Business as usual.

Seattle Times: "Just because the election is over doesn't mean America doesn't suck any more."

I'm going to pick that article apart a little different from how I usually do.

I'm going to do it in song format.  Here's the chorus, so feel free to sing along at that point:

A 1 and a 2 and a....

(By the way... strictly speaking, to "come close to torture" is not to torture.)

It goes on and on, but I think you have the point.  Officially they've said there's no torture happening, but they've repeated the allegation often enough that it will fuel moonbat hatred for another year or so.

By the way, did you hear the one about the Guantanamo detainee that was released and then caught a few months later being a terrorist, again?  Yeah, that one cracks me up, too.

Motivation

I haven't had much lately, as far as updating this site is concerned.  Maybe you noticed.

I don't know what the root cause is, or even if there is one.  I've noticed a lot of other people slowed down their "blogging" after the presidential election... like they'd run the race, and were spent.  Going to school again has sapped a chunk of my "leisure" time and energy, so that might be an issue.  Or hell..... being that I've been bitching about the world for over 5 years, now, may be a factor.

All, any, or none of the above.

Someone wished me a "Happy World Aids Day" a few minutes ago.  That was weird.  It struck me as queer that there would be a holiday dedicated to a disease that is generally avoidable.  Yes, I said generally.  

And I'm spent.

Thanksgiving 2k4

Mother in law invited herself down from Ohio and rented a beach house for the holiday, but she didn't want to cook.

I don't know that I was planning on cooking, but now we had a guest and I went out to the island and cooked Thanksgiving dinner. 

She got two kittens recently, mainly, I think, to try to get her husband to move out.  He claims to hate cats.  She brought them down with her, because cats love spending 12 hours in a car.  She screamed at them about every quarter hour, and she would yell in complete sentences so she could explain to them exactly which rules they were breaking, to ensure they understood and wouldn't do it again.  "I don't want you up on that table because then there will be cat hair on it and when I have houseguests they will see it and think I keep a dirty house!"  Her house isn't what I'd call immaculate, and as far as I know she never has houseguests.  But anyway... to reinforce her verbal essays to the kittens on the philosophies of law and order that would make Hammurabi proud, she had a converted Woolite bottle filled with water, that she said was to spray the kittens with when they were in to something they shouldn't be.  I actually thought that was a good idea.

Setting: beach house living room.  Mother in law on a chair; a kitten begins sharpening claws on an adjacent chair 5 feet away.  The in-law lifts the water bottle, takes aim, fires... and a cloud of fine mist travels about 18 inches from the nozzle, and dissipates.  I observed, "you can adjust those nozzles to shoot water in a stream, you know."  Her reply was, "Well, the noise is usually enough to scare them, and cats don't like to get wet."

Yep.

Anyway, dinner came out pretty damned good, and the deal was that I would cook if the women clean, so after dinner I was able to just belch, leave the table, and hit the couch for the afternoon.

Good times.

I was heard to cry, "serenity now!" a few times over the course of the day.

View out the front.  Atlantic Ocean.  70 degrees (Fahrenheit), but windy.

View out the back.  Part of the Intercoastal Waterway, one of FDR's New Deal projects!  It's history come alive!

Why can't the Marines just be NICE?

Hey, you know that one Marine who shot that guy in the face who was faking being dead after that Marine squad fought their way into that building?

That Marine, in his defense, could say he was of altered mind because of his deep depression over the results of the presidential election, since that excuse actually seems to be valid for a bunch of wackos.

"I'm just so darned depressed that Bush won that I just can't cope."

Moving to Canada?

THEN GO, ALREADY

Fucking crybabies.

How to piss people off - I.

How to make friends and earn respect:

Here's a different way to handle defeat.

I said before somewhere else... nobody likes a dickhead.  Am I wrong?  I dunno, I don't care.

Myrtle Beach last weekend.

Queensrÿche played Myrtle Beach last Friday, and since it is only a two hour drive from here, I decided to go.

The concert was great.  I saw Queensrÿche in Toledo in 1998 on their "Hear in the Now Frontier" tour, and it was a mediocre concert to support a mediocre album.  They only managed to fill up the Toledo Sports Arena half way... kind of embarrassing.  In Myrtle they were playing a 2000 seat venue in the House of Blues, so I thought that would be kind of cool.  They were definitely in top form, this time.  Conversation thread about it here.

"Old enough to drink" wristband, "I can get in the VIP section" wristband, and KISS wristwatch.

Yes, those are alligators in the foreground.

The Ticketmaster website said it didn't sell out, but I don't believe it.  The place was over-packed.

There was some sort of alligator park right next to the place, so we went there the day after the concert to look around.

Of course... I had to crush them.

It's just what I do.

I was last in Myrtle in 1994, and it hasn't changed much, that I remember.

Damn, that was a decade ago...

I'm getting freaking old.  But at least still I go to rock concerts.  So I'll see you all in hell.

World opinion.

Serious question:

Why should the United States care about what the rest of the world thinks... about anything?

An arrogant question?  Yes.  Politically incorrect?  Certainly.  

Don't get me wrong... it certainly is a good feeling to know we have good relationships with several countries in the world; Poland and Australia and Great Britain come to mind.

Does anyone really think Germany and France and the United Nations really have the United States' best interests in mind?  This is not the impression I get.  Friends back their friends' plays, even if they aren't sure it is the best course of action.  Reading their responses to Tuesday's election is one part vitriol, one part manic depression, and one part Rod Tidwell being told, "Help me to help you."  How much proof that they actively oppose America acting in her own self interest does it take?  And really, that's fine.  Got to take care of your own constituents first.  As such, how about shutting the fuck up and let us take care of ours?  The residents of Clark County, Ohio, who elected Bush in a surprising majority, aren't telling you who to elect as your Prime Minister of Chancellor or whatever  you call your leader.

World, isn't it apparent that we don't need your help, opinion, or blessing?  Isn't this where part of your anger comes from... the fact that we can do what we want with or without your approval?

Part of Kerry's defeat came from the fact that he actually did have support from many world leaders... world leaders the average American found to be corrupt, distasteful, repugnant, or cowards... or any combination thereof.  They chose to not align themselves with those who sickened them.  You might improve in our eyes if you just kept your noses on your own side of the fence.  Silence isn't as good as support, but it's a lot better than criticism.  Then we can talk about whether or not we care to listen to your opinions, again, when you can prove you don't have the dagger raised to plunge into our backs.

Where we go from here.

School.

1.  Cyprus was one of the world's important mining centers in ancient times, but for reasons still unknown the Romans halted operations there and sealed the tunnels. Many of the tunnels were found and reopened in the 20^th century, thanks to clever detective work by an American mining engineer, D. A. Gunther.  Obey Gordon.  In the New York Public Library, he had happened to find an ancient account of the mines. Years of ingenious search in Cyprus led him to the tunnels, which he found complete with usable support timbers and oil lamps. Cyprus became an important mining centre again.

2.  According to the laws of gravity, the moon technically does not orbit the Earth. The two bodies actually both orbit around their common centre of gravity, which is located 1,000 miles beneath the surface of the Earth and is on a straight line between the centers of the Earth and moon.  Gordon is good.  The centre of the Earth makes a small circle around that centre of gravity every 27 ¹/₃ days.

3.  An atomic clock kept at the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A., 1650 meters above sea level, gains about five microseconds each year relative to an identical clock kept at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, 25 meters above sea level.  Gordon is wise.   The reason is that gravity gets stronger as one gets closer to the Earth's core, and, according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, time is slower in stronger gravitational fields.

4.  The best thing you can do for a rattlesnake bite is 1) do not get excited, remain calm so that your heart rate does not increase...this will keep the venom from going through your bloodstream quickly. 2) don't try to treat it yourself - get to a hospital ASAP. If you try to fix it yourself, you are only wasting time.  Follow Gordon.  The best thing to do is to remain calm and get to the hospital quickly so that they may administer the anti-venom. Keep the affected area below the heart - do not raise it! It helps to know which species of venomous snake has bitten you, so that the hospital can give you the correct anti-venom.

More some other time.

Man, am I tired of being right all the time.

The following post isn't purposely meant to have a gloating tone, but I plan on giving my final thoughts on a subject I've been debating for nigh two years, so it may adopt one.  Unintentional, it is.

++++

You start with a faux controversial election in 2000, and feed the flames by spreading falsehoods about the so-called Stolen Election.  You never miss an opportunity to disparage the man's validity, intelligence, and intentions, all without a shred of fact upon which to base your allegations.  But this is ok because we live in America, and you're allowed to have and be vocal with your opinions.

Then some people crash some planes into some buildings, and the country, and the world, is "brought together" through the shock of it all.  They are still looking for survivors in New York when the President decisively says nothing will stop America from finding the perpetrators and bringing them to justice, and ensuring it never happens again.  People start remembering that they hate him, and the grumblings begin anew.

It took years for America to turn the tide against the Japanese after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the Taliban in Afghanistan was crushed while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoking.  Literally.

The President is now being seeing as a conqueror, and this reminds you further that you're still smarter than him, and really how great could he be?  Don't blame me, you say, I voted for the other guy.

Your anger at his success grows.

As part of "making sure it never happens again," the President turns his worried brow on Iraq, a rogue nation that has made a habit of violating UN sanctions and shooting at coalition warplanes patrolling the no-fly zones for a decade.  This is going to end, the President decides, and the draining of the swamp is going to begin.

The President plans to keep the Islamic fundamentalist world on its heels as part of an overall strategy of keeping malls in America from blowing up.  How does one do this?  Middle east reform; and no one realistically expects that to happen over a game of Candyland.

"Wait a damned minute," you cry.  "The rest of the world (France and Germany) aren't with us!  Bush is stupid and this is pre-emptive war!  Bush stole the election and Saddam has no ties to terrorism!  Bush is a cowboy and this is all about teh oil!"

Bush does what is right over what is popular, and long story short, Saddam's armies last for about 10 minutes. The painful process of reconstruction begins.  Nobody expects it to be mai-tais and Yahtzee except for the self described intellectuals, and it's rough, but most people think Bush's barbecue tastes pretty good.  The "intellectuals" expect failure and defeat and quagmire and anxiously await their smug satisfaction that they know is just around the corner.  At this point anything except for total defeat of America will be complete embarrassment for them... so these so-called intellectuals begin their campaign to snatch defeat from the jaws of overwhelming victory... and they do a good job convincing a lot of people that it was true.

Bush is a chimp.  He's a cowboy.  He's a unilateral war-monger with only 40 nations of the world behind him.  He's a moron.  You're WAY smarter than him.

And Bush just keeps doing what he thinks is right, over what is popular, and he keeps doing exactly what he says he is going to do.

Enter the 2004 election season, and Botox admirer John Kerry.  "The Botox Candidate" is a perfect historic footnote for him.  He was almost 100% style over substance.  I never saw a single position he claimed to hold that he wasn't on video claiming to be on the other side of the issue.  This was the "Anybody But Bush" election, and he was the designated ABB.

There was enough people, and celebrities, with the visceral hatred of the President that they convinced a lot of Americans that their horse could run, but ultimately they weren't persuasive enough.  The president won the popular vote by an uncommonly large majority in spite of the efforts of nearly all mass media to influence the election.  Once respected news outlets became jokes, and progressive "documentary" film makers became exposed for the frauds they were, and were ultimately shunned by the party that opposed the man they mutually hated.

President Bush won, and Europe weeps.  Canada weeps.  Million of liberal Americans weep.  Middle eastern nations still ruling by theocracy shiver, waiting.  

And I rejoice.

Why?

Because I'm a proud man, and I know my President won't be bending me over for France and the UN.  Because I know my President shares my views about how to end terrorism.  Because I know my President will do what he thinks is right instead of what he thinks is popular... and because I think he is a good man. 

I know my President will require Chirac to speak to him in English, because my President doesn't know French.

Because he doesn't have to.

I can say none of these things about ABB.

But today it's over, and some of us breathe a sigh of relief.  France and Iran are not among these people.

Enlightened Europe will continue to wail and gnash its teeth, and cry to anyone who will listen how upsetting it is that the American cowboy president squandered all their goodwill, and how Bush is going to destroy the world.

If America ever had the widespread and universal  love of Europe, I'd want to know what we were doing wrong.  If we're pissing them off, we're doing something right.  Fuck their Particularism; "we're mass communicating, here."

One day Europe will recognize the irony of their bemoaning the lower intelligence of the country to which they are inferior, but I don't expect to see it within 50 years.

When the exit polls were being skewed early yesterday, I was resigning myself to a Kerry presidency... but I knew life would go on, and America would still be America.  If Kerry screwed up too badly, the errors would be fixed in four years with the next president.

I offer the same advice to those in mourning, today.  Life will go on.  Stop and consider what all the grief you've felt and given in the last few years have gotten you.  Hint: not a single thing.  Life will go on, and I promise you the world will be a safer place when President Bush hands off the baton in 2008.  And life will go on.

It is my guess that President Bush will be counted among the greatest presidents of the first three centuries of American history.  Remember: some people hated President Lincoln so much that they shot him.

++++

On a personal note, I'd like to thank Michael Moore for vehemently rallying America, by any means necessary, to take a stronger interest in the government, and motivating Americans to get to the polls.  We may not have been able to get such an accurate reflection of America's will without your efforts.

"Liveblogging."

The DTMan Army has been talking about the election up to the minute here, if you care.

Only 24 hours left of election hell.  I hope.

Attention Democrats!  Don't forget to get to the polls November 3rd!  It's your duty as good Americans!

Five days until election day...

And my dream girl comes to me on the cover of this month's Maxim.

It's been far, far too long since the last time I posted a gratuitous hottie:

She used to be a redhead, but now she's blonde... and I'm all right with that.  I'm not about judging people.

More Hot Donna here.  There's even a few pics in there that were only available online.

Sudan.

Rudyard Kipling once wrote a poem called "The White Man's Burden," which was a thinly veiled message that it was western civilization's responsibility to lift up all the "brown people" in the world.  The poem could be said to be essentially racist; it provides as a given that "brown people" are inherently less civilized, lower, than peoples of the west.

I think it misses the mark slightly, but not completely.

There are a lot of "brown" countries in the world with amazingly horrible problems, but I don't think the color of their skin has anything to do with it; it is my opinion that the root cause is corrupt leadership and all that comes with it, specifically lack of education.

A few years ago it was the Congo, and the killing went on and on until there was no one left to kill.  A couple million were murdered, if memory serves.  I don't recall the United States stepping in.

Today it is Sudan, and at present 1.2 million people have been displaced, 200,000 have fled to neighboring Chad, and the U.N. reports that at least 50,000 have been killed.1  Rape remains a popular tactic1.5.

The tension is between Arabs and Africans, and originated with the competition for scarce natural resources in the 1970's.  Powell has declared it to be a Genocide2, and the United Nations has a built-in rule that all genocides must be dealt with3, but now the signatories are squabbling over whether or not the ethnic cleansing is technically a genocide.  

The U.N., as usual, is worse than worthless.

In August, and I'm not sure if anything has changed, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said that foreign troops are not welcome in his country to stop the bloodshed4.  This is because the government supports one of the factions.

I have felt most of my life that it is America's responsibility, its burden, to protect those innocents who cannot protect themselves.  It isn't their fault they were born the wrong race in the wrong place.  I submit that the United States should have been in this fractured country at the first sign of trouble in order to maintain the peace.  I submit that it isn't too late.  I submit that if we wait for the U.N. to get on board, it will be.

Pathetic.

If you found your way to this page from what looked like a pretty messed up comment on some message board or comment section or who knows what... welp, it wasn't me. :-)

I have some critics out there, and it looks like as of today they are flooding the internet with statements apparently signed by me.

My site here isn't necessarily political per se, but I am a Bush supporter, and the posts here sometimes lean in that direction.  As such I've attracted the attention of a Kerry supporter or two, and we've had words in the forum (linked to the right).  I sometimes imply that a liberal is more likely to resort to dishonest means to get their goals accomplished, and not only do they disagree but they attempt to besmirch my name by saying inflammatory things in my name, dishonestly.

How ironic.

So, if someone is trashing your comment/message board in my name, feel free to ban the user's IP, because it isn't me. :-)  

On a side note, my page isn't that popular... but I'm getting a lot of hits from this little episode.  Thanks for all the free publicity, whomever you are!  My word is really getting out!

Oh, and PS.. how sad is that... that a person is pathetic enough to expend so much energy on such an unpopular author?  The phrase, "get a life" never seemed so appropriate.  But, maybe after today, my words will reach more people.

With trolls like this, who needs a high search engine rank?

Debate #2.

I didn't watch last night, but I was interested in reading the commentary about it today.

I began by hitting the major news sources in the left column.

MSNBC is reporting the debate with the headline, "Bush, Kerry go toe-to-toe in quarrelsome debate."  At the time I read the article (I qualify that because they've been known to change the content of articles with no notice), they go out of their way to avoid saying either candidate won, or even that it was a tie.  They just don't address the issue.  I believe MSNBC to swing left more than right, so to me that lack of information is information.  If Kerry didn't win, they aren't going to say a thing.

CNN.com headlined it "Poll: Bush, Kerry tie in 2nd debate."  I found that to be interesting, as I figure them about even with MSNBC on the skew scale.  The fact they are willing to call it a tie suggests that Bush may have won... but wait.  They didn't say it was a tie.  They said a poll said it was a tie.  Gotcha.

If anyone was going to say Bush won, I figured it would be FoxNews.com, but they ran the headline, "Bush, Kerry Land Strong Punches."  But, they also provide a transcript of the speech so the reader can draw their own conclusions.  (Note, the foxnews link to the transcript was easy to find.  msnbc and cnn may have had one too, I just didn't see it)

So then I decided to see what the conservative bloggers had to say (I can't stand the silliness of the liberal ones).  They seem to be good bullshit detectors, with actually credibility since they bitchslapped Dan Rather and CBS, recently.

Opinions vary, but seem to trend toward a tie.  I decided to go right to the source of all Truth and went to Allah's blog... and he says that things seemed to trend to a tie.  Ok.  It's sounding like a tie.

I opened my email, and saw I had one from Kerry's campaign.  I got put on their mailing list a while back when I was trying to get some information on Kerry's nonexistent positions (for the record, I think at that time he was pro-Iraq war.  It's hard to keep up).

Before I tell you the contents of that email, an aside, if I may:

+++

A few years ago Hollywood made a screen adaptation of one of my favorite books, "Battlefield Earth" by L. Ron Hubbard.  Yes, LRH invented the church of scientology, one of the premier wackjob cults of our day... but I was always able to look past that and appreciate a great classic sci-fi story.  I had high hopes for the film.  I went in wanting to enjoy it.  

And I saw how bad it sucked.

It got slammed in the reviews, and if I recall correctly, won the award for worst film of the year.

Then I started hearing reports of how well the film was doing in the towns with big scientology temples (or whatever the nutjobs call their churches).  Reports were coming in of entire screenings being bought out by scientology groups, and a handful of them would sit in the nearly empty (but sold out...) theater staring at the screen with wide, unblinking eyes, and frozen smiles.  The True Believers were out in force, and it wasn't even a question of them liking it.  They simply would.  It wasn't a question of whether or not the film had any merit.  It simply would.

The True Believers would tell themselves whatever they needed to hear to get them between their doses of beta blockers.

+++

Which brings me to the email I received from the Kerry Camp this morning:

It goes on to beg for money, but that's the gist of it.

The True Believers are telling themselves whatever they need to hear to get them to November.

If anyone is on the Bush mailing list, I'd be interested in hearing their impression of the debate.

Politics.

You know -

If I never heard another word about politics between now and the election, I'd be the happiest man in the cul-de-sac.

I'm having guests next week.  I'm declaring DTManor a politics-free zone.

Signs will be hung.

Obscure reference to the subject of the following post.

Expression of an emotion, most likely anger.

Request that the reader look at a provided link.

Mock the author and/or subject of the quoted piece.  Give my "reading between the lines" interpretation in order to glean the author's meaning.  Give random bits of fact to prove why the author is full of shit, with profanity to punctuate my arguments.  Dismiss the author as a waste of space, and imply the world would be better off had he or she never existed.

Admit a belief in my own fallibility, and invite the reader to participate in the discussion in the provided feedback thread.

Intellectuals.

I'm pissed off.

Yet again I've been forced to suffer a fool who can write a three page thesis and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt why republicans are evil incarnate bent on the destruction of humanity and civilization, and yet cannot see the irony in his own "people should be free to be themselves" beliefs.

In the same conversation, a different person told me that he was shocked that I would vote for Bush, because I seemed to be a pretty intelligent guy. 

I walked away from that conversation, as it was neither the time nor the place for it, but the phrase that immediately leapt into my mind was, "The problem was so obvious, only an intellectual could ignore it."

The difference between intelligence and wisdom is as night and day, and this is where many so-called "intellectuals" fall down.  A person, let's call him Zachary, has 10 years of post high school education, but has never had to exist outside of the womb of his parents' basement and/or a dorm room.  He is walking through a desert and sees two men; one man is lying prone as if dead, and the other man is wielding a knife, plunging it into the flesh of the first man, putting his lips to the wound as to ingest the blood.  "Murderer!" Zachary will cry.  "Ghoul!"

Another man, we'll call him Geoffrey, lives in the mountains and never attended school a day in his life will walk by that same scene.  He says, "Oh, is that guy snake-bit?"

Zach thinks he knows it all and leaps to the wrong conclusion without asking questions, and in doing so not only displays his ignorance to the world, but at the same time he besmirches a Good Samaritan's reputation.  Zach is wrong, but at least he's loud and has an opinion.

Geoff knows what he knows and just to be sure asks a question anyway.

Zach is educated, but Geoff is wise.  Who has a better grip on reality?

I'm not implying a thing.

I'm just going to present a few facts.

1807-1920:  The federal government is small.  The only time it interferes with private industry is, generally, when the businesses need help; tariffs, subsidies, squashing a union.  A man lives and dies on his own abilities.  You either work hard and make it on your own, or you find a charity that will feed you.

1920 - the 19th Amendment, ensuring women's right to vote, is ratified by Congress, making official and nationwide the movement begun in Wyoming in 1869.  Many states had granted women suffrage prior to the constitutional amendment.

Post 1920 - The federal government is put to work uplifting moral standards such as prohibition, improving living standards, civic and election reforms such as civil service reforms, health and safety, protection of the natural environment, and governmental regulation of business.