Video: We Will Remember

(H/T HotAir)

Sign the Pledge at We Will Remember.

Not everyone is sold on the iPad

Irk! Now this is not a good thing to read:

Gadgets come and gadgets go. The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn’t the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.

If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn’t for you.

If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn’t for you.

If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you’re going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn’t for you.

via Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either) – Boing Boing.

I have to give props to Mr. Cory Doctorow for his brutal honesty. The article is quite the good read; from a standpoint of someone, who does not even own a iPod, much less an iPhone! 😀 I mean, I am just not big into, what I like to call, useless gadgets. To me, a phone is for making phone calls. Not for sitting there and playing games and all the crap you can do on them today. I mean, there is a thing called “Sexting” which is transmitting rather nasty pictures of one’s self over the internet. We never had to contend with stuff like that when I was a kid. (I am 37, by the way…) Besides that, you would not want to be transmitting naked pictures of my body anyhow; as I am almost sure it would cause someone great problems of the psychological sort to see me naked.

Now, from a greedy capitalist’s stand point; if I had a bunch of shares with Apple right about now and I saw this article. I would be asking for this guys head on a platter. I mean, just who the hell does this grumpy old jackass think he is? I am sure that Steve Jobs is not too happy about someone dissing his product, that he’s worked his rear end off to produce. On the other hand, this is just one man’s opinion of this product and I am sure that there are many others who have written that this is an exciting product to try.

The bottom line is this; we live in a free market, capitalistic society, and that free market will decide if this product is a smashing success or if it will be a flop. That is because that Free Market allows the PEOPLE, not the Government, to choose whether a product will be sold or even successful or not. Granted, it will take effort to make this happen; promotion by the company, the sales people and even the customer to buy the product. However the point is….. the freedom of choice is there. You can choose which product you wish to own by apple, all of them or none of them at all. That is the beauty of America. The only thing stopping you is your financial situation and also possibly your personal desire to own such product. Personally, even if I did have the money to own one of these iPads, I most likely would not own one. Because I personally do not see the point in owning such a thing. I have a very nice laptop, which suits my needs perfectly. I also do not see the point in owning something like this, and then having to own a iPhone or something similar, why not just put a camera and the ability to make phone calls in it as well? Again that is wonderful power of personal freedom and choice.

Now I could yammer on here about how the some of the Democrats and the socialists want to do away with all this freedom and change the system we have here in America. But I think everyone that reads this knows my position on those subjects. It also is not lost on me, where this thing is produced and the political positions of some of the people that will own one of these things.  However, I will not bring that into this discussion here, as I am blogging about an iPad. 😉 😀 😛

Update: Others Talking about the iPad: Pajamas Media, The Confluence, Althouse, Vanity Fair, Bits, Scripting News, VentureBeat and Gawker

Update #2: Message to AllahPundit: Do you really want to be known as the dude who owns a electronic gadget, who’s name basically invokes thoughts of a Electronic Maxi-Pad or Internet Maxi-Pad? Not if you are Beta-Male. I mean, you are already being called a candy-ass Rhino as it is; you do not need anymore help. I’m just sayin’ 😛

Video: Is the Stimulus Working?

This comes via R.S. McCain:

The Reality Report #36

In this report:

Does Obama want your DNA?

How far will the IRS go to extract the peoples blood?

What the heck is Chris Dodd thinking about the FED’s monetary power? Gary answers those questions and
welcomes SpyChips co-author and RFID expert Katherine Albrecht to the show to discuss the latest in
RFID and implantable human tracking technology.

MoonBat Fight! President Bambi Teleprompter and Senater Ugly Botox are fighting

Further Meltdown on the Hill:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s increasingly public disagreements with President Barack Obama are a reflection of something deeper: the seething resentment some Democrats feel over what they see as cavalier treatment from a wounded White House.

For months, the California lawmaker has been pushing Obama hard in private while praising him in public. But now she’s being more open in her criticism, in part because she feels the White House was wrong — in the wake of the Democrats’ loss in Massachusetts — to push the Senate health care bill on the House when she knew there was no way it would pass.

Earlier this month, Pelosi criticized the president’s State of the Union call to exempt defense spending from a budget freeze. And in a White House meeting with leaders of both parties this week, she questioned the effectiveness of his plan to give small businesses tax breaks to hire workers.

“What you’re seeing now in public has been building in private,” said a top House Democratic official. “House members did their work — they did everything the president asked of them. And it gets stuck in the Senate. Or the Senate screws it up.”

via Family feud: Nancy Pelosi at odds with President Obama – POLITICO.com.

That is what happens when Democrats overreach and make promises that they cannot keep. Another Example:

“He wants a jobs bill, we get a jobs bill,” the official said. “He wanted health care, we got health care. Then the answer is, ‘You just need to twist enough arms to pass the Senate bill.’ You can twist arms if you’ve got a handful of them to twist. You can’t twist over 100 arms. There needs to be some reality check there.”

“Both ends of the Capitol — the House and the Senate — are starting to wonder if they’re on their own,” the official continued. “You have a lot of frustration there. And the White House’s reaction to all of that seems to be, ‘Run against Congress’ — which, as you can imagine, doesn’t go over very well with House members. The White House reaction seems to be, ‘Position ourselves against Congress.’”

See, the problem is this here. The President seems to forget that the Congress; that being the House and Senate, have people running those offices, and not robots. Those people actually have to answer to their constituents, and going around doing the will of the President and ignoring those who elected you, can lead to one’s ouster from his office. You would think that the President would be smart enough to know this.  No, I am not saying that President is outright dumb; I just think that the President had some sort of crazy idea of some sort that when he took office and the Democrats got the majority that the Democrats and Republicans would just roll over and let him run roughshod over them. We see now that this just was not the case. This is a good thing, I believe this is why the America people’s involvement in politics is very necessary in this time of great uncertainty.

Others: Wall Street Journal,   Left Coast Rebel, , Hot Air,Wake up America

Breaking News, Massive Snow Storm Lands in my neighborhood

and of course, I have video:

and pictures too!

Yes, We were hit by a snow storm
Nothing we Michigan people cannot handle.. (well, some of us!)
Yes, that is as cold as it looks. Especially that WIND... Oy!
Snow Shovels and Fishing Poles --- You can obviously see where my Dad's priorities are at.
A sure sign of Certified Hillbilly, A box fan on a front page, In the middle of winter! 🙂
A left over from the days when I actually worked for a living. My Briefcase. It is a truckers dream. I put every damn thing in that briefcase. I miss those days of driving... 🙁
Dad's truck. My Car was down the street on the side road, Snow Emergency and tickets cost money
Ye old backyard, Cold and quite snowy...

Answering Laurence Vance

I write this piece to answer the libertarian leftist Laurence Vance’s smear piece against me. An article for what it is worth has only brought 143 visitors to my blog, as of this writing. For a man, who is supposedly an authority on all things libertarian; not to mention all things Austrian economics —That my friend is quite amusing, I guess Lew Rockwell and company are legends in their own minds — at best.

I will not sit here and pick apart this entire ridiculous article, which is filled with in inaccuracies about me, who I listen to in talk radio, and all the other silly assumptions that those of the idiotic leftist mentality believe about us, who happen to respect and support our Military. Nevertheless, I will correct this leftist imbecile on some issues.

First off, whom or what I listen to on television: I guess Mr. Vance assumes that Fox News Network in my Television when I am awake. This is a gross fallacy; I only watch Fox News during the daytime; that is, if and when, I decide to turn the blasted thing on. I think I may watch an hour of Television at most, as for during the opinion hour at night, the only person I can stomach on Fox News is, in fact, is Bill O’Reilly. I find Sean Hannity most annoying. Why is that? Because Sean Hannity is a water carrier, a talk points repeater. Quite bluntly, Sean Hannity is an idiotic gasbag — Not to mention he looks and dresses like a closeted gay twink. Sean Hannity is, in fact, a Republican. He spouts Republican talking points — all the while claiming to be a Libertarian. One thing I can tell you, Sean Hannity is not a libertarian, he is not even close. Even I, the most hawkish man in the blogosphere can tell you that. Sean Hannity, to me, represents the Bush-era Fox News. Which has since changed, they stopped with the stupid Bush-era talking points and moved on. Sean Hannity, well, not so much. As for Limbaugh, I respect the man for building such a large business around his, well, ego. However, I do not listen to him on a regular basis, and I will tell you why. Rush Limbaugh strikes me as someone who is love with his own voice — something that I find most highly annoying. Therefore, I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh for that reason. Like anyone else, I catch the clips online when he says or does something remarkably stupid. As for Glenn Beck, Beck peddles paranoia; I am not much into that sort of a thing really. Glenn Back believes that communism is still a real threat. I disagree; I believe that radical socialism is a real threat. However, staunch communism is not and has not been for many years — McCarthy saw to that little feat — and yes there is a big difference between socialism and communism, it even says this on the communist party USA’s website. I ought to know, I did look it up. I do not make a habit of yowling about things that I have no clue about, unlike some in this idiotic political blogosphere.

Therefore, yes, I do watch Bill O’Reilly; why, you ask — Because Bill O’Reilly is fair and yes, balanced. Anyone who actually watches his show knows that Bill does not carry water for the President, ever. Bill also is fair to the President; he does not just hate President Obama, because he is a socialist, much to the chagrin of those on the far right. Bill O’Reilly, like me, has a strong disliking of the socialist far left. This is because we both happen to know that socialism is a threat to the free capitalistic system in this country — this is why I respect the man. Another thing that made me begin to watch him at Bill O’Reilly was the fact that he stopped the policy of shutting people’s microphones off, that disagreed with him. I noticed that he was doing that, and because of this, I refused to watch O’Reilly. As much as I disagree with much of what the left has to say; I do believe that anyone in this Country, as long as they are not planning to overthrow or cause harm to anyone in this Nation, have the right to freedom of speech. This is what got Senator Joseph McCarthy into a great deal of trouble, this is why people like William Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell Jr. (not to be confused with his son, Brent Bozell III) abandoned McCarthy. Because McCarthy wanted to exert thought police on the American people, that which is, sadly, a tactic of the far left. Because O’Reilly abandoned this practice of shutting microphones off, I began to watch him. I also starting watching Fox News and frankly stopped watching CNN and MSNBC because of the blatant partisanship of MSNBC and to a lesser extent CNN. I am all for a diversity of opinion, but when you actually stoop to the level of insulting your viewers, that is when I decided that the bus stopped here and I got off. (So to speak)

Getting back to the subject at hand here, Laurence Vance also accuses me of not being able to separate the Military from the Government. Which is most amusing, because his posting at Lew Rockwell’s Blog; he accuses the Military of occupying Iraq, which was done on the orders of the George W. Bush Administration — Which is something I pointed out in one of my previous postings. Therefore, to Mr. Vance I say — Project much, friend? But then again, when talking to a leftist, one can only expect so much — because to them, up is down and left is right, and the world is a very bizarre place; which is why I tend to avoid reasoning with them. After all, the Bible says; “If any man be ignorant, let them be ignorant” and I do try to follow the Bible as much as I possibly can.

While I am on the subject of Iraq, I feel the need to clear something up. If Mr. Vance or anyone else happens to believe that I am some sort of a Bush-supporting Republican, please be advised that this about as far from the truth that one can get. I did not vote for President George. W. Bush, at all, either time. During that time, I was firmly in the Democratic Party column. This pre-dated my blogging days. I was a left of center — albeit quite the “half-assed left of center,” but I digress. Further, I did support the Iraq war, until the reports came out and the White House admitted that they were wrong about Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, it was that little incident, that triggered me to start blogging in February of 2006 as a “left of center” blogger. I will explain the reasons why I switched sides for another posting, as this one is getting very long.

Finally, to answer Mr. Vance’s charge of being a “Red State Fascist” — If loving America and in loving America; knowing that in order to maintain the peace requires strength. If knowing that the United States Military is a valued treasure in this Country and should be highly respected — If wanting to see the United States of America protected from terrorists; both foreign and domestic, makes me a Red State Fascist — I plead the only thing I that I will ever plead to a charge as this — guilty as charged.

May God Bless the United States of America and May God Bless the United States Armed Forces. Further more, Thank God for our Military and Thank God for the privilege of being able to debate those who I disagree with, without the fear of being criminally persecuted for it. We live in a wonderful Nation and I will always defend her from those who would want to slander her. I feel that it is the most that I can do.

Thoughts & Prayers needed for my Dad

As some of you might know that read this blog regularly might know; I do live with my Parents. That, in itself is a very long story. Anyhow, My Father will be going into the hospital tomorrow morning at around 8:00 a.m. or so, to have a very important heart procedure done. They are going to run a dye into his bloodstream to check and see if there is any blockage and if there is, they will be putting stints in. There is, although not probable, a slight chance that my Dad could need open-heart surgery while they are in there doing that work. Therefore, needless to say, I will be quite occupied for the next few days. There is good news however; I will be taking the laptop to the hospital with me; as so, I do not go crazy with boredom in the hospital.

Everyone that knows me well will tell you; that I hate hospitals with a passion. I do tend to avoid them as much as humanly possible. However, this little trip is highly important to me. Therefore, I will be joining my Dad up at the hospital for a good part of the day. I am not sure how long it will take. I am told a good part of the day.

So, I am asking for everyone who either reads this blog daily or even does the occasional drive-by. Please keep my Dad in your thoughts and prayers tomorrow — and for the rest of the week. Also, keep my Mother in your prayers as this all is really making her worry and she is not in the greatest of health either.

Thanks again,

Patrick