Doesn't surprise me in the least...

An AirTran Airways flight was delayed about two and a half hours in Atlanta after a passenger refused to get off the cellphone.

I'd have stuffed it up the guy's rear end.  Sideways.  And no jury would convict me.

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Was Jesus a capitalist?

A fascinating article by Adam Graham at Pajamas Media responds to Michael Moore and liberals who claim that the Bible supports socialism.  It's always been my understanding that His mandate to take care of the people around us was given to us individually, and that His intention was that we were to see to that responsibility ourselves, not to offload it onto the government.  There are some very interesting and thought-provoking comments to this article as well; make sure to make some time to read them.

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Now, this is funny

Stavros Flatly - Greek Irish Dancers - Britains Got Talent 2009

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Ditherer in Chief, part 2

HotAir Pundit has more.  We're doomed.

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Ditherer-in-Chief

So Himself can't make up his mind on whether or not to send troops to Afghanistan:

President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

Obama still is close to announcing his revamped war strategy, most likely shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends on Nov. 19.

The president raised questions at a war council meeting on Wednesday, however, that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama’s thinking.

So his trip to Asia is more important than the well-being of the troops that are already over there. Wasn't it he who decided that Afghanistan was more important than Iraq in the first place?

Best comment to the article:

Barney Fife with good speaking skills, a narcissistic personality
disorder and a 4-year employment contract. May the Lord help us.

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A story that broke my heart

Pajamas Media discusses the economy's helpless victims:  family pets.  But remember, cap and tax and healthcare reform that will ensure that no one gets healthcare are more important.

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You'll take this healthcare bill and you'll like it!

So the Democrats seem to be saying with the travesty of a health care bill (which isn't what the Congress is supposed to be focused on, by the way) that passed over the weekend.  Pajamas Media is reporting that the people of this nation oppose the bill by a margin greater than or close to that by which the current resident of the White House beat his closest opponent last November. 

Unemployment is at 10.2%, and if you include those people who have either given up looking for work or those who are working part-time, the number is closer to 18%.  Yet the pResident and morons in Congress seem to think that "fixing" healthcare, which will have a negative impact on the unemployment numbers, and cap and tax, which will have an even greater negative impact on unemployment, are the most pressing issues facing this nation.  Shitheads.

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All that's missing is the 400 Hz tone

For those of you who miss the old test patterns, Jimbo has this.

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You're watching Big Brother TV!

One of the other boards that I belong to, specifically one devoted to Chicago TV, had a post the other day congratulating Sesame Street on its 40th anniversary.  There were lots of remembrances by many of the members, myself included (I was a little old when it started, but my youngest brother, who was a baby in the mid-1970's, watched it, and I watched with him when I kept an eye on him).  After a while, people started to complain about how politically correct it's become, and I was reminded of something that I saw in the book Hi There, Boys and Girls!:  America's Local Children's TV Programs, by Tim Hollis (Jackson:  University of Mississippi Press, 2001).  Hollis' book starts with a history of children's television and how in the late 1960's the activist group Action for Children's Television tried to get the FCC to write strict regulations for children's television, essentially banning advertisements for snacks and toys and requiring a certain level of educational content be given during the shows.  The shining example of what they wanted TV to become was, of course, Sesame Street, which had started around that time with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (i.e. the American taxpayers).

There are two quotes in the book from the hosts of these after-school shows.  One, from "Skipper Chuck" Zink from WTVJ in Miami, was this:  "They rave about Sesame Street, but nobody ever mentions that Sesame Street is fantastically well-funded.  Give me nine million dollars and I'd show you what kind of shows I could do."  The second was this from "Brakeman Bill" McClain of KTNT in Seattle:  "If you look at who the organizers are behind the pressure groups, you see that they're very heavily infused with public TV people.  They'd love them to get a lot more government money [and we know where that comes from - JH] into children's programming, but then you have a dangerous concentration of government power.  First they're teaching them how to read and write, then they're telling them how to vote." 

As I told my group, while I'm not going to say that public television is leading to the downfall of Western civilization, it is in a position to have a disturbing amount of influence over children.  Its funding comes from the taxpayers and from a wide variety of liberal foundations, and the people who are involved with it are of a highly liberal persuasion.  There are plenty of liberals in television to begin with, but again, the CPB folks are in a position where they can mold young minds, and while commercial TV might try to sell kids a lot of crap, public TV might very well have its own similar and more frightening agenda.  I'm glad I don't have kids, but if I did, I'd much rather have people who were only interested in money trying to influence them.

And, by the way, Sesame Street is profiting greatly from the licensing of its characters for toys and snack foods...

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Why I'm glad I don't travel anymore

Got this from American Airlines this afternoon:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently introduced a new program called Secure Flight, which is designed to enhance the security of domestic and international commercial air travel.

How will this affect you?

When you purchase a ticket on AA.com or through an American Airlines Representative, you will be asked to provide the following information: full name (as it appears on your government-issued photo ID that you will use when traveling), date of birth, gender and redress number* (if applicable).

Then, in wee tiny letters, this:

*A TSA-assigned identification number. This number is assigned to customers who believe they have been mistakenly matched to a name on the watch list to help prevent misidentification.

The terrorists have won.

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Fire them all!

You know, the Founders of this country had a great idea:  come up with a representative (dare I say "republican"?) form of government, give them a list of specific national priorities and tasks to focus on, and let the people of this nation decide everything else for themselves.  The Constitution--you know, that interesting old document, according to the pResident--was fewer than ten pages long, written longhand, and contained the entire blueprint for the nation. 

The brevity of that document should have been a tip-off that the Founders didn't believe that government should be the be-all and end-all.  In fact, it didn't have any specific rules for the rest of the people.  It set out what the government would do, and left it to the rest of us to figure out the rest of the rules.  In fact, they came back and amended the Constitution ten times specifically to say that.  You can say whatever you want, we won't tell you where to go to church or who you can hang around with, you can own whatever guns or other weapons you want, we can't hold you against your will without a good reason, we can't go digging through your papers or records, etc., and most important, unless we've said something in this document that says otherwise, you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want. 

In roughly five generations, a government that basically did what it was designed to do in a way that none of us had to be bothered by what they were doing has become a government that we have to watch like a hawk because they're busy doing everything they weren't designed to do while ignoring the things that they were.  And it's not just Democrats, and not just Republicans, it's the whole damn bunch of them. 

It's time that we threw the whole damn bunch of them out.  They're starting to see their jobs as entitlements instead of responsibilities, and starting (starting?) to take themselves a little too seriously.

More later.

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Thanks, veterans...

...for everything.

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Happy Birthday, Marines!

Today is the 234th birthday of the United States Marine Corps.  To all Marines, current and former, thank you for your service and for keeping us safe, happy birthday, and Semper Fi!

So, where I've been...

Nowhere, actually; just took a few weeks (OK, 2 1/2 months) off to concentrate on job training and to absorb what's been going on in the world in general and what I should write about in particular.

With respect to the former, I now have a Certificate in Advanced Web Design and Programming from Kennesaw State University, meaning that I now ostensibly know CSS and XHTML, PHP and MySQL, Perl, ASP.NET, and how to modify web pages to drive the most action to them, or the mighty SEO. Why? Nothing better to do, I guess. I have money coming in, but not a whole lot of work for it. I feel somewhat guilty about that, but I've done my best to keep occupied and make myself valuable if India runs out of programmers. I've also been studying Ruby and Rails, which is introducing me to Ajax, which used to stand for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. I should have been learning this stuff fifteen years ago, but better late than never.

With respect to the latter: There are some dynamite bloggers out there. I have a lot of them listed on the right over there. One of the things that amazes me is that they are so persistent in this. They post every day, sometimes several times a day, sometimes so much that you have to wonder when they work. I am in awe of their ability, and wish I could keep up with them. The difference is that I don't have the commitment to it that they do. Typing with one hand makes everything a chore, and at this point whether or not I can get my right hand (which is the dominant hand in my case) up and working again is doubtful. Part of it, too, is that a lot of times when I'm writing a blog entry I'll think of something else to write about, and so many things pile up that I end up not writing about any of them. I've also noticed that, since the stroke (three years ago next February) I get overwhelmed very easily, and I'm less willing to argue with people, even if they are idiots that deserve to be dealt with harshly.

I'm also afflicted with being too conciliatory. My family, by and large, are partisan Democrats, as are many of my friends, and I don't want to offend them. Few people know about this blog, and while part of me wants to "be a playa", another part of me fears ostracism and scorn if I express myself. Then I think, wait a sec, I have something to say and things to get off my chest, and tough shit if people don't like it.

So, I need to get over the fear that people will hate me if I express myself and acknowledge that they will anyway, and use my blogging as a way to exercise my right hand at the keyboard. If I want to type with both hands, maybe I should type with both hands. Duh.

While I'm at it, maybe I should do my composing offline and upload the stuff when I'm done. Blogger has this thing at the bottom of the screen that looks like it's tapping its foot, saying "come on, I'm tired. Save the post and let me rest." Or, maybe I should build my own damn environment. Who knows how long Blogger is going to tolerate us conservatives? The crowd at Google (which owns Blogger) is a pretty leftist bunch.

So, I promise to be better about posting here. Can't promise that it'll be perfect, and it won't always be centered on politics and current events, but it'll be more than what you've been getting.

I'm sure you're thrilled...

New stuff on the blogroll

Geez, I haven't been out here in some time...more on that later.

I want to wish bon chance to Bruce Parrello, who had helped Ferdy the Conservative Cat write his blog. Ferdy has gone to live elsewhere and Bruce kind of gave up the blog, though it's still there. I took it off the list, but will add it or any other blog Bruce writes if and when he gets active again.

I managed to lose a couple of my cats over the summer, so instead of having a real lot, I just have a lot. Such is life.

Anyway, I found the Daily Pundit over the weekend, and liked his stuff, so I've added a link to him. I've also added a couple of cartoons: Diversity Lane, a "liberal family saga" which I think y'all will enjoy, as well as Hope n' Change Cartoons, another very funny cartoon.

More to follow shortly...