Skalduggery

The Republican Governors Association put up a new ad worth watching, and the site is worth the trip too! Vote!

I encourage you to watch all the videos at the “Remember November” site.   VOTE!!

My Sincerest Apologies

I’m not much of a fan of overly private/personal websites – on the other hand, when one is making excuses for failing at a job… well; offer the “reasons and explanations” prior to failing to meet a deadline! So then, without too much private information, it seems I’ve a chronic medical condition that is a little more challenging than I had anticipated. That’s my excuse for the past weeks. I’ll do my damndest to put up a post to notify before any other hospital stays in the future. Moreover, I’ll also work on trying to figure out the “automatic” posting that I know is possible – but have never tried to accomplish. Despite the excuses, reasons, and explanations I am old enough to feel an apology is in order: You all have my sincerest!

And here, because it’s so much better than I have on hand, is another great video by Andrew Klavan. ENJOY!

Visit this site for discount coupons!

My sincerest apologies for my failure to post – a small mea culpa. You see, I’m busy putting together a site survey for the Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire!

Take a trip to Kings Valley, Oregon and

And a Faire to Remember!

Come be thee blythe and merry at the Renaissance Faire! Just 15 miles and 500 years away from downtown Corvallis. Here enchantment awaits young and old alike as jousting knights and noble steeds clash on the tourney fyld while minstrels, troubadours, jongleurs, dancers and bards fill the lanes with delight.

With over 125 artisan stalls and 1,000 costumed players, visitors can browse the village for unique hand made goods and one of a kind treasures while surrounded by Renaissance revelry and entertainment. Eat, drink, and be merry, for food purveyors are on hand within Friar Tuck’s Forest, and children delight in games and adventures.

The only Fair of its kind in Oregon, this exciting event offers an educational interactive adventure in history, welcoming families and children. Modeled on the merriest of elements from the times of Shakespeare and Elizabeth I, and set in the historic renaissance of 1558 to 1603, here all the Faire is a stage, and everyone a player!

Come join the fun! Cheers all!

Big hat tip to Diary of a Mad Conservative! I was surfing around before work and came across this on her site – had to repost this video:

Enjoy the new ad!

Cheers all 😉

Suess Appeasement

Bill Whittle, in this installment of Afterburner, takes us to school on the consequences of appeasement and cowardice – a demonstration of head in the sand suicide. The cartoon’s link lead’s to Bill Whittle’s video – a worthy dozen minutes or so – and before you go, here’s a spot from The Weekly Standard that is definitely worth the entire read… but here is the closing paragraph that speaks to the same subject:

We need to recover our sense that, while any regime is capable of lapses in the protection of human rights, for democracies like the United States and Israel, these are lapses from their own standards, lapses which they work to redress. For tyrannies like Iran and Syria, as for jihadist revolutionaries, by contrast, human rights abuses are not lapses from a higher standard. On the contrary: The behavior we term “abuse” is their standard, one they strive to implement every day. We must also overcome our discomfiture at being labeled enemies of “the Muslim world” or the Iranian or Syrian “people.” Tyrants and dictators, and the jihadists who aspire to join them, do not represent their peoples, and they cannot represent high religious values. The West’s unambiguous moral opposition to such regimes and the terrorism they sponsor, whether deployed against their own populations or against innocents abroad, is at the service of liberating their peoples from fear and oppression.

Cheers you princes of our future!

I'm Sorry, I Swear!

I’ve had a few 16 hour days, some of it associated with mandatory overtime. Bummer. That’s why there isn’t a new post up this Monday; however, I will put up a post for this week. My apologies for not keeping up!

Cheers!

Update: Peace offerings… Two great PJ O’Rourke quotes

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

After all, what is your host’s purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they’d have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.



This is a Monday Morning Quickie! Hat Tip to American Digest! If you haven’t seen this… what are you waiting for? I’m getting the movie!!!

Seriously, are you pansies gonna cry?

Here is what I am trying to tell you: the country is not ready for conservatism.  It flirts with it, as it did with the Bush’es and Reagan, but doesn’t fight for it.  It sits in a stupor while some goofball from Chicago openly and consciously kills the constitution.  No, ladies and gentlemen, you are not the men and women your grandparents hoped you would be.  Your old man “didn’t get his seed back”, as my Dad used to say.

Virgil and I spend a fair amount of time talking about whether the real change will come along as catastrophic, or slow-burn.  It could be either, after all.  And somehow, before all this can be resolved, it will be strong folks of character, at the local level, who put it back together.  The question I have for you is, will you take your power back, before they bankrupt you completely and put you into permanent servitude?  I don’t think you will.  But you’ll probably fight like hell for marijuana. The Daily Bayonet

Huge HatTip to the American Digest! Take a trip over to the ‘Bayonet’ and read the whole article… and according to the author it was “calculated to make some o’you pansies cry, so you might as well get started now.” I’m of a mind to write something similar with some of the same kind of old pictures of family. It would be worth doing just for my daughters – because their grandparents and great grandparents were remarkable people. Maybe it’s time we take back our communities to recreate a country.

Cheers all, and

Happy Sunday 😉

The courage to get it right?

Last year, during black history month, Eric Holder, our first black AG, called us “a nation of cowards” when it comes to discussing race. That was the single phrase seized on by many in the media, on both the right and the left, and it was the phrase used to praise or denigrate Holder’s speech and the current state of racial affairs in the United States. The speech itself was lengthy and only somewhat nuanced, but there was a lot more there than most people were willing to discuss – black or white… or any other color for that matter. Let me use a part of the same sentence where the offending phrase was found: I believe that “in too many ways,” Eric Holder was right. Whether you agree with him or not, I’d urge you to listen to the entire speech in context, or of course, read the text of the speech – much faster results.

Part of his point is that while Americans have moved to the point of working, lunching, and attending functions together, on weekends, we pretty much self segregate… and that isn’t good in his view. I am more sanguine about our progress than Holder, but I do believe he is right about our general unwillingness to discuss racial matters in an open and honest manner. Lots of reasons for that little problem, but I’d like to open up this can of worms… because “in too many ways,” not many people are willing to expose themselves to the consequences Holder so blithely suggests we all should risk.

I had several people at work try to dissuade me from heading in this direction (I often bounce some of my more controversial ideas off of several folks I know), but I thought, “Hey, screw it. This blog has had me on the carpet more than once.” And, as some of you know, I have often argued that courage is a thing to value.

Rather than throw a rant on why I think the AG is full of it, I’ll just throw out a few facts, a few statistical certainties, and wait for the charges to fly. Keep in mind here, that I am NOT offering explanations at this point, nor am I making any allegations or interpretations of the facts I’ll be laying out. I’d really like to hear what you have to say – providing you can keep the conversation civil, accurate to the best of your ability (in other words, be prepared to back it up), and really aimed at affording all of us the opportunity to get a better grasp of the realities involved.

In addition to the Bureau of Justice Statistics site, you can also find some of this information at Heather Mac Donald’s Weekly Standard article, Excusing the Oakland Rioters: Looting is not a form of civil rights protest, and the city of New York’s crime statistics.

• Blacks commit nearly 6,000 murders annually (most of whom are black), and whites & Hispanics commit a little more than 5,300 murders a year (most of whom are white or Hispanic). Whites & Hispanics comprise about 81% of the population, while blacks comprise about 13% of the population. Since the US has just over 300,000,000 people, the math is pretty straight forward. Blacks murder almost 154 people per 100,000 of their own population. Whites & Hispanics murder almost 2.2 people per 100,000. The murder rate for blacks is 70 times higher than the murder rate for whites and Hispanics.
• The 73^rd precinct in New York is mostly black, and “the per capita rate of shootings there is 81 times higher than in the mostly white 68^th precinct…”
• The police stop rate of vehicles in the 73^rd precinct is 15 times higher than in the 68^th precinct.
• In New York City, blacks “commit 80 percent of all shootings, whites 1.4 percent, though blacks are 23 percent of the population, and whites 35 percent.”
• At the beginning of 2009, there were nearly 1800 whites on death row and there were just over 1300 blacks on death row (both the white and black numbers include some Hispanics).
• During 2008, there were 20 white and 17 black people executed.

As I said earlier, at this point I’m not trying to explain these numbers, nor will I offer any interpretations of the meaning in these numbers. I’ve got questions about these and other numbers. Why are these kinds of numbers rarely if ever mentioned when discussing race in America? Especially on the “big three” news stations, PBS, NPR, CNN when their prolific little series on race air on national television? For the elites that are concerned with the brutality of the police and their unnecessary taking of black lives, why are they not equally concerned with the unnecessary taking of black lives in the inner city? Why don’t these victims get the same care and concern from our nation’s elite, the media, and the professoriate? Especially when they are so obviously more numerous?? Why doesn’t the unnecessary taking of white lives by the police rate the same air time and outrage?

Finally, in closing this post, remember, please keep the comments and email civil, and as important, let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt about our honesty and earnestness in seeking out the truth. I’ll be using the replies to guide some of my follow up posts – posts aimed more at our nation’s intellectuals than at everyday Americans.

Cheers – all of you!

Klavan on the Culture

Well, I’m on a new post (a new job at the prison) which puts my days off on Thursday and Friday, and it means I’ll be adjusting my target day for posting new material. I haven’t quite decided between Friday and Monday, though Monday sounds good in terms of starting a new week for those of you that read me at work. Moreover, if the whimsy takes me, I can review the week in news! Of course, I’d like to start jumping into Susan’s Microfiction Monday now and again (cause I truly enjoy that diversion), but I can’t let that substitute for my regular posts – and me being the lazy fellow that I am…

So then, since I can’t quite decide, I’ll mess around with it for the next few weeks and see how it shakes out… In the mean time, check out Andrew Klavan at PJTV in “Klavan on the Culture.” His title this week let’s you know where he’s going with his satire… Obama’s Beach Blanket Recovery: It’s Happy, Snappy & Incredibly Crappy. So click the picture or the textual link and visit PJTV for a nice alternative to the slobbering love fest of the MSM with Obama – who knows, you might laugh. Or cry. Or get angry. Could be all three I suppose.

Cheers!