Feed Your Family on $10 Billion Per Day...

Must. Read. From. I o w a h a w k

A Fisking Unlike Any Other..

Berg nails Lambert to the cross.

Read it.

Really.

Hide the Decline

This is great!



Via Minnesotans for Global Warming (h/t Gary Gross)

In Memoriam...

It's sad when a member of the blogging community passes ad astra.

It's even sadder when that member is a true military hero who sacrificed greatly for freedom.

But what's nearly unbearable is when that hero, with so much to live for, dies by his own hand.

Such was the case with Flopping Aces' Chris Galloway.

Rest in peace. May God bless your family, sir.

Why the Dover Ban must be re-instated

The Dover Ban is the executive order signed by President Bush that the media were exempt from taking pictures of flag-draped coffins of service men and women as they made their final journey home to their families via Dover, Maryland, after making the supreme sacrifice.

The Obama administration, being sensitive, kind, and caring to military families, moved to end the Dover band, saying that media pictures could once again be taken of the flag-draped coffins, but only with the permission of the fallen's family.

Sensible, right?

Think again.

Gold Star Mom Knottie makes the best case why this decision to reverse the Dover Ban is about as compassionate as salt in an open wound.

Read the whole thing.

MN SD-15 BPOU Convention

Well, we got some fresh blood in the leadership of MN SD 15 BPOU (Basic Political Organizational Unit, for those of you in Rio Linda); not that I'm complaining about the old blood.. My hat's off to Jeff Johnson and Josh Behling, who both did a bang-up job helping our BPOU; especially during the unprecedented turnout that was experienced at last winter's BPOU caucus, in which by all accounts over 1,000 SD 15 Republican faithful showed up to make a difference.

We will certainly miss Jeff's and Josh's leadership and expertise, especially in integrating our BPOU into the electronics age. On top of that, it would be difficult to find two nicer guys if you searched the world over with binoculars.

As of now, Jeff Radcliffe and newcomer Rick Vanden..(gads, can't remember the last name--sorry Rick) will co-chair SD15; Barbara Banaian (yes, King's wife), will be SD 15B vice chair, Dan Ochsner will be 15A vice chair, Dorothy Thompson will remain on as treasurer, and yours truly (yes, me) was elected as the new SD 15 secretary. Additionally, I was elected as an alternate delegate for State Central.

There were some surprises in store tonight, as well; specifically, I was honored as a recipient of two recognition awards; one a "suitable for framing" award from Michele Bachmann for Congress campaign, and another beautiful wooden plaque for service to SD-15 and "toward the cause of conservatism." Fellow SCBA bloggers Gary Gross and King Banaian were given similar awards. Truth be told, I was at once flabbergasted and honored, as I have never before received such recognition.

Another surprise was that my 18-year old son, Leo III, who was basically at his first BPOU meeting as a voting-aged citizen, ran for State Central delegate. He got up and gave a speech, the whole nine yards, saying that he was no longer going to sit on the sidelines, and that he wanted to make a difference.

Even though he was not elected, to say that I was proud of him this evening would be a gross understatement.

He is a fine young man, and is destined, as he says, to make a difference in his lifetime.

It Takes A Proverb...

Iowahawk outdoes himself.

Must reading.

Coming November 22nd... V.I. Day!

Zombietime makes the case for why it is so.

Hanging up the Hammer...

We kind of started out as a trio, actually a quartet. This blog, Jon The Night Writer, Jeff at Peace Like a River, and, of course, Uncle Ben at Hammerswing who has decided to retire his blogging hammer so as to free himself to higher pursuits.

Best of luck, and godspeed, my friend!

-Leo-

Does anyone else see a pattern emerging here?

Raven finds another one.

Moonbats on Parade...

In what surely made the patchouli-scented panties of their base as wet as Niagara Falls, The kook left in the House Judiciary Committee used our tax dollars for a dog and pony day in what amounted to a bitch fest and a mock trial to impeach President Bush.

Mr. Dilettante nails the fisk, and drives it all the way down to China for good measure.

The Best Title for a Post. Ever.

And a damned good article, to boot.

Crap.

And that's all I have to say about this.

You will be missed, my friend.

The Best Top 11 List--Ever.

Check it out at NIGP.

This is what's wrong with the Republican Party..

It's emblematic in their choice for official 2008 RNC Convention apparel:

to wit:Enough kissy-face with the socialists already, okay???

And Zubaz??

Personally, I'm putting my money with KAR.

So Where's the Mouse?

A great eye opener as to where we're headed as a society:

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus:

I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders--a lot of things we like--didn't happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.

It wasn't until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan's Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

Read the entire, amazingly true article here.

Long Live the King...

Just got done with a visit with fellow-SCBA blogger King Banaian, who's in the hospital for a gall-bladder procedure.

King's recovering nicely from his surgery, and was in good spirits, and may be back home tomorrow (but most likely on Friday).

Continued prayers on King's behalf would be greatly appreciated on the part of this blogger.

An update on King..

From an email I received from Mrs. Scholar:

King was scheduled to have his gall bladder out at 8:15 a.m. (Tuesday) but is currently experience a high fever and heart palpitations.

He did not want me in the room, such was his pain.

We appreciate your prayers and concern and will keep you updated,

Continuing prayers would be appreciated..

Prayers, Please...

I just received a phone call from Gary, telling me that our good friend and fellow SCBA blogger, King Banaian, is in the hospital, in what I am told is not a serious, but still a very painful condition.

Please keep King and his family in your prayers.

"The Summer of Our Discontent"

Speed Gibson takes the word to the streets regarding the Ethanol scam.