August 22, 2008
Why Not...
Caroline Kennedy as Obama's VP? She has the same job Cheney had before he was tapped as running mate.
Just an idle thought.
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
August 17, 2008
'Help! I'm a Hollywood Republican'
An excerpt:
...This brings me to my second secret life.I'm a Republican. A heretofore secret Hollywood Republican. I know men and women who are heavy drug addicts and they have no problem finding employment in Hollywood. I know men and women who are gambling addicts and they work pretty regularly. There's even a director who was arrested for child molestation and yet was hired by Disney - yes, Disney - to helm a picture, and people defended this decision by saying even child molesters have a right to work. I would bet my bottom dollar that all these people are on the correct side of the political spectrum. They are liberal democrats.
Me, I'm a Republican. A conservative Republican. I believe passionately in free market capitalism. I believe in the Second Amendment, i.e., the right to bear arms (I even own several guns and go to the shooting range with friends from shul several times a month). I despise communism and fascism, and I believe there is a special place in hell for Islamic totalitarians and their Western apologists - probably 99.9 percent of Hollywood people.
The whole thing here.
Pigeon hole: For Your Perusal
Seriously
Darra Torres rocks! I was so impressed with her last night watching her races, and am equally impressed listening to the interview she's sitting for now. It's not often you get to see someone over 40 compete for Gold at the Olympics.
Pigeon hole: Nifty!
August 14, 2008
Sound Familiar?
Seems like the good old Soviet way is alive and well -- they want to 'reeducate' us, you see.
Those who make human behavior their business aim to make living "green" your business.Armed with new research into what makes some people environmentally conscious and others less so, the 148,000-member American Psychological Association is stepping up efforts to foster a broader sense of eco-sensitivity that the group believes will translate into more public action to protect the planet.
"We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do," says Yale University psychologist Alan Kazdin, association president. "We know what messages will work and what will not."
These people are all about restricting not only our liberty, but controlling what we think. Scary stuff, people.
(Three posts in one day! Wow!)
Pigeon hole: Blithering Fools
Follow the Money
They sent Martha Stewart to prison for a whole lot less. An interesting article on Pelosi's stock market shenanigans and what she has to gain by keeping the price of oil high.
Pigeon hole: For Your Perusal
You're Doing It Wrong
I keep hearing that Obama is supposedly the Anti-Christ. Seriously? Dudes, have you heard the guy speak when he isn't using a teleprompter? Unless he's going to 'uhhh' and ummm' us into the Apocalypse. I was looking for something a little more charismatic for the 'Ultimate Evil'. But that's just me.
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
August 9, 2008
More Than Gas Prices
This op-ed by John Shadegg pretty much says everything I've been saying for years.
GOP protest goes beyond gas pricesAmerican colonists liked their tea, but the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against more than an unfair duty placed on what many would consider a luxury item. Paul Revere, Samuel Cooper, Thomas Melvill and 112 other men did not don costumes and throw tea from ships in the dead of night solely because of opposition to a levy on tea. Their acts that December evening were a revolt against tyranny. The Crown was infringing upon the basic rights of the colonists, limiting their ability to establish commerce and prosper.
In much the same way, the Republican protest that began in Washington last Friday is about more than gas prices. In fact, it’s about more than energy. I’ve called this the new Boston Tea Party. This is about the American economy, jobs, and national security. And, in the end, it’s about who we are as a people. Our refusal to tap our own resources - oil, and natural gas or to use nuclear power - touches every sector of American industry.
While we spend $1.2 billion a day on foreign oil, the U.S. airline industry, is laying off flight attendants, mechanics, pilots, and airport workers. The American auto industry, is laying off assembly workers and closing plants. American families are tightening their budgets and canceling vacations, hurting the tourism industry which is vital to our economy here in Arizona. From coast to coast industries and workers are suffering.
Washington Democrats’ anti-energy policies risk our economic, as well as national security. Dollars spent on oil from the Middle East or Venezuela, cost American jobs and finance America’s enemies, either directly or by providing income to the people who bankroll them. We must stop!
We can no longer defend buying oil from the Middle East, Russia, or South America when we have our own oil off our coasts, under public lands in the West, in Alaska, and in millions of tons of oil shale.
We cannot defend creating jobs for oil field workers in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, but telling American workers they are out of luck. We cannot justify saying to employees of a U.S. airline, that they must accept being laid off after 10, or 15 years on the job because the majority party in Congress is more sympathetic to views held by environmental extremists than it is to their plight.
Environmentally, forbidding domestic production doesn’t make sense. America would access oil using cleaner, more environmentally conscious methods than the countries from which we are currently buying it.
Of course we need to move beyond fossil fuels. We must stop wasting energy and make more energy-efficient homes and buildings. We should be developing cars and vehicles that are more efficient and run on clean, renewable fuels.
We can, and will, achieve these goals much more quickly if we use our domestic resources. Imagine the benefit if we shifted money spent on foreign oil back into the American economy and invested it in the development of alternatives.
Ingenuity is the essence of the American people. We are a “can do” nation, not a “can’t do” nation. We have faced, and overcome, every challenge placed in our way. We won our independence from Britain, the most powerful nation in the world at the time; we defeated fascism and communism; we conquered polio; we put a man on the moon. We will overcome this energy crisis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other defeatists notwithstanding.
-John Shadegg (Op-ed to Arizona Republic)
Pigeon hole: God, Family, Country
August 5, 2008
Make Them Stop!
If I have to listen to one more sanctimonious "global warming" radio spot, I'll scream. What's worse is that the majority of them are put on by PG&E! So they take money from my electric and gas payments to them and use it to pay for these insipid and irritating radio adverts. Talk about adding insult to injury!!
Pigeon hole: ARGH!!
Guess What?
No, not regular blogging. But I did get the new anti spam plug in to work, *and* I managed to install a plug in that allows me to automatically close old entries. What a relief! Between the two, my spam problem has almost totally disappeared. Go me!
Pigeon hole: Nifty!
August 3, 2008
Woot!
House Republicans to Resume Floor Protest on American Energy Monday
Finally, our people are showing some damn backbone! Way to go! Now keep it up!
Pigeon hole: Nifty!
July 23, 2008
Obama's Hair
Maybe it was just the lighting outdoors at the press conference he had in Israel this morning, but his hair sure looked a lot grayer than I remember it. Has he stopped colouring it so he looks older?
And speaking of the Obamessiah, he's sure not the gifted speaker they try to make him out to be. He may be great with a crowd in front of a teleprompter, but her really sucks at off the cuff type speaking. "Israel is a great friend of Israel"! Hah! And all the umms and ahs. But you won't see the MSM talking about his verbal gaffes, will you? That's saved for Bush.
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
July 15, 2008
Gah!
If I have to hear Michelle 'Bitter' Obama prattle on for the next four odd years, I'll be the one that ends up bitter. Could this woman be any more out of touch with regular working women?
"You're getting $600 -- what can you do with that?" Mrs. Obama said in Pontiac, Michigan last week. "Not to be ungrateful or anything, but maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn't pay down every bill every month. The short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good, and it may even feel good that first month when you get that check, and then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings."
Yeah, that's what I did. /sarcasm
Here's the whole story, along with a roundup of some of her other more memorable moments.
As a woman, she just makes me cringe.
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
The Real Threat
I've been saying this over and over. The global warming movement is authoritarian and totally about restricting our freedom.
July 8, 2008
A Special Grace
There's a lot to think about in this article.
Pigeon hole: God, Family, Country
July 4, 2008
Happy Birthday, America!
...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
July 2, 2008
I Remember the Seventies Too
...It's all such a 1970s way of thinking. That's when many gloomy experts told America that the Cold War, inflation, scarcity, and economic malaise would be permanent fixtures in our lives. Americans, they insisted, needed to lower their expectations of what was possible. Life was now more of a zero-sum game. The same meme is being recycled today. Don't believe it.
The whole thing here.
July 1, 2008
'America's Jedi Knight'
Loved Jonah Goldberg's column today on the Obamessiah:
... "I am absolutely certain," he proclaimed upon clinching the Democratic nomination, "that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." So wait, America never provided care for the sick or good jobs for the jobless until St. Barack arrived? That doesn't sound like the country most Americans think of when they wave their flags on the Fourth of July.Obama went on to say that he will "remake" the country. Well, what if you don't want it remade? And Michelle Obama — who believes America is "downright mean" and is proud of America for the first time because of her husband's success — insists that Barack will make you "work" for change and that he will "demand that you, too, be different." What if you don't want to work for Obama's change? What if you don't want to be "different"?
Liberals might giggle at what to them sounds like paranoia. But if you aren't already entranced by Obama, Obamania can seem not only vaguely anti-American but also downright otherworldly. Star Wars creator George Lucas recently proclaimed that it's "reasonably obvious" Obama is a Jedi Knight. Mark Morford, a particularly loopy San Francisco Chronicle columnist, says Obama isn't really "one of us." Rather, he's a "Lightworker," the sort of being who can help us find "a new way of being on the planet." Self-help guru Deepak Chopra insists that an Obama victory would bring about "a quantum leap in American consciousness." Even NBC's Chris Matthews has been entranced by Obama's Jedi mind tricks. Obamania, he says, is "bigger than Kennedy. … This is the New Testament."
The whole thing here.
Pigeon hole: Hanson, Goldberg, & Steyn
June 29, 2008
Bah!
So I actually managed to install the new TypePad/MT anti spam plug in. Go me! It's showing up on the plug ins page, but I don't think it's working. I'm getting the same amount of spam as before. And seeing as I disabled the older anti spam plug ins, I'm beginning to think none of them ever actually worked. No wonder I've been drowning in spam. I'm thinking of disabling comments altogether and people can just email me if they have something to say. It's not like we're drowning in traffic around here -- just spam!
June 28, 2008
Schism
Looks like it finally has happened:
Jerusalem -- Just minutes ago, conservative Anglicans announced what they are calling "The Jerusalem Declaration," which states their intention to erect a new "fellowship of confessing Anglicans."From their statement:
[W]e grieve for the spiritual decline in the most economically developed nations, where the forces of militant secularism and pluralism are eating away the fabric of society and churches are compromised and enfeebled in their witness... Sadly, this crisis has torn the fabric of the Communion in such a way that it cannot simply be patched back together.
All the details here.
June 19, 2008
Best Friends in Iowa
Best Friends is on the move in Iowa, rescuing stranded pets and farm animals.
Pigeon hole: Worried & Watchful
June 18, 2008
How Stupid?
How stupid do the Dems think we are? Yeah, rhetorical question there. Their fave line is 'but if we started drilling now, it would take ten years to get to the oil'. No kidding! And if we'd started drilling ten years ago, we'd have the oil now. By that argument, there's no point in building new roads to relieve traffic congestion. Heck, they won't be finished for five years, right?
GAH!!
May 31, 2008
Those Backwards Irish!
Imagine actually letting their people vote! Where will it all end? Truly shocking. /sarcasm
And *Bush* Is The Stupid One?
Lord!
From Obama's visit to Mt. Rushmore:
He did express curiosity about the filming of a chase scene in "North by Northwest," Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 classic starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint that included a death-defying scramble over Rushmore's presidential faces."How did they get up there in the first place?" he asked ranger Wesley Jensen.
"They didn't. It was a movie set," Jensen told him.
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
May 30, 2008
Drill Here, Drill Now
You can sign the petition here.
Pigeon hole: For Your Perusal
May 29, 2008
Bilbo Baggins = James McAvoy?
That's the rumour at least.
Pigeon hole: Here Be Dragons
More Missing Girls
The bitter irony of sex-selective abortion
Missouri state Treasurer Sarah Steelman recently earned the opprobrium of abortion-rights advocates by calling for a ban on sex-selective abortions. Critics have derided this as an attempt by the Republican gubernatorial candidate to pander to pro-lifers. But a quick glance at international statistics suggests that sex-selective abortion is no dystopian fantasy. It is a chilling reality throughout the world and in our own backyard.
May 26, 2008
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ~ Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
The Mars Photos Are Awesome, But...
why the heck are they in black and white? Is there an actual reason we can't transmit colour photos from the Mars Phoenix Lander? I assumed with a new, higher tech lander, we'd also get colour photos, but instead, they're the same old B&W. Anyone know why? The only colour image I've seen says it was colourized after the fact.
Pigeon hole: Space: Above & Beyond
May 25, 2008
Sadness
I'm just glad my grandparents never lived to see this day.
Religious trends and our religious future
If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this. The progress of conservative Islam in the UK has been amazing, and it has come at a time of prolonged decline in church attendance that seems likely to continue.This progress has been enthusiastically assisted by this government in particular with its hard-line multi-cultural dogma and willingness to concede to virtually every demand made by Muslims. Perhaps most importantly the government has chosen to allow hard-liners to act as representing all Muslims, and more liberal Muslims have almost completely failed to produce any leadership voices to compete, leading many Britons to wonder if there are indeed many liberal Muslims at all, surely a mistake.
At all levels of national life Islam has gained state funding, protection from any criticism, and the insertion of advisors and experts in government departs national and local. A Muslim Home Office adviser, for example, was responsible for Baroness Scotland’s aborting of the legislation against honour killings, arguing that informal methods would be better. In the police we hear of girls under police protection having the addresses of their safe houses disclosed to their parents by Muslim officers who think they are doing their religious duty.
While men-only gentlemen’s clubs are now being dubbed unlawful, we hear of municipal swimming baths encouraging ‘Muslim women only’ sessions and in Dewsbury Hospitals staff waste time by turning beds to face Mecca five times a day — a Monty Pythonesque scenario of lunacy, but astonishingly true. Prisons are replete with imams who are keen to inculcate conservative Islam in any inmates who are deemed to be culturally ‘Muslim’: the Prison service in effect treats such prisoners as a cultural block to be preached to by imams at will. Would the Prison service send all those with ‘C of E’ on their papers to confirmation classes with the chaplain?! We could go on.
The point is that Islam is being institutionalised, incarnated, into national structures amazingly fast, at the same time as demography is showing very high birthrates. Charles Taylor’s new and classic work on the Secular Age charts the rise of the secular mindset and what he calls the ‘excarnation’ of Christianity as it is levered out of state policy and structures. Christianity is now regarded as bad news, the liberal elite’s attack developed in the 1960s took root in the educationalist empire, and to some extent even in areas of the church.
Today the Christian story is fading from public imagination, while Islam grows apace. There needs to be some fresh thinking in this area where the claims of Christ are sensitively explained. Our church leaders must develop ways of explaining this, as our feature on mission and evangelism this week demonstrates.
May 20, 2008
May 19, 2008
You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up!
So Obama thinks the rest of the world gets to have a say on how much I eat and where I set my thermostat. Like I always say, real life is very often a Monty Python skit. What's frightening is that this guy could be President.
I would love to see what him and Bitterchelle spend on groceries and what their utility bills are. I bet they aren't sitting under blankets during the cold Chicago winters, or sweating during the summer without air conditioning.
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
May 18, 2008
Feed
I think I have the feed fixed, thanks to Jay. He sent me some instructions, which I managed to implement without blowing up the blog.
May 9, 2008
'Remembrance of Panics Past'
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.
Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.
Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them."
In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
Do I Have To?
I see headlines like this: McCain planning climate change tour -- and I ask once again, do I really have to vote for this guy? He sure doesn't make it easy.
May 8, 2008
How High?
So how high do energy prices need to go before we can muster the public will to overcome the lock the environmentalist faction has on utilizing our native energy sources?
May 6, 2008
Celeb Hippy-crites
Is the hot air emitted by celebrities when they spout ecological platitudes a greenhouse gas?
Pigeon hole: Blithering Fools
April 30, 2008
Why So Bitter?
I've been thinking about Michelle Obama lately. I admit, I don't get her. She's my age, but that's about all we have in common. She has a loving husband, healthy children, an Ivy League education, and makes more money than me and my entire family combined. And yet, she seems so angry, and dare I say it, bitter. In Michelle Obama's world, living in America sucks. And yet, she is blessed with a life few of us will ever have. She doesn't have to worry about her next paycheck, or paying a credit card bill, or paying her rent when it goes up. I doubt she ever lived out of the family car when she was a teenager. But instead of feeling blessed at what being an American woman brings her, she's angry; all the time, it would seem.
I'm not rich, I never went to college -- I was too busy working as a teenager to help support my family. And no, not in the U.S.A., but in Canada, that perfect society, or so the liberals would have us believe. I have a roof over my head, and food on the table, and I'll never be rich and powerful like Mrs. Obama. But you know what? I thank God everyday I was born in this country. I am blessed. Mrs.Obama may not think she is, but I know I am. I can vote, I was educated, I know I won't be murdered by my family for besmirching some disgusting concept of honour, or stoned to death for talking to a man who isn't a male relative. I don't have to worry about armed gangs slaughtering me and my family, or wonder where my next bowl of rice will come from. Each and every one of us in this country is blessed beyond compare to so many who suffer in this world.
John Edwards talked about 'Two Americas', and perhaps he was right. There's the America he and Mrs. Obama inhabit, the one that's hopeless and never good enough. Then there's mine, the one I'm grateful for and wouldn't change for a life in any other country in the world. Sure, we all go through hard times. But that's life. No one promised us we'd have perfection. It isn't possible. All we can do is be the best people we can be with the life we have, and to be thankful for the blessings we've been given. And we've certainly been given many. It's sad that Michelle Obama will never realize that.
Pigeon hole: God, Family, Country
[snorfle]
I love the title of this article: Dude, Where's My Recession?
And if that weren't enough, he throws in a Terminator analogy for good measure.
[snorfles some more]
I Hate That!
You just discover a product you really like, and when you got to buy more, find out it's been discontinued! Last year, at Bath & Body Works, I bought a shower gel form a new line they were carrying, Aquatanica Spa. I really liked it it -- it had a fresh oceany sorta scent, made with seaweed and other sea type ingredients. I went to the website, and they've discontinued it! The bottle said it was a line from France, but it looks like it was actually made by B&B W since I can't find it anywhere else but on Ebay. I'm bummed. My favourite showergel by Aveda (sage and cedar), which I'd used for years, was discontinued last year, and this was what I'd replaced it with. To add insult to injury, the B&B site recommended I try instead one of their other lines, which they claim is similar, but it's almond scented! Bleah! Almonds do not smell like the ocean where I come from.
/ticked off
Blog Tech Stuff
Just an FYI that I'm trying to get a quote on how much it will cost to get the RSS feed fixed. I know it's been broken for something like two years, but I just wasn't blogging enough for me to want to spend more money on the place :) Since I'm blogging more regularly now, I figured it was time to get it fixed. Depending on the cost, of course. As for all the other broken bits, it's been suggested I switch over to WordPress, but while I'm blogging more, I'm not sure I'm blogging enough to justify what that would cost to have installed and set up. Same thing with just upgrading to the newest MT, which seems to do all the things I've wanted for quite a while.
So, RSS first, and then see if it's worth doing a complete overhaul at some later date.
