An Overview of the New WIVTWID Feature
I’ve decided to write a series of postings that explain why I vote the way I do. Each topic will begin with a letter of the alphabet, but before I get started I want to make the list of topics. I need my reader’s help, since I have 11 more topics to identify. A list of what I have and don’t have follows.
Tucson, we have a problem
The mountain lion hunt in Sabino Canyon has been called off, the Canyon repoens tomorrow, and I’m pissed.
Warning: severe screediness follows.
A young woman was about to finish her first year of college…
… and like so many others her age she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat and had grown to be in strong favor of the distribution of all wealth in America. She felt deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch conservative, which she expressed openly.
One day she was challenging her father on his beliefs and his opposition to higher taxes on the rich & more welfare programs. In the middle of her heartfelt diatribe, based upon the lectures she had heard from her far-left professors at her school, he stopped her and asked her point blank how she was doing in school.
She answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain; that she had to study all the time and never had time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn’t even have time for a boyfriend and didn’t really have many college friends because of spending all her time studying, and she was taking a more difficult curriculum.
Her father listened and then asked, “How is your friend Mary?”
She replied, “Mary is barely getting by.” She continued, “All she has is barely a 2.0 GPA,” adding, ” and all she takes are easy classes and she never studies.” But to explain further she continued emotionally, “But Mary is so very popular on campus, college for her is a blast, she goes to all the parties all the time and very often doesn’t even show up for classes because she is too hung over.”
Her father then asked his daughter, “Why don’t you go to the Dean’s office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your 4.0 GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0?” He continued, “That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.”
The daughter, visibly shocked by the father’s suggestion, angrily fired back, “That wouldn’t be fair! I worked really hard for mine. I did without and Mary has done little or nothing. She played while I worked really hard!”
The father slowly smiled and said, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”
Hat tip: The Donovan
A Shooting Offense
I missed the birthday of the M1911. Thanks to Boots & Sabers for the reminder.
I hereby sentence myself to 5000 rounds through my Colt at the range for my offense. This sentence is to be carried out in as quickly and accurately a manner as possible. Shame on me.
Semi-Daily TRON (The Review Of the News)
Let me rephrase that: history will blame Clinton for the intelligence failure and Bin Laden for the attack.
I like blogs, they’re like your own personal printing press. Maybe I should start a newspaper.
Conjunction Junction
A rare meeting is in good viewing tonight. I’ll try and take some pictures, but the good news is that this conjunction can be seen throughout the rest of the month. With all the wedding planning going on, I may have to wait until then to get some time if tonight doesn’t work out.
My Thoughts on the Pledge Kerfuffle
Via The Corner:
Justice Souter’s question for Dr. Newdow was whether, even assuming that schoolchildren were being asked “as a technical matter” to make a personal religious affirmation, the recitation had become in practice “so tepid, so diluted, so far, let’s say, from a compulsory prayer that in fact it should be, in effect, beneath the constitutional radar.” Was it the case, Justice Souter asked, that by “the way we live and think and work in schools and in civic society in which the pledge is made, that whatever is distinctively religious as an affirmation is simply lost?”
Dr. Newdow replied: “That is a view that you may choose to take and the majority of Americans may choose to take. But it’s not the view I take, and when I see the flag and I think of pledging allegiance, it’s like I’m getting slapped in the face every time, bam, you know, `this is a nation under God, your religious belief system is wrong.’ “
Souter brings up a very good point. If we accept ceremony for the sake of ceremony, we lose the motivation for performing the ceremony in the first place. In that regard, the Pledge of Allegiance is today no more than a poem of sorts, lacking any meaning whatsoever. Dr. Newdow, for all his faults, is trying to find meaning in the Pledge, and he does. That his suit flies in the face of the first 180 years of the Constitutional republic and its traditions is beside the point. He is right in arguing that words have meaning (as they should), but Souter is also right in pointing out that our society has become so tepid, perhaps because of meaningless repitition, that the words have lost meaning.
This case is about, really, two things. First, at what point does speaking something with your mouth become a conscious affirmation of what you believe? Second, does the Congress, in an effort to validate and reaffirm the past history of the nation in acknowledging God, have a right to add two words to someone else’s writing?
I believe speaking something is an affirmation of your beliefs when you say it of your own free will and you understand what your are saying. I also believe that the Congress has every right to be resolved to reaffirm our past commitments to relying on God for our continued freedom, unity, and justice. They do not, however, have a right to coerce someone to say it.
Oh, you silly sun worshippers
Since it is rapidly approaching, can someone please explain to me why we as a nation have this ridiculous thing called Daylight Savings Time? How exactly is it a savings, since you have to give it back mid-fall? You’re not saving anything. You set your clocks forward, which means on the first day of this ritual you actually lose an hour, instead of saving it.
Boy I’m glad AZ doesn’t participate in this foolish, useless kludge.
Well, there goes the Internet Music Neighborhood
Uses Windows Media Player. Popular idea + common (proprietary) software + predatory real-world pricing = instant popularity. You have to admit, they know how to pull one over on Apple and Steve Jobs.
But then, so did Bill Gates. Its not as if its hard, just infrequently done.
The Contradictions of Gay “Marriage”
There is an inherent problem with the gay “marriage” movement, and it lies with the claims of its proponents. On the one hand, they claim that homosexuality is a “lifestyle choice”, yet on the other hand, they claim that they are gay because “God made them that way”, i.e. it’s in their genes that they like to get into each other’s jeans.
Horse apples and cow pies. Let’s address the points sequentially.