I started in about eleven this morning and finished up about five; six hours to can twelve quarts of mincemeat, and I didn't realize until I sat down to the computer just now that today is Halloween. Good thing Leslie bought some candy — some years we even have trick-or-treaters.Your voter registration is current and a ballot will be issued for the next election.I'm registered. Big whoop.
If you haven't dropped by The People's Cube lately, you might have missed the publication of Shakedown Socialism: Unions, Pitchforks, Collective Greed, The Fallacy of Economic Equality, and other Optical Illusions of "Redistributive Justice" by Oleg Atbashian.
This week Antony Beevor reviews Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith by D.K.R. Crosswell. There have been countless biographies of the generals of World War II, and many are excellent. This biography of Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, is one of the best.On that recommendation, it's in my cart.
They don't just hate our Republican, conservative, libertarian, strict constructionist, family values guts. They hate everybody's guts. And they hate everybody who has any. Democrats hate men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, gays, straights, the rich, the poor, and the middle class.P.J. O'Rourke. Go read it.
"So, the economy is pretty bad and there's high employment. You think you can do something about that?"Frank J. Fleming at Pajamas Media.
"We can spend a trillion dollars we don't have on pork and stuff."
"No ... that's not what we want. We'd really like you not to do that."
"You're stupid. We're doing it anyway."
"That's not going to help us get jobs!"
"Sure it will; millions of them ... though they may be invisible. You'll have to trust us they exist. And guess what else we'll do: We'll create a giant new government program to take over health care."
"That has nothing to do with jobs!"
"We don't care about that anymore. We really want a giant new health care program. We're sure you'll love it."
"Don't pass that bill. You hear me? Absolutely do not pass that bill."
"Believe me; you'll love it. It has ... well, I don't know what exactly is in the bill, but we're sure it's great."
"Listen to me: DO. NOT. PASS. THAT. BILL."
"You're not the boss of me! We're doing it anyway!"
"Look what you did! Now the economy is way worse, we're even deeper in debt, and we have a bunch of new laws we don't want!"
"You're racist."
"Wha ... How is that racist?"
"Now you're getting violent! Stop being violent and racist, you ignorant hillbillies! And remember to vote Democrat in November."
Just like we knew that he would now.The notion of karma comes with lots of new-age baggage, but it is an old and very conservative idea. It is the Sanskrit word for "deed" or "action," and the law of karma says that for every action, there is an equal and morally commensurate reaction. Kindness, honesty and hard work will (eventually) bring good fortune; cruelty, deceit and laziness will (eventually) bring suffering. No divine intervention is required; it's just a law of the universe, like gravity.A very conservative idea? Cool, man. Or as the old ’70s joke went...
I'm sorry, Ms. Pelosi, but I'm afraid my karma just ran over your dogma.
In the film's opening minutes, 7th-grade teacher Yuko Moriguchi (played by actress Takako Matsu with a dead calm) informs her students that her daughter's alleged accidental death was actually a murder at the hands of two 13-year-old boys in the class. From there, she unleashes a psychological torture on the youths with devastating consequences.You can watch the trailer here. It's all in Japanese, of course, but you'll find it easy enough to understand.
"Nakashima has something on his mind and he's made a monumental film that makes you feel like you've been run over by an iceberg," adds Mr. [Grady] Hendrix. "My biggest disappointment of the year was programming 'Confessions' knowing full well that people would rave about it, critics would acknowledge its power, and not a single U.S. distributor would have the guts to buy it."My emphasis. It's based on the novel Kokuhaku by Kanae Minato. No luck there, either, unless you can read Japanese.
"All legislative districts in the United States shall be drawn compact, contiguous, and as nearly as possible along existing county or parish borders."All three of those clauses could be given a precise mathematical definition. Compact could be the ratio of perimeter to the square root of area, to be no greater than, say, six. Contiguous means exactly that. Existing borders could be mandated to be no less than, say, 90%. Cartographic software does the rest.
Zombie's been playing with a new political spectrum chart that kind of explains that whole Ann Coulter – Grateful Dead thing. 
Leslie spotted this one at a friends of the library sale. The Pioneer Heritage Wild Game Cookbook by Jack French has recipes for everything from Alligator to Woodcock, including, believe it or not, sixteen different ways to serve squirrel: Republican advances in traditionally Democratic states, including Connecticut, Oregon and Washington, may not translate into a wave of GOP victories. But they have rattled local campaigns and forced the Democrats to shift attention and money to races they didn't expect to be defending.That's more coverage than Oregon has gotten in the last three congressional elections combined. One-party states are boring. We're not boring any more.
Rising sentiment against the party in power has washed ashore even in coastal Oregon, where Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio won his 10th re-election two years ago with 82% of the vote.
"I am having the same problem that Democrats are having across the country, which is ennui," he said, noting that his opponent's yard signs "are thick" across much of the district. Mr. DeFazio said he is facing the fight of his political life....
Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, vice chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, bluntly predicted his party is heading toward a big win. "The Democrats are standing on a beach with the water going out and there is a tsunami coming their way," he said....
In the Northwest, freshman Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader is in a tight race with state Rep. Scott Bruun. To the north, in a district that includes Portland suburbs, six-term Democratic Rep. David Wu is under pressure from GOP sports consultant Rob Cornilles.
Many Democrats are stunned that Mr. DeFazio has a race on his hands in a district that includes the liberal bastion of Eugene. Mr. DeFazio, facing a political newcomer, biochemist Art Robinson, says he isn't surprised.Wave bye-bye, Peter.
It "is certainly not a district to be taken for granted," he says, "especially not in an election year like this."
We'll miss you... Like a toothache.
A genuine 'elixir of life' — at least for miceI know what you're thinking: cut to the chase and tell me what it is and where I can get some.
The cocktail of amino acids — building blocks of proteins — was found to increase the lifespan of mice by 12 per cent. Researchers believe it may also benefit humans, especially the elderly or sick. In laboratory experiments, middle-aged male healthy mice were given drinking water laced with three specific amino acids....
Longer survival was accompanied by biological changes which boosted the energy supply to cells and reduced oxidative damage caused by destructive molecules called free radicals. The treated mice had more stamina and improved muscle co-ordination.
Three amino acids: Leucine, Isoleucine and Valine(Click the links for sources.)
The Ohio Republican privately told a handful of male Republicans to avoid getting drunk and partying with female lobbyists at after-hour parties on Capitol Hill, according to a July report in the New York Post.OK, that's a clue.
...voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and includes enough rural farmland, timberland and blue-collar Portland suburbs to be closely contested by Republicans in recent election cycles.I love what's implicit in that statement: the party of the "blue-collar suburbs" is the Republican party.
The atomic age isn't exactly over, but it seems we may have entered a new phase of it. In the age of cyberwarfare, what does it mean to have a nuclear weapon if someone else may own your command and control systems — and you may not even know that they do? If the Iranians do manage to build a bomb, can they now risk embarrassment, not to say a nuclear catastrophe, by testing it? And even if they test it successfully, what's its strategic worth if they don't know whether or not they can actually use it?Lee Smith in The Weekly Standard.
In a SPIEGEL interview, former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discusses America's fight for German reunification, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's woes at the time, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's merits and the later mistakes of his successor, Gerhard Schröder.Well worth reading.
Feed Bag 
Refudiating liberalism in all its forms.
