. Remember I said “best of a bad lot” and that’s because all of them are still big government types. Just Democraps dragging their heels, as it were, when it comes to government interference in citizens’ daily lives.

But back on point: Newsmax is just another example of too many (how many is too many? One is too many) folks seeking to counter leftist crap who resort to twisting and outright lies at times to counter… twisting and outright lies by the left (all the time).

Taking a poll of right-wingers is all right. Deliberately misstating poll results as referring to “Americans” in general–well, deliberately unless the writer and editor that viewed the thing are genuinely stupid–that’s just stupid and wrong.

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Nothing important, just… Saw an American Heart Association commercial the other day that said for every hour of vigorous exercise, I could (as in “maybe it’ll happen”) live two hours longer.

So? Looks like a poor bet to me. I’d stil have lost an hour

sleeping
blogging
reading
really listening to some fine music (who can really listen and the nuances of good music while grunting and puffing? Oh, rock or some other contemporary so-so music, sure, but even the BeeGees deserve better than having their stuff grunted and puffed through *heh*)
etc.

…to huffing and puffing and grunting and sweating on a hamster wheel (which is all most “vigorous exercise” is *heh*).

Sure, you say, I might have an “extra” hour to do these things as a result of “vigorous exercise”. Might. But I have those hours now, so why waste ’em with time set aside for “vigorous exercise”? Oh, if there’s someplace I want to walk (someplace walking with my Wonder Woman, for example) or some physical work I need to do anyway (yard work–cos I’m a confirmed tightwad) or work on the house, I can view that as exercise and get as much real benefit, perhaps more, since I’d be feeding my soul with something productive instead of playing hamster-on-a-wheel.

No 10K runs for me. Yeh, well, I just don’t care.

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Pet’s Garden Blog, Faultline USA, Sujet- Celebrities, Stageleft, Maggie’s Notebook, Walls of the City, basil’s blog, Helium, Shadowscope, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, The Pet Haven, Right Voices, Pursuing Holiness, and , thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

twc plans for Saturday…

Sleep in–done 😉
Feed The Boys–done
Pick up food order (yeh, semi-bulk “club” buy. Great deal if you can get it)
See Wonder Woman off to her librarian conference
General cleanup (but since it’s raining, the outside gets a pass).
Return last night’s videos (yeh, two rentals, cos was Friday “popcorn night”)*
Maaaaaybe make another “grape medallion” (for a rosette atop a pilaster framing front door–yeh, finally getting around to that lil chore). The first one turned out OK, so why not?–done (yeh, this post has taken close to FOUR HOURS to write, taken a word here, a word there, as things unfold. :-))

Pretty lazy day. No taxes to do, no major chores on my plate (that I can get to–weather is holding some at bay-hey, hey, hey-*heh*)

Blogging today? This is it. NOT gonna spend time and energy on “issues” today. Just. Not.

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*about those videos… one was not as bad as I’d feared, the other a “B- movie” (best rating from my Wonder Woman–decent cgi but crappy plot, dialog and character development. Uneven acting–an old pro sleepwalking his lines gave the best performance). The not too crappy movie was “The Holiday”–and still an unconvincing performance by Cameron Diaz (well, she had a far-too-contrived plot to work with, I’ll give her that). The best part of the movie by far, ecept for the last part of the last scene with the two of them, was the interaction between the Kate Winslet character and the Eli Wallach character. The Kate Winslet/Jack Black duo never made any sense at all, at all. Still, Kate Winslet gave it a decent run for the money. All-in-all, not bad value, since one of the movies was a “free rental”–*heh* And the popcorn was freshly popped. Enjoyed the Gummi-Dinos, too.

Dead at 84. I continue to recommend (as I have often before) that everyone read his Harrison Bergeron. As speculative fiction (a very short story–read it and come back, even), the vision he posits there is becoming a very dread reality in our society today, a bit at a time…

Read it.

Not that I observe every day alike, mind you, but I do observe that this month Friday the Thirteenth does actually fall on a Friday.

Just thought the less observant might appreciate knowing that.

Click here for more.

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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.

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.)

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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.

…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.

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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…”

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 –

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 — just two days after the attacks of 9-11 — 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 — 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.

I so often have nothing but excoriation for politicians *spit* on my blog, that I thought it might be a fair and decent thing to make note of a site that does comment on some good politicians *spit*.

The Internet’s Most Comprehensive Source of U.S. Political Biography,
or,
The Web Site That Tells Where the Dead Politicians are Buried

There. Now don’t say I never noted anything good about politicians.