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People of the Light?

Not talking about Mass Media Podpeople whenever “people of the light” are mentioned.

See Orson Scott Card’s article at The Rhincerous Times of Greennsboro, NC. A taste:

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

by Orson Scott Card

October 20, 2008
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them…

…It’s not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices…

More, much more, at the LINK.

Interesting that it would take a lifelong Democrat to upbraid the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind so unequivocally. Maybe, if there remain even a few more–a remnant of honest, decent men and women–such people in the Democratic Party (and hopefully a few in the Replublican Party as well), just maybe there is hope for the republic of the Foun ders that once was.

I’ll not hold my breath, though. Rather, I’ll use it to cheer such folks on. Way to go, Card!

h.t. Jerry Pournelle’s mailbag

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“It’s the most wonderful time of the year… “

Yep. October. Time to start making beer again (summer’s just too much hassle here at twc central). Here’s the “kit-let” I started with last year, a nano-mini-micro-brewkeg from Mr. Beer:

I soon “graduated” to making “kitty litter beer” (*heh* just some molasses beer made in a bew keg made from a WELL-cleaned 3-gallon plastic kitty litter tub), and this year I plan on making more of almost all the beers I made last fall/winter/spring and adding some hard ciders and wines.

Why not? I have plenty of empty Grolsch swingtop bottles!

🙂

Beer: the second of my much-venerated “holy brews”–lagging only slightly behind coffee.

Oh, this is much better, indeed, than moping about, griping and complaining about politics!

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Why Do I Do This to Myself?

I just read an disappointing book, “How to Be a Geek Goddess.” It was all so pointless, since I’m not “divinity” material and can’t pass the physical anyway.

Oh well.

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“Survival cancels out programming”

Let’s hope so. From the afterward to Watch on the Rhine:

Right now, Western Civilization, however much many of its members may refuse to admit it, is involved in a world war. No, it has seen no entire cities destroyed; no trenches have drawn their scars across entire continents. It is a world war all the same. Moreover, it is a world war that is putting to the test every notion of individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and rule of law that the West prizes. And should we lose we will see, or our grandchildren will, the erasure of all that is good in Western Civilization.

We cannot afford to lose.

Yet winning will have its price, too… Because side by side with the virtues of Western Civilization are paired vices that may destroy us: a narrow legalistic mindset, an emphasis on form over substance, and an unwillingness to do the ruthless and violent things we must if we are to survive. This list is not exhaustive. Perhaps worse than these things, however, the West has nurtured at its own breast a set of execrable, vile, treacherous and treasonous villains that seem to seek at every opportunity to do all they can to ensure its destruction.

What is said above concerning Western Civilization in general goes as well for the United States. This election year, be very careful to vote for candidates who do not fall into the class described above as, “execrable, vile, treacherous and treasonous villains that seem to seek at every opportunity to do all they can to ensure [our] destruction.” And do note well, Sarah Palin’s clarion call in her “debate” with Plagiarizin’ Joe that we Americans must awake to our own responsibilities and duties as individuals.

It is your duty to seek out and nullify those “execrable, vile, treacherous and treasonous villains” seeking the destruction of our society.

And remember also the clear words of James Burnham:

“Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.”

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A Thought for Today

Along with the classic Eight Most Terrifying Words in the English Language (“I’m from the government; I’m here to help”), this colorful thought:

“You may not like the effing government, but the government likes effing you.”

Take that thought to the polls on November 4th, would you?

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I think that word DOES mean what you think it means…

Isn’t it nice for The Chosen One to take time from his busy schedule to visit my humble blog? *heh*

Barack Obama | info@whiterabbitcult.com | whiterabbitcult.com | IP: 82.146.49.61

I really like what you had to say here! It\’s about time! Would you mind if I placed a link back from my blog?

Can anyone say,

😉

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“The voices, the voices… “

*heh*

I can’t say this post is just random stuff, because I’m sure (sure, I tell you!) that the voices in my head have some reason behind all this…

My preferred election map (and with the hope of some coat tails):

Will it happen? It’s up to you, so do NOT disappoint me!

Strange things going on with the latest iteration of Opera and Flash. When I run Opera 9.6–native Linux version–and ANY Flash applet or video or whatever loads on a page, Opera “grays out” (dims) and freezes. Sometimes for just a few seconds, sometimes completely. Weird. Especially weird, because when I use Opera 9.6–Windows version, running under WINE–and load the same pages with the same Flash elements, no problem. It’s almost enough to get me to use Firefox. *heh*

Update: The upgrade to Opera 9.61 seems to have knocked this bug on its tail, for the most part.

A nice, warm bowl of oatmeal. Yum. Almost as nice as a nice, warm bowl of cheese grits. *heh*

I know a decent, honorable politician (which also means not necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed, but a nice guy). Surprise, surprise. One. He recently said to my wife–some meeting with her teachers’ group–that if Obama won the election, he might just have to leave the country (as well might we all, juuuust ahead of the Obamassiah’s Brownshirt Brigade). I told her the next time she saw him to refer him to this. At least that country has a history of resistance to cultural destruction.

My desk. I just cleaned it off and it’s three (or four) layers deep in STUFF. It’s the sort of instant trasnformation that epics aren’t sung about…


What? Me worry?

Joe is now the most notorious plumber in American politics since the Watergate plumbers. And they weren’t licensed, either. It turns out Joe doesn’t even make 250 grand, and it’s only the 250-thousand-a-year types who’ll be paying more (please, no tittering) under Good King Barack.

Read more from Mark Steyn on Joe the Plumber here.

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Joe the Plumber, Meet Ed the Dairyman

*heh*

What’s to add to that? (Oh, there are details of the Obama tax proposals that are far, far worse than depicted in this lil clip, but 5th grade–or lower–math is about the level of most college graduate sheeple, so we’ll just let it go at that.)

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Two-Party System?

While I believe a two-party political system has many advantages, the problem with our two-party system nowadays is that it isn’t, really. One wing of our uniparty talks about unity, while doing everything it can to be divisive, while the other wing talks about bipartisanship, meaning “surrender our principles and accede to the other wing of the uniparty’s demands.” And so we end up with R.L. Dabney’s prophetic 19th Century utterance,

“Conservatism’s history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. 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.”

Yes, he was talking about conservative vs. “progressive” as to both political and social matters in the 19th Century–which were somewhat more separate in the 19th Century than today. How much more valid are his words today? (OK, so there is some small difference between the two “major” parties. The Dhimmicraps–leaders and rank-and-file, it seems–want to drive the country over a cliff into the abyss of socialism/communism at a brisk 100mph, while the Repugnican’t “elites” demur. They feel a more sedate 75mph is in order… )

So, some would “send a message” to one party or the other by voting for a third- or fourth- or firth-party candidate. The problem with that is that nobody’s listening to the so-called message. The only way a third-party candidate can send a viable message is by either winning an election or getting a plurality of the vote. Apart from that, third-party candidates are dismissed by very nearly everyone as simply cranks. No, the only way an “independent” (ain’t no such critter*) or third-party candidate can make waves big enough to be heard is to have a big enough base of the candidate’s own to actually win office… and then be successful in making changes that are positive, whatever base deems positive.

By that set of criteria, Joe Lieberman is an almost successful third-party (a party of one?) candidate/officeholder. To be truly successful, he’d have to have effected positive change in the party he left, at the very least, and he’s not done so.

When I see a viable third party form that espouses my views, I’ll jump on board lickety-split. Until then, unfortunately, I’ll probably still be limited to votes against the worst candidate, more often than not. Fortunately, reviewing this year’s offerings at local, state and national level, I can vote with some degree of positivism on almost half the races. Heck, adding Palin to his ticket even gave me a positive reason to vote for Juan Mexicain (and hope for a Palin presidential candidacy down the road, a candidacy that may well be a step in reform of the Repugnican’t Party).

But third-party? Not until someone with a positive record of accomplishments and genuine reform comes along to challenge the Uniparty.

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