Patio Pics

So I have put up the roofing for the new patio area. looks great! we are very happy with the way it turned out.

It's been a while

It's been a while since anyone has added anything to this blog so I thought I would post this. The Princeton Review selected the best regional colleges and Taylor was name a best midwestern college. Wheaton also receive this designation......but I went to Taylor so don't care about Wheaton :) http://www.princetonreview.com/best-regional-colleges.aspx?uidbadge

Obamassiah

thanks to Ace

Great words from a great man

“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help them permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”

-Abraham Lincoln


I dont think I need to add any comments to that.

Gun owners are happy people

The Wall Street Journal reports that gun-clingers are not, in fact, bitter.

According to the 2006 General Social Survey, which has tracked gun ownership since 1973, 34% of American homes have guns in them. This statistic is sure to surprise many people in cities like San Francisco...

Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.

Nor are they "bitter." In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were "very happy," while 9% were "not too happy." Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.

In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling "outraged at something somebody had done." It's easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn't true. The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don't have guns.

The gun-owning happiness gap exists on both sides of the political aisle. Gun-owning Republicans are more likely than nonowning Republicans to be very happy (46% to 37%). Democrats with guns are slightly likelier than Democrats without guns to be very happy as well (32% to 29%). Similarly, holding income constant, one still finds that gun owners are happiest.

In 2002, they were more likely to give money to charity than people without guns (83% to 75%). This charity gap doesn't reflect their somewhat higher incomes. Gun owners were also more likely to give in other ways, such as donating blood. Are gun owners unsentimental? In 2004, they were more likely than those without guns to strongly agree that they would "endure all things" for the one they loved (45% to 37%).

...for many Americans, happiness often does indeed involve a warm gun.

I love that last line.

Will we be allowed to drill?

You may have heard that the House just passed a silly bill taxing American Oil companies for their record profits with the pretense of easing the financial burden on the consumer and researching alternative energy. (never mind that the TAX on a gallon of gas is about 20-30 times the profit margin at any stage in the manufacturing and supply process)

Its funny.

No new drilling allowed in Alaska, no more nuclear power plants built, no hydroelectric plants... all because of the eco-hippies on the left, but now that oil is rising in cost, they are suddenly feeling sorry for the less fortunate Americans.

Then I read This Article on the incredible reserves which are being surveyed in the Dakota / Montana region. Reserves that could potentially drastically reduce, if not end US dependence on foreign oil.

Will the region be slapped with ecological protection laws? or will we be allowed to utilize our national resources?

Latch-key dog exerciser

I especially like it when about 1/2 way through the video the dog isn't really done chewing on the ball yet, but the machine goes into its launch cycle. He just doesn't really want to give it up quite yet.

I can see Kohl making good use of a machine like this, maybe in the yard, as I rock in my porch chair sipping sweet tea and smoking my pipe...

thanks to boingboing

Iraq war insights

In a fascinating NYT article, the insurgency in Iraq is being blamed for turning Muslims away from their faith. “Before, parents warned their sons not to smoke or drink,” said Mohammed Ali al-Jumaili, a Falluja father with a 20-year-old son. “Now all their energy is concentrated on not letting them be involved with terrorism.”

Evidently, the Iraqis are growing weary of not only the constant Iraqi on Iraqi violence, but also having to live under the harsh rule of Sharia law, having "found themselves stranded in neighborhoods that were governed by seventh-century rules. During an interview with a dozen Sunni teenage boys in a Baghdad detention facility on several sticky days in September, several of them expressed relief at being in jail, so they could wear shorts, a form of dress they would have been punished for in their neighborhoods."

The blame, it seems, is being squarely placed on the religious clerics of the region.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

This story appeared 3/4/2008. As one commenter on Commentary Magazine's Contentions blog put it:

Like it or not, the NY Times sets the agenda for the entire left-of-center media and virtually all Dems. The piece is significant mostly for that reason, although whether other segments of the liberal media will push back remains to be seen. Hillary and Obama will ignore it, b/c their narrative of a failed war is central to their foreign policy ideas.

I won't hold my breath as I wait for this news to work its way through the mass media; moreover, the campaign. But the authority of the NYT is hard for the left to resist, and convenient for the right to laud when it serves our purposes.

I remain convinced that President Bush will be vindicated in the long run. Perhaps this article is just a crack in the mighty edifice of the anti-Bush rhetoric. As the Contentions blogger put it:

This Times piece represents a tectonic shift in the Iraq War and in the larger ideological struggle. From this date on, the War cannot be talked about in quite the same way. Those opposed to it can no longer snicker so easily when recalling the President’s assertion that people everywhere want freedom, and they may have to check their rage before declaring we’ve created more terrorists. There are some who understood that changing hearts and minds was the only way to triumph in the long run, but felt that Iraq was a huge setback in that pursuit.

Anyway, if this trend does in fact continue, it will bring interesting and significant changes to the region. Let's hope so, anyway.

Friday's Walk

(click on photo for greater detail)

Woe to the Middle Class!

This video I just found is a really interesting piece of work. Not full of enough facts and data to satisfy my skeptical nature, but interesting.

It makes me want to read that book...