Ted Roosevelt on Imigration

Others have been blogging about the border security issue. Some have said that this has been reaching a boiling point. Today there were walkouts and work stoppages across the country in protest of proposed bills that would illegalize support of illegal immigrants. I think it's a good time to bring this up.

Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Fog of War

I received the following anecdote in an email this morning:

A Japanese company and an American company decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.

So American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

To prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the "Rowing Team Quality First Program," with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles! Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceledall capital investments for new equipment.

The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses, and the next year's racing team was outsourced to India....

How true, how true. In my experience, I would add only one modification. The money saved would be distributed to the Senior Executives as multi-million dollar severance packages, and the rowing team would be sold to the Japanese. The American Senior Executives would then add the experience to their resume as another “success story,” and form a new American rowing team with a group of Indian nationals with visas for working in the US. Witness Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP, who was paid an estimated total of $42 million in severance to leave the company after the merger with Compaq failed to produce the benefits that she promised.

I was thinking just this morning about another micromanagement experience I had as a Software Support Engineer. As a computer engineer, my imagination can run wild when I get bored. So when I’m out driving around, throwing papers, I get to think about, remember, and dwell on all sorts of things.

As a Software Support Engineer, it was my job to investigate and resolve problems in my employer’s software components, which were used by other professional software engineers in their development projects. The issue that I remember was interesting because it involved some actual investigation, instead of simply reading appropriate publicly available knowledge base articles to the customer. Shortly after I got down to the “meat” of the problem, I got a phone call from what turned out to be a manager leading her team in a conference call. The manager wanted to know why I hadn’t resolved the problem, how long it would take, how many people were working on the problem, what criteria defined the problem as being “complex,” if I could provide hourly updates of progress, and what she could do to get more resources on the problem. I explained as tactfully as I could that it would take a day or two, that the process was a one-person job, and that the best thing that she could do to help would be to leave me alone and let me actually do the work.

In retrospect, I think that now I would conference call in my manager, and say something like “Hi, this is Mark here with a customer for issue number 987654. The customer’s manager wants to micromanage my work instead of letting me do the work. You know how it is, fog of war, Mythical Man Month, that sort of thing. Can you take care of this for me please? Thanks. Bye.”

The fog of war is a well-known phenomenon where the various unknowns in war make it impossible to plan or coordinate with much clarity. The battlefield would be clouded with smoke, and the troops would loose sight of each other and the enemy, and go charging off in the wrong direction and get lost. It also refers to the lack of intelligence of the enemy’s plans and tactics, and results in surprise attacks. In the context of computer problems, I’m using the term to refer to the lack of knowledge of the cause, nature and extent of the problem, which prevents any accurate forecasting of the eventual resolution of the problem.

In the context of the current global war on terror, there is a fog of war in that the enemy has no national identity to go to war against. The enemy hides among us, and uses our own resources for their purposes. The enemy elicits the sympathy of the gullible who feel compelled to defend the rights of the oppressed, without realizing that they are empowering the oppressors. The enemy abuses the media that finds the terrible to be the most newsworthy, transforming them into useful idiots. Witness the effects of Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, Ward Churchill, and others. These people want the war to end immediately, want immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Yet they have even less idea of the problems and potential problems being faced by both the Americans and the Iraqis if we were to withdraw. The anti-war protestors are in a fog about why we’re in a war in the first place.

The Mythical Man Month was a book that was required reading when I was a senior in college. It describes how IBM developed the OS/360 operating system, and how over-managing a project results in a later project because of additional training, management, and coordination required.

So what happened to my Software Support Engineer job? The executive management was on its third CEO in as many years. The Sales organization appropriated the Support organization away from the Engineering organization. The product line that I was to support was scheduled to change every two weeks. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, and I insisted that I be left on one product for a minimum of three months so that I could get established. Two weeks later, I was laid off for poor productivity. Shortly afterward, 9/11 happened, the company moved on to its 4th CEO, then was sold to a competitor. And because I hadn’t spent 20 hours a day for the past 15 years learning the newest technology, nobody in the computer industry wanted to hire me. And I decided that I could at least make a living delivering newspapers.

Muffin Top

There's another "My world has gone to hell again, and I'm fighting valiantly to regain some sanity" post in the works to follow up for another anger management / succumbing to entropy series.

While I rebuild my computer, and recover my data that's lost in limbo-land, I'm having a hell of a good time following some of the humor / pull-my-finger / fart-joke / moonbat documentary blogs. Might as well. This photo from Caption This is an example of what's called a "muffin top". Not referring to the hood.

Which brings me to my next wikipedia term of the day:
Muffin Top - slang for people who wear both tight pants and midriff-bearing tops. The resulting spillage of skin resembles a muffin top.

Oh, and the photo is of Cindy Sheehan being arrested yet again, blah blah blah blah, whatever. I suppose the pink bib is a police issue drool bucket or something, I don't know. Be careful of the gnashing teeth too, I think they drip acidic saliva.

"Gentlemen, do not look at her face; her gaze can turn a man to stone. For your protection, we've placed a protective hood over her eyes."

Brokeback Hollywood

I used to get the impression that hollywood producers believe that everyone gets laid as often as they eat a meal. In my case, we're still collecting enough data to produce a meaningful statistical analysis, but so far it looks like the next time I get to eat is 8.4 year from now. I used to look forward to eating, but after finding out about this I don't think I'll ever eat anything again.

At first, the movies were about cowboys and indians. Then it was marines and aliens. Now they've gone back to the westerns, except this time it's cowboys and cowboys.

Entropy Again

Snow day. Day 2, Part 2. Low of 6 deg. F, wind chill -3 deg. F. Last week (part I), I could barely stay on the roads going 15 MPH. Spun out, doing a 180 in front of some guy that was shovelling his driveway right about the time that I'm contractually obligated to have the route completed. He looked at me like I was a terrorist. Had to go back out into the intersection, make a U-turn in the intersection, make another pass at his cul-de-sac, then deliver his paper at his feet.

Somebody else thought I was a terrorist. I don't know if it was his car that barked at me as I walked past it, but his comments of "I hope that was a newspaper you just threw... BOOM!!!" were ever so slightly rattling.

Whenever there's a snow day, the truck - the one that brings the papers from Denver to the warehouse - is an hour late. That's an hour later than they are usually late, which makes them two hours late on snow days.

"How are the roads out there?"
"Are you an olympic figure skater? 'Cause if you're not, you ain't gonna have a very good time getting to work"
You'd think that the Denver Post could check their own weather forcast, and step up production and delivery of the paper when there's bad weather. But it's not like an organization that big to have any sense of the big picture.

"How come you're so late?"
"Dude, on days like this, hurrying just makes it worse."
I wonder if that's why the truck driver was drunk when he finally showed up at the warehouse. On a snow day.

President Cheney shot some lawyer. Or maybe it was Dan Quayle. Either way, good for him. Oh, and all the newspapers all felt jilted that he didn't report the crime to them for 18 whole seconds. "It was as if the country was decapitated for those 18 seconds."

I managed to get 245 MB worth of spam from the past three years to my postmaster account at emporium-sw.com cleaned up. That's 31 spam messages a day for 3 years. Some 33,169 messages. Uh-huh, yep, and that's right. I got Outlook set up with that account, and set up a rule to delete everything that comes into it. And everything that comes into the server for some made-up account that doesn't exist gets dumped into a blackhole.

Now that I'm not hitting my disk space quota on the server, I can put some ebay listings up there. I even got the new auction software installed. 'Cause the old software quit working, 'cause they quit maintaining it, 'cause ebay changed their rules so those people couldn't write their software like that anymore. So they're basically out of business, until they can re-write their software all over again.

And the truck's been overheating. Well, not since it's been so freakin' freezin' cold. But before that, it was boiling over. I don't know what's going on, everything is new again except the engine block itself. Since I replaced the power steering for a cool $800 just a week ago, I'm a little embarrassed to take it in right away and say "You know that new radiator you put in last summer? Well it's plugged up already."

But still, the overall cost of repairs is still less than the combined cost of payments and insurance on a new vehicle. So I'm happy that every repair is one more major component that I shouldn't have to worry about for a while. Stoicism is the only thing that keeps me sane anymore.

Wait, there's still more driving me to the edge of going postal. Some guy was taking his dog out for a pee, and the dog turned vicious and was ready to rip me a new one. Probably 'cause I was wearing the burglar hat that day, 'cause it was so cold. Oh, and some lady whispered under her breath "I don't like you" at me in my burglar hat that day. So that's when I got the pepper spray. You know, just in case.

Well, it seems the idea of wanting to protect myself has been drawing in all the more wierdos. Even the ring of bag-thiefs at the distribution center is having a hard time, since they stopped getting the designated national's bags for us. Now I have to put all the papers in those cheapey rice bags that fall apart as soon as you think about them. I went to throw a USA Today over the top (of the truck), and the paper flew out the bottom of the bag onto the street. In the snow. Furtunately, its too cold to get a wet paper complaint. Stoicism again.

The USA Today was extraordinarily fat today, so that's probably why it flew out of the bottom of the bag. It's probably full of coverage of Cheney's shooting rampage.

Although I did get a wet paper complaint on a perfectly dry, but windy day. The explanation for that was the phone menu on the complaint hotline. Remember the Springfield Emergency Hotline when Bart tried to report Flanders as a murderer? "If you are being murdered, press one..." [Bart presses random key] "You have selected 'Regicide.' To report the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one..."

I should just refuse to deliver any more national newspapers until they get more bags for us. 'Course, I'd lose my job right away. My boss takes every opportunity possible to threaten me with my livelihood. The memo congratulating us on winning the lowest complaint-rate contest also ended with a threat to our livelihoods if we didn't improve the complaint-rates.

I was also threatened with my livelihood when I bit some girl's head off for parking too close to my truck, then complaining that I was in her way.

According to the liberals, if I use enough of words like 'terrorist', 'target', 'suspect', 'bombed' and 'killed' in some out-of context way, the NSA will pick up these blog entries off of the internet, report my suspect activities to my employer, give me a 35% pay cut for some made-up reason, cancel my (non-existent) health insurance, put me in the FBI database, have me shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, where I'll be beaten with rubber hoses, hosed and raped with a Koran, have rubber bands tied around my gonads, then be beheaded by some Special Forces commando dressed up as one of those wonderful Islamofascist thugs, er, I mean terrorists, er, I mean "insurgent", er, I mean "freedom fighter."

And one of these guys wants me to listen to talk radio while I work. Dude, they know that the only people that listen to talk radio are pathetic liberal losers that can't formulate their own opinions and need opinions spoon-fed to them by some anti-American Democrat's tool. I don't need to listen to something that's just going to piss me off while I'm trying to work.

Jelly Jihad Continues

Another Danish pastry containing an apparent image of the prophet Mohammed has surfaced today. At a bakery in Detroit Michigan, Joseph stopped by for some donuts. “The idea was to celebrate the Superbowl victory of the Steelers,” Joseph explained. “When I saw those danishes, I decided they were so tasty, I asked for a dozen of those instead. It wasn’t until I got to the office that I found the one with the li’l Arab dude.”

That was only the beginning. “Bill was just going to eat it, and Sue said something like ‘Don’t eat that! Isn’t that one of the 9/11 terrorists? You might hurt somebody.’” Sue was on to something that would change all of their lives in a profound way. “So we gave her this look, like, WTF, and she says ‘You know, hurt somebody’s feelings.’ I was about to take a bite, when Sue grabs it out of my hand and heads over to Mohammed’s desk.

“We always thought Mohammed was just one of the guys, kind of a mamma’s boy, you know, knew his internet protocol stuff pretty well, but kind of secretive. Well, Mohammed just goes postal. It really surprised all of us. It was really unexpected.” It turned out that Mohammed was a secretive but avid knife collector. Omar produced an 11-inch dagger from his desk, and began absent-mindedly stabbing the Blue Angels calendar on his cubicle wall while muttering “no more blood for oil… no more blood for oil…” The stabbing quickly turned to hacking, followed by violent thrashing, as his targets became more human, and his chant turned to something Arabic, followed by a shouted “JELLY JIHAD!!! JELLY JIHAD!!! JELLY JIHAD!!!”

Sensing the growing unrest in the American heartland, Iranian police (yes, police, from Iran, as oxymoronic as that sounds) knew the embassy of Denmark, the pastry’s namesake country, would be subject to the inevitable jelly jihad. As if a hundredth monkey episode had overtaken their conscious minds, a group of protesters appeared at the Danish embassy just moments after the cartoon Danish appeared, and Mohammed lost it. Some of the protesters carried signs with slogans such as “Behead Pastry Chefs,” “Daneland [sic] Will Have It’s 9/11,” and “Exterminate Those Who Bake Jelly.”

At the office where the offending Danish appeared, the building was in flames. Sue grabbed a black tablecloth from the company cafeteria, cut an eye-slit in it, covered herself, and ran outside as the sole survivor, only seconds before the building exploded in a huge mushroom cloud. Speculation persists as to whether the suitcase nuke that apparently caused the explosion originated from Iran, or from President Bush.

Investigators have located and examined the charred remains of the offending Danish, and have traced the jelly to the Sucker’s Jelly company. Local Muslims, having learned from the internet that Sucker’s created the jelly that spontaneously generates Mohammed cartoons, confronted company president, Richard “Dick” Sucker. Mr. Sucker at first explained that the morphing jelly technology was obtained from the pantry on board the alien spacecraft from the 1947 Roswell New Mexico crash. The Muslims protesting the cartooning jelly would not accept, or understand the alien origins of the cartooning jelly. Without attempting to further explain the spontaneous cartooning of the jelly, Mr. Sucker eventually apologized. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you guys are such jerks. I’m sorry that you just don’t get it. And I’m sorry that you have to throw such a temper tantrum over our little publicity stunt. But I’m not sorry that we made the cartoon danishes.”

In Tehran Iran, President Ahmadinejad has announced a bake sale where participants are encouraged to bake camel dung containing images of President Bush in bed with Hitler, Hillary Clinton in bed with Hitler, Hillary in bed with President Bush, Bill Clinton in bed with Satan, and endless such combinations.

Special Thanks: Moonbattery.com, Willisms.com, Outside The Beltway, The Nose On Your Face, little green footballs, Clarity & Resolve, Dr. Sanity, Michelle Malkin

Zealot Seen In Pastry, Fajitas Ordered

Mary was enjoying her coffee and the morning newspaper at a Boise Idaho coffee house when she decided to order a danish, a jelly filled pastry apparently invented in the country of it's namesake. When the breakfast treat arrived, she was shocked to find a clearly insulting caracature of the renouned prophet/zealot, Mohammed within the jelly and swirls of sweetened bread. When Mary informed the waitress about the faux pas, the waitress insisted, "Oh I don't know anything about that. I just deliver them, I don't have anything else to do with them. You'll have to talk to the chef about that."

Mary asked to talk to the chef, and the waitress also refused any knowledge or responsibility for the whereabouts of the chef, as that was not in any way, shape, or form specified within her contract as a waitress. Filled with uncontrollable jelly rage at being snubbed, Mary stormed the kitchen shouting, "There's a zealot in my danish!"

The chef, upon inspecting the pastry, claimed that he didn't intentionally create any image of Mohammed within the danish, but the image spontaneously appeared on it's own. "It's just a trick of your eyes! You're only imagining it! There is no picture of Mohammed in this pastry" the chef further backpeddled.

Meanwhile, Mohammed, sitting at a nearby table wondered what all the excitement was about. Always spoiling for a good Jihad, Mohammed glanced in the general direction of the table containing the offending danish, and rose from his table. "WHAT!!! Another disrespectful cartoon of my beloved prophet!!!" the shiek shrieked. "I am hereby ordering a Fajita against this... this... INFIDEL chef!!! And all other non-muslim chefs throughout the world!!!" The shrieking shiek then produced a 59-year old AK-47 model Russian machine gun from his turbin, and fired a volley of rounds into the cieling.

At the same moment, further unrest eruputed at several muslim political communities known as "countries" contained stronghold fortress "embassies" held by non-muslim european "countries". Nearby these infidel strongholds, groups of angry muslims, subconsciously sensing unrest withing a foreign land, spontaneously stormed the embassies, at first marching with protest signs, and burning flags. The violence quickly turned to throwing of molotov coctails - a homemade gasoline bomb - , pushing down of gates and fenses surrounding the embassies, and a series of suicide bombers exploding within the embassy walls.

In Iran, president Ahmadinejad, who is also offended by cartoon danishes, promised his minion that he would complete his work on a nuclear bomb, and that the first ICBM would be headed straight for Boise, Idaho. Meanwhile, non-muslim chefs everywhere were ordered to behead themselves with their own cleavers. Those who do not own cleavers, or refuse to cooperate will be beheaded by the nuclear shiek, the shrieking shiek, and any compassionate jihadist muslim who feels sympathy for the plight of muslims oppressed by the appearance of cartoon danishes.

Addendum:
Credit where credit is due. Special thanks to moonbattery.com, Willisms.com, Outside The Beltway

Blame Bush: a photo essay

I am so sick to death of the democrats, liberals, and moonbats blaming everything possible on Bush. I'm not even going to bring up John Conyers' and Ray McGovern's silly trial and indictment of the Bush administration's crimes against humanity. Why, the evidence is overwhelming. Here's a parade of witnesses speaking out against the attrocities of the Bush Administration.

Not only has President George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States of America rigged both of his elections...

George Bush has personally permanently altered the New York City Skyline.

George Bush not only created hurricane Katrina and blew up the levees in an effort of ethnic cleansing,

George Bush created a massive hurricane on Jupiter, big enough to swallow a thousand earths, that has destroyed countless civilizations throughout the entire universe, and thousands of parallel universes, for trillions of years. Trillions, and trillions, and trillions.

George Bush washed the soil off of my farm, right down to the bedrock!


George Bush dumped toxic nuclear waste in my favorite fishing hole!


George Bush looked up my dress!


George Bush made demons posess my cat.


George Bush turned my dog into a zombie!


George Bush turned me into a hippopotamus. Well I got better. Mostly.


George Bush turned my teeth into corn!


George Bush sold me these glasses.


George Bush stole candy from my baby!


George Bush made me cry too. And he killed my baby with his bare hands! Baby killer!


George Bush made my butt look fat. Or something. I can't tell anymore.


And George Bush made my butt look fat too.


And mine too.


All in all, George Bush has made a total wreck of the whole country! How could this happen?

Chappaquiddick

I probably don’t need to apologize for not posting much lately. Seeing as how only random visitors read my blog anyway. The truth is that I’ve been busy getting my state sales taxes straightened out, which means getting the rest of my accounting straightened out. And I’ve just been fatigued, depressed, and not really sure what I want to do when I grow up. I know, I’m 42. I’d like to write about some of the fascinating metaphysical stuff that I’ve been finding. At the same time, the politics and the war really bug me with the way so many moonbats keep blaming everything possible on the president. And I’m not so sure if my metaphysical friends would understand how I feel about the politics, and I’m not sure if any potential political allies would appreciate my metaphysical interests. I guess that’s just one of my life’s missions.

Chappaquiddick
You know how in the X-Files, how Mulder would always go visit his mom at Martha’s Vineyard. I never knew where that place was, or if it was real. I suspected it was real, ‘cause I’d seen the name in other places. It turns out that Martha’s Vineyard isn’t a real vineyard, but it’s an island off the coast of Massachusetts. And there’s this little island right next to it called Chappaquiddick. They’re connected by a little sandbar that gets flooded over during storms, and the only way to get across is by 4-wheel drive. So they have a ferry that goes back and forth called the On Time Ferry, which only holds three cars. And once you get to Chappaquiddick, the place is tiny. There’s only one store, that’s also a mechanic’s garage. It only has 150 residents, but somehow 450 houses, the rest of which I suppose are rented out to vacationers or time-shared or something like that, I don’t know. And these people think of themselves as their own little country, separate from America, which isn’t really a country, but a pair of continents that has several countries, one of which is the USA. But that’s not the point.

Well, there’s this senator, Ted Kennedy. I found out that this Senator Ted Kennedy is actually the brother of president John F. Kennedy. That’s right, the one that got shot in Dallas, and caused all those conspiracy theories. And his other brother, Robert, got shot too. I guess having that much tragedy in the family could make some people go crazy. I understand that JFK’s wife, Jackie lost it and went and did some weird stuff. But I’ll have to go read about all that some other time.

So this Senator Ted Kennedy started drinking. I mean, a LOT. And like most alcoholics, he denies it, and refuses any kind of help. And the guy’s big. I mean ENORMOUS. Maybe it’s the alcohol or something, ‘cause I don’t think it’s genes. His other brothers, Jack (what they called JFK), and Robert never got fat. All this, and they still let Ted Kennedy be a senator for some reason. I think maybe there’s a lot of people that had similar family tragedies, and sympathize with him, so they keep electing him senator. Which is really unfortunate, ‘cause we don’t need a nation of losers being run by a congress full of losers.

The connection is that Senator Kennedy made Chappaquiddick Island famous one day. They were having some sort of frat party political drink-a-thon sort of thing there one day. This was back in 1969, by the way. And Senator Kennedy, drunk as a skunk, went driving off with some hooker. They called these girls “boiler room girls”, which sounds like hooker to me. Except instead of prostituting themselves for money, they prostitute themselves for some politician’s campaign.

And, drunk as a skunk, with a political hooker in the passenger seat, Senator Kennedy went driving off of a bridge into a canal. He said he dove into the canal to save the girl, then rested on the bank, then went to call his lawyer. I’m not sure how successfuly a big lard-ass like that could dive into a canal to save a girl from a submerged car. Blubber floats doesn’t it? That’d be like a 10-foot cork trying to dive. It ain’t gonna happen. It wouldn’t surprise me that he got all out of breath and had to rest on the bank either. But when they pulled the car out, there wasn’t any water inside. Not enough to drown someone. And I’d think that the girl would be able to get the door open herself. For some reason, they never did an autopsy to find out whether she drowned, or suffocated.

The whole thing was real, real suspicious. Maybe that’s just another of the family tragedies that made Ted Kennedy go crazy, and drove him to drink, and get fat. Fatter. I don’t know what physical condition he was in at the time.

Alito Confirmation

Fast-forward 37 years later to the present day. There’s this judge, Sam Alito, that they’ve been trying to get appointed to the Supreme Court. Well, here’s Senator Ted Kennedy, making an ass of himself, ‘cause he and some other liberal and democratic congressmen don’t want Alito confirmed to the Supreme Court. Instead of just voting against the confirmation, and letting the votes speak for themselves, they gotta pull a bunch of stupid stunts. First, they drill Alito on anything they can come up with, put words in his mouth, don’t let him answer the questions, even though he answered the questions anyway with a lot more wisdom than the senators that were posing the questions. They even threatened to filibuster, you know, where they read from War And Peace, from recipe books, phone books, and other nonsense just so nobody else can talk.

Why don’t they want Alito on the Supreme Court? As near as I can tell, it’s ‘cause they’re afraid he’ll reverse Roe vs. Wade. That’s the decision that makes abortion legal. Senator Kennedy was only pro-choice after Roe vs. Wade; before that he was pro-life. That’s like when I was a kid, and didn’t care about football, I would root for whichever team was ahead.

Abortion is one of those fringe topics that only affects a select few people. I hate to offer an opinion on abortion, because whichever side I take, someone will hate me for it. I have a certain sympathy for the unborn soul that has it’s life prematurely ended before it ever got started. It sounds a lot like my computer career. But I would have to say that abortion is one of those procedures that we should be grateful for, but on rare occasions where it really serves a positive, useful purpose. Abortion should remain a legal option, but I would strongly urge pregnant mothers and doctors to consider all possible alternatives before opting for abortion.

Over at Moonbattery.com, Van Helsing tells about how Senator Kennedy rants that all hell will break loose if Alito is confirmed. Of course by now, he already has been confirmed. But he says women will be force-aborted en-masse, slavery will be re-instituted, cub scouts will carry out the works of terrorists, dogs and cats will be living together. He says he’ll eat a baby for every vote to confirm Alito. He threatened to roll around on the senate floor, and throw a temper tantrum. Whenever I behaved like that, I was sent to my room without supper. Yet, for some strange reason, they still let Ted Kennedy be a senator.

This isn’t the first time that Senator Kennedy has attempted to harass a Supreme Court nominee out of confirmation. Apparently, he said the same things when Robert Bork was appointed in 1987. I can’t find who was saying it, but some other blogger was saying that this sort of Supreme Court Appointee bashing goes on when these lib-o-crats can’t get their way, and they’re afraid that it’ll upset the political balance of the court. As if the court has to be exactly half liberal, half conservative, at all times. What if the views of the people shift toward the right because more people see what a nutcase Kennedy and his liberals are? I don’t know, but I’d say that dogs and cats living together doesn’t look all that bad after all.

New Year's Anti-Resolution

I don’t normally make New Year’s Resolutions. I think that resolutions should only be made after a dramatic, life-changing event, or a transition from one phase of life to another. Such as resolving to never pass a cop after being pulled over for speeding when you passed a cop. Nevertheless, I feel that the past three months have been a lot of hard work, leading up to the big Christmas shopping season, which actually paid off a tiny fraction of the work that I put into BazaarMart.com. I’m real tempted to make a positive, life-changing resolution. I wanted to resolve to give up the sarcasm, or maybe just cut back a bit, but the folks downtown at the Denver Newspaper Agency are making it real hard.

Some donut-head in marketing decided to make a Christmas gift of free newspaper subscriptions for us newspaper carriers. So instead of a list of New Year’s Resolutions, I’m making a list of reasons why I don’t want to subscribe to the newspaper that I deliver.

1. I already read the comics while I’m waiting for the truck to show up at the warehouse with the front-page section.


2. I’ve got a whole warehouse full of newspapers that I can take one home from any time that I want.


3. I can steal a sample from one of those forcibly subscribed “customers,” and they’ll probably thank me for not delivering it.


4. I can read the left over paper that I don’t deliver to that guy that never picks it up and builds a pyramid in the corner of his porch.


5. I don’t want you putting my name on your list of people that you’ve “previously done business with.”


6. I don’t want you calling me telling me that you’re giving me a free newspaper anyway.


7. I don’t want you giving me a free sample paper without calling me.


8. I don’t want you selling my name to one of your “associate companies,” whoever they are this week.


9. Last but not least, I see more damned newspapers every single night than I care to see in an entire lifetime, and the last thing that I want to see when I get home is yet another newspaper in my driveway that some other carrier delivered.


10. And one more just make it an even ten, I don’t want to have to get mad and threaten the other carrier, because I know that there’s nothing he or she can or would want to do about it, and even if I did, I would probably lose my job if not go to prison for murder, and they’d still replace the other paper carrier with someone else the very next day.

Last Minute Shopping

I've honestly finished my christmas shopping three days ago. I only went down to WalMart this evening because I ran out of milk, which signals the necessity of a regular grocery shopping trip. It's just an unfortunate coincidence that the last-minute Christmas shoppers had overwhelmed the store. Ad to that the announcement being broadcast over the store loudspeakers at regular intervals:

Attention WalMart Shoppers, it is now 5:00, and the store is closing at 6:00. Please make your final selections and proceed to the front of the store for checkout. Thank you.

I swear I heard them make the same announcement twice for 5:15. I made my shopping list on the way out the door, and checked it twice while in the drink aisle, only to behold that I had yet to retrieve a bag of cat food. Having made my final cat food selection, I proceeded under pressure to the front of the store, only to find that the first checkout clerk was closing her lane. The second clerk, a miniature three-foot high 60 year-old lady, was finishing up with another miniature three-foot high 60 year-old lady, when she bungled the approval of the customers check. The customer wanted an extra $20 cash returned, and the added complexity was more than the two of them could collectively fathom at such a late hour. Customer Service was called in. Meanwhile, another customer placed his half-dozen articles on the belt behind my dozen articles, only to retrieve them upon seeing what was transpiring (or not) at the register. I had already had the same thoughts, but had determined that by the time I gathered my dozen articles back into my cart and had gone to another register, all avaible checkers would have either closed, or been transformed into Dumb Doris deer in the headlight register flailers. Or the impending 6:00 deadline would have passed, and I would have to spend Christmas locked in a WalMart store full of low-grade food, leftover Christmas merchandise, women's lingerie, and piles of beanbag furniture. So, I perservered, and remained in line while Dumb Doris (her name was actually Barb) mechanically checked an item, placed it in a bag, turned the bag turnstile, and repeated the process untill she eventually realized that she could put more than one item in a bag, and that she could actually fill both bags on the side of the turnstile before proceeding to the next side. So after enduring thirty minutes of last minute shopping horror, I managed to make it home, safe and sound, where I could snuggle sound in my bed with visions of Little Debbies cakes dancing in my head.

System Overload

I can’t keep up with all the nonsense that’s going on out there, and still blog about it all, and not only run an internet business, but build it up to sustainable levels, get more education in needed skills, do my Christmas shopping, and run a paper route, along with all the extra promotional campaigns the papers are running, all at the same time. To put it simply, System Overload! So I’ll just mention some headline stories that I wish I could write a full article about.

The War On Christmas. It’s now improper to use the word Christmas at Christmastime, so as not to offend those who do not actually believe in Christ. There was an article on this in the Denver Post, and somewhere else, probably many somewhere elses in the blogosphere. Somewhere in Kentucky, I think, school kids were sent home for saying “Merry Christmas” to each other. There’s even a book on The War On Christmas. Someone sent me a video clip (I wish I could post it) of some redneck reading the PC rendition of ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. And the non-denominational holiday figure laughed “Lady of the evenin’! Lady of the evenin’! Lady of the evenin’!” Crap, can’t even say “Ho Ho Ho!” Any more. Now they got me counting the Christmas cards that mention the word Christmas, and those that don’t.

Iraq has a huge, successful election. Of course, nobody in the media seemed to notice. It’s one of those things that’s deeply emotional to me, because it’s a sign that we’re accomplishing what we set out to do in Iraq. And the clueless democrats and liberals wanted an immediate withdrawal. It’s a good thing they caught those trucks full of bogus ballots, ready to rig the election.

The Government is spying on you. According to a poll in USA Today, 52% of Americans are engaged in some illegal activity that they don’t want the government to know about, 47% of Americans have nothing to hide, and the other 1% presumably don’t know the difference between right and wrong.

What’ve You Been Smoking? (I’d sure like some of that) I’ll bet the 52% are all smoking pot. I never did use the catch-phrase, “What’ve you been smoking?” I found it offensive when that phrase was used in reference to me, because I’m not a stoner. It’s always the stoners that use that catch-phrase. If I asked a crowd of people, say, company employees, “Everyone who’s drug free, raise your hand” I’ll bet the 47% would proudly raise their hand, and I’d know that the other 52% were all stoners (and 1% are too dumb/stoned to know the difference).

Patriot Act is Killed. It’s always the democrats that use the polls to make their decisions. Since 52% of Americans are opposed to the Patriot Act because they have something to hide, then the democrats are in support of the legalization of marijuana. This has parallels to prohibition, somehow. I just don’t care to figure it all out right now. But it doesn’t seem to have much to do with finding the terrorists.

Medicine Kills. Now, even more slowly. A good friend of mine has an elderly mother that is in the hospital dying. I’d rather not, and don’t have explicit permission to give all the details. Over the past few months I’ve heard reports of this elderly woman going from a relatively healthy, although diabetic and wheelchair bound person to a dying, half-dead person, carved up like a Thanksgiving Turkey. Every step along the way, the doctors were careful to point out the worst of all possible outcomes. And then, the worst of all possible outcomes happens. Have you guys ever heard of psychosomatic illness? Have you guys ever heard of the power of suggestion? Far be it for them to actually encourage a person’s will to live. It’s been said that more money is spent on health care at the end of a person’s life than at any other time of their life. I’m convinced that doctors like this take advantage of the health care plans of well-to-do families in such a way as to prolong the demise of the elderly, maximize the amount of extraordinary health care services provided, and extract the greatest amount of revenue from the insurance companies. I think it’s disgusting.

Tookie Who? Okay, so this guy started the Crips gang, was convicted for murder, never confessed his crimes or showed remorse, but managed to write a children’s book. So, because he wrote a children’s book, some moonbat wants him pardoned. And since Governor Schwarzenegger won’t pardon the guy, poor, poor Tookie gets the death sentence, and Arnold gets a bad rap as Governor Terminator. Arnie, you can terminate all the Tookies you can find, as far as I’m concerned. More power to you.

Angels among us. I’ll end this rant on a positive note. I’ve discovered one of the best Iraq-based military blog I’ve seen. Michael Yon’s Online Magazine. Reading through his archives, I’ve gained a lot of respect for his perspective, just how much progress has been made there, how little of that progress has been reported in the media, and what the soldiers stationed there experience. In one of the most interesting posts: Lost In Translation, Michael interviews a family man who spent most of his adult life either imprisoned or conscripted in the wrong army because he believed in Yezidism, an ancient offshoot of Judaism that believes in angels as central to their faith. Another interesting article is Angels Among Us, where a group of marines get their humvee blown up by an IED. When asked how they all escaped being killed, a soldier looked straight at Michael and without hesitation said, “We had angels watching us.”

Christmas Wish List

Well, the Christmas tips have started to roll in, and I’m looking at how I should spend the money. As I said before, I’m not going to disclose how much I get in tips, because it makes people jealous. If you have such feelings, consider how much BS I have to put up with from idiotic management and angry and forcibly subscribed customers, all the risks I take, having to save for and pay my own income taxes, having to run around in the cold at night, wearing clothing that makes me look like a burglar in order to keep warm, having to pay for auto maintenance and gasoline – don’t you think I deserve some consideration? So I smile when I get a $50 check from someone in the rich neighborhood, and I pass the smile right back to them with the best possible service. After all, TIPS stands for To Insure Proper Service.

It’s not really in line with the Christmas giving spirit, but in keeping with the commercialization of Christmas, I’m giving my Christmas tip money to the merchants and service providers in exchange for much-needed goods and services. So here’s my Christmas tip spending list:

• Gasoline to feed the ever-hungry gas hog. With the price of gas down to $2 per gallon and my mileage hovering around 13 MPG, depending on the temperature, gas only cost me $7.70 per day, instead of the previous $10 per day when it was at $3 per gallon. It’s nice to see that the gulf coast refineries are back in operation, or whatever is making gas relatively affordable again. Thank you.


• Lunch. This is another item that a certain portion of the pocket cash goes to. In fact, with gasoline, and an occasional random purchase at Wal-Mart, this is the only other item I spend cash on. For all those who send me cash in the mail (which you’re not supposed to do anyway), that just offsets the amount of cash that I take out of the paychecks in order to sustain a standardized cash level for the gas fund. But those paychecks always feel like something worth celebrating, and I do so by splurging on lunch from the value menu at Wendy’s. Thanks to the cash givers, doing so just feels a little bit easier.


• A new clutch. Here’s where I start into the auto maintenance category. Last year about this time, the clutch started making a funny noise. Funny noises from the truck really make me nervous, so I had the mechanic investigate, and he said the clutch would eventually go bad, and have to be replaced. Like, any day now. He offered to replace it right then, but said it would slowly go bad over the next few months. I haven’t done the clutch in the 100,000 miles that I’ve driven it, so like Yellowstone Park exploding, it’s due right about now. Like “The Big One” knocking California into the ocean, it’s due any day now. I keep listening for that funny noise again.


• A new steering wheel cover. I like cheap things. They cost less. When I decided that I needed a special steering wheel cover with enough grip to quickly spin the wheel around while flying through all those cul de sacs, I found a cheap one with knobbies at Wal-Mart for $8. Well, like all cheap things, it’s falling apart, so I’d better put another one in the grocery cart at Wal-Mart next time I’m there.


• Body work. They told me that this model of Toyota had problems with the bed rusting out along the seam. The rust is starting to work it’s way along in a big bubble. And the paint is peeling in other places. I don’t know how much the discount auto body repair guy would want, but the Bump Shop offered to replace that panel for a mere $2,000. Outch! I think I’ll save my money until it becomes as critical as the clutch, then talk to that discount guy.


• Software. I’ve pre-spent some of my Christmas tip money on this item. Preventative maintenance, and spending money to keep spam, viruses, and other people’s nasties out of my system. Here, I have to make a sub-list
  
  • System Mechanic 5, and
  
  
  • An expensive upgrade to System Mechanic 6. This might actually have saved my butt a few times.
  
  
  • Diskeeper 9 defragmenter. I’ll skip the upgrade to Diskeeper 10 defragmenter. It just doesn’t solve my system performance problems.
  
  
  • Error Nuker. Like Diskeepr defragmenter, it didn’t really fix my performance problems. But it’s already paid for.


• System Mechanic, after having the system do a boot-time disk check, which I could have and did do anyway, seems to be telling me that my hard drive is unreliable, and that it can’t quite pinpoint and flag exactly what spot on the drive is causing the problem. To compensate for this, I should probably buy another hard drive, possibly from a different manufacturer. But then I’ll have to clone the drive data. Yuck.


• Since all that maintenance software won’t change the fact that I’m just running way to much software on my computer, I should be thinking about getting a new system. It’d really be nice to have one of those 3 GHz systems – are they up to 4 GHz or something higher now? – instead of my old 800 MHz system that can barely keep up with itself. Then I’ll have to contact all those software makers and get my licenses transferred to the new system. Maybe I should take the traditional do-it-yourself approach and just get a new 5 GHz motherboard, and a case to match it. And then watch the system try to re-configure itself, and end up in some crippled state that I have to fix manually. Hmmm, decisions, decisions.


• I’ve really been wanting to get that Access 2000 book, so I can do more better database work. I haven’t seen any good classes for Access. Classes cost ten times as much as books anyway, and you still have to buy the book.


• Before I do that, I might want to upgrade to Access XP++ 2006, or whatever is coming out next. Naw, why buy the same software twice?


• In spite of what I just said about classes, I want to take the AWAI copywriting class. I’ll probably have to commit myself to a year of studying to match the year’s worth of monthly payments. Or I could just pop for the $500 right now. Are you kidding??? My Christmas tip money is already spoken for by everything else on this list. This is one of those potentially get-rich-quick schemes. Besides, I was fired from my first job for “poor communication skills,” and now, it’s my life’s mission to learn and practice good communication skills. Why has nobody bothered to use even the 10% discount coupon code I set up on BazaarMart.com? I dunno. Either just saying there are discounts and freebies, and one is a storewide discount isn’t “good communication,” or my web visitors are all illiterate.


• Income taxes. Sigh. I must’ve been blocking this out of my mind throughout the rest of the list. Well, I’ve still got four more months to save up enough to pay my income taxes. See, as contract labor, my “employer” doesn’t consider me to be an employee, and so doesn’t withhold income tax for me. So I have to come up with the money myself on tax day.


• Credit card debts. Sigh. Another thing I’ve been blocking out of my mind. When I get the time and energy, I’m going to invent some scheme to take advantage of these zero interest, introductory offer type things to actually pay down the principle instead of continually throwing money away at these creditors.


• There’s an options-trading newsletter that makes claims of having an 80% success rate of recommendations that at least double your money in an average of six weeks. The cost is $89 each month. If I can start out with some $500 out of my current portfolio, and if it does what it says it does, I should be able to leverage that into a substantial sum fairly quickly. Call it a get-rich-scheme. Call me crazy. But I’ve been a gambler for these types of things before. I’m willing to give this one a shot. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll hold them to their money-back guarantee.

Well that’s about it for my Christmas wish list. Now, to go do some actual Christmas shopping for the family.

Merry Christmas

Wind Chill Factor

With the onset of cold weather, my thoughts are turning from politics, business and the holidays to the hazards of an outdoor / nightime occupation in the cold winter months.

Last night, the low temperature was 17 F. Winds were especially strong. I estimated gusts up to 20 to 30 mph. A quick Google search for "wind chill factor chart" brought me to this page, with this chart. That puts the wind chill factor down to -17 F to -26 F. I could feel it. Even though I wore extra layers of clothing and nylon ski pants over my blue jeans, the thinness of my hat and the exposure of my face felt like I was going to freeze my face off. According to the chart, there is greater danger that exposed flesh will freeze.

Tonight, the low is again 17 F. But Tuesday and Wednesday, the low temperatures will be down to 3 F and 1 F. I don't get wind speed forcasts from my desktop weather tool, downloaded from weather.com. If the wind continues, the wind chill factor could easily be in the region of -40 F.

There's one fella that oddly shows up wearing shorts and sunglasses, no matter what the weather, or time of night. If you're a religious or spiritual type, prayers for myself and the others in the newspaper carrier business would be appreciated at this time. If you have to be out in the cold weather, be sure to dress appropriately.

Happy Thanks-ri-abso-freakin’-lutely-diculous-giving

I didn’t get a chance to write about Thanksgiving. The newspaper made Thanksgiving not only bonus day (everybody gets the paper, regardless of their subscription schedule), but they had to give us five, no, six sections. Three sections devoted exclusively to advertisement. And they decided to give every carrier an extra 50 papers per route. All “sissy pissers.” Sissy pissers? Sigh… someday I’ll have to write up my paper carrier lexicon. These are all delivered on the Saturday and Sunday schedule: abbreviated “SS,” which I pronounce as “sissy.” And the edition is the Denver Post Special (special comics), abbreviated DPS, or simply PS, which I pronounce as “pisser.” They go in piss-yellow bags, and they just piss everyone off. Hence, 50 new “sissy pissers.” And, of course, I still got until 6:00 AM to deliver – fold and deliver – 300 and something enormous papers. And that lady that consistently calls in a complaint if her paper isn’t there by 6:00 AM, the same lady that last Thanksgiving sat and watched at the window until I delivered it at 7:13 AM before calling to complain that she didn’t get her paper (as soon as I delivered it, on Thanksgiving Day), well she got her paper before everyone else this year. Even though driving out of my way to do so made the rest of the route 10 minutes later.

Then, I got to drive 50 miles across the state to have Thanksgiving dinner with my family. For some mysterious reason, I decided that I would enjoy my visit with the family more if I could pre-visit without the fatigue of the Thanksgiving Day route dragging me down. So that meant two 50-mile each-way trips, for a total of 200 extra highway miles.

And, there’s the Christmas card situation. I won’t publicly disclose how much money I got last year from Christmas tips, because it makes some people jealous, and I really really need that extra money. I didn’t get my order of 350 cards in until the Monday before Thanksgiving. That’s three weeks later than last year. The Christmas cards went out with the Sunday edition following Thanksgiving. Much of my energy the past two months has been on efforts leading up to this day. I’ve been importing between 20 and 40 items each day into my web store, BazaarMart.com each day since October. All this so that I could have all (most?) of my supplier’s products in the store in time for the Christmas season. To kick off my part of the Christmas shopping season, I decided to set up some Christmas specials (go there! There’s discounts and freebies!), and print up a promotion on some card stock to be included with my Christmas card distribution. The card signing and stuffing party took place over the two days following Thanksgiving.

All that work left me just wore out. And now, the credit-card checkout system on the web store isn’t working right. That’s okay, I’ll just keep poking around in the dark until it goes in somewhere. Did I actually say that just now? I get kinda punchy when I’m wore out. Maybe you’ll understand why I play solitaire and procrasti-blog instead of fix things like the checkout problem.

The Struggle, The Dream

I’m Procrasti-blogging again. I was running a system repair in System Mechanic 6 yesterday, but I aborted it because wanted to get some more work done, and wasn’t sure if the system “repair” would spontaneously reboot my system, and lose unsaved work. It got to 90%+ finished, and just sat there. For hours. Not making any more progress. Still responding, still working, just not showing progress. Today, I’m running it again. That’s symbolic. I should have read today’s news yesterday.

From Breitbart.com, via Cao’s Blog,

The House voted 403-3 to reject a nonbinding resolution calling for an immediate troop withdrawal.

And again,

On Tuesday, the Senate defeated a Democratic push for Bush to lay out a timetable for withdrawal.

Dr. Sanity writes about the same thing, but compares it to the struggle between Good and Evil in the latest Harry Potter story. I never read Harry Potter. The Lord Of The Rings was much more of a heroic epic for me than anything else. The Dr. compares what the movie describes as the difficulty of the decision between what is easy and what is right with that same difficulty in supporting the war against terror.

The Lord Of The Rings may have been considered a metaphor for WW II in the period following that war, but I would argue that it is at least as good a metaphor for the current war as Harry Potter, and in general, as a metaphor for all struggles between Good and Evil. Some probably said that Star Wars was a metaphor for the Cold War. But I would agree with others’ statements made elsewhere that neither Harry Potter nor Star Wars hold a candle to LOTR. Tolkein designed a whole world, integrated a mythos, populated it with distinct races and unique languages, and created characters and cultures with complexity and depth. True, I’ve never read Harry Potter, but from what I know it’s just boilerplate pulp fantasy spun off as children's stories and mass-marketed in a never-ending, self-perpetuating meme.

Other than that, I agree with the premise behind the “Good Vs. Evil” stories. For me, the most memorable line in LOTR was when Frodo lamented that he had the burden of the ring, and wished that he had never been given it. Gandalf replied, “So do all who live in times such as these. But that is not for us to decide. We have only to decide how to use the time that is given to us.” That line, seen in the movie released not long after 9/11, not long after I lost my job, was the line that changed my life. It echoes the same sentiments of choosing between the easy and the right. Again, in The Two Towers, Frodo laments his burden and the impossibility of their mission. Sam encourages him with “We've got to go on, because we've got to believe that there's still some good in the world that’s worth saving.”

When I lost my job, on May 16, 2001, it was clear to me that my Computer Engineering career was not moving forward as I had hoped. It was clear that others weren’t interested in supporting my ambitions as much as they wished to use me to advance their own ambitions. After sending out some 600 resumes and getting fewer interviews than I could count on one hand, it was clear that I wasn’t likely to get a job in the computer industry anytime soon. 9/11 was the final nail in the coffin. I was worried that my education was becoming increasingly out of date, even as I was looking for a job. When I expressed my concerns to a friend’s aging parent, who echoed my fears in the simplicity of a bygone age by saying, “Does that mean you’re a failure,” that obscene “F- word” hit me with more force than any other vulgar obscenity in the language.

I had been working on the idea of writing and selling my own software. Being somewhat of a stock market dabbler, I had started working on some investment analysis software. I developed this, packaged it with security and licensing measures, payment options, and sold it under the “try before you buy” shareware model.

Somewhere in the middle of this is when the LOTR: The Fellowship Of The Ring, and that line that I quoted above inspired me to continue my work. I felt that the world needed something, and that I was the right person to create it. Getting yet another entry-level job at some startup company that didn't have the commitment to stay in business longer than six months would short-circuit my dream.

My success was very modest. Not anywhere near enough to support me. Marketing became a major consideration. My project wasn’t go anywhere unless I could effectively promote it. That’s when my plan took a hard left turn. I’ve had difficulties with communication skills all my life. I was fired from my first job because they interpreted my soft-spoken nature and privacy of thought as “poor communication skills.” I’ve taken jobs like sales, and customer service, as a way of giving myself opportunities to practice good communication skills. Blogging is just one more of those practice efforts. Another is my web store, BazaarMart.com, which I’ve been working at most enthusiastically in recent months. Search engine marketing is one thing. The real art of sales and marketing is in charisma, and persuasion, and most of all, cultivation relationships with customers, clients, associates, and service providers. That’s something that’s taught in certain little known courses, which I have yet to take.

The progress towards success is slow and uncertain. I have a little book titled “New Work Habits For A Radically Changing World” (Price Pritchett, 1996). In the chapter titled “Accept ambiguity and uncertainty,” he describes how people like to have their work clearly defined for them, but must ultimately define their work for themselves, especially in uncertain times. Most of the liberals and democrats want their work defined for them, their income assured, their projects unhesitatingly funded by the infinite resources of the government, their wars fought and won according to a schedule that they could fit on their Palm Pilots. It doesn’t work that way, sir. E.L. Doctorow described how it feels like to write a book as "like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." In a sense, the war on terror has become a bit like driving at night in the fog. It worries me that people like John Murtha want to immediately stop all activity because there’s no signs of progress. I'm just glad that the rest of Congress understands (according to the Dr.'s article) that if we turn around now, that we won't get there for sure. For my part, by funding my activities at this time with a mere paper route, I might be driving down some wayward dark, foggy frontage road with only a vague notion that continuing ahead can only take me to someplace new. But at least I know that by continuing ahead, I’ll eventually get there.

The MSM Agenda

I'm blogging again while procrastinating. The newly-installed virus scanner is at around 97% complete with it's complete scan of my system after running 27 hours 33 minutes. System Mechanic 6 thinks my sound card driver is a virus, or at least "a dangerous or unnecessary program [that] is currently lowering performance." Whenever I killed the process, the system would spontaneously reboot itself. The system fitness is rated "poor", and critical repairs with the comprehensive repair wizard are recommended. Ho Hum, what else is new?

Neo-Neocon talks about Pankaj Mishra's book review that

"Iranian democratic elections indicate the will of the people is for a hard-line theocracy"

I was about to comment that elections are not always fair, or an accurate indication of the will of the people, even in the United States. But I was a bit concerned that this might invoke the liberal conspiracy-theory hogwash-meme (here's another wikipedia-based article) of "Bush rigged the election(s)." But after further reading I realized that Neo-neocon is way ahead of me. She followed the Iranian elections, and lists the activities that took place, swaying the elections in favor of Mohammad Ahmadinejad. The same guy that american embassy hostages recognized from the Iranian Hostage crisis in 1979. The same guy that has been spouting beligerence such as "Islam will reign from every mountaintop", and "We will wipe Israel off the map", and "A World Without Zionism".

Now this Pankaj Mishra, who it turns out is primarily an Indian literati, is taking the position that the Iranian people freely and enthusiastically elected this Islamofascist, and blindly follow whatever anti-America, anti-Israel, pro-worldwide shariah law rhetoric he puts forth. I have to conclude that when people are paid writers, when they're paid to produce something written every day in as much quantity as possible, that the quality of research that goes into the writing often suffers along with the value of their work. It seems that the primary objective of the mainstream media is to either a) call into question the validity of those in elected office, or b) stir up, provoke, or fabricate controversy so as to have something more to write about. Either way, it's just yellow journalism with the intent of selling more newspapers. But the net effect is an erosion of society.

I could just about imagine the conversation between Mishra and his editor:

Editor: "I want you to expand your horizons. Write about something other than India. Like, maybe Iran. Iran is current news, write about Iran."
In Mishra's mind: "Well, they just had an election I think. I guess I'll write something about why they elected that guy. Elections in America are always fair, so I guess elections everywhere must be fair. There must be a book written about it; I'll do a book review. "

Moving right along, here's something really maddening at Moonbattery.

Representative John Murtha (D-PA) has taken the next logical step in advancing the Democrats' strategy of deliberately causing us to lose the war in Iraq so that the defeat can be hung around Republicans' necks by calling for an immediate withdrawal of our forces.

I don't even need to imagine the scenario: Iraq falls back into the hands of al-Qaeda, nuclear weapons developed, nukes rain down on US cities, dogs and cats living together, the walls bleeding in the twelfth precinct. Okay, the last part was from Bill Murray in Ghost Busters.

Why do people get such nutty ideas like we should immediately hand Iraq over to the terrorists, and have our soldiers all shoot their commanding officers? Turning back to Moonbattery, there's a clue in the phrase, "the MSM's defeatist propaganda barrage". There we are again, the media is mucking around with world politics, just to create a controversy that's "fit to print". And apparently, there's some politicians as well as regular people who don't pay enough attention to what's really happening to make an informed, responsible decision. And how could they, when the media denies reality, either out of ignorance or of intent.

Why We Fight

I've been looking for the motivation to pay this month's bills, while waiting for a hard disk defragmenter and a system repair utility to make some progress, and cruising through my list of favorite blogs. Procrastinating.

If there's one article today that I would want to share with whoever reads what I write, it would be this: a story of a soldier who gives his heart, his blood, his silent Jewish prayers, and spoken prayers from the Koran in an effort to give an innocent Muslim child who had fallen victim to a terrorists attack a chance to pursue life as just an innocent Muslim child celebrating Ramadan. In spite of all the political rhetoric about lies, pre-war intelligence, WMD's, here's why we're fighting the war in Iraq.

There are many Americans who ask why we’re here. Why are we sacrificing so many American lives and placing so many in harm’s way? What is the purpose of it all? Well, I don’t really know the big picture. But from my small sector of the battlefield, the reason I am here is to give “the least of these,” my children over here, a shot at “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — just like my other children living in America.

I couldn't add any more nobility to the article with my own words. Go read it for yourself.

Intifadah

I love Wikipedia. I've learned so much in the past few months just by looking things up on Wikipedia. I could easily keep my blog filled with interesting articles just by posting a little something about everything that I look up on Wikipedia. In fact, I think I'll do just that.

Today's vocabulary term is "infitadah". I've been seeing this quite a bit recently while reading about the riots in France. Most recently, I found the term used on Moonbattery.

Intifada (also Intefadah or Intifadah; from Arabic: "shaking off") is an Arabic language term for "uprising".

The article goes on to describe several examples of infitadahs, or uprisings. Including two Palestinian revolts aimed at ending Isreali military occupation.

So the story in France goes, a bunch of Muslims immigrated to France, didn't get jobs or otherwise contribute to society, and expected Socialist France to feed and house them, change their diapers, wipe their noses, and so on, yada yada yada.... Boo freakin' hoo. Now they gotta riot when they don't get all the riches that their ancestors had. Sounds like a bunch of Democrat welfare bums. I guess they have some other words for them in France, like citizens. Or whatever French for citizen is. If I could come up with a good "told-ja-so" I would. I guess that's what they get for voting against the War On Terror in the UN. I'm reminded of a line in Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, where Theodin King says "I'll not risk open war", and Aragorn answers "Risk it or not, war is upon you."

So, why don't the French take some action, and quell the uprising? Why don't they just deport all the Muslims to Saudi Arabia? Just why are the French being so... French? Turning back to my history lessons from The History Channel, there was a widely advertised program a while back about the French Revolution, where the French went off on a terror-rampage, beheading everyone who breathed out of the wrong nostril, and could only stop the violence with even more violence, until the whole thing finally petered out in a bloodbath-orgy of such unbelievable magnitude that they couldn't possibly outdo themselves anymore. My theory is that the French Revolution left the country in such a state of shock, that anytime there was any threat of war, they'd rather roll over than repeat the horrors of the French Revolution. The horrors of the French Revolution turned the French into a bunch of pacifists, and they haven't been able to get over it since. Hence, they failed to build any military sufficient to resist the Germans at the onset of WW II. And hence, they failed to recognize the emminent threat of the Islamofascist thugs that had been occupying their own suburbs for generations.

Speaking of The History Channel lessons, I've been watching a bunch of programs lately about the Crusades. You know what? The Arabs invaded Israel. The Crusades were an attempt to reclaim the Holy Land in the name of Judea-Christian tradition. Jerusalem has been thrown back and forth between owners for thousands of years. First the Jews, then the Romans, then the Palestinians. Even though the Romans tore down the holy Jewish Temple, the Jews built the place in antiquity. This could be another Wikipedia article post about the Temple Mount. But even if the Romans did tear down the temple, the couldn't destroy the massive foundation or the Western Wall, which still exists today as a testament to the construction that was done in 350 BCE. That was the second temple; the first was built in 950 BCE.

And the Palestinians had the arrogance to come along and build their mosque on the Temple Mount, and claim exclusive rights to the Temple Mount. The Arabs have been invading and conquering since times of antiquity. And now, they've effectively invaded, and are in the process of sacking France. The Arabs can't contribute anything to civilization; they've always got to go invade and steal. They invaded Israel, stole Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. They invaded the United States, stole airplanes and attacked on 9/11. And now, they've invaded France. I still think France should dust off their guillotines, and start taking care of business. Of course, nothing like that will ever happen. France is too busy apologizing for the terrorists, calling them "youths", calling the Intifadah "unrest", and using other terrorist-enabling, apologistic terminology that would be fit to print in the New York Times.

Fallen Hero Number 2,000

Before I start, I would like to point out that I’ve been away from my blog lately because I have been working very hard to build up my web store business, BazaarMart.com. For the past month, I’ve been importing from between 20 and 40 new products each day, as well as fixing up some of the details of the web site, and my database from which I’m building the web site. It’s been no small task. As much as marketers of “Get Rich On eBay / The Internet” schemes would like one to believe, it takes a lot of work to get something like this going.

So now, this artificial landmark of 2,000 soldiers killed in Iraq is as good a reason as any to come out of my cave and add to the rhetoric. The mainstream media is simply using the arbitrary statistic as an excuse to sensationalize the news and sell newspa… uh, advertising attached to news, er uh… news serving as a vehicle for advertising revenue. So, in effect, the MSM and their advertisers are capitalizing off of the death of one particular soldier, who happens to be in the slot enumerated by a particularly round number in our base-ten number system, while unfortunately demeaning that soldier into a uncelebrated wasteland of statistics.

I thought I might least find out the name and story of that one particular soldier. Even the New York Times couldn’t get that right. Michelle Malkin reports on a story ran by the NYT titled “2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tour Stretches On, A Grim Mark” about Marine Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr. Michelle tells about a letter received from Cpl. Starr’s uncle Timothy Lickness giving the unreported story. The letter contained an excerpt from a letter to Cpl. Starr’s girlfriend, intended to be delivered in the event of his death, which described his reasons for re-enlisting for the third time, his reasons for fighting for freedom, and for bringing freedom to the Iraqi people.

But there’s still more that’s not being told about the NYT article. Marine Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr died on May 30, 2005. Five months before the October 26 NYT article. Marine Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr was not, in fact, the 2,000th soldier to die in Iraq. In other words, the NYT cherry-picked their own set of soldiers to hold up as their poster-child against the war in Iraq. The NYT used Marine Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr’s death to sell newspapers.

I remember delivering the NYT that day. I delivered 18 of them to the liberal residents of Boulder, Colorado, home of Ward Churchill. The NYT was particularly difficult to fold that day. The paper carrier crew commented that there was a lot of reporting on the 2,000-soldier landmark. I looked inside the NYT to see what was adding all the extra bulk, expecting to find a big section on the war, perhaps listing all 2,000 names. The extra bulk was a special auto advertising section.

Back to the quest for the 2,000th soldier’s name and story. One of my first stops in my search for hero number 2,000 was Cao’s Blog. Cao (pronounced “Key”) is from a military family, and is always a good source of responsible facts and views from the military point of view. Cao wrote on 10/26/’05 that Staff Sergeant George Alexander, Jr. was the 2,000th soldier killed in Iraq. A link on the Michelle Malkin article led me to a Fallen Heroes Memorial web site. A search on that site led to Staff Sergeant Alexander’s story. Here’s what Fallen Heroes had to say:

Army Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander, Jr.
34, of Clanton, Alabama.Alexander died at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, of injuries sustained in Samarra, Iraq, on October 17, 2005 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Benning, Georgia. Died on October 22, 2005.

To put the sacrifice in perspective Cao offers some additional historical war statistics.

2,403: Americans killed at Pearl Harbor
2,976: Americans lost on 9/11
9,386: American soldiers killed taking Normandy
12,500: American soldiers killed taking Okinawa in WW2
24,000: American soldiers on both sides killed at the battle of Antietam during the Civil War
54,246: American troops killed in Korea
58,198: American soldiers killed in Vietnam
116,516: American soldiers killed in World War 1
133,811: Confederate troops killed in the Civil War
295,000: American soldiers killed in World War 2
364,511: Union Soldiers killed during the Civil War

Not to mention the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War 2.