Family Humour and 2 Pics

Adopted daughter Alicia on left.


Eldest daughter Tahlie on the right.










Spare Teen - Anybody Want One?

Youngest daughter Caitlin.

All we want is a holiday

Green Employment Promises

I heard Obama has promised $$$'s for green employment. Employing 1/2 million people to go door to door checking each and all's green card is a worthwhile green job. Also, the need for transportation to the border would be a real money spinner, so anyone who has a few dollars floating around, take my advice and purchase a few cattle carriers as it will ease possible traffic blockages.

"The first step toward the president’s new green economy will come with the passage of the congressional stimulus package—a down payment ......will create 460,000 jobs in three years, save taxpayers $2 billion ......."

"But the centerpiece of President Obama’s new proposals seeks to change the way Americans drive, by giving states like California leeway to design their own tough ....... standards. Stay tuned."

Self-Reliance? What's That?

There's nothing to really comment on with this one; the article speaks for itself. Here are two key quotes:

And so the government keeps offering special deals to people who keep taking them, and people are so conditioned to believe that government is the only answer to every woe that besets them — in part because the politicians keep saying they will protect the people from harm and insulate them from their own bad choices — that people don’t just expect but demand the special deals.

"My guess is they will just print more money, and we’ll look like Zimbabwe," Stossel said. "I hope you have gold or real estate."

Orwell's Children

There's not much to comment on this one either. Maybe I'm just feeling lazy, or I'm saving it up for something else. Here's a teaser:

It has been sixty years since George Orwell wrote his chilling dystopian classic, 1984, and it has been thirty years since we saw the creepiest example of educated and free people willingly walking into a living dystopia. November 18, 1978, three decades ago, 918 people drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. Jim Jones, the communist leader of Jonestown, Guyana, had become "Big Brother." Soviet and Communist Chinese propaganda films and condemnations of capitalist and imperialist America blared continually to the subjects of this island of Leftist Hell.

Jonestown ended in mass suicide, but the real horror was that ordinary people, Americans like you and I, had become so decoupled from reality and morality that they could be led to surrender everything, even their lives, intoxicated only with the venom of modern Leftism. These were Orwell's Children.

We are drifting into the sort of horrific future he described. Too many of us for comfort or solace have become just like the denizens of Jonestown: Orwell's children -- a new generation of creature enraged into constant militancy against eternal enemies, oblivious to the notion of a Blessed Creator, melded into the consciousness of the party hive, divorced from history, hypnotized by images, inoculated against reason, stripped of family, and existing only to serve the cause.

Read the rest from American Thinker.

Now, if you are an atheist or an agnostic (like me), and you're having trouble reconciling the references to God, here's how I look at it. I'm an agnostic - I have my doubts as to whether God exists, but I couldn't look you straight in the eye and tell you with unquestioning certainty that there is no God. After years of religious schooling (from kindergarten through 8th grade) I made my own decisions for me and nobody else, and now, at 43 years of age, the thought of God hardly enters my mind for the most part; but I don't have a problem with those who do have whatever they consider to be a "relationship" with God. As long as nobody is forcing me to believe or give money to a church or whatever, I don't have a problem with it (too bad I can't say the same about paying taxes to the federal government). That is a far cry from the rabid, "freedom from religion" atheists who actively and vehemently attack Christianity and want to abolish from public consciousness any thought of or reference to God. They, in a sense, worship humanity, with the state as a figurehead embodiment of humanity. (Ironically, many of those people are the same ones telling us that humans are a virus on the planet).

Regardless of how you may feel about religion and how it's been the cause of so much death and misery throughout history - consider this: In the span of only a half century - far more death, misery, and destruction was dealt out at the hands of totalitarian regimes (Mao, Stalin, Hitler) where religion was replaced by the state and a man replaced God.

Hueys and the GAU

Sometimes I miss those days. Some days I wish I could still get my hands on one...



Hat-tip: BobF

President Bush, Thanks for the Memories

Anybody Else Notice This?

I was listening to some of President Obama's inauguration speech and I noticed something. Over time, Obama's speech patterns have taken on more and more of a southern, black preacher - something of a cross between Bill Clinton and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Personally, I think the man is a chameleon, somebody able to become what he thinks people want him to be. A true politician through and through.

A Tale of Two Ironies

This from the Southland Times:

Invercargill, New Zealand

Sisters Natalie Bennie and Tamara Shefa were upset after being booted out of the Mevlana Cafe in Esk St yesterday by owner Mustafa Tekinkaya.

They chose to eat at Mevlana Cafe because it had a play area for Mrs Bennie's two children, but they were told to leave before they had ordered any food, Mrs Bennie said.

"He heard us speaking Hebrew and he asked us where we were from. I said Israel and he said 'get out, I am not serving you'. It was shocking."

Mr Tekinkaya, who is Muslim and from Turkey, said he was making his own protest against Israel because it was killing innocent babies and women in the Gaza Strip.

"I have decided as a protest not to serve Israelis until the war stops."

He said he had nothing against Israeli people but if any more came into his shop they would also be told to leave, and he was not concerned if he lost business.

After my initial reaction of disgust, I found it highly ironic that here's this muslim Turk banning an Israeli in protest of Israel's actions against the Palestinians in Gaza when, until 90 years ago, his native country occupied that same area (and then some) for hundreds of years. I wonder how he feels about that and how he would have felt were he alive then. Something tells me he would not have given a rat's ass about the plight of the Palestinians, but now that non-muslims are in charge - Jews, no less - well, that's different.

That's irony number 1. Here's irony number 2.

When this incident happened last week, I was going to simply write about how the Middle East mess has tentacles that reach even here, to New Zealand, a tiny little country at the bottom of the world with no dog in that fight and of little significance in affecting any meaningful change there. Then, as I began doing a little more sourcing, I found this blog entry and began reading the comments. As I read through them (all 180-something at the time), an interesting issue came to the surface: Property rights. One commenter stated that, although he found the cafe owner's behavior appalling, he finds the anti-discrimination laws more appalling, and on that basis he had to side with the cafe owner. I have to agree. Let me explain.

First, consider this statement from Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres:

"Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation in Palestine, it is simply against the law for providers of goods and services in New Zealand to discriminate in this way."

Respect for private, individual property rights are at the foundation of Western civilization. ANY move away from that principal is a step toward a more collectivist, communist society, and that is more of an affront to human or civil "rights" than is being denied service at a private establishment. It's his property, and he should be able to deny service to anybody for any reason. Any law that contradicts that right flies directly in the face of respect for private property rights. The only thing that matters is that the buyer is willing and able to pay for the goods and/or services, and the seller is willing to provide them. Now, if you believe that racial, religious or any other kind of discrimination is morally wrong, then vote with your wallet and choose not to do business with that establishment. If enough people feel the same way, he will either have to change his tune or face going out of business. That, I believe, is the way to affect change - NOT by demanding that government enact laws that prohibit certain behaviors or actions which, however reprehensible, do not deny others their rights.

One does not have the "right" to walk into a private establishment and demand service, but the current law in New Zealand and most elsewhere in the West has made it so. We have betrayed one principal for another, denied one set of rights and granted another set. The equation is out of balance. Where these civil and human rights laws go wrong is that they don't just stop with regulating how government institutions and agencies - those in the public sector - conduct themselves. They go that one step too far into the private sector.

I know this is a difficult concept for some to grasp, but it really is simple. Is racist behavior wrong? I believe it is, but as long as it does not deny somebody their right to life, liberty, or their own property, it should not be illegal. Do I think the guy is a complete asshole? You bet. But I believe he has the right to be an asshole, the right to be wrong - and suffer the consequences for it; not by government mandate, but by the people themselves in any form that does not involve violence, coercion, or destruction of property.

Cut the Crap Already - Rant

If I hear one more complaint about the "massacre" of Palestinian women and children in Gaza at the hands of the IDF; one more whinge about "genocide," "illegal occupation of stolen land," or "indigenous rights" I'm gonna puke.

Let's be very clear here. The stolen land idea is bullshit, and if that is what you believe, then you are a fucking idiot. Go back and learn the history you were never taught in school, and don't even waste my time.

This is an ongoing struggle that cyclically erupts into violence - a never ending cycle of violence, followed by some third party-negotiated cease fire, and then it begins again, usually with Hamas indiscriminately firing rockets into Israel or sending some deluded, illiterate, brainwashed, wild-eyed jihadi into a pizza parlor in Tel Aviv with a vest full of explosives and nails and God knows what for shrapnel and feces or medical waste to cause infection in open wounds for maximum effect - deliberately targeting civilians. Israel responds with the sophisticated weapons they have at their disposal, targeting key Palestinian personnel and infrastructure, doing their best to minimize civilian casualties. If one considers the full capabilities of the IDF, I can't for the life of me understand how anybody can see it any other way. They are either blinded by ignorance or ideology or both. If you believe that the IDF is committing genocide or any of that other bloodbath mantra, then you are even more of an idiot. If that were Israel's real intent they could literally within a matter of days turn Gaza and the West Bank into a parking lot and kill every living thing there with a massive, indiscriminate bombardment of the area using only conventional weapons. Done. Game Over.

That obviously is not what is happening, so why do libs and leftards continue to parrot this lie? For some I know it is simple Jew hatred. I have had many arguments where, after much dancing around about being for the underdog and disenfranchised, that has come out in the end. Fine, at least they have taken a side. For others it comes down to ignorance. For others yet, to them all that matters is who is losing; they are the victims no matter who started it. Christ, I heard some moron the other day who not only thinks that Hamas is the victim and the Israelis are the aggressors, but also believes that the media portrays it just the opposite, turning world opinion against the Palestinians.

And this idea of "disproportionate response" is another crock of shit. Hamas brought a knife to a gunfight. Too bad, so sad. Hamas, like those who have come before them, has chosen violence; hell, that's why the Palestinians voted for them, to take it to the Israelis. Now that they have, firing rockets from schools, mosques, wherever, and uses the same for shelter, hiding behind their own women and children, Hamas and their sympathizers cry "foul." It's so predictable that it seems scripted. Their sympathizers hold the Israelis accountable for firing back anyway, knowing this, but nobody calls Hamas on the carpet for being more "wrong" by putting up those innocents as human shields to begin with. But the media will not confront that issue. Far be it for them to let objectivity get in the way of ideology or, more accurately, a good, "if it bleeds, it leads" story. Cue the professional mourners and victims.

And while I'm at it, what is with these daily "union breaks" for "humanitarian aid" to reach the civilians? Is this combat or a sporting match? I'm telling you right now, if war becomes sanitized to the point where it is just accepted and regulated in some perverse way, then we run more of a risk of more of these perpetual conflicts. War is hell, and it should remain that way if for no other reason than to be a constant reminder that it should be a last resort. When it's on, however, then it's ALL ON. No quarter, no mercy. One must be ready to escalate to any level necessary to win, and winning is defined as the point where your enemy surrenders unconditionally or risks facing complete, total annihilation.

How to Save the Airlines

Via a reliable email:

Dump the male flight attendants. No one wanted them in the first place.

Replace all the female flight attendants with good-looking strippers! What the hell, they don't even serve food anymore, so what's the loss?

The strippers would at least triple the alcohol sales and get a 'party atmosphere' going in the cabin. And, of course, every businessman in this country would start flying again, hoping to see naked women.

Because of the tips, female flight attendants wouldn't need a salary, thus saving even more money. I suspect tips would be so good that we could charge the women for working the plane and have them kick back 20% of the tips, including lap dances and 'special services.'

Muslims would be afraid to get on the planes for fear of seeing naked women. Hijackings would come to a screeching halt, and the airline industry would see record revenues.

This is definitely a win-win situation if we handle it right -- a golden opportunity to turn a liability into an asset.

Why didn't Bush think of this? Why do I still have to do everything myself?


Sincerely, Bill Clinton

Hat-tip: Don

Global Warming