Housekeeping Note

Due to some email I received recently from a visitor who just didn’t “get” a post of mine, I added the following to the “What is third world county about?” page:

I reserve the right to speak complete nonesense (see “silliness” reference above) if I wish to. Usually, I’ll give some indication that I’m doing so, but if I do write something that’s nonsense, and I don’t hang out some obvious sign that I’m doing so, AND you are simply too dull to catch it, no problems. We’ll both just blame your mother.

Are we clear now?

*heh*

“Snow” Day Again

Late start today. Not that the whole county shut down, but since my Wonder Woman had a “snow” day, I’ve kept things close in and we’ve worked on a little advance Spring Cleaning. I’ve been in storage areas of my office that haven’t seen the light of day for years. Two whole drawersfull of stuff I simply dumped in a box for later sorting (and yes, I will do that!) and labeled, “Junk from 2 drawers”–*heh*

Once whole LARGE file cabinet drawerfull of ancient floppies. Need to sort through them all, archive (and enter into database that’s stored in the same place!) all the data I should/want to keep and burn to multiple CDRs or a couple of (duplicate) DVDs for archiving, then format or toss (or even archive, sorted and labeled) the floppies in a more easily accessible fashion.

To give you an idea: I have 3.5″ and 5.25″ floppies going back through all the DOSes to about DOS 3, back further to TRSDOS floppies–and even some Mac software/archives.

That stuff really needed sorting out!

(My paper files were mostly sorted some weeks ago.)

Then, there’s the “surface” storage… shelves and such like. Most of the old music, language, history, etc., books have already been boxed (and labeled and etc.), but there’re still five very, very full shelves of books n such that need sorting out.

Then, of course, I need to clean and sort out the bookshelves in the living room for refiling with previously boxed books…

This Spring cleaning thing is pretty heavy stuff (book boxes, get it? :-))!

Oh, well, at least I had some “deck beer” to lighten the load. (“Deck beer”–over-sugared some beer for bottle conditioning. Temnps outside have been mostly below freezing for a while… so, placed a bunch of bottles of this beer outside for conditioning after only 3 days. It’s all turned out very, very good. Whatta save!)


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A Moving Experience

Nah, not an emotionally moving experience, just a (so far) successful one.

BlueHost just ain’t half bad, folks. The support folks seem to actually be invested in providing… service!?!

Quite a change from what I had grown accustomed to elsewhere.

We’ll see how this all turns out. So far, I seem to have my blog mostly functional (save for those issues noted in the Thursday Thirteen post yesterday) and so have enabled redirect at my domain management service… we’ll see.

Canceling my Fat(head)cow “Sucks Dead Bunnies Through a Straw” account either today or tomorrow. That should put paid to the whole shoddy experience there.

Of course, I fully expect the billing folks I talk to to refer to the “six months’ free service” I supposedly have coming (promised by several “support” folks) for all the hassles Fastcow has caused in the past. But why would I want even “free” service somewhere I’m sure to get more BAD service? It’s like getting a coupon for “All You Can Eat” from a restaurant where one got food poisoning. Who’d want it?

*heh*

Housekeeping Note

Over the next few days, third world county may be up, may be down, may be mixmastered, hashed, folded, spindled and mutilated, but I project it will be back in full flower by Monday, at least. [Sooner, looks like. Still some rough edges as of 11:30a.m. central time on the 13th, but at least the thing loads, now. Again. Was just peachy keen fine last night @11:00, then… reloaded and all was not well. Now better, nearly peachy keen again. Must be the dreadlock wigs and chicken bone rattles at BlueHost support. *heh*]

Thanks for being patient. Just some housekeeping and then calling in the movers. Finally butchering the Fatcow.

[Update: you may notice some screwy category listings on blogposts that were formerly well-*a-hem*-categorized (in my unimpeachable categories *heh*). Don’t know exactly what I’ll do about that. Hate to lose the search ability it gave me–and y’all–but going back to tag each of over 3,300 posts would be a nightmare. Have to see what a reimport of wp-postmeta database might do… Also, user info seems a tad scambled. Oh. Well. It’s still better than when Fat(head)cow (sucks dead bunnies through a straw) screwed up on me transferring twc from one Fat(head)cow (sucks dead bunnies through a straw) account to another in January.]

Torching straw men, hammering at feet of clay

(With apologies to T.S. Eliot)

[These] are the hollow men
[These] are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.

Alexandra asked for a “10 Worst Americans” list. In her post, she further elaborates using the term “evil” to describe characteristics of “worst” Americans. Most of my “worst Americans” (though not all) fit the mangling of T.S. Eliot’s words above.

With nearly 230 years’ worth of people who have had a negative impact on society in America, I could name ten and not even scratch the surface. But here, mostly in no great order, are ten of the worst. Note: Since there are so many “worst Americans” I’ve included a few classes of “worst Americans” that embrace some who simply cannot be drawn out from the crowd around them. “So great a host… “

An obvious pick would be Jean Fraud sKerry. Along with his more intelligent and able fellow scum, Billary Clinton (yeh, no one could doubt that unholy wedlock has made them one after the way they lied, cheated and slandered their way in and out of office over and over), Jean Fraud has defined filthy, low down dirty lying, cheating. scumbag politics for the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.

There: two in one.

(Still no ranking. One could lump Harry Pelosi Kennedy in the mix with Jean Fraud and Billary and not really notice any personality change.)

Next, who can doubt Dan Blather, his ilk and apologists (Mass Media Podpeople and Loony Left Moonbats one and all) occupy slot number three? I say all these “people” together comprise one of the worst Americans because they “think” with a group mind. Dittoheads are anarchistic individualists next to the “commie fag junkie” (to steal a great meme from George Carlin) hive.

Michael Moore. Planet-sized ego encased in lard. Liar, and proud of it. Embodies all the worst memes of the Loony Left Moonbat brigade and Mass Media Podpeople’s Army in one big fat slob.

Hollyweird. A sub-class of the Mass Media Podpeople/Loony Left Moonbat hive mind, differentiated only by its even greater ego and divorce from reality. Orbiting Pluto, it thinks itself the Center of the Universe. Discrete elements of the Hollyweird Hive Mind are not discernable. It is all one “person”. Any cells that begin to differentiate themselves from the Hollyweird Hive Mind are attacked as a cancer on the Body Beautiful. Those such as Mel Gibson who have enough stength to survive outside the Hollyweird Hive Mind (strength=character+financial resources+an ability to, uhm, think) may find success i n their ostracization.

There, that’s five, all fitting very nicely the definition of “evil” proposed by M. Scott Peck in “People of the Lie”.

Five more? OK, some classes and individuals.

Two classes of “worst Americans”-Public school administrators and educrats. Together, these two classes may be doing more to destroy America all other persons combined. Educrats-those self- and governmentally-appointed arbiters of What Shall Be Taught, and How-rule public education from afar with massive stupidity. While some may be truly evil, most are simply stupidly arrogant and arrogantly stupid. Consider all the dictates issuing from Washington D.C. (influenced by idiots running college “teacher education” programs) that govern what can and cannot be taught (and how) in your local school district. What activities are allowed and what are prohibited. Classroom disclipline, class makeup, curriculum, and more. Coming from a Congress and bureaucratic swamp that’s responsible for supervising the WORST public schools in the nation. That makes sense.

And public school administrators? Arguably the stupidest people in education. Seriously. I’d put my GRE scores, for example, up against ANY pubschool principal or superintendant. With extremely rare exceptions, they are all skating on the left end of the bell curve. And it shows in the effect pubschool administrators generally have on classroom teaching. Instead of doing things that enhance teaching and learning, most pubschool administrators-with noted RARE exceptions, as I have said-are massive stumbling blocks to education.

America would be far better off to put all the educrats and pubschool administrators in work camps breaking rocks.

Some more specific Americans to round out my list:

Lyndon Johnson. What a lying snake. A venal poltroon. Lied America into Vietnam, screwed America with “The Great Society”. Skated off the public stage when he should have been run off the planet on a rail.

Jimmie Carter. It is to my eternal shame that I actually voted for this picayune creep. Once. He is a lying, slanderous, traitorous piece of filth. An ego-driven fantasist who apparently believes the world revolves around him. He does charitable works? Yeh. And the reason is obvious in his dung beetle grin*.

Pat Robertson. He simply cannot keep his mouth shut, and what comes out is slander to the God he says he worships. Another ego-driven publicity slut.

And what shall I say of Roger Baldwin, Eugene V. Debs, and John Dewey? All influential in the formation of the American Communist Lawyers Union-and Dewey has to his “worst American” credit the distinction of having been the single greatest destructive force in creating (or perhaps Dewey would prefer “manufacturing”) stupid Americans, compliant sheeple.

Now, let me get historical on this list: Abraham Lincoln. Yeh, yeh: I know the Lincoln hagiography, and what I’m about to say will earn me the disapprobation (to say the very least) of 90% of the folks who read this. One can argue day and night that Lincoln’s so-called “freeing of the slaves” was a great thing and that he “preserved the Union”, but the plain fact of the matter is that for all intents and purposes, the republic handed us by the Framers died at Appomattox, and what we have today in runaway federal anarcho-tyranny is a direct result of Lincoln’s War. Each and every abuse of federal power, each and every twisting and outright violation of the Constitution we now know as just normal federal government behavior was either prefigured or practiced in even more flagrant and brutal fashion by Lincoln. More than 620,000 killed in Lincoln’s War. Not to free slaves, but to increase the power of Northern industrialists, destroy the economic power of the South and, not incidentally, bring about Lincoln’s view of a federal government that not only could but did (and still does) overrule Constitutionally-guaranteed State authority and individual rights.

Whatever good the man did is far, far overshadowed by the legacy of federally-practiced anarcho-tyranny we have from his hand today.

And I close with this:

A General Summary
Rudyard Kipling

We are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
India’s prehistoric clay;
He that drew the longest bow
Ran his brother down, you know,
As we run men down to-day.

“Dowb,” the first of all his race,
Met the Mammoth face to face
On the lake or in the cave:
Stole the steadiest canoe,
Ate the quarry others slew,
Died-and took the finest grave.

When they scratched the reindeer-bone,
Some one made the sketch his own,
Filched it from the artist-then,
Even in those early days,
Won a simple Viceroy’s praise
Through the toil of other men.
Ere they hewed the Sphinx’s visage
Favouritism governed kissage,
Even as it does in this age.

Who shall doubt “the secret hid
Under Cheops’ pyramid”
Was that the contractor did
Cheops out of several millions?
Or that Joseph’s sudden rise
To Comptroller of Supplies
Was a fraud of monstrous size
On King Pharaoh’s swart Civilians?

Thus, the artless songs I sing
Do not deal with anything
New or never said before.
As it was in the beginning
Is to-day official sinning,
And shall be for evermore!

Shamelessly flogged at TMH’s Bacon Bits (He’s baaaaaack!)

Send the ACLU another warm fuzzy

Still short shrift mode. Jay, at Stop the ACLU, is having a busy week, too, and sent the info below out a day early to clear the decks for his schedule.


One of our contributors, Craig McCarthy, set up a petition to stop taxpayer funding of the ACLU, quite a while ago. We are trying to help Craig reach at least 25,000 signatures. We are not that far away. Just two days ago, I put up as one of Stop The ACLU’s best posts of 2005, my interview with former ACLU lawyer, mr. Reese Lloyd. I had no idea it would be such great timing. Mr. Reese strkes again in a podcast with Congressman Hostettler.

Rees Lloyd made the comments in an online podcast hosted by Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., in which the two discuss the congressman’s legislation, the Public Expression of Religion Act, or PERA (H.R.2679). The bill would prohibit judges in civil suits involving the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause from awarding attorney’s fees to those offended by religious symbols or actions in the public square – such as a Ten Commandments display in a courthouse or a cross on a county seal. Lloyd, a California civil-rights attorney, is an officer with the American Legion who wrote a resolution passed by the national organization supporting Hostettler’s bill. As WorldNetDaily reported, Hostettler’s proposal would amend the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Act of 1976, 42 U.S.C. Section 1988, to prohibit prevailing parties from being awarded attorney’s fee in religious establishment cases, but not in other civil rights filings. This would prevent local governments from having to use taxpayer funds to pay the ACLU or similar organization when a case is lost, and also would protect elected officials from having to pay fees from their own pockets. Hostettler says some organizations have created a new civil liberty – a right to be protected “from religion, which is found nowhere in the Constitution, nowhere in the Bill of Rights.” The Indiana congressman blames “a very select group” for “perverting” the original statute, including the ACLU, People for the American Way and Americans United for the Separate of Church and State. “They use this statute to extort behavior out of individuals,” the congressman said, citing the Indiana Civil Liberties Union threatening local educators. The group sent a letter to officials saying they would be sued and be forced to pay attorney’s fees should any graduation prayers be offered at commencement ceremonies. The threat sent the message, Hostettler said, that individuals tied to school districts could be impoverished personally. Said the lawmaker: “When officials see the potential threat of a lawsuit, they stop allowing children to write papers for English class – when they’re asked to write about the most important person in their life and they decide to write about Jesus Christ.” Hostettler’s bill would allow cases to move through the courts without public officials worrying about being held personally liable for thousands in attorneys fees. “Let’s let these cases go forward; let’s let the courts decide what’s constitutional and what’s not, and let’s not leave it up to the ACLU,” he said. Hostettler explained that while government entities can pay attorney’s fees charged to individual elected officials, they don’t legally have to, which puts the politicians on the hook. Saying most taxpayers are in favor of allowing public religious expression, the congressman noted the irony of those same taxpayers being forced to pay the ACLU to sue their local governments. “The current threat to public officials is very real; it’s ongoing,” Hostettler stated. “It’s been the case for several years that public officials are scared to death to suggest any type of public recognition of our Christian roots. It’s a problem that needs to be addressed in Washington, D.C.” PERA would prohibit damages, court fees and attorney’s fees from going to plaintiffs in establishment-clause suits while keeping the original purpose of the civil-rights law, Hstettler says, to provide a means for those whose religious liberties have been blocked to find justice. The congressman wonders why the ACLU would oppose his legislation since it still provides for “injunctive relief” – e.g., a court can rule in the ACLU’s favor and force the removal of a Ten Commandments display – but takes out the monetary incentive for lawsuits. “If they’re not out for the money but are really out to preserve our civil liberties … then the ACLU should not be opposing my bill,” Hostettler commented.

In the podcast, Lloyd decried the “terrorizing litigation tactics of the ACLU.” Said Lloyd: “Not only can the ACLU brings these suits and compel taxpayers to pay them to destroy the public display of our American history and heritage, but so can Islamist terrorists or Islamist sympathizers in our midst. “All they have to do is walk into court, make their claim that they’re offended by the sight of a cross or other religious symbol, and they’re going to win the case because judges follow one another under stare decisis,” or deference to precedent. The judges would then order that fees be paid to the Islamists, Lloyd contends. Lloyd said this issue came into focus for him when he witnessed the fight in San Diego, Calif., over a cross on a veterans’ memorial on public land in the Mohave Desert. “For me, that was the one step taken too far,” Lloyd said. “Now, for the first time, the ACLU was attacking the very veterans who secured their freedom.” A civil-rights activist since the ’60s, Lloyd worked with the ACLU in the ’70s and was “very supportive” of the 1976 Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Act because it was a “noble attempt to assure that people who had legitimate civil-rights violations and injuries could secure legal representation.” Stated Lloyd: “The ACLU has perverted, distorted and exploited the Civil Rights Act … to turn it into a lawyer-enrichment act.” Lloyd says the American people are “oblivious” to how many millions of dollars in taxpayer funds are going to the ACLU each year. The attorney pointed out many attorneys in cases brought by the ACLU are volunteers, so the fees the group is awarded normally do not go to reimburse an attorney but rather directly into the organization’s coffers.

Hostettler’s bill, which was introduced first in 2003 without success, currently has 35 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and sits in the House Committee on the Judiciary.

The Center For Reclaiming America claims that they have over 100,000 signatures backing this bill. Honestly, I don’t know what they are waiting on. If we can up our petiton from 19,000 to 25,000, I will personally take the signatures to Congressman Hostettler myself….I promise you. I only live two hours from D.C. SIGN OUR PETITON TO STOP TAXPAYER FUNDING OF THE ACLU ….and spread the word as far and wide on this petition as you can!


Folks, even if you did get your CHRISTMAS card mailed to the ACLU, this petition is yet another way we can show them we care, we really do care. There. That oughta make the All Communist Lawyers Union feel all warm and fuzzy.

🙂

*sigh* I didn’t want to give you this for Christmas…

…although those of y’all depending on Symantec security products (e.g. Norton Anti-Virus) might view this as my Christmas present to you. So, Merry Christmas, all tied up with a bow and all:

Using NAV? JUST STOP IT. Quick, download a different AV product! Grisoft’s free AVG Anti-Virus will do. Why?

“Symantec Confirms AV Library Flaw, Promises Patches”

Anti-virus vendor Symantec Corp. has publicly acknowledged that a high-risk buffer overflow vulnerability in its AntiVirus Library could lead to code execution attacks when RAR archive files are scanned.

A proof-of-concept example of Symantec’s products’ inability to catch bad code that can execute from within an RAR file is all that’s been shown, so far. But that’s enough. Just ONE example like that would be enough for me to switch (and it was, several years ago), and anyone using NAV ought to at least temporarily disable it, download another AV product and install it until Symantec can restore some semblance of confidence in its product.

You have been warned, If the Grinch steals your Christmas cos you didn’t heed the warning, at least I know I tried.

(Yes, I know that SO FAR no examples exploiting the Symantec virus scan flaw/vulnerability have been found in the wild. So? You wanna be the one to find one? 🙂

Red Lights Flashing at Is it Just Me?, NIF, TMH’s Bacon Bits, and Jo’s Cafe.

PSA—WARNING! Danger Will Robinson!

In case you have not already recieved this warning:

“News: Santa IM Worm Installs Rootkit Payload

A Christmas-themed worm attack is on the loose, affecting
instant messaging networks from AOL, MSN, Windows Messenger,
ICQ and Yahoo.”

See the eWeek article here.

You have been warned. Don’t come crying to me if you get “hit” (unless you wanna pay me for the fix. heh :-).

I’ll tell the world at Basil’s Blog and Diane’s Stuff’s Wednesday Weekly Open Trackback Alliance Fest.