Still Here

Serious stuff first.

Dad is going home for hospice. He desperately wants to spend his last days with his family. Time is definitely running out on him. I only spend a day or two a week up there but he is constantly on my mind and in my prayers. I am usually up there Wednesday and Thursday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday are my heavy days at work as there are two of us who switch back and forth while the rest of the crew gets the weekend off.

The sale/inheritance of the house I will be living in is moving along. I was there this afternoon looking it over. The people who were living in it did not exactly trash it, but there is work that needs to be done. They were supposed to be out a week ago, but there is a lot of stuff in that house that belongs to them. (They were buying it, but a felony by the man of the house, resulting in a loss of 60 to 70% of the household income while he sits in prison for trying to kill his wife/girlfriend ? resulted in a voluntary foreclosure with the house reverting to us.) The inside of the garage looks like a dirty-minded ten year old decorated it.



Of course it's the 8+ acres of land, including a large yard, a field for a big garden, and a small woodlot complete with a pond that really interests me. That house and shed looks so small from space. I'm thinking about planting some apple, cherry, pear and plum trees, along with a grape arbor and strawberries and red raspberries but I don't know how many and will have to do it a few at a time. It's nice to live in the country where one has real space. So much is possible, God willing.

Denial

I could post dozens of links but it's pretty clear without them that some are in denial.

I have read in newspaper comments and some blog comments that the Scott Brown won because the Obama was not left-wing enough.

Check out the comments from this column in the tabloid New York Times.

The very first couple of comments I read are repeated here.

The fantasy here is that Obama is, or ever was, a liberal. A generation ago, before the huge shift to the right that occurred in American politics, he would have been considered a moderate Republican, a category that no longer exists.

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How old are you, 12? People didn't vote for Brown because Obama is too liberal. They voted for him because Obama isn't liberal ENOUGH. Look at the negative poll numbers on health care reform. A solid 25% say the health care plan doesn't go far enough.

One day, when you're all grown up, you'll get it. (That is, if maintaining your job doesn't demand that you stay in right-wing denial.)

I wonder what dimension these people live in. This is total denial of reality.

I just shake my head in disbelief. I know that there are some who are so far to the left that they have left their brains behind but I am sure that they are few in number. I remember many times in the library reading a narcotic (ie sleep inducing) article in The Nation in which they insisted that the left would win if they only would run real socialists because that's what the masses really wanted. It's like that old story of a newspaper reporter who couldn't believe that Nixon slaughtered McGovern so badly because she didn't know one person who voted for Nixon. All that story really told was how narrow her social circle was. I know a few people who still support Obama but there seems to be fewer of them every week.

I answered this page on Facebook. Now please note that the young people and computer savvy people are supposed to be his biggest supporters. Now look at what the supposedly young and progressive Facebook crowd is saying.


That is a big amount. Now the numbers could narrow some but I don't expect that gap to come anywhere near closing.

What really happened? Gagdad Bob said it best:

My friends, this is the moment when we said NO! to the dork farces who insist that you can fill the economic swimming pool by taking water from the deep end and pouring it into the shallow end. This was the moment -- yes, the delicious moment -- when we came together as a nation and made Tingles Matthews cry on national TV. And folks, it doesn't get any better than that.

The guy has a way with words.

At Last

A few minutes ago, while eying the Drudge Report, I let go and sighed a sigh of relief.

Hopefully it is the start of something big and something good.

I have learned that when it comes to politics the good news is rarely as good as it seems and the bad news can be not as bad as it seems or worse than can be imagined. I know this is not the gateway to Paradise but it is a good first step.

☼☺☼☻☼

Hallelu - Jah.

Update

I wonder if they will be as honest as these two one-time foxes were in this song. Will the left admit what has happened.





H/T Hot Air

It Was a Rough Weekend

Friday Night, about 40 minutes before my shift ended, I got a phone call from my brother who was very upset. Dad had just had a heart attack. I immediately arranged for someone to take my Saturday Shift and headed right up as soon my shift ended. I arrived at Bay Regional Medical Center at about 11:30 and saw my father. He looked at me and took my hand.

They have given medicine that stabilizes him but at the moment it appears to be only a matter of time now. It may be a few days or a few months but, short of Divine Intervention, he's not going to get better this time. Prayers are requested.

Just a Test

I just want to see what others see when I do this.

΄Έν α̉ρχη̃ η̉ν ο̃̉ λόγος, καὶ ο̉ λόγος η̉ν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς η̃ν ο̃̉ λόγος.

John 1: 1 in Koine Greek

בְּרָאשִׁית בָּרַא אֱלהִים אֶת־הָשָׁמַיִם וְאֶת־הָאָרֶץ׃

(Genesis 1: 1 in Hebrew)

One of the problems I ran into in What HE Said was the inability to use Greek and Hebrew fonts. Hopefully I have it licked. I originally attempted to write using Greek and Hebrew font sets but couldn't get them to transfer to Blogspot properly. Using the Character Map is much easier but still needs some work. The solution dawned on me while I was commenting about hidden icons at Carol's Blog.

I still need some practice with the accent and breath marks in the Greek fonts and the fact that Hebrew is read and written backwards (from our point of view) creates some problems that I need to learn to work with better as well.

Is It Beginning?

or is it Ending?

Is it the end of the global warming hysteria or the beginning of the New Ice Age hysteria?

Read the article.

Whatever happens the eco-fascists will demand more power to deal with it.

When I was a young teenager, a Freshman in High School, I was genuinely concerned about the environment. I had seen the results of an invasive species first hand when I watched the elm trees die around 1970. No one wants zero environmental protection policy, but it has to genuinely protect the environment, not simply enrich the High Priests and Priestesses of Mother Earth and their cronies.

Too much environmentalism is nothing more than an excuse to control other peoples' lives.

We Have Some Winners

and they would have rather not won this.

Darwin Awards are given, generally posthumously, to those who have selflessly eliminated the genes for stupidity from gene pool by taking themselves out of it in incredibly stupid ways.

Last year's Darwin Awards have been announced.

Two gentlemen arrive in a BMW to rob a bank. They use explosives to blow their way to the money, use too much, blow up the building and crush themselves to death.

Following a dream to closely can be deadly.

How about a controlled slide down the face of cliff - - on purpose? Hey! Watch This! Famous last words of far too many.

In countries where there is a military draft some people come up with brilliant ways to stay out of the military, and then there are some not-so-brilliant ideas.

I thought I knew a guy who was in running for a Lifetime Achievement Darwin Award but this guy has him beat.

Actually the "At Risk Survivors" section is a lot funnier.

Two Quickies

First off the global warming crowd is going to keep on ignoring the obvious. I guess when everything you are is dedicated to an idea you can't let go of it.

Secondly, take a look at this poll results of Americans and their ideology. Actually there are several charts that carry good news on this poll.



This is by the "not so biased" Gallup Poll so they can't scream "Rasmussen is biased" on this one.

What do these two stories have in common?

It's Cold Out There.

And I work mostly outside at night.

It looks like the temporary and entirely natural warming cycle of the 90s is now completely over.

Of course they will talk about it until they find a new environmental boogie-man to hit us over the head with.

1960s Litter and DDT
1970s Overpopulation
1980s Acid Rain
1990s Hole in the Ozone Layer
2000s Global Warming (AKA Climate Change)
2010s ????????

They'll "discover" a new doomsday threat. They always do.

Another You Gotta Be Kidding Moment

Only in Berkeley . . . (sigh).

They are seriously considering eliminating Science Laboratory courses for High School Students in Berkeley. The first paragraph makes it sound tragic but necessary.

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

If the money is not there for the courses then it's not there. It's called reality and we have to live with it even if the results are undesirable.

But there's more to it after you get past the first paragraph.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

Except for the fact that roughly a quarter of the students in those classes are Black and Hispanic. Maybe they're not authentic members of the said minorities because they are achieving something substantial in the academic fields.

The way to correct the racial imbalance in achievement is not to bring the white students to a lower level but to improve the achievement level of the minority students. To intentionally hold anyone back because of their skin color is racism, and whites too can be the victim of discriminatory policies.

If only a few minority students succeed because of these classes, it would still probably be a greater number than the number of them that find success in athletics and music. By slamming this door on white students they slam it on everyone.

The Golden Bough

I have, of late, been reading Sir James Frazier's The Golden Bough which is a stupendous study of superstition and belief in magic through the ages. In fact it's a case of information overload as he repeats episode after episode of human beliefs and superstition.

I am less than 1/5th of the way through the book and I'm not even sure if I'll ever finish it. It would be fascinating if it wasn't so danged tedious. It's almost, not quite but almost, as bad as reading a law book (yes I have tried.)

A few things stand out but one thing in particular seems to strike me and that is his contempt for the ordinary people. He said the worst thing that happened to England was the American Revolution because it put ordinary, which in his opinion meant "ignorant and superstitious", people in charge instead of the enlightened nobility. He seemed to believe that a nobility consisting of people who are above the superstition and ignorance of the common people should lead while pretending to believe. (He actually gave backhanded praise to the fraudulent shamans and magicians because they saw through the nonsense yet used it to gain power which in turn benefited the masses.)

On a lesser note he sees two kinds of magic in the world which he dubs "sympathetic" and "contagious" one being a link between similar things (a man and a voodoo doll for example) and the other being a link between two things that were once one or at least in close contact (a primitive fear of another finding his fingernails and using them to harm him from afar.) I can think of at least two other kinds, at least one of which is still popular today: "Mind Over Matter" (Common today in some circles) and "Memic Magic" born of the belief of the masses manipulating reality.

There is obviously more to reality than what meets the eye. The fact that the more we learn of subatomic particles and the universe, or even multi-verse, as a whole the less sense it seems to make clearly points in the direction.

I believe in Divine Intervention, though it is relatively rare at the moment, but I reject human magic of any sort as wishful thinking.