third world county – Page 287 – "In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."

September 4, 2009

Obamanation Kiddies’ Hour?

Obamanation Kiddies’ Hour? Notsomuch in America’s Third World County. So far, I have confirmation of two gradeschool/middle school combos here in America’s Third World County canceling any participation in The 0!’s first nationwide indoctrination of America’s pubschool children in Obama Worship.

Hmmm, seems parents were burning up the telco wiring and–surprise! surprise!–school administrators looked at their hole card and decided deuces weren’t gonna cut it.

Open thread at Moonbattery (whence the graphic above was ~~stolen~~ urm, borrowed).

September 3, 2009September 3, 2009

Recessional

It’s been too long since I let “Kipling Tuesday” lapse at third world county, and while it’s not Tuesday, contemplating the morass of sins our government commits in the name of The People using the power an enstupiated, greedy sheeple electorate has given it, I thought his “Recessional” most apt.

Recessional
Rudyard Kipling

God of our fathers, known of old–
Lord of our far-flung battle line–
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine–
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies–
The Captains and the Kings depart–
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away–
On dune and headland sinks the fire–
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe–
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law–
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard–
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Amen.

September 3, 2009

Service? What Service?

Yeh, I’m back griping about my ISP again. *sigh*

So, service had been “fair to partly cloudy” since about late Sunday evening/early Monday AM. Not stellar, but mostly up and mostly adequate. Then I got this in my email:

We appreciate that you have chosen Xxxxxxxxx Online High-Speed Internet service, and we constantly look to bring you a better service
with new improvements.

We have just increased your download speed from 8 Mbps to 12 Mbps, and your upload speed from 52 Kbps to 1 Mbps.

All you need to do to get the faster speed is unplug the power cord from your cable modem, and then plug it back in to the outlet. That’s it!

“Really?” methought. “OK, I’ll just do that lil thing, since service seems slow today.”

Cycled my “modem” (it’s NOT a modem–“MOdulator/DEModulator”; it’s a specialized router, but who’s keeping score? Oh, I am, that’s who). Checked my connection. Yep. Still slow. In fact, checking with SpeedTest, the latency test timed out three times with three different servers before I could get a SpeedTest started. Then, when the download “speed” refused to go above 190kbps (WHAT?!?!), I canceled the thing and tried again. Yep. No matter what server I chose to test my connection with, the touted “12mbs” download “speed” was nowhere, mon frere.

So I called. Eight times. Seriously. And that doesn’t count the times the correctly dialed phone number refused to connect–either one of them. Why eight times? Disconnected when put on hold twice. Got a rude $%^&* named “Champale” (sp? What mother would name a child that?) once and hung up myself. The other five were cycling through attempting to find someone who would escalate the call to someone who knew something beyond just the first level diag chart, cos I’d covered all those bases in spades more times than the doofuses on the other end of the line have (and actually know what those things are meant to accomplish).

Once again I was told an upper level tech would contact me within 24 hours. Of course, when I’ve been told that before, it’s turned out to be false. In fact, the last person I talked to confessed to me that my record does not indicate an escalation has ever taken place.

Now? I’m back to a nominal download/upload speed–for now!–that is acceptable, but 1/3 less than the lying email I recieved today. And I’ll have an acceptable connection until… I don’t, if the record of the past couple of months is any indication.

Oh. Well.

September 3, 2009

Global Warming… Notsomuch

It’s a nice Fall day on September 3rd here in America’s Third World County.

*huh*? Fall? Doesn’t that come later? (Yeh, September 22/23 [Astronomical] or September 30 [Meteorological])

Well, the sycamore stands in our back yard seem to think so as they are shedding leaves. The 60-something degree temps outside seem to agree, and since the weather forecast is for cool weather and rain for the next week, I guess I might be forgiven for thinking it’s an early Fall, even though Persephone might not yet be packing her bags for her annual trip to Hades quite yet.

I do kinda hope this doesn’t mean we’ll be in for another ice storm like we had in January of ’07, even though that was the result of a cold snap that also flew in the face of the doctrines of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming/Changism.

Oh, well. A couple of weeks without power weren’t all that bad, really. Dig out the ole campstove, candles and flashlights and LOTS of sleep if it happens again. 🙂 Still, even if it does, perhaps the power company’s learned its lesson. I do see that power lines are much freer of overhanging branches than they were in ’07… (‘Cos even the electric company doesn’t think the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming/Changism is full of anything but pure B.S.)

September 2, 2009

“Say What, Willis?”

Just got an email from a blog buddy that included the following comment summing up the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind response to every infringement of citizens’ rights: “Yawn. No big deal. You have to just trust Barry, cause he is just so cute and fuzzy!”

Hmmm, I told him he’d better take care or they’d accuse him of calling Obama, “That nappy-haired 0!”

September 1, 2009September 1, 2009

Change

~~Stole~~ Borrowed the graphic from Cathouse Chat.

“In a democracy (’rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”-third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom

…and stupidity.

You wanted change, dumbasses; you got it. Problem is, now the rest of the country has to live with your mistake.

August 31, 2009August 31, 2009

Rasmussen: “57% Would Like to Replace Entire Congress”

“A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote.”¹

Yeh, but Rasmussen only polls “likely voters” who are alive. That misses a HUGE demographic for Dhimmicrappic voters: the dead.

August 31, 2009September 1, 2009

Well, It’s Not West Virginia

…but invoking the shade of John Denver, it’s “almost heaven”–for now–after a couple of months of poor service from my ISP (which shall go unnamed to protect the guilty *heh*). I had a real difficulty getting up to full curmudgeonly “gripe ’em out” mode, since the last couple of months of on again-off again service from my ISP was the first time in six years with this ISP that I’ve had cause to really gripe. Finally, six business days after my full mode “take no prisoners” assault on my ISP’s support, another tech came out, metered the input on my line and got a definitive number on the poor feed from them–same as ALL THE OTHERS he’d tested in town that day–and someone apparently kicked some a$$ back up the line, cos my numbers for the past couple of days’ service have been consistently better, and service has been–apart from a complete outage early this a.m. around 1:00, when I suppose someone may have scheduled some additional service, and I ought to have been sleeping anyway–better since Saturday.

(Heck, for much of the past couple of months, SpeedTest.net, when it would load at all, would time out testing my connection. That’s not good. And yes, I redacted the ISP’s name and the location of the test.)

It’s nice to–for now–have service that’s more like what I’ve been paying for. Nice that my repeated, pointed remarks about the ISP not investing enough in service (having too few service techs, as an example) seems to have resulted in TWO techs working the multiple calls in town last week, instead of the usual one, hugely over worked guy (it may have helped that I encouraged others that I know have the same ISP to list that in their gripes as well, ya think? *heh*). Also nice that, my repeated pressing for my ISP to “make me whole” also resulted in a rebate on at least a portion of the past two months’ service charges. Lesson: in today’s economy where companies are cutting back in the wrong places (not laying off or at least re-tasking useless management pukes but laying off, or not hiring, enough “boots on the ground” for example), rattling the cages of increasingly higher layers of support personel is sometimes the only way to get what you pay for.

Update: well after a mini-outage late last night and again this a.m., my current connection speed’s a slight improvement over yesterday… for now.

August 30, 2009August 30, 2009

Will Rogers on Congress–Updated for the 21st Century

Will Rogers had a way of putting his finger on the pulse of the tension between a free citizenry and the political “elite” but he does need a bit of updating for our times, for example:

“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as we do when the baby gets hold of a hammer.” – Will Rogers

Well, yeh, if the “baby” is 9 feet tall, weighing in at about 600 pounds, swinging a 25 pound sledgehammer and having 50 pounds of “diaper harvest” dripping all over the place… Yeh, that kind of baby with a hammer and a tantrum.

August 30, 2009

Smart People

I’ve stolen a small clip from one frame out of four panels of a Sluggy Freelance comic *whew!* to hint at something The 0! and his ilk know well: it doesn’t matter who you blame for a problem as long as you can pretend that “You’re dumb; I’m smart’ you’re little; I’m big…” (through the whole litany of excuses “Harry Wormwood” and “Agatha Trunchbull” used to oppress Matilda in the eponymous 1996 film–my personal fav DVD) and do something to make the problem into a “crisis” so you can “do stuff right now!” to make the crisis worse, so you can then… You get the idea. Why! Really all you have to do is pick something/someone to blame and stick with it, so why not just stick with…

(To understand the brilliance of that concept, see that August 30, 2009 Sluggy Freelance comic. Of course *evil grin and a “bwa-ha-ha-ha”* to really understand that, you’ll need to check out the whole Sluggy Freelance background, but especially noting the character of Kiki and the background of the “Zombie on a Stick”. But that’s a “whole ‘nother” set of “issues”. *heh*)