A Brand New World

Posted on January 21, 2006 by Professor Booty

Well now, it seems that the Kid has finally found a way for me to post the results of my teaching once again. Hopefully, things will be settling down around here and I won’t be interrupted further in my weekend filings.

The Kid also informs me that this new software is a bit, um, pre-historic, in comparison to the old program when it comes to posting pictures, so what we’ll be doing is adding thumbnails ‘below the fold’ until the Word Press people decide that they’d like to figure out a way to let folks ‘Press’ more than just words.

So let me lead the cheer for the everlasting stability of RNS and the hope that, just as Miss Kendra is helping the plants do in the pic below, Random Nuclear Strikes will blossum.

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Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

Mwahahaha!

Posted on January 20, 2006 by Phil Kadath

Weeeere Baaaaack!

After some hiccups in the MySQL, I think things should be getting back to normal.

Thanks for waiting.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

You could almost call it a convention

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Phil Kadath

Mr. Completely has come up with a very novel idea for a gunblogging get-together called the “Gunblogger Rendezvous” that you should look at.

The plan is to have it take place in Reno, NV at the Silver Legacy Resort and Casino on the weekend of November 3rd, 4th and 5th. He’s got all the info at his place and it looks like a whole lot of fun.

You don’t even have to be a blogger to go. Just so long as you don’t possess a Brady Foundation membership card, you’re welcome.

I’m running the idea past the Analog Wife, but our wedding anniversary is on the 1st and her plans for that week are more along the lines of a cabin on an island in the upper Puget Sound and for me to have no computer access.

But I’m working on it.

Now you go take a look.

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | 1 Comment

They’re Failing

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Phil Kadath

So, of course, the standards must change.

I’ve written here before about the state of education here in the State of Washington and given some of the history leading to the creation of the WASL (Washington Assesment of Student Learning) test that all students now need to pass in order to graduate from high school.

As I wrote about the probability of in the linked post, people in the capitol are now putting on a full court press to replace the WASL with something less ‘assessing’ and less ‘judgemental of student performance’. In real people language that translates to “We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars to show that the system is succeeding, but now that we can clearly see that it is not, and we need to change it.”

One of the ideas being bandied about is to have ‘student portfolios’ kept for the students to show off to a board of what I would hope will be educators and if said board OKs it, the student can graduate based on their ‘portfolio’.

I call it the “Look the teacher gave me an ‘A’ on my diversity collage. Give me my diploma!” scenario. But I think LTTGMAAOMDCGMMD is too long for an official name. I’m sure that the Office of the Superintendant of Public Instruction will think of something that rolls right off the tongue though, what with all those English majors now working in the public sector here.

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Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | 2 Comments

Self Delusion – Grass Roots Style

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Phil Kadath

I put on the hip-waders and wander through the KosBog so that you don’t have to.

Kos thinks that his site and the work he has done to help Howard Dean-(D)ipshit is all going towards a grassroots effort to help re-retake over the Democrat Party and hand it to the MoveOn sore-losers.

Unfortunately for the ‘grass roots’ folks, Kos acts blatantly obtuse, either because he is just that dumb or because he wants to lie to them. Today’s case in point: the ‘Hillary/Plantation’ blow-out.

Apparently, the wingnutosphere has the vapors because Hillary used the word “plantation” to describe the GOP-led Congress.

Too bad for them Google exists.

He then cites a number of uses of the word “plantation” by Rush Limbaugh, Bob Novak, the WSJ, and NRO found by Atrios and ‘John in DC’ of the Americablog.

Sadly, no matter how many debate-format shows he watches, he just doesn’t seem to get that the use of the word “plantation” in and of itself isn’t what is being objected to, it is that Hillary used the word to try and label herself and her fellow Dems as slaves to the Repub majority.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time Bill Frist told Hillary that if she didn’t vote the way he wanted her to he would give her 50 lashes with a whip or have her hung. Nor do I remember any Repub claiming ownership of a person in the lesser party in the House.

Part of Kos’ claim to ‘the grass roots’ is that every year he changes out the list of people who he allows to post directly to the front page of the dKos. I don’t know where he finds these people, maybe he just picks the first 6 people in line to kiss his ass, but he found a really winner with the selection of ‘georgia10’.

G10 reports on the NYT article from Monday with the misrepresenting headline “Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11th led FBI to Dead Ends” that actually says that the wiretaps DID lead to arrests and at least one conviction for laundering money to help fund the training of terrorists and conspiracy to wage war against the United States in Oregon that Captain Ed pointed out on Tuesday.

Of course, those facts are all the way down past paragraph 16. G10 apparently can’t read for that long a period of time because the last paragraph quoted in the post he/she/it wrote was #7.

And apparently, none of the geniuses in the ‘grass roots’ can read that far either because none of the 194 comments mention them.

Self delusion at its best, folks.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 1 Comment

A Day Late

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Phil Kadath

(I spent so much time trying to find out the latest on Mike yesterday and then I zonked out within 20 minutes of getting home that I forgot to post this, so as the title says, this is a day late)

Go to this link at the local Seattle NBC affiliate and take a look at the accompanying photo (login: [email protected] / password: blahblah)

Isn’t that cute? There are 8 and 10 year old children marching in the MLK Day parade! But why did they crop the picture so close? I can’t read what their banner says? What is that thing about “Jobs Not Jails”?

That is most likely because the banner was from the Northwest Social Justice Fund and we all know what the term “Social Justice” means, right?

Yeah, these folks believe that ‘Poverty’ can be ended if we just tax more ‘rich people’, crime can be stopped if we release criminals from prisions and racism can be stopped if we all just feel guilty enough and pay up some reparations.

To these folks, dragging their children out for events like this to denounce everything not fringe left-wing is a wholesome family event, but homeschooled children are being “Indocrinated”.

Oh, and the unidentified woman quoted in the article is actually NWSJF’s Donations Manager. Too bad the local media doesn’t feel that they need to disclose that info.

Posted in Knee-Jerk Anti-Americanism | 1 Comment

RNS Quote of the Day

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Phil Kadath

In the case of Milgram v Loew’s of 1951, the consistent refusal of distributors of motion pictures to grant first run’s to a drive-in theater was held to be proof of ‘collusion ‘. Each company had obviously valid reasons for its refusal, and the defense argued that each had made its own independant decision without knowing the decisions of the others. But the court ruled that “consciously parallel business practices” are sufficient proof of conspiracy and that “further proof of actual agreement among the defendants is unnecessary”. The Court of Appeals upheld this decision, suggesting that evidence of parallel action should transfer the burden of proof to the defendants “to explain away the inference of joint action” which they had not, apparently, explained away.

Consider for a moment, the implications of this case. If three businessmen reach independantly the same blatantly obvious business decision – do they then have to prove that they did not conspire? Or if two businessmen observe an intelligent business policy originated by a third – should they refrain from adopting it, for fear of a conspriacy charge? Or, if they adopt it, should he then find himself dragged into court and charged with conspiracy, on the grounds of the action taken by two men he had never heard of? And how then is he to “explain away” his presumed guilt and prove himself innocent?

From a lecture given by Ayn Rand at the Ford Hall Forum, Boston. December 17th, 1961

Posted in Quote of the Day | Leave a comment

Man Down

Posted on January 17, 2006 by Phil Kadath

Blogger, Protest Warrior and long time RNS reader (all the way back to the black and blue days) Mad Mikey has had a stroke and is currently in the hospital recovering from surgury.

If you’re the praying type, yours won’t be wasted on this man and they would be greatly appreciated.

Now, I can’t get to his place because I’m at work and my employer blocks all Mu.Nu blogs but I’ve managed to scapegoat a way to read the posts on the situation at Da Goddesses place here, here and here.

Smash also asks for whatever type of spiritual wishes you may be able to offer, having counter protested the Code Pick ghouls many a time outside the Balboa Park Naval Medical Center, San Diego with Mike.

Get well soon, Mike. We’ll wait for ya.

Posted in Heroes, Comrades and Brothers | Leave a comment

I Smell A Double Standard

Posted on January 17, 2006 by Phil Kadath

Remember back around February, 2004 when Bush Economic Advisor, N. Gregory Mankiw said something positive about the outsourcing of jobs? There was a huge blowup in the American press and among the anti-Bush socialistas about how the Administrations was happy to lose US jobs to foreign countries and that they like America becoming a nation full of service industry workers?

If not, here is a link to the story. Sorry, I don’t have time to go to the cess polls and round up the links to their reactions, but trust me, it was a good two weeks that they spent whining about it.

Last Friday, Max Baucus, who I believe is the senior Senator from Montana, though someone from Big Sky Country may have to verify this for me, was in Bangalore, India on the first day of a five day tour of the country and said something that goes a little something like this,

Sen Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the US Senate Finance Committee, said Friday that outsourcing white-collar jobs to low-wage countries such as India has become a global fact of life – and that America must learn to live with it.

That sounds even more popmus than what Mankiw said, yet I had to read The Al-Guardian to find it.

How curious.

The guy went even further saying

Baucus said the majority of fellow Democrats agreed with him, despite the party’s longtime opposition to America companies moving jobs overseas.

Oh really? How revealing. I wonder who those Democrats are?

Now, Baucus isn’t really a favorite of the Klueless Kos Kid types. In fact, they said that he “betrayed” them when he voted to confirm Justice John Roberts to the SCOTUS.

So I wonder why they don’t want to show off his current ‘betrayal’ of the Democrat Party? Maybe because they don’t want to know who those Dems are, in case their previous comments on the Mankiw story should come back to bite them?

Posted in Useful Idiots | 1 Comment

For Some Reason

Posted on January 17, 2006 by Phil Kadath

I don’t believe them

I found this list of ‘America’s 20 Meanest Cities’ from the National Coalition for the Homeless while perusing the Portland IMC for eco-terrorist news this last weekend. When they say the word “Mean”, they are speaking of the cities attitudes towards bums and vagrants. Of course, they call them by the euphamism “Homeless”.

The reason I don’t believe them is that they have the City of San Francisco on the list holding the #11 spot.

How can a city that gives people money for no other reason than they say they’re ‘homeless’, and not only doesn’t have a law against urinating and/or defacating in public, but refuses to pass one be almost in the Top Ten cities that are “mean to homeless people”?

Take a look at the list. If your city is on there, raise a glass to yourself.

My city didn’t make it.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 3 Comments