Happy New Year, and all that. I have not been posting much because I have been watching football non-stop and working on some stuff for next semester. Life gets back to normal today, though.
The Worst Spam Letter Ever
The Worst Spam Letter Ever
Hi, I have seen your ad and visited your website. I love the way your website looks with such elegant presentation. Did you build it yourself? Or pay someone to build your beautiful website. I’m also a netpreneur and i love to develop good business relations. I’m taking a minute to write to you because I love to help when I can. This internet is such a jungle, sometimes a good tip can help. I don’t if you are like me but i believe the ball always comes back one day or another. Seeing your ad reminded me how i used to throw away money time after time on advertising with very little results. It was like i was in the dark ages. I found the light one day by accident. What a great event as it made me clearly see how to get people coming to my website. Wow!, my mind was shocked by amazement how simple it is and how it saves me precious time so i can enjoy the money that i make instead of being a slave to regular society rules. I quit my job as a massage therapist to become a future webmaster. I felt like that until the day i discovered a good resource. It explained to me how to get my traffic for free. Not the regular method we see everywhere. Tactics that worked for me. It made all the difference for my website. Since then, i’m experiencing great results without spending a dime in advertisement. If you would be interested to know where i got the information, simply reply to this email with Send Info in the subject line and i will send you a link. Respectfully yours, Donny Depew
The elegant presentation of my website? What- the ugly coloring, the messed up fonts, or the spelling errors? I was laughing hysterically by the end of the letter.
Islam, the Peaceful Religion A
A gunman slipped past guards at a Southern Baptist hospital and opened fire Monday, killing three American missionaries with shots to the head and wounding another. Officials said he may be part of an Islamic militant cell targeting foreigners and secular-minded politicians in Yemen.
Clearly, Patty Murray was correct. We need to build more hospitals and infrastructure in the Middle East, and then staff them with our citizens, and then they will stop worshipping Osama and his twisted religion.
*** Update ***
The Instapundit already said very much the same thing, so yet again, I am not as original as I thought I was.
Alex Knapp asks: What is
What is a Democrat, anyway? Go find out why he is asking.
That Damned Flag Racism seems
That Damned Flag
Racism seems to be the drug of choice for some of the lefty bloggers out there, and it appears that racism is so rampant that it is everywhere. In fact, you might be a racist and not even know it, at least according to the standards now being floated about my the more paranoid in our midst. I know for sure I am a racist, because just like Bill Frist, I would choose to hand out unsharpened pencils if I were campaigning- that is the level of absurdity to which the current debate has sunk. At any rate, now the confederate flag appears to be an issue again with the lefty bloggers. I admit no allegiance to the confederate flag, and I have no idea why people like it and wear it proudly. To me, and to most black people, the flag stands for one thing- slavery. As I have stated before, when I see someone wearing a confederate flag, I just think of them as having a case of the stupids- because the meaning of the flag is so clear to me, at least. To others, this is not the case, and I could never figure out why, particularly when I know a lot of decent, non-racist people who do fly the flag. I knew a bunch of great guys in the Army who were proud of Dixie, and they did not have a racist bone in their body. Sebastian Holdsclaw, in a comment on Matthew Yglesias’s site, has one plausible explanation:
I think that displaying the Confederate flag is disgusting, but if the question is, “How can Americans who think of themselves as patriotic wear it?” I have a thoeretical answer: symbolism drift. It isn’t a technical term (so far as I know) but I think you all know what I mean.
Roughly (and with many intermediate steps) I think that the drift is: Symbol of the Confederacy (treasonous), Symbol of Rebellion against intrusive Government (somewhat unmoored from the specific rebellion), Symbol of General Southern Rebelliousness (think Dukes of Hazard). Generally, patriotic, Confederate flag wearers tap into their southern rebelliousness as a facet of their American spirit.
In parallel with this drift (or perhaps causing it) are the lies which Southern culture tells itself in order to ennoble the Confederate rebellion without embracing slavery. I do not mean the coded racists who embrace the Confederate rebellion because they hate black people, I mean other people with Southern roots who want to be able to take pride in their heritage. Unfortunately for them, the legacy of the Confederate rebellion is such that their heritage is deeply tied to the evil of slavery, so mental gymnastics are required which end up looking foolish or scary to outsiders.
I can understand that. I am coming to the conclusion that the flag is worshipped by those people Sebastian has discussed, as well as the real racists, skinheads, and other scum. Throw into that mix people with sentiments like this:
As much as I hate to admit it, I doubt if we will ever get a chance to vote on the flag issue,” said Tom Nesbitt, 61, a disabled Vietnam veteran and farmer in Cordele. “It’s like everything else the liberals cram down our throats. Once they have the upper hand, there’s no going back. All we can do in rural Georgia is keep voting the [politicians] out of office.”
Perhaps he is lying. Perhaps he is speaking in code. Or, perhaps this is a legitimate protest against an obnoxious ruling party. I guess there are multiple reasons that people loved that damned flag, but for me, I can live without it. I don’t like the meaning I associate with it.
Sheesh… Ted Barlow is back
Ted Barlow is back and blogging ferociously, and he is willing to ignore Roger Ailes’s charge that Bush is engaging in mail fraud by having Christmas Cards stamped from Crawford but mailed from Austin because of logistical difficulties (I know- yawn). However, in order to preserve his lefty credentials, Ted notes:
Roger argues that this is mail fraud, while a commentator disagrees. I don’t know. But logically, it makes about as much sense as postmarking your Christmas cards from your time-share condo.
C’mon, Ted. That is the best you can do? I might note that unlike some previous occupants of the White House, when Bush says he is going home for the Holidays, at least he has an idea of which state he is referring to, and that he actually owns a house and property in said state. I won’t mention who those previous homeless occupants were, though, because I would hate to be a right-wing wingnut or whatever the ad hominem of the day is.