Skalduggery

I once enjoyed a wonderful ride to work each morning, and unfailingly, provided I had the ready cash, I’d stop by the coffee goddess’ place of business and pick up a great cup-a-joe. Though it’s a rare day I find myself traveling this little byway, I thought it a perfect spot to share this Christmas Eve morning.

To all of you out in the world that visit this blog: from our family to you and yours, we wish you the best possible Christmas Season this year and an even better year to come!

Cheers! Steven & Crew

Since it is our 34th anniversary, I’ve decided to take a one week break in my attempts at somewhat substantive posts… ok, I’m just taking this week off for my anniversary – forget about that whole substantive post thing… I wouldn’t want that coming back to bite me in the, er, ehem, behind. However, there are a few posts on other sites worth visiting, and I’m always a fan of watching someone ELSE do real work!

NeoNeocon has a great link and highlight of the current war on the CIA that is worth the read. Her little blurb give the gist of the story, but the original (quite lengthy) story is well worth the visit.

Responsibility – Freedom Demands It, and Asymmetric both have posts and links worth reading through concerning environmental issues.

See you soon! Cheers all.

Happy Thanksgiving

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder

Here’s hoping all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day no matter how you might celebrate it, and moreover, that it be a day of fun and laughter… it’s nice to smile while being thankful.

May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious
and your pies take the prize,
and may your Thanksgiving dinner
stay off your thighs! ~Unknown

Cheers All 😀

This should have gone up yesterday, but I was terribly busy taking advantage of the Veterans’ Day sales… OK, that was to get a few of the self-righteous’ knickers in a twist 😈 Seriously, thank you so very much to all veterans for their service and sacrifice, and especially to my father, father-in-law, and my two oldest daughters and their husbands for their tours in Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq (both daughters and husbands) respectively. Military service is sort of a family business for us… not a popular profession in many circles. To all you vets, to all you mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers of vets, please accept my family’s heartfelt thanks and gratitude to all of you!

I found this video over at Tom’s Responsibility – Freedom Demands It site – take a look at his fly the flag entry… and as for the video, well, I totally stole the idea 😀 and put it up here too! It’s a pleasant five minutes, so enjoy yourselves – and a great big hat tip to Tom!  Cheers all!

Granted that’s a bit over the top, but I love reading this guy! He manages to be deliberately disrespectful by engaging his readers with accusations that fall only a little short of gross exaggerations. In part because of his journalistic background, but largely because he believes his readers share his own disgust with hate accusations so common today, he’s not just credible – he’s fun. The print magazine has an excellent bit of art for O’Rourke’s article – I’ll risk providing that bit of art and the first two paragraphs… Click the picture to access the article – it’s a grand bit of fun!

Whew, I’m pooped. Jimmy Carter has got me run ragged with all the hating I’m supposed to do. Jimmy says I’m a racist because I oppose President Obama’s health care reform program. Even Jimmy Carter can’t be wrong all the time. And since Jimmy Carter has been wrong about every single thing for the past 44 years, maybe–just as a matter of statistical probability–he’s right this time.

I hadn’t noticed I was a racist, but that was no doubt because I was too busy being a homophobe. Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot. Since I do not want America to suffer another Sean Penn movie, I will accept that I’m a homophobe, too. And I’m a male chauvinist due to the fact that I think Nancy Pelosi is blowing smoke–excuse me, carbon neutral, biodegradable airborne particulate matter–out her pantsuit.

If that doesn’t whet your appetite for a little fun, then you need to read this just to get your smile on. And your indignation. Take a trip to a great political rag… TWS!

Cheers all, happy Tuesday!

I’ve had a bit of an exchange with a few readers and writers concerning the ethics and basic practicality of Obamacare – the Sunday Funnies seemed like something to make everyone smile just a little, and yet, say something worth thinking about. Sometimes political cartoons are just wonderfully fun! So, here are two I found while surfing my favorite wingnut haters at MSNBC… click the pictures for a listing of daily political cartoons:

Cheers all!

Take a trip over to Responsibility – there is a killer post up concerning taking things one step at a time, especially when things are overwhelming or complicated… or overwhelmingly complicated. He takes as a point of departure Peggy Noonan’s article over at the WSJ in which she says that Americans are disheartened, and worse that:

We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.

Look for a little optimism, a plan, or at least the next brick! We need to make sure our locals notice.

Cheers!

The vacation’s over and I’m getting ready to head out to work… *sigh* Only here in Oregon are people crazy enough to bundle up because it’s cold, and then take their shoes and socks off so they can splash in a numbingly cold Pacific! That’s exactly what we did 😉  So this is just a tidbit to say regular Thursday posts will resume now that vacation’s over. For fun, here are couple more shots of the girls having fun!

And of course the new dog “Einstein” is included with Mom and her daughters 😀

The trip is coming to a close, I’ve tons of pictures, a few I’ve taken to the “darkroom” known as Adobe Lightroom (a fantastic bit of software for digital photographers), and it’s time to start catching up on blog posts, email, etc. The grandpa gig is a great one to have, and now that I’ll soon be headed back home I get to put together a few of those little videos that people get so annoyed with… 😀

So, for a filler tidbit before I’m back to business – here’s an annoying video (unless you happen to be family I guess) that I put together to celebrate Chase’s arrival. Fun to put together, fun to share with captive audiences… well, you’ll get the picture… The song,  A Simple Love, is by Melissa Ethridge, and the photos were by yours truly – from the toast when I arrived to the snap of “Little Tony” catching a nap.

Oh! And “Little Tony” just puked all over dad – gotta say, this is sooo much fun to watch happen to someone else!!!

In the mean time,

Cheers All!!

I can’t wait, I’m leaving soon to visit one of my daughters – I’m going to be a grandfather… again 😉 Had to throw that out there – and now that it is out there, I’ve another short tidbit before work instead of a nice focused post. The American Spectator had an article in their September issue that takes aim at our notions of freedom. The title of the article, What’s Your Metric, works on a variety of levels. First it really does get a person to thinking about his method of gauging his current liberty. Second, I’d bet it reveals that many of our personal measures of freedom are woefully inadequate. Like Tom over at Responsibility, the article likes to ask questions. Tom asks a series of questions to provoke thought, and Daniel Oliver opens his article with questions:

HOW DO YOU WATCH FREEDOM? How do you watch it grow? How do you watch it shrink? What’s the metric? What’s your metric? What do you think the metrics of your fellow citizens are? If you have no idea what their metric is, how do you talk to them about freedom with any sense of urgency?

Just those questions make serious thought a necessity if we are to intelligibly discuss our notions of freedom. Some of the metrics mentioned are interesting and raise questions of their own. Milton Friedman’s metric for example, “was the percentage of GDP spent by government.” Naturally it was inversely proportional 😀 Another measure offered was by either counting or weighing “the Federal Register or the Code of Federal Regulations.” Oliver then offers that “A better measure is the COST of regulations” (emphasis mine). He then gives us a standard definition to work with:

Freedom House defines freedom as “the opportunity to act spontaneously in a variety of fields outside the control of the government and other centers of potential domination.” Quick: name a field that is outside the control of government?

There’s the rub. It shouldn’t be that hard. I’d encourage you to run over to The American Spectator and read the article – it’s a short and sweet little missive, and well worth the read to get finally to:

Are those imperfect measures? Perhaps. But then, what’s your metric?

Cheers all,

I’m off to work.