To Love One's Country....

Let me say first that I am neither an Obamamaniac or a McCrazy. And while I still have a conscience, I may not vote it, and therefore my vote may very possibly be up for sale. Email me with offers. You can pay up via PayPal.

I have exerpted most of this, and you can read this entire post from John McCollum's blog: Ears To The Track.

The very thoughtful follow-up post to this article can be read here at Ears To The Track.

To Love One’s Country
(Also entitled “The Post That Erased Any Chance I Ever Had At Being Elected To Public Office.”)

...I’ve noted with interest and not a small amount of consternation this election cycle’s focus on “loving America,” and I’m interested in exploring what it means to love one’s country, and whether or not it’s important to do so.

Michelle Obama said something like, “For the first time in my adult life, I’m really proud of my country,” and the pundits and bloggers reacted as if she said, “For the first time in my adult life, I survived a 24 hour period without sacrificing a toddler on the altar of Baal.”*....

...First, I just want to say that I really do think that there is a double standard when it comes to evaluating what constitutes anti-American perceptions or actions. The far right in our country (and probably in every other country) has very effectively crafted the perception that support for nationalistic militarism and ethnocentric exceptionalism are the primary means for demonstrating one’s love for the Fatherland.

Thus, a (black) pastor who says “God is judging this country because of its economic and military injustices” is immediately and effectively labeled “an America-hater,” but a white pastor who says, “God is judging this country because of its sexual immorality” is regarded — at worst — as being moralistic and outdated. In both cases, the pastor “hates” the nation’s moral record. In only one case does the accusation that the man “hates America” stick. Likewise, people who oppose the country’s drift toward secularism at sexual tolerance may still be considered “good, patriotic Americans,” but those who oppose the nation’s march toward imperialism are somehow seen as exhibiting civic deficiencies.

My friends on the far right would probably acknowledge that this double standard exists, but they would probably see it less as a misjudgment and more as a confirmation that liberals do indeed hate America.

...Double-standard aside, I’m not really sure I see “loving my country” as being particularly high on my list of moral imperatives. Don’t get me wrong — I do love my country — I just don’t think that patriotism is necessarily one of the higher virtues, or that lack of willingness to go to great deals to demonstrate one’s patriotism is an indication of one’s suitability for good citizenship, or even good leadership.

I could make my argument from a secular standpoint, but I’m more interested in exploring the scriptural aspects, since “God and Country” are so often linked in this discourse, particularly among us evangelicals.

In the scriptures, I’m commanded to love a lot of things: my God, my neighbor, my wife, my enemy…I’m never commanded to love my country. In fact, if “loving my country” means that I demonstrate preference to someone based on their ethnicity, their nationality or, for instance, their loyalty to America’s foreign policies, I think I’ve pretty much undermined a very important aspect of Jesus’ mission on this earth — to make his temple a “house of prayer for all nations” and ours, to “make disciples of all nations.” And when I’m willing to value American lives over, say, Iranian lives or when I’m willing to promote America’s economic interests over the interests of the world’s poor simply because I’m American I may actually demonstrate my infidelity to the only Kingdom worthy of my allegiance.

I guess I’m grappling with what it means to “love my country.” I do recognize that being born American, much like being born white, has afforded me many opportunities that I didn’t earn, and that I don’t deserve. I am grateful to God for all of those opportunities. But I also am deeply conflicted about what those opportunities and privileges require of me, and what blind spots they provoke, and I think that promises of allegiance and demonstrations of fealty to any temporary, earthly kingdom creates an untenable level of moral debt to a creditor by whose terms I cannot abide....

Again, you can read this entire post on John McCollum's Blog: Ears To The Track.

Gift -- for Father's Day

Hi Dad. See you soon.

Gift by Brooks Haxton

All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;
and we all do fade as a leaf
—Isaiah 64:6

After my mother's father died,
she gave me his morocco Bible.
I took it from her hand, and saw
the gold was worn away, the binding
scuffed and ragged, split below the spine,
and inside, smudges where her father's
right hand gripped the bottom corner
page by page, an old man waiting, not quite
reading the words he had known by heart
for sixty years: our parents in the garden,
naked, free from shame; the bitterness of labor;
blood in the ground, still calling for God's
curse—his thumbprints fading after the flood,
to darken again where God bids Moses smite
the rock, and then again in Psalms, in Matthew
every page. And where Paul speaks of things
God hath prepared, things promised them who wait,
things not yet entered into the loving heart,
below the margin of the verse, the paper
is translucent with the oil and dark
still with the dirt of his right hand.

God never comes into the calculations....

"If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14


http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5045549&page=1

Scientists warn "We are living in the last century for our species."

Funny how God never comes into it...

"Real Men of Genius"....

I was on espn.com, checking into whether Tiger's knee was "organized" enough to make the US Open, when I saw an idea contest for the Budweiser "Real Men of Genius" ads.

I couldn't help myself. Here's my entry letter:


This is a little rough. You Genius Beer Ad Guys may have to fluff it a bit.

Real Men of Genius: The Incredibly Intelligent Beer Ad Guy.

Voiceover: You’ve always been a genius - from that first year of pre-school in East Hampton, through that BA in BS at Columbia, on through to Honors at Haaaavaad School of Bizniss and your currently very gainful employment for whoever is lucky enough to have Budweiser’s advertising contract.

Sure, it’s not Geico, with that funny little green Aussie, but this ain't Aussie beer. You're throwing ad ideas for America's #1 mass-produced weak-ass-Kool-Aid of a beer around a table full of other incredibly intelligent ad-persons while drinking expensive mineral water from France.

You’re nothing like the people you work the pitch for. And when you throw that pitch at them, they know it, 'cause you throw like a girl. You're sailing off Montauk, weekends. You’ve never eaten a hotdog. You recycle Kitty Delight Tuna - not beer - cans. You had beer once, and it made you sick. You PLAY Polo, but wouldn't be caught dead in the shirts or the cheap cologne. You know what to do with an Ascot. Heck, you are an Ascot. And you still confuse that funny look they're giving you with admiration.

Life is good.

So here’s to YOU, Mr. Incredibly Intelligent Beer Ad Guy.

Final Passage -- Bruce "Utah" Phillips....

Bruce "Utah" Phillips

Final Passage by Linda E. Cable

This last painful journey
is all so wide and green,
a maze of sharp stalks,
the persistent echo of ravens
crying out so many names.

Cooler, softer meadows
once promised to me
lay beyond the razor cut
of all the lies grown ripe,
and crushed along my path.

I have reached the hard pack
of my travels through this
final field of remedies,
stumbling breathless,
striving toward the clover.

Soon I will lay bloody cheeks
upon the healing dew,
crown my head with feverfew,
crush lavender in my palms
and offer myself to the sun.

"Bruce Utah Phillips died at home, in bed, in his sleep, next to his wife."

What a way to go....

Everybody's an expert -- even when they're not....

I am finding myself finding ever deeper enjoyment in simple things:

Mowing the lawn. Looking at my sweetie for extended periods of time while she doesn't know I'm watching. Reworking old compositions on guitar. Counting the shades of green. Sitting cat-in-lap on couch. Having extended conversations with our older dog.

And there are the things that aren't as good. Grownup things:

Feeling that ache of wanting to take care of everybody and everything by somehow keeping all pain away. Worrying about pain I know is going to be coming, and how to keep that pain away for as long as possible. How to get people you love to believe that you really know what you say you know. Bouts of sobriety.

I think the "old soul" term may come to fit many of us, but in my case I think that I am finding some of what is really important at this late date. For a large portion of my life I have been simply an over-opinionated idiot with nothing to back it up. Here is hoping that at least most of that stops here. I realize that to some, overzealous opinionating is what a blog is for. So here are some intentionally vague points:

There a few things that I am very certain of, many things that I am not -- and not certain of....

I come from the educated side of an Independent Baptist background. The "Independent" is there for a reason, as they are an opinionated bunch, with a dead-certainty on a lot of subjects that cannot be conclusively proven. But there aren't many churches where the Pastor regularly uses multiple translations and compares them to the Greek and Hebrew, and publicly challenges his congregation to further their education and question authority, either. So that's a plus. Which leads to this:

I am alternately perplexed and amused by people who seem so dead-certain-right on subjects that that have multitudes of experts lining up on a multiplicity of sides. Not that I don't think you can arrive at certainty on many things (Relativism is escapism through denial of personal responsibility, IMHO.), but the particular brand of pseudo-intellectual certainty that seems to pervade the blog-O-sphere just ends up confusing me. I read extensive posts full of just-has-to-be-this-way opinions, and then I have to check it somewhere. And then I often end up confused, because even the "real world" reality experts can't agree, but somehow there is this person on a blog that "really knows".

So here's the kicker: I’m going to look for footnotes. I'm going to make it a point to read people who don't claim expertise, and who keep their lecturing to a minimum, and who don't let their readers drag them down the track of Blog-O-sphere Expert.

And maybe I'll just sit here with either a guitar or cat on my lap.

Have I made myself clear?

Probably not.

In Honor of Memorial Day....

Our Government once again proves that while it claims to be in the Freedom Biz, it is actually in the Rape the Taxpayers in the Name of Freedom Biz... otherwise known as War. This pissed me off so much that I post here the whole article in lieu of the link. From the Washington Post:

Spending On Iraq Poorly Tracked
Audit Faults Accounting for $15 Billion in Work
By Dana HedgpethWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, May 23, 2008; D01

The inspector general for the Defense Department said yesterday that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $15 billion worth of goods and services ranging from trucks, bottled water and mattresses to rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that were bought from contractors in the Iraq reconstruction effort.
The Pentagon did not have the proper documentation, including receipts, vouchers, signatures, invoices or other paperwork, for $7.8 billion that American and Iraqi contractors were paid for phones, folders, paint, blankets, Nissan trucks, laundry services and other items, according to a 69-page audit released to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
An earlier audit by the inspector general found deficiencies in accounting for $5.2 billion of U.S. payments to buy weapons, trucks, generators and other equipment for Iraq's security forces. In addition, the Defense Department spent $1.8 billion of seized Iraqi assets with "absolutely no accountability," according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who chairs the oversight committee. The Pentagon also kept poor records on $135 million that it paid to its partners in the multinational military force in Iraq, auditors said.
The Army disagreed with some of the auditors' findings, saying that it is difficult to maintain an adequate paper trail in a war zone and that it has improved its record-keeping and accountability efforts. Robert L. Wilkie, assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, declined an invitation to testify before from Waxman's committee.
Of the $7.8 billion in payments detailed in the audit released yesterday, about $1.4 billion did not meet the most minimal requirements for documentation, making it highly possible that waste, fraud or abuse had occurred, according to auditors. In one case, there is a copy of a $5.6 million check from the U.S. Treasury paid to an Iraqi contractor but no documents saying what was purchased. In another, a South Carolina contractor was paid $11 million, according to a voucher, but auditors said they could not tell what goods or services were received.
"Without a receiving report and invoice, we don't know what we paid for," said Mary Ugone, the Defense Department's deputy inspector general for auditing. She said internal controls and paper trails were inadequate and that the Army's "finance personnel were not adequately trained" in overseeing the billions of dollars paid.
Auditors referred more than two dozen vouchers, totaling $35 million, to criminal investigators at the Pentagon.
Waxman said the poorly documented expenditures of seized Iraqi assets included a $320 million cash payment for employing 1,000 people that was handed over to the Iraqi Finance Ministry with "little more than a signature in exchange."
"Investigators looked at 53 payment vouchers and couldn't find even one that adequately explained where the money went," Waxman said.
The money paid to military coalition partners, including Britain, Poland and South Korea, was intended to help local reconstruction and humanitarian projects. Auditors said that none of the files reviewed "contained sufficient supporting documentation to provide reasonable assurance that these funds were used for their intended purpose." In one case, the Defense Department made an $8 million payment to Polish forces with minimal documentation, according to the audit.
An audit report issued in November found that $5.2 billion of U.S. payments to buy weapons, trucks, generators and other equipment to support Iraqi security forces had major deficiencies in how items were accounted for, saying that the Defense Department did not know "what equipment is due in, due out, issued and on hand." The inspector general found that the Defense Department could not account for 12,712 of 13,508 weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers for Iraqi forces.
"When we turned them over to the Iraqis, they weren't properly accounted for," said Gary Comerford, a spokesman for the Defense Department's inspector general, saying serial numbers were not consistently recorded. "The paper trail is not complete."
The November audit also described how the Pentagon paid $32 million for the construction of an Iraqi military facility in Anbar province that was never built. Defense Department officials told staff members of the oversight committee that "this is embarrassing" because "not a spade of dirt was turned."

The peasants -- they just gotta work harder....

I read this on Crunchy Con. It was a good enough explanation of where I am that I reposted it.

Credit: anglican (whoever he or she is)

."... I am weary of this stay the course on the war stuff and how the Democrats are "The Party of Defeat", which sometimes they may be, but with Iraq that is not honest.

I was weary of the Iraq war from the get go, we are losing because it was an ill conceived, utopian act of idiocy; we are not losing because the Democrats aren't rallying hard enough around the flag. Wilsonian democracy crusades are crap, and the Repubs must renounce that crap. Yeah the surge may be working, but for how long and at what cost. We put out one fire in Iraq and another flares up. Nobody stops and looks at the big picture. Iraq is a nasty place and eventually is going to have a civil war that we can't stop....

"And as for the economy, I can't take another ******** lecture from Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved about hard work and how America is the greatest country on earth, blah-blah, and how people who whine about the economy are all just leeches who have been brain washed with liberal victimology, who need to suck it up and work harder.

The Democrats are going to destroy the Repubs over this. Rush's buddies have systematically looted the American economy and cut down a lot of the ladders for upward mobility. Yes hard work and responsibility is key, but all that doesn't really matter when there are few to no good-paying jobs or opportunities anymore for a lot of people. In this regard of destroying Middle Class America, McCain is merely Bush part deux.

Nothing like looter class millionaires exhorting the peasantry to work harder."

And that's where we are at. Note what Peggy Noonan predicts, here.

The Middle of the End....

Just a short note here:

The Shiite militants are taking over Lebanon.

Violence and War are on the increase in the Middle East and Israel is rapidly in the process of isolation.

The world economy is collapsing.

We are one unforcastable EVENT away from the Tribulation.

It is looking more and more like we are on the doorstep of the arrival of The Beast.

He will come and temporarily seem to solve everyone's problems.

"... When he comes, he is not gonna be wearing horns, have a pointy tail and a pitch fork. He is going to be the prettiest thing this world has ever seen. Everyone will love him, as he will have almost everyone fooled."

He will bring a false hope.

You will take the Mark, or you will not be able to buy, sell, get healthcare or eat.

Stealin' When You Shoulda Been Payin'....

Stealin' When You Shoulda Been Payin'

Person to person file sharing (p2p) patrons out there need to know that you are flat out STEALING. And it’s not just "information" on a file, it is the artist’s work, and in some cases, their livelihood.

This thievery has nothing to do with "freedom of speech". That file you download and copy is someone’s intellectual property that they created, spent thousands of dollars to produce and, more often than not, thousands more to market.

The artist is the supplier and the music is the product, not the file. Increasingly the artist and the distributor are the same, so if you up-load or down-load, you are not stealing from some faceless corporation, you are stealing from a musician who very likely maxed out his or her credit trying to maintain control of their product.

The artist or the company that contracts them pays to put the original creation into a format that can be distributed. Do you have any idea what a good producer is worth? How much they charge? How much mastering costs? Website SEO and Marketing costs?

And then you steal it. You don’t buy a CD before burning 20 copies for your friends (that’s a crime too), you just download the file and burn.

Music is intellectual property, and the recording industry is doing what they have to do in order to maintain protection of their copyrights. If they don't protect their rights to own intellectual property they lose the opportunity to both control dissemination and any possible chance to make a living from their work. That cuts the chances of the artist having the freedom to create more art.

So, here's hoping that the artist you steal from hunts you down and gives you an at-least-symbolic boot to the head.

Six Degrees and the NSA....

Six Degrees and the NSA

Everybody knows someone who, etc....

With me it's a guy I used to be in a band with who is the cousin of a guy who spent 7 years in fed. pen for keeping books for that east coast biker gang, the Pagans.

The cousin knew a guy in Jersey who supplied pot to the guy in Connecticut who also worked for the Pagans and ran most of the ho's on the east coast.

The guy who ran the ho's knew a guy in Detroit who the Pagans used when they needed "some guy from out of town”.

The guy in D-town knew another guy who was “in” with a Canadian who smuggled Afghan smack that came thru LA on a freighter from Thailand.

The Canadian knew a guy from Cleveland who went to college in Buffalo with my girlfriend.

My girlfriend and I saw a John Prine concert not too long ago.

Everybody knows George Bush thinks John Prine is Un-American.

Yeah, that’s eight degrees counting the girlfriend.

Nine, if you count John Prine.

Don’t worry.The NSA will keep track.

The only thing about this little note that gives anybody any hope at all is that I won’t have access to computers at “The Camp”.

There's a difference - some may not think so - between our government (military or civilian) operating in our "best interest" beyond our borders during either peace or war and the government spying on its own citizens within our borders and without probable cause.Ooooh, and here I'm gonna get some flack: It's about as Constitutional as "sobriety checkpoints".Several similarities. Funny how the same people who hate one can put up with the other.

Mega-Churches and Politics....

Mega-Churches and Politics

Christians and other (I hesitate to call belief systems religion; as most religions are simply the hijacking and watering down for popular consumption of a belief system) people with different belief systems and all citizens are welcome to participate in our representative Republic (it's not a true Democracy - thank God).

But (and a big but) any church (note the small "c") and other organization which uses its power and platform to give voice to a particular candidate should not be able to function as tax exempt and non-profit (and I am aware of the inequity that seems to be present between so-called conservative and liberal candidates and the treatment received from the Government of the groups and churches that give them voice).

The true Church would never think of presenting a political candidate as a speaker and thus attaching to said speaker the endorsement of the Church.

My Church has one objective: teaching and adherence to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This does not mean non-involvement from the individual members in the political process, but it does mean recognition of our representative Republic as a separate entity from the Church (big "C"). From my perspective, large churches tend to water their knowledge of the Gospel down with politics and involvements that detract from the true function of The Bride of Christ. The local Church should not exist as a social center and protective bubble that keeps away the World. It should be a place of worship and teaching that inspires its members to live their lives in the world as Jesus would; the effect hopefully being one of constant example.

Protest and picket all you want, but If you want to help change a life and influence the world, go work in a soup-kitchen; and when you spoon out that soup, accompany it with a simple "Jesus loves you, He died for you, and if you want to know how to live with Him forever, I'll be happy to tell you."

In the near future....

(Addendum: The economy will suffer such a slide, with the staples of gas and food going up, that there will be a huge backlash among the common people, resulting in the Liberal Elite riding into power on the Obamamania ticket.

The "Hope" that he promises will be followed with continued failure of the economy and the crippling of National Defense. Not that the 'pubs would do any better.)

There will be a National ID Card within three years - probably brought about and allowed through reaction to a great catastrophic event.

Many food staples will become more expensive than a gallon of gas (which will soon be way over $5/gallon), and thus unaffordable to the average citizen.

Individual state unemployment systems will go broke publically (they already are, they are just going to admit it), and shortly thereafter Social Security and other state administered retirement systems will stop payouts.

There will be a major economic meltdown. Government will try to establish control over the economy. Many necessary products will be effectively Nationalized and still be unavailable. Unemployment will be close to 30%, in spite of a National jobs/registration program where many will work in trade for sustainables (Will work for food).

The dollar will devalue to the point that the currency will be replaced with a North American Currency that will tie Canada, Mexico and the U.S. together economically. This won't last long with an almost direct jump to some sort of chip implant in lieu of ID and currency.

Then it will get bad....

Obamamania Update....

Obamamania Update: A running Scared commentary.

Boy howdy.

I think the superiority that inhabites Obamamania's disgustingly elitist world-view comes through in this unavoidable condescension. Just listen to the phrasing, the sound-bites, the certainty of it all: They DO know what is good for us. Trust them, they do.

It says something about the quality of Presidential candidates our country can field when the most thoughtful person left in the race comes up with a clunker like this.

Obamamania says:

"... You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

I may very well be bitter, but that's just me. I don't "cling to guns and religion" because I'm bitter. I cling to Christianity and the Right to Bear Arms, first of all, because my God sent His Son to die for me, and I am both obligated and grateful to Him for saving my undeserving soul -- and because they are both part of MY HERITAGE, and I am commanded through my belief to obey GOD; and given my observation of you and what you stand for, I will probably need my guns for survival.

Scary stuff.
_________________________
Mike Huckabee on Obama:

"We should recognize his many strengths. His poise, his intelligence, his ability to inspire. He's like the car you always wanted as a kid. You had your dream car and it had every bell and whistle option your heart could imagine. Then, one day you sit down and decide you want that car, except, when you do the numbers, you realize you can't afford it. You've waited and dreamed about it your whole life, but the reality hits you; you can't afford it."

Caucus vs. Popular Vote Results:

There are a lot of lib voters who love to talk a good game when it comes to anti race-bias, but when they get in the booth it's a different matter. I don't think you have to guess at any "Bradley Effect" -- all you have to do is look at the Caucus results in all (not just northern) states vs. the popular vote. If there is data on white caucus votes, I'd bet it backs that up....

On the exit polls, people lie. All the time.

I'll bet the difference in the exit polls and results mirrors the data of white Dem' caucus voters vs. white Dem' popular vote, only at a slightly smaller ratio.


On the Obama's Somali outfit pics:
Fortunately for Obamamania, the outfit completely covered up the "Go Hamas" t-shirt.


He can walk on H2O, then turn that H2O into a passable American Pale Ale (with the help of a good brewmeister, some malt and Cascade and Centennial hops), then waste that Ale by pouring it on the swooning crowd, bring world peace, brotherhood, end jaywalking and world hunger.

Personally, I'm waiting for the end-world-hunger thing, and I'm HOPING he uses the loaves and fishes trick.

Make mine a Neeew-Oileeens-style blackened Orange Roughy, please -- accompanied by said American Pale Ale; and if you would, one of those homemade flat-breads they used to have at Shaw's in Lancaster.

"Good people can vote for evil because the political process spreads the cost of evil to everyone. This serves to both obscure specific evils within the grand scope and façade of government, and also to allow for the devotion of resources to evil in huge disproportion to what people really want to give it. As long as people recognize the authority of government to fund itself on their behalf, the regime will continue." -- Jacob Halbrooks

"Revivalism from the beginning has only thrived insofar as a single individual is the focus of the devotion of the faithful, and that individual is chosen based on his ability to stir up excitement in his followers. Objective truth and deep sustained intellectual reflection are substituted with shallow rhetoric and easily attained emotional fervor. So, in fact, Obama actually has more in common with Charles Finney than with any former president, in that his views on policy are largely irrelevant to his supporters. In the modern context, Joel Osteen comes to mind. People don't care what he says, so long as he makes them feel good. But what we're witnessing is a sort of resurrection of the Caesar cult. People believe that the government is to be their savior, and they think Obama would make a good messiah." -- Kerry Lewis

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken

"I hate to be so cynical, but I'm afraid we're about to get a belly full of what we've got coming to us. How a person gets through this life without faith in Christ and fellowship of Christian friends is beyond me." -- Rublev's Dog

Rublev's Dog takes that walk....

... down the creek with dad and the old Marlin 39.

I’m going to miss my favorite blogger, Chuck, over at Rublev’s Dog.

He is riding off into a Carolina sunset and retirement (hopefully a la Bret Farvre).

His last post is great, and replete with wonderful advice: "And don’t take any microchips…"

Goodbye and hello, as always.

'pubs, Dems and Paulites....

Shame that the very ‘pubs who make fun of the Paulites supposedly “limited understanding of foreign policy”, also ignore the economic realities that the RPs are concerned with. As do the Dems.

We are economically screwed past the point of no return. ‘pubs and Dems have combined to ignore sanity for so long -- National debt-wise, Bush makes Reagan look like a piker -- that our economy is being threatened by the “National Security needs" of a war WE started.

And NeoCons have signed on to a program that chooses war in lieu of Nat.Healthcare. It's like the Dems and 'pubs are having a dialog over which way to go bankrupt. Instead of the slow death of Big Gov., we've juiced up the speed of our demise by dumping our debt down the well of Iraq.

Flash: we've BEEN bankrupt. The call just hasn't been made yet.

Iraq is Bush’s version of Public Education: if you throw enough money at it, eventually… what? The infection feeds on money.

How much do we owe? How much of that is owed to other nations?

What happens when the debt gets called?

McCrazy's VP pick....

Gonna take off my Libertarian, Paleo-Conservative hat and put on a 'pub one fer a minute.

The McCrazy VP pick, way I see it:

Kasich would have been the pick, if it weren't for the Faux "News?" entanglements.

Condi has been overshadowed and way too indecisive.

Romney is sure defeat. I've never seen a candidate with a higher "dislike quotient". You'd get the CEO vote and no one else.

Haley Barbour also falls into that catagory. He looks like every southern fried politician/car salesman with a little Boss Hogg thrown in.

Colin Powell? Won't happen. Too old anyway.

The Minnesota Gov., Pawlenty? Why pick a guy from a state that will go Dem?

Texas Gov., Perry? Ehhhhhh, no. Texas.

My pick: Kinky Fried-man. Funny is way underrated as a VP plus and vote puller. And the only Texan anybody will vote for....

Cerealously, the best pick for the 'pubs would probably be Charlie Crist, if he could somehow get rid of that fake-looking Florida tan. If he can't, mebbe they can buy him some dyed hair extensions and pass him off as female and black?

(This was posted after I re-read the post before this, which just proves the point -- to my shame.)

Social Subtleties and Snarky "Superioriatedness"....

A fairly important subject, so I CROSS-POSTED an edited version from Assistant Village Idiot.

Social Subtleties: Three Connected Discussions.

The three posts below go together, separated for easier reading.

Part I: Sophia's Office Window

Sophia has the office next to mine. She is a Christian conservative of slightly different flavor – chocolate chip to my vanilla, perhaps. Her window looks out over the copier, and she has affixed a long list of examples from around the world of what bad things happened to peoples who were not allowed to own guns. It’s been up a few months. I don’t know how many folks have read it.

One of the med students from another unit brought the psychiatrist over to look at it. Neither said a word, the younger just pointed to it and grinned mockingly. How do I know it was mockingly, rather than approvingly? Because our brains are very good at picking up social cues like that. Even the worst of us are pretty good at it. We evolved in groups where such things were important for survival. Tribes enforce their norms via gestures and expressions which are maddeningly difficult to describe. My oft-mentioned A&H tribe is especially good at it. They can pick up the merest changes in tone or eyebrow.

So can I, as I grew up in that tribe.

The psychiatrist likewise grinned in amusement. Some rube had had put up something about gun rights for public display. Here! What a maroon! No words, just the shared chuckle.

It is not merely the point of view, of course, though that in itself can prompt those superior smiles. The placement and tone of the document were also part of their pleasure. Those gun people. They don’t know how they come across. They don’t get that this is ridiculous. We do. We two, and our tribe do. That’s how we know we’re better.

If progressives don't want to be accused of this level of arrogance and rudeness, they should stop doing these things in front of me every few days.

CS Lewis writes about this in The Screwtape Letters. In a comment that stabbed me to the heart when I first read it and stayed ever before me in my long conversion from liberalism to conservatism, the senior demon Screwtape tells his nephew Wormwood to encourage some types of humor but not others, in order to deliver the patient out of the hands of The Enemy and safely into Hell, to be food for them.

"... But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it."


Lewis is referring more to spiritual than political flippancy, but the point holds. Watch how often people will laugh at something or someone without bothering to make a reasonable argument or give evidence against it. All the cool kids “just know” that it’s ridiculous. The tactic is an enormously powerful social enforcer. Time and again while I was a progressive, I would hear people make such jokes to me. Reagan. (Hahaha.) NASCAR. (Snicker.) Trickle-down. (Ha!) Born-agains. (Stop, you’re killing me!) I now have the opposite response: when someone speaks as if the joke is obvious (sometimes they go so far as to add an urban legend in, like Dan Quayle and studying Latin), I now conclude that it is merely a social cue, an efficient tribal communication devoid of intellectual content.


Part II: Classical Values

The Tricky Politician's trick:

... He gets to tell everyone present that he agrees with them, but also gets to pose as a person who sees many sides of things – one who has been fair to other points of view and has considered them. So when he kicks them in the balls you know they deserved it. The audience, meanwhile, receives no real challenge to reevaluate their position. They can even pretend that they have reevaluated their position in that instant. They go on as before, thinking themselves wise and the politician evenhanded. Better yet, the politician is on record as having considered an alternative POV. Even his opponents might be impressed that he has at least heard them clearly.

Tricksy politician. False.

One layer deeper, I look at the tactic a soupcon more kindly. The current audience receives the near-indiscernible disagreement in the context of being patted on the back a dozen time. Yet in this age of rancorous debate, the single comment can be taken out of context and sent out into the world: ... A communist can be made to look libertarian, a libertarian communist, and anyone can be made to look stupid or evil.

It's still not honest, but it's more understandable in that context.


Part III: Tone Filters

We don't mind pervasive snarkiness so much, when it isn't aimed at us:

... I was able to perceive the tone, but could filter it out when I thought it was directed at others. Once I knew that the tone was directed to folks like me, the snarkiness was too much. From listening to people live and reading their arguments for years, I suspect I may be on the good side of the bell curve for evenhandedness. I think many people get so used to talking within their own group that they don’t even hear the nastiness directed to others anymore. They believe they or their comrades are being critical, but not unfairly so, and certainly not insulting. A good test is observing whether their own tone fed back to them offends. Conservatives who spend much time in the presence of liberals are puzzled that phrasings and tones of voice clearly calculated to offend pass unnoticed by the speakers.

Screwtape is apposite again:

"... In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother's utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: "I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper." Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken."

I have heard that tone shooting out from the conservative end of the spectrum toward the progressive end at times, but far less often. I have little doubt there are professions or churches or cultures where conservatives are in such predominance that the tone deteriorates unnoticed. When folks believe they are alone with their own they become less cautious, freer with their sneers. I recall standing on the street with a Mormon friend when other friends of his came up. As their comments about non-Mormons intensified, I could feel his discomfort and embarrassment – they had wrongly assumed that I was one of them and revealed themselves more than they wished (they were less nasty than social workers, BTW). It is always interesting to see behind the curtain.

What intrigues me about these tone-filters is that they are apparently automatic.

(Read the unedited version at Assitant Village Idiot)

Competition and Loyalty in the Bizness Werld....

A "for whom the bell tolls" note:

Our company lost our best salesperson today, along with his assistant.

This was after the latest round of salary cuts. They cut his salary for the third time and he picked up the phone, called our big competition and got a no-cut contract, including his assitant. They took his phone and computer and are planning on keeping him in an empty office for two weeks while they try to salvage the accounts, but I don't think that is happening.

They really think he won't be able to take his accounts. Right.

In these days of competitive pricing the only thing that swings the deal is loyalty and a comfort level.

You know, it's funny how it's OK to poach from other companies, yet when it's done to you it seems SO wrong....

News flash: it ain't.

And loyalty goes both ways.

On an addtionally sober note, my job is no longer safe. It is true that while I am the only person capable of doing my job at my company, and so far have been exempt from any cuts, if they replaced my duties and divided them up, they might get by for a while, until the mistakes begin piling up and the stuff I do that I never told anyone how to do doesn't get done.

Note to self: Next time get compete Cobra coverage for 6 months in my contract. That would have been smart.

Failed....

What do you do when your Better-Half hates something you thought you done good? I realize that a writer of ANY type has to be in love with the newest thing... and I always am to some extent -- even when I know the piece has limitations that might be made worse by my lack of real talent. Then the Writing Prof shot me down.

My much-much better half says that there is nothing redeeming in this song lyric - it doesn't "reach" for anything; that the subject is a cliched version of a man, there's a million songs where the "mine done failed", and that while there is some good pacing and careful wordplay (she liked the "rack of wood" line), there is nothing to spark interest and any need to understand motives... and she's the English Perfesser. My much-much better half also does not like writing in "Vernacular" (Even though she has a whole book of short stories in it).

The lyric is full of Regional references that are limiting -- that I understand, but I don't see why you have to steer clear of cliche, as long as it is handled right. John Prine does it all the time. Fred Eaglesmith even voices it all the time. And although I admit this song does not have that Prine-like twist and human revelation at the end, it doesn't need it -- the song is a reflection of the subject: an all-too-common man, who isn't going anywhere. Ever. Surrounded by failure, he IS failure.

So I did what I had to do to preserve myself. I ignored her, for the most part.

Lyrics here:

Failed

What do you think the Future is going to look like?

I was reminded of this great movie quote today:

“What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen....”

- Albert Brooks from Broadcast News

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. - Matt.24: 4-5

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works. - 2nd Cor.11: 14-15

When Fear Follows....

PBS has "Bush's War". Watch it.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/

Four-thousand, now. And still going "strong". This "war" has now lasted longer than WWII, and will continue past the time our economy can no longer support it and until the US is part of the NAU. This wrong-headed, stupid invasion that should never have happened still should have been over in two months; and another sign of our despotic, dying Empire is that we don't know the way to "start", fight, finish, or "prosecute a war", be it a "just" one or a criminal enterprise.

If there is ever an opportunity to write a history of the United States of America that extends past the next twenty years it will include these facts:

We could have sealed borders north and south, patrolled them indefinately, provided health care for all US Citizens and solved the Social Security problem for what we will throw into this pit of national despair and pay in interest, economic damage and blood.

When Fear Follows

The Bell Tolls the Idiocy of Big Bizness continued....

The Bell continues to toll throughout the bizness werld.

I've noticed lately that it's VPs.

And, it's VPs simply because we have too many of them. We've always had too many of them, be they golf buddies or relatives.

And they don't really do anything. Oh yes, they're supposed to "track" things, yeah... hummmmmm. Must get a Porsche and a cuppa coffee... and say "hummmmmm" a lot (Re.: Office Space). Track things that are already being tracked by subordinates -- clerks, and assitants... or track things that don't need tracking, because everybody knows that THEY ARE ALL ****** UP TO BEGIN WITH AND YOU ARE TRACKING ****!

But be ye glad, Oh Yes, Be Ye Glad, Big Business idiocy doesn't stop with eliminating VP positions that shouldn't have be created to begin with.... No, they eliminate the one VP who is actually doing something. All other VPs are free to take golf vaca at will and every Monday and Friday off. Whoopee!

Yes folks, it's still alive in its deadness. Still alive and slowly eating itself.

Hypocrisy 101, Terrelle Pryor and Big-time College sports....

Listening to Bruce Hooley's hypocritical critique of Terrelle Pryor's press conference and answer to Tim May's "image" question, I thought about the forthright answer: Do we really care if he's a good or bad kid?

Pryor replied that "I don't need to fix my image", because "it doesn't really matter if I'm a good or bad kid, you guys are here because I can ball."

At that point (and I really like May's stuff, especially his blacklisted "non-coverage" of Tressel -- and yes, Pryor should have taken the visits to Oregon and Penn St.) Pryor may have been the only honest person in the room.

As long as he's not "gettin' the Goose on" before practice and riding around with guns in the trunk of his JT Chrysler supplied leaser, then he's good to go.

http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaab/news?slug=dw-academics031808&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Fools and Simpletons....

Crosspost from The Assistant Village Idiot

Fools believe they are wise. They search for the abstruse or esoteric, whose very mention brands them as someone in the know, much like poseur ordering wine, or everyone talking about the theater. Full of themselves and impressed with their own deep thoughts, they make just enough sense to be irritating. Simpletons aren’t sure whether their comments are intelligent or not, they just go with what seems sensible. Fools order a Syrah because it’s from the Northern Rhone Valley, simpletons order the Shiraz because they had it once at someone’s house and liked it. It’s the same grape, grown in a different place. Many people claim to know the difference. I don’t know if they do or not. I don’t. I don’t remember whether I liked shiraz or not, which any idiot would do, and why I’m still only the assistant.

Here we go.... Now, what to do?

Crosspost from Rublev's Dog....

While I am bearish on America, with its state-managed economy and its immorality, I refrain from being an all-out alarmist. I never bought into the Y2K scare, for example. I believe the economic erosion for middle and lower class North Americans will be a long, undulating descent. Regardless, what to do?

1) Trust the Lord. Yes, that sounds terribly cliche. I hate it when some apostle of super-spirituality says, "God is in control." The Lord is ultimately in control, but man is ultimately responsible. God allows men to act and reap the consequences of their actions. Faith lays hold of the eternal and keeps the temporal in perspective. The sufferings of this life are not to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us in the age to come. With Christ as the anchor of our souls, we remain steadfast in doing the right thing, even unto death.

2) Get right with your neighbors. You're going to need them on your side if and when times get hard.

3) Each visit to the grocery, buy extra pallets of water. Your family should stockpile two months worth of water and vittles. Storing up canned goods is probably a good idea, but water is indispensible. If the consumer market sees a dramatic, sudden spike in prices (resulting from currency devaluation and rising shipping costs), there will be panic; then comes hording, sporadic shortages, and food prices spiraling into higher inflation. It's always good to have plenty of water on hand.

4) Try to grow your own food and can it. We're asking the Lord for enough rain in this parched area during the spring and summer for a successful garden.

5) Arm yourself. I'll answer to the Lord for killing a man while defending my family; I will not answer to Him for allowing someone to harm my family. Buy a long gun, preferably a shotgun. Handguns are more dangerous around children, and they require a background check and waiting period. Depending on the direction taken by legislators and courts, handguns would likely be the first weapons outlawed and confiscated. Teach your younguns how to respect and safely use firearms.

Bottom-line: panic is useless; lack of preparedness is senseless.

School Income Tax... I told you so.

School officials explain lack of big property tax decrease

The bureaucrats in favor of taxing the working poor made a lot of promises, while those of us who took the time to wade through all the misinformation put out by the BOE continued to have doubts and questions that could not be avoided or answered, although Martin/Bunting, et al. succeeded in confusing enough people to get this abomination passed.

Check out your own total School Income Tax and property tax totals, but we are paying the same amount in property tax plus the additional SIT tax on two salaries. And the extra forms to fill out. Ain't it a joy?

And isn't it strange that the only people who made out on this deal are the commercial/rental property owners? Can a comparison be drawn of the rental property owners and BOE to lobbyists and Congress?

Of course I am sure that they are passing on the savings to the consumers/renters.

Mr. Bunting's favorite quote seems to be " Berkeley's 17th Law": "A great many problems do not have accurate answers, but do have approximate answers, from which sensible decisions can be made."

Well, the quote itself seems like an "out" -- and just the kind of “confuscation” needed to dupe some taxpayers. I wonder which set of books they’ll show the next time they hit us up. They do need to avoid “accurate answers” at all cost when they are costing us money.

They are bringing "relativism" economics down to the farm and losing no sleep over this. From their point of view the taxpayer owes whatever amount of money they can scam us out of.

Now we've got the English printing money that isn't really there....

Bank of England injects 5 billion pounds into money markets

A Quick Macroeconomics Lesson....

FROM RUBLEV'S DOG
http://rublevsdog.blogspot.com/

A Quick Macroeconomics Lesson

http://rublevsdog.blogspot.com/2008/03/quick-macroeconomics-lesson.html

How Multi-national Corporations Avoid Paying Taxes....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15704.htm

Sick, sick, sick people. Lord help us....

I have been meaning to do this for several years, but for some reason never found the time, outside of five minutes tonight.

Under one of my web-aliases, I checked up on the Stormfront (white supremacist) forum.

Through my years on the web, I've spent a bit of my time ridiculing these guys, but apart from jabbing at their posts on various forums (islamonline.net, the extinct boottotheskull.com etc...), I really hadn't looked into the mouth of the beast.

Suffice to say, it didn't take any more (less) than the five minutes mentioned above.

These guys are one of the many reasons that God is going to judge this world and its sinners very soon.

I have never been anywhere on the web that more quickly made me both spiritually and physically cringe.

I imagine that these guys, along with pedophiles, are the bottom feeders of the mirror of society that is the www.

The "Springerization" of our modern world that we who still have some (questionable) sense of morals talk about, is the small, small tip of the "sin nature" iceberg.

God forgive us.

Please.

Democratic Election Results....

Let me continue my normal adolescent, reactionary political comments here.

Happy Dance. Oh, Happy Dance. (You REALLY don't want to see that.)

Susan Gwinn lost her badly conceived bid for Athens County Prosecutor.

She entered the race for obviously wrong reasons and ran the race in even more obviously wrong ways.

Level heads prevailed -- for once.

Most Ignorant Endorsement Ever...?

Sometimes an editorial statement can be made simply through selection.

Terry Smith scored a knockout in Monday's Letters-to-Editor segment of the Athens News. And he did it without writing a single word. Not one! ("No, not one. No, not one." 'scuse me, got all hymnal on ya.).

All he did was approve this letter; possibly the most ignorant endorsement ever:

Letter: Gwinn, with all her experience, deserves any office she wants

"Susan Gwinn has proven herself to be a uniter, not a divider.
She not only opened the Democratic Party to all; she’s devoted her life to it. Gwinn deserves whatever office she chooses."


Dear Obama, help us. I'm not sure I can delve the depths of this deepness.

Ok... I'm a uniter, not a divider (I am, yes I am. Just check my bonafides. No, those are my boxers.), and I've spent my whole life in service to others -- and beer.

The office I choose is... "King of the World".

See, because I deserve it.

Susan Gwinn's "Raw Truth" is just a little too raw for me.

"Raw Truth" is just a little too raw for me.

Athens County, Southeast of Columbus, may be about to set a horribly bad precedent.

Susan Gwinn, the entrenched Democratic Party Chairperson is running a well-funded and aggressively negative campaign for County Prosecutor.

The possibility of having a very political Democratic fox guarding the henhouse of a majority Democratic county has even local Democrats concerned.

Have you ever read a Letter to the Editor from a candidate, complaining about not being endorsed by a paper? Gwinn wrote a letter to a newspaper excoriating it for not endorsing her. This is the ultimate in whining self-service, and gives us good insight into the future behavior of the Prosecutor's office under Ms. Gwinn.

Reading Ms. Gwinn's "Raw Truth" letter castigating the Athens News for their endorsement of incumbent C. David Warren in the County Prosecutor’s Race helped me decide my vote. Do we really need a County Prosecutor who so obviously combines the personal with the political and who publicly "prosecutes" her grudges?

Members of her own party have already pointed out the potential partisan problems of the county Democratic Party chair holding the office of Prosecuting Attorney. It is blatantly antithetical to the historically fair principles of the Democratic Party and evidence that Athens County does not need Ms. Gwinn and her penchant for publicizing personal disagreements while holding a position that plainly demands fairness and dictates restrained good judgement.


Athens News Editor Terry Smith on Gwinn:

"For me, this race comes down to three issues, and all of them trump the isolated and exaggerated problems that Gwinn has raised about incumbent Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren. Interestingly her criticisms didn’t gain purchase in the public conversation until she filed to challenge Warren in the primary.

The three issues:

1. She has no experience as a prosecutor, and he has decades. How some people can ignore this fundamental advantage for Warren is beyond me. This especially applies to the Democratic office-holders who have come out for Gwinn. It makes me wonder whether some of them are mainly looking toward the future and their own skins by supporting their influential party chief for a position that she’s obviously not qualified for.

2. As party chief, she has no business serving as the prosecutor, a position of power and discretion that ought to be as non-partisan as possible, and where she’ll constantly be stumbling over potential conflicts of interest. Most of those who think this is OK are the Democratic faithful. I wonder why this is? Has anyone asked the Republicans how they’d feel about having one of the county’s chief law enforcers also managing the opposition party? If you look at the arguments in the pro-Gwinn letters, many of their points do highly recommend Gwinn — except not for prosecutor but for party chief, a position she already holds. How, for instance, does Gwinn’s success at getting students registered as Democrats relate to how she would run the prosecutor’s office?

3. Her campaign ads — including professionally done TV commercials that seem more appropriate for a statewide race than a small county’s prosecutor’s contest — are unfailingly negative and often unfair and misleading. They reflect worse on Ms. Gwinn than Mr. Warren."


If Gwinn is elected look for a politically hand-cuffed Prosecutor's Office resulting in long-term damage to judicial process in Athens County.

A few thoughts on Bill "Willie" Cunningham and his McCain Intro "speech"....

If you are not familiar with this, then it won't make sense; but here are a few notes I took while listening to Cinci radio this morning on the drive into work.

Was McCain introduced as John "Sidney" McCain?

I can just see Willie jumping up and down shouting "Hooray for John Sidney McCain".

Who thinks a middle name makes the man? It sure don't -- I gotta cool one.

This is ridiculous. There are plenty of important issues connected to Obamamania that scare me -- his "Spiritual Leader", his Church, his socialist plans and connections; but his middle name does not.

And as usual, the only thing that impresses me about Cunningham is his ability to still spout racist and xenophobic crap with foot firmly inserted in mouth.

Lord help us if the "base" of the party is Willie Cunningham.

No wonder we don't do well outside "our" white-bread demographic.

How did Willie the Mouth get on that stage, anyway? We got no black 'pubs anybody respects anymore? Yeah, that's the guy I want talkin' to America for me.

I heard The Mouth of Cinci on Jim Scott this morning and the exact quote was "well, they (the Media) call Bush, Cheney, etc... everything but a WHITE MAN...".

There was a little skip of silence and and I swear I almost heard Jim Scott choke. I wonder if he didn't throw up a little in his mouth.

I'm thinkin' 700 doesn’t put THAT in a podcast or transcript. I'm a-bettin' they LOSE that one.

What an idiot. If the 'pubs lose, a part of it may be that the general public thinks that all conservatives are like that (word removed after some thought - use your own).

Blue Ridge China....

Personal note:

My much-much-much better half and I collect Blue Ridge China. It was manufactured in Erwin, TN., not far from Johnson City and almost directly north of Ashville.

The time I used to spend frivolously, I now spend in Antique stores and Junk shops, my favorite being the latter -- lighter on the wallet.

http://www.blueridgechina.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ridge_China

Bank Robbin' Songs....

On a whim...

Two of my favorites are Springsteen's Highway 29 and Eaglesmith's Pontiac.

Add some if you feel like it.

Willie P. Bennett 10/26/51 - 2/15/08

God, please have mercy on Willie's amazing soul....

The best side man in the world and now the best out of it.

The next Fred show will be tough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_P._Bennett

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/portputley/

When I Go

Come, lonely hunter, chieftain and king
I will fly like the falcon when I go
Bear me my brother under your wing
I will strike fell like lightning when I go
I will bellow like the thunder drum,
invoke the storm of war
A twisting pillar spun of dust and
blood up from the prairie floor
I will sweep the foe before me like
a gale out on the snow
And the wind will long recount the story,
reverence and glory, when I go
Spring, spirit dancer, nimble and thin
I will leap like coyote when I go
Tireless entrancer, lend me your skin
I will run like the gray wolf when I go
I will climb the rise at daybreak, I will
kiss the sky at noon
Raise my yearning voice at midnight to
my mother in the moon
I will make the lay of long defeat and
draw the chorus slow
I'll send this message down the wire and
hope that someone wise is listening when I go
And when the sun comes, trumpets from his
red house in the east
He will find a standing stone where long
I chanted my release
He will send his morning messenger to
strike the hammer blow
And I will crumble down uncountable in
showers of crimson rubies when I go
Sigh, mournful sister, whisper and turn
I will rattle like dry leaves when I go
Stand in the mist where my fire used to burn
I will camp on the night breeze when I go
And should you glimpse my wandering form
out on the borderline
Between death and resurrection and the
council of the pines
Do not worry for my comfort, do not
sorrow for me so
All your diamond tears will rise up and
adorn the sky beside me when I go

-- Dave Carter

Where The Sun Shines Through

Put me down
Where the grass is green
Down near close
Where I dreamed my dreams
Where a big ol' tree
Throws a big ol' shade
But where the sun shines through

Take me home
While you live life
Home with you
Is never Bye and Bye
And it is sweet
And it will be
Home

I can go
But I won't leave
Going's easy
An' I believe
That I've always been happy
Hangin' 'round
With you

So put me down
Where the grass is green
Down near close
Where I dreamed my dreams
Where a big ol' tree
Throws a big ol' shade
But where the sun shines through
Where the sun shines through

Reconditioning....

Sometimes I like to post fairly well-known but timely or timeless quotes, like this one; even though most of YOU people, will remember or recognize it, and really don't need reminding.

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.” – fictional character Miss Hardcastle, from That Hideous Strength, by C.S.Lewis

The Basic Problem With Both Parties....

Lew Rockwell:

"... Until the dollar is made sound again, there will be little hope of restraining the government. The problem is that neither party has an interest in doing this. Whether the party supports welfare or warfare, it ultimately depends on the power of the government to finance itself through financial trickery...."

My Vote for President....

Since Ron Paul is drawing down his effort, I've finally made a choice, and of course it will be a write-in.

I'll be voting for Fred Eaglesmith for President of the United States.

I believe he's already President of Canada and rumor has it he works cheap.

True, he'll be taking a lot of vacation days, just like 43, but he'll be busy making good music.

He'll solve our commuter problem too. I hope everybody likes trains.

Willie P. Bennett reprising the role of the tough as nails VP with the bad tikker.

I can see the bumper stickers now:

"Vote for Fred, but not that one...", or

"I shot your dog, I thought he was a terrorist."

Timmy's in the educational well, and trust us, money will get him out!

Taxes, taxes, taxes. Some random notes:

I recently paid the balance of my part of my school district's earned income tax. Talk about a tax that descriminates against the poor and multi-income, out of town jobbers.... It's the kinda thing that makes that there flat/sales tax look good, don't it?

And, maybe I'm just a little sore, having just paid my share of the SDEIT for a school system that will provide more failures for Com1 next year.

We're seeing a majority of kids from "good" schools who can look up study notes online and copy them into a Word file, but can't solve math problems without a calculator, tell an adjective from an adverb, and many times don't know verb from noun.

And I admit we don't see the brightest (they leave the state), but these are kids with 3+ GPAs from LOCAL schools.

And tax-wise, they always need a new school building. And we are Oh-so-happy to oblige... year after year.

Fine, here's the deal:

One of the signs of failure of our public high schools is the need for beginning Com courses in college, so....

You can have ten new buildings if you can promise us that every one of the children (It's all for "the children", ain't it? Not the administrators or the union, right?) can add, subtract, multiply and divide WITHOUT a calculator or computer or cell phone, etc....

And it would be wonderful if they could diagram a sentence when they enter classes at college with their 3.something GPA (And how the **** did they get that? It must have been the old school building's Karma.), so that we don't have to teach them "remedial" Com in sophomore year after they flunk both the test-out and freshman year Com1.

Cliches are identified as such because they are generally true, right?

Well here's the cliche: "You can't fix our education system by throwing money at it." But don't tell the NEA that and don't tell that to the people who live in "rich" districts or make their living in the system.

I've seen teachers and school board members asked what it would take to make education better in their system, and every time the answer is "more money". Somewhere down the line, some old fogey will reply "Parent involvement?", and everybody will roll their eyes and stick their hands out.

The average graduating senior is less educated than twenty years ago. Just give one a basic math test and reading skills test.

The "system" is nothing but a sponge.

My much, much better half (who disagrees with me on this, as she IS an NEA member) teaches writing and art at a local college. The kids entering college (Admittedly this is in Ohio, and at a State school, so it is an indictment of only our Ohio public schools.) may be technologically ahead of those 20yrs.ago, but who isn't?

In basic writing, reading and math skills, the AVERAGE college freshman is way behind one of 20 yrs.ago.

Many of these kids have to be taught how to write sentences and paragraphs BEFORE you show them the basics of whatever class you are teaching, just so they can have the bare chance to complete the assignments.



More on this as I get wound up....

And, there seems to be a “school” of teachers who adhere to a new-fangled style of teaching that actually ignores these mistakes in grammar “as long as the student gets their message across in a clear and concise manner”. These teachers are compounding the problem. Their very argument is an oxymoron.

Here’s link to an article on the subject:

http://www.grammarmudge.cityslide.com/articles/article/2730324/47154.htm