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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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Gun Laws Don't Work
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Amitai Etzioni's Blog
Scrappleface -- Dangerously Clever Satire
Michael Williams -- Master of None
Another Conservative Blogger
A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
An Iraqi dentist
Promoting children being raised by their own parents
A federal law clerk opines about the law
Michelle Malkin's blog
Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
A conservative/moderate black blogger.
Another sensible American
Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
Music, Politics, Motorcycles
Maggie's Farm: Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
Another conservative.
Neocon Blues
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HP Jornada 820
I've had this gadget for a couple of days now, and I've found that it has some very endearing qualities--and for my purposes, a couple of serious defects.
1. It is very small, and very light. If you need a gadget for taking notes in Word or Excel, or you need to take documents or spreadsheets on the road with you, this is a pretty clever way of doing so.
2. I'm told by those who use it that it has about ten hours of life on a battery. There's no hard disk drive, which is why the battery life is so long.
3. It is instant-on. Very nice!
The downsides--at least for my purposes:
1. It runs something called Microsoft Pocket Word which has a subset of Word's features. The most critical deficiency is that it has no notion of footnotes. If you load in a document loaded with footnotes (as I was planning to do), you lose the footnotes.
2. Big deal, I'll read in Rich Text Format files instead. Nope, that loses those footnotes also.
3. Okay, I'll convert the document to PDF. Adobe has an Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC handheld computers like this. The Jornada family is supported, but the Jornada 820 uses an instruction set that is not supported.
4. Okay, I'll save my document as HTML. That preserves the footnotes--but the version of Internet Explorer that comes with this gadget doesn't allow you to search a document--which is the major reason for bringing this along.
5. Microsoft Pocket Excel converts standard Excel workbooks--but only one worksheet gets converted. The rest seem to vanish into J-space. As you might expect, some of my spreadsheets I wanted to take along have multiple worksheets. I could separate them out, and save each of them individually, but this still doesn't solve the Word document problem.
It's cute, it's clever, but it doesn't do what I need. I suspect that I will have to either lug a notebook, or put my stuff up somewhere that I can get access to it remotely (since web access seems to be common now).
Amazingly enough, someone has ported Linux to the Jornada 820, but I'm not sure that I want to invest the time into figuring out how to install it, and work around the rest of the struggles involved. Perhaps I will just take this along to take notes with, so that I don't have to scribble, and then try to decipher my scribbles later.
UPDATE: It turns out that Excel worksheets do carry over okay--I just wasn't pulling down one of the controls to let me see the other worksheets in the file. Still don't have a solution to the Word footnote problem, except to bring both the Word document (no footnotes, but searchable) and an HTML version (footnotes, but not searchable).
Great Artists and Intellectuals Think Alike, Apparently
A really bizarre interview with Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis. If he sounds like some of the lunatic left of the United States, this is no surprise, since he was both a communist and a fascist at different times of his life: Question: Mr. Theodorakis, on November 4, 2003 you said in this house the words that shocked Jews and non-Jews across the world. You said that the Jewish people are at the root of evil. What did you mean?
My mind just boggles.
Answer: "For me the root of evil today is the policy of President Bush. It is a fascist policy. I cannot understand how is it that the Jewish people, who have been the victims of Nazism, can support such a fascist policy. No other people in the world support those policies but Israel! This situation saddens me. I am a friend of Israel. I am a friend of the Jewish people. But the policy of Sharon and the support for the policy of Bush darkens the image of Israel. I am afraid that Sharon is going to lead the Jews - just as Hitler led the Germans - to the root of evil."
...
Let me explain to you the context for this reaction. Many Jews have a renewed fear of Europe. We are afraid that there is a new kind of anti-Semitism in Europe. So when you said what you said there was a feeling of thou too, Brutus. There was a feeling that even our old friend Theodorakis turned against us.
"I don't believe there is anti-Semitism in Europe. There is a reaction against the policy of Sharon and Bush. I think it's artificial to think there is a new anti-Semitism. It's an excuse. It's a way to avoid self-criticism. Rather than ask themselves what is wrong with the policy of Israel, Jews say the Europeans are against us because of the new anti-Semitism. Because they don't love us. And even Theodorakis says we are at the root of evil. This is a sick reaction."
Why? In what way is it a sick reaction?
"Because this kind of reaction is relevant to the psychopathology of the Jewish people. They want to feel victims. They want to have this comforting feeling. We are in the right, we are again victims. Let's create another ghetto. It's a masochistic reaction." The Jews are masochists?
"There is psychological masochism in the Jewish tradition."
Is there sadism as well?
"I'm certain that when Diaspora Jews talk among themselves, they feel satisfied. They feel that now, when we are so close to the greatest power in the world, no one can do anything to us. We can do whatever we like. This is why the claim of new anti-Semitism is not only a sick reaction, it's a sly reaction as well."
In what way is it sly?
"Because it really allows the Jews to do whatever they want. Not only psychologically, but also politically, it gives the Jews an excuse. The sense of victimhood. It gives them a license to hide the truth. There is no Jewish problem in Europe today. There is no anti-Semitism."
...
"In 1932 I was in Ioannina. There was a very big Jewish community there. I played with the Jewish boys all the time. My grandmother was very religious. She had a room full of icons. She sang psalms. Much of my music was influenced by her religious singing. And I remember that in springtime she said to me: Now that it's Easter, don't go to the Jewish quarter. Because during Easter the Jews put Christian boys in a barrel with knives inside. Afterward they drink their blood."
Was this story imprinted in your young mind?
"It was a very powerful image. Years later, before I became a communist, I was a member of a fascist youth movement. It was a state-sponsored movement during the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas. We walked up and down the streets in uniform and heiled all the time. It was a bit like the Hitler Youth but comical. One day they gave me an assignment: to talk the next day about communism. I went home and asked my mother what is communism. She said she didn't know but she thinks it's something evil. What kind of evil, I asked. Evil like the Jews, she said. So I asked her if the communists also put little boys in barrels with knives and drink their blood.
"What do I want to say by telling you all this? These things exist. I wasn't aware of it before, but now, through your questions, I realize it is there."
...
Do you think the Jews are fanatic?
"Something that is very negative can also be positive. If the Jews didn't have fanaticism, they wouldn't have existed. There is no evil without good. The Jews need this fanaticism. What one might call Jewish fanaticism has more to do with self-defense. It was through their religion that Jews were interconnected and kept together."
You seem to be fascinated by the Jews. Why?
"To be a community that disregards all dangers and remains true to its origins - that's a mystery. Look at France, for example. There is a huge community of Jews in France where there is a great civilization. But do the Jews become French? No. They speak the French language perfectly. They succeed in their work. But they are not French. They always think of going back to Jerusalem."
...
The Jews have international finance in their hands?
"They control a great deal of the world's finances."
So today's globalized capitalism is controlled very much by the Jews?
"Since we speak frankly, I will tell you something else. The Jewish people control most of the big symphonic orchestras in the world. When I wrote the Palestinian national anthem, the Boston Symphony was planning a production of my work. It is controlled by Jewish people. They didn't allow the concert to go on. Since then I cannot work with any great orchestra. They refuse me."
You ran into this problem with other orchestras too?
"Wherever there are Jews. Wherever there are orchestras controlled by Jewish people, they boycott my work."
You really feel Jews control much of the music world?
"Yes."
And the same applies to world finance?
"In America the Jewish community is very strong. It controls much of the economy. Certainly the mass media.
"Let me make myself clear: When the State of Israel was established, we were on the side of Israel. There was great sympathy toward Zionism because of what they suffered in the war. This is one side of the Jews. But the international Jewish community is also a negative phenomena. The Jewish people now appear to control the big banks. And often the governments. So whatever bad or evil comes from the governments, it's natural for ordinary people to associate that with the Jewish people."
You yourself think that the Jews, the international Jewish community, have control of the banks, Wall Street, the mass media?
"Yes."
And you say that now, through its influence on Bush, it has control of world affairs?
"Yes."
Everything Is About Gay Rights, Apparently!
Over at Classical Values (one of the only blogs by a gay person that I read with any regularity), we learn some more about Governor McGreevey's boy-toy problem. Apparently, Cipel is now saying that his $110,000 a year job was not about internal security after all, but just an appointment secretary: In other words, the guy got a meaningless, do-nothing job at $110,000 a year.
My feelings exactly. The attempt to portray McGreevey's problems as the result of a "homophobic society" is nonsense. Cipel was paid well for a job that didn't require him to do much--at least at the office. McGreevey's corruption is really no different from what a lot of others have done over the years. The only difference was the sexual plumbing.
Remember, this came into public focus only because the gay angle titillated the attention of the public. I wonder how many other complete nonentities there are who consume $110,000 in tax dollars per year for doing absolutely nothing, without any qualifications.
As I said before, the routine nature of such corruption is the real story, and I find it offensive that it's being buried in layers and layers of phony victimization.
Are there any real victims to be found here?
How about gay men who live their lives in dignity without resorting to victim role-playing games at taxpayer's expense? (At least the family courts don't yet have jurisdiction over such nonsense.)
And how about New Jersey taxpayers?
Classical Values also has another post about how the lunatic left is reimagining Watergate as being "centered around gay rights and health care." No, seriously.
At Least Bush Is Admitting This
It's pretty obvious to most Bush supporters that this describes what happened: WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said for the first time on Thursday he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be" after U.S. troops went to Iraq, The New York Times reported. The insurgency, he maintained, was the unintended result of a "swift victory" that led to Iraqi troops disappearing into the cities and mounting a rebellion.
As I've pointed out previously, some of the problem was that we expected an intense fight to the death by Baathists and al-Qaeda during the invasion. Most of them either lacked the courage or the stupidity to do that. I suppose if we had killed tens of thousands of them during the invasion, and we had a relatively quiet year afterwards, the left would be calling him "Bush the Butcher" now instead.
This Doesn't Seem To Be Urban Legend
I blogged a few weeks ago about a man found in an abandoned Tokyo building who had been dead for a very, very long time, and a number of readers pointed out that it had all the earmarks of an urban legend: no name, for example. This news story has gobs of details: name; dates; people interviewed: WINNIPEG—His telephone number was still listed in the telephone directory and his condominium fees and bills were automatically being withdrawn from his bank account.
No one knew Jim Sulkers had died in his bed almost two years ago.
Neighbour Sam Shuster said residents in the complex often wondered where the man they knew only as Jim had gone, but were told his condominium fees were still being paid.
"How can that happen, for God's sake. Two years!" Shuster said yesterday of the man who had been a resident in the building since the mid-1980s.
"I used to ask the president of the board of directors where in the hell is he? She said all she knew was the bank gets the monthly money so we don't worry about it."
Sulkers' remains were discovered Wednesday. Manitoba's chief medical examiner, Dr. Thambirajah Balachandra, determined he had died of natural causes.
...
He said a newspaper dated Nov. 21, 2002, was found in the man's apartment and a wall calendar was opened to November 2002 — evidence the man died nearly two years ago.
A cousin, Kim Dyck of Winnipeg, said she lost contact with the man after his mother died about 10 years ago, but relatives had attempted to make contact with Sulkers last summer when they were in the city for a wedding.
"They knocked on his door and he didn't answer," she said. "You assume he isn't home. You certainly don't assume he's dead."
She said the man's bills must have been covered by a pension cheque automatically deposited into his bank account.
Neighbours said Sulkers' mailbox had become full several times and was always emptied by a letter carrier.
Canada Post spokesman Brian Garagan said letter carriers are required to clear full mailboxes and inform a supervisor, who calls the condo owner. He said the corporation was trying to determine if that policy was followed.
Emails That Promote Felonies
I've received emails promoting pornographic websites that encourage you to "share them with adolescents in your house." Alessandra blogs about an email that she recently received that is much more bluntly promoting incest.
I try, very hard, to imagine that the vast sewer of pornographic spam email is simply an expression of the tremendously greedy obscenity industry. But encouraging people to commit felonies that are likely to get you locked up in prison, where you won't be able to spend any more money on pornographic websites? I sense that there is something a lot darker going on out there than just simple greed.
Kerry/Edwards Bumper Stickers Aren't Real Common Here in Boise
But I did see one last night at Target. It was, of course, on a Mercedes SUV.
Performance Bonds Are Nothing New
I was surprised, but not terribly so, to find that the Revolutionary government of Maryland required contractors to post a bond conditional on meeting deadlines and quality expectations: Sir. By order of the Honorable Convention we return
you eighty four Bayonets & a Gun Barrel, which Mr Winters of Chester Town sent here for our inspection, & we are directed to inform you that unless you comply in a short time with yr contract with this Board, or give us satisfactory reason for the delay, that your Bond will be put in suit. We inclose here a copy of Mr Winters's letter, and have also given him orders to return you the remainder of the barrels. [Archives of Maryland 12:330]
Someone's Military Service More Than Thirty Years Ago
isn't all that spectacularly important. I wish Democrats had believed that when they tried to raise a fuss about whether Bush actually completed his Air National Guard service or not.
What does matter is whether someone is lying about it. This article by Max Boot from the Los Angeles Times argues that it is hard to tell if Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are wrong (memories are among the last reliable pieces of evidence in court) or if Kerry's "seared" memories need some correction. But he does make the point that Kerry's opportunism is plainly visible: Kerry's problem has been the persistent perception that he is a consummate opportunist who is willing to say anything to advance his own career. The New Republic unearthed a classic example when it found letters his office had sent to one of his constituents in 1991: One explained why he favored the Gulf War, the other why he opposed it. The Swift boaters' stories fit his image as a slippery schemer.
Much to Democrats' chagrin, the claim that George W. Bush was AWOL during his National Guard service hasn't caused as much of a stir, perhaps because it doesn't fit his image — Bush is generally seen as too hawkish, not as someone who ducks a fight.
Also, such symbolic issues matter less for a sitting president. We can judge him by his record in office. With a challenger, voters are reduced to sifting his resume for clues about his character. That's why the Swift boaters' allegations have taken on a bigger importance than just about anyone expected. Or that they probably deserve.
Reality Check for Margaret Cho
A bizarre statement by Margaret Cho, the "comedian." (Many who saw her short-lived TV show, I understand, would also use scare quotes there.)Cho is also writing a book, due next year, about the year in politics. It includes a how-to guide to activism and social change. The 35-year-old has also just completed a CD/DVD rap album about health and nutrition.
Let's see, your cellmates are likely to be mentally ill, prostitutes, drunk drivers, and drug addicts. If you have been held in a jail cell for more than 72 hours in the last 12 months, you may not give blood, I presume because people in that category are at heightened risk for AIDS because of jail rape. Boy, Margaret Cho sure knows how to have fun!
Cho says she intends to get arrested sometime during the Republican convention.
"Maybe it will be for something totally unrelated, like shoplifting," says Cho, who promises she will wait until after her Saturday shows.
"Right now, I am just trying to figure out which precinct to do it near, figure out where the hottest, most fun cell to be in with other people will be."
Have I Got A Deal For You!
I just got a Jornada 820 that I would like to use as my traveling notepad. Unfortunately, it came without a serial cable, and I have had no luck finding a list of which PCMCIA Ethernet cards will work with the drivers that are installed with Windows CE 2.11, and no easy way to install drivers for any other NIC.
I have an 8 MB compact flash card, and a Jornada specific parallel cable (goes into a USB port, and talks to a parallel printer output on the other end) that I would love to swap for one of the Jornada serial cables. (Yes, it's rather special.)
Alternatively, if you can find a list somewhere of PCMCIA Ethernet cards that have been tested with the Jornada 820, and are known to work, that would be nice to have as well.
UPDATE: I know that there are lists of Ethernet cards that work with Windows CE. Because of the chipset of the Jornada 820 is a bit different, I need an Ethernet card that works specifically with the Jornada 820.
The Russian Plane Crashes
One of the planes sent a hijack signal. One broke apart in the air; the other crashed. Does anyone seriously doubt that this is the action of al-Qaeda's Chechnyan franchise? I know that the Russians, then the Soviet Union, then the Russians again, have an ugly history of human rights abuses in Chechnya. The al-Qaeda/Chechnyan extremist connection leads me to this unfortunate conclusion about Chechnya's self-styled "freedom fighters": lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas, and there's no choice but to exterminate you.
If al-Qaeda's leadership had the intelligence of toasters (instead of suffering from turbans wound too tight syndrome), they would recognize the importance of limiting their enemies to one at a time. Russia, for a variety of poor reasons, didn't want us to clean out the Iraqi nest of scum. I do hope that they start to figure out that the entire Middle East is going to require some sanitizing of terrorists.
Professors Fired For Refusing To Inflate Grades
The details are here. The president of the college decided that "effort" should count for 60% of the grades of freshman--even if they didn't understand the material at all. Two science professors thought that this was ridiculous, and refused to pass students who simply didn't understand the material.
Wouldn't it be wonderful in the real world if trying hard was enough? "I worked really hard at writing this software you wanted---but it doesn't work. Shouldn't our customers buy it anyway, because we tried so hard?"
Public Domain LPD For Windows 98
I need a public domain lpd that runs under Windows 98, so that my son's Linux box can print to a color printer connected via USB to a Windows 98 box. (Yes, I should move everyone to Linux, but I haven't gotten around to it.)
There are a lot of lpd implementations that cost money--someone must have a public domain verison.
The Ted Rall Academy
Make sure you visit here to see their ad for the Ted Rall Academy:Do you hate yourself and everyone around you? Are you haunted by voices directing you to kill? Is everyone an idiot--except you? If so, chances are you have the ability to become a syndicated political cartoonist!
I fear that this ad parody is far, far too accurate.
Another Government Bans Same-Sex Marriage
The Cherokee Nation: TULSA, Okla. -- About a month after a lesbian couple successfully filed for a tribal marriage application, the Cherokee National Tribal Council voted to clearly define marriage as between a man and a woman.
As the Dawn Patrol (from whom I filched this link) observed:
Principal Chief Chad Smith has indicated he will sign the measure, which was approved by the council Monday night.Proving that even the pagan religions so exploited by today's New Agers have a sense of right and wrong—what C.S. Lewis called the Tao, or Natural Law that underlies most world faiths—a Cherokee representative says, "If we don't address this, we'll have a flood of same-sex marriages. This will be a black eye on the Cherokee Nation. Even the state of Oklahoma doesn't allow same-sex marriage."
There's something delightful about that last sentence.
A Lot Of People Seem To Be Betting On United Airlines Going Under...
and taking quite a bit with them. If you visit this website where recent municipal bond transactions can be displayed, you will see a fair number of municipal bonds that were sold to finance airport terminal facilities for United Airlines, like this one "CALIFORNIA STATEWIDE CMNTYS DEV AUTH SPL FACS REV UNITED AIR 13077YAL0" that have annualized yields to maturity of more than 49%! An Illinois muni bond described as "CHICAGO ILL O HARE INTL ARPT SPL FAC REV UNITED AIR LINES PJ
167590ER5" has an annualized yield to maturity of more than 16%. Someone expects those facilities to not only be not paying their way, but apparently not paying their way for quite a long time!
Losing the Culture War
Over at Reflections in Order Not to Go Insane, Alessandra ruminates on a 1999 letter by Paul Weyrich about how conservatives have won the political war, but lost the cultural war. Weyrich argues: What many of us have been trying to do for many years has been based upon a couple of premises. First of all, we have assumed that a majority of Americans basically agrees with our point of view. That has been the premise upon which we have tried to build any number of institutions, and indeed our whole strategy. It is I who suggested to Jerry Falwell that he call his organization the "Moral Majority." The second premise has been that if we could just elect enough conservatives, we could get our people in as Congressional leaders and they would fight to implement our agenda.
I guess that I am not quite as discouraged as Weyrich. I will agree that in a lot of respects, what calls itself "conservative" today is a mixture of social conservatives, libertarians, and quite a number of younger people who are bugged by sexual depravity--but reluctant to seem judgmental, at least until it involves animals or children. I recall that the National Review Online blog "The Corner" had a discussion of "barebacking" a while back, and one of the NRO contributors observed, mocking an Oldsmobile slogan of a few years ago, "This isn't your father's National Review."
In looking at the long history of conservative politics, from the defeat of Robert Taft in 1952, to the nomination of Barry Goldwater, to the takeover of the Republican Party in 1994, I think it is fair to say that conservatives have learned to succeed in politics. That is, we got our people elected.
But that did not result in the adoption of our agenda. The reason, I think, is that politics itself has failed. And politics has failed because of the collapse of the culture. The culture we are living in becomes an ever-wider sewer. In truth, I think we are caught up in a cultural collapse of historic proportions, a collapse so great that it simply overwhelms politics.
That's why I am in the process of rethinking what it is that we, who still believe in our traditional, Western, Judeo-Christian culture, can and should do under the circumstances. Please understand that I am not quarreling with anybody who pursues politics, because it is important to pursue politics, to be involved in government. It is also important to try, as many people have, to re-take the cultural institutions that have been captured by the other side.
But it is impossible to ignore the fact that the United States is becoming an ideological state. The ideology of Political Correctness, which openly calls for the destruction of our traditional culture, has so gripped the body politic, has so gripped our institutions, that it is even affecting the Church. It has completely taken over the academic community. It is now pervasive in the entertainment industry, and it threatens to control literally every aspect of our lives.
Alessandra observes: I think this profound loss in the cultural sphere is being felt more and more with each passing day. Given that it didn´t happen overnight, and it is a war, not some smooth transition, it has taken people time to react and start devising strategies. Although it is a profound loss, it has at least served to show conservatives how important the personal sphere is. I wouldn´t want to go back to a Stepford Wives conservative scenario, which was highly oppressive and full of problems, but I certainly don´t want to live in today´s oppressive pigsty, with this garbage of homosexuals and bisexuals and the legitimation of homosexuality (in all its most dysfunctional modes) as normal, sexually degenerate/violent people, people who spit on respect and commitment regarding relationships, etc., dominating education, law, social relations.
Perhaps because I didn't grow up anything even remotely like "a Stepford Wives conservative scenario," I don't spend much time worrying about this. I recognize that there was (and still is) a traditional culture that treated women as second-class citizens (and often much worse), but it doesn't seem to have gone away, in spite of the left's complete control over the culture. If anything, the degradation of women in the methamphetamine subculture makes 1950s America look pretty darn respectful and affirming of women.
I disagree with Weyrich in one respect, where he refers to the culture war victors as "Cultural Marxists." I don't think so. One of the important points that Orwell's 1984 makes is that totalitarian societies are dreadfully afraid of sex. I watched the movie version of 1984 (appropriately made in 1984) last night, and it emphasizes that sex leads to marriage and family--which create divided loyalties for individuals, who must decide whether family or state are most important. I think Orwell overstates this claim a bit. The Soviet Union was a fairly puritanical society, and Red China fiercely so--but I think this had a bit more to do with the fact that both of these were pretty traditional societies before Communism, and many traditional societies are pretty conservative about sex.
Of course, there were leftists like Emma Goldman, who were advocates of free love, because they regarded marriage as an instrument of oppression of women. You can find similar sentiments among a number of feminists in the 19th and 20th centuries. I am still not convinced that the cultural degradation that we are seeing is particularly Marxist. (Some of these advocates were expelled from the First International for this position.) I think the larger cause of this apparent relationship is that Marxism was fiercely atheistic, and regarded religion in all forms as a tool of oppression. Therefore, anything identified with religion (such as self-restraint, in any area of human experience) was regarded as evil.
I have a little hope for the future. Yes, the news/entertainment industry is dominated by depraved people, who lack self-restraint in many areas. They are certainly degrading the culture. I keep hoping that one of these days, the Hollywood set's repulsive behavior will get so out of control that average Americans will decide that they don't want to keep funding them. But I confess that this requires a level of self-restraint that I just don't see happening anytime soon. I fear that it will take another severe shock, like 9/11, to get Americans to stop and think carefully about larger moral issues.
More Scum of the Universe
I just received this email, which starts out with a copy of the Google trademark: Google's mission is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful.
Of course, these scum aren't Google at all, and that "free download" is almost certainly another member of pop-up hell.
We are offering a Free Internet Toolbar
Are you tired of pop ups and spy ware? It can be one of the most frustrating experiences you encounter while surfing the web. Constantly having to close the pop up windows that appear non stop. Well with our free toolbar you can instantly get rid of
1. All Pop Ups
2. Spy ware that tracks your every move while you surf
3. Cookies which also track where you go on the net
Plus, our toolbar does so much more. You will love surfing without worrying about who is watching you do what. And the best part is that it doesn't cost you one penny. That's right......its 100% FREE to you. So, go ahead and CLICK HERE to download your free copy today.
Thank you for searching with Google
I've informed Google about this, and hope that they track these scum down and shred them for trademark infringement and fraud.
Kerry Demands Bush Tell Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to Stop
This has to be one of the most hypocritical demands that I have ever seen a politician make. For a year now, the left's attack dogs have been engaging in character assassination by innuendo and guilt by association: about Bush's Air National Guard service; Fahrenheit 9/11. By comparison, the attacks by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are straight forward. They may be wrong. They may be lying. But the criticisms are direct, and if they are wrong, or lying, at least you can tell what they are saying about John Kerry without doing any connect the dots sort of stuff.
The complaint is that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is unlawfully coordinating its actions with the Bush campaign. If so, it is no different from the connections between the Kerry campaign, the Democratic Party, MoveOn.org, and the rest of the section 527 organizations that have been going after Bush. This chart over here is pretty damning on this count.
The worst criticisms that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have made about Kerry aren't even close to the garbage that Michael Moore and MoveOn.org keep insinuating about Bush. Yet Kerry now is having a temper tantrum, because someone who dislikes Kerry as much as Michael Moore dislikes Bush, is playing by the same rules.
There is one difference, of course: the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth members know John Kerry in a way that Michael Moore and MoveOn.org don't know Bush.
My Mother's Cat Missing In Redding, California
I mentioned a few days ago that my mother's cat Ditto had gotten away at the Motel 6 in Redding, California, and that was heartsick for Ditto's return. Here's a picture of Ditto.
If you find her, please contact me immediately.
A Question for Outlook Express Experts
Is there a way to block all email from addresses that are not in your address book? My wife (like me) gets a lot of spam, much of it useless, some of it offensive, and a bit that is legally obscene. Much of it goes straight to the Deleted folder, based on various rules that I have set up in Outlook Express, but she asked me yesterday, "Is there some way to delete all email that comes from an address that isn't in my Address Book?" This way, only people in her address book would end up in her InBox; everything else would go to Deleted. I have looked at Outlook Express's mail rules, and I can't see anything that does this--but I hope some clever person knows a way to do this.
UPDATE: A number of people suggested various Bayesian spam filters--which I use for my own email account--but I wanted something simpler, that requires no training. One of my readers came up with a way to do this.
Tools--> Message Rules--> Mail... -> New
1 Conditions-->Where the From line contains people-->
2 Actions--> Delete Folder
3 Description--> click on the highlighted words-->
Address Book --> highlight everyone in the book --> From --> Ok -->
(IMPORTANT) then click Options -->
Rule 1 - Message does not contain the people below. -->
Rule 2 --> leave 2nd option clicked. -->
Ok --> Ok --> --Ok --> Ok.
And it really does work! Of course, if you add anyone to your address book, you'll have to repeat the process.