Well a cold front blew in today and its colder than .... you know. It was a stiff wind that came out of the north. This front blew in hard this afternoon and before i got home my wife sent me this picture.
Darn. I liked that tree (sorta).
Later i took a shot of it laying on the fence. I was just about to fix that fence, too. Now I'm glad that I hadn't fixed it yet.
I know what I'll be doing on Saturday.
Some might call it "Biden's Bid for the Beltway" or "Political Posturing for Possible Presidency" (make your grammar teacher proud - make up your own headline). But it was obvious from watching the news in Spanish this evening that Senator Joe Biden isn't worried about kowtowing to the Hispanic audience.
Seems to me like this is a fairly balanced article. After the newscast, i had to "google" Joe Biden because the ONLY thing getting play in Spanish was "Joe Biden said Mexico is corrupt." and the newscasters were acting like "Mexico is still corrupt" was some kind of slam instead of a fact.
Politically incorrect sources of news.
Free Republic
townhall.com
Instapundit
Jihad Watch
and one of my favorites NewsMax
And just in case you might be sexist enough to think that all Muslim terrorists are young men, check this out.
Where i live, we hear quite a bit about Mexican and Latin American politics. I will leave Hugo Chavez for a while and tell you about a problem closer to home.
For those of us that watch Spanish language television, the biggest show that we've seen lately is the Mexican presidential elections - held in July and contested ever since. If you think the Bush elections were divisive, you haven't been paying attention to Mexico's recent political fray. Despite the fact that Mexico is a multi party system, the two big contenders this time were Felipe Calderon of PAN and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of PRD. Lopez Obrador had resigned as mayor of Mexico City to run for the presidency.
There was much complaining and grandstanding during and after the whole thing but when Calderon was officially declared the winner (by a very thin margin), then the fun REALLY got started.
Lopez Obrador urged his supporters to shut down industry by blocking major roadways in Mexico City. [On more than one occassion, they were rather successful in bringing traffic to a standstill and business leaders claim that his actions have cost them approximately US$35 million]
Now, in a self-important move reminiscent of fellow Leftists Chavez and Castro; Lopez Obrador has declared himself "Legitimate President" of Mexico and has called for the institution of a parallel government and cabinet.
Can Mexico ever hope to be taken seriously (and leave behind its 3rd world problems) while unhappy political candidates are setting up their own governments? This will only serve to complicate EVERY serious diplomatic matter because Lopez Obrador will insist that the USA meet with his government, as well. Knowing a little of the recent history of Mexican politics, I fear this will not end well for Lopez Obrador.
Whatever your traditions around this holiday, i hope that all who see this enjoy a very Happy Thanksgiving!!!
And if you have no Thanksgiving traditions, start some!
Is it true that Nancy Pelosi stinks? It must be - there is a website by that name -NancyPelosiStinks.com (why didn't i think of this?)
This advice from wikiHow might be useful in protecting our valuables from an ever-expanding government (some things are the same no matter which party is in power) How to Make a Hollow Book
And here are three interesting articles that come up when you search wikiHow for "politics"
How to Choose a Political Party (nice graph)
How to Get a Job with the U.N.
How to Shoot a Handgun (as always, this article has links to much other wikiHow fun!)
Finally, according to NumbersUSA , while members of Congress that were recently ousted didn't get the boot because of their stance on immigration, the 2006 shakeup will make actual effective immigration legislation more difficult to pass. According to analysis by NumbersUSA, 9.5% (nine point five percent) of incumbent Congress members with a good rating (strong on border security, etc) lost their jobs while over 25% (twenty five percent) of incumbent Congress members with a poor rating (favoring amnesty, etc) were defeated.
In short, we will be picking apart the results of the fall 2006 election for years to come.
Yesterday morning i heard about comedian Michael Richards going totally racial on a heckler. It was ugly. Actually it was worse than ugly. Yesterday evening i was watching Hannity and Colmes with my folks (i'm too cheap to pay for cable - i have youtube :-) and two black comedians were being interviewed about what they felt about all this. Not even these two guys could agree what would have been the best way to handle it (pretend it was all an act or go on BET and *really* apologize) but there seems to be a pretty wide consensus that Michael Richards' public career is over.
Why am i mentioning this in the middle of everything else that is going on in the world? This incident just demonstrates again that we (humans) will never solve the big problems by ourselves. How long have we been working to eliminate racism in this country? Can anybody say "Emancipation Proclamation"?
I don't want to seem overly pessimistic but the reality is that we will always have reasons to disagree. I've even read comments from atheists that feel that "The source of all the world's problems is religion and as soon as we get rid of it, we'll all get along." . No, there will be something else (race, class, etc) to cause divisions and tensions. Or to borrow another argument, "When all the guns are taken away, then we will bludgeon each other to death."
Are we inherently evil? How is it that this horrible behavior is learned over and over, generation after generation? Maybe the comedian in the studio with Hannity and Colmes was right when he said that we are all racists and Richards only said what we are all thinking. I hope, for our sakes, that he is wrong.
Now I hear that a leading Democrat wants to re-instate the draft? Is this what we have to look forward to for the next two years?
Give me escapist fantasy anyday.
Save the cheerleader. Save the world.
Today was our second service using our new projector system at church. We're using MediaShout (i've never used this program before) and it has a fairly steep learning curve on the front end but it really seems like it is flexible enough that we will be able to do almost anything with it!
Last week we immediately saw a change in worship - I think everybody really liked being able to look up and see each other and look at the worship team instead of having to look down at song sheets.
We're still continuing on the learning curve but things are looking good.
Yesterday I flew home from a software training and company meeting. While its good to see co-workers that I haven't seen in a while, travel is getting to be more and more of a hassle. This is the first time that I have flown without checking luggage.
Now its: show your I.D., wear slip on shoes, take the laptop out of the case, 3-1-1 , empty your pockets, "Bag Search!". More than once I have wondered what our founding fathers would think of our measures to keep ourselves "safe". Sometimes I think they would be quite bothered with the fact that we are so abundantly comfortable with so much government interference in our lives while we tolerate disappearing liberties.
Thanks to some over zealous legislator, I cannot take a short lunch if I feel like it (and some days I feel like it). Federal law requires that any day that I work 6 hours or more, I must break for at least 30 minutes. I am no longer allowed to check email, take phone calls or handle anything even remotely "business related" on my lunch break.
I'm just about sick of government interference and the next two years aren't shaping up to be any better.
Honestly, my intent in setting up a blog was not to be "political" - but i guess that ship sailed when i chose the name for the blog.
But the truth is, we don't live in a vacuum. I honestly believe that the statement "The only thing that is necessary for Evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing." is a valid statement.
Here is a suggestion of something fun that you can do this Christmas (i stole the idea from my friend Lily)
Want to have some fun this CHRISTMAS ? Send the ACLU a CHRISTMAS CARD!
As they are working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday, we should all send them a nice, CHRISTIAN, card to brighten up their nasty, dark, sad, little world.
Make sure it says "Merry Christmas" on it.
Here's the Address, just don't be rude or crude.
(It's Not the Christian Way.)
ACLU125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004
Two tons of Christmas cards will freeze their operations because they won't know if any are regular mail containing contributions. So spend 39 cents and tell the ACLU to leave Christmas alone. Also tell them that there is no such thing as a Holiday Tree. . . . It's a Christmas Tree even in the fields!!
And pass this on to your email lists. We really want to communicate with the ACLU ! They really DESERVE us!!
I'm planning on sending more than one :-)
i was checking out the comments that people have left on different entries and saw that another blog has added us to their blogroll. i checked 'em out and now you can find One Country Voice listed in the "Found on the Blogosphere" section. You should check it out.
i want to send a big "Thank You" to our friends at Faultline USA. On Monday, Peace Through Superior Firepower was added to their blogroll. We will keep a link to them here on our "Found In the Blogosphere" section.
If you haven't checked it out yet, you definitely should. In my humble opinion we will have to increase our vigilance against the tactics of the far left after Tuesday's fiasco, and Faultline is a recent addition to the blogosphere that seems to be keeping an eye on issues of interest.
I found reference to these articles (armed women #1 & armed women #2) while reading Mallard Fillmore today.
The November 5, 2006 comic will be archived here until Dec 4, 06. Mallard Fillmore has to be one of my favorites - he never ceases to point up the foibles of the media. For instance today's comic says "The part of the handgun in this cartoon is, as always, played by a banana due to newspaper editors reactions to previous depictions of handguns in this comic strip."
In his strip today, Mr Tinsley/Mallard is depicting an elderly woman defending herself against a mugger armed with a knife. (Apparently "newspaper editors" have no problem with the depiction of a criminal armed with a knife - interesting double standard)
Tinsley states "*See Mary Katherine Ham's column about real women who've foiled violent predators because those women were armed at townhall.com, because you won't hear about 'em from the mainstream media..." so i decided to look 'em up and put a link to them, too.
Ya' gotta love a woman who can defend herself.
We don't have cable TV here but between Google, CNN, YouTube and the recently launched Texas Border Watch , i've got a solid case of "choose your news".
And for my friends who are crazy about YouTube, here's some stuff i like:
Airport Security
Bill Clinton's Terrorism Failures
Nixon Defends Secrecy (really, you gotta see this one)
Fun in the Office (Rube Goldberg style)
i have to agree, YouTube is *cool*
