Saturday, May 3

May

Hola, chicos. While it's true I've severely backed off blogging for the summer, I'm tired of my to do list tonight and have been reading around and found a few things I don't want to lose track of so I sez to myself, I sez, "Self, why not start stacking up a list?" I'll add new stuff to the top as I go. Or something.

May 11/08:

Calling all Tacoma owners. $$$

Via Daniel Pipes, Mike Wallace interviewing then Israeli-US Ambassador Abba Eban in 1958:

[w]e have certainly achieved our territorial settlement as a result of agreements, not as a result of violence. It was they who decreed the method by which the present frontiers were achieved. They rejected the 1947 recommendation.

We said, "Let us have boundaries by international agreement"; they said, "Let us fix our boundaries by war," and they made the war. But following the war, we reached agreements and these agreements define our boundaries, and we... and they have agreed that they may not be changed except by mutual consent.

But much more important even than history and law, is this basic moral question: Here we, are eight thousand square miles, perhaps the smallest state in the international community; here they are, eleven sovereign states, three million square miles, four hundred times our area, and we have the fantastic doctrine --
(video & transcripts)

May 10/08:


May 6/08: Does anyone in the house know anything about teaching kids how to speak German? If so, Alice wants to speak with you. Other than that, a couple of things tonight.

May 5/08: Behold! Vegetable Rights (via)

May 4 3/08:
  • Why read it when there's video? Milton Friedman brilliantly smiles his way through the death of the Capitalism is Born of Human Greed Theory.
  • Why burn your eyes out watching video when you can shut 'em and listen? John Piper podcast in Britain: Treasuring Christ and the Call to Suffer Pt 2 "In order for Christ to be killed there had to be killers." No one thinks about suffering like John Piper. A resource list.
  • Deborah Gyapong quotes a United Church progressive commenting on calls for the church to wipe out the term "Christianity": "Even Rev. Giuliano agrees that the name Christian -- which carries the baggage of colonialism and other ills -- should probably be phased out. Instead, he would replace "Christian" with "Follower of the Way" or "Follower of Jesus."" Read the whole post over there before weighing in on that one. To me, Deborah Gyapong is like Canada's Anchoress. I am a fan.
  • Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Changing the world one video game at a time. Get ICED! I Can End Deportation and so should you. You recall past influential games like Doom, now we have the ultimate in cyber social justice.
  • And finally, Rum Fritters. Mmmmm....fritters.

Saturday, April 26

See You, In September

Last night it dawned on me, I've got quite a summer ahead of me.

1. Starting a charter school.
"The true well-being of a town – its security, its strength – is to number within it many learned, serious, kind, and well-educated citizens." Martin Luther
2. Then there's the familee reunion at our place. It's gonna be a good one. Only I didn't know I was going to be part of starting a school when I started planning the familee reunion.




3. Next I've got to figure out how to replace the L-Strips & dash board on my truck. This too, for that matter. CJ of ToyotaFiberglass.com keeps selling me fiberglass Toyota pieces and there's a pile accumulating in the garage. It's like books. I can't stop buying. Excellent service there though, he's given me his cell phone help line so he can talk me through the demolition and reconstruction.

4. Plus, I kind of want Captain Capitalism to make me rich, Rich, RICH!!!

If I may suggest a summer assignment, EMG, that would be thee EMG, suggested I read My Lady Nicotine, by J.M Barrie whom you will recall fathered Peter Pan. Few people know that Peter Pan may have been a faerie, but deep down he was a first rate pro-smoking advocate. It was in his blood. Anyway, I read it and loved it!! You can't read it and not want a drag...more to the point, you'll come away feeling vindicated in taking a drag. Smokers must read this book.

Now my dream would be if you, dear heart, would have a look at Barrie's book and write a bit about why you really dig smoking. Picture a Smick-Smack-Smokey Extravaganza with links all around. In the interests of fascist egalitarian fairness, dissenting anti-smokers may participate as well, but be forewarned that the rest of us enlightened progressives will hurl insults at you.

Still, imagine how it will boost your traffic!

Read My Lady Nicotine online.

And be ready to report by the end of August.

When I'll be back.

Smoke more. Alice digs it.

Knee-jerk libertarianism...

...can turn you into a lefty if you're not careful.

Somewhere in Robert Bork's book, Slouching to Gomorrah, he mentions the modern liberal emphasis on the integrity of its institutions over the integrity of the citizenry. Hopefully I'll have a minute to dig up his quote later, but in the mean time consider it in this case:

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that police cannot use random dog searches to find drugs at schools or in public places, with the exception of airports.

[...]

In one of the cases, police visited St. Patrick's High School in Sarnia, Ont., in November 2002 at the invitation of school officials.

While police and their dogs searched the school, students were confined to their classrooms. During the sweep, a dog led police to a backpack in the gym that contained marijuana and magic mushrooms.

The student who owned the backpack was charged with possession of marijuana and psilocybin for the purpose of trafficking. He challenged the admissibility of the evidence on the grounds that his Charter rights were violated. (CTV)

And he won. Which then is the larger crime? If you are a modern liberal, you will recoil at the process and say sniffing without permission is far worse than selling dope out of your locker. If you aren't a modern liberal and you recognize the importance of an upstanding citizen base for the preservation of society, what do you say?

Think about it, what's the answer?

Here's a different thought, not the one I'd originally intended, from Robert Bork:
Judicial radical individualism weakens or destroys the authority of what sociologists call "intermediate institutions" -- families, schools, business organizations, private associations, mayors, city councils, governors, state legislatures -- that stand between the individual and the national government and its bureaucracies. All of this has happened within the lifetimes of many Americans. We are worse off because of it and none of it was commanded or contemplated by the Constitution.
Case in point.

Thursday, April 24

A Meandering: Let wrong die on my shoulders.

It would seem that when someone wrongs you there are two choices.

Leave it and let the wrong die.
Or stir around in it and let the wrong grow.
Imagine the power this gives us to rid the world of wrong. Let it die on my shoulders. Someone says something terrible. You never mention it again. That branch of wrong you could have grown shrivels. Not rocket science I guess, but this clarifies a point for me. On pacifism.

Pacifism says leave it. Whatever it is, leave it. Turn the other cheek. Love thine enemy. And to that I look at the beauty of the principle, leave it and let the wrong die. That branch of wrong you've come to be in charge of, in a word, dies.

Revenge says stir in it. Whatever it is, stir in it. Tweak the other cheek. Get thine enemy. And feasts its eyes on the delight in the principle, stir it and right the wrong. The wrong, in a word, thrives with leafy green branches.

So then what about the time when this principle applies?
Leave it and let the wrong grow.
Stir around in it and let the wrong die.
The emphasis should not be on whether or not to"leave it", but on what "lets the wrong die".

It simplifies the whole pacifism debate.

Will that be paper, or gold?


"Gold and silver are the emissions of nature: paper is the emission of art. The value of gold and silver is ascertained by the quantity which nature has made in the earth. We cannot make that quantity more or less than it is, and therefore the value being dependent upon the quantity, depends not on man. Man has no share in making gold or silver; all that his labors and ingenuity can accomplish is, to collect it from the mine, refine it for use and give it an impression, or stamp it into coin.

[...]

"Paper, considered as a material whereof to make money, has none of the requisite qualities in it. It is too plentiful, and too easily come at. It can be had anywhere, and for a trifle.

"There are two ways in which I shall consider paper.

"The only proper use for paper, in the room of money, is to write promissory notes and obligations of payment in specie upon. A piece of paper, thus written and signed, is worth the sum it is given for, if the person who gives it is able to pay it, because in this case, the law will oblige him. But if he is worth nothing, the paper note is worth nothing. The value, therefore, of such a note, is not in the note itself, for that is but paper and promise, but in the man who is obliged to redeem it with gold or silver." (Thomas Paine, 1786)


And to think we've moved from paper to digital. Sort of sheds a little light on why money doesn't by very much anymore, eh?

Wednesday, April 23

John Piper: Both-And

One hang up I've always had with the Christ Follower movement: We're not Christ.

Jesus never wrote anything. He hung out, and talked, and healed. But if his followers had only done that, we wouldn’t know even that about him. Both-And, not Either-Or. And some people more one than the other. (John Piper)
Anyway. As you were.

Tuesday, April 22

Because sometimes, the absolute truth is unavoidable...

Edmonton Sun: "So much for global warming. Earth Day festivities went ahead despite the blast of frigid weather yesterday."

National Post: "By terrorist standards, the body count in Seattle was small -- just one dead and eight others injured. But Haq's trial is nonetheless a noteworthy skirmish in the war on terror in one critical respect: The unemployed engineer is bipolar, and has pled not guilty by reason of insanity. This is an extreme rarity: Most accused jihadis vigorously shun the insanity label as an insult. [...] The reason I find Haq's mental health so interesting is that it puts into sharp relief the sheer inhuman craziness of every terrorist attack."

Inhuman? Doesn't that depend on what your truth is about humanity? Can sanity exist without truth?

And sometimes, the truth turns out to be more reaction and less truth: "The American Psychiatric Association has agreed to host a discussion on religion and therapy for homosexuality. Next month they'll bring in conservative theologians and pro-gay voices to duke it out in two debates."

Doesn't it?

Until the dictator is removed...

Benedict XVI on the 'dictatorship of relativism':

Benedict’s point was that if relativists consider any claims of moral truth as inherently oppressive, they feel justified in attempting to muzzle those who make them. In Benedict’s words, they “seek to subordinate all religions to the super-dogma of relativism.” (National Review)
What of the binding chaos in western society is a result of the 'dictatorship of relativism'? Of that, what good does it do to seek solutions in the realm of specifics if the problems are symptomatic of the dominating efforts of the super-dogma? How effective a strategy is it to squelch the binding chaos by stamping out each little fire that's constantly being started by the overriding power?

Is there any point in talking about anything other than relativism and its pernicious effects?

Monday, April 21

Northern League takes Italy

It would appear that a measurable number of Italians read Mark Steyn's book, America Alone.

One of its [the Northern League] campaign posters featured a Native American with the slogan: "They were subjected to immigration and now they live on reserves!"
Swish that one around in your noggin for a while.

ht: The newest addition to Alice's sidebar, RoadSassy.

Harvard: Liberte! Egalite! Chastite!

Here's what I don't get. Why do the Harvard hook-up students care whether or not a bunch of other Harvard students aren't having sex? Why do the little university kids get all twisted out of shape about it? Perhaps it's the dawning realization that their wymyn's studies course fees were a waste of money.

“People just don’t get it,” Fredell said. “Everyone thinks we’re trying to promote this idea of the meek little virgin female.” She said she was doing no such thing. “I care deeply for women’s rights,” she said. Fredell was studying not just religion but also gender politics — and was reading Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” alongside John Stuart Mill’s “Subjection of Women.” She had awakened to the wage gap, to forced sterilization and female genital mutilation — to the different ways that men have, she said, of controlling women. One of these was sexual. Fredell had seen it often in her own life — men pushing for sex, she said, just to “have something to say in the locker room,” women feeling pressured to have sex in order to maintain a relationship. The more she studied and learned, the more Fredell came to realize that women suffer from having premarital sex, “due to a cultural double standard,” she said, “which devalues women for their sexual pasts and glorifies men for theirs.” (NYT)
Not that it's any of my business, but after reading the whole article, it would seem on-campus chastity groups would do well to take a page out of Stephen Harper's book when it comes to dealing with the press. [Although this poor dear may disagree -- A.] A whole paragraph dedicated to the hook-up girl's decision to order and eat an entire big floofy dessert, while the Virgin Fredell ate oatmeal.

Indeed.

___

To read for later: Elizabeth Anscombe "Contraception and Chastity"

Alice is a Rocketing Rabbit...

And your reflexes? How are they?

Saturday, April 19

Expelled: no questioning allowed

Ben Stein's intelligent design movie Expelled is out in theatres this weekend. Here's a trailer:



As William Dembski puts it, "In EXPELLED, Stein interviews atheistic scientist after atheistic scientist, and they all admit that they haven’t a clue how life arose. There is no materialistic theory of life’s origin, and anyone who suggests otherwise is bluffing. To assert that life arose by purely material forces is therefore an article of speculative faith. Stein is on the side of freedom of inquiry and expression in asking for intelligent design to have a place at the table."

Funnily enough, Panda's Thumb proves the premise of the movie with this home-made graphic. Yes, question Darwinian theory and those of the establishment will make sure your career is in the toilet.

I'm glad to see the Darwinists in agreement with Ben.

Dear Bob Rae

Bob, your Liberal Party abdicated the Nobel Peace Prize winning Pearsonian crown as a Peace Maker, the day that you all blessed the Tamil Tiger sympathizers in the GTA to collect two million dollars a month for the Tamil Tiger war-chest which went on for the next 13 years, and you want the Liberals to get involved in Sri Lanka’s affairs. You must be joking! It is just not Kosher, to allow the Tamil Tigers shoot bullets bought with Canadian dollars to kill innocent unarmed Sinhalese civilians, and then tell the Sri Lankans, we can help you to arrive at some peace deal, when you Liberals are a bunch of Tamil vote-sniffing rats and are suspect.
Signed,

Asoka Weerasinghe, Tamil Canadian

He continues at the Broom

Friday, April 18

Edward Lorenz, 90

Edward Lorenz, father of the chaos theory, passed away this week:

Lorenz's early insights marked the beginning of a new field of study that impacted not just the field of mathematics but virtually every branch of science--biological, physical and social. In meteorology, it led to the conclusion that it may be fundamentally impossible to predict weather beyond two or three weeks with a reasonable degree of accuracy. (MIT)
Meanwhile...

ht: Tim Blair

Thursday, April 17

In a world without absolutes...

...beauty is in the eye of the beholder. *

Self-expression. Expressing the self.

Crunchy Con: "Whether you really will be watching Aliza Shvarts kill her unborn children, or you will be watching Aliza Shvarts pretend to kill her unborn children, you will be watching Aliza Shvarts deny her humanity and present herself as a barbarian, to barbarians"

Wednesday, April 16

The Paradox of Humanity: An Alice the Camel YouTube Docudrama

Next time you think someone is a hypocrite, smile and remind yourself that they're living out their humanity. It seems to me that the only thing consistent about humans is their inconsistency.

I was just trying to find a rendition of Ave Maria for a piano student of mine and stumbled across a rendition by Sarah Brightman, who delivers the musical mood I was trying to explain, but wowee...the visual is more than a little steamy for my dear, sweet, innocent, young lamb of a piano player I'm teaching. Here, Sarah Brightman sings the Hail Mary, a prayer to and about the Virgin Mary, only wearing well placed gold leafing and donning a look in her eye that is, well, a smidge contradictory to my perception of the initial intent of the prayer.

In fact, to be blunt, the whole display makes Sarah Brightman look like a tramp. Considering she's singing about the Virgin Mary, the trampy look has a bit of a Jezebel tinge.

And I'm not even Catholic!!!
And I LOVE Sarah Brightman!!

The YouTube clip is here. Since this is a family show you can click out of here to look at it if you wish. But, ewww...

Which brings me to my next bit of EwwTube wonder. American Idol Goes to Church:



Set aside your belief or disbelief in God for a minute. Am I the only one who finds it funny to watch a group of people sing a song that worships an outer being on a show where people are competing against each other to become the next Idol?

And that's Idol with a capital I.
And that's humanity.

____

Redemption: One deJezebelled Sarah Brightman wearing a black leather number. She has a really pretty voice. And from the interviews I've seen, a charming personality.

Tuesday, April 15

Fitna? Fitness


It was as though someone had kicked the stuffings out of me. For $45 a terribly beautiful young woman, hardly my age, politely guided me through a round of Pilates and soon my conventional haggard look graduated to hinker. Hinkering around like an old, old, woman. Old.

And to think I had asked for it. No, paid, for it. Why wouldn't I? It's good for me. The right thing to do. And given the typical Pilates target market, even a progressive thing to do.

Coincidentally I've been reading The Tragedy of Korosko at Mark Steyn's suggestion, so it's not totally surprising my thoughts turned to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's western tourists whose paid touring company took them right into the hands of vicious, desert bandits.

"Then, with good, hard country before them once more, the tired beasts were whipped up, and they ambled on with a double-jointed jog-trot, which set the prisoners nodding and bowing in grotesque and ludicrous misery. It was fun at first, and then they smiled at each other, but soon the fun had become tragedy as the terrible camel-ache seized them by spine and waist, with its deep, dull throb, which rises gradually to a splitting agony." (A. C. Doyle)
Now if you ask me a camel rides a good bit smoother than Doyle suggests, but that aside, yes, the camel-ache seizing the spine and waist? I bin there. Yesterday, in fact.

Not to cast too dark a shadow on Stott-Pilates, but it all has me pondering Mark Steyn's question in America Alone, "how can the most advanced society in human history fall to a bunch of ignorant death cultists?"

Freedom is a tricky business. Often the very gift or talent you are known for becomes the very shackles that bind you. There's a fine line between polite and doormat, or assertive and aggressive for that matter, and it seems like for some, be they persons or nations, they have to walk through the fire before they can find the balance.

But there is a balance, I feel. And it's housed in bodies of principle tempered with experience. Sir Arthur's colonel, after upholding his standards in spite of the desert heat and seemingly inescapable tortuous circumstances, emerged from the experience with a greater depth:
"You haven't got such a thing as a cigar?" asked the colonel, wistfully

Archer drew a thick satisfying Partaga from his case, and handed it down, with half a dozen wax vestas. Then he cantered after his men, and the old soldier leant back against the rock and drew in the fragrant smoke. It was then that his jangled nerves knew the full virtue of tobacco, the gentle anodyne which stays the failing strength and soothes the worrying brain. He watched the dim blue reek swirling up from him, and he felt the pleasant aromatic bite upon his palate, while a restful languor crept over his weary and harassed body.
Peace at last.

Smoke more. Alice digs it.

The Tragedy of Korosko is a terrific read. First published in 1898, it's a prophetic read. At 110 years old, it can be read online here.

Me? Next week I will cough up another $45 and obediently if not dutifully fulfill all the expectations of my Pilates guru. It is a fine line between polite and doormat, or assertive and aggressive for that matter. Either the repeated torture will steel my conviction and help me stand taller or else it will reduce me to one who crawls under a rock in cowardly defeat. Neat!

Only time will tell.

___

Previously: Alice reads America Alone, where Tragedy of Korosko is highlighted.

Sunday, April 13

Human rights: Canadian bloggers sued

Ever since I heard Kate McMillan, Kathy Shaidle as well as Ezra Levant and Free Dominion were being sued by Richard Warman I've been thinking about the leader of the Progressive Element, The Head, whose main minion said this:

"Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything." (C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 1945)
The Head, you see, was a scientist who had, through careful planning, dodged the inevitability of death and survived the guillotine when his followers, The Progressives, dusted off his disembodied melon and mounted it with a connection of tubes filled with precise concoctions of life-giving fluids. And it was from there he lead, that severed head, and to where he said the people sped. Because you don't need reality to get an idea, um, rolling. Or up off the ground. Never mind that The Head was armless and legless. The Progressives granted him importance, so he needed to be dealt with.

Upon reading the newspapers today, we are living out C.S. Lewis' sci-fi prophecies.

Only in Canada, I'm not sure where The Head is actually housed these days. But I see his minions everywhere.

As Mark Steyn puts is:
Incidentally, if you examine the philosophical underpinnings of Canada's "human rights" "jurisprudence," you're struck by a consistent contempt not just for freedom of expression and the presumption of innocence but also for property rights: it's no surprise that a body that takes unto itself the power to regulate the content of privately owned magazines also assumes with nary a thought that it has the right to hijack its neighbours' computer systems when it needs to construct a false identity.
This is Canadian reality today: government regulation of magazine content, hijacked computer systems and false identities.

As Oz Guiness puts it, Without absolute truth there is only manipulation.

If this is news to you, please avail yourself of a special one-time only Alice the Camel Canadian Current Events Human Rights Primer. Or ACCCEHRP for short. Read your way through and catch a glimpse of The Head's minions before they catch a glimpse of you:

Mark Steyn will get you started -- "Serial litigant and Stormfront member Richard Warman launched a blizzard of lawsuits today, against The National Post and the backbone of the northern blogosphere - Ezra Levant, Kate McMillan, Kathy Shaidle and Free Dominion."

Ezra Levant thoroughly explains -- "It’s impossible to criticize section 13 without criticizing Warman, because without Warman, section 13 would have been defunct years ago – almost no-one else in this country of 33 million people uses it."

Macleans -- Richard Warman says he's fighting hate

Free Mark Steyn -- Great stuff up there. Keep checking it.

Study up and then dig out your wallet. Paypal buttons aplenty.
Regular people are racking up irregular legal bills simply by doing regular things.

c/p: Brutally Honest

Tuesday, April 8

Killing us softly...

"It's incredible that a drug which has been taken by 80 percent of women ... is almost bereft of any long-term outcome safety data," Rietzschel said in a NaturalNews report.

A Word On Boycotting Beijing

"The athletes have all worked so hard."
"It's their games."
"The Olympics are not about politics."

Indeed. I suppose.

Here's the trouble with that. The IOC voted to take a risk and accept China's bid to host the Olympics. At the time, the decision raised a few eyebrows. Why did they decide that? What message were they trying to send?

Well put your finger in the air and test the winds with Wikipedia:
The IOC evaluation commission classified[2] the "political system" as "working for China" and declared: "The overall presence of strong governmental control and support is healthy...". Li Lan-Qing (2001-07-17, vice premier of the PRC): "The winning of the 2008 Olympic bid is an example of the the international recognition of China's social stability, economic progress and the healthy life of the Chinese people."
Well, wikipedia...meh.

The thing is, setting aside Tibet for the sake of the athletes gives the IOC the free pass I imagine they were hoping for when they signed off on China. Public apathy. Politicians are cashing in on it too.

The innocent athletes have worked! We can't penalize them!
People are dying...meh.

At least the IOC isn't totally oblivious to reality. This insight regarding Beach Volleyball:
Beach volleyball:
– The concerns of the Bid Committee were noted regarding potential traffic and transport difficulties for athletes, Olympic Family and spectators in using a very high profile public site in the centre of the city. The Commission was of the view that the Zhadyan Park site proposed by the Bid Committee was preferable, noting that it would provide a legacy for the sport. The Commission took the view that the Tian’anmen Square site was inappropriate. (Report of the IOC Evaluation Commission for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in 2008)
Not on Tian'anmen Square, just down the street. Heartfelt.

Nations should rise up. Yes, the athletes will be forced to meet the face of right and wrong head on, but sometimes that's what happens in life. How else will the IOC come to rethink their decision on granting the Olympic bid to a country like China? How else will they come to think twice before they do it again?

There is more to life than a gold medal.

___

Fortitudine: "Our participation is a tacit moral sanction of their practices."

Sunday, April 6

Charlton Heston (1924-2008)

Sporer has this to say about Charlton Heston;

Heston’s political activism also mirrored America itself. In the 60s and early 70s Heston was a loud advocate for racial civil rights and reasonable gun control. When the civil rights movement centered on the disingenuous pandering of affirmative action and gun control became a screeching cry that for the prohibition and confiscation of all the evil guns, Heston changed with times and became a leading conservative activist.

Which speaks a bit to what is up over at Belmont Club;
Not very many people will remember that Charlton Heston picketed a segregated theater premiering his own movie; or that he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr on the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington. All at a time when no one in Hollywood was willing to speak out against racism. It's more likely that he'll be remembered as the six foot three inch tall actor, who played Moses and Ben Hur, and later became the president and spokesman for the National Rifle Association advocating the right to keep and bear arms; or recall that he opposed affirmative action. But Heston the marcher and Heston the NRA president come closer together if one recalls that in the actor's mind at least, racial segregation helped the cause of Communism. The fight for freedom took many forms, but underneath its varied guises it was always the same thing.

Part of the problem with Charlton Heston wasn't that he was inconsistent, but that he was too consistent. And the common mistake, even of the Old Bolsheviks, was to suppose that following a set of principles was better following fashion. Those who wonder whether Heston had wandered off should ask themselves whether Martin Luther King, had he lived, might also have remarked to the nation's First Black President that ''America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns.'' After all, King was a Republican and nobody remembers that either.

(Count me as one who didn't know Dr. King was a Republican. Makes sense though.)

There's something valuable about a man who knows why he's passionate about the things he's passionate about. Then when his cause gets up and leaves him, he knows it's time to part company.

Train at home for a better career

"Strategic Animal Byproduct Relocation Technician";

In the new manure economy, he says, there's no shortage of farmers who can smell a good deal.

Check out the Manure Trader to catch a glimpse of the financial possibilities.

"Unless you're willing to punch the bully..."

Tony Woodleif is teaching his young son Caleb to be a man;

"[S]ometimes the best way to deal with a bully is to punch him in the nose as hard as you can, and to keep punching him until he falls down."

"Oh."

I know, I know, turn the other cheek, and all that. I'll get my sons started on pacifism once they're confident they can punch out the bully. Because unless you're willing to punch the bully, turning the other cheek isn't Christianity, it's cowardice.

HT: Rick