Category: The Kitchen Sink

This article raises some very, very interesting–and very disturbing–questions about The Obamassiah’s connections to the Saudis. Worth your time, IMO. Perhaps worth your time further spreading awareness of.

h.t. D=S

Caught a little of Norm Coleman (somebody get that man to an eating disorder therapist! *heh*).

Saw a bit of Mitt Romney (boring) and The Huckster (looked like a snake shedding its skin). *yawn*

“To be President, it’s not enough to [just] be present.”–Rudy Giuliani, speaking about The Obamassiah’s legislative record (because The Obamassiah has no executive record) of “voting” on legislative acts, “present” instead of actually making a decision between yes and no.

“Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy.”

and

“More experience as an executive than Obama and Biden combined.”–Giuliani again.

The above, of course, as a prelude to the big attraction tonight: the Sarah Palin speech scheduled to begin… whenever Giuliani finally finishes. Stemwinder? Not quite, but he has managed to push all the hot buttons.

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Not going to try to do a transcript or anything, just impressions.

Thunderous reception to Palin. (Hey, notice who’s holding Trig?)

OK, enough with the cheers, already. Take charge, Sarah.

Begins with acceptance and tribute to McCain. Brings standard applause.

Goes to McCain’s Iraq stance and Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind counting him out for it. Palin attributes McCain’s nomination to “determination, resolve and sheer guts”–“a true profile in courage”.

[Edit: meant to say here that I attribute Juan Mexicain’s nomination to the “fact” that it was just “his turn”–it’s a Repugnican’t thing. Meant to say it, but ears and fingers don’t work all that fast together anymore and time and tide wait for no man… *sigh*]

“…troops in Iraq who have now brought victory so close…” “and as mother of one of those troops” (C-Span: camera on Track). Plays the “fine men and women in uniform” and moves from Track through the list of family members present with aplomb (Trig now in Dad’s arms).

Elliptical allusion to “family issues” (“special needs children” “a friend and advocate in the White House”) Todd–hits his “common man” features, including the Inuit connection–faithful marriage, etc. Now Mom & Dad featured–parents on camera–hey! I think I know them! Don’t they live in my neighborhood? (Thumped the “common mn” bone some more with Harry Truman reference.)

(LOTS of pride in America, common man stuff.)

Hockey mom and PTA. Trots out the “hockey mom/pit bull” comparison again (one of her “stump” phrases).

“Since [Obamaites] look down on [small towns]”

“[S]mall time mayor is sorta like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Thumps the “bitter people clinging to their religion and guns” Obama gaffe.

“…not a member of the permanent political establishment… [so] some of the media consider me unqualified for that reason alone.” *heh*

“I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion; I’m going to serve the American people.” (S’what I heard–close to the prepared comments that were published.)

“…challenge the status quo, to serve the common good and to leave this nation better than we found it…”

re: Alaska: ” …put the government back on the side of the people.”

Hits national security-petro connection (throws in consumer/economic matters): refers elliptically to ANWR (gets the “Drill baby, drill” chant). Elides into drilling vs. doing nothing (the real Dhimmicrappic “plan”)

Hard hit on The Obamassiah’s two books, lotsa speeches, NO LEGISLATION.

“…styrofoam Greek columns back in some studio lot…”

Hits The Obamassiah’s tax raise plans as his real “economic plan”. What his taxaholic plans do for (negative) job creation.

“change to promote careers vs. careers to promote change”

Hagiography of McCain’s record again. *sigh* Sold out, Sarah?

“Harry Reid and the do nothing Senate” Endorsement from Reid? “Can’t stand McCain”

“Presidency not supposed to be a journey of self-discovery” “[World] not just a community and doesn’t need an organizer”

Waves the bloody flag a bit. Ends with pitch for McCain again. Family comes up to join her. Holding Trig, now.

McCain joins–with a hand mic–what’s up?

Ebulliantly, “Don’t you think we made the best choice for the next Vice President of the United States? [cheers] And what a beautiful family. [McCain tutoring Palin on keeping “face” toward delegates who “need” recognition. “Field talk” passed between candidates as they pass each other working different parts of the crowd, etc.]

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OK, she hit all the points she needed to tonight. I expect to hear more in the coming days.

Was it a home run? Maybe. Maybe a three bagger that may become a home run on errors from the Obama team, IMO.

Fox commenters talking about Palin’s speech “written for her” a lot, not realizing, I suppose, how many of the key digs were actually hers, recycled from past political events in her life. And, of course, her delivery was worlds ahead of anything I’ve ever seen/heard from the “great speaker” The Obamassiah.

Karl Rove notes her undoubted input to the speech, giving her more credit than the Fox ‘heads did.

During a break today, I read a few chapters of “The Last Centurion” by John Ringo. This comment mugged me in one of the dark alleys of chapter three:

“I care for all living beings except slow drivers in the left-hand lane, terrorists and pedophiles.”

Amen, brother. Preach on.

*heh*

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I sometimes have questions come my way, most often via email, about just what/where America’s Third World County is. Gleaned from Census stats and elsewhere, with [interjected comments]:

Median resident age: 34.3 years
Missouri median age: 36.1 years

Males: 10,980 (50.6%)
Females: 10,701 (49.4%)

Average wage per job in 2003: $23,161 [Lotsa illegals–proportionally–dragging the wages down]
County population in 2003: 21,999
Jobs in 2003: 6,532

Total labor force in 2004: 12,079
Unemployment rate in 2004: 4.9%

Average household size:
America’s Third World County: 2.6 people [I always wonder about those homes with fractional people… ]
Missouri: 2.5 people

Estimated median household income in 2005: $29,887 ($27,010 in 2000)
America’s Third World County: $29,887 [That’s household income. The Pelosis, Obamas, Reeds and Gores, et all, of America apparently want these folks to pay $10/gallon for gas and higher prices for everything else. Jerks.]
Missouri: $41,974

Estimated median house/condo value in 2005: $79,045
America’s Third World County $79,045 [Ours is valued–by several sources–higher by quite a bit; indeed, even with recent slides in twc property values, over the Missouri median–but all that does is raise our property taxes, cos we’re not selling and we’re NOT borrowing on our equity.]
Missouri: $123,100

Median monthly rent in 2000: $382 [Note below: median rental is more than the mortgage payment on twc central :-)]
Institutionalized population: 110
Median monthly costs for houses with a mortgage in
America’s Third World County in 2000: $580 [twc central’s about $200 less, and will be $Zero, soon]

As you may rightly have inferred from the bits above, both wages and living expenses for America’s Third World County are generally less than in Missouri as a whole, and the same holds true for America’s Third World County vs. the U.S. in general. Indeed, when so many folks were gritching about $4.00 (and higher) gasoline, we’ve yet to see such a critter, here in America’s Third World County. (Gas is under $3.40/gallon, now that some promise of new drilling is in the wind.)

I now return to the irregularly-scheduled third world county curmudgeonry.

Or, rather, a comment on Ubuntu 8.04 updates.

*sigh*

So, the OS/distro works like a champ… or did until I clicked the “updates are ready to be installed” (or whatever) button about a week ago. (Before that, an update to WINE apparently “broke” it enough that Encore no longer works properly *arrrgggghhh!*) Now, other issues. I had gotten sound configured like I wanted it (conf to use the old SBLive! Platinum card instead of the onboard nVidia sound), but after last week’s update, nothing I have done in the past does diddly to get it wrking that way again. Now, it’s a crapshoot as to what sound “card” will provide sound for any given application.

Yeh, yeh, disable the onboard sound in the BIOS setup utility and force the OS to use the only chipset it can then see, but that’s soooo… brute force.

Other than that and a weird STOP error in WinXPP/VMWare Server (VMWare doesn’t have a problem; it’s something in the VM/WinXPP interaction), everything’s hunky dory. Oh, wait, not. Flash player no longer works after the last OS update, either.

OK, at one point I was all set to (and IIRC actually did) pronounce Ubuntu 8.04 “Aunt Tilly” ready, assuming someone who knows how to find their own posterior with a stick and a mirror installed it for her. Now, if OS updates are going to break commonly used apps/plugins/components/configurations, I’m not so sure. Canonical had better get its @$$ in gear on this.

Oh, and before anyone points out that I can configure sound preferences via the Control Center, NOT! Oh, it says it’s configured corectly and even (sometimes) tests properly from within the sound applet, but it lies. And the Control Center is a palid, weak, poor analog of the configuration tools built into just about any version of Windows. In order to really manage hardware configuration, it’s often necessary to use the command line. Now, I have few problems with doing that, apart from having gotten away from the (DOS) command line, for the most part, for some few years now and haviung minimal experience with tghe Linux command line (I’m getting better, but there are only so many hours in the day).

But.

What’s not all that big a deal for me is just not “Aunt Tilly” friendly. Heck, “Aunt Tilly” can often not even find Control Panel in Windows without “a mirror and a stick” and approach radar and someone who knows a bit talking her down safely, so maintaining an Ubuntu 8.04 Linux box may well be beyond the “Aunt Tillys” of this world.

Sad. It has so much promise, and it’s perfectly fine for me (as long as I have the time to track down where the buggering updates screwed up my configuration files), but if the the “Aunt Tillys” of this world were to jump on the Ubuntu bandwagon, they’d fall right off lickety split.

Oh, well.

Thanks to hth who reminded me via email of The Church of the Red Breast and a most elegant scamming of a Nigerian Scammer. It’s a rather long read, but worth (re)visiting.

The Church of the Red Breast

Enjoy.

As David Drake recalls from Kipling’s “Screw Guns,”

You may hide in the caves,
they’ll be only your graves,
but you can’t get away from the guns!

It’s a thermal imaging video of an AC-130 Gunship in action taking out some bad guys (and taking great pains to NOT hit a nearby mosque) in Afganistan. I don’t know its provenence, but I obtained it from a collection of books-on-CD written/edited by David Drake, and his first-hand experiences with the AC130 tends to lend some color *heh* to it. The view is from the 40mm cannon station.

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Trackposted to Nuke’s, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary’s Thoughts, A Newt One- Congressman Frank Wolf!, McCain Blogs, Woman Honor Thyself, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Democrat=Socialist, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

And delightfully so.

I’ve listened to Beethoven’s symphonies–and his other works–many, many times over the years, even been privileged to be a part of performances of some of his works through the years, but one thing that is a continual surprise is that every time I rehearse (think on that word a bit, would you–sometimes my :listening” is merely reading through a score and discovering new delights in my mid’s ear–Fun!) one of his symphonies it’s fresh, new, full of delights both in things that resound in memory and that strike me brand spaking new.

Try finding that in “Top 40” pap.

Listening to number seven again today, during an extended, well-earned break, I started out feeling exhausted, filled with an almost rag doll lassitude.

First movement wiped that out in a BIG hurry!

I just love this stuff.

🙂

I need some help on some lyrics. A childhood “song” (of course it was a song! What else could it be? Better, in many ways than Top 40 crap nowadays… ) that stuck in my memory–all save two words–and pops up (though only very, very, very rarely out) at the most inappropriate times. *heh*

More below the fold… Continue reading “Lyric help?”