Category: Blogroll

Two pieces of news this week bore seeds of encouragement that the arrogance of “leaders” (of two different kinds, approximately the same class of persons) may be ameliorated by pressure from the serfs.

The so-called “DREAM Act” which would offer green card status to illegals who entered the U.S. illegally before they turned 16 AND afford their relatives an easy way to bypass normal immigration procedures as well AND extend massive educational benefits not available to American citizens to those same illegal aliens… has been removed from attachment to the defense authorization bill by its sponsor, Dick “Turban” Durbin.

That’s one in the “win column” (for now–it’ll be back) for the little guys who brought massive “market forces” pressure to bear on politicians *spit* this week.

Another piece of news this week offers hope for the little guy. Businesses and individual users faced with the expense of hardware and software upgrades as we as with widespread software and hardware incompatibilities caused by upgrades to Windows Vista (or purchases of new computers with Vista preinstalled) can breathe a sigh of relief–for now.

Microsoft confirmed that changes were made over the summer to make it easier for customers to downgrade to XP. Microsoft changed its business practices so computer makers selling pre-activated Vista machines to order Windows XP discs that could be included with PCs or shipped to customers without requiring additional activation.

So far, major players in the “Get Out of Vista Free Card” offering include Lenovo, Fujitsu, Dell and HP, who will all at the very least include a “recivery” or install CD allowing installation of XP over an existing Vista install, at customer request.

Why would the 1,000-pound gorilla of software back off from killing XP in favor of Vista? Because people have been voting with their wallets to not support the OS the way Me$$y$oft expected.

Just as Dick “Turban” Durbin found too much opposition at grassroots level–enough opposition that even the arrogant elite politicians *spit* he listens to had to take notice–to keep his bill of treason afloat.

Sometimes, in spite of the fast sales pitches, smoke and mirrors, and outright lies, sometimes the sheeple rebel. Both Microsoft and the U.S. Senate have heard (and heeded–for now) the remote echoes of past peasant uprisings and even fainter echoes of the Revolutionary War that led to curtailment of past oppressors’ power.

Moderately encouraging news.

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Thirteen Ways to Have a Better Day

1. Think “happy” thoughts. (e.g.–“The guy who just cut in front of me and slowed down in 70mph traffic slowly lowered into boiling oil.”)

2. Smile at the world (and the world will wonder what the heck you’re up to).

3. Wear better-fitting shoes. (Or go barefoot. Sure, you’ll not be allowed in a McDonalds, but you are looking for a way to better your day, anyway, so that’s a win-win for ya.)

4. Avoid phones. (Don’t 90% of your hassles come from “miscommunications”?)

5. Uffda! Avoid “feeda“. *heh* (I once saw a graphic demonstration of the difference between the Norwegian expressions “uffda” and “feeda“–two guys walking; one pointed at the ground and said, “Uffda!” The other didn’t see “it” in time and said, “Feeda!” So, it’s uffda if you see “it” and feeda if you step in “it”… )

6. Be pleasant to idiots. (See the principle stated above. Uffda! You’ve been warned.)

7. Turn off the “news”. (Again, see numbers 5 and 6. *heh)

8. Eat some ice cream. (The joys of cold, sweetened fat!)

9. Take a nap. (There’s no problem that does not look better from behind closed eyelids.)

10. Laugh at life’s little “funnies”. (“So, two Muslim terrorists walk into a 230-grain bullet traveling at 830 feet per second… ” That’s both funny and economical! Don’tcha just love .45 ACP humor?)

11. Coffee!

12. Beer!

13. Pray “The Serenity Prayer”… Frequently.

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had to kill
BECAUSE THEY REALLY TICKED ME OFF!

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Noted at the Thursday Thirteen Hub and trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Big Dog’s Weblog, The World According to Carl, The Pet Haven Blog, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, The Yankee Sailor, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

*heh* Or, All the “News” That’s Fit to Fake. Or, “How to keep sheeple scared and angry over nothing so the real issues can slide our way.”

Even I get caught up in going apseshit over fake news from time to time. But I do at least try to discern the agendas of the “reports” before jumping on a bandwagon. Read the header on this blog. Currently it reads:

“A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it’s going to get.” — Ian Williams Goddard

I got lucky in the recent story about the student who was reported to have attempted taking a “hoax device” (what a weasel worded hoax charge! “Device”? What? A “hoax spork”? *feh*) into Logan Airport.

Of course it was a “reality-based fantasy” hoax, perpetrated by hoax airport security theater, Mass Media Podpeople hoax news mentality and scaremongering. Predictably, folks all over the place, including blogs, went apeshit.

Will the truth that’s emerging get similar play in the “news”? Of course not. Excerpted from an email to Jerry Pournelle (from someone who’s demonstrated clear credibility in the past):

Last week was Career Week at MIT. As usually happens during such events, the students turned out in high numbers to speak with company representatives and examine the “free” items that are handed out to students who visit certain booths. Star Simpson, an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major who enjoys playing around with electronics, wore a bulky handmade nametag to the event. It consisted of a breadboard, LEDs in the shape of a star (for her name), some wires, and a nine-volt battery. She taped it to her sweatshirt to keep it in place, possibly hoping that the company representatives would better be able to remember a student with a flashing nametag.

She also, as is custom, acquired a number of neat little items from the vendors there. I’ve seen some of what was available – bleach pens for clothing, large foam ‘pills’ that you could squeeze as a method of stress relief, small containers of Play-Doh. She picked up a canister of Play-Doh and placed it in her pocket.

Some time after this – I don’t know how long, sorry – she went to the Logan Airport to meet a friend of hers. I can easily see her losing track of time and being too rushed to put her sweatshirt away before leaving. Or perhaps she forgot the breadboard entirely – just as someone with a bandaged wrist will soon ignore its presence. Or perhaps she thought no one would care – she is from MIT, after all, and the culture here does not regard breadboards as weapons of mass destruction. Or perhaps she thought that it wouldn’t matter, since she knew that she would not be going through the security checkpoint.

For being an all-too-typical space cadet, Star Simpson recieved the scare of her life, was subject to massive false accusations by Mass Media Podpeople and metaphorically pilloried, keelhauled and otherwise villified by folks (including bloggers), near and far. I was lucky, I guess, in that I was immediately suspicious of the reports, simply because ANYYTHING coming from a.) airport security theater is about 90% fantasy and b.) Mass Media Podpeople “reports” approach 100% lies, especially when based on “facts” (that can be twisted into lies) even though c.) anything that sounds too stupid for words IS likely to have been done by the average Joe or Josephine on the street. So I didn’t exactly jump on the villification of Star Simpson Bandwagon. Just luck and cynicism paying off.

Go. Read the whole thing, including Pournelle’s reply. Look into the facts of airpoprt security theater, and think on this: whenever a man (particularly a lowbrow goon employed by the government to suppress the sheeple) does something he knows is wrong, he always claims it is his duty. Yeh, I butchered the centurion’s line from Shaw’s “Antony and Cleopatra” with my paraphrase. Let Shaw sue me.

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Inside the Northwest-Territory, Allie is Wired, Right Celebrity, DeMediacratic Nation, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, , and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Do Not Pass Go

Do Not Collect… on the WalMArt money orders recieved in the mail.

Readers of this blog are not likely to fall for it, but, according to an unconfirmed report from a “usually reliable source” with ties in WallyWorld Central, “Apparently someone in Argentina got ahold of WalMart money orders and is randomly sending them to people in the states. Some people (who need their sign-duh) cashed them and have been arrested.”

Do note:

1.) I have not checked this out further
2.) “WalMArt money orders”? Heck, who woulda thunk it? Are such things for real anyway?

So FWIW, if any of us DO recieve any such things in the mail, let’s all send them to someone else to cash. Preferably a politician *spit*, Mass Media Podperson or some despised neighbor. *heh*

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Only this weekend. By a fortuitous turn of events, I discivered that the only weekly elimination competition show on TV this last season is being shown in a rerun marathon this weekend… on MTV.

So You Think You Can Dance?

Well, these folks certainly can!

No, not that Fred: this one.

I don’t always agree with Fred Reed, but it’s hard to disagree with his take on “higher education” in the U.S.

You’ve heard of Kaplan, which sells prep courses to subvert the SATs. You know, vocabulary lists, drills, that kind of thing. If you are too witless to have acquired a vocabulary by graduation from high school, you memorize a bunch of those word thingies with all those, like, letters in them, and forget them the day after the test, but you’re in.

Which is what the universities want. Universities are about tuition. The money of the barely sentient spends as well as any other, and there are more of them. Like all businesses, the schools, if such they are, want to expand their customer base. They want to spread the wondrous radiance of cultivation over the autistic, the anencephalic, and perhaps the dead, who might be taught by channeling. Pets, arthropods, outcroppings of rock. Furniture. Rosy O’Donnell. George Bush. The potential clientele is large. Empty space, perhaps.

As it turns out, who would have thought it, some kids don’t have vocabularies, and largely don’t have brains, and either can’t read real books or would rather be poisoned, and consequently are totally incapable of study in a university. Thus the pressing need to get them there. It doesn’t make economic sense that a university should lose twenty K a year because some wretched prole can’t read Dick and Jane.

Read the rest at the link.

It’s doubly unfortunate that so many kids who are intellectually (and ethically–more on that another time perhaps*) unsuited to a real college education are steered toward college and away from meaningful work that suits them, because it not only cheats them, it cheats those who are suited, by the process of dumbing classes down to the level that dummies (or even just those who’d otherwise be out of their depth) need to survive.

Oh, well. The ones who are suited to real college work can always make their way to the library and play a few rounds of autodidacticism.

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Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Woman Honor Thyself, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Phastidio.net, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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* Continue reading “Fred on Ed”

All the Bushwah (another word for bullshit that is strikingly appropriate given Fifi Bush’s–that lapdog to successive Mexican presidents–unwavering intent to erase our Southern border) about giving away the store to illegal aliens (70% or more of whom are Mexican illegals with most of the rest entering via our porous Southern border with Mexico), and all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth (along with legal and bureaucratic saber rattling) from Mexican officials about how badly we treat Mexican citizens who just want to come here and steal jobs from Americans (along with ID theft and much, much more), services paid for by American citizens, etc., why not “surrender” to Mexico and… adopt Mexican standards for immigration and Mexican practices for controlling our borders?

Sounds good to me.

This article in Human Events (from last year) outlines the way Mexico views illegal immigrants and touches on how illegals are treated there.

Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign visitors and immigrants are:

• in the country legally;
• have the means to sustain themselves economically;
• not destined to be burdens on society;
• of economic and social benefit to society;
• of good character and have no criminal records; and
• contributors to the general well-being of the nation.

The law also ensures that:

• immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;
• foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;
• foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country’s internal politics;
• foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or deported;
• foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned or deported;
• those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.

Well, those sounds like reasonable steps any country might take to protect its citizens, don’t they?

How about also implementing the same sort of “border patrol” the Mexican government has on its southern border? Yep. Real life, fully armed (with ROI that allow actual, well, use of those arms against invaders) Mexican Army troops.

So what was with all the stuck pig sounds emmanating from Mexican officials when Bush(wah) ordered a token number of National Guard to man small portions of our Southern border as observers, only?

Oh, it would have forced the Mexican government to revamp the “How to Evade Capture and Effect Successful Invasion of the U.S.” comic books it had been offering free to any Mexican who would volunteer to be a part of Mexico’s invasion of the U.S. (OK, so I titled the thing more honestly than the Mexican government did. What will the Mexican government do? Sue me? Good luck, Juan.)

Get those faxes, calls and letters (and visits, if you can) to your congresscritters demanding that the U.S. adopt Mexican immigration policy–and actively, vigorously, diligently enforce it.

And as for Fifi Bush? Let him eat beans.

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Trackposted to Stop the ACLU, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, DeMediacratic Nation, Adam’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Right Truth, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, Adeline and Hazel, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, Church and State, and Public Eye, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Merck has begun marketing its Gardasil vaccine as applicable to young boys. So, what’s the big deal?

Gardasil, Merck’s cervical cancer vaccine, has already been heavily marketed to young girls (actually, to brainwashed soccer moms for their young daughters). The real market for Gardasil is young women who have compromised immune systems. (HPV is almost never a problem for women with uncompromised immune systems, and less so for women who do not engage in risky behaviors like scooting between multiple sex partners, drug use, etc.)

Nevertheless, parents should evaluate whether the vaccine is for their daughters. Side effects include, but are not limited to:

Pain in the area of the injection
Swelling in the are of the injection
Redness in the area of the injection
Fever (or very high fever)
Nausea
Dizziness
Diarrhea
Vomiting
Cough
Toothache
General ill feeling
Joint pain
Trouble sleeping (insomnia)
Stuffy nose
Signs of an allergic reaction, including difficulty breathing, wheezing, an unusual skin rash, itching, or hives

Of course, now that Merck is marketing the stuff for boys, who knows what the side effects may be, since it wasn’t tested on males (see the other “Things You Might Not Know About Gardasil” at the link…)

But why market the vaccine for boys, anyway? Oh, I guess because,

The new male recommendation is based on the notion that boys could get throat cancer if they have oral sex with an HPV-infected girl.

OK, examine that for a second. There are really relatively few cervical cancer cases in American women each year, in fact, in any given year, only 0.0087% of women are even diagnosed with cervical cancer. Look at that percentage carefully again: 0.0087%, that’s 8.7 in 100,000. And of those cases, 8.44 of the 8.7 (per 100,000) new cases are cured by various medical means currently available.

The death rate from cervical cancer is about 4,600 per year in the U.S., a less than the flu. No matter how you slice the annual average 36,000 deaths from flu in the U.S., many, many more than 4,600 are women. So, among many risk factors, HPV is relatively low, even for women, as a health risk factor–and even lower if they do not engage in risky behaviors and behaviors that compromise their immune systems.

So, then, what’s the big risk of throat cancer in boys from exposure to HPV, anyway?

In looking at patients with tumors that were positive for a particular strain of HPV already well-linked to cervical cancer, six or more oral sex partners increased risk for throat cancer by eightfold. [emphasis added]

Wow! That certainly seems scary enough, doesn’t it? But wait a minute… how prevalent is throat cancer anyway, and what are the other risk factors, and how are they weighted?

Approximately 34,000 people in the US will be newly diagnosed with oral cancer in 2007.^*

That’s certainly more than will be diagnosed with cervical cancer–by a factor of about 9. But of course, most of those with throat (and oral) cancers are men.

“HPV has been found to be a factor in about one out of five oral cancers.” OK “a factor” in 20% of throat cancer cases. That’s poretty significant, but still leaves other factors influencing the other 80%, doesn’t it? And note that’s “a factor” in those 20% of cases, indicating that even in those cases, there are others. In fact, “About 90 percent of people who develop these [oral, throat] cancers use some form of tobacco.”

Seems tobacco use is the biggie. In fact, from that source it would seem that at least some (up to 90%?) of those “20% of cases” would likely involve tobacco use, too.

So, Merck’s marketing their Gardasil vaccine to protect boys from this risk? At about $300-$400 per boy (OK, I threw in a nominal–and totally bogus!–$15 per Dr. visit for the three-series shots; it’ll be more, of course)? And what will the customer get? Possible protection for boys who

a. have compromised immune systems
b. are (likely) heavy tobacco users
c. have six or more oral sex partners

Possible protection, because the jury’s still not in on Gardisil’s effectiveness against oral/throat cancers with an HPV linkage.

It is not yet clear if the HPV vaccine now approved for the prevention of cervical cancer in women can also prevent HPV-driven throat cancer or other malignancies that have been linked to HPV infection… ^**

Hmmm, seems like parents actually being parents and teaching their boys (and girls) about the benefits of chastity as opposed to instant gratification, avoid tobacco use and other risky behaviors, etc. would be much more effective, as well as having a beneficial effect on society in general.

But that would require parents to be, well, parents, you know, the responsible adults we all know most parents… are not.

Oh, well. Just scare ’em and give ’em some drugs.

(Oh, and before anyone pipes in with “You just don’t know kids” or some such bullshit, well, yes I do. I’ve not only taught and worked with teenagers, my Wonder Woman and I have raised our own. Responsible parenting is too possible. I learned it from my wife.)

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Trackposted to Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Faultline USA, Right Truth, Nuke’s News & Views, Cao’s Blog, Right Voices, Pursuing Holiness, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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This trailer for an “updated” 300 is as good an intro as I could ask for…

h.t. NealsNuze

Matthew 7: ¹³Enter ye in at the strait* gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; ¹⁴Because strait* is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.–NJKV

The semi-archaic construction above actually carries the meaning of the text better (for those who can read it) than many more modern translations. *sigh*

This makes me think of gates and fences. In the broader context of society today, we have a political elite and those they serve (decidedly NOT the majority of citizens they are tasked to serve!) who have determined to completely eliminate the gate controlling access to the superhighway leading to perdition while at the same time piling heaps of trash in front of the gate that opens onto the narrow path to life.

An example–one of many–can be found in the clear message of those who once again seek to grant amnesty to those who have violated our borders, stolen IDs, jobs and services from citizens and done so with the active aid of a foreign power. ¹, ², ³. Were our political elite–elected for the most part with votes bought from greedy and lazy American sheeple–not blinded by their own greed, lust for power and stupid short-sightedness as well as being completely scornful of their duty to this country’s citizens, the hordes of illegal aliens would soon be flooding over the borders OUT of the U.S.

No, don’t give me the old lying memes that they’re here to do “jobs Americans won’t do” or that it’s impossible to deport 20 million people. *throws the bullshit flag*

1. Eliminate illegals’ jobs by cracking down on those who hire illegals
2. Eliminate social services for illegals that are paid for by tax dollars (private social services that do not use ANY public monies could, of course, continue to aid outlaws if they wished).
3. While cracking down on illegals in the workplace, put those thus caught on chain gangs making little rocks from big rocks until they’re too worn down to EVER consider coming back through the back door.

Do those simple things and the flood of invaders seeking to leave would swamp our borders.

But the other side of that particular “open the wrong gate and block the right gate” behavior by our political elite is that the gate to legal immigration is blocked by piles of bureaucrappic trash. Yes, we do need immigrants, but not to do the grunt work and menial labor that limosine “liberals” and fake “conservatives” want done on their estates and in their lowballing businesses. We need immigrants who have technical skills and real science education since those skills and education factors are lagging in the U.S. Yes, lagging, falling behind, failing to meet our needs as an advanced, technological society. (But that’s another rant–about education.)

Any politician *spit* with more than two active synapses in the thunder mug that sits atop his shoulders could see that offering amnesty (even the backdoor amnesty being considered this week)–rewarding outlaws who wreak havoc on our social structure, economy, national health and medical systems, etc.–is a bad, bad idea. But though the smartest of our politicians *spit* (those who actually do have two or more working synapses in the thunder mugs sitting atop their shoulders) know this, almost all of them are still on the road to tearing down the last of the crumbling walls between us and the barbarian hordes. (And yes, I am aware of a very few statesmen left who seek to preserve what little of the Republic we once had. Too little, too late? Maybe.)

*For those to whom “strait” is a confusing term, “strait” is a perfectly good word that is very different in meaning to “straight”. It is most often used in our less and less literate culture to mean “a narrow channel joining two larger bodies of water,” leaving aside its broader meaning. Strait=narrow (thus “straits” as bodies of water are also often referred to as “narrows”!)

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Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan says the Iraq War is all about the oil.

Really, Alan old boy? Where’s the surplus of $10-per barrel oil, then? Where’re the pumps with $1.00 per gallon gas?

If the war were all about the oil, we’d be awash in oil and Saudi Arabia would be looking at its sponsorship of jihad with an eye to ending that (very viable) excuse for American adventurism and likely (were there to be one single solitary ounce of truth to President Fifi Mohammed Bush’s declaration that we’d hold national sponsors of terrorism accountable) extirpation and total annihilation of the Saudi “royal” house.

If it were all about the oil.

Smart people can be so very, very stupid sometimes. Maybe Alan’s problem is advancing senility.

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