Off to WordPress

This is the last post I will be making on Blogger for the foreseeable future. I am going to make all new posts over at WordPress. Look for new stuff over at demolition65.wordpress.com


I just got tired of posting everything twice, and I am finding the assets over at WordPress outweigh the advantages of sticking around here.

Jill Carroll and Piling on

Just a quick note on the release of Jill Carroll, and the subsequent outrage Right bloggers engaged in when a video surfaced of her praising her captors and criticizing the Bush Administration.

When I first heard about this video, my first thought was "Stockholm Syndrome", and my second was, "Hello. She's a hostage. Could she have been threatened in some way to do this?". Anyway, I never wrote anything on it, as I felt that it might have been a bit too soon to comment. Besides, the poor woman has just returned from one of what the APA calls the five most stressful situations any human can hope to walk away from. Why get on her now?

Seems that I was correct to do so.

Then RickTheWise over at RightWingNuthouse put a very elegant spin on all of this. Iwould urge you to go read it right away.

Facing to the Dexter

From dictionary.com:


DEXTER:
1. Of or located on the right side.
2. Heraldry. Situated on or being the side of a shield on the wearer's right and the observer's left.
3. Obsolete. Auspicious; favorable.

Also:
SINISTER:
1. Suggesting or threatening evil: a sinister smile.
2. Presaging trouble; ominous: sinister storm clouds.
3. Attended by or causing disaster or inauspicious circumstances.
4. On the left side; left.
5. Heraldry. Situated on or being the side of a shield on the wearer's left and the observer's right.

I muse upon this in part because I am visiting my in-laws tomorrow. My father-in-law, like my own father, was born left-handed. Sinister comes from the Italian sinistra meaning pretty much what is says above: both "from the left" and "evil."

This has a practical if somewhat archaic application to my father and father-in-law in that, though both are left-handed, both write right-handed. This comes about from the ancient belief that left-handed people were sinister; evil; wrong. And so, you made them learn to write with their right hand. You forced this training under the guise that it is a world of right-handers, and that using the right hand trained your brain correctly.

This last hare-brained notion isn't so far out of whack, in that beginning neuroscience teaches that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and the converse if true for the left side brain/right side body.

Side note: The notion that "left handed people are in their right minds" has some actual truth to it.


Now, I have always regarded the treatment of my father and father-in-law in terms of handedness to be little better than barbaric. And I still hold to that.

But after wandering around a bit today in the lower nether-regions of the political left. . .places such as here , here,here, here, here and here I begin to wonder if the Italians weren't correct in the first place.

It is getting harder and harder to escape the notion that the Loon Left is in fact truth in advertising. It is sinister.

"Suggesting or threatening evil."

The Left is not what it says it is

There are so many sacred cows to the MoonBat left.

-We represent tolerance and freedom of speech.

-We represent fully equal rights

-The Other people (the Wingnuts they like to call us) are for suppression of freedoms

-The Other people are essentially fascists, and if left to their own devices, would brutally suppress all opposition.

-The Other people hold to senseless faith points.


And yet, if one looks hard at each of these cows, one finds that they can be turned on their heads.

-We represent tolerance and freedom of speech. Tolerance. Like here? What about here, where Pharyngula host PZ Myers refers to Ben Domenech as a scumbag? Or perhaps when liberal blogger icon Kos refers to Bill Bennett as a "moralizing buffoon"?

Here are his exact words:

You know, I can't be nice to these people. I don't care how "nice" they might be. When I did CNN's Reliable Sources this past Sunday, I met Bill Bennett in the Green Room (and they say Michael Moore is fat?). He said nice things about this site, said it was the only liberal site he read, and seemed pleasent enough. He and Bill Press chatted it up amiably in the Green Room before they did battle on camera. But regardless, I can't get past the fact that the moralizing buffoon (Hi Bill) is helping destroy my beloved country.

I try not to be rude. But I can't cross the line into "friendly" with that crowd. Of course, I am "friendly" with Mike Krempasky. So maybe I'm just full of shit.

Well, at least you're being honest, Kos, in admitting that you can't live up to your tolerant stanards. And since you mention it, if the shoe fits, you might as well wear it.


You are full of sh!t.

We could go on for DAYS, but in the end, can we find committed liberals that live up to their standards of decency? No way. The difference between them and the "wingnuts?" Us 'Nuts at least admit that we don't always make it. 'Bats claim they are tolerant, beark that standard CONSTANTLY, then make no excuses. They both live the standard and totally disregard it at every waking moment. For them, the standard of decency doesn't even have the benefit of being a goal to strive for. It's reduced to a cliche.

Oh, and as for the freedom of speech bit: If I were to get up on a soapbox in downtown Frisco and proclaim active homosexuality as morally disordered, I will have elected officials from the 'Bat side calling for the suppression of my First Amendment rights. This gets even worse if I am a landlord and don't wish to allow sexual activity in my property by unmarried people. Laws passed by the "tolerant Left."

____________________________________________________________________________________

-We represent fully equal rights. So long as those rights don't infringe on the rights of women, gays or minorities. Once those come into conflict, the above groups win out. Especially if the aggrieved party is unborn, white, religious or old.

To paraphrase Orwell: "All rights are equal. But some rights are more equal than others."

____________________________________________________________________________________

-The Other people (the Wingnuts they like to call us) are for suppression of freedoms

-The Other people are essentially fascists, and if left to their own devices, would brutally suppress all opposition.

Without question these are my favorites. Do you really think that if Bush were the second coming of Hitler, that he would allow the presence of these ignorant nattering magpies to continue blathering as they do? Lincoln, universally admired by 'Nuts and 'Bats alike, suspended habeas corpus in the United States, not only at places like Gitmo. And the threat we face from radical Islamofascism is much greater than that presented by the South. If Bush and his fellow 'Nuts were really as intolerant as the 'Bats say, they would all be in prison.

And do you really think we would be having these immigration issues if Bush and the right were real fascists?


No, the real fascists here are from the Left. Imagine what will happen to free speech if the Clintonistas and their fellow Moonbats get Blight House back.

We will see a wave of repression against conservatives and evangelicals as has not been seen in an English speaking country since the time of

Call me doomcrier? So be it.


____________________________________________________________________________________

-The Other people hold to senseless faith points.
Now, this one requires its own post which I intend to write with spring break (FINALLY) upon us.

It is the only one of the Left's accusations that holds any water on the face of it. But even then when one digs just a bit, it too collapses from its own lack of internal consistency.

Where does the left get its definitions of sensible and senseless? Of right and wrong? Truth and falsehood? Essentially from two sources; one's own impulses of the moment, and from empirical data (at least amongst the atheistic of the moonbats). The problems with the first are myriad, and also deserving of its own post. Suffice to say for now that if the world is full of 6 billion relativists all determining their own sense of right at the moment, you end up having 6 billion different notions of truth, and from there you rapidly proceed to anarchy and the disintegration of human society.

The second is explored here. Again, suffice it to say that there are ways to the truth that extend beyond empirical data points. To enslave oneself to empiricism as the lone means of obtaining objective truth seriously hampers one in fully examining -in the words of Douglas Adams- Life, the Universe and Everything. It is a barren world that the MRT lives in.


A perpetual state of bemused wonder is brought about anytime one contemplates the Left and its matter-of-fact hypocrisy.

Then they wield the hypocrisy wand at the Right. . .but at least the Right struggles to be good.

From the "Individual is Now God" Files. . .

. . .we have former Washington governor Booth Gardner, a man noted for his remarkably cranky exterior when he was the Evergreen State's governor in the '90s, has now been diagnosted with Parkinson's and become a vociferous advocate for legalized suicide.

He says he wants "to be in the position where — on a Sunday afternoon, in the summertime; this is the ideal — I'm with my kids and grandkids and I say to them, 'Come here, I've got to talk to you.'

"And they come and I say: 'Friday's my day. That's when I want to leave. Let's spend the rest of the week hanging by each other.'

"That's dignity."

"I have the right to make the last decision."

Yes indeed. We from the MRT Central Command reserve all rights normally attributed to God for ourselves. When others start life, and when they (espcially I) may end them.

I wonder how Booth would feel if he have a brand new car with a poor electrical system to his son, and his son decided that instead of working with it and using it as valid transport, he simply decided to drive it into the nearest tree and be done with it, how he would feel?

Am I oversimplifying? Maybe. Is his position logical? In a materialist culture that in the end is one of the most pessimistic worldviews ever conceived by man, well, yes. But is it life giving? Is it optimistic? Is it LOGICAL?


Emphatically, no.

Those "Tolerant" San Franciscans

Seems an evangelical teen group marched in SF, and was met not only by counter-protestors, but was censured by a local Assemblyman who claimed they are hate freaks who need to be driven out of the city with cattle prods.

Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who told counterprotesters at City Hall on Friday that while such fundamentalists may be small in number, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco."

Yep. More of that old-time, tolerant Liberalism down in gay Frisco.

Full article here.

WordPress

Am currently playing with my blog over at WordPress.com.

Check out demolition65.wordpress.com to examine my new digs.

For the time being, I am going to do dual posts at both sites, as their are pluses and minuses to both sites.

Pluses to WordPress: ALLOWS ME TO CATEGORIZE MY MATERIAL, a feature I have been wanting to use for some time.

-Does not force you to dive into the code to add to blogrolls and so on.

-Does not have blogger's current reputation for servers problems.

-Has a nice line-up of templates


Pluses to Blogger:

-CAN do the code editing. Right now WordPress won't allow for nifty things like site counters and ClustrMaps on the toolbar

-Much more freedom in toolbar and layout options.

So, I'll work with both for the time being.

Michael Schiavo

Is a fricking monster. (SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE)


LINK

Michael Admits Book on Terri Schiavo to "Settle Score" With Her Family
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 23, 2006

New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- In a startling revelation, Terri Schaivo's ex-husband Michael admitted in an interview that his new book “Terri: The Truth” was written to "settle some scores" with Terri's family rather than honor the memory of the woman at the center of a national euthanasia battle.

Schiavo made the admission in an interview with NBC News scheduled to be broadcast on "Dateline" on March 26.

Host Matter Lauer told Schiavo, "I guess you could've written a book to honor Terri. After reading it, it's not really the book you wrote."

"This is a book that in some ways settles some scores, doesn't it?" Lauer asked him.

Michael Schiavo eagerly replied, "Oh yes it does."

Though Schiavo wrote the book with goals of retribution in mind, he said he thought "many times" of writing a book to honor the memory of the woman he painfully starved to death over a thirteen day period.

That Michael's book is more about scoring political points that honoring Terri Schiavo's life comes as no surprise to some observers.

The book was written for Michael by military history author Michael Hirsh, who offered Michael his services after becoming angry that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law a measure approved by the Florida legislature allowing him to stop Terri's euthanasia death.

Responding to allegations that he may have physically abused Terri, leading to her collapse, Michael told NBC News, "They're wrong. I heard the thud. Ran to Terri. Called after that little gasp, I mean, it was within a minute I was on the phone with 911. They can think whatever."

Terri's initial collapse was blamed on a potassium imbalance, but an autopsy concluded that was not the case. A bone scan performed after Terri's collapse found evidence of possible trauma and friends later revealed the couple go into a heated argument on the day Terri collapsed.

Matt Lauer asked Michael why he didn't divorce Terri and decided to marry his longtime girlfriend Jodi Centonze, with whom he had an affair and two children while married to Terri.

Schiavo responded, "Why do I have to divorce Terri? Terri wasn't like a football -- an inanimate object you pass back and forth. She was my wife. You mean because your wife gets sick, do you give her back?"

Terri's parents repeatedly ask Michael to divorce Terri so they could take care of their daughter. He refused because he would have lost the remainder of a $1.5 million medical malpractice judgment the Schiavo estate received.

Michael also told NBC News about his decision to prevent Terri's brother Michael from seeing her just minutes before she died.

Lauer asked Michael: "You're walking into the room. Did you stop and think, “What would Terri want?” Would she want her brother or sister?"

He refused to respond to directly to the question, only saying Terri would want her family to get along.

Michael concludes his interview with what the Schindler family will likely say is a slap in the face to Terri. He tells Lauer of the woman he euthanized, "She's up there praising me right now ... and saying thank you."

She's up there praising him right now? Is she happy with how he is spending the rest of that malpractice settlement? Did Matt Lauer ever ask him how he is using the remainder of that settlement?



Can you say the word, "delusional"?



Fr. Frank Pavone has issued a blistering indictment of Mr. Schiavo in the linked letter here.

Another illustration of the inconsistency and moral bankruptcy of the Left

From an older post on Pharyngula:

When moral absolutists try to apply simple-minded, black-and-white reasoning to a complex situation (and defining a human being is certainly a complex problem), you get criminal travesties like this one:

A sailor's wife was pregnant with an anencephalic child, whose probability of surviving or of ever being conscious was zero. She, reasonably, wanted an abortion.
But the Congress had decided -- that no federal funds should be used to pay for abortions except where the life of the mother was at stake. As a result, Tricare (formerly CHAMPUS) the agency that covers military families, refused to pay the $3000 the abortion would cost.
The family sued, and a federal court ordered Tricare to pay, and the abortion went forward.
Then the Justice Department (with John Ashcroft as Attorney General) sued the family to recover the $3000, out of the sailor's pay of less than $20,000 a year.
The Justice Department just won. A panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled that, under a 1980 Supreme Court precedent upholding the Hyde Amendment -- a parallel provision to the one in question, but applying to Medicaid recipients rather than to military families -- the law was valid and the government didn't have to pay for the abortion. Consequently, the family has to pay the money back.

Our guardians of purity have magnified the pain of this family and willfully and vindictively punished them for the 'crime' of a biological imperfection. I call that evil, pure and simple. There should have been no question in this case that an abortion was necessary.

But then later in the article, the author of this disaster (PZ Myers) says this:

People with severe spina bifida can be intellectually and socially capable, fully human, but a young family with limited resources ought to have the privilege of making a choice about whether to shoulder the responsibility before the fetus has acquired those mental capacities. I presume we now have a government that will force families to take on that burden, but will refuse to pay any part of the price.

Well, the author seems to be contradicting himself. He IS willing to pay for abortions, so that "sub-humans" -according to his reductionist definition- might be eliminated, but to actually care for these creatures, even when "fully human" -such as in the case of spina bifida patients- is something he is NOT willing to pay for.



Well, as anyone can see, he IS being consistent; consistently evil in his application. He is reducing children to economic computations. Children that might contribute to society, OK. Children that may contribute but in the end will cost society more -spina bifida patients- have to go. And as for anencephalic patients who can never contribute, get rid of them immedietely. Because they are not human to being with, they must be eliminated.


He's down on the right side of my sidebar. A well-learned, profoundly misguided man.

So, Ben Domenech goes down. . .

in a blaze of ignominy because he plagiarized PJ O'Rourke's best stuff.

Should he have resigned? You betcha. Can't hope to have any journalistic street cred if you're cribbing from others.

But I want to focus on the reactions from the blogosphere.

From Michelle Malkin:

The bottom line is: I know it when I see it. And, painfully, Domenech's detractors, are right. He should own up to it and step down. Then, the Left should cease its sick gloating and leave him and his family alone.

From RightWingNutHouse:

If we conservatives have any claims to promoting honesty and decency, there will be more calls on the right for Mr. Domenech to do the honorable thing and save himself and his employer the embarrassment of being fired by resigning immediately. Little can be gained from his continuing to blog at the Washington Post as I for one never plan on linking to anything he writes and would hope that other conservatives would join me in such a boycott.

Ben Domenech is not the kind of writer we want representing the conservative viewpoint at the Washington Post or anywhere else. With so many eloquent and able conservative writers, I’m sure the Post will have no problem finding someone else to take over a blog that should be espousing honesty and decency as the principles by which we on the right live by.

Anything short of that just won’t do.

And. . .from the left:

Daily Kos:

Howard Kurtz started the Post's walk-back on Domenech in today's edition, mentioning that the appointment of Domenech had "touched off an online furor," and then finally, in his 9th paragraph, getting around to mentioning "what appeared to be instances of plagiarism from Domenech's writing at the William & Mary student paper." Kurtz' seemed to suggest that Domenech's serial plagiarism is just a sideshow to the "on the one hand/on the other" disagreement on his political beliefs.

Expect to see Kurtz' approach adopted by the wingers. They'll argue that it was the merits of his arguments that upset progressives, and that it was unfortunate that the liberal Washington Post chose a weak candidate to represent conservative views when there were so many more deserving candidates.

"Sadly no Comment" (you have to go and see for yourself. Lots of glee, four-letter adjectives used liberally in place of coherent criticism. . .the usual.


Let us note the the vitriol . . . and conspiracy theories. . .are emanating from the Left on this. Perhaps that is no surprise. Domenech was regarded as something of a hero on the Right for infiltrating the halls of the notoriously lefty WaPo. His almost immediate fall from grace is a bit breathtaking. . .and certainly exhilirating for the MoonBats. In some ways. . .ONLY SOME. . .you can't blame them for a bit of existential crowing.


Now, I have searched for some comparison articles on Malkin to see if she treated Jayson Blair with as much dripping contempt as the MoonBats are for Domenech right now. . .and all I was able to find was more LEFTY ranting on the evils of the blogosphere. People like Brokaw claiming that bloggers are out of control. How this related to Blair's perfidy I cannot tell.

But still, with Domenech, the ranting is coming from the Left. With Blair, (based on my decidedly limited research) the ranting ALSO came from the Left.



One of these days, I will do an involved post on the entrenched hypocrisy of the Left; if they are all about openness and loving, why do we see SO MANY instances of their unadulterated hate speech all over the blogosphere?

And the Sheen Moonbat legacy continues

I'm not sure when Charlie Sheen fell off the map for me. Was it the constant drugging? Or acting so stupid as to cause a woman like Denise Richards to dump him?

Naw. It's this latest deranged rant that did it for me.

Grumpy lately?

I note that my last few posts have been on the grumpy/curmedgeonly side, lately. So have the Anchoress's. Is it winter?

Erly mid-life crisis?

Or, once again, has the Anchoress nailed it with this spot-on ramble. Check it out.

Bad Craziness

Y'know, it's bad enough digging out of the morass of foolishness surrounding my life lately. . .and it got even sillier when the choral director's daughter did infact get the role of Dorothy. . .that really smells.


But then I go over to Mark Shea's Catholic and Enjoying It blog, and today he churned out about 8 different links that just totally discouraged me.

I'm not gonna reproduce them here. Go on over and take a look for yourself. Marked "March 20th, 2006." If you're anything like me, you'll find the links easily enough. If you aren't and don't agree with Mark on the horrors these various tidbits foretell. . .well, bad cess to you.

I swear, between Oz, berserk parents at my school, Shea's and Suicide of the West's alarming posts, I'd have more than enough reason to feed myself headfirst into the nearest meat grinder if it weren't for the following:

-My health
-The reality and health of my seven children
-And the reality and health of my lovely wife.

And thank God for them!!!!

Wallflower

6 X 6 – from wall to wall
Shutters on the window. . no light at all
Damp on the floor, you got damp in your bed
They’re trying to get you crazy-get you out of your head
They feed you scraps, they feed you lies
To lower your defenses, no compromise
Nothing you can do, the day can be long
Your mind is working overtime, your body’s not too strong

Hold on, Hold on
They put you in a box, so you can’t be heard
Let your spirit stay unbroken, let you not be deterred

Hold on, you have gambled with your own life
And you face the night alone
While the builders of the cages
Sleep with bullets, bars and stone
They do not see your road to freedom
That you build with flesh and bone

They take you out – the light burns your eyes
To the talking room – it’s no surprise
Loaded with questions from clean white coats
Their eyes are as hidden as their Hippocratic Oath
They tell you-how to behave, behave as their guest
You want to resist them, you do your best
They take you to your limits they take you beyond
For all that they are doing there is no way to respond

Hold on, Hold on
They put you in a box, so you can’t be heard
Let your spirit stay unbroken, let you not be deterred

Hold on, you have gambled with your own life
And you face the night alone
While the builders of the cages
Sleep with bullets, bars and stone
They do not see your road to freedom
That you build with flesh and bone

Though you may disappear, you’re not forgotten here
And I will say to you, I will do what I can do

Though you may disappear, you’re not forgotten here
And I will say to you, I will do what I can do
And I will do what I can do
And I will do what I can do

Copyright 1982, Cliofine, Limited.

Taken from the lyrics sheets attached to the 1982 album Security by Peter Gabriel.

Dedicated to all those who suffer from the stings, arrows and aggravations slung by human insects.

Discouraged,, seeking prayers

There are times working with adults is a chore beyond measure. I was reminded of that little fact once again, today.


Please pray for me, as I am struggling tremendously just now with bitterness and anger at some remarkably unjust and unethical treatment at the hands of some adults in my life.


Want to know why I got out of school administration and back into teaching? When you teach, kids are acting like kids, in other words, your target population is acting appropriate to its level of development.

Adults, on the other hand, when you deal with them as an adminstrator, are acting like kids. I have no problem managing kids that act their age. I have ENORMOUS impatience with adults that do not act their age.