March 26, 2009
Charity upon reading “William the Conqueror” by Jacob Abbott: “There are no conversations or anything, it just describes his life droll word after boring, droll word”.
So should I make her finish reading it if she can use the word droll in a sentence?!
March 24, 2009
Ordinarily I don’t go for the “bash-the-Dad” humor, because Papasully is extremely capable and helpful around here. But this is so funny I laughed out loud the whole time, may even have “leaked” a little.
March 13, 2009
I had a good laugh this morning when reading this article from the Wall Street Journal.
To quote the article…
“Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Friday used his annual press conference to fire a shot across Washington’s bows, saying he’s “worried” about the safety of China’s U.S. assets. His words sent a chill through the Treasury market, and urging the U.S. government to “maintain its credibility” will ruffle feathers, too.”
I would like to toss my hat in, too. Hey gov, could you do us all a favor and maintain your credibility please?
Oh wait, what’s that? You are bankrupt? And printing fiat money that HAS no value? Oh well, then at least make sure you pass out the cheese before you go belly up.
Do they still do that anyway with food stamps? ‘Cause if I get a choice between some good imported Brie from the health food store and a 5 pound block of “processed cheese food”, I’ll take the Brie.
November 4, 2008
October 30, 2008
Aaah, it is that time of year again. Changing leaves, fires in the pit, weenie roasts, the first frost. I love it. Oh, but then all those wicked demon-lovers come out with their creepy decorations and mangled gourds and satanic costumes. They are just trying to steal our children with buckets of candy.
Wait a minute. We have those decorations, and jack-o’lanterns, and costumes. That’s right folks: we are participating in that grand old pagan holiday known as Halloween. What is a good old Irish family supposed to do? So I thought a short history lesson might be in order for the folks who have just had their knickers crawl north.
Yes, it is true that in ancient pre-Christian Ireland October 31 was celebrated as Samhain (sow-in), a time when it was believed that the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living, and the dying of the crops was a symbol of human death. Samhain festivals were celebrated with bonfires, costumes, heavy eating and drinking, slaughter of livestock (argued whether this was sacrificial or for the winter stores – probably conveniently both) and an occasional orgy. Druid priests predicted the future and told fortunes. All serious pagan stuff, and condemned by Bible and Tradition.
And along comes good St. Patrick and drives the snakes out of Ireland. For those who do not know, the ancient Druids symbolized themselves with snakes, a symbol of their wisdom and immortality. When St. Patrick came back to Ireland to save our poor pagan souls he sent the druids a ‘packin. Thus “driving out the snakes”. And as the Catholic church has done in so many places where pagan ritual and worship dominated the populace, she replaced the current festival with one intended to honor Almighty God and his saints, while not depriving the local people of all their fun. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints’ Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. (Another little lesson: the ending “een” in the Gaelic tongue is used to denote smaller or younger, much like “ito” does in Spanish.)
Wikipedia says “In the ninth century, the Church measured the day as starting at sunset, in accordance with the Florentine calendar. Although All Saints’ Day is now considered to occur one day after Halloween, the two holidays were, at that time, celebrated on the same day. Liturgically, the Church traditionally celebrated that day as the Vigil of All Saints, and, until 1970, a day of fasting as well. Like other vigils, it was celebrated on the previous day if it fell on a Sunday, although secular celebrations of the holiday remained on the 31st. The Vigil was suppressed in 1955, but was later restored in the post-Vatican II calendar.”
The tradition of carving gourds originated in Ireland where the head was thought to be the center of power and to house the soul. The gourds were hollowed and carved to likenesses of faces and a candle placed inside to ward off evil and to rebuke superstition (which when you think about it is funny, since Irish are the most superstitious people I have ever known). Likewise, the costumes of Samhain morphed into costumes designed to poke fun at those who still believed that the spirits of the dead and the old pagan gods still held any power over the saved.
In America, and the rest of Western society, most if not all of the theological meaning of Halloween, All Saints, Samhain, etc. has been lost as we comercialized the holiday. (See Santa images anyone?) Anymore, we pretty much regard Halloween as a fun time to dress up and go nab some candy. And who doesn’t need more candy?!
Costumes here: mamasully is going as an American Indian, because that costume still fits around the belly and I am not huge enough to need my pumpkin suit. Diligence: Vampire slayer (Fray if anyone knows who that is). Charity: gypsy, Engineer: Grim Reaper, Eccentric: fairy princess, Stringbean: princess, Motormouth: goblin, Princess: ballerina, Turtle: tiny pumpkin. Papasully has to be coerced into a costume every year, and we haven’t managed to convince him yet. Ususally he caves when he sees everyone else dressed up.
October 29, 2008
I really have, I am that afraid of Obama and the Freedom of Choice Act. I thought this guy was a hoot. Don’t click it with the kiddos in the room because he does mention some adult topics.
October 27, 2008
I am copying here the entire text of Card’s column in The Rhinoceros Times. If you are at all into Sci-Fi and want a great read I highly recommend “Ender’s Game”. I like his other books, too. He is a very engaging and entertaining writer. You can check out his fansite at Hatrack River.
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
October 09, 2008 by Orson Scott Card
An open letter to the local daily paper – almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor – which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house – along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. “Housing-gate,” no doubt. Or “Fannie-gate.”
Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled “Do Facts Matter?” (http://snipurl.com/457to): “Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.”
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It’s not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let’s follow the money … right to the presidential candidate who is the number two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an “adviser” to the Obama campaign – because that campaign had sought his advice – you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension – so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie – that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad – even bad weather – on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth – even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that’s what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences. That’s what honesty means. That’s how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time – and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter – while you ignored the story of John Edwards’ own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women (NOW) threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That’s where you are right now.
It’s not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation’s prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama’s door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe – and vote as if – President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats – including Barack Obama – and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans – then you are not journalists by any standard.
You’re just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it’s time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.
October 24, 2008
Pumpkin Potato Soup, serves approx 18
3 T olive oil
1 1/2 med onion chopped fine
12 C. chicken stock or broth
6 C. pumpkin puree (canned works fine)
3/4 C. green onions. chopped
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
Salt and Pepper
Approx 5# chopped potato
6 C. milk
Saute onion in olive oil over medium heat until soft. Add remaining ingredients, except milk. Cook until potatoes are soft enough to eat. Add milk and cook over medium heat until just hot, but do NOT bring to a boil. Check for salt and pepper.
October 24, 2008
This first video is fine to watch with the kiddos in the room, it is not graphic. Although if they are old enough to be paying attention to politics (as my oldest ones are) it may cause questions.
This one gets a little graphic at then end (not vomit kind), so I would shoo the littles away.
October 24, 2008
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