Free In Idaho!

This is one of the reasons I won’t put advertising on my blog.  Although it is rather humorous.  Rather like the context sensitive eBay ads on your search sidebar, or the “buy used” sidebar at Amazon… just for gigles, check out trojan over at Amazon.  “2 New & Used” eh? 

I always enjoy reading some of the other (usually younger) guys’ blogs when they talk about their kids.   Jay G does it.  Marko does as well.   So I thought I’d brag a little on our youngest kidlet.  My Sweetie and I went out to the airport this morning to pick her up.  She came to town for a couple days, to get away from work and the rain, ”hide out in Idaho”,  and to visit with us (well, with her Mom mostly).  When we got back to the house she opened her bag and pulled out her wallet and said “is cash ok to pay you back for my plane ticket?”

This grown up kid thing has it’s moments too. 

Last night after dinner I was sitting around just really hoping something would change, and I was particularly focused on gas prices.  After all, that is about all anyone is talking about these days.  On my way home from some business in town I noticed that my favorite gas stop had gone to $4.02… sigh… they did pretty well, holding it below four bucks, but they finally succumbed.   I was really bummed, so you can imagine how hard I was hoping for some change. 

Can you believe that?  Me?  I know, it’s a good thing my Dad doesn’t read my blog, because he always said “Brother, if you want something to change you’re going to have to get off your ass and change it, because sitting there hoping isn’t going to do it.”  Or something like that, I don’t remember.  He said stuff like that about 40 years ago, and back then I wasn’t listening very hard.  Yeah, I had to reinvent the wheel.  Come to think of it, I had a Che shirt, a Harley, and a dope pipe then too.  Not much culture change the past 40 years, eh?  Or are they just reinventing the wheel? 

But this hope thing is actually a pretty attractive idea, so last night, when nobody was looking (my Sweetie was watching “John and Kate +8″) I gave that hope thing a good shot.  Hope. Gas Prices. Change.  Hope.  Gas Prices. Change.  No, I didn’t go “Ooooommmmbaaaaamaaa”.  That’d be creepy.

Well, this morning on my way in to town I drove by my favorite gas stop again and damn!  that sign had changed!

$4.05

So, sue me.  I’m just a rookie at this hopey changey thing, and I don’t know how to steer it yet.  Guess that’s why we need the Obamessiah, you think?

It’s not about the best person for the job, it’s about quotas.  That is the message from the Democrat Party in 2008.  If the recent primary struggles weren’t enough proof, how about looking at the Idaho State Democrat Convention?  This is the delegation selected to go to Denver later this summer, as reported in the Idaho Statesman this morning.

The 23-member delegation includes five African-Americans, three Native Americans, a Hispanic, an Asian, a gay man and a lesbian woman - all categories in party affirmative-action goals. Hispanics are Idaho’s largest minority group, with 9.8 percent of the population; Native Americans represent 1.4 percent, Asians 1.2 percent and African-Americans 0.8 percent.

Former Democratic National Committee member John Greenfield lost his chance to be a national delegate because a coin toss determined the slot he had campaigned for must go to a woman. Party rules require an equal split between genders.

But Greenfield, a 64-year-old Boise lawyer, said it’s time for older, white men to defer power. “It’s the healthiest thing that ever happened to this party.”

Eight of the delegates are under 35, exceeding the party goal of six in that category. A new group, Idaho Young Democrats, had about 50 of the 332 delegates at the convention.

Affirmative action goals, eh?  Not proportional representation, not the most qualified, not luck of the draw, or who spent the most money, or even who did the best job working for the goal… these folks were hand picked to fit the special interest group/”victim” list mentality the Democrat Party has worked so hard establishing in America today.  Quotas.  There is no difference between picking a person because of their skincolor/gender/sexual orientation or whatever, than there is in denying another person for the same reason.  Would that they would work so hard to pick the best, rather than the most diverse. 

By the way, give the Statesman credit for quietly pointing out

Hispanics are Idaho’s largest minority group, with 9.8 percent of the population; Native Americans represent 1.4 percent, Asians 1.2 percent and African-Americans 0.8 percent.

So we’re not even doing actual proportions here, but politically correct proportions.  Other demographics include women 49.6 percent, which they’ve got covered, and whites 95.2, which they’re doing all they can to ignore, since getting rid of old white guys in the Idaho Democrat Party has been one of the stated goals as well.  No word in the Statesman concerning the number of Sierra Club members, teachers, or lawyers in the delegation.  You go, Dems.

On the same weekend we read about Barack Obama being a “lightworker”, fantastically appearing to help the human species evolve to the next level, we also read about another, similar aspect of the human condition, this time from Africa.

Discrimination against albinos is a serious problem throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but recently in Tanzania it has taken a wicked twist: At least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts.

Many people in Tanzania — and across Africa, for that matter — believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and strikes about one in 3,000 people here. Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich.

It’s hard to even know what to make of that… but I found it interesting that the article contained a little political note

Salvator Rweyemamu, a Tanzanian government spokesman, said the rash of killings was anathema to what Tanzania had been striving toward; after years of failed socialist economic policies, the country is finally getting development, investment and change.

“Failed socialist policies“…. hmmm?  That isn’t the main point though.  Nor is the failure of U.S. foreign aid, what that spokesman called “development” and “investment”.  Easy as it might be to decry the failure of U.S government policies across all administrations that insist on continuing to fleece the American citizen in order to flush it down foreign toilets, I’ll leave that post for another day.  No, the focus of my thoughts was on the different ways magic continues to appear in the human existence.  Because humans, for all our bluster and busy-ness, all our ego, cannot seem to escape a belief in magic.  No.  More than a belief, a need for magic. 

Police officials said the albino killings were worst in rural areas, where people tend to be less educated and more superstitious.

Killing albinos for their body parts, because they’re believed to be lucky… it’s easy to lay that off on lack of education, or superstition.  But is that really any different than believing in the magic of socialism?  I’m thinking of Cuba, the Soviet Union, and even the failure of many European social programs.  And on the scale of human belief in magic, lack of education and superstition, where do you put Obama the lightworker, consciously directed human evolution, and the belief that one human politician can magically transform America? 

African witchdoctors are easy to spot, at least for us here in the West.  What is more difficult for us is spotting those who would be our chief priests and witchdoctors, and the magic they peddle to the more sophisticated, better educated masses.  Like the magic of ever bigger government making the world a better, safer place. Like the magic of living a life with no consequences.  Like the magic of socialism promising to take care of all of your needs.  Like the magic of a politician who can lead us, not only to a brave new world, but also to a better humanity.   Salvation, if you will.

If you simply rely on what you can see, and wish really hard, it is easy to believe in magic.

Hope, Change!  Magic.  No thank you.

And since it’s Sunday, allow me to close with this

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12

Those of you who are familiar with Bill Whittle, probably already found this, but he has a new post up over at Eject!Eject!Eject!  Those of you who are not familiar with him ought to get over there and meet him, and read his essays.  His blog hasn’t had a post since January, but I’ll bet it has gotten more daily hits the past 5 months than most active blogs do, from his large fan base checking for new stuff.  Find out why.  Thank me later.

A movie?  And 5 new essays in the works?  And a link to an interview?  Oh my.

Apparently, the Moonbat Olympics Qualifying was going on in San Francisco this week, but I was busy having a real life and I missed one of the events.  From Instapundit I was made aware of an article that explains the Obama messiahthing (I cannot say ‘enlightened’ because I am a hopeless putz and can never hope for true enlightenment).  Warning: swallow, put your fork down, send the kids out of the room, and have a bag handy.  You want to know what it is about Obama?

No, it’s not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

High-vibration integrity?  Really?  What about Grandma, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko?  All under the bus.

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

This is a stunning performance ladies and gentlemen.  You folks in California or Seattle might not see anything wrong with this article, but here in Idaho, not even Bill Cope, one of the leftover hippies writing for the Boise Weekly can rise to this level of nutballery.  In Idaho, this person would be considered “at risk of hurting themselves or others” and everyone would keep a watch out for them.

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.

Barack Lightyear our Messiah, come to save us all from the eeevvviiilll Bushitler… hmmm, kinda has the zip, doesn’t it? I guess when you don’t have a real resume, a “narrative” is just as good.  No wonder the mainstream media gets a thrill up their leg covering this guy.   And I doubt all of us bitter Neanderthal conservatives, clinging to our guns and our Bibles, believing in an ancient diety who died will understand the opportunity that has come to mankind at just the right time in our evolution, in the form of the lightworker Barack Lumino Obama.

There’s a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that’s been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama’s candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him. It’s exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.

Obama is going to ride this horse, laughing his ass off, all the way to the White House.  No, I take that back. He will believe it about himself. And the people behind him will be the ones laughing, and working hard to change this country into something the Founders hated with all of their beings, and did their best to warn us against. There is a serious side here that frightens me.  When otherwise intelligent people set aside their ability to think rationally and process information  to the degree that this writer has, and so many others it seems, there is a very real threat to our freedom when enough of these people confer power on a man like this.  Thrill up your leg?  No, more like hair standing up on the back of your neck.

A blog I look at sometimes runs photos with the title “Why We Win”.  My only thought when I saw this was “why we’ll lose”…

Words fail me.  This crap makes me so angry, on so many levels, I can’t even see straight.  What kind of people ARE you?

Driving through the neighborhood this afternoon, I noticed three kids playing in their front yard.  Oh yeah, school’s out.  But as I got closer, I realized they were all three holding whips, and taking turns trying to crack them over their heads or out in front of them.  I’m thinking “what the…”, and then I notice the cheap imitation brown fedora the oldest one was wearing.  It was even the wrong color, and my first thought, as a grouchy old man, was that school should be a 12 month deal.  My second thought was that someday in their twenties, they’d look back on this day and think “we were such dorks”.

And then my third thought was back to when I was that age, and my brothers and I all had coonskin caps and toy “kentucky long rifles”.  Fess Parker as Davy Crockett was our hero.  He was also our hero as Daniel Boone, again wearing that coonskin cap.  And Leslie Nielson was another one, as the legendary Swamp Fox, although his hat was a tricorner with a tail on it, if I remember correctly.  Good role models.  Frontiersmen.  Patriots.  I wonder if those kids when they’re in their fifties will miss their boyhood heroes as much as I miss mine?

The economy, the war, gas prices, encroachments to liberties and the promise of higher taxes aren’t enough.  And crapweasels like Clinton, Obama, McCain, Pelosi, Reid, Bush, Craig, Snowe, Biden, McClellan, Warner and Lieberman, and any of a dozen other political names in the news this week… you’d think the American people would give a rip, at least enough to vote.  Not so much.  It’s been 40 years since we had voter turnout of 60% or higher.  Not even half that for primaries now.

The Secretary of State’s Office is still waiting for final results, but it estimates Idaho’s turnout at about 25 percent, which would make this election one of the most ignored primaries since 1994.

Ada County’s turnout was about 21.4 percent of registered voters, while Canyon County’s was 27.9 percent.

But one of our greatest Founders saw it all the way back at the beginning

The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
                                            - John Adams