Day: November 12, 2005

[NOTE: Go ahead and consider any Saturday post an “Open Trackback” post for the weekend.]

A grab bag of thoughts from all around…

Jerry Pournelle shared some thoughts on honoring our service men and women, including this:

“…the GI Bill today is much lower than it was after World War II, or the Korean War. It is easy to show that the GI Bill paying for retraining — in academic colleges, commerce colleges, trade schools, technical colleges, all of those — was one of the best investments this nation ever made, putting some serious adults young and old into the higher education system.

There are bills pending in Congress that would increase the GI Bill for today’s veterans. They have been cut back “to save money”. Let me say that if we can afford a trailer and payments to people whose only justification is that they were in the path of a hurricane, why cannot we afford benefits for those who put themselves in harm’s way at the call of their country?”

Read the whole thing.

“Dedication Is Visible Among new Soldiers” at military.com (from a Christian Science Monitor article) is good news on more than one front.

“Wal-Mart Boycott Ends with Apology” (from WallyWorld) at Stop the ACLU relates how pressure from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights helped put “Merry Christmas” officially back in Wal-Mart greeters’ allowed repertoire of greetings and “Christmas” back in the search terms at Wal-Mart’s website. heh

It was linked below (in Wednesday’s Open Trackback post), but DO NOT MISS Norman Podhoretz’ article, “Who is Lying About Iraq?“

And did you catch “The French Connection” at The American Thinker?

And DO catch TMH’s Bacon Bits’ “Will Paris (and Washington) Go to School on l’Intifada?”

Semi-random quotes:

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.” -G.K. Chesterton

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” -John Stuart Mill

“American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward to perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It tends to risk nothing serious for the sake of truth.” -R. L. Dabney

“Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide.” -James Burnham

Linked at Don Surber, Common Folks, Common Sense, Stop the ACLU, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Random Numbers, Basil’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, The Tar Pit, The Uncooperative Blogger

Technorati : France burns, GI Bill, Iraq, L’Intifada, Plame, Veterans Day, military service

I had supposed someone might ask about the sperm whale in my sidebar by now…

Well, I had noticed a number of bloggers (GM Roper comes readily to mind) who have taken to placing images of animals that’re in their TTLB Ecosystem “evolutionary ranking” somewhere near their TTLB listing. GM, of course, chose an African Elephant in full dudgeon.

Given my own political persuasions and the state of both the major parties (as well as all the minor pitty-patty parties-heh), I couldn’t find a large mammal that’d suit and evoke association with my own political leanings.

Oh, let me clarify something: as disappointing as some of the current administration’s acts have been, I still actively support the Bush administration. (Heck, I support the Blunt administration-admittedly sometimes with embarrassment-in my home state.) And given the fact that the Democrats want to drive the country off a precipice at 90mph (and accelerating!), the fact that Republican politicians prefer to head off the same precipice at a more sedate 45mph almost always wins my vote. Reluctantly, in many cases.

You see, I am really a classical Liberal Conservative. I believe in conserving the values that the Founders and Framers held, as much as is possible, and, even more, in restoring those that have been neglected, actively harmed or simply lost. Vales like teue freedom of speech and press , not some vague, anything goes (or not, according to the tastes of the ruling elite) “freedom of expression”-no, I’d like the words of the First Amendment to mean something concrete. You know, rather like it did to the Founders and Framers of this (onetime?) republic.

I’d like to see the Republic restored. Yes, a choking off and weeding out of Federal fingers in every pie (I almost wrote, “every eye” cos it sure seems like feebs are poking anyone they want… anywhere they want-The Martha Rule, ya know. Anarcho-tyranny).

I’d very much like to see less licensing by various governments of activities the Constitution assures us are Rights. (A “right” that is licensed is no longer a right. It has become a priviledge which can be taken away at the edict of a government bureaucrat.)

I’d like to see the concepts of freedom and liberty once more associated with responsibility and duty.

I’d like to see charity no longer dispensed by the government to those that government bureaucrats and politicians must keep down on the welfare plantation in order to justify jobs and power. Better charity were given freely, too, than via coercion at the end of a gun barrel. (Just try to defy the IRS to the end, and that’s what it comes down to.) Robbery is robbery, whether the robber paints himself as a Robin Hood or a welfare politician/bureaucrat.

I’d like to see those who say they believe and uphold and serve to protect the Constitution… do so.

The group of those who are serious about that task does not seem to include a number of politicians-of either major party-to make one good fist.

So, I’m a sperm whale, not a raging bull elephant or a jackass (or, possibly with Billary, a hinny ass).

Here are a few books to put on your wishlist for Christmas…

TheFairTax Book and

America’s Best Kept Secret Fairtax: Give Yourself a 25% Raise

State of Fear

Do As I Say (Not As I Do) : Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy

The Shadow of Saganami (The Saganami Island)

At All Costs (The Honor Harrington)

The Chronicles of Narnia Boxed Set

Linked @ Choose Life ; Jo’s Cafe; Stuck on Stupid; The Uncooperative Blogger; Basil’s Blog

Technorati : C.S. Lewis, David Weber, Fair Tax, FairTax, Honor Harrington, Liberal Hypocrisy, Michael Crichton, Narnia, Narnia Chronicles

I never see unrequested popups or popunders when I surf, and rarely see ads (Opera’s good to me that way), so this was news to me…

FTC Shuts Down BlogSpot Spyware Ring, and Spyware Operation Shut Down by the FTC.

Hmmm… seems “a massive spyware operation that allegedly used Google Inc.’s BlogSpot service to trick millions of computer users into downloading spyware and adware programs.” _1_ Hmmm, popup ads offered “free lyric files, browser upgrades and ring tones” to sucker naïve users into loading spyware onto their systems.

And a big distro venue for these scum was Blogspot, which “was being used to spread spyware and adware programs such as ‘Search Miracle,’ ‘Miracle Search,’ ‘EM Toolbar,’ ‘EliteBar,’ and ‘Elite Toolbar.’”

Gee, I just cleaned some-a that off a naïve user’s computer the other day. (An older 900Mhz machine barely running XP and dragged to a painful crawl by 371 pieces of spyware and 12 Trojan dialers. *sheesh*)

Nice to know the FTC is doing something useful for a change. I wonder if the creeps who were doing this will get as much time as Martha did for “lying” to investigators? (Remember: the witness whose testimony was critical to Martha’s conviction—NOT for insider trading, which she could not have done, but for “lying”—was later charged with perjury in his testimony… Good going, feds.)

Oh. Well. Regardless, whatever these guys get in punishment/fines won’t be enough. Confiscation of EVERYTHING these guys and their families have now or ever might have down to seven generations might be enough in the way of fines, but boiling in oil wouldn’t be enough of a punishment for these creeps…

*mutter, mutter, gripe, complain*

But the naïve users who infested themselves with spyware and were exposed to potential theft of personal information? Well, God love ‘em, they got what they deserved.

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Trackbackposted at The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Don Surber’s “Dean’s Dot.Com Bust & Open Post”, Stop the ACLU and TMH’s Bacon Bits

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