Points to Ponder:

[T]hose who have comments boxes are capable of manipulating the content there to suit their own agenda including banning people who raise strong enough arguments against the "prevailing orthodoxy" at a given weblog. You would be surprised at how often those who laud their "willingness to interact with others" will put censors on their comments boxes that would make the monitors at Pravda in the days of the old Soviet Union blush and as we do not believe in unnecessary censorship, that means we would inexorably leave out there potentially a variety of assertions that our lack of time to respond to would give the unintended perception of being "unanswerable" by us. Those are the main reasons for our refusal to use comments boxes in a nutshell. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa December 1, 2008)]

Firestorm threatens to engulf Blanche Lincoln (Politico)

Senator Blanche Lincoln whatever else one wants to say about her was the only Democrat on Senator Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee to vote for Senator Jim Bunning's amendment which would have prevented the attempt to jam Baucus' proposals through without being seen or even read. Those of you who want to call and scream at the Democrats on that committee for being a bunch of unethical f##king cowards who preach "transparency" yet do the exact opposite (in classic 1984 fashion I might add), kindly spare Ms. Lincoln from your wrath. She (unlike the other twelve Democrats on that committee) did the right thing ethically and in principle and for this she deserves to be commended.

On Recent Funerals and Suspending My "No More Funerals" Stance of Recent Years:

I attended another funeral yesterday eleven days ago -my twenty-first in the last nine and a half years.{1} This was despite the fact that I decided to take a "no more funerals" approach to things after attending my Aunt Cecilia's funeral in the second part of 2006. At that point, I had attended twenty funerals in six and a half years and simply could not deal with it anymore. And that was not even all the family, friends, etc. who died in that span of time. But I had to suspend my stand for Jerry Dykstra, a good friend of my fathers and whose eldest son I played soccer with for six of the eight years I played in years past.{2}

I knew Jerry for nearly thirty years and was able to see him in the final weeks when he was getting to the point to where his cancer was becoming unbearable. But he always had a smile on his face, always was of good cheer, and continued to drink two rusty nails a night until recent months.{3} He was a good man and will be missed -most of all by his family of course and I told his sons if they wanted to talk about it to feel free to give me a call. No sooner did I get back than I heard from my mother that my Uncle Don passed away earlier that same day so if his funeral is in the Seattle area,{4} I will again suspend my "no more funerals" policy and go to that one.

I have known Uncle Don{5} literally all my life. I am sure he held me in his arms at least once when I was still in diapers: I note that to give an idea of how far back this connection goes. He was also a good and decent man. I had not seen either Uncle Don or his wife my Aunt Sheila{6} in probably three or four years -I think the last time was at their son Paul's wedding in 2004. But unlike in the case of Jerry of whom we knew was going to have less than a year,{7} Don's death came completely out of the blue unexpected. Jerry died three months shy of his seventy-first birthday, Don two months shy of his sixty-first birthday.

Prayers for both of them would be most appreciated.

Eternal rest grant unto their souls oh Lord and let thy Perpetual Light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. May the souls of Jerry Dykstra and Don Hellstrom along with the souls of all the faithfully departed, through the Mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

Notes:

{1} In that span of time, I lost thirty-five persons either close family, relatives, close friends, etc.

{2} I covered the subjects of funerals in general around that time and also on the subject of Aunt Ceil in another thread. Here they are for those who are interested:

On Prayer Requests (circa October 3, 2006)

More on Cecilia Flynn (circa October 5, 2006)

{3} Jerry and my father used to drink rusty nails together and after my father died, Jerry would drink two a night: one for him and one for my dad. That was his story anyway and he stuck to it until for health reasons he could not.

{4} It is most likely going to be in Wenatchee, Washington though.

[Update: It was held in East Wenatchee and I did not attend due to the distance. -ISM]

{5} Basically an honourific title: Don was married to Sheila my dad's adopted sister. (It was her mom Jenny whose death in March of 2000 started this long chain of passings but I digress.)

{6} I am sure my dad figured this out years back but when I was a teenager, I had a crush on my Aunt Sheila.

{7} And most likely he was slated to live for less than six months.

journalism died
last year to be reborn by
Giles and O'Keefe
[Written just now]

On ACORN and Corruption:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

I originally was going to post this as a minor posting back around September tenth but was not able to get around to it until now and since the original draft, a lot has developed on this subject so I want to go over it all here. Let us start with the original material of this posting which was to be led off with this link:

Exposed! ACORN Gets Its Nuts Cracked: Teenage Prostitutes, Money Laundering and Tax Fraud (Doug Giles)

Originally I was going to say that the mainstream media would not cover this of course any more than they covered the 11 ACORN persons arrested for voter registration fraud in Florida earlier in the month{1} (one of whom registered "Paul Newman" to vote incidentally enough) or the fact that ACORN is under investigation in twelve states for voter fraud. But bear this in mind: if ACORN was in any way connected with a prominent Republican, the msm would be all over this. Once again though, President Obama's connections with this organization from his community organizing days will likely be ignored.

To get the gist of the story, read the link above because what Hannah Giles (posing as a prostitute) and James O'Keefe (a film maker posing as a pimp) did in the Baltimore branch of ACORN was duplicated in a variety of other ACORN offices. ACORN fired the two employees involved in the sting in Baltimore and also two more who were involved in a similar sting in the ACORN Washington DC office. You can read more on the DC matter here.

Now the rest of the media other than Fox they were as silent as a whore in church initially. But then there was a sting in Brooklyn, New York upon which employees from ACORN there were fired and the Brooklyn DA will pursue investigating ACORN perhaps even under RICO statutes. Then we have the Census Bureau stripping ACORN of participation in the 2010 census, another video emerging out of San Diego, California and another one in San Bernadino where a woman is on camera talking about killing her husband along with the usual prostitution stuff.

ACORN kept trying to play it down and has threatened to go after the film makers but they also fired all their employees involved in the various offices where Giles and O'Keefe caught them on camera giving advice on various ways of breaking the law from advice on opening a house of prostitution to tax evasion to smuggling underage illegal immigrants from El Salvador to work in the house of prostitution, etc. Yet despite all of this (and this is not all there is), ACORN has the aucadity to accuse Giles and O'Keefe of immoral conduct when all they did was trap ACORN's employees on camera endorsing some of the worst kind of filth imaginable!!!

Meanwhile, the Senate voted 83-7 to defund ACORN on September 15th with the House following suit on Thursday with a 345-78 vote.{2} All of this happened not because of the mainstream media but instead in spite of them because other than Fox News, they were all very late to this story and it is not as if they were ignorant of ACORN being a corrupt organization.

There is a reason why your host has for years sought as much as possible to get news from sources other than the mainstream media which is frankly little different (at all) than a state-run media. If anything has made this irreversibly clear, it is the media's woeful performance in the past week in covering stories from the Van Jones resignation to the 912 march to the ACORN scandals: all of which put the Obama administration in bad light. And this means the depths of disgrace to which the mainstream media sunk last year are depths to which they remain.

Notes:

{1} And over 40 since July of this year.

{2} ACORN's Enablers

recent departures
Jerry D and now Don H
will write on it soon
[Written on 9/21/09]

Hi-Ho, the Derry-O

This paragraph is like Mastercard:

[Michelle Obama] spoke of her own culinary efforts: "There are times when putting together a healthy meal is harder than you might imagine." Particularly when it involves a soundstage, an interpreter for the deaf, three TV satellite trucks and the closing of part of downtown
Washington.

I seriously do not know what more could I add to that. But I am sure my Accord is the real "carbon footprint maker" not the caravan of vehicles that Michelle Obama used to go shopping right???

Organizing Against World Net Daily

The beauty of being a conspiracy theorist is you do not have to subject your ideas to things like logic, reason, non-contradiction, or any other factors that people who take thinking seriously would do. To the extent that World Net Daily entertains this kind of crap, they do the opposition to President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and their radical ilk a grave disservice.

What's Happening to Women's Happiness?

While an interesting article, this is not that difficult to explain in my mind. Basically, women were deceived into thinking they could "have it all" by various feminist sorts and the fact is, that is and always has been a myth. More could be noted and I may very well expand on this at length at some point in the future. However, at the moment that is all I have time to say on this matter except of course that my posting of an article from the "Huff and Puff Post" does not constitute any sort of general endorsement of them as a source.

Did He Lie?

As usual, Charles "in Charge" Krauthammer puts forth a fine article -this one examining the Obama claims from his joint session speech on September 9th.

Cap and Trade Will Cost $1,761 Per Family: US Treasury Dept

Gee, those who were claiming that it it would only cost "pennies a day" and were blasting the Heritage Foundation's $3,000 per family estimate as "grossly excessive" should apologize for their lies and shut their pie holes. They have no credibility whatsoever on this issue anymore. Considering how cap and trade barely made it through the House back in June, the subsequent revelation of the EPA suppressing a critical review by one of their analyists coupled with the fact that this cap and trade revelation from the Treasury Department was known to the Obama administration back in March: the combination of these two developments should suffice to kill crap and tax cap and trade in the Senate.

shared burdens better
unburdening you of cash
your caring gov'ment
[Written on 11/21/08]

New Government Policy Imposes Strict Standards on Garage Sales Nationwide

I will have to tell my mother the next time she does one of her big garage sales that she needs to police what she sells lest she be fined for selling any used toys from friends of hers that are on some government book list of things you are "not allowed to sell" now. Gee, how would any of us ever be able to live and avoid "running with scissors" if not for the "benevolent hand" of Leviathan watching over us all???

What Happened to the Anti-War Movement? (Byron York)

Whatever one might say about Cindy Sheehan, she is at least consistent. For that reason, though I disagree with her on her views, I do respect that she has shown principle in her anti-war stance unlike so many others who were louder than Fourth of July fireworks when President George W. Bush was in office but who are now as silent as a whore in church with President Barack H. Obama in the White House.

The Convenient Fantasies of President Obama

Solid as usual by Michael Barone.

Obama's Big Political Gamble (Karl Rove)

Love him or not, as usual Rove's analysis of his opponents' weaknesses is worth a read.

Obama's Health Care Pitch

Fred Barnes' analysis of BHO's speech is a good one. I can summarize the 47 minute speech in a sentence folks: "it may not add up folks but ignore that and lets win one for the swimmer!!!"

Obama, the Mortal (Charles Krauthammer)

Um Charlie, I was using the Icarus wings of wax analogy months ago{1} , you owe me some royalties ;-)

Note:

{1} To my knowledge it was not on this publishing medium but in other places.

Flashback 1991: Gephardt Called Bush's Speech to Students 'Paid Political Advertising'

I am sure that while many Republicans and Independents (not to mention some Democrats) were uncomfortable with the "study plans" released for students prior to President Obama's speech today, I doubt any of them would call for an investigation of the White House and spending public money on this matter. The same was not the case with the Democrats in Congress during the administration of President George H. W. Bush. Kudos to Noel Sheppard at News Busters for this scoop and pointing out yet another in a long list of hypocritical double standards employed by Democrats in Congress.

Cheney: Obama Team Should Be Debriefing CIA Interrogators, Not Investigating Them

It should not take even the assistant of the assistant of a rocket scientist to realize what actions such as these do. For one thing, they lower the morale of people who work at the CIA and are involved in national security. Secondly, if lawyers who give legal opinions which lead to or influence policy have to be concerned about future administrations even talking about (let alone actually) looking at investigating them for supposed "criminal behaviour"{1}, then this will inexorably lead to a weakening of national security. How could it otherwise since -the absolute idiocy if these assertions aside for a moment{2}- any motivations for taking tough measures against non-Geneva following enemy combatants will have to be weighed against the possibility of the person's views being considered "criminal."

This would furthermore (if the current crowd's methodology is observed and presumed to be the future norm in this area) not to be not be done an objective manifestation of the evidences.{3} Instead on the mere subjective intentions{4} of any given polemicist who finds himself in power later on and wants to extract political revenge against positional adversaries. The latter is what they do in communist/socialist/totalitarianist nations, it should not be what we see in a republic such as ours.


Notes:

{1} I say "supposed" because whatever one thinks about the manner in which detainees were treated, it borders on banana republic behaviour for one administration to be playing the "our predecessors were criminals" schtick. Plus, the idea that we were engaging in "torture" is so laughable as to be absurd but then again, when you have people refusing to define their terms, this is the sort of irrational drivel you get: people mindlessly parroting words and slogans as if this suffices to make their argument.

{2} Namely, this one:

On the Subject of CIA Interrogation of Terrorist Suspects In Light of Recent Events (circa April 30, 2009)

{3} On the Difference Between Objective Manifestation and Subjective Intention (circa February 27, 2007)

{4} See footnote three.