Concealed carry welcome

This was sent to me by a friend in Texas:

 

Note the sign on the door:

Apparently it has brought them some new business.

We'll be OK now.

Weather is too wet for golfing, so His Executive Self cut his vacay short.  Hallelujah we be saved!

Staycation

Sister made it in from Raleigh last night, nephew and daughter will probably camp out at the Caer rather than deal with Irene in Baltimore.  Combination of pets could be...exciting.  But I probably won't be posting much over the next week - too much running around and playing to do.

Government Accounting, or Why We are Broke

Tom Lehr was explaining it in the 60s:

Rainy day Grook

SATURATION

The heavens are draining,
it's raining and raining,
and everything couldn't be wetter,
and things are so bad
that we ought to be glad:
because now they can only get better.  (Piet Hein)

At least until Irene hits... 

Natural born citizen

I haven't paid a lot of attention to the birth certificate issue - it will work out one way or the other, regardless of what the JUST resolution should be.  Obama is basically a thug who has lots of thug contacts and lots of power that can be used to get in the way of anyone trying to get to the truth of the matter.  And he is also so into himself and his own power that he might withhold a perfectly valid birth certificate just because he felt like it.

This article by Michael LeMieux concerning the issue of the definition of "natural born citizen" is an interesting one, as it lays out the source and thinking behind that particular constitutional requirement for a president:

"There are those that tend to dismiss this stating the Constitution does not define what the term “natural born Citizen” means therefore we will assume it must mean born within the physical United States boundaries vice a naturalized citizen. They would be in error.

Throughout the Constitution the writers used the term citizen numerous times but only here did they differentiate a specific classification of citizen even different than a naturalized citizen identified elsewhere. The founders would not have identified a specific kind of citizen unless it was for a specific reason."

 .......clip......

"In a correspondence between Benjamin Franklin and Charles William Frederic Dumas, Franklin stated:[2] “I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the law of nations.” (Emphasis added) So not only where they familiar with the “Law of Nations” but they consulted it frequently.

It should not be surprising that within Vattel’s Law of Nations the term “natural-born Citizen” was defined as: “The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” (Emphasis added) Notice the plural use for parentage."

The entire article can be read here.

 

There are a lot of people who would have us think that the Constitution is too hard for the general U.S. citizen to read and understand.  And that any understanding of it is entangled in 200 years of case law requiring specialists.  No.  It takes some work but it's OUR Constitution, and we need to reclaim it.

Words of support...

Thank you for your kind words of support as we recover from the devastation of the quake...

 

Yeah, ok, I stole that from facebook, but it made me laugh...

Note to the earth...

Experiencing an earthquake was on my geologic buck list. That was fulfilled by a little one a year or so ago - sharp enough let me know what it was but small enough that I didn't even get out of bed.  There was absolutely no need to hit us with a bigger one today.  Really.  I don't like my house shaking like that.  Really.  Let's not do it again, OK?

How's that healing thing working out for you?

"But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds." Barack Obama, 1/12/11

 So how's that whole civility thing working out for ya'll?  Yeah, I didn't believe they meant it either. 

Company coming

It's gonna be a sparse week here.  Company coming, so I'm running around like the proverbial chicken.

Yesterday I looked at the garage and decided I couldn't stand it any more.  The trouble is that I expect to store both my gardening stuff AND the Sante Fe in there and over time it gets too crowded. I don't like doing that sort of thing on Sunday, but I decided it would only take about an hour to take everything out, and another to put everything back, so that would give me the rest of the day to relax.  I should know better.  Five exhausting hours later I finally got the garbage bagged up.  I did get the boxes with Dad's tools unpacked after 3 years and if anyone ever hears me say I need to buy a wrench, plyers, saw, clamp, screwdriver, or any of a variety of common tools, well, no, it's in the garage.  Doesn't matter what size, it's in the garage.  And wood putty.  I don't need to buy wood putter.

Beat up, don't know about functional

After shedding a great deal of sweat in the yard today, I thought I'd snap a few pics and work on my gun "registry" a little tonight. The guns that came to my house after Dad died include a shotgun, which I finally took a closer look at this evening.  A couple of levers turn this

into this easy enough.

I find "Simmons Hardware Co." and "Expert Trap" on it, as well as Dad's social security number, etched into the barrel, but a search of the web hasn't turned up a serial number list for me to try to date it with.  I suspect it was used for groundhogs in the garden rather than for actual trap shooting.  Since we didn't have a garden from the early 60s on, it may have not been fired in 50 years.

It's a bit beat up.  But beat up just means character as far as I'm concerned.

At some point I'd like to shoot it - never fired a shotgun before.  Seems like one should be a standard in the home.  But I'll let someone with more knowledge than me give it a going over first. 

Sleepy haiku

Cat glides across bed,

Pounces with mischief and purrs.

But it’s 4 a.m.!

Will miss 'im this year

It's getting on to time for my planned "staycation", during which my sister will join me up here in the hills of West-by-God Virginny.  I have a lot of things planned, pending weather, but I told her that while all other things are optional, the Virginia Scottish Games are not.  And by about 1:00 of what I hope will be a sunny September day I intend to be seated in the main music tent, my second ale of the day in hand, surrounded by plates of haggis, bridies, and various other Gaelic treats that are entirely too heavy for a mid-Atlantic summer day but are, nonetheless, necessary to happiness at a Celtic festival.  And, yes, I actually like haggis.  Worse, I like festival vender haggis.

When it comes to music I'm a big fan of the little guy.  I've done the major venue/big star thing before, but I'd rather be sitting in a tent or a church hall, listening to the folks who never get a huge recording contract, who run to Wal-Mart when the festival runs out of cups, who stand by the vending table talking happily with fans during breaks.  There is incredible talent in the world, and thank goodness for the web and the CDs we can order from personal web sites.  Festivals are wonderful for discovering new performers - for an entry fee that is generally less than $20 you can spend hours happily listening, singing along, and dancing.  Of course, they make a lot of money off of me in sales of food and drink, and I always buy a CD or two, but, still, I consider it a primo deal.

My favorite of these little guys is Alex Beaton (followed closely by Charlie Zahm).  Based in Nashville, Beaton is an ornery Scot with a rich brogue, a great love of traditional music and his Celtic heritage, and a performer who obviously loves people.  He's generally the headliner at the Scottish Games,  and I was really anticipating seeing him perform this year.

But Beaton is currently in a rehab hospital in Nashville, recovering from a serious spinal cord injury.  There's a gap in knowledge of what happened - he was sitting on his patio, felt bad, asked his son to get him a glass of water.  When his son returned he was laying on the ground and his heart had stopped.  Something damaged a disk in his neck so badly that the pressure on his spine interrupted his heart beat.  The last news I found on the web was good - the concern has been how much damage was done to his spinal cord, but as the bruising heals it seems feeling is returning.  And apparently he's flirting with the nurses and calling his wife a "pain in the arse", which means his personality is intact.  Everybody is praying he's returns to his hearty and hale self and is back on the touring circuit ASAP.

We'll still have fun - the Glengarry Bhoys will rock the house and have us dancing in the aisles.  But, jeez, I'm gonna miss Alex this year.

Too Much Joy

Last Saturday was a planning day for an upcoming retreat for a prayer group I belong to.  It will be an intense 3-day weekend for a large group and we are trying to get the details of food prep, set up, clean up, etc., sorted out and nailed down ahead of time.  Six hours of planning requires some play mixed in, so at one point we formed two circles, one within the other, inner circle facing out, outer circle facing in.  The outer circle then moved to their right, one person at a time, singing a version of "Shalom Chaverim".  An essential part of this is to look into your partner's eyes as you sing and bow to each other - the song is personally directed to the person you are facing.  That's really rather hard, especially for those who have spent a lot of time in cities.  My daughter and I have often commented on how disconcerting it was when I moved into a more rural area.  People were friendly.  They made eye contact.  In the city eye contact is interpreted as a territorial threat - you don't do it.

Anyway, I've loved this simple song ever since I first heard it, and wondered if it was Hasidic in origin:

Because the Hasidim keep to themselves and appear so different with their dark clothes, long side locks, and tasseled prayer aprons, most people don't realize that they are a people of great joy, song, and laughter.

They exult the Shekinah Glory of God while finding Him in all the details of their lives.

Father of all worldly things:
You create your world afresh each passing second,
And were you to withdraw your loving kindness from creation,
All would be as nothing in the twinkling of an eye.

But moment by moment you empty the vessels of blessing upon
   your creatures:
The morning stars appear again and sing you their love song
And the sun sallies forth boldly to sing its song of strength.
And the poor man cloaks himself again and bares his heart to you,
And again his soul's prayer cleaves your heavens as it ascends before you,
And again his body breaks beneath your terrible glory,
And again his eye is lifted towards you.

But one ray of your light and I abound in light,
But one word from you and I am reborn,
But one tremor of your eternal life and I am drenched in the dew
    of childhood.
O you who create all anew, O Father, create me, your child, anew.
Breathe in me the breath of your nostrils and I will live a new life,
    even a new life of childhood.     (Hillel Zeitlin)

Ninety-five percent of the Hasidim of Europe were slaughtered in the Holocaust.  It was as if the rage of Hitler's neo-pagan Nazism couldn't stand to be faced with so much joy.

It's day 18 of Islam's Ramadan.  So far, this supposedly holy season has seen 83 terror attacks by radical Muslims, resulting in 335 deaths.  That doesn't include the latest attacks.  I have very little hope that the Hasidim, with their radiant mysticism, will survive this reviving evil if it isn't stopped.

Sexist

Apparently there were a lot of strange plans considered during WWII.  This one, from a link provided by Creative Minority Report caught my eye and made me laugh out loud.

"He said: “There was an allied plan that they would smuggle oestrogen into Hitler’s food and change his sex so he would become more feminine and less ­aggressive."

Now here's the thing - somebody obviously thought "aggressive" and "female hormones" are mutually exclusive.  Any guy who has had to deal with a seriously PMSing woman would, I suspect, disagree.

Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-world/2011/08/15/bizarre-plan-to-defeat-hitler-by-turning-him-into-a-woman-revealed-115875-23345117/#ixzz1V95NPAnp

Just shaking head...

From the U.K.'s The Telegraph:

A 13-year-old boy has walked free from court after admitting smashing up a shop with a stolen golf club as his mother said the riots are because the government does "f*** all" for children.

The boy, who cannot be named because of his age, was one of the very few defendants to walk free from court, after receiving a nine month referral order for burglary and violent disorder.

His mother, sitting beside the boy's father, wiped tears from her eyes as the court was told she handed him in after seeing wanted photos of her son being circulated by Greater Manchester Police.

She is on benefits, does not live with the boy's father and has 10 other children, the court heard.

Emphasis and red type color mine.

OK, I confess I'm ignorant.  I confess I'm uneducated.  I confess I'm a right-wing Bible-thumping neanderthal and so couldn't possibly understand this,  BUT 1) HOW THE $#&* CAN PEOPLE KEEP SPOUTING THE "IT'S SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT" DRIVEL !!!???? AND 2) HOW CAN PEOPLE NOT GET THE CONNECTION!!!!!????  WELFARE PROGRAMS MAKE IT EASY FOR BABY DADDY TO NOT BE THERE AND THEN KIDS GET IN TROUBLE!!!!

End of rant.

It's Working!

Courtesy thepeoplescube.com

Sound familiar?

"That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising. ...  The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it -- actually there is no question which has taken a deeper hold on the public mind."

 "To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies."

"They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy."

 

"But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community."

Like so many other things that people think are new, been there, done that.  Saw what would happen if certain fundamental concepts were ignored.  

By 1891, which is when the quoted words were written,  the Industrial Revolution had radically affected Western society.  Immense prosperity had been gained, but often at appalling cost to workers:  long hours, little pay, and dangerous working conditions were not unusual.  Unrest had been growing throughout the second half of the 19th century as people sought some way to protect themselves and to obtain equitable and just conditions for themselves and so for the families they were often struggling to support.  It was clear to many that "there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion."

Unions were forming and dissolving.  Marxist socialist groups were also rallying workers, with demands that all be distributed evenly.   The taking from one who has been deemed to have too much in order to give to one who is thought to have too little ignores a basic fact:

"It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own ... Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life."

The document quoted from is an encyclical titled Rerum Novarum, released by Pope Leo XIII on May 15, 1891.  The full text can be read here.  I've chopped and rearranged, but reading the full document in the context of both that time and this one is very interesting, because we are increasingly seeing the predicted playing out of something that is condemned in the document:  over-reaching governments that have attempted to redistribute wealth by over-taxation of the productive part of the population are seeing increasing violence, destabilization, and the collapse of the socialist structures they have built.

It's our job as individuals to take care of the needy in our communities, not fob it off on some faceless, amorphous entity called "the government", i.e., "Let the government do it."  Governments have proved fiducially irresponsible in such things, and encouraging  government to take what rightly belongs to a person and misuse it is piling wrong upon wrong, depriving communities of the funds that they could more wisely use because they know their own needs better.  Separating charity from the idea of the worth of every individual in the sight of God has left generations without a concept of their own self-worth or the worth of others.  It has led to the development of a deeply entrenched entitlement mentality that has forgotten the joy of being grateful and so only knows the unfulfillable desire of "I want."  The end result of that is now being seen in the viciousness of mobs of teens that are repeatedly appearing in U.S. cities and the rioting and destruction erupting in Europe.

A hundred years ago Leo wrote of the great need of society to care for its poor.  At the same time he saw how evil class warfare is, and how destructive to society the use of it to manipulate people would be.  But people still haven't caught on.  We've been here.  We've been warned what would happen if we did this. If we don't fix this soon we don't deserve the t-shirt.

Just Wrong

 

I knew looters were stupid, I just didn't realize HOW stupid!

Mixed bag...

... at the range this week.  I want too much too soon and moved too far back at first, which cost me accuracy.  Felt better when I had chewed a good sized hole in the center of the target with the Browning after moving up again.  That's a fun gun to shoot - substantial feeling without being big or overly heavy.  Easy to control.  The little .38 is more of a problem.  I'm tending to the left, and sometimes I'm doing the mental equivalent of a face squinch just before it fires, which means I'm anticipating the shot and flinching.  The only solution I know is to go shoot it some more.

A comparison...

... of two men called "Reverend".  One is far more coherent and in touch with the real world than the other.  You choose which.

Myth and History

The Norway massacre was a convenient moment for anti-Christians.  They were able to supplement their endless repetition of "Look at Timothy McVeigh" with "Look at Anders Breivik".  Since most of the media feels no need to actually report information, this was a boon to the politically correct "Muslim all good, Christian all bad" ideologues.  And since there are a great many people whose approach to issues is to repeat a mantra that makes them feel good, anti-Christian acolytes took up the chant,  unwilling to recognize that Anders Breivik had rejected Christianity just as Timothy McVeigh had, both living their lives with the cultural trappings but rejecting the actual teachings of the religion.  Like the Unabomber, Breivik left a manifesto, one that shows an increasingly twisted and violent person who had planned attacks for more than a decade.

It's interesting that those who call Christianity a myth are themselves very quick to believe in myths and urban legends concerning Christianity. The myth of the Crusades is a particularly dangerous one, because it conveniently allows the dodging of a history that is very relevant to the world today.   We've been here before.  Only chronological myopia can turn that statement into anti-Muslim rhetoric. Rather, it's a recognition of the fact that many places in the world are already involved in the repeat of a dangerous history - a history as recent as 1699.

The myth of the Crusades as an unwarranted attack on innocent Muslims in the Holy Land is only about a hundred years old and is a product of the last gasps of an Ottoman Empire desperate to gain support.  The armies of Islam had roared out of Arabia and conquered Jerusalem in 638 AD, northern Africa by 700, Spain in 711.  Charles "The Hammer" Martel blocked the Islamic advance at Tours and Poitier in 732.  But part of Europe and much of the Middle East was now under Islamic rule, including Jerusalem.  By 1027, the Eastern emperor's negotiations with the Fatimid rulers of Jerusalem had brought relief to the Christians there, and pilgrimages had resumed.  But then came the Seljuk Turks, with conquest in the name of Allah, not co-existence, as their goal.  Christian communities were again threatened and besieged.  And Muslim armies were once again driving for Christian Constantinople, the center of the Eastern Empire.  Armenia was overrun; the Emperor's forces crushed at Manzikert. Only manipulation of Islamic disunity allowed the Emperor to fend off full collapse of the Eastern Empire and he appealed to the Pope for help.  In 1095 the Pope responded with a call for a Crusade to liberate Jerusalem and bring relief to the Christians there.

The Pope and the Eastern Emperor knew that if Constantinople fell to the Seljuks the victories of Charles Martel would be meaningless and Europe would be open to Islamic conquerors.  And so it proved once Constantinople fell in the fifteenth century.  By the time the Ottoman armies were stopped in 1699 they had conquered most of Eastern Europe.  To put that year in some historical perspective, by 1699 Jamestown, VA, had been in existence for 92 years, Plymouth, MA, for 70, and Benjamin Franklin would be born in less than 7 years.

For two years the Crusaders fought their way to Jerusalem.  The army was of its time - a time when resistance brought slaughter and sack.  The Papal Legate had restrained them for two years, but he died just before they reached Jerusalem.  Without him, Jerusalem fell brutally.  And brutality in war was tit for tat.

Saladin (c. 1138 - 1193) was known as "The Merciful" because he offered those he conquered the choice of conversion or slavery rather than the usual choice of conversion or death.  But he took the head of Raymond of Chatillon himself after the Battle of Hattin in 1187.

That evil was done in the name of Christianity during the Crusades is inarguable.  But the Crusades began as a response to Islamic invasion and to free Christians who were suffering under Muslim dominion.  It was not Christianity that rose up and invaded non-Christian lands, but rather an aggressive form of Islam that rose up and invaded non-Islamic lands.

The Crusader cry of "Deus volt!" may no longer be heard on a battlefield, but the cry of "Allahu akbar!" is once again reverberating around the world as Islam becomes an aggressive force in a nuclear age.  Ignoring that is perilous and an invitation to a repeat of history.

Responsibility

It's just amazing.  There isn't a single thing that isn't the fault of somebody else. Please, somebody write this on Obama's teleprompter:

Irk!

Yes, yes it is, and there were two of them plus eggs...

And in case anybody asks if I was wearing the gardening gloves that I hate using, the answer is that I sure was afterwards.

Babel

Call it serendipity or Holy Spirit, I read the Rev’s post on communication and an article titled “What Freedom Means in the New Babel” in a back issue of This Rock on the same day.  The article is written from the point of view of the need for communication in evangelization and apologetics but it has many points that are equally valid in the cultural debate many of us find ourselves embroiled in.  And like it or not politics reflect cultural debate.

In the Biblical story of Babel in Genesis 11, all people spoke the same language.  Then they overreached themselves in pride and were forever divided by an inability to speak to each other, to communicate.  At Pentecost, that was reversed (Acts 2:11) – unity in Christ brought unity in understanding and communication.  It always gets me when people tell me that the Bible or history is not relevant – it happened a long time ago, we are different now, this is the modern world.  No, we aren’t different now in anything but outward forms.  And one of the most difficult of those outward forms to deal with is language.

I don’t mean language as in I speak English and she speaks French – that has its own issues and issues within issues.  But the English language as I speak it and the English language as this culture speaks it often reflect different meanings.  These differences in meanings can be relatively superficial.  I remember someone relating that on her first night as an exchange student in England the host family husband politely asked “Would you like me to knock you up in the morning?”  Like “boot” vs “trunk”, “wrench” vs “spanner”, this sort of variability in language can be gotten over and laughed about.  But the current cultural battle, which includes what we see in our government, is over the meaning of one particular word:  freedom.

English is a relatively new language, a mix of German and French, and what could be recognized as modern English is only about 500 years old.  According to the author of the article, Gregary Beabout, “Freedom” comes from the name of the Norse goddess Fri (also Frig or Freya) who remained with her husband Odin not because of his power but because she loved him.  So “freedom” and “love” share an Old English root, as does “friend”.  But during the upheavals and revolutions of the 17^th and 18^th centuries the concepts of love and family began to be denigrated, viewed as constraints, and separated from the concept of liberty and freedom.  Freedom began to mean the right to do whatever one wants - in theory as long as nobody else gets hurt. The doer, of course, decides whether or not someone is getting hurt.

One of the reasons Latin remains the official language of the Church is precisely because it is a dead language.  Unlike modern languages the meanings of its words are not in flux and will not change.   In Latin, there is a clear distinction between libertas (liberty, freedom for excellence) and licentia (license, freedom from constraint).   Right now we are in a battle to determine which of those two words for freedom is going to define us.  The “grammar” can sound the same – love, justice, human rights.  But the one rests on responsibility and a relationship with God and His commandments; the other defines the individual as God and so defines its own commandments.

The Tower of Babel sundered multitudes from each other and thousands of years later we are paying the price.  It remains to be seen if a common definition of freedom will be chosen or if we will collapse in disarray.  I choose libertas as my definition.  After having lived many years by the other definition I well understand the true freedom of the one and the slavery of the other.  But many people around me equate freedom with licentia.  And I don’t know how to bridge that language gap.    

Tell them the exact spot.

Now when you tell someone where to go you can be more specific:

 

Thanks to Creative Minority Report for a giggle.

Target Practice

So I was making up a mental To Do list and one of the items on it is "Buy targets". Being as my mind is jumping all over right now it bounced on over to "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!"

I really don't find the zombie targets all that interesting, so maybe I should make up something more entertaining to me to liven things up.

Yeah.  I'm bored.  Really bored.

Dickering around...

So I apologize for any weird things that appear on this blog while I'm tinkering with it.  Purely accidental.

A Bit Beyond Erector Sets And Tinker Toys

I'm not mechanically inclined - I haven't the patience. My solution for things is to hit it with a hammer, bang in on the floor, or flag the neighbor when he's walking the dogs and ask if he can fix it. But this, originally reported in June, is fascinating:

A New York web designer for fashion house Gucci surprised his neighbors by revealing he built a nuclear reactor in a Brooklyn warehouse, the BBC reported Wednesday.

Mark Suppes, a 32-year-old amateur physicist with a passion for sustainable energy, constructed the $40,000 homemade fusion reactor in his spare time.

He is the 38th independent physicist in the word to achieve nuclear fusion from a self-built reactor and forms part of a growing community of "fusioneers." These brainiacs are trying to discover how to produce energy by fusion, a process that currently consumes more energy to run than it creates.

Read the full article here

I wish these folks luck - if they can make it work a home nuclear generator would beat solar and windmills all to heck.  However, I would prefer that they make sure that what they are doing is safe before tinkering around with nuclear materials - meltdowns on the kitchen stove might concern the neighbors.

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby.

Richard Handl told The Associated Press that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material.

 More here.

A Happy Ending

After all the aggravation of the last weeks, it's time for a happier subject.  So a thank you to Creative Minority Report for a happy ending blog and video.  And major thumbs up to responding LAPD officers for hanging on. 

Suicide Attempt Ends with Happy Wedgie


Sore for a while, but hopefully his life will get better.

(I'd upload from YouTube myself but it considers this porn...)

A Parcel of Rogues in Our Nation

Scots poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) well knew the sad history of his once free country.  Power became more important than duty to those who should have led their nation, and time and again the Scots were sold out to the British until all hope was crushed at Culloden and with the Highland Clearances.  As a terrorist (thank you Mr. Biden) who believes that the entrenched and comfortable politicians of both parties in this country are working to preserve their own power rather than to serve the country, this poem by Burns is resonating strongly with me these days.

Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory;
Fareweel ev'n to the Scottish name,
Sae famed in martial story!
Now Sark rins over Solway sands,
And Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England's province stands -
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

What force or guile could not subdue
Thro' many warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few,
For hireling traitor's wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour's station;
But English gold has been our bane -
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

O, would or I had seen the day
That treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay
Wi' Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour,
I'll mak this declaration:
We're bought and sold for English gold -
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

Need smacked upside heads!

Yes, file charges.  I understand the urge to shoot reporters - I have fits of it myself.  But half our problems these days are coming from years of lack of serious consequences for actions, and 16 and 17 are old enough to know better:

FONTANA, Calif. (KABC) -- ABC7 Eyewitness News reporter Leanne Suter was injured by a pellet fired from a BB gun while covering a story in Fontana on Saturday.

Suter was struck in the hand. She was taken to a hospital for treatment and will be OK.

Suter and a photographer were doing a live report on the weather near Summit Avenue and the 15 Freeway just after 6 p.m. when shots were fired.

Police were called, and with the assistance of a San Bernardino Sheriff's Department helicopter, were able to pinpoint a house that was possibly involved. Arriving officers found several BB guns inside the house.

Police arrested two boys, ages 16 and 17, for assault with a dangerous weapon, which is a felony. They were later released to their parents.


Authorities said they apparently were firing from the home's backyard in the direction where the news van was parked. The news van was hit. Police recovered at least two pellets.

"We are grateful no one was seriously hurt and we are fully cooperating with police in their investigation," said Arnold J. Kleiner, president and general manager of KABC-TV. "Our crews and reporters are very conscious of good safety practices and take proper precautions when on assignment. They could not have anticipated that someone would decide to target them in this way." 

The case is being forwarded to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office to see if charges will be pursued.

Need Blogger Help

OK, I'd like to make my links brighter and easier to see.  I go into the advanced design stuff and I think I set everything to red and apply it but when I go back to the blog it's still the same color.  I know I can put codes in by hand for each post but I don't wanna.  There must be a css somewhere with this code in it that I can get to. But how?