Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Somebody's not clear on the concept...

here:

DALLAS — Anyone turning in their U.S. citizenship application on Wednesday or after will have to learn "What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy?"' and "What does the Constitution do?"

This country wasn't set up as a democracy per se; in fact, the word "democracy" appears nowhere in that document. And there were reasons for that, not the least of which was that it's all too easy for individual rights -- such as, to cite a pertinent example, the Right to Keep And Bear Arms -- to be sacrificed to the whim of the majority under the democratic form of government, whereas in a republic, there are certain safeguards to reduce the likelihood of that happening. I have to wonder, are there any questions about which form of government the Founding Fathers actually set up in the Constitution? And are there any questions about the differences between that form of government and a pure "democracy"? I'm betting there isn't. And that's just downright pathetic.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Another random observation...

I'd heard about the Microsoft "I'm a PC" ads but up until now I'd never seen one. Well, that just changed. I saw this one, and the only thing I really know to say is, "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?"
"I'm a PC, and I wear a suit!"
And...? This is the best Bill Gates' whiz kids could come up with? All righty then.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Not surprised, just disappointed...

I thought it was more than a little disingenuous for Kathleen Parker to point to the Charles Gibson interview with Sarah Palin as evidence that she's "out of her league" when that was clearly -- when compared to Gibson's interview with Barack Obama -- one of the biggest mainstream media hit jobs on a Republican candidate that's ever been done. (And of course it was by no means the only one.) And I didn't really think the Palin soundbites Parker cited in her own hit piece were really so bad compared to the word vomit Obama and Biden have been belting out that the mainstream media have been slobbering over since day one. I daresay it's a good bit more substantive, even, than Obama's HopenChange(tm) gimmick. But it should be remembered that Parker in effect referred to the sins of Dan Rather and Eason Jordan as "tripping." I'll admit that Kathleen Parker does hit the X-ring many times, but when she's off the mark, she's WAY off the mark.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

"..because of teh RACISM!"

...according to a rather unexpected politician, apparently...

What is Barack Obama's biggest remaining obstacle on his road to the White House? A nationally prominent Republican sums it up in a word: "Bubba."
"The Bubba vote is there, and it's very real, and it is everywhere," former House Majority Leader Dick Armey recently said. "There's an awful lot of people in America, bless their heart, who simply are not emotionally prepared to vote for a black man."
It's bad enough to see the Democrats copping this shit...it's beyond disheartening to see a Republican doing it too, and one of the heroes of the 1994 revolution to boot. What about Obama's associations with people like William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright? Or his proposal of the civilian national security force? Or the mandatory community service? Oh his blatant disrespect for tens of millions of people in this country, as evidenced by the bitter-clinger remark to the San Francisco donors? Or his further alienation of those same voters with his extremely anti-firearm record? (Speaking of that, is anyone REALLY surprised that his brownshirts would threaten to yank the broadcast licenses of stations that ran ads exposing that record? Obama has no respect for the Second Amendment, what makes anyone think he or his minions respect any of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights?) How about his choice for vice-president, a man who thinks gun owners are mentally ill? No, it's none of that, it's because of teh RACISM! Really, you'd think that would have manifested itself more during the primaries, if it was really that big of an issue...and why is it that voting against Obama because of his race is cast as a bad thing, yet nothing is said of those who will be voting for Obama for the same reason? I guess this is how the left applies the "any chair in a bar fight" philosophy, but it's still quite disgusting.

Ooooh, good taste...

Bill Cody's Classic Country Weekend is playing here. Lee Ann Womack's his in-studio guest this week. She just said that if she had one record to listen to for the rest of her life, it'd be Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman." I always thought Womack had great taste...while I don't know if that one would be at the top of my list, it'd be damn close.
"And I need you more than want you...and I want you for all time..."

Thursday, September 25, 2008

do we really want to legitimize this?

Wow, what do you say to this?

Rep. Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because "anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks."
I have to wonder what hunting moose and carrying guns has to do with the fate of Jews and black people. It's quite a rich irony that it's always whites who get accused of racism and bigotry, yet other races seem to get a pass on that even though theirs is often much more potent, as we see here. Perhaps this example doesn't mean that much, considering that such rhetoric comes from an impeached federal judge, but taken in tandem with the support of people like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers -- not to mention those asshats who warn of things like race and class wars if Obama loses, or even the fact of Obama's being a product of the thoroughly corrupt Chicago political machine -- it more or less demolishes the "post-racial candidate of change" shibboleth Obama and his worshippers like to peddle. Do we really want to legitimize the statements like the one Alcee Hastings made -- and the mindset embodied in such statements -- by electing Barack Obama president? I sure as hell hope not.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

you're a...what?

Yeah, I got a huge kick out of this:

Microsoft's new ad features contrasts a "stereotyped PC user" dressed up like John Hodgman in Apple's Get a Mac ads with a number of people who say, "I'm a PC" apparently to affirm that they run Windows.

However, not even Microsoft itself can wean itself off the Mac, as the metadata discovered by Flickr user LuisDS points out. Microsoft was not only using Macs but also Adobe's software in place of its own Expressions Studio, which the company bills as software that "takes your creative possibilities to a new level."

Sort of makes those folks who claim Apple's success is all about marketing and those who go on and on about the "serious design and operational shortcomings" look like they don't know what the hell they're talking about. I don't claim that Apple's perfect, but when you have the manufacturer of the Mac operating system's main competitor using the Mac operating system to make the advertisements for that competing system, well, that pretty much says it all, doesn't it?
(h/t Cold Fury)

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Random Musings: Sniper Rifles? And what about those OTHER guns?

Sean Braistead says, "I’d say an important difference between a 12 gauge shotgun and a .50 caliber sniper rifle is the ability to blow a head off from a half mile away." Leaving aside the disgusting leftist hyperbole inherent to all their gun-related discussion, what about the lethality of less-powerful cartridge such as the 7.62mm NATO at an even greater distance? Are we next going to start hearing all about the threat to national security posed by those eeeeevil 7.62mm NATO sniper rifles? It just goes to show that demonizing something like a deer rifle as a "long-range sniper gun" isn't that far from the more common gun-ban talking points.
As far as Greasy Joe Biden (thanks, Michael Bane) saying Barack Merle Haggard Obama isn't going to take his shotgun...well, what about my 1911s, or, say, Mike's AR-15? Would that the press had asked him about that, but I suppose that'd be too much to ask. Of course, as Robert says, the NRA actually encourages this sort of thing with, for example, the photos of Charlton Heston waving the flintlock instead of a more politically-incorrect weapon...

Monday, September 22, 2008

Some irony for your Monday morning

The headline on this story reads, "Bailout strikes many on Main Street as unfair." The prevailing sentiment among the regular folks interviewed is that it's wrong for the feds to effectively force taxpayers (and it should be noted we'll ultimately be forced at gunpoint, natch) to pay for the bad decisions of Wall Street, i.e., to make loans to people who didn't have sufficient income or assets to pay those loans back. Yet in that story, there's a picture of a man holding a sign that says, "Bail out Main Street Not WALL STREET." What this sign holder is apparently advocating is for the taxpayers to be forced to pay for the bad decisions of just a different set of people. Now, how is THAT any more fair to those who actually lived within their means?

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Random Sunday Media Musings

I am not really sure what to say to this, from Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe...

Sarah Palin may yet be the fulfillment of an old feminist prophecy that Texan Sissy Farenthold once described with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek. We will have achieved equality the day mediocre women take their place beside mediocre men. Check that one off the to-do list.
Oh wait, I know exactly what to say to that. Palin should consider it a badge of honor to be called mediocre by a bitter old harridan like Ellen Goodman. Ole Sarah Barracuda must really be doing something right.
And then there's this, from Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune...
As we enter the season of highest political advice, here's my advice to the Democrats: Dumb it down.
I don't need to give that advice to the Republicans. They've been dumbing it down for years. That's why they keep winning.
Do I sound condescending? Do I sound like I am talking down to Joe and Josephine SixPack out there in working class America? No way. I come from working class America. I know. It takes smarts to dumb the issues down well enough to help people to make an intelligent choice.
Hey, um, Clarence? Just a tip...when you're basically asking for someone else's opinion, you're really not supposed to give your own. Makes you look like more than a bit of an arrogant ass..Methinks you're not nearly as smart as your station in life has led you to think you are.
...(McCain's) party's ticket is well positioned to pull off a possible victory. Why? A big reason is how McCain-Palin has outmatched Obama's elegant charisma in winning the support of working-class white voters.
...(Obama's) college professor side tends to show....
Ok then. I'd argue that another (arguably as big) reason McCain has pulled into a dead heat with Obama is that as more and more Americans get wind of Obama's plans for the country -- i.e., an economy-crushing tax burden to finance yet more Nanny-state reindeer games and potentially an all-out ban on civilian ownership of firearms -- they come to see that while flawed, the McCain-Palin ticket is much preferable to that. As for Obama and his college professor side...it's not the "eloquence" that's the problem there. It's the idealism and utter lack of knowledge of how the world outside academia works that's the problem. But I really didn't expect Page to know that.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

The Drug Problem in America

I saw this on the bulletin board at work the other day and thought it was great. I suppose it's been circulating the Internet for ages, but I'd never seen it till the other day as far as I remember...

The Drug Problem in America

The other day, someone at a store in our town read that a methamphetamine lab had been found in an old farmhouse in the adjoining county and he asked me a rhetorical question, "Why didn't we have a drug problem when you and I were growing up?"
I replied: "I had a drug problem when I was young":
I was drug to church on Sunday morning.
I was drug to church for weddings and funerals.
I was drug to family reunions and community socials no matter the weather.
I was drug by my ears when I was disrespectful to adults.
I was also drug to the woodshed when I disobeyed my parents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect, spoke ill of the teacher or the preacher, or if I didn't put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me.
I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap if I uttered a profane four-letter word.
I was drug out to pull weeds in mom's garden and flower beds and cockleburs out of dad's fields.
I was drug to the homes of family, friends, and neighbors to help out some poor soul who had no one to mow the yard, repair the clothesline, or chop some firewood;
and, if my mother had ever known that I took a single dime as a tip for this kindness, she would have drug me back to the woodshed.
Those drugs are still in my veins; and they affect my behavior in everything I do, say, and think. They are stronger than cocaine, crack, or heroin; and, if today's children had this kind of drug problem, America would be a better place.

The Political Ad of the New Millennium

Seriously, though...this is just pure, unfiltered, absolute genius!
"Remember New Coke? That was change. Or how about the new Site Meter launch? That was change, too...And speaking of change...one word...Vista!"
(h/t Cold Fury)

Hey, we're lit up again!

Yep, I am writing this from my desk in my apartment as the air conditioner's running full blast. I got the power back on about 10 minutes ago. I kept flipping the breakers on and off the last couple of days, getting increasingly frustrated with the fact that the lights wouldn't come on. Little did I know there was another breaker that had to be flipped. But I took care of that this morning, and we're back up and running here. More bloggage to come later...

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Everything's just as I left it...

Just a quick update: Everything in my home is just as I left it. All that needs to be done is to get the power back on and I'll be back in it. I am blessed, yes, I am...more later.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Back to Southeast Texas tomorrow...

So I got a call from my boss today. He said he wants me to come back to the Golden Triangle tomorrow, so off I will go. And once again, blogging will be as I can get to it, as power is still out pretty much all over the area. If I remember right the target date for 100% power restoration in my area is Sept. 23, but I am hoping I'll have it sooner. Posting will probably be less frequent than it's been the last couple of days, but then again I got lucky and was more or less able to blog at my normal pace. Go figure. ;-) I saw pictures of parts of my apartment complex, and some of the buildings had damaged roofs, while others looked to be fully intact. Here's hoping mine fared well. Wish me luck, and I'll be back as soon as I can...

So I wasn't the only one...

Yeah, I know I'm late to the party on this one (I sorta had an excuse, what with runnin' from two hurricanes and all...), but I was pleasantly surprised to find Gerard Vanderleun's take on Obama's whole "lipstick on a pig" gaffe was pretty much identical to my own. Money graf:

One of the standard lines of humor when making a dirty joke about women is, as all men who have been teenagers know, to compare a woman's natural odor to rotting fish.

So God says to Adam, "Hey, where's Eve?" Adam says, "I let her go wading in the ocean." God says, "Idiot, now all the fish are going to smell like that."
Older than dirt and about as funny as.... You get the picture.

And by linking the "Pig with lipstick" reference to the stinking fish reference, Obama gets to ooze out some filthy and sexist humor with maximum deniability. He'll go the "Who? Moi?" route on this one. Already, in classic Obama fashion, he's claiming that he meant something else entirely. John McCain, I think.
Yep. And you know if it'd been McCain who made that slur toward Obama's running mate if he had picked a female, he'd have been crucified in the mainstream media.

Thanks for the clarification, Daniel...

Apparently I got a visit from Daniel Barnett of the Amendment II Democrats, and he left a comment on this post, responding to Hammer's contention that the group was trying to say John Kerry had changed his position on guns, and I thought it important enough to point out and comment on:

Just for the record, Amendment II Democrats did not even exist until June 2005, when I first put the website on-line. Whomever made those remarks about John Kerry and guns, it was certainly not Amendment II Democrats who did so.
That's good to know. I was thinking John Kerry was really no more palatable to a pro-Second Amendment Democrat than Obama, Biden or anyone else like that. And to the extent that sort of thing was said by ANYONE who claims to respect the Second Amendment, my money says it was just the Fudds, the guys who see things like personal defensive arms and black rifles and say "you don't need that to hunt with!" or "you can't hunt with that!" As far as Jon Tester saying Barack Obama "understands the issue (of guns) much better than before," well, I hate to say it, but I more or less agree with Bitter on this one. Barack Obama's record on guns (and Joe Biden's, for that matter) pretty much speaks for itself, and any gun owners who vote for that ticket have no one to blame but themselves when the black-clad FBI agents show up at the door telling them, "Give us your guns or else." You know what that scorpion is. You know he's bitten before. Why would you even think of entertaining the thought of picking him up again?

Monday, September 15, 2008

A couple of random observations...

It should be interesting to see if the dynamic at work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina plays itself out in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike -- large metropolitan area affected gets all the media coverage, while the smaller communities to the east who caught just as much if not more damage more or less get the shaft. I realize there are a lot of different factors in play here compared to there, but still I get to thinking now and then the same thing will happen. We'll see. But then again, we're Texans. Just like after last time, we'll just deal with it and get to fixing what Ike tore up, not really waiting for anyone to notice. I think the question of why things played out the way they did in the aftermath of Katrina vis-a-vis media coverage are definitely worth pondering, though...
You know what's rather ironic? Someone with a Texas Concealed Handgun License who carries...not a gun, but an empty container of mace on their keychain. Does not compute...

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Another reason self-reliance is good...

From the Sept. 11 Beaumont Enterprise:

Citizens should arrive at the Civic Center with photo ID and try to limit their baggage as much as possible with only essential needs including prescription medication. No weapons, including firearms. This no firearm rule applies to those persons with Concealed Handgun licenses.
Pets must be restrained in a pet carrier. Unsecured animals will not be allowed on the buses or in the shelters.
Makes one wonder how many had to leave their dogs behind, and, of course, their firearms. I realize there's only so much room on those buses, but still that's just a horrible thing. Makes me glad I am as self-reliant as I am, because I was able to get myself out along with my firearm collection; as a matter of fact, a Springfield 1911 and a spare mag were riding shotgun with me as I made my way north. And if I'd had a big dog, I'd have been able to take him too. Or her. ;-) Much of the other stuff I left behind, but all that will be much more easily replaced. It might take a while, depending on whether the roof got ripped off like it did during Rita, but we'll see how things go.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Here we go again...

They just called a mandatory evacuation for Jefferson County this morning, so I am packing and heading north again. Hope to be back real soon, but in the meantime, blogging will be catch-as-catch-can. Y'all be safe now...

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Bad move, Ron...

So I read this in the Chron today and was rather disappointed, to say the least...

Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning, Houston-area congressman who waged a feisty Republican primary campaign for president, is expected on Wednesday to urge supporters to reject the two major-party candidates and vote for any of the four minor-party contenders on the November ballot.
...
In his speech, Paul is planning to say that voters can send a message to the major parties by voting for the non-establishment candidates: Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, Green Party contender Cynthia McKinney, independent Ralph Nader or Constitution Party standard-bearer Chuck Baldwin.
...
While Paul will say these individuals have strong philosophical differences on various issues, "they all stand for challenging the status quo — those special interests who control our federal government."

I read that last bit and my bullshit detector started pinging like crazy. I really can't speak in regards to Chuck Baldwin, as I know next to nothing about him -- but McKinney, Nader and Barr, from what I know about them, seem only to be railing against the "special interests" because their own "special interests" aren't the ones setting the agenda in Washington. It brings to mind what Lee said as he reviewed Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 back in the summer of 2004:
If you want to find fault with the system, fine, but if you think there’s some nefarious aspect to Bush specifically, I assure you that President Kerry will come into office with a long list of blue-blood patrician asses that need to be kissed.

And the same could be said of a President McKinney, Barr or Nader. They would all, every single one of them, come into office with a long list of special-interest asses that need to be kissed. And by associating with these people, Ron Paul is sacrificing his own credibility and that of his liberty-oriented agenda. For better or worse, by associating with these people, Ron Paul is ensuring that that much fewer people are going to listen to what he has to say. I know Paul's been dismissed as a kook by a lot of people. But I sure as hell don't understand why he chooses to make it easier to do that sometimes.

Monday, September 08, 2008

It wasn't the first time..

...that Obama let his true intentions slip...

Q: When you were in the state senate, you talked about licensing and registering gun owners. Would you do that as president?

A: I don't think that we can get that done.
No unequivocal "yes" or "no," just a mealy-mouthed admission that it wasn't feasible at the time. Based on his record, I'd go with a "yes," but I'm just cynical that way, I suppose.
You can see this exchange in this clip (at 5:01) of Chris W. Cox's blistering speech at the NRA convention this year, from which comes a killer quote:
"Folks, Barack Obama is just as radical as Hillary Clinton. He's just not as experienced at lying about it yet."
A-yep...

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Yeah, I have a real problem with that...

More and more I've been hearing some of the hits from the early 1990s on Rowdy Yates' classic country show on KILT, from folks like Brooks & Dunn ("Neon Moon"), John Michael Montgomery ("Life's A Dance") and Collin Raye ("Love, Me"). I don't have anything against those folks, and I guess technically speaking those songs ARE country gold, but just the same I have a real problem with them being played on a classic country show when radio programmers by and large threw the old music off the air when those guys and their contemporaries came along in the post-Garth Brooks era. Granted, it's gotten a lot better in recent years, but considering those artists -- and those very songs -- still get played on the radio and never really went away to begin with, it just makes me wonder, what's the point?

Saturday, September 06, 2008

He'll send others...

Barack Walkin' in the Moonlight, Seein' Nothin' But The Taillights Obama has himself another Freudian slip, this time in front of a hand-picked audience:

"If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. "Even if I want to take them away, I don't have the votes in Congress," he said. "This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns."
Of course you know that if he had the votes in Congress he still wouldn't take them. He'd send other men with guns to get their hands dirty with that task.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

All Hail Democracy! Hmm...maybe not...

Oh, now this is a new one on me -- a law professor using the First Amendment to shit on not only the Second, but in effect all the rest as well...
(h/t Armed and Safe)

In striking down the District of Columbia's gun control law, the U.S. Supreme Court raised the question whether constitutional rights are necessarily good ideas. The court, in a 5-4 vote, invalidated the Washington, D.C., law because it violates the Second Amendment right to "keep and bear arms." Whatever else that may be said about the case, it illustrates Thomas Jefferson's observation that by trumping policy choices, constitutional rights amount to rule of the living by the dead.
Whatever the merits of gun control today, researching the history of the Second Amendment in a bid to determine the view of the people who adopted it in 1791, hardly seems a sensible way of deciding the issue. It is arguable — as the 5-4 split on the Supreme Court indicates — that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to possess guns; "bear arms" has a military ring.
If democracy is the norm, only policy choices clearly precluded by the Constitution should be struck down by the courts. The view of elected legislators should prevail in cases of doubt. The court might well, therefore, have refrained from taking the gun control issue out of the political process.
...Though the Constitution wisely precludes very few policy choices, even those few can create serious and unneeded problems, pointlessly frustrating democracy....

Once again, before we go on, a definition:
democracy [di-mok-ruh-see] n. -- system of government more accurately known as the "tyranny of the majority" whose doctrine says that if 51 percent of the people vote to strip the other 49 percent of their God-given rights then that's just too bad for them.
All righty then. He might as well just have said the Supreme Court's decision in Heller "raised the question whether God-given (or natural) rights are necessarily good ideas." After all, the Bill of Rights more or less codified in that document protections of rights that were bestowed upon humans by virtue of humans' very existence -- those of life, liberty and property, as laid out by philosopher John Locke, who was a tremendous influence on the Founding Fathers. Now, I understand that people are going to have different ideas of what rights are and which rights should be protected, but for once I'd like for these statist tools to explain to me why something like Lockean philosophy is such a bad thing. I'm getting the idea that Lino Graglia and his anti-liberty ilk would say "because 51 percent of the people say it is." Question is, though, could even 51 percent of that 51 percent put forth even a semi-cogent argument (NOT grounded in "social utility") detailing why the Lockean concept of natural rights -- or those rights not being subject to a vote -- is such a bad thing and should be scrapped in favor of what basically amounts to majority rule? I'd bet the contents of my gun safe that the answer is "No." If indeed that's the case -- and again, I am betting it is -- then why in the hell should I or anyone else give a flying rat's ass what they think? And why should mine or anyone else's rights be dependent on a vote of these ignorant clods?! I bet they couldn't come up with a semi-cogent answer to THAT, either.
Graglia goes on to bemoan the makeup of the current Supreme Court and the fact that so many cases hinge on the swing vote of Anthony Kennedy:
In a nation of more than 300 million people with elected national and state legislatures and executives, the final decision on such fundamental policy issues as gun control, punishment for child rape, consideration of race to increase school integration and the legal rights of alien enemy combatants held overseas rests on the views of a single unelected official.

A nation willing to go to war to spread democracy elsewhere should have more faith, it would seem, in democracy at home.
It might well be the case that those fundamental issues rest on the vote of one justice, but sometimes that's what it comes down to. Sometimes that's all that protects our rights. I do wonder what Graglia and his ilk would say if the Presidential election all came down to one person's vote as so many Supreme Court cases do. After all, that'd be democracy, too. (And I might have more faith in democracy if it brought better people to power than, say, Barack Obama, Charles Schumer, Sheila Jackson-Lee or Howard Metzenbaum.) Basically, what Graglia is advocating is one form of usurpation (legislative) over another (judicial). And as far as I'm concerned that makes his position no more tenable than the situation he derides. As the old saying goes, "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo." And it would seem that we have a law professor at a top-tier university advocating that three of those boxes be taken away. I don't know about you, but to me that's just scary as all hell.

Hey, sometimes the songwriters can sing, too!

Every now and then, you'll see songwriters who have their name on big hits from other artists give singing a shot and make their own record. Sometimes that doesn't work out so well, but other times the writer proves himself -- or herself, as the case may be -- to be a hell of a singer, too. From what I've heard of Alabama native Jamey Johnson, he definitely fits into the latter category. The first I ever heard of him was in 2006 when George Strait took "Give It Away," of which Johnson was a co-writer, to No. 1. (He was also a writer on "It Was Me," a cut from Strait's Troubadour cd.) About that same time, or it might even have been a little bit before "Give It Away" topped the charts, Johnson had a minor hit on the charts with a song called "The Dollar" — the title track of his debut album, which from what I gathered from that title track was straight-up traditional Haggard-Jones-Jackson-and-Strait country. I really liked that song but I never got around to buying the cd. Well. Mr. Johnson just released the follow-up to that debut, and I've heard snippets of its first single, "In Color," here and there. Saturday night when I was on the run through East Texas, I heard the song in its entirety. One word, friends. In-farking-credible. Both the song and the delivery of it. I can't explain exactly why, but I just got a huge lump in my throat when I finally heard the whole thing. If this song doesn't end up being a hit record, and if Jamey Johnson doesn't make it as a singer, well, the only thing I can say is that will say more about the state of current country music than Johnson's merit as an artist in his own right. Check it out.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

...and you think you're gonna win?!

Deranged leftist moonbat Fatima Ali says, "If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war..."
Oh, now, that's just golden! Hey, Fatima, which side do you really think is going to win that one? Which side do you think has all the guns, you blithering fool? You leftists really crack me the hell up, considering you think WE'RE the violent ones and here YOU are, warning of war in the streets of America if your guy doesn't win. I really, really think you're letting your mouth overload your ass with the overheated rhetoric on this one, but that's just me.
(h/t David Codrea)

Maybe that wasn't such a bad idea...

From this morning's Chron:

DALLAS — A car driven by a drunken driving suspect with four previous DWI arrests and an invalid license raced away from a sheriff's deputy, ran a red light, then went airborne after a wreck and landed on top of an SUV, killing a newlywed couple inside, authorities said.
Second-grade teacher Erika Clouet, 24, and her husband of a little over a month, construction worker and aspiring musician German Clouet, 23, of Irving, were killed in the accident early Monday.
The driver, Uriel Perez Palacios, 22, of Dallas, remained in the hospital Tuesday in fair condition, Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Kim Leach said. His passenger had to be cut from the vehicle and also was hospitalized. She is in critical condition.
Officials on Tuesday charged Palacios with two counts of murder and three counts of intoxication assault. A phone listing for Palacios could not be found.
The murder charges are believed to be the first time a Dallas County prosecutor has pursued a DWI case as murder, Leach said.
Dallas County authorities Tuesday were still piecing together Palacios' extensive arrest record. He'd been arrested as recently as June for driving while intoxicated and was released after paying a $500 fine. He also was involved in two police chases and had four outstanding warrants, officials said.
After a DWI arrest in 2007, his bail was set at $3,500, increased to $100,000 and then lowered back to $3,500, Leach said. It is unclear why the judge lowered the bail, which Palacios paid.
Back in my driver's ed class in the early '90s, my instructor told the class that in El Salvador, drunk drivers got put in front of a firing squad. When I see stories like this, I think that wouldn't be such a bad idea here.