The Great:

The Disgusting:

On August 6, 2011, 30 US service members were killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter they were being transported in crashed in Wardak province, Afghanistan. It was the deadliest single loss for U.S. forces in the decade-long war in Afghanistan. 17 members of the elite Navy SEALs were killed in the crash.

Yesterday, Karen and Billy Vaughn, parents of Aaron Carson Vaughn, spoke at the Defending the Defenders forum sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots outside the RNC Convention in Tampa. Karen brought a copy of the form letter they were sent following their son’s death.

It’s a form letter.

It was signed by an electric pen.

That’s not all.

Karen Vaughn reached out to the parents of the other SEALs killed in that crash.

Their letters were all the same.

Form letters – signed by an electric pen.

After the deadliest single loss of US forces in Afghanistan, Barack Obama sent out form letters to the parents.

If that doesn’t tell us all we need to know about the “president’s” level of respect for the heroes who place their lives on the line for our safety and our liberty, well…

UPDATE: But Obama did send a personal letter to rapper Heavy D’s family when he passed away.

And this guy wants us to reelect him?

I really hate to say this about any of my fellow Americans, but anybody who votes to reelect Obama is either an idiot, a hater of America, the Constitution or both or just a garden variety traitor who truly does not deserve, born here or not, the privilege of living in this awesome country.

First, so much for the Obama deepwater offshore drilling moratorium.

A federal judge halted President Obama’s deep-water oil-drilling moratorium on Tuesday, telling the government its justification for the ban was “rather overbearing” and misled the public in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Judge Martin L.C. Feldman issued an injunction, describing the president’s decision as rushed and ruling that the government had jumped to the conclusion that all deep-water drilling rigs are dangerous despite the lack of any evidence.

The White House said it will immediately appeal, but in the meantime it is yet another setback as Mr. Obama seeks to show he has gained control of the environmental disaster in the region two months after the BP well first began gushing. Eleven workers were killed when the rig exploded on April 20.

The moratorium has come under fire from lawmakers of both parties in the region, who said the halt could hurt the already struggling economy’s chances of rebounding.

Judge Feldman said the Interior Department misstated the opinion of the experts it consulted. In his report to Mr. Obama, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the recommendations, including the six-month moratorium, were reviewed by experts from the National Academy of Engineering but the engineers said they never saw the final recommendations and don’t support a blanket ban.

Oh, well, Mr. President, there’s one attempted sabotage on our fledgling (if existing at all) economic recovery that looks to have bitten the dust.

Next, returning to the subject of Obama’s overtures toward a “boiling frog” style takeover of the Internet, Bob Livingston has a spot on essay on the subject that casts a pall of reality over the dubious reassurances of one Senator Joe Lieberman.

Relax!
It’s always a comforting feeling when the fascists tell you to relax. And that’s what Senator Joe Leiberman (I-Conn.) told everyone to do Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley.

Crowley asked about the Kill Switch bill Leiberman co-sponsors with Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would allow the President to shut down the Internet in a time of emergency.

The President will never take over the Internet, Leiberman—with a warm smile—assured the audience. The government shouldn’t take over the internet. The president would only do that in catastrophic times. Not going to do it every day. It’s only for national security. Relax.

“Right now China—the government—can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war. We need to have the ability to do that, too,” Leiberman said.

Of course, in China the government runs over its people with tanks. It drags them off to prisons without trial for practicing Christianity or saying something government doesn’t like, where they disappear forever—probably with a bullet in the brain. I wonder if Lieberman thinks our government should have those abilities as well.

China also censors the Internet—every day—to stifle the free flow of information… because it can.

The worry for Leiberman and his fascist buddies—the elected elitists who march to the orders of the New World Order—is not what would happen to America if some outside entity launched a cyber attack on the United States.

The worry is that the Internet has opened up a treasure trove of information and an ability to share ideas with freedom-loving people all over the world. No longer is the main stream media the sole purveyor of information….

The rest is here.

Now, in the interests of displaying a group of people who are really easy to laugh at, we give you… “progressives!”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a liberal consumer advocacy organization, has announced it will sue McDonald’s unless the fast-food franchise stops using toys to market its “Happy Meals” to children.

“This morning, CSPI notified McDonald’s that we will file a lawsuit against the company unless it stops using toys to beguile young children,” said Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

“We contend that tempting kids with toys is unfair and deceptive both to kids who don’t understand the concept of advertising and to their parents who have to put up with their nagging children,” he said.

unfair and deceptive both to kids who don’t understand the concept of advertising and to their parents who have to put up with their nagging children…

And these are people who expect to be taken seriously.

Sports-wise, the United States is moving ahead in the World Cup…

Landon Donovan scored a stunning goal in the first minute of injury time, advancing the United States to the second round at the World Cup with a 1-0 win over Algeria.

With the U.S. perhaps three minutes from elimination Wednesday, Donovan brought the ball upfield on a counterattack and Jozy Altidore’s shot on the breakaway was tipped by Clint Dempsey into goalkeeper Rais Bolihi. The rebound went to Donovan, who kicked it in from about 8 yards for one of the biggest goals in U.S. soccer history.

…while the French… display their Frenchness.

French soccer chiefs were so certain their failing team would crash out of the World Cup that they had a bus ready to take them straight to the airport for a coach-class flight back home. Sure enough, the most arrogant, disjointed, fractured and embarrassing squad in the tournament was happy to oblige.

For the third match in a row, France, a 2006 World Cup finalist in Germany, showed a complete lack of class on and off the field in South Africa. A 2-1 defeat to the host nation sent the French home with just a single point, and coach Raymond Domenech provided a new low point by gracelessly refusing to shake the hand of South Africa coach Carlos Alberto Parreira.

Two days after a player mutiny in which the team refused to show up for one of Domenech’s official training sessions, France was on its way back to Paris, stripped of its superstar privileges.

Instead of flying in first-class luxury on an Airbus A380, like how it arrived to South Africa two weeks ago, the squad was ushered out of the country on a no-frills charter flight booked by its fuming national federation.

And it was nothing less than the team deserved.

So much for France…

…is killing us.

Time for a wee-hours-of-the-morning feast.

Another Seth kind of thing, knockwursts and sauerkraut over a thin spread of dijon mustard {made in Canada, as French products are forbidden in my house} in open-faced sandwich format on rye bread, ramen noodles and fresh tomatoes smothered in Marie’s creamy Italian dressing.

Yum!!!!

I will be offshore for a couple of days in meetings with a client, and will most likely not be heard from until Thursday.

Just to let y’all know why I may not be replying to comments until then, or posting anything new.

So it’s the wee hours, I recently finished doing some work and have done some blogging, it’s almost time I hit the rack and I’m kicking back with a large mug of Cafe Bustelo and some Sambuca on the side. I have some old music(rightnow, the theme from Romeo & Juliet, next I think Paul Mauriat’s Love Is Blue) playing from my MusicMatch library via Logitech speakers I bought last December {Logitech gets my personal uncompensated endorsement, the sound is excellent} and I’m thinking about the state of things…

Israel is fighting a war against Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Gaza. We’re talking war, not just a small counterterror Op, in which the IDF is fighting, for the moment, on 2 fronts.

The best President we’ve had since early 1988 is in the process of diminishing America’s sovereignty several notches in the pursuit of forming a small-scale EU with Mexico and Canada. What’s really disturbing about this is that we hear almost nothing from the media about this and even less from members of Congress.

Now, where the MSM’s concerned, I can understand. Being liberals, they have been busting their touchases these last few years to propagandize we, the people, into casting off “the bonds” of American identity and love of country, and becoming “people of the world united” or something like that, becoming as much like France as possible and of course, offering our collective “guilty American neck” to the chopping block of Islam.

{Ah, Summer Place, by Percy Faith!}

It’s really great to know that fellow Americans like the communists at the ACLU and the traitors folks at the New York Times are behind the nation 100% — Actually, to judge from what they consider journalism, they have become what comes out of the nation’s behind. Get some Charmins, clean ‘em up. On the other hand, if you’re in a priveleged position in a government security or intelligence agency, you can report on the latest defense secrets to the NYT and they guarantee to safeguard your identity while they print the details. Can’t blame ‘em, right? Someone’s got to help fundamentalist Islam murder us, right? It may as well be Keller as anyone, right? Thank G-d he took the initiative to act on our behalf!

{Every Time We Touch, by Maggie Reilly, who had one of the most awesomely beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. She did some recordings with Mike Oldfield as well as her own great stuff back in the 1980s. I’d've loved to see her and Annie Haslam do a back-to-back concert, they’d have been highly compatible, or her and Annie’s band, Renaissance, about tied as my second favorite with Yes, just behind my #1, Focus}

Wow, at half a century, the 1970s and 80s seem like contemporaries of the Boston Tea Party!

At 50, you also have memories of a time when nobody calling himself an American would disrespect our country and the principles upon which it was founded the way the Democratic Party, via its liberal element, does today.

At 50, you can rejoice that you won’t be here to see the end result of what liberalism turns our country into over the next half century.

My prediction is the society Sly Stallone is defrosted into in Demolition Man, where cops, not even armed with lethal weapons, “request” that a criminal lay down his weapon and submit to arrest, and there’s no enforcement procedure to respond to “Fuck you, make me!” because in the Utopian mindset of that time, citizens naturally respond as expected.

I’d hate, however, to be forced to learn how to use the 3 sea shells.

Stepping completely away from politics for the moment, this is an e-card I received from a friend whom I haven’t talked to, emailed or otherwise had contact with for some time, entirely my fault.

H/T Nikki

This one is self explanatory, and shows how there is little to choose between liberals and Muslim activists. It came to yours truly in the form of a forwarded e-mail.

Looks like a small case of some people being able to dish it out, but not take it. Let’s start at the top. The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman.

Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student’s Association The e-mail was in response to the students’ protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were “hate speech.” Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:

Dear Moslem Association: As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey!), burning of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called “whores” in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France..

This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile “protests.”

If you do not like the values of the West — see the 1st Amendment — you are free to leave. I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially, I. S. Wichman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering”

Well! As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn’t like this too well. They’re demanding Wichman be reprimanded and mandatory diversity training for faculty and a seminar on hate and discrimination for freshman. How nice. But now the Michigan chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn’t believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.

For its part, the university is standing its ground. They say the e-mail was private, and they don’t intend to publicly condemn his remarks. That will probably change. Wichman says he never intended the e-mail to be made public, and wouldn’t have used the same strong language if he’d known it was going to get out.

How’s the left going to handle this one? If you’re in favor of the freedom of speech, as in the case of Ward Churchill, will the same protections be demanded for Indrek Wichman? I doubt it. Hey guys send this to everybody and ask them to do the same and tell them to keep passing it around till the whole country gets it. We are in a war to the bitter end.

Hat Tip: BJS

So it’s between 9 and 10 in the morning, and I’m doing things on-line. I have a long playlist going at MusicMatch, stuff from my own eras gone by, like

Goodbye To Love (The Carpenters), Stoned In Love (The Stylistics), Early In The Morning (Vanity Fare), Come Saturday Morning (The Sandpipers), etc, etc….

I need to run out of my office and into the rec-room for something. Simon & Garfunkels’ “The Dangling Conversation” is playing. I’ve been sort of singing along with the song, and as I get up and head for the other room I continue doing so. This is about a 70 second project.

I get back to my office, still singing along, and find that Paul, Art and I are still in perfect sync:

“Yes we speak of things that matter, with words that must be said,
can analysis be worthwhile, is the theatre really dead?”

Gives me pause for thought, am I that easily hypnotized?… then the song ends and another one I’ve liked a lot, untireably, for about a quarter of a century, commences,

A Girl In Trouble (is a temporary thing) by Romeo Void. I must admit that it’s one track I’ve never begrudged (or failed to begrudge) anything whatsoever about the subject or whatever — I just love the sax music, the instrumental theme and the way it all goes with every aspect of the vocal. I might well be able to listen to it over-and-over, without a dinner break.

What? Y’ain’t hearda’ Romeo Void!?

Today, I am updating my blogroll and media links, a lot of work as you’ll see when I’m done.

Between that and the stuff I need to do where my new house is concerned, I’ll be pretty well tied up.

For the meantime, I’ll leave you with still another email from Aunt Brenda…

Is it the NFL or is it the NBA?

36 have been accused of spousal abuse

7 have been arrested for fraud

19 have been accused of writing bad checks

117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3 have done time for assault

71, repeat 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

14 have been arrested on drug-related charges

8 have been arrested for shoplifting

21 currently are defendants in lawsuits. and

84 have been arrested for drunk driving

in the last year.

Can you guess which organization this is?

Give up yet? . . . Scroll down, citizen!

****************

It’s the 535 members of the United States Congress.

The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.

Hmmmmm……….