More irony for your Monday morning...

...vis-a-vis Houston mayor-elect Annise Parker (emphasis mine -- ed.):

Her sexual orientation did not become an issue in the mayor's race until after the Nov. 3 election produced no clear winner. Two anti-gay activists mailed fliers calling attention to her support from gay groups and to her relationship with her partner of 19 years, Kathy Hubbard. In addition, a group of black pastors spoke out against Parker for her so-called “gay agenda.”

Black pastors persecuting her? Wow. It reminds me of the results of the vote for Proposition 8 in California last November, which was to ban gay marriage in that state. As I recall, the black vote for Prop 8 was very high. I remember thinking then, as I think here, that it's really sad that a group that has been the victim of so much bigotry would exhibit it toward another group. No doubt the pastors would say that Parker chose to be lesbian, but I find that argument to be absurd in the extreme. Honestly, with anti-gay sentiments as widespread as they still are, why would anyone make the conscious choice to be such a social outcast? (Remember this conversation, Sabra?) Annise Parker didn't choose to be gay any more than those pastors chose to be black. And when one looks at it that way, the pastors' carping about Parker's "so-called'gay agenda'" look REALLY bigoted.

As for Parker's almost two-decade-long relationship with her partner -- we all know there are all too many heterosexual marriages that don't even last that long. If those black pastors pulled their heads out of their asses they might even see that Parker and her partner might have something to teach them.

To the irony...

...of blacks supporting gun control, you can add the irony of the fans of a football team in a predominantly black city having a chant which is believed to have its roots in minstrel shows making fun of black people. No doubt every Klan member who hears that chant smiles a snaggle-tooth grin as big as Lake Ponchartrain every time he hears it, too.

Sure looks like a good takedown...

...to me:

A 14-year-old boy has been charged with murder in the stabbing death of his mother's boyfriend on Saturday morning, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.
The teen's mother and her boyfriend, Juan Contreras, 33, argued at a party, authorities said. Contreras allegedly assaulted and threatened the woman before heading to their far east Houston apartment in the 13900 block of Alderson to collect his belongings.

Now, I'll admit the as-yet-undetermined facts of this case might show the boy's actions weren't justified; as this reads now, though, I can't help but agree with one of the commenters: "Taken into custody...? He should be given the keys to the city. Any low life who threatens and beats a woman deserves a knife in the gut."

I would substitute "a magazine full of .45ACP hollow-points" in place of "a knife in the gut," but hey, the kid did the best he could with what he had to work with. At any rate, his mother's gonna have one hell of a cautionary tale to tell future boyfriends: "It's in your best interests not to hit me. My son killed the last man who did that."

And another one bites the dust...

Another lefty meme, that is:

Annise Danette Parker was elected mayor of Houston on Saturday, winning her seventh consecutive city election and becoming both the first contender in a generation to defeat the hand-picked candidate of Houston's business establishment and the first openly gay person to lead a major U.S. city.

Which meme is that? You know, the one that says Texans and Southerners are bigoted hicks who'd string homosexuals up if they could get away with it. That was a particularly ugly race, too. I am glad to see that Houston voters weren't swayed by the efforts to paint the race as a referendum on gay rights. At least I would hope they voted for Parker on her merits and not just because of her sexual orientation. Harris County may be a bit more liberal than the rest of the state, as Obama did win the county in the '08 presidential election. I think this is still noteworthy despite that, though, especially considering these are the same folks who put Chuck Rosenthal and John B. Holmes in the county DA's chair.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, Dennis.

I read this from Dennis Henigan (of the Organization Formerly Known As Handgun Control) and got a chuckle out of it:

Generally speaking, Congressional offices hear more frequently from “gun rights” partisans than from constituents who support stronger gun laws. This, of course, says nothing about public support for gun control. For example, over 80% of Americans support legislation to close the “gun show loophole” by extending Brady background checks to private sales at gun shows. But it is a level of support not generally reflected in constituent communications to Members of Congress.

In other words, the American public overwhelmingly support more gun control but they're not motivated enough to call their Congresscritters to demand it, getting themselves drowned out and their wishes denied by the noisy minority of the eeeevil gun lobby. Does that make any sense whatsoever? Yeah, to me either. I'd think that if the support for making all transfers undergo background checks was that high, Congress would be hearing from the people. I'd guess those polls were rigged to support HCI's goals. That's honestly the only thing that I could think of that would explain such a poll.

As for the bad reviews of Henigan's book, well, a perusal of said reviews shows quite a few of them to be well-written, and with actual cites to back up what they say. The way he (and some on our side, regrettably) talks one would think the reviews were full of "OMG Henigan is teh suxxorz!!!!1111one!!!"-type writing from people who hadn't read the book, but a surprising number of them are actually very well written, i.e., "Henigan is wrong and here is why." Of course that doesn't surprise me. We are the ones on whose side the facts and logic lie.

Taking the old saying a tad too literally...

As I was at the dentist yesterday waiting to have two wisdom teeth yanked, I had the TV on WGN watching the tail end of "Nash Bridges," followed by the midday news. One of the items on the newscast concerned the police in a certain Chicago suburb (whose name escapes me at the moment) handing out whistles for people to blow when they were being mugged, robbed or what-have-you. I know people talk about "blowing the whistle" on crime, but it seems to me that is taking that saying entirely too literally. One wonders how many people in that benighted area would come to their fellow subjects' assistance as they heard that whistle blow as opposed to waiting on somebody with a badge and a gun. I'd bet most of them would not. Even if the powers that be in Illinois do not actively try to "discourage people from self-help" as certain folks do in Massachusetts, you know the let-someone-else-do-it mindset is only helped along by Illinois politicians' resolute denial of Illinoisans' right of self-defense.

And a, well, not-so-random observation: It didn't hurt so badly when those teeth were pulled. The dentist numbed me up right-good, I tell you what. Once that anesthetic wore off, though, I was in pain like nothing I had known before in my entire life. Seriously. I just wanted to curl up in a ball on the floor and whine. Vicodin and ice on my jaw cleared that riiiight up, though...

Making saints of devils?

It certainly seems people are prone to do that, especially when the devils shuffle off this mortal coil.

I can definitely understand BR's daughter getting pissed off about what was being said about him before it was deleted. I can also understand her thinking he was a good person. But I can't agree with that, or with a commenter there saying he "led a good life...despite his imperfections." Those imperfections being, of course, that he was an elitist, vitriolic asshole who tried to divide the gun owner community even more than it already is, when it needs now more than ever to present a united front against those who would take all of the guns. The fact that a certain organization which advocates the government having a monopoly on force called him a "profile in courage" (linked at SIH) ultimately tells me all I need to know about just how "good" of a person he was. It sucks for his family that he's dead, and I'm sorry for their loss, but that's about all the sympathy I can muster.

Civilization suspended?

Oh, man. Leonard Pitts returns to form in a spectacular fashion this morning, with so much hand-wringing that I barely even know what to tackle. There was one thing in this column that jumped out at me more than anything, though:

Can-do fell apart, civilization fell apart, New Orleans drowning and its trapped people turning feral and mean while those whose job it was to rescue them bungled, bickered, pointed fingers and otherwise acquitted themselves with all the smooth efficiency of the Keystone Kops.

"Those whose job it was to rescue them." I wonder if it ever occurred to Pitts how illuminating of a commentary such a statement is on how far we have fallen -- that the federal government was expected to shoulder the responsibility of getting those people out of New Orleans, as opposed to the local and state governments, or -- horror of horrors! -- the people themselves to get out of harm's way via assistance from their friends and family. Why was it that we saw the horrors of Katrina as an example of government dropping the ball, as opposed to seeing it as the result of multi-generational dependence on government on all levels (hence, perhaps, family members being unable to help the downtrodden get out) to do things the Founding Fathers never intended government to do? Things like that only make it that much easier for civilization to fall apart; yet Pitts has yet to address that phenomenon. I wonder why that is?

Hey, another rocker who shares my sentiments...

...on country music:

We all love country music - real country music, not this awful, awful, awful mockery they put out today. They should be ashamed...

(Benmont Tench, a co-founder of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.)

I've said all this before, but I think it bears repeating. It's one thing when you have the classic and Texas-red dirt country singers denigrating Nashville country, but it's quite another when you have the stars of other genres doing it. I recall Tom Petty himself saying a few years back that all this new country sucked eggs too. In a way you could say that the other genres' stars saying this actually boosts the credibility of what the folks in the country genre are saying, because those other singers don't have a vested interest in the popularity of real country music. One could say they come to it with a more unbiased eye.

Of course, the argument goes in an entirely different direction here, with this quote from Kellie Pickler:

I like the tears and the realness in the voices, and it's not overproduced — no smoke and mirrors..."Willie's Place" on XM Satellite Radio is all I listen to.

I must admit I was really surprised by that, as what they play on Willie's Place is just so radically different from the type of music that Kellie Pickler records. Granted, I guess it shouldn't be surprising that the record labels would try to steer her in such a different direction -- but the fact that she doesn't listen to the type of music the record labels want her to record, is not a good commentary on that type of music. I wonder if Taylor Swift's ears were burning when Ms. Pickler said that?

(h/t Country California)

Who are the real racists...

...here?

Amid all the headlines generated by Tiger Woods' troubles — the puzzling car accident, the suggestions of marital turmoil and multiple mistresses — little attention has been given to the race of the women linked with the world's greatest golfer.
Except in the black community.
...
The darts reflect blacks' resistance to interracial romance. They also are a reflection of discomfort with a man who has smashed barriers in one of the whitest of all sports and assumed the mantle of world's most famous athlete, once worn by Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan.
...
On the one hand, Ebonie Johnson Cooper doesn't care that Woods' wife and alleged mistresses are white because he is “quote-unquote not really black.”
...
The color of one's companion has long been a major measure of “blackness” — one major reason why the biracial Barack Obama was able to fend off early questions about his black authenticity.
“Had Barack had a white wife, I would have thought twice about voting for him,” Johnson Cooper said.

Wow. Not really black? If Obama had a white wife that person would have thought twice about voting for him? And all this time the media have been trying to tell us that it's the white people who are the racists, while here it's put on display for all to see that the black people have their own attitudes and tests on racial purity that would have everyone up in arms were it white people doing it. Tell me how this is any different from the attitudes of the KKK, Aryan Nations, Stormfront, et al?

"....brain...going...all...'splodey..."

Palin Reactions

If Sarah Palin can draw this kind of crowd to a book signing, imagine what kind of crowd she could draw to the voting booth in 2012. I will never understand the feelings of those who say she is a liability to the Republican Party with these reactions. It seems there weren't any protesters to speak of -- if there were, I'd think the story would have mentioned them. I know it's just one book signing, but even so, I tend to think the mewling of the GOP elite is, well, just that.

On the Southeast Texas weather...

...I think one of my college buddies said it best on Facebook this morning:

"I was just watching the Weather Channel and Jim Cantore is in Houston, which means everyone should evacuate."

Heh...

If a certain gift works for someone...

...for the better, in ways that are not advertised, who gives a flying rat's ass if others might think it's tacky? I might look odd with two cell phone cases hanging off my jeans -- one for my phone and one for my iPod -- but I would damn sure rather have those cases than risk leaving my cell phone or iPod in my pocket and running it through the washing machine. I have lost an iPod that way; I am sure others have as well, and I'd bet more than a few have lost cell phones that way too.

...and justice for all?

Not quite...

...(Martin Luther) King's vision included more than justice for black folk. His vision included all God's children, red and yellow, black and white.
King's vision and struggles are important to remember as serious conversations about immigration reform are again beginning to brew, as indicated by the remarks last month of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at the Center for American Progress.

I think it's rather disingenuous for The Rev. Clemons to be comparing MLK's vision to that of those who advocate certain methods of untying the immigration Gordian knot. It has always struck me that groups such as LULAC, La Raza and (to a much greater extent) MEChA, as opposed to seeking justice for "all God's children," only seek it for their preferred race. And so it continues to this very day. I thought it was particularly self-righteous of him to admonish us all to "(l)isten not to false prophets who wrap their politics around the fear of the immigrant" as he continued to build his premise on the shifting sands of the argument that the advocacy groups share King's goals of justice for all. It's not the immigrant many of us fear; it's the balkanization of American society and culture that is encouraged by these advocacy groups. Sooner or later that is going to have to be confronted and dealt with. And touchy-feely rhetoric from disingenuous clergymen isn't going to be nearly enough to do it.

Quote of the Day...

Ryan Streeter, former Bush White House domestic policy adviser and and current senior fellow at the Legatum Institute, a London independent policy think tank:

California, as everyone knows, has a coolness factor that Texas cannot match...But unless one has been living in a cave, everyone knows the cool state is also the broke state.

Yep. And everyone who's paying attention knows that California's coolness quotient seems to be declining all the time, for as many know, people are fleeing the state in droves, to the point that you're looking at paying at least twice as much for a U-Haul truck to move from California to Texas as you would be paying for a move from Texas to California.

Yes, really. According to the U-Haul website, to rent a 26-ft. truck from Houston to L.A. will cost you $555 if you pick it up a week from today, whereas under those same parameters, an L.A. to Houston rental will run you $2050. Granted, a commenter to this post says it's a bit more complicated than that; but while that may be true, it still deserves to be pointed out that Texas' major metropolitan areas are growing in population while California's are shrinking.

Misinterpretation?

Now, I will acknowledge I might be misinterpreting this...

As an alumnus of St. Thomas University and having been reared in a Catholic family, I would like to respond to your article in Sunday's Chronicle regarding Cardinal Daniel DiNardo's opposition to abortion (“DiNardo not going to ease up criticism of health bill issue; Cardinal says church has a duty to voice its views against abortion,” Page A1).
I regard the church's stand as extremely hypocritical and insensitive to women who risk their health bearing the burden of having more children than they can afford. This issue should be decided within the family without coercion from any church.

...but it seems to me that the author of the above passage is saying the Catholics should be fine with using abortion as birth control, and for the life of me I can't get my head wrapped around such "reasoning." As for not having children than one can afford, well, what happened to using some sort of, um, more conventional contraceptive? I would think that was far preferable to abortion, and cheaper to boot. As for this...

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and Pope Benedict don't seem to understand the difference between lobbying and blackmail. When you threaten a member of Congress with withholding of church rites if they don't vote a certain way, that's blackmail, not lobbying.

Huh, and all this time I thought the Catholics were just asking the politician members of their church to adhere to one of their most fundamental beliefs. Hey, wait a minute, I still do think that....

Everybody knows this is the fault...

...of American gun shows...

Mexico cartels buying officials with campaign cash

Yep, and everyone knows what would remedy that, right? An "assault weapons ban" in the United States...

You can't have one without the other...

...or, Cry me a river, Chet Flippo...

"Honky Tonk Badonkadonk," Trace Adkins (2005) -- I know Jamey Johnson was a co-writer, but I don't hold it against him. I respect Trace as an artist, and I don't hold it against him, either. It's a tough business climate in country music these days. But "Badonkadonk" and especially its accompanying video represent the absolute bottom for country music. And this opened the floodgates for even more vulgar songs and trashy videos and even gave skin a bad name. Everyone involved is capable of much better.

I'll admit he's absolutely right here. The thing about it is, though, is that this sort of thing is what's going to happen when you introduce those pop influences in country music in an effort to get the younger audience. You're not going to get one without the other, because they're both part of an effort to gain new audiences for the music. Just like the music itself evolves, so does the marketing for it. This isn't going on in a laboratory in which one can keep undesirable elements out. And if Chet Flippo is going to defend country music going pop, which of course he has done in the past, then he doesn't have any business whatsoever bitching about it taking on the characteristics of pop music or it being marketed like pop music. Different audiences call for different marketing schemes. If I can see that, then why can't he? Is it really more complicated than that?

(h/t Country California)

If they don't condemn him for this...

...then they nigh well should...

Regarding “4 officers shot dead in ambush” (Page A1, Monday), since Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted the suspect's sentence, I assume the Republican Party will now condemn Huckabee with the same fervor as it did Gov. Michael Dukakis, who afforded a convicted murderer a long weekend.

I am sure the guy who wrote that was an Obama voter, but even so he does have a point. It'll be quite interesting to see if Huckabee comes back for another round in '12...

UPDATE: Quote of the day, from a commenter at Hot Air, in response to a Huckabee quote from this Politico story:

“It is disgusting, but people use anything as a political weapon.”…Mike Huckabee

You mean, like referring to your opponent’s (Romney) religion (Mormonism) as being in league with Satan in the midst of a campaign? YOU MEAN DISGUSTING LIKE THAT YOU SANCTIMONIOUS PILE OF DEMAGOGUERY?

Ooooh, burn!

Interesting contrast here...

...that I just HAD to blog about...

Now playing at Hair Nation, Sirius Ch. 23: Queensryche, "Jet City Woman," which of course has the line: "Fortunes are lost on the women I've seen, but without you, I can't breathe...you're the air to me..."
As I was listening to it, I saw today's Quigmans. I thought that was pretty funny. But maybe that's just me...

I'm just not seeing anything suicidal here...

....or, Maybe Kathleen Parker has a different definition of "suicide pact" than I do:

Just when independents and moderates were considering revisiting the GOP tent. Just when a near-perfect storm of unpopular Democratic ideas — from massive health care reform to terrorist show trials, not to mention global warming hype — is coagulating over 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Just when the GOP was gaining traction following gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey … Republicans perform a rain dance at their own garden party.
Things were just going too well.
Thus, some conservative members of the party have come up with a list of principles they want future candidates to agree to or forfeit backing by the Republican National Committee.
The so-called purity test is a 10-point checklist — a suicide pact, really — of alleged Republican positions. Anyone hoping to play on Team GOP would have to sign off on eight of the 10 — through their voting records, public statements or a questionnaire.

Okay then. Let us, for just a moment, look through this checklist (PDF ALERT) and its essentials:

1. Support of smaller government, lower debt and lower taxes.
2. Support of market-based health reform as opposed to government-based health reform and government-run health care.
3. Support of market-based energy reform and opposing cap-and-trade;
4. Support of workers' right to secret ballot.
5. Support of legal immigration and assimilation and opposition to amnesty.
6. Support of troop surges in the Middle East.
7. Support of containment of Iran and North Korea vis-a-vis their nuke threats.
8. Supporting retention of the Defense of Marriage Act.
9. Opposing government funding of abortion and rationing and denial of health care.
10. Supporting the right to keep and bear arms by opposing further restrictions on gun ownership.

Now, granted, this list does have its flaws, in particular No. 8. As a libertarian who thinks the government has no business telling people whom they can and cannot marry, I find the DOMA to be a tremendous affront to personal liberty in this country, even being quite heterosexual as I am.

However, I see absolutely nothing wrong with any of the other nine items in this list whatsoever. After all, for example, if you support higher taxes, more gun control and amnesty for illegals, for all practical intents and purposes, you're...a Democrat. The only problem I might see in some of them is their phrasing, i.e., "support this by opposing this." To that extent I might agree with Kathleen Parker that taking positions on certain issues might "require more than a Sharpie check in a little square." On the other hand, I think it's safe to say this list takes all those so-called "nuances" and distills them down to their bare essentials. And I don't really see anything wrong with that either.

I am not surprised that Parker just preferred to take the list at face value and proclaim it to be some sort of Manichean litmus test, as that's the only spin on it that gives her "argument," if you want to call it that, any credibility whatsoever. It is, however, ironic that she would contend that "the problem is that many conservatives have lost faith in the ability of Republican leaders to think" considering how she leveled every other accusation in that piece off the cuff, evidently with no other reasons to back them up than "because I said so and my status as an elite media pundit matters." Such a method of argument, of course, requires absolutely zero thinking.

Just some random observations...

...prompted by this story:

The brazen escape early Monday of a pistol-wielding rapist — a career criminal with a penchant for abducting and assaulting girls as young as 7 — had prosecutors and police scrambling to notify past victims while state lawmakers, once again, demanded a crackdown on prison contraband.

There are those who want to make it harder for average citizens to get a gun, all the while saying, "you don't need guns, because the police will protect you." Well, what happens when this guy takes down someone who's not in blue? Why should ordinary citizens be left to wait on the police to save them from monsters like this when, as the courts have ruled, the police don't have any responsibility to the individual citizen, just to the public at large?

I should note I would never argue that the police DO have a responsibility to protect the individual citizen. After all, that would leave the door open to huge liability when the individual citizen has harm visited upon him or her. And there are only so many people out there who are willing to put on the badge and gun. However, even if there were enough people to assign a cop as a personal bodyguard to everyone, it still wouldn't be feasible, because, well, those cops have to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families too. And the money for that has to come from somewhere.

So it only follows that at some point, individual citizens are necessarily going to have to take responsibility for their own protection at some point -- and this responsibility is not going to end when they step out the doors of their homes. Which puts Doug Pennington's mewling about being forced to live with concealed weapons in a whole new and quite unflattering light. I guess he and his kind would prefer that my Sabra and her beautiful little girls be at the mercy of monsters like that. One more time...you wonder why I think gun-grabbers are by and large evil, despicable people who deserve whatever harm criminals might wish to inflict upon them? There's your answer.

The amazing world of self-medication...

...or, Hey, did you know alcohol has other uses besides getting you drunk? That's right!

I have been in what seems like constant pain this weekend, with what I think is an impacted wisdom tooth. Started around last Wednesday and seems to have gotten progressively worse. I will be making an appointment with a dentist posthaste, but in the meantime, my dear, sweet Sabra suggested the fifth of vodka I have on hand could help with the tooth in general, with alcohol being the disinfectant that it is. So, I went a-Googling, and found this: 21 Amazing Alternate Uses for Vodka.

Several of them have supposedly been disproved, but I'm here to tell you that No. 20 -- swishing a shot of vodka over an aching tooth and allowing your gums to absorb the alcohol to numb the pain -- works pretty damn good. It works even when the pain awakens you from a deep sleep at 0245 hours, as happened to me today. Swished the vodka around and let it soak, then back to bed I went till 0735 or so. So not only does the alcohol keep it clean, but it works as an anesthetic of sorts. Had it not been for Sabra I might never have been alerted to that. One more reason I love that woman...

More bloggy for you soon...

...but right now I am spending time with my baby. More posting to come soon. ;-)

For once, I agree with Clarence Page...

...but perhaps not for the reasons he thinks.

Americans might need to have a candid conversation on race -- but honestly, if we're going to talk about race vis-a-vis anything, we need to talk about why it is so many folks on the left are so damn eager to throw out the "RACIST!" accusation every time some person or group comes out opposing various presidential initiatives, such as government health care, or cap-and-trade. I particularly loved (well, okay, maybe not) the way Page spun this:

In some cases, the nuances as to what's racist or what isn't draw distinctions without much of a significant difference. Take, for example, the anti-Obama billboard that auto dealer Phil Wolf erected recently in Wheat Ridge, Colo. In big letters it says, “BIRTH CERTIFICATE” and “PROVE IT,” a reference to the goofy movement that questions Obama's natural-born citizenship despite overwhelming evidence. It also features two cartoonish images of Obama wearing a turban and reads, “President or Jihad?” and “Wake Up America! Remember Ft. Hood.”
In interviews, Wolf has said he's convinced Obama is a secret Muslim, a view that Pew Research Center polls have shown about 11 percent of the population shares. Would they feel that way about a white president with Obama's background? Frankly, it's not hard to imagine, considering the paranoid streak in American politics that has nurtured worse myths than that about previous presidents.
Maybe that's what my friend and MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews was thinking when he blurted out during coverage of the 1,500 people waiting for Palin in a Grand Rapids, Mich., bookstore that “They look like a white crowd to me” and “not that there's anything wrong with it, but it is pretty monochromatic up there” and “I think there is a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs. other people.”
Conservative bloggers took umbrage at that, for all the understandable reasons of racial ambiguity that I listed above. You're not a racist just because everybody around you happens to be of the same race as you. Yet, as political demographics take shape, there is a tribal aspect to politics. Birds of a feather flock together, social scientists tell us, and so do people.

Well, no. I would put money on the proposition that conservative (and libertarian) bloggers (and non-bloggers too!) took umbrage at that because it was a filthy slander from an Obama-fellating pansy who has nothing of substance to say in response to why there's, well, ANY opposition at all to his Dear Leader. And if we're going to talk about all the white folks banding together, then we need to take a good, long, hard look at the black, brown, and yellow folks doing it too. Really, though, we need to break away from Black vs. White, and move on to Pink vs. Grey, as the peerless Bill Whittle put it once upon a time. If you haven't read that linked BW essay, I very, very highly recommend you do so, but I particularly loved this line:

"Let’s not talk about Black and White tribes… I know more pathetic, hateful, racists and more decent, capable and kind people of both colors for that to make any sense at all. Do you not? Do you not know corrupt, ignorant, violent people, both black and white, to cure you of this elementary idiocy? Have you not met and talked and laughed with people who were funny, decent, upright, honest and honorable of every shade so that the very idea of racial politics should just seem like a desperate and divisive and just plain evil tactic to hold power?"

Why yes, Bill. I know good and bad people of all colors. And yes, the very idea of racial politics IS evil. Those who engage in it are going to have much to answer for, I believe.

A bit of a rant...

....inspired by my baby's troubles with Windows Vista and downloading Service Pack 2 this morning...
You would think Microsoft would have their shit straight by now in relation to updates. You would, however, be wrong. She was downloading SP2 this morning and ran into a corrupt program file, and everything just STOPPED. I did a bit of searching for her and found out that this would require re-installation of Vista. She knew what I was probably thinking, so she went ahead and said it: "This is why you own a Mac, I know." And indeed it is. I know Vista has been huge amounts of trouble for a lot of people, and I have a pretty good idea as to why...but one would think after, what, six versions (?) of their operating system, they'd have it to the point where updating the system wouldn't grind the machine to a halt. Yet one more reason it's gonna be nothin' but Mac or Linux, or some other alternate OS, for me from now on if I can help it.

Ahhh, more great late-'90s George...

...at Prime Country, Sirius Ch. 61: "I caught you lookin' at me when I looked at you, yes I did, ain't that true...you won't get embarrassed by the things I do, I just want to dance with you..."
The lead-off single from Strait's 1998 album One Step At A Time, "I Just Want To Dance With You" spent three weeks at No. 1 in the summer of 1998. Songs like this were about as close to bubble-gum as George ever got. I've heard some people claim people like me have a double standard for not minding songs like this, but I don't so much mind them if they sound halfway country, and this song had a great fiddle-and-steel arrangement that didn't sound like it was tacked on, as many songs from the more contemporary acts do.

The reviews of One Step At A Time in general weren't quite as positive as the ones for the two sets that preceded it, Blue Clear Sky and Carrying Your Love With Me, but in spite of that I for one thought the cd was arguably the best of those three, It had some of the best single songs of George's career, among them the title track, "Remember the Alamo" and "Maria."

I always thought it was pretty nifty that the album had a song with the title "Remember the Alamo," considering it was released on April 21 -- San Jacinto Day here in Texas, the day that the Texians won their independence from Mexico, with the Texian soldiers' battle cry being "Remember the Alamo!" The gut-string-soaked ballad "Maria," was, in a way, my introduction to the Texas music scene, as it was penned and originally recorded by Robert Earl Keen; I bought the Keen cd with the original version of that song (West Textures) a few months later, and really liked it. I really should pull those cds out and put 'em on the iPod...

I don't get it.

I don't fully understand why certain people are making such a big deal out of the Rhode Island Roman Catholic bishop's decision to ask Patrick Kennedy to stop receiving Communion due to his pro-abortion stance. It seems rather cut-and-dried to me. I know some will say that the Catholic Church is being judgmental here and it's unbecoming of them to do that, but the bishop isn't asking Kennedy to stop taking Communion based on anything he has done. He's asking Kennedy to stop taking it based on what he believes, which to me is clearly a fundamental difference and makes Mario Cuomo's complaint about faith guiding one's authority little more than a half-assed attempt at rationalizing whatever beliefs one wants to hold. But that's just what I think...

As usual, some juicy tidbits are to be found...

...in the letters to the editor in this morning's Chron:

Palin once stayed with her daughter at a luxury hotel for five days, which brought her grand total for travel (including air fare) to more than $3,000! It is clear that Palin is not ready for the White House after all. She is going to have to learn how to squander taxpayer money in a much bigger way if she aspires to the pinnacle of politics. When our president jets off to New York for a few hours to go on a date with the first lady for a price tag of several hundred thousand dollars on the taxpayers' tab, that is presented as presidential good taste that Americans should appreciate.

Yep. Who says American news media don't have one set of standards for Democratic politicians and another for Republican?
I am reminded, though, of something I heard not long ago, in regards to Palin's book; a Palin fan was dissatisfied with Palin's not calling the McCain people out earlier, saying that "evidently she did not have the spirit to rock the boat" then. While I can understand that opinion somewhat, I don't necessarily think it was bad that she stayed silent then. I am absolutely certain that had she rocked the boat back then it would have been a lot worse for the Republicans, because the Democrats and their PR firms (aka the American news media) would have taken full advantage of that. It might have been a bit late, but I think it was better she call those apparatchiks out a bit late than not at all. And I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Despite the relatively close margin by which McCain lost last November, he was still arguably the second-worst candidate (after NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani) that the Republicans could have chosen to be their standard bearer and had he picked almost anyone other than Sarah Palin to be his running mate, Obama's margin of victory would have been much larger than it was. Palin deserved so much better, and so did the rest of us.

Real Americans? Real funny.

I actually saw this column in the dead-tree edition of yesterday's Houston Chronicle, sitting in Beason's Park on the Colorado River just outside of Columbus with Sabra yesterday, and I will tell you the same thing I told her. Where the hell does E.J. Dionne get off talking about what Real Americans do and do not understand? He talks as if he has the slightest clue of what anyone outside the District of Columbia boundaries actually thinks, when the truth of the matter is that he proves himself to be just another insulated lefty journalism elitist every time he sits down at his keyboard. It'd be interesting to see how Dionne defines "Real American," too. Judging from the column, I'd bet he probably defines it as "one who voted for Obama for his promise to do his best to nationalize one-seventh of the American economy," or however much of it health care is. Going by that definition, I'd wager that less than half of the electorate comprises Real Americans. Who says modern liberals don't know how to demonize the opposition?

On a different note in the column, I got a huge kick out of this line:

Defenders of the Senate always say the Founders envisioned it as a deliberative body that would cool the passions of the House. But Sessions unintentionally blew the whistle on how what's happening now has nothing to do with the Founders' design.

And I bet you money that Dionne hasn't a clue as to why things go down so often like that in the Senate. A "deliberative body that would cool the passions of the House" is EXACTLY how the Founders envisioned the Senate, and that is exactly why they were initially not subject to popular vote. The Constitution as written specified that Senators, as representatives of the states, were to be elected by the state legislatures; it was only with the passage of the 17th Amendment in the early part of last century that they started being elected by the people, as the members of the House of Representatives are. So with that, the Senate became nothing more than a smaller version of the House, and the states as entities don't have any representatives in Washington anymore. And I would also bet you that Dionne, being the lefty that he is, thinks this is a GOOD thing, because hey, the people know best, even the ones that, as Tam so pithily put it, think "legislation proclaiming the theme song from Friends as the national anthem or Britney Spears being voted Dictator-for-Life" is a good idea. And you'll note, of course, that the health care bill recently passed by the thinnest of margins. Did Dionne really not think that would be at least one indicator of just how contentious the bill would be in the Senate? Or that the popular-vote-elected Senators would take advantage of the rules not repealed by the 17th Amendment? Once again, E.J. Dionne is being his typical naive and/or disingenuous self.

I also got a kick out of this howler earlier in the piece:

Republicans know one other thing: Practically nobody is noticing their delay-to-kill strategy. Who wants to discuss legislative procedure when there's so much fun and profit in psychoanalyzing Sarah Palin?

Not to retort to third-grade-recess-level discourse, Scooter, but YOU and YOUR people started THAT shit. It's a bit late to be bitching about it now, don't you think?

So male culture is now to blame...

....for gang rape, apparently...

The ingredients for tragedy all were present, experts say. A bunch of men. A vulnerable young woman. Alcohol.
What happened next, authorities say, degenerated into a two-hour-long gang rape by as many as 10 males. Another 20 people allegedly watched as the victim was assaulted, beaten bloody and robbed of her jewelry but they did not stop it or call police.
...
"Everybody was asking why did this happen?" said Peggy Reeves Sanday, a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist who has written extensively about gang rape. "It's very clear if you look at the male culture and the bonding culture of young males and the adventure and bravado of a social situation."

Wow, who knew such naked bigotry disguised as legitimate scientific observation would make it into a newspaper story like this one? Honestly. Can you imagine the outcry if Ms. Sanday had said something such as, "It's very clear if you look at the black culture and the bonding culture of young blacks"? I know well that anecdote is not the plural of data, but my buddies and I never did anything like this when we were plied with alcohol. And I very seriously doubt we are the exception here.

This sort of thing reminds me of a discussion I had with my darling Sabra not long ago. If I remember correctly, I had suggested she study anthropology; she recoiled at the suggestion, saying that the field was permeated with moral relativism, as part of being a scientist was being able to make observations free of any kind of judgment or personal bias. Sounds good in theory, but in the practice of anthropology, this sort of thing means you can't call out things like this as the barbaric practices they are. After she pointed that out to me, I saw exactly where she was coming from. And the flip side of that is what we see here, that is, that you can get away with smearing entire races and even genders if you do it under the guise of scientific observation. It'll be interesting to see who else picks up on what this particular anthropologist said.

A new favorite for me, from Waylon Jennings...

...at The Roadhouse, Sirius Ch. 62: "Someone called us outlaws, in some old magazine...and New York sent a posse down like I ain't never seen..."
A hit record for Waylon in 1978, "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out of Hand" was based on a true story, the one of his getting busted for possession of cocaine. I had not heard this song that much before I got Sirius, but it's gotten to be one of my favorites. As bad as I hate to admit it, I really got familiar with the song due to James Hetfield's recording it on the 2003 Waylon tribute I've Always Been Crazy, and while the Waylon original is different, it remains the best.

Dear Abby drops the ball...

...once again:

My wife of 25 years, in an effort to get me to stop smoking, refuses to have sex until I quit. It's been more than a year since we made love.
I love my wife with all my heart, and I always will. I plan to stop smoking, but not this way. She will not give in (or give out). I don't want to think of sex as her weapon, but it is. Any advice on how to cope with my unwinnable battle?
DESPERATE in Arlington
Dear Desperate:
Yes. You mentioned you plan to quit smoking, so why not start now? Read on:
Dear Abby:
On Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009, the American Cancer Society is celebrating the 34th Great American Smokeout...

Now, this whole Great American Smokeout is a great thing, but is it wrong here that I see the issue as one of the woman's use of sex as leverage as much as it is the man's not quitting the cigarettes? Haven't made love for more than a year? I really don't know what to say to that. I maybe hopelessly naive here, but I thought using sex for such purposes was supposed to be verboten. I am not a relationship expert; all I know is that I think that woman's doing her husband wrong even if it is for a good cause, and I'd think that if the roles were reversed, too. Thoughts?

This ran in a TEXAS newspaper?

Yeah, it did...

Production of the AR-15 sporting rifles a big mistake
...
I’m a strong Second Amendment rights person. I stand against fire arms registration and government control and confiscation of our guns. But I strongly feel that the firearm manufacturers of our country are making a big mistake in producing the AR-15 sporting rifles.
...
These modern sporting rifles are inflammatory in looks — they don’t look like modern hunting rifles. They are military in looks. They look like they were produced to kill men, not deer.
...
...why endanger our Second Amendment rights by manufacturing and defending a modern hunting rifle that has such an inflammatory design? It plays right into the hands of the anti-gun movement. They love the looks of the AR-15. It’s easy to enrage the average American against such an “assault rifle.”

Let’s get wise. We have a difficult enough task defending our right to own firearms without this foolish battle.

Wow, where to start here? I think if you say things like "I support the Second Amendment, but..." my fellow gun owners and I are well within our rights to call you out as NOT supporting the right to keep and bear arms. Either you do or you don't, and if you support throwing any kind of gun to the anti-freedom wolves, for any reason whatsoever, you are not a supporter of the right to arms. I really do believe it's just that simple. Jim Darnell makes it even easier to call him out, as he even readily acknowledges the excellence of the platform for hunting, calling the rifles "light, compact and accurate." Yet he still advocates ceasing production of the rifles on the flimsy grounds that "it's easy to enrage the average American."

So I guess he thinks it's not even worth trying to educate this archetypal "average American." Of course that's ASSUMING what he says is true. And I'd be willing to bet that isn't the case, because of the very facts he uses in his column -- namely that it's a very popular rifle and that it's produced by several different manufacturers in MANY different calibers, from the .223 Remington right on up to the .50BMG. With that large of a market for those rifles, after the expiration of the Clinton gun ban and especially after last year's elections -- and the lack of a groundswell of support for a semiautomatic rifle ban -- it's worth asking just how "enraged" Americans are about these weapons. Not enough to make that much of a difference, I think, if ANY.

Wow, what a pathetic excuse for a man...

...Doug Pennington is:

[I]sn’t it ironic how some libertarians want government to stay out of their lives, yet have no problem with forcing other people to live with loaded, concealed weapons everywhere they turn? The grocery store; the park; the school; the airport. Apparently, we have the “freedom” to live with what these so-called libertarians tell us to live with. After all, they have the guns, right?

Actually, no. I see no irony in that whatsoever. Libertarians merely want others to respect their right of self-defense. Doug Pennington thinks said libertarians are going to pull out their guns and start shooting for whatever reason, I guess. I get the idea he's confusing libertarianism with nihilism, or one or more aspects of one belief system mixed up with the other belief system. Which makes him either a blithering idiot (spouting off about things about which he knows little to nothing) or appallingly disingenuous (intentionally confusing the two belief systems and/or aspects thereof in a cynical attempt to take advantage of his audience's ignorance vis-a-vis the different belief systems). At any rate, his rhetoric does not speak well of him. One wonders how he gets out of bed in the morning with such an overweening fear of his fellow human being.

He is right about one thing, though. We DO have all the guns. He and his anti-liberty ilk would do well to keep that in mind as they push for ever more restrictions on our liberties.

I don't know if it goes under the heading....

...of "Only in Texas," but this took balls of steel:

A Missouri City man was able to get the drop on a pair of armed robbers Wednesday, shooting one several times as the other fled, authorities said.
...
After he was forced upstairs, the man managed to grab a pistol and began shooting at the attackers, striking one several times, Bailey said.

Huh. Now, the antis always tell us guns are bad for self-defense because the goblins will get the jump on you with them, but here this guy was working on his car in his yard, forced in the house with a rifle, no less, and he manages to get a pistol under that stress and take down one of the would-be robbers. I'd guess it was the goblin with the gun, too. (So much for the argument, as well, that rifle always trumps pistol...) To paraphrase the inimitable JayG: Do NOT fuck with Texans. We WILL get a gun and shoot your stupid ass even if you DO get the jump on us.

Oh, and one final note: The resident shooter was 20 years old, one year younger than the legal age to own a pistol. Why is it that our state and federal governments deem him unworthy to own the very tool that likely saved his life?

UPDATE: Mike W. pointed out in comments that one can possess a pistol at 18, but one may only buy a pistol at 21. I knew this but did not think of it as I was writing earlier. He also points out something else:

This also illustrates why you should have a gun ready to go. If he had to abide by a "safe storage" law he'd never have been able to use the gun for self-defense.

Yep. God bless Texas, as it has not yet been sullied by such feel-good nonsense and with the grace of God never will.

To all the veterans, near and far...

...thank you all, for making the sacrifices you have made and are making for all of us. May we prove ourselves worthy of them.

Personally, I thought it was the government...

...that got us into this mess:

A new poll shows Southerners are fretting about job loss and the economy and don't think the federal government is doing enough to address either.
...
Nearly 72 percent said they favored new government programs to create jobs.

And no doubt economics and history teachers everywhere -- and especially from Texas to Virginia -- are crying. How are those federal programs going to be funded? You and I both know the answer to that: the funds will be taken from the people who actually fund job creation, that is, all the small businesspeople in this country. I honestly figured more people would know -- at least intuitively -- that said entrepreneurs would be better at creating jobs than faceless federal bureaucrats, considering it's, you know, those entrepreneurs who depend on said job creation to put roofs over their heads and feed their families. If this poll is any indication whatsoever, the dependence on government is a lot farther along than I thought it was. It's going to be interesting to see how many Republicans campaign for next year's elections on the promise of "creating more jobs" via yet more stimuli....

Acting presidential for once...

...that would be Barack Obama...

...For those families who have lost a loved one, no words can fill the void that's been left. We knew these men and women as soldiers and caregivers. You knew them as mothers and fathers; sons and daughters; sisters and brothers.
But here is what you must also know: Your loved ones endure through the life of our nation. Their memory will be honored in the places they lived and by the people they touched. Their life's work is our security, and the freedom that we all too often take for granted. Every evening that the sun sets on a tranquil town; every dawn that a flag is unfurled; every moment that an American enjoys life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- that is their legacy.

There's really nothing else I can say, but that he did their memories right. May they all rest in peace.

If I were a Virginia taxpayer...

...I would be quite ticked at this:

Unless Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine steps in, sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad will be executed Tuesday for the attacks that terrorized the nation's capital region for three weeks in 2002.
...
Death penalty opponents planned vigils across the state, and some were headed for Jarratt, about an hour south of Richmond, for the execution.
Beth Panilaitis, executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said those who planned to protest understand the fear that gripped the community, and the nation, during the attacks.
"The greater metro area and the citizens of Virginia have been safe from this crime for seven years," Panilaitis said. "Incarceration has worked and life without the possibility of parole has and will continue to keep the people of Virginia safe."

Excuse me, but no. She may be right that the citizens of Virginia are safe now, but to insist that the hard-earned tax dollars of those citizens continue to be used to feed, clothe and house that murdering monster is just...words fail me. How about the opponents of the death penalty take care of that? Let their tax dollars go to the care and feeding of Muhammad and the others on death row, since they're the ones insisting on keeping him alive and let the rest of the people's money go toward more worthy endeavors? Sounds fair to me. They want this bastard to continue to draw air, so they should be the ones to pay for it.