dangerous liberty

Boy, what a few months it has been. Had a huge project started mid-september at work - 57 hours of OT the first two weeks, 46 the next two, my site was hacked in the interim - all files deleted. Then my mother in law was diagnosed with Leukemia and shipped directly to Shands in Gainesville.

Time to blog for lil ole me? Heck no! But now, a new year is upon us, the MiL has had a bone marrow transplant (amazing things, those) and has passed milestone after milestone with the best possible results. She’s doing well, her brother was a perfect match and his stem cells and her good living have brought all her blood cell counts within normal range and I expect she’s going to live many more good years.

It has been an eye-opening experience for me - mainly in the grace God has given me to take on all the extra stuff that comes with caring for a very ill family member and the realization that, while I was away from my news junkie needles, little seems to have changed in the tenor and tone of US politics. Republicans are still pretty gutless, now tainted by Abramoff and Democrats are still willing to pronounce their most hopeful partisan speculations as fact and not get called on it by anyone by right wing bloggers. The Alito hearings ought to be fun…

My resolutions this year are all centered around getting myself organized - which will make it easier for me to do some of the things I’ve wanted to do for a long time, like learn to play guitar and maybe write some fiction. My plan is to plan. Just a week at a time, adding long term stuff as I move forward. Heh, so far I’ve written down the goals and that’s about it, this story from the Onion about sums up my holidays and my new goals!

I’ve got a good start for this weekend, I just need to take some time and plan next week - then I need to stick to it. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Watch yesterday’s NewsHour on PBS.

New Feature!
Watch yesterday’s NewsHour on PBS.

Some really nifty optical illusions here.

Via Volokh via GeekPress.

In recent propaganda piece, the Soros funded liberals at media matters are arguing a classic strawman in Distorting FDR: Bennett and Hume claimed father of Social Security system wanted privatization. The lede:

In an attempt to promote President Bush’s plan to partially privatize Social Security, nationally syndicated radio host and former Reagan administration official William J. Bennett and FOX News managing editor and anchor Brit Hume falsely claimed that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated replacing Social Security with private accounts.

It would be more accurate to say that Roosevelt envisioned a Social Security system that would eventually be self supporting, not a massive burden on the working class as demographics have changed.

It was put well here, Expertise notes that the SSA report Hume quoted from stated:

the annuities “will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations.”

And notes

today’s system is set up so that current workers are funding the retirement benefits for current retirees, not to fund current workers when they retire. If that was the case, there wouldn’t be a problem with the system, as workers could look forward to the money they put into into the system when they retired.

This blogger also advises a peek at the comments section on the Media Matters piece where one Walter Hart is tearing up the myrmidon followers of media matters propaganda. His comments deserve wider distribution:

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I couldn’t get all the kids to smile pretty and look at the camera at the same time. Thank god for Macromedia Fireworks! (click continue reading to see pictures)

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My apologies for the mulitple pings to the fellas at Powerline, I cleared their trackback address out of both of my edits, but MT still pinged them!

A little quiz generator to see how well folks know me!

Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!

We bought a house and are busy getting packed and scrubbing crevices!

But the RNC has brought me back, at least for a bit.

I’ll post links later to the best blogging from the convention.

Between the fields where the flag is planted there are 9+ miles of flower fields that go all the way to the ocean. The flowers are grown by seed companies. It’s a beautiful place close to Vandenberg AFB. Checkout the dimensions of the flag.

The 2002 Floral Flag is 740 feet long and 390 feet wide and maintains the proper Flag dimensions as described in Executive Order #10834. This Flag is 6.65 acres and is the first Floral Flag to be planted with 5 pointed Stars comprised of White Larkspur. Each Star is 24 feet in diameter; Each Stripe is 30 feet wide. This Flag is estimated to contain more than 400,000 Larkspur plants with 4-5 flower stems each for a total of more than 2 million flowers. You can drive by this flag on V Street south of Ocean Ave. in Lompoc, CA.