Month: December 2005

Around and about for the last coupla days (so far)

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Texas politics with national repercussions from freedom folks: Artfully Drawn Districts Tom DeLay has been in the news again recently regarding the redrawing of political districts in Texas. I’ll be honest — I haven’t been following that closely, so I’m not up on all the facts…

[Well, you just knew I’d have a perspective… My take? Republicans took advantage of their first chance to correct Democratic gerrymandering and other abuses of the past 30+ years in Texas. But that’s just me… one man, one vote, and all that.]

IRIS Blog notes more political correctness over-riding free (and honest) speech on campus: Princeton Censors Ex-PLO Speakers; Likely to Hire PLO Professor Princeton U. Says Campus Event Against Terrorism is “Too Inflammatory” Princeton University has cancelled a speaking event by three former Middle East terrorists because it says that the use of the word “terrorist” in the promotion for the event …
 
[yep. Can’t have people calling a spade a spade, even if their first name is Sam or David… Academis Nuts strike again: “Oooo! ‘Terrorist’ is such a loaded term. let’s call them ‘poor, misunderstood members of the [*spit* *gag*] religion of peace”]

The Florida Masochist offers a lesson in semantics and common sense: Bogus Excuse #2 That the person means something entirely different. Case in point here. Judith Miller is no longer working for the NY Times, Scooter Libby is under indictment and now Valerie Plame is leaving the CIA. My view on this entire story remains unchanged.
 
[Can’t have people say what they mean and mean what they say, now! No! Politicians, Mass Media Podpeople and Academia Nuts would all be out of work and loony Left Moonbats would all be in therapy (well those that aren’t already)!]

The Florida Masochist asks a question that’s been keeping folks awake nights (or not): Are Howard Dean and Frank Rich the same person? So its been done before. The Democrats claim Republicans live in the past, when it so often is them in reality. I wouldn’t give much credence to anything Governor Dean says, he is either small minded or don’t know what he is saying more often than no…

[OK, I have to know. Are they? ;-)]

And again, from The Florida Masochist (who’s leaving no electrons for the WindowsXP fish): The Palm Beach Post is going to the dogs For the second time in a month, The Post is featuring people fighting over a pet dog. As amusing or dumb these stories are, the paper is still delinquent on covering the missing Food stamp card story. The real priorities of my hometown newspaper are …
 
[But the pressing question is: did anyone BITE the dog?]

DL, posting at TMH’s Bacon Bits, celebrates the lack of tree-abortion clinics 2,000 years ago: Thank God Its Mother Didn’t Practice “Choice” Cut down a tree, and get howling from the eco-worshiping left. Yet, a daily occurrence of cutting down future gems is exactly the madness of our abortion industry.
 
[heh. Droll, DL… hit ’em again, harder]

And, again at TMH’s Bacon Bits,  DL rolls right on with what might appear to be a rhetorical question… but with DL’s substantive answer, isn’t: Why Do Liberals Hate Bush? Yes, the party of deceit hates Bush, because they hate truth – and Bush is a refreshingly truthful man. They fear his truth, because they know it can defeat their lies.

[Uhm, DL, I think you got almost all the reasons but one: faux liberals (the ones who hate Bush) are just stuck in a retarded emotional development phase… at about 2 years of age. Crybabies.]

Is It Just Me? notes another “reality-based” fantasist: Impudence To The End
Excerpt: Defiantly, Saddam Hussein and his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti are pictured shouting down the court disrupting what little control the judge has over the proceedings. The outbursts have continued throughout the proceedings so far, riddling …

[Yeh, well I still say Saddam had better hope my Baptist preacher grandfather was wrong in his belief in a literal hell. But in his case, I’d say that’s a slim hope indeed.]

More Israeli news from Tel-Chai Nation: Suicide bomber attacks Netanya mall In another blow to Ariel Sharon’s credibility, a sucide bomber attacked a shopping mall in Netanya today. The Islamic Jihad and Al-Aksa Martyr’s Brigade, the latter which is affiliated with Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah gang, both claimed responsibility

[Appeasement never works… ]

This news from The Land of Ozz reminds me of that old saying about gun control being hitting the target… Merry, Happy, Season’s Greetings from Target
Excerpt: The fight by some to take Christ our of Christmas is running hot. The American Family Association (AFA) is taking a stand against Target for its policy of not using the term “Merry Christmas”. Focus on the Family reports AFA Founder and …
 
[Ready… Aim… ]

The Real Ugly American asks, McCain in 08? Major Garret of Fox news was just on the Bill Bennet Show and stated “many many things are moving in John McCain’s direction for 2008”. He cited as evidence this exchange between McCain and Tim Russert on Meet the Press yesterday…

[And my answer is a prayer: Dear God, I hope not! I can see it now: Snake McCain for President. Gag a maggot.]

Now this post from Stuck On Stupid is what I call an “RCOB”* piece of news: A Disgusting Death Wish To A Soldier Joshua Sparling6900 Georgia Ave NWBldg. 2 Ward 57Washington, DC 20307-5001 That is the address of a soldier that received one card. That Card written in a child’s hand wished him death. That card was the only one that he received in the week that he h…

[*RCOB=”Red curtain of blood” for the nearly berserker rage at the filth that would pen such a poisonous missive]

Bloggin’ Outloud notes the essential difference between dogs and cats. Dogs vs Cats They feed me, they love me, they take care of all my needs. What’s the conclusion? Find out at Dogs vs Cats Open Post at Bloggin’ Outloud.
 
[Hmmm, sounds like a “real person” vs. “reality-based egotistic fantasist” deal to me…]

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More later… or not. We’ll see.

Once again, Romeocat has yet another beautiful Advent post. Here’s a musical intro for you. Just play the following as an accompaniment to her citation of the lyrics to “O Come Little Children”.

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I recieved some disturbing, but not altogether unexpected, news from an aquaintance in email the other day. It seems the Loony Left Moonbats/Mass Media Podpeople/Hate America First crowd are setting up a straw man argument against immigration control via an ad hominem attack on Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo.

As I said, it’s not unexpected. The Loony Left Moonbats/Mass Media Podpeople/Hate America First crowd have no real arguments to counter genuine legal, security, economic and even moral arguments in favor of genuine immigration control and cultural assimilation, so they have now begun attempting to tar the Congressman who is most visible and vocal in his attempts to Guard the Borders with the “racist” slur.

Here’s Glenn Greenwald’s take on the matter (a TWCâ„¢ Recommended Read). A sample:

“All in a single one-line post, Oliver Willis manages to perfectly illustrate the cheapest, most intellectually dishonest — and, for those who wield it in the immigration debate, the most self-destructive — form of argumentation.”

Read the whole thing.

What ought we to do? I’m all for a combination of efforts: Jerry Pournelle’s suggestion that we institute a bounty for illegals (with appropriate controls to curb abuses); Dafydd ab Hugh’s “Walls and Gates” (my paraphrase-scroll way down on the linked article) idea-create strong, well-policed, barriers to further illegal immigration and means for those who want to visit/live here legally to do so as well as for those who want to become AMERICAN citizens to do so.

But those who want to circumvent our laws, form their own little enclaves of non-American mini-states (like France has allowed Muslims to do) must be brought to heel.

UPDATE: Fixed the link to the Greenwald article]

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This has been a production of the Guard the Borders blogburst, brought to you every Monday by Euphoric Reality. The purpose of Guard the Borders is to raise awareness about the illegal immigration problem. If you care about our borders and want to join the blogburst, send your blog name and URL to kit.jarrell at gmail dot com.

Blogs Already on Board:

Open Post. Do your thing. Link to this post and track back at will.

The amazing thing is this thing still shows signs of pseudo-life! But the “Grows new feet and tail”? Not so amazing… What great feat is it for Jean Fraud sKerry to grow a new tale? His life is a string one unbelieveable tale after another. From “immaculate conception” (of at least one Purple Heart), through consorting with, giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war (while still officially an officer in the Navy), slandering ALL those who served in Vietnam, and flip-flopping his way through a Senate career and Presidential race. Why should every new tale about releasing his records be considered anything new?

What is amazing is that he gets a bye on every lie from a media that will have a feeding frenzy whenever President Bush does not lie (calling honest statements lies when they are not–hmm, sounds familiar. In another context such behavior was attributed to satanic influence… )

A simple question for Senator Jean Fraud sKerry: where are the records you promised 310 days ago, on national television, to release? Still tied up and held “in confidence” at the Boston Glob (not a misspelling), the LA Slimes and with your biographer, all of whom say they do not have release from you to reveal their entire contents? Indeed, none of them indicate that they yet have the entire contents of the records you said you released 200 days ago.

General aside: will someone please set this liar’s [figurative] pants on fire? heh. Maybe then he’d be moved to actually-gasp!-keep his word.

Nah. Then besides a feet and tail he’d also have to grow some integrity. And that’s much harder for something like Jean Fraud sKerry to do. Something on the order of a camel passing through the eye of the needle.

From TMH’s Bacon Bits (Hey! like the graphic, dude! *VBG*),

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This was brought to you by the Free Kerry’s 180 Blogroll. If you want to join, visit Cao’s Blog for instructions. The blogburst is every Tuesday. All you have to do is encourage Kerry to set his 180 records FREE. The more, the merrier!

Blogs already on board:

LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI
Aaron’s cc
And Rightly So!
Atlas Shrugs
Balance Sheet
Big Dog’s Weblog
Cao’s Blog
Christmas Ghost
Civil Issues
Conservative Friends
Cuppapolitics
DANEgerus
doubleplusgood infotainment
Euphoric Reality
Every Man
Flight Pundit
Fundamentally Right
Furry Press
GM’s Corner
Gribbit’s Word
House Of Wheels
i-imagery.com
Infinite Universe
International House of Conservatism
Jackson’s Junction
Jay Howard Smith
Kender’s Musings
Knight Simplar
Lifetrek
Moonbattery.com
My Vast Rightwing Conspiracy
NIF
Oblogatory Anecdotes
PBSWatcher
Pirate’s Cove
Pooklekufr: The Kafir Constitutionalist
Power and Control
Private Radio
Progressive Conservatism
Publius Rendezvous
Ravings Of A Mad Tech
Reasoned Audacity
Reverse Vampyr
Right in Philly
Right Track
Rottweiler Puppy
Something…and Half of Something
Steve’s Blog
Stop the ACLU
Sweet Spirits of Ammonia
Tall Glass of Milk
The Babaganoosh
The Creative Conservative
The Dark Citadel
The Neo Con Blogger
The Neocon Blogger
The Paragraph Farmer
The Pulpit Pounder
The Sunnyeside Of Life
Think About It
Third World County
TMH’s Bacon Bits
Truth On Iraq
Uncle Jack
Villainous Company
Web-Nuts
What Attitude Problem?
Where’s Your Brain?*******************************

I made comment earlier today that most of my readers seem to be from the right side of the bell curve (in terms of “g” potential), and in fact, I suspect that a goodly many are a tad further right of center than I am on that old debil IQ score. So, I have a lil non-scientific test for ya. View the video below and ascertain what you think the nature of the interaction is between

a.) the questioners and Donald Rumsfeld

b.) Donald Rumsfeld and General Pace (the other person answering reporters’ questions).

Then CLICK HERE and read material quoted in the report that accompanied the video on the site where I found the video and answer the questions found at the link back here in comments.

Yeh, I know it’s overly cumbersome. That’s part of the “test” silly… 🙂

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Shamelessly promoted at Committees of Correspondence.

This from a reader/correspondent at Chaos Manor:

According to the research firm The Gartner Group:

“What makes the Sony BMG incident even more unfortunate is that the DRM technology can be defeated easily. Gartner has identified one simple technique: The user simply applies a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc, rendering session 2 – which contains the self-loading DRM software – unreadable. The PC then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the commonly used CD “rip” programs continue to work as usual. (Note: Gartner does not recommend or endorse this technique.) Moreover, even without the tape, common CD-copying programs readily duplicate the copy-protected disc in its entirety.”

Please note that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, this makes a “fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape” an illegal circumvention device, and under the Act, possession of this device is punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and up to five years in jail!

Anarcho-tyranny: We are all criminals. Note that the activity the DMCA and Sony’s DRM copy-protection scheme are mdesigned to prevent is perfectly legitimate use for say, tapes of music or videotapes of shows and was-up intil DMCA-perfectly legitimate use of CDs, etc.: the archiving of legally-owned copies of music or video, or the trtansfer of their contents for use on other devices. This whole “let’s make criminals of people for fair use of copyrighted material they have paid to use” ploy is a violation of our legitimate use of property designed… to make crimiinals of us all.

Ferdy has a post, “Notes from Ferdy – The Sony Question,” that touches on this as well. What are YOUR thoughts?

Shamelessly flogged* at: Is it Just Me?, Macstansbury, Bloggin’ Outloud and NIF

(*To avert those who’ve been exposed to recent pejorations of the term from gasping in dismay: flog-Informal. To publicize aggressively: flogging a new book. 🙂

Responding to an email from someone very obviously on the left end of the bell curve, Jerry Pournelle said,

“I presume that just about all of my readership is on the right hand side of the bell curve, although I sometimes get messages indicating that is not an absolutely justifiable assumption.”

I have justifiable reason to assume much the same, at least based on comments and the growing number of visitors who are non-Internet Exploder users. *s*

But, yeh, I’ve had to deal with one or two folks dropping in here from the left (sometimes called the “low”) end of the bell curve. Gotta love ’em. Cos they aren’t smart enough to know when they’re stupid, of course.

😉

(Of course, I’m somewhere toward the left end of Chaos Manor readers, but given the quality of his usual correspondents, that’s quite a good group to be in.)

Do pop on over and read the whole thing. You’ll have to page down a ways to get to the commentary and the e- that inspired it. Worth the time and effort, though.

Just so this isn’t just another reminder to head over to Romeocat’s Cathouse Chat for her daily Advent post, here’s a little instrumental accompaniment to go along with the lyrics to the song she quotes today. Feel free to sing along. The music’s already started below (just CLICk to stop/restart if you want), and the words are here.

Do consider submitting something to Adam’s Carnival of Christmas, too.

Note, for quicker loading, this time I chose a midi file. The quality of the reproduction will depend entirely—apart from your speakers :-)—on your synth/patches. This midi file was originally written as a demo of Roland’s Soundcanvas products.

Adverts at Bloggin’ Outloud and NIF

OK, what a mishmash. 🙂

Open Post. If you know what to do, do it, and I’ll try to do a roundup later. If you don’t know aht I’m talking about, see here.

Featured blog? I mentioned over the weekend that All Things Beautiful had a significant (and very long, detailed) post “The Jihad Apocalypse” that is more than simply worth reading; it is an important read. But All Things Beautiful is also more than just one or two great posts. It is one very good post after another with exceptional posts liberally distributed among other worthwhile reads. Going in my Regular Reads section as soon as I get A Round Toit. DO drop over and spend some time. You’ll be very glad you did. But plan on spending time. It’s a very content-rich blog. Fluff? Need not apply at All Things Beautiful.

Playing catchup: I missed this exchange between Jerry Pournelle and a Marine Colonel who served as Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq. It makes a good complement to “The Jihad Apocalypse“. My very minor observation: It’s sad that they both seem to agree that exporting America’s “slacker” culture is probably one of the best long-term methods of defeating Islamic jihadism… since by the time that’s accomplished, slacker culture may have allowed the Chinese to overcome us…

Stuck on Stupid found an interesting story: WW2 Vet Awarded Medals 60 Years Later. Man! That’s worse than the line at the DMV!

Freedom Folks has a chuckle in A Jury Of Thier Peers. heh

Ar Cathouse Chat, Romeocat continues her daily Advent posts. Seasonal must-reads, IMO. Today’s post will have me searching for an appropriate mp3, again.

Guard the Borders later today will feature a tip I got in email. Gotta love sharp readers.

Oh, and have you visited iHillary recently? Lotsa good Photoshop snark. Check out the “Dr. Soros” book. *snirk* And “Donkeysaurus”? heh

Outside the blogosphere, two very different pieces of news: Seven League Boots? And Kimchi defeats asian bird flu? Finally, a use for kimchi. Wonders never cease.

🙂

Link to this post and trackback.

Plugged at NIF_2_ (heh), Bloggin’ Outloud and maybe others later, if I make the time.

If you want the Advent post, go visit CatHouse Chat’s Sunday post “The King of Heaven, born on Earth”. Well said, Romeocat!

But before you click the link, fire up this Excerpt of a CD by The American Bach Soloists Choir. (Good stuff Maynard.) Then listen along and read Romeocat’s “The King of Heaven, born on Earth”.

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And don’t forget R’Cat’s encouragement to participate in the Carnival of Christmas,

Don’t forget to think of submitting something to Adam’s Carnival of Christmas. I hope and pray he has a huge Carnival, full of all the joy and light and wonder of this blessed season!