Ban the Republican Party?

Henke (who, with sanity kicking in, I find myself reading less of these days), notes Ted Rall, (whom I try to read never), calling for the banning of the Republican party.

Yeah, you’ve read correctly. Says Rall:

It’s not as wild as you might thing. (sic) Political parties are banned all over the earth. For instance, the Communist Party is banned in Russia and the Nazi Party is prohibited in Germany. The Republican Party hasn’t murdered in the tens of millions, but why wait?

Well, I guess thare’s the storm trouper coming out again. One wonders if he really supports such bans… (The Democratic party would for example have been banned under Saddam…) …but let’s look at the arguments laid by his drooling reader:

Republicans have attempted to destroy our constitution by tearing down the wall between church and state. They have attempted to subvert our constitution to create a theocracy. The GOP itself is guilty of treason.

Once supposes that they would have tried the same with George Washington, who wrote:

“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible”

… and…

“To the distinguished character of a Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of a Christian.”

Says Rall’s (apparent) fan:

Republicans nominated a man unfit for the presidency, a man who lacks the intellectual curiosity, the disposition, and the decency to be president of the United States. They knew he was incompetent when they nominated him. They put the quest for power above the good of the nation. They have committed treason. The GOP should cease to exist as a political party.

Now, of course the idea that this idiots judgements about the President are politically motivated never enter what laughingly passes as his thought. Further, some level of desperation is apparent, here. And is the writer tacitly admitting their guy was, by not beig elected, deemed more incompetent than Mr. Bush, who WAS elected?  Clearly they couldn’t beat this ‘incompetent’, even in the kind of dirty fight the Democrats aranged…. both times… and so the response is to, like the totalitarians Democrats have become,  call for the use of government to ban their opposition.

But the writer goes on, as if to confirm my read:

Republicans have destroyed our environment. During the 1990s, a critical time during which we could have begun reversing global climate change, they funded corporate pseudo scientists to befuddle the public and browbeat the media into believing, against all reason and common sense, that humans are not responsible for the rapid global climate change we are experiencing. They have put not just our country but the world at risk. The GOP should cease to exist.

 Actually, no. Global warming is a farce, and the science is thereproving it. The only way apparently, to stop such results from coming into the public eye is to ban the Republican party. Yeah, that’ll do it.  And are the rest of us really to accept what Rall and his followers claim as ‘reason’ and ‘common sense’? Again, the facts are not on the side of this writer, so his desperate response is to use the power of government to ban the opposition.

Republicans have been attempting to destroy our public education system for the past 30 years. In doing so, they have attacked the very foundation of our democratic society: An educated populace capable of analytical thought. The GOP deserves to be abolished from American politics forever for this crime.

I agree…Education is the foundation of our society… and it’s not a democracy, but a REPUBLIC… and thank God for that.  But actually, the American educational system has destroyed itself, aided by Democrats who arranged the government takeover of it… government takeover being the fastest way to destroy anything.   

And then we come to the heart of the left’s mantra of late:

 Republicans have destroyed American foreign policy, destroyed our global credibility, played upon fears to justify a senseless war, and ultimately served as a recruiting tool for terrorists. No political party should be allowed to survive after such a blunder.

 And whom it was whose misguided foreign policy.. the placating of such terrorists and the countries that sponsor them, and the party whose goden boy was responsible for it, and the results of that misbegotten policy, has apparently gotten right by this numbnuts.

Finally:

And finally Republicans have turned Americans against Americans, families against families, gays against straights, religious against nonreligious. They have preyed on our bigotry. They have appealed to the basest instincts of human nature: To hate what one does not understand.

So… let me understand this clearly… this is your excuse for ten years of losing elections? And the last line… this this an explaination of why you and Rall hate the Republican party enough to want them banned?

I guess I DO understand you clearly. The totalitarian methods you call for show this much…. You clearly haven’t the wit to understand them.

All you have, is hate.

?

First of all, a progress report:

“Elephant”, my new server, (actually, my old one, reborn) which has had a heartbeat for a day or two, now is up and talking to the rest of the network. Even better… the 50 or so gigs of music I’d left stranded on the D: Partition is readable. Now, granted that most of it, I’d managed to move over to “Bear”, my other server, before the array failed about a year and a half ago. But some of it, I had not.  That I can even SEE that partition is a fluke; Usually, when the controller goes, you have about a 75% chance of losing the drive array’s data.. the new controller isn’t happy about picking up the old controller’s config. In this case, though, everything appears to be working, and working well.

But just on GP, I’ll copy down what I need, (A process likely to take several days) and then reformat the partition before putting Elephant into full service. Call me weird, but it’s kinda like a wrench head having an old car restored and working well again. It’s nice to have the old boy back.

Been thinking; Since he’s kinda slow, I guess the best service I can put him to would be as a backup; He’s got two tape drives and room for more. Now each night during the overnight hours, I have had every system on the network doing a complete disk dump to “Bear”.  That process takes some SERIOUS room on Bear’s 500gb of drives.. compressed, around 40 gigs. I’m thinking have them do their dumps to Elephant instead and have him tape the result. directly from his drives. This would open up some more space on Bear, which is my more capable server.
Oh, that and he can handle the CD tower of 6 drives, to share to the LAN, of course.

And, dare I say this, I’m considering a motherboard replacement… if I can figure out what mother will work with this early (Version 3.5) ServerRaid card. It’d be nice to tuck a faster mother in the old case, and have it work with that card and the existing drives. The RAID controller is PCI, so you’d think it’d work… but I’ve seen a lot of strange proprietary stuff with IBM over the years.

-=-

By the way, I did try that SuperStacker II hub… the performance isn’t as good as the current day consumer grade switch… the collision rates, comparatively go through the ceiling.  Too bad… it’s kinda neat to have it around, but I guess I can’t use it.

-=-

Christmas was a fine day, as I predicted. Most of the family gathered over at my sister’s place.  She and her husband are planning on leaving for Florida very shortly.  So, I likely won’t see them until May.  Actually, I hope I don’t see them until May.  Them coming back earlier, she and her husband, means something has gone wrong, most likely with her health.
We got lots of pictures, which I’m now preparing to share with the folks who were there. I’m finding that there’s some serious advantage, in having the additional memory card for the camera.  Since I didn’t get one for Christmas how the looking for that.

Now that I know what I got for Christmas the practical side of me comes out and starts looking for solutions to problems I’ve been fiddling with sine late October. Example; I’ll be looking for a solution to my cell phone problem.  I have one, a nice one, and it works well.  But it also has a MP3 player in it, and I am considering whether or not I should use that feature on the phone or simply get a regular MP3 player and not mess with the phone.  I’ll be looking around for a cheap one, to see what the prices are. I’d need to get some Mini SD memory and the $60 xfer kit to get the phone working. Might not be worth the money… but without someone telling me their experience with the thing in MP3 mode, I’ll never know.

-=-

(Ugh) I didn’t mean to, but I ended up over-eating today.

Oh, well, work tommrow, so I’m off to bed.

James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured “Godfather of Soul,” whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a founder of rap, funk and disco as well, died early Monday, his agent said. He was 73. Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music.

I think I could have picked a better time to check out. (grimace)
I mean no disrespect; I just think it’s sadder than usual when someone dies on Christmas day.
(sigh)… anyway….
I didn’t really appreciate his recorded output, until his performing and recording career was past it’s zenith.  I was more into pop sounds, in those years, and he was decidedly not pop, on the whole. Old, he’d get an occasional song to pop up ; “I feel good… I got you” was one such.

“Living in America” was another such tune. ironic that that particular tune comes to mind, given the flurry of activity around Sylvester Stallone’s movies.  That tune, you may recall came up in one of them ; Rocky III, I think.  That particular disk was a staple in my repertoire at weddings for a long time.

But on the whole, I really didn’t listen to him very much.  Until, ..oh, I don’t know… the last five years or so.  I suppose it’s that way when you’re on the cutting edge.  People don’t appreciate you until after you’ve gone, at which pont they say “Damn, the guy was GOOD”.
As it is, the guy had more honors and titles attached to his name than anybody else in the business.  And he grew and adapted to see what a long period 60 soul music seventies disco funk, rap in the eighties the man did it all, and did it well.

One question I’ve never had answered, though, is what he thought of what he sees going on in the music world around him today.  I can’t help but think he… as positive as he usually was, by all accounts, would have been somewhat disheartened by the whole deal.

A Christmas Day message:  economic freedom means economic growth.   Not really a new message, but a message to which liberals are deaf.

From the Wall Street Journal:

In 2005, per capita personal income grew 31% faster in the 15 most economically free states than it did in the 15 states at the bottom of the list. And employment growth was a staggering 216% higher in the most free states. It hasn’t been a “jobless recovery” in states that have adopted pro-growth tax and regulatory policies.

Will Franklin, WILLisms,com has the details, and loads of graphics on how, “Economic Freedom Produces Better Economic Outcomes.”

In a society where packing up and moving to another state is not all that unusual, Americans are taking advantage, moving to economically free states from relatively oppressive states. People are voting with their feet.

“Live free or move” indeed.

Mrs. Pelosi campaigned on a promise to drain the republican swamp.  She made no promise to drain the democrat swamp.   The Washington Post details, Pelosi hand picked choice for majority leader, Jack Murtha, scheme of funnelling federal tax dollar to his campaign contributors, here.

In 2001, Murtha announced the creation of Scialabba’s nonprofit agency for the disabled in Johnstown, Pa. The next year, with Scialabba still on his staff, Murtha secured a half-million dollars for the group, the Pennsylvania Association for Individuals With Disabilities (PAID), and put another $150,000 in the pipeline for 2003, according to appropriations committee records and former committee aides. Since then, the group  has helped hundreds of disabled people find work.

(,,,)

That arrangement over the years has yielded millions of dollars in federal support for the contractors, businesses and universities, and hundreds of thousands in consulting and lobbying fees to Murtha’s favored lobbying shops, according to Federal Election Commission records and lobbying disclosure forms. In turn, many of PAID’s directors have kept Murtha’s campaigns flush with cash.

Send Mrs. Pelosi a message that it is  time to drain her democrat swamp.  Corrupt congressmen and like Murtha and of Alan B. Mollohan need to go

I got some E-mail, earlier this evening, which said words to the effect that while she liked the point I made with this evening’s ‘Nightly Ramble’, that she missed seeing the post I’ve put up the last couple Christmas Eves…

So…..

-=-

This is a time of year when I don’t envy the position of members of the cloth.
Such men and women find themselves in the position of having to write a sermon on essentially the same message every year while making that message sound fresh. It’s not an easy thing to do. That’s why, for the last couple of years at Christmastime, I have simply re-posted “A Bithead’s Christmas”. It’s not laziness that drives that but an inability to come up with a fresh angle every year ; when I have an idea firmly in my mind I can explore and goals of that idea until I’m blue in the face and red in the fingers, and my keyboard is suffering under the strain. But often, the fresh ideas simply don’t come.
There’s this too. I have gotten more e-mail in the past six weeks requesting that article be reposted, than any of the 3500 other articles I’ve ever placed on this web site. It’s obvious that what I wrote in that article struck some serious chords, in the readership of this website, and on the web at large, since the vast majority of people reading an article are apparently coming in from Google, looking specifically for it. I am amazed.
Perhaps it’s better that way.
Sometimes the expression of an idea comes out perfectly, and explains it well, no matter how many times it’s repeated. The Christmas story, the Christmas promise, is most certainly one of these. It is precisely as I said last week in this space; Christmas, and thereby, Christianity itself, has been going on for a little over 2000 years, in spite of all the naysayers, protesters and government regulations that history has managed to toss up in those 2000- plus years. It does so, because at the core of it all, is a message that all the naysayers, Protesters and government hacks will never understand, much less conquer. It is a message that will survive the ravages of time, government, and liberals, facists, and anything else long after you and I are no longer even a memory in this world.
The Christmas message, you see, is eternal, and ever green.

(Evergreen.  I am suddenly struck with the symbolism here)
There is something of a journalistic precedent for this as well. . I do not pretend to hold myself quite so high in the world has these media outlets, but I’d like for you to consider two examples from some well-regarded media outlets; Papers from around the country this day will be Printing “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”. A Wall Street Journal has for years posted the same editorial every Thanksgiving for the last 47 years, and if I’m not mistaken they perform similarly on New Year’s Day as well.
So with all this in mind I will offer once again this year:

I find myself wanting to take more seriously, the challenge of writing to the subject of Christmas, today, than I have in years past. It’s not clear in my mind as to why, but this isn’t unusual… I never really do have a firm grip on why I want to attack a subject in these spaces. In fact, the writing of a coulmn for me has becomes more an effort of exploring a subject; the codification of random thoughts. The act of putting those thoughts into words on a screen allows me to think about, and RE-think about the subject at hand. My thoughts on a given subject often do not fully take shape until such time as I’ve re-written them twice. Often, indeed… usually, the ideas are already there, waiting to be cast into words, but not fully defined until the act of sitting down and typing them out. I suppose this subject is no exception.
To this effort, some blogs, this time of year will quote the great Gospels of Christ’s arrival, and expound on that. And that’s worthy, and right. Some others will take the secular angle of the holiday and go off on that. That too, is fine, though frankly it’s always for me missed the core of the topic, a little.
But not me, for either of those tacks. Not this year. I’m going to go off the beaten path, for this post, at least in context of this blog, given it’s Christmas, and off the beaten path in terms of the Liturgical calendar, given it’s me. I’m going to stick with the meaning of Christmas, but to point it up, I’m going to turn to something a little later… about 30 years later… for my subject. I trust you’ll see why when I’m done.
This story is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We’ll use Luke’s version for the purpose.

In Luke 18 it reads:

15 Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 17 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Now, all three versions add a little something to the story, and I suggest you read them yourself to get it all. Most times that Christians hear this text or read it, a child is being baptized. The apparently intended thrust of reading it in those situations is to make a loose connection with the Children being accepted by Christ. And, that’s a valid angle for the story.
But, think about the story line, here, so you can get the flavor of what I’m going to describe to you. There’s a far bigger angle that many miss.
Christ has been playing “superstar” for a while, now. He’s been attracting flat out huge crowds wherever he goes. The disciples are starting to become concerned for the (human) well being of Christ. Children are, then as now, a source of some stress to adults already under stress, so the disciples decide, wordlessly to give the Lord a break. But Jesus says.. “Hey… No.. Let ’em come… It’s OK. ” Apparently, seeing some remaining resistance in their eyes, he reinforces the command with a statement that must have shaken them badly. “It’s to the likes of these as belongs the Kingdom of God.”
Now, It’s not hard for us to imagine what’s going on in the minds of the disciples…. They must have felt a little put back… While not saying so, they must have figured they had an inside track to Heaven. (Shrug) It’s human nature.
The passages don’t record if they said anything, but you just know what they’re thinking, here… “Comon, Jesus… We’re tryin’ to give you a break here! And you elevate these lowest of low, mere children, into the ownership of heaven? You raise a polite nothing to a path to heaven and eternity? What’s THAT about?”
And you know, Jesus knows it too. He knows full well what they’re thinking, because watch what he comes back with: “I’ll tell you the truth;”, he says, “Unless you change… Unless you transform, and accept the kingdom of heaven like a child, you’ll never enter it.”
But what does he mean, here? He’s talking, I’m afraid, about how you lose touch with happiness and the sense of wonder, as you become an adult. That loss prevents us from seeing the Kingdom of heaven as it is.
For most of us, the happiest times of our lives was when we were children. When we’re younger, we have less in the way of cares, and troubles. Let’s admit, too, that as we get older, we become aware of, and allow more and more sadness into our lives.
It’s true; It’s a hard world out there, and being adults we’ve come to understand this, in a way of understanding that only long exposure and experience… and lots of scar tissue, can bring.
It seems that every year we have more worries and concerns.

Oh, yeah, do we EVER worry. We worry about our health, and those concerns increase with advancing age. We worry about our jobs, about our investments, our savings, about the future in general. Retirement is a concern. Will we have enough? We’re too fat, we’re too skinny. We’re too tall, we’re too short, our once wavy hair is still waving… Only, it’s waving bye-bye. We worry about the future our kids will have and the normal growing up problems, but we also worry about the future that we’ve left our kids. We look at the news, and we wonder what kind of a world have we left them? We even worry if we worry too much.
We’ve seen marriages and relationships we thought would pass the test of time, pass away, instead. Things we had hoped would come to pass, didn’t, and those we’d not dreamed, in our wildest nightmares would happen, did. We see loved ones die. Jobs disappear. Hearts get broken.
And friends, those are just the hum-drum… The everyday worries that every generation has had, since Cain bopped his brother’s bean with a rock. Then you get into the problems particular to us and our times; AIDS, oil shortages, cancer, drugs, the way our own technology seems to be spiraling out of our control…And Islamofacists. Ah, yes, there’s nothing at all, to my mind, like the specter of 3000 plus people dying on national television, in Washington, NY and Pennsyvania… while we watch, to remind us that we’re not in control.
And yes…. it’s all about control, if you think on it for long. All these things I’ve listed are worries about things we cannot control, try as we might.
The list of these reverses, these scars, gets longer as the years progress, and it starts eventually, to break down the positive outlook in every one of us… Each according to their ability to resist. Each step, each worry, each bit of emotional scar tissue, if you will, moves us farther away from the relative joy of our comparatively carefree childhood.
By now the sharper among you will notice where I’m going with this; This is where Christmas comes in. This is why Christmas holds a special place in our hearts, and our traditions.
You see, even for the not-so-religious, it is a time of renewal of our fragile human spirit. All of the hurts, small and large, become less pronounced, and fade under the soft glow of the lights, the candles, the fireplace, and the smile of the children.
Have you ever noticed that it’s the children, in fact, that do us the most healing? Christmas, it’s said, is for the children. Presidential speechwriter and WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan noted recently about some of the qualities of children:

“They are susceptible to wonder. A child can look at a red toy car in the red-green glow of Christmas tree lights and imagine an entire lifetime. A child can play with a new doll and smell good things being cooked and hear sweet music and it can make that child imagine that life is good, which gives her a template for good, a category for good; it helps her know good exists. This knowledge comes in handy in life; those who do not receive it, one way or another, are sadder than those who do.”

Of course, we move away from that ability as we grow older. Our long experience has hardened us to the realities of the world around us, and perhaps jaded our point of view. But here comes Christmas, which gives us, individually and collectively, the chance of looking at the world though the wonder-filled eyes of a child once again… Becoming childlike ourselves in the process, and becoming healed and renewed.
The experience is a far deeper one for those who have accepted the Christmas promise, and it’s meaning. Reacting to that promise includes allowing someone else to run the controls of our lives. Remember I said it was all about control? Well, I want you to think about the features of being a child. It was Randall Jarrell, I tihnk, who once quipped:

“One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”

Well, let’s remember.

You’re NOT in control of much of anything. Someone who knows better, and is by far more powerful than we, is running things. And looking back, I’m sure most of us would conclude that having that situation back would be of comfort to us. Haven’t we all wished to resign from the world of adulthood at times?
I guess this would be a good place to slip in a parallel story. Consider the fictional person of Ebeneezer Scrooge. Think about how the story develops; He’s had some serious emotional setbacks in early life… and those have become a self-feeding, never ending circle by the time we meet him, 7 years after his best friend’s death.
All these setbacks have made him cold, and hard, and for all outward appearances, non-feeling. He’s covered with emotional scar tissue. Being hard, is his way of dealing with what he cannot control.
Only after his overnight experience do all these cares get swept away, along with his anger of not being able to control his situation…. The realization comes to him that he never really WAS in control in the first place, so stop fretting about it all… Think about what are essentially the first words out of his mouth as he realizes that the weight of his worries.. Not unlike worries you and I have had, are gone; “I’m as light as a feather….” The weight of that scar tissue… And all the concerns they represent having been lifted off his shoulders…
“…and as giddy as a Schoolboy!”
Like a child.

“I’ll tell you the truth”, he said, “Unless you change.. Unless you transform, and accept the kingdom of heaven like a child, you’ll never enter it.”

Amazing parallels, aren’t they?

I’m reliably informed that Charles Dickens was not as a rule what one would call very religious. Yet, in looking at the parallels in these two story lines, I must wonder in all honesty if he didn’t have some help with “A Christmas Carol”.
Now, you’ll notice I took some liberty with the way the Biblical text was quoted. Some liberty, I say, but not very much, really, since it’s long been pointed out by Bible scholars that the word that earlier versions of the text had as ‘change’ were really translated from the ancient Greek word for “transform”. This is a major point, because it demonstrates what the first step is, and whose it is… yours.
And no, change and transformation are not the same thing. The best description I’ve ever thought of to explain the difference between the two, runs along these lines:
If I take a rock, and in the other hand I take a large hammer, and I hot the rock with the hammer, and break it, I’ve changed that rock. If I take that same rock, and take a small hammer and chisel, and very carefully, perhaps over a period of decades, sculpt that rock into a flower, I’ve still merely changed that rock.
Transformation, on the other hand, is when the rock itself, as a matter of responding to it’s own will, becomes a flower. And of course that’s beyond the normal power of the rock, by any standard we know.

What Christ therefore is saying is, that we must become children, as of a matter of our own will. Which is, as I say, impossible by any standard we know…. Which in turn leads us to the source of all things, who teaches us how, and gives us the power to do it.
You see, the externalities I mentioned, the lights, the fire, the children…and that which Dickens writes of… the giving, the being open to what joys are around us, and so on, helps toward the goal of understanding the Christmas promise, but it’s not the whole deal.
At the core of it all… (and this is a connection that, alas, many people never make…) is that the one whose birth is being celebrated every December the 25th, is the one who takes over that long list of worries.

THAT’S WHY WE CELEBRATE!!

With those worries removed, lives get changed, hearts mended, child-like perspectives restored in a way that the lights, carols and greenery can never do on their own. And the newly remade Children find that the authority and responsibility and all the ponderous weight connected with them, are taken away by the one who said “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”.

Now, I must warn you; There are those who will resist being told all of this… to the point of removing such joy as they find, wherever they may find it, often using the power of governments, and force of arms to have it removed from town squares and schools, mocking, persecuting and yes, even killing those responsible for the spreading of the news of this miracle. It’s a sad truth, that a world used to darkness, you see, will continually fight to see the darkness continued.  That warning given, however, I will say to you also, that it’s no accident, Christmas being called the season of light, and that Christ is called the light of the world.

If I have one wish for this Christmas, it is that you will be open to the light…. With the wondering eyes of a child.

Udpate: 

James at OTB has a list of other blogs passing along their holiday greetings.

Fact, there is a pay disparity between males and females.  On average men earn more per hour than women. 

Myth, this disparity is the result of some sort of discrimination and the state ought to take action to remedy it.

The New York Times has long whining piece about this alleged discrimination against women. “Gender[sic] Pay Gap, Once Narrowing, Is Stuck in Place:”

Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, women of all economic levels — poor, middle class and rich — were steadily gaining ground on their male counterparts in the work force. By the mid-’90s, women earned more than 75 cents for every dollar in hourly pay that men did, up from 65 cents just 15 years earlier.

Note to the Times, it is not a gender gap.  Only nouns have gender.   It is sex gap.

Long winded rational, there are many factors which determine compensation, experience, training, education, risk, etc.   Men and women get paid differently because they have different priorities and make different career decisions.  Those studies puporting to show a wage gap never take into account the different career decision made by the different sexes.

Short, you don’t like the intricate analysis and believe the statistics are the be all and end all.  Fine.   According the Department of Labor, in 2005, over twelve times as many men were fatally injured in work place as women.   If you believe that statistics prove discrimination, then the workplace has fatal bias against men.

Luke 2:8-14 “Now there were shepherds nearby living out in the field, keeping guard over their flock at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were absolutely terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid! Listen carefully, for I proclaim to you good news that brings great joy to all the people: Today your Savior is born in the city of David. He is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a vast, heavenly army appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among people with whom he is pleased!”

That’s why… That is why there is joy in the world….that one single, powerful message.
It is, in fact, the most powerful message this world has ever received.  No small irony is that that this most powerful message was first heard by shepherds, the lowliest of the low for that time.
Many have tried to drown the significance of this event, and of this message in secular custom.  Yet it survives, having outlasted nearly all such that were attached to it.  Many have tried to deny the event ever happened.  Yet it’s story still survives.

So powerful message is it, governments have tried to deny it, for fear of losing their hold on their subjects. So powerful is it, that people have been shunned, imprisoned, impoverished, and killed outright, all for the mere retelling of it.  Cultures have tried to deny it. Individuals have tried to deny it… but so powerful a message is it, that despite all efforts to the contrary, it has been told and retold for 2000 years and more… and still does not lack for the retelling on this night, having lost none of it’s power.

The question is, what do you do with the message?

Hewett, this morning, points to a WaPo article, and suggests they’re helping Hillary Clinton and Obama clear the primary field of all opposition.

I don’t know as that’s the intent… though I wouldn’t put it past them, and frankly, their efforts are certainly helping to that end.

I guess if I was either one of those two, taking all the air out of the primary season, would certainly be on my agenda.

In watching this develop, however, I can’t help but look askance at the Obama candidacy.   The only times I’ve ever seen anyone come to the four in the democratic party, this fast, previously, was on two occasions… Howard Dean, and Bill Clinton.

On that basis, I can’t help but wonder, if this Obama thing… is becoming popular so quickly, and on such a scanty record, isn’t the Clintonites getting behind him, and using his rock star status, for the purpose of clearing out any possible competition. as much as there is an intense dislike for Hillary Clinton within the Democratic party, let’s face it; In a choice between Hillary and an unknown such as Obama, most Democrats will hold their nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.
Mind you, the Democrats are sure to go down in flames the scope of which will remind one of Ruby Ridge, in the general election, in such a situation, but I just don’t see this falling out any other way.

I say this to President Bush as someone who learned the hard way how embracing the world’s complexity can be twisted into a crude political shorthand. Barbed words can make for great politics. But with U.S. troops in Iraq in the middle of an escalating civil war, this is no time for politics. Refusing to change course for fear of the political fallout is not only dangerous — it is immoral.

That’s John Kerry, this morning.

If it’s no time for politics, John, why are you engaging in them?

The policy in Iraq is not broken contrary your constant screaming about it.  Indeed, the only thing that I can think of that justifies that screaming in your own mind is that if you can categorize the policy is broken, you can take part in the replacement crew.

No one should be looking for vindication in what is happening in Iraq today.

Yet you do so, with every breath you take. Even your supporters can see that far.

But here it is, John, and I know you’re not going to like this, but the fact of the matter is, that to the extent that we have been unsuccessful in Iraq is exactly the extent to which we’ve tried to modify the policy to satisfy the antiwar crowd, which you yourself have attempted to lead.  Listening to the antiwar crowd, cost us more lives than needed to be taken to accomplish this task. How does it feel, John, to be personally responsible for the unwanted deaths of American soldiers, for your own political gain?
Your biggest problem right now, is that George W. Bush has thusfar operated from a base of principle, as regards Iraq, and the whole of the middle east.  And that’s a problem for you because you don’t, and you don’t understand people who do.  You flip flop at every slight change in the breeze.  The only principle which you and many other Democrats are led by is whether are not you are in power.  Everything else including the wellbeing of the country and the world, is on the table to you, and of secondary concern.
Who could possibly trust America with foreign policy based on flip flopping and every breeze that comes along, as you insist we should?  On what basis would America’s commitments be trustworthy?

When BinLaden formulated his plans, he looked at our history in Vietnam, as you’ve been claiming you did. He knew that American might would bring him to the brink of destruction… but he also knew what our researchers are now telling us about Vietnam; that we were mere weeks away from victory at the time people like you urged a pull-out.

The people who were commanding North Vietnam’s armies, have been telling us that now for years.  Yet you never seem to include that point in any of your political speeches.  I’d be very interested in knowing why.  More correctly, I know why; what I’d be interested in hearing is you admitting it. I suppose you don’t have the integrity to do so.
In any event, what you propose for Iraq is more of the same.  And that’s the thing BinLaden sees, that you won’t admit to; He knew there’d be people like you that would try to get American to lose it’s resolve. And like Vietnam, he knew you’d likely succeed in your efforts, prior to his being defeated.
A withdrawal, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and a lower place for America in the world.  That is the fervent desire of people such as you, and your nitwit followers.
America does not need such flip-flopping people in positions of power, in this critical time, and we CERTAINLY do not need the likes of you telling real men… real leaders… how to do their jobs.

Dry up and blow away, lightweight.

The Associated Press is reporting that some moron in California set  himself on fire to to protest some cause or another:

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -(AP)- A man used flammable liquid to light himself on fire, apparently to protest a San Joaquin Valley school district’s decision to change the names of winter and spring breaks to Christmas and Easter vacation.

This is so boring.    I would not be opposed to morons setting themselves on fire provided they obtained the proper fire permit and but used enough fuel to finish the job.

Outside the Beltway has more, here.

I will confess to being lazy today… more or less in anticipation to what’s to come the next couple of days. Not that I don’t like and appreciate Christmastime.  I certainly do.  It’s just that for all that it is, there is also some stress involved with the partying and where one has to be, when, and so on.

Our preparations around Casa De Bit are nearly complete.  All that remains now was the final food preparations, and then actually showing up to where the family is gathering a share, which happens to be a share of my sisters place.  Thank the good lord that she and her husband had both the dollars in the presence of mind to buy a fairly sizable place.  My brother did two, and he’s expanded on that place rather substantially over the years.  As it stands right now, those are the only two places that have enough room for the family.

When we first bought this house, we actually had everybody over for Christmas, and it was a grand time.  Trouble, was it was a little on the tight side space wise.  Now that both my brother’s kids and my sisters kids are married and have families of their own, space is becoming more and more of a premium.  It’s gonna the point where we’re gonna have to seriously consider renting the place out.  I say that, in jest, of course, because it’ll never happen.  Still it would solve a number of problems.

I have to admit, though, that it’d be nice to have the clan all here. I don’t know.  I’ll consider it as time goes on this coming year but I have to tell you space will be an issue.

For the meantime, however, I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and the next day.  Truth to tell, the last few years, our family isn’t as close as it used to be, as nieces and nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews, now make their way in the world, they have their own lives, and they often are not with us. Dad’s gone now, a few years past.  So are all my grandparents. But, to my understanding, a number of the family will be at my sister’s day after tomorrow.  We’ll have a grand time, together.

Note the inclusion of that last word… “together”. I’ll just leave that word hanging there.  It pretty much says what it needs to say, all of its own.

-=-

It’s windy up here tonight.  We’ve got about 40°, and 45 mile an hour winds, with higher gusts occasionally.  Gonna be a bear try keep the Christmas decorations where they are to be.

-=-

Because I say I was lazy, does not necessarily mean I was totally unmovable.  I actually got quite a bit done today.  I managed to touch up the website a little bit.  Some of you will of noticed by now the little decorative magazine style drop cap thing going on at the head end of every post.  That’s something I always wanted to add to the other site that never got around to doing.  I also smoothed out some of the rough spots in the RSS and ATOM feeds.

I get some pre- writing out of the way too.  I will often jot down half formed ideas that I will use in later posts, once those ideas flesh themselves out in my head. I managed to salt away a few of these, today.

I also managed to restart my old server.  “Elephant” is an IBM Netfinity 7000. For those of you who don’t know about such things it is a quad processor PII/200MHz. that’s right, I said 200 MHZ.  It’s actually a little faster than the slowest machine that I have which I called “Gopher”.  Go for gets used for things like watching the firewall, doing FTP work, and slow file transfers.  Elephant, meanwhile, is a huge lumbering beast.  At the moment he’s running a full Gig of RAM, and 70 gigs of RAID-5 across 14 disks. (A defrag on this thing sounds like I’m grinding coffee!)
He also has two DLT tape drives, and capacity for a number of SCSI devices. In past years, he’s been responsible for keeping the CD library up and running. the CD library is a cabinet with six SCSI CD drives. this configuration plus the seventh one that’s already in the unit, allows me to share seven CDs simultaneously.  This can get used for a number of things, but what I used it for mostly was setting seven music CDs in them, and telling my MP three converter to go to town just before I went to bed.  Usually, it was finished by morning.  I plan to use that setup again; it’ll be nice to have it back.
Now, Elephant has been sitting around for the last year and a half not doing much of anything after I lost the RAID contoller on him. This week, I managed to find another one, and I was worried he might not spin all those drives… but when plugged it in, he old boy came up and barked like a champ.

Now, slow as he is, I can’t run anything more recent than WIN 2000, and frankly I wouldn’t want to run anything newer than NT on him.  So, NT it is. But, whatever.  He handles file rights correctly, is reasonably responsive on the network, any handles all my SCSI devices. In other words, he does the job. And he was free… plus, he’s an old friend… I inherited him when they retired him at a job site I was working at, at the time.

Setting him up was like old home week; having gotten used to setting up newer servers, I found myself having to actually THINK about what I was doing, and remember what I USED to do with NT.

I have a lot of machines like that around the house. I have a few newer ones, like Panther, here… my main desktop machine, but most of the systems on my LAN (I have 12 at the moment 3 of them servers…) are <1GHz. They're free, they do the job, and I get practical networking experience... keeps me sharp. And of course, it's not just my job, but it's my hobby, too. Nice to have a hobby your family gets a practical benefit out of. -=- I must say, I'm a little surprised by the number of notes that I've gotten from readers, these last few days, about these Nightly Rambles.   When I started this, I wasn't at all sure it was going to click.  Apparently, however, it has.  And thank you for telling me. -=- Oh, well, I have presents to wrap, and then to bed.

What I just love about our society is that as soon as any person is elected to public office, he assumes the mantle of an all knowing know-it-all.   And if the MSM happens to support his particular position, they treat the politician as if he were in fact a know-it-all.

From the Washington Post. Byron Dorgan and Sherrod Brown attempt to explain “How Free Trade Hurts:”

Worker activism, new laws and court decisions changed all that during the past century. As they did, a middle class grew and thrived. By mid-century, it became the engine that drove an ever-expanding economy in which benefits were shared by tens of millions of Americans. The American Dream of a secure, well-paid job with benefits, a nice house and a high-quality public education seemed within reach of everyone who worked hard and played by the rules

Greg Mankiw, does not agree:

That last sentence is striking. There is no doubt that most Americans have seen dramatic improvements in living standards and workplace norms over the past century. But should we really give most of the credit to “worker activism, new laws and court decisions?” I don’t think so.

So just who is Mankiw and why should we care?   From Mankiw’s blog:

I am a professor of economics at Harvard University, where I teach introductory economics (ec 10) among other courses. I use this blog to keep in touch with my current and former students. Teachers and students at other schools, as well as others interested in economic issues, are welcome to use this resource.

I’d say that gives Mankiw considerably more bona fides than Dorgan and Brown.

See the chair, Fidel Castro’s chair? See how empty the chair is? Raul Castro, seated right, now has the nerve to criticize his brother’s workers’ paradice.

Anita Snow writes about a new honesty in Cuba, “Raul Castro Speaks About Cuba Food Woes:”

HAVANA — Acting president Raul Castro complained to lawmakers about inefficiencies in the island’s economy, telling them in comments made public Saturday that there is no excuse for the transportation and food production problems that anger many Cubans.

One, it can be inferred from the article, that Fidel Castro is dead. Raul Castro would not be criticizing the basic Cuban economy if Fidel Castro were still alive with the potential to return to power.

Two, the Cuban economy does not work because central planned economies have never worked. An economy which can not feed its own population is a failure. See the former Soviet Union. See North Korea.

The AP is reporting, just now:

KABUL, Afghanistan – A U.S. airstrike near the Pakistan border killed the Taliban’s southern military commander, a U.S. military spokesman said Saturday, calling him the highest-ranking Taliban ever slain by American forces.

Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani’s vehicle was hit by a U.S. airstrike Tuesday as he traveled in a deserted area in the southern province of Helmand, the spokesman said. Two associates also were killed.

This is truly great news, if we can trust the Associated Press.  On the other hand, it shows the U.S. winning, and the Arab terrorists losing, So I suppose there’d be no motivation for them to lie about that.