It is almost that time.  Maybe a new glock?  Nah, don’t like shoot’n them all that much.  Always pinching my finger.

Possibly a Walther, or a Hecklar Koch?  A bit expensive right now…

But I’m thinking maybe, a nice new Ruger Bisley revolver.  That there’s some nice shootin’!

But thanks to Aaron’s cc: we all know what April 15th is.  And its not bring your gun to the Post Office day.  Send your tax return first, and then go shopping.

Power Line has a deconstruction of the comments made about the famous AP Picture that just won the pulitzer.

I have been forwarded a “story behind the photo” by Santiago Lyon, Director of Photography of the Associated Press that was posted on April 5. I regret that I hadn’t seen this account of the Iraq lynching before writing my views, nor had I seen the original “uncropped” version of the photo until last night. Only the cropped version was available on the Pulitzer website. Looking at the uncropped version of the picture, assuming the camera was a 35mm, then a reasonable inference would still remain that the photographer was less than 50 meters from the subject.

I now know what the Director of Photography believes the photos demonstrate and why they were important: “The images spoke volumes about the situation in Iraq just six weeks before the 2005 national elections — the murder of people key to the election process, on a main street in Baghdad, with the gunmen not even bothering to conceal their identity with masks.”

Let me unpack the commentary by Santiago Lyon by following his description of the event

Frankly, my humble opinion is that it is just way to easy to believe that the photographer was working with the terrorists. I have come to expect no less… I wonder why that is?

But MediaLies, one of my favorite reads, has more.

For ratings, the Doctor drew in an audience of 8.3 Million.  That’s 2 million more than those that tuned in to see the Royal Wedding.  I’m hoping that this is mearly a taste of things to come.  I’d love to see this new series get a nice long run… like say… another 26 years.

The 10 best ultimate must have SciFi titles. That is my quest.
If we had to prove to some extraterrestrial that we knew a thing or two about sci fi, and he (she/it/them/narf) asked to prove it with 10 titles, what would they be?
Leave comments on your favorites. Don’t have 10? Don’t worry about it. Add a few of your favorites, or even just one.

Count how many times you have seen a border collie on tv, recently?

Growing up I fell in love with the beautiful black and white dog I had seen on Little House on The Prairie (Bandit). I had not an idea what the breed was at that time, and it was not a dog you would frequently see. For years I would look for information about this dog, and there was little known. I saw another one of these beautiful pups at the end of a Cheap Trick video (Up the Creek) as the pup covered his face with his paw at the end of the video.. it was precious!

I did not find out what the breed of this beautiful dog was until I was an adult, and found this was the most intelligent dog, as well as their agility. The more I found out about this dog the more I fell in love with them!

When my hubbie and I bought our previous home he wanted to get a dog but was cool with it being this breed I had spoken of. Still even when we found our border collie, most folks had no clue anything of this breed. The most people knew was they were the "frisbee dog". Our pup is 6 years old now, and in the time commericals and movies have meshed border colllies as much as we once saw the "SUV" breed (labradors, our joke is labs are free with the purchase of an suv)..

So what have you see border collies in lately? (here are my sightings)

• Burger King Commerical
• JC Penney Commercial
• Numerous arthritis commercials.

Share your Border Collie sightings..

…Slashdot actually has something useful besides geek wanna-be socialists whining about having to work for a living.

This is one of them.

At Sakakibara-Kikai you can see the LandWalker 2005/3.  Why yes, it is a Battle Mech.

And yes, it is fully functional. 

Don’t forget to watch the video they have on the site.  It walks around and threatens the cameraman.

Need some statistics?

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　　　　妨é«ËœÃ£â‚¬â‚¬Ã£â‚¬â‚¬Ã£â‚¬â‚¬Ã£â‚¬â‚¬Ã£â‚¬â‚¬3m 40cm
　　　　総額顏　　　　1000kgw
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　　　　幢劺　　　 㚨ン㚸ン(250cc)
　　　　移幢擹波　　　ãâ„¢Ã£šÅ Ã¨¶³Ã¤ºÅ’足歩è¡Å’
　　　　移幢速度　　　晚速1.5km/h
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　　　　　　　　　　　　　右側　バル㚫ン㚿㚤ムï¼Ë†6発ï¼°
　　　　　　　　　　　　　左側　㚷ョット㚬ン㚿㚤ムï¼Ë†6発ï¼°
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There, now that helps doesn’t it?

Of course, I am sure the ACLU is already filing lawsuits against the US Government that they used one of these at Abu Graib, or maybe Bush is secretly arming the Minuteman project with these.

Jeremy Gilby has what should be the official response to all the ranting about Jimmy Carter not going to the Pope’s official viewing.

Who cares?

But my favorite part:

One of the listeners on the Laura-Ingram show called in to point out something funny, as Andrea Mitchell opined on the idea that Rice should have given up her seat.
[paraphrased] So a Southern Democrat wants a black woman to give up her seat on a vehicle?

Jay Reding ties together several different sources into the perfect explanation of conservatism. And why the left consistently can’t figure it out.

Conservatism isn’t some monolithic bloc of like-minded individuals, it’s a diverse marketplace of ideas based upon a few shared precepts build upon a foundation of ideas that stretches back for centuries. The terms “liberal” and “conservative” don’t even remotely match their dictionary definition anymore  they haven’t at least since 1968 and quite likely since the New Deal. The political realignment of 1968 brought a massive change to the American ideological spectrum. The 1960s produced the radical left as the former hawks of the Democratic Party became today’s neoconservatives. The right coalesced around the national security issue - first based on their stance on the Cold War, and now on the fight against Islamofascism. As the liberalism of the Johnson and Carter Administrations produced economic malaise and a loss of national pride, the conservative movement, led by Ronald Reagan, was there to provide the kind of leadership that America had been lacking. It is quite telling that the only truly successful Democratic politician on the national level, Bill Clinton, won not as an outright liberal but as a “new Democrat” who used the politics of triangulation and his own ineffable personal charisma to outflank the Republicans on the right. Since 1980, no outright and unabashed liberal has been able to win an American election. Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry all failed while running on a platform of liberal populism.

Co-worker is on the phone with Microsoft for an Exchange issue. He’s been on the phone for a while, when he asked the Microsoftie on the other end to hold on for a minute while he checked something.
15 minutes later he came back with lunch.

I saw this group on the news this evening.  The "Minuteman Project" is a collection of citizen volunteers in Arizona who have taken it upon themselves to patrol the Arizona-Mexico border in a surveillance campaign to monitor illegal immigration.  Some reports I have read say that illegal aliens cross over into the USA at a sum of several million every year.  They say that they’re coming here for a better life.

As a general rule, I’m a mostly a live-and-let-live kind of person.  However, I do have issues with letting anyone and everyone in.  I mean… thousands of these "undocumented workers" cross the USA borders daily and manage to hang around due to lax immigration laws.  Then… untold millions of dollars are being spent on these visitors who are gaining access to taxpayer provided services that were meant for American citizens.  This excessive spending results in our having to make budget cuts in law enforcement, health programs, and educational services that was meant for our citizens… and for MY CHILDREN.

Being a resident of Delaware, I’m not in an easy position to volunteer my time to this effort.  However, I’m thinking that I’ll be sending them a donation… and I’m encouranging others to contact them as well.

Here’s a quote from thier About page:

The Minuteman Project is a grassroots effort to bring Americans to the defense of their homeland, similar to the way the original Minutemen from Massachusetts (and other U. S. colonies) did in the late 1700s.  Like them, we want to bring to this effort only what few personal possessions we can carry…plus our heart, mind and spirit. 

This call for volunteers is not a call to arms, but a call to voices seeking a peaceful and respectable resolve to the chaotic neglect by members of our local, state and federal governments charged with applying U.S. immigration law.

It is a call to peacefully assemble at the Arizona-Mexico border to bring national awareness to the decades-long careless disregard of effective U.S. immigration law enforcement.  It is a reminder to Americans that our nation was founded as a nation governed by the "rule of law", not by the whims of mobs of ILLEGAL aliens who endlessly stream across U.S. borders.

Accordingly, the men and women volunteering for this mission are those who are willing to sacrifice their time, and the comforts of a cozy home, to muster for something much more important than acquiring more "toys" to play with while their nation is devoured and plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens. 

Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious "melting pot."

The result:  political, economic and social mayhem.

Historians will write about how a lax America let its unique and coveted form of government and society sink into a quagmire of mutual acrimony among the various sub-nations that will comprise the new self-destructing America.

‘Nuff said…
Go here to make it happen for you!

Thanks to the Pirate’s Cove…

See the rest of the gang!

Firepower Forward - The Cutting Edge of Freedom

Brian is a US Soldier. After 2 years of enlisted service with the 101st Airborne Division, He took an early discharge to attend ROTC and complete his BA in Economics before returning to active duty as a Field Artillery and later an Ordnance officer. After completing his MBA in Finance at St. Bonaventure University, he left active duty in favor of a career with Merrill Lynch. Recalled to active duty as a Reservist in support of Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom, he was offered the reinstatement of his Regular Army Commission. With his former students and soldiers in uniform and in harms way, he accepted the offer, resigned his position with Merrill, and is now serving as the Battalion Executive Officer of the 191st Ordnance Battalion in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

New from Digital Labs—

IMFStats works with the Microsoft Exchange 2003 Intelligent Mail Filter (IMF). If you happen to have a Microsoft Exchange 2003 server, and it is running the IMF plugin, give this a try.

When configuring the IMF filter, you need to set a few different settings, such as what to do with UCE, what level of “spamminess” to mark the cutoff, what to do with the Junk Email in Outlook, etc.

IMFStats works by pulling the real time statistics from your IMF filter, graphing it, and then analyzing the results. The analysis will help you determine which values to set in your configuration based on Microsoft’s recommendations.

IMFStats will automatically search Active Directory for Exchange 2003 servers, and then check each one for the IMF plugin before adding it to the list.

Give it a try, let me know what you think.

Dogtalubsa has some of the best pictures of the Pope I have seen yet.

Uhhh, that’s sarcasm.

Go ahead, install Windows 2003 Service Pack 1.  It is early in the morning, you have about 10 hours before the Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash 4.0 starts.  That is plent of time for what is a twenty minute install.

Needless to say, that stupid little voice is buried in the back yard somewhere now.  I am still cleaning up the mess that this service pack caused.  Many hours of not booting at all, and even after getting into safe mode and uninstalling, no dice.  Or booting either.  Finally, I had to drag out the original CD and run a repair.  Except the original CD is a little scratched, so I hope those few files weren’t all that important that I couldn’t copy.

Lots of fine tuning, and the box might be stable enough to run for another two months before I can rebuild it completely.

But I missed the party damnit.  I am not a happy camper today…

Pope John Paul II was one of the “Big Three” during the 1980’s and 90’s, along with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Those three people brought down Russian communism. That rare combination of personalities on the world stage was a freak occurance, but it came at the right time in history. So far, we do know that the Pope as unsuccessfully assassinated on Russian orders. He was a huge threat to communism since he grew up under it in Poland.
Oops, missed a few in the big three. From Llama Butchers…

As to the question of the Pope and the end of the Cold War, Carl Bernstein (yes, Carl Bernstein) has a biography of the Pope that came out a number of years back that makes this case in spades. Hugh cites the short list as follows:

With Reagan and Solzhenitsyn, John Paul II represents the three forces of opposition to communism that shattered the evil empire, the Soviet Union –the American-led West, the Eastern European resistance, and the Russian dissident movement.
I would agree only to the extent that you include Margaret Thatcher (whose rise to power preceded Reagan’s), Vaclev Havel, and the indispensable Lech Walessa to the list.

I would like to see a Chinese Pope next.

Since right now China is the biggest threat to world freedom. No, they’re not terrorists, which is what we are currently cleaning up around the world. They are the biggest totalitarian government. And they have been gobbling up other countries near them. And of course, now they have set their focus back on Taiwan in a big way. Hopefully it will turn out to be bluster, but you never know when you’re dealing with the neighborhood bully.

So a Pope from China would really annoy them. Especially since Chinese Catholics aren’t even allowed to be Catholic.

The Vatican said Saturday that Chinese authorities have carried out a new series of arrests of officials from that country’s non-government controlled Catholic Church.
The most recent arrest occurred Wednesday, when a priest was picked up in Hebei, the same diocese whose bishop was arrested Jan. 3.

The statement said security forces also detained the 86-year-old bishop of Wenzhou, Monsignor James Lin Xili, on March 20 and two days later a lay official of the diocese.

Rumour has it that the next Pope will be from Africa, or maybe Latin America. While those places can be a royal mess as well, I think we should go for maximum effect right now…
Captain’s Quarters got me thinking about this…

Been a bit busy for posting lately. New full time contract, and also a new project I’m working on.
But today I’m free (mostly) to read the sites on the blogroll, check the news, and editorialize on a few things!