Category: Uncategorized

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Check this out: taking money from taxpayers and giving it to criminals. Absolutely. A government-run program in Wisconsin is loaning mortgage money to illegal aliens. And they know they’re loaning taxpayer monies to criminals. And they just don’t care.

“It’s money earned, taxes paid, families need a home. It’s that simple,” said Democratic state Rep. Pedro Colon.

Liberalistas. Pedro, go home. Hey! Here’s an idea! Maybe some enterprising real estate mogul wannabe can find out where these 150 (so far) loans have gone, drop a dime on the “owners” to the INS and scoop a few of the resultant defaulted properties up for a song… It’d work for me.

EDIT: Oh, man, forgot to tip my hat to Ogre. Oh please, oh please, Mr Ogre! It wasn’t an intentional “bad pitch”. 🙂

Dr. Sanity asks this cogent question: “…what do the people who are actually fighting the war in Iraq know that the average citizen (who gets their information secondhand, as it were) does[n]‘t know?”_1_

Hmmm, you have to wonder, when retention rates (re-enlistments, like Casey Sheehan’s) are up enough to make up for lagging new enlistments, eh?

See Dr. Sanity’s post.

Halo-failo-scan? In which I segue from a blogpost about blogging to a semi-cultural/political rant. IOW: just plain fun, folks.

Haloscan’s been having problems recently. Hmmm… really kinda liked the service. Was nice n convenient: easy way to add trackback functionality to trakbackless blogger account, easily-managed comments and RSS feed.

But you’ve probably seen all the recent complaints of folks’ trackbacks either failing… or being made as multi-trackbacks.  Now, I get three different “reports” on comments. At the Haloscan management site, one set of comments may show.  On my blog, some comments don’t show. And a different set of comments show in the RSS feed for comments.

I suspect, given the fact that I’ve run across a number of other blogs reporting problems, that someone at Haloscan decided to “upgrade” something and improved it until it broke… but just a little, and that things’ll be fixed soon.

But meanwhile… your comments may or may not show up properly or immediately. Feel free to rant and rave anyway.

But try to either make sense or be completely (and humorously) nonsensical when you do.  I don’t have a formal comment policy.  I don’t care one single solitary bit what “kind” of language you use.  But anything that presents itself as a serious comment but is riddled with fallacies (_1_, _2_, _3_) will be subject to mocking deconstruction (if I have time and feel like expending the effort), deleted as too assinine for public exposure or left as the commenter’s own self-parody—the deciding factor: my personal whim.

Many people exercise common sense when formulating their comments. I can appreciate that. Some exercise their sense of humor, and I can appreciate that, usually no matter how weird their sense of humor* may be. Others, and they are few indeed, actually learned in school or elsewhere how to make clear, reasoned arguments. Rare, and greatly appreciated.  People I stand to learn much from.

But some just have no business even having an opinion, because they are both too ill-informed and are idiots (usually, as I have said elsewhere, self-made idiots), unable to recognize the value (or even the existence) of arguments from facts or reason, taking their preconceptual biases as fact and building a “reality-based” fantasyland of idiotarian unreason on that shaky foundation.

Here’s a scary thought: Exposure to such could almost move one to accept Margaret Sanger’s arguments for eugenics. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” In light of the current trend among liberalists, Holmes’ comment begins to have a certain appeal…

But, no.  Better to remove much of the shielding preventing a Darwinist microevolution of the race… Get the “gummint” outa the cradle-to-grave protection racket. Starve the academicians.  Feed the (NON-POLITICAL) scientists. Make artists—all of ‘em—either live or die in the marketplace (no more NEA subsidies). Castrate lawyers making their living off liability suits. No, really: castrate. A lower testosterone level will help. Let folks take responsibility for their own stupidities. Remove the heads of politicians who come up with “great society” ideas that ruin families, destroy communities and enhance their own political power.  Yes, their heads.  They’ve not been using them for any good anyway.

It’s a big job, but these small steps toward re-introducing the idea of personal responsibility. And that would put paid to the Frank Roaches, Dan Blathers, Nancy Pelosis, Teddy Kennedys, Jean Fraud sKerrys and all their ilk.

That it would eliminate many on the quasi-faux-conservative side of the coin as well would be a nice lil side benefit.

*Do note: humor is not always funny. Some of the most humorous of pieces can be dark, broody, macabre.

Border Patrol Chopper Forced Down by Thrown Rocks (h.t. NIF)

“One baseball-sized rock gashed the rotor, forcing the pilot to land nearby, said Michael Gramley, spokesman for the Border Patrol sector based in Yuma, Ariz.”

You know, I’m thinking “Hmmm, the Cards’ pitching really sucks… why not… “

Koan of the day: When jackasses are braying in their echo chamber, do they make any sense at all?

Kos and other podpeople follow on Frank Rich’s NYT article “Swift-boating Cindy Sheehan” (and no, I’m not providing them any linkage—the asinine brays can be found easily with Google if you so wish) and are joined in their echo chamber by such as the poor benighted soul who commented on a post of mine below. What none of these jackasses (and I use the term not as a pejorative but as a simple descriptive; after all, do not they nearly one and all claim a jackass as their mascot?) pause to consider is that their use of the term “swift-boating” to describe their contempt of the tactic of actually displaying verifiable facts and on-the-record statements by Cindy Sheehan to discredit her reveals their contempt of any facts that contradict their predetermined viewpoints.

“Swift-boating” as viewed by anyone who actually read the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth materials, viewed/listened to their ads and then dug into the supporting documentation and its background is a term of reasoned argument, not vile invective, as all the little Frank Riches of the Loony Left suppose.  Rather than being character assassination, as Rich and the herd he runs in assert, examining the actual words and deeds of an individual that tend to refute their own current public statements is simply good argument.

Let’s  consider for a second the record of actual character assassination.  Rich portrays the marshalling of facts concerning Cindy Sheehan’s behavior by those who question her motives and actions as a conspiracy to assassinate her character emanating from Karl Rove.  But where’s his evidence? He begins by begging the question of Rovian machinations in character assassination, commits an error (or two) of construction along the way and then simply engages in blatant ad hominem attacks on Karl Rove and President Bush.

(For any leftists visiting, get a good text book on logic and have someone read and explain the section on common fallacies of argument to you. No. Have them read and explain more slowly.)

Now, that’s character assassination. Rich doesn’t even marshall any facts. He has no witnesses to the supposed Rovian marching orders, no documentary evidence whatsoever; he just makes them up as he goes along. That is, to suit his malicious purposes, he writes lies. (Must be lies, otherwise he’d cite some actual verifiable facts to support his statements.) He knows he can get away with this cos any defense to his lies will be portrayed by his fellow Mass Media

Podpeople as evidence that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”—even when the only smoke is what Rich and his fellow Mass Media Podpeople are blowing.

The really sad thing is that Rich can get away with this within his own lil herd of non-critical thinkers, cos, well, none of them seem to be able maintain the remotest relationship with logic or argument from fact or reason.

Hence the echo chamber effect where one braying pod-jackass starts, another follows and soon the whole herd is braying in unison: “The Eeeeeevil Karl Rove is making his minions say bad things about Mother Sheehan!  Heee-Waaaaahhhhh!”

*Yawn*

Ya know, it was bad enough when I had to put up with 7th grade hormone-lobotomized students who couldn’t (or more often simply wouldn’t) think their way out of the cul-de-sacs they marched themselves into with their “speech-challenged piscine*” ways.  Putting up with such stupid behavior in supposed adults is beyond me.  I simply won’t do it.  As soon as someone adequately demonstrates that they are beyond reason, I feel safe in not listening to them any more, except for occasional times stopping by to see if their medication’s been properly moderated, yet.

Life’s too short to listen to people who have proven themselves to be self-made idiots.  (Their podmasters may have handed them their very own self-lobotomy kits, but they didn’t have to use them.)  

*Yeh: Dumb Bass.

From Michael Crichton: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous

Michael Crichton offers an excerpt from his new book, A State of Fear as an introduction to his argument that making policy based on “science” dominated by political ideology is harmful.

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

Read it and think about its application to today’s public policy dustups based on ideology-driven “science”.

Read and consider:

State of Fear

edited to include a more direct link to State of Fear and bumped to top.

I stole this in its entirety from Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor Mail.  I hope he, and the author of the piece, Greg Brewer, will forgive the theft…

The Telemarketer

The phone rang as we were sitting down to dinner. I answered it and was greeted with, “Is this William Wagenhoss?”

This didn’t sound anything like my name, so I asked, “Who is calling?” The telemarketer said he was with The Rubberband-Powered Freezer Company or something like that. I asked him if he knew William personally and why was he was calling this number. I then said, off to the side, “Get really good pictures of the body and all the blood.”

I turned back to the phone and advised the caller that he had called a murder scene and must stay on the line because we had already traced this call and he would be receiving a summons to appear at the local courthouse to testify in this murder case.

I questioned the caller at great length as to his name, address, phone number at home, at work, who he worked for, how he knew the dead guy and could he prove where he had been about one hour before he made this call. The telemarketer was getting very concerned and his answers were given in a shaky voice.

I proceeded to tell him we had located his position at his work place and the police were entering the building to take him into custody. At this point, I heard the phone fall and the scurrying of his running away.

My wife asked me as I returned to our table, why I had tears streaming down my face and so help me, I couldn’t tell her for about fifteen minutes. My food was cold, but oh-so-very enjoyable.

As Dr. Pournelle says, “Pity we can’t do that to spammers.”

A Precision Guided Humor Assignment from The Alliance of Free Blogs:

What happened to all the oil that President Bush stole from Iraq?

Well, due to the Bush administration’s complete incompetence, that oil has been put to many nefarious (and sometimes nearly unbelievable) purposes…

1.) Hillary used some to grease the skids under the sKerry candidacy.
2.) White House had 33,967,893,281 bottles of “Special Saudi Hand-holding Lotion”  manufactured for meetings between GWB and Prince Abdullah…
3.) Teh-RAY-zha Heinz is using it to fuel her (and hubby’s) SUVs and the Heinz private jet.
4.) Upcoming: Chainsaws. Crawford. Midnight visit to Sindytown by outraged troops home from Iraq?
5.) The Bush twins.  (Well, they’re always to blame, aren’t they?)
6.) 6 billion barrels went toward maintaining Harry Reid’s oily personality, Nancy Peolosi’s nightcream supply and some was sold to maintain Teddy Kennedy’s  water wings (it is a base canard that TK keeps his water wings filled with booze.  Only half are filled at any one time.  The other half are back at the warehouse being refilled.). Some was traded outright to Muslims in Sudan for slaves to provide a supply of blood for Hillary to suck.
7.) U.N. diplomats and Peacekeepers (the “kinder, gentler” diplomats and Peacekeepers) using some to grease rape victims and to provide fuel for their Land Rovers. Kofi’s family now an order of magnitude richer.
8.) The Eeeevil Jooooos.
10.) Much of it is on the moon, now, in the hands of “friendly” aliens from the Crab Nebula. Got a pretty penny for it, too, thank you very much. I think it was a 1943 Steel Wheat uncirculated. (BTW, they got screwed on the deal: they also got Jean Fraud sKerry’s brain and a certificate ceding them 40% of his non-existent soul; a coupon for free treatment from Teddy Kennedy’s fav substance abuse center—with free swimming lessons included; a CD of “The Best of Howard Dean”; a picture of Barbara Streisand.  But the thing that made most of them walk outa the airlock without their helmets was a DVD featuring Cindy Sheehan. The screeching drove them mad. Both of the remaining “Crabs” are now blind and deaf.  Fortunately, they can still frell.)

Unfortunately, those are but a few of the places all that oil from Iraq has disappeared to, instead of going to make gasoline for my gas tank…

Saw this over at The Conservative UAW Guy and I thought, “Hmmm, anyone whose patriotism can’t stand up to a challenge or two probably has none.”

Think about that the next time someone starts whining about their “support for the troops” while denigrating those same troops.  Think about it the next time someone blames the U.S. for 9/11 and still claims to be a patriot.  Think about it the next time someone tells lies about atrocities our military is supposedly committing (“in the manner of Genghis Kahn”—a la Jean Fraud sKerry) in Vietnam Iraq and still claims to be a patriot.

Thanks to iHillary for the image.

Anyone whose patriotism can’t stand up to a challenge or two probably has none.

Small edits to aid those who missed the Swift Boat Vets’ reproduction of sKerry’s scurrilous lies in his 1971 Congressional Testimony. What a patriot!

Fiona Apple’s “first third studio album” (whatever that means) is due out in October
 
Extraordinary Machine to be released from durance vile.  Sony’s dungeon won’t be the same w/o it.
 
I have to admit to a kind of strange fascination with Fiona Apple’s singing.  Her songs and her voice.  Both juuust on the edge of being whiny without quite getting there.  Maybe it’s the dark undertones of her music and her voice that holds her performances just shy of whiny.
 
Whatever, I find I can take greater doses of her singing than most other current pop singers.  In fact, I even actually like some of her stuff! Some of it has to do with the fact that though she bends pitches, she obviously can tell what the pitches  are that she’s bending. And her voice has a complexity that nearly every other popular “artist” I’ve heard in the past 5-10 years lacks. I could wish for more blending of her head and chest voices, but she uses the break between them effectively.
 
All told, an intriguing performer/songwriter. And I may just break a longstanding rule and buy a popular artist’s (no scare quotes this time, cos—although I can’t quite figure her out—she does have some chops) album.  (Don’t get me wrong: I do occasionally buy CDs, just not usually of someone well-known in the current milieu.)
 
h.t. Lovely Daughter for pointing out that Sony’s giving us another bite of the Apple.