* I succeeded in slicing my thumb open with a bagel slicer. As a result, it’s been a bit of a problem trying to type. That said, I’ll use my voice dictation system, and soldier on.
* Pics of the new ride:
Well, I did manage to get a few in, last night, which is another reason why I didn’t post a Ramble… and here’s the best of the bunch. Drill each for the (much) larger view.
Call me a victim of winter, if you will, but I just liked the way the light played on some of these shots. I haven’t managed to get any shots of the interior yet, but for now I’ll pass along one that I ripped off from familycar.com which seems a rather nice resource for such things.the interior on mind is the same color. Indeed, the pictures from this other site could very well the same vehicle.
I suppose it doesn’t look like much from the outside, particularly in comparison to the van which was the flashiest vehicle I’ve ever all, bar none. Not a very flashy car, much as I tried for the glamor shots here. But take another look at that interior, and you’ll understand what all this is about. Comfort.
The thing rides like a luxury car and has a feel like a luxury car, while being what we consider these days, a truck. It plows easily through turns, with the confidence I had not thought to find in this class of vehicle.
Interestingly, they have not only the interior pictures but the outside as well, in the same color.
I should say at the outset this is the first black car/truck I’ve ever owned, so it’s going to be interesting to see how I manage with the paint on this truck. My wife had a black Escape, and scratches were a serious issue.
OK, enough of that, for now.
* Surber notes… as does Beck, a story about how several federal agencies are spending healthcare money as in… TAX money… for a conference. I suppose, that doesn’t sound to abnormal until you consider that the location for the conference is Disney world. Says Surber:
This is a taste of what government-run health care will be like.
Was there ever any doubt of that point?
* I note the push toward ‘hate crime’ laws by the Democrats. of course, this is simply more political posturing, because they know they’re not going to get it signed into law. But more, such legislation doesn’t make sense. Consider, please, the statement:
“I hate intolerence”.
I wrote,back in march of ’01:
The pattern is well established. Politicians and others have frequently blamed “hatred” for headline making crimes, particularly when in the act of pandering to so-called Minority groups..
*After the April 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, President Clinton named G. Gordon Liddy among the conservative talk-show hosts he called “purveyors of hatred and division,” saying they were “encouraging violence.” The liberal press, who has long been willing to prostitute itself to the end of defeating anyone who holds views to the right of say, Fidel Castro, gleefully agreed with him.
There was serious talk of McVeigh being charged under “Hate crimes’ laws, but I’ve forgotten if he ever was prosecuted under those laws. I suspect though, that he was so charged.
*’Concerned’ over arson attacks on black churches in 1996, (You recall, the ones Mr. Clinton lied about) civil rights leader Joseph Lowery accused the Christian Coalition of fostering an “extremist climate.” The non problem was followed up as a group of hate crimes.
*When avowed homosexual Matthew Shepard was killed in Wyoming last year, Homosexual-extra-rights advocate Joan M. Garry suggested it was the result of a conservative anti-homosexuality campaign she said “fuels the fires of bigotry.”, and his killers were subject to and convicted under Hate Crime statutes.
*Following the shootings at a Jewish community center in California, the leftist media and politicians jumped onto the hate crime bandwagon, labeling those episodes of violence “hate crimes”..
*In Texas, the dragging death of a black man has brought two white men to conviction and the death penalty. These were reported by the press, most notably CBS and CNN (who forever shill for big government ) as hate crimes.
Yet there is another pattern, also well established… a more disturbing one.
#When a gunman spouting blasphemous rhetoric burst into a youth service at a Fort Worth Baptist church this week, and fatally shot seven persons, the liberal’s war on hate crimes was nowhere to be seen. Nor were there endless lines of liberal leaders, making as much out of the situation as possible.
#When in 1997, a kid who had been known as anti-Christian shot up a high school prayer group in Paducah, KY where were the people protecting us from ‘hate crime’? They must have hidden behind the folks who want to remove the second amendment from the books. It’s the oddest thing; these looked just like the folks who had been screaming about hate crimes in my first examples.
#When the April murders of Christian students at Columbine High School in Colorado, made the front page… where the shooters specifically picked out Christians to shoot at by asking them for professions of faith and then killing them for their answer, we saw no crying and wailing from the usual suspects about ‘hate crime’. Yet, there can be no question that these crimes too, were motivated by hate.
Such discrepancies alas constitute legal life in America today. And with our over dependence on law, and on government, such nonsense penetrates every aspect of our day to day lives. The obvious question is why such double standards are permitted to exist. The answer, I fear, goes directly to the heart of the motive behind the hate crime laws. Understand; “motive” is not an idle choice of a word.. I consider the laws and the motive behind them, criminal. Why?
Well, in answer, it doesn’t pass my notice, and I hope it doesn’t pass yours, that there are many who scream loudly to the populace for hate crimes laws when certain groups… groups whom they have historically favored… are targeted. Yet, these same people keep stony silence when other groups that they don’t favor are. You should also take note, of which are which. This disparity, (along with the disparity in the implementation of hate crime laws themselves) sends the message that hate itself isn’t the real issue… but rather WHOM you hate… that it’s OK to hate certain people. And of course, by passing hate crime laws and selectively implementing them, the government sends the clear message of which we shall and shall not hate.
A look around provides the idea that open hostility to Christians, and others who hold traditional American values, is growing rapidly, and government is doing much to foster this hostility. Let’s be honest enough to say that this is the real purpose of “hate crime” legislation; to provoke hatred against politically incorrect groups, such as those who dare to try and uphold traditional cultural values, and/or those who are Christians.
I suggest that this double standard is just one more front on the culture war … a war so many deny exists.Yet, it is a war that continues to claim victims. As in this case.
Let me be clear, here. I am not suggesting that we give ‘hate crimes’ status to those crimes that we have not. I’m suggesting that we should grant ‘hate crime’ status to NO crime. By their design, and certainly by their implementation, the Hate Crimes statutes tend to reveal motives on the part of the government, which have racial and cultural motives, which are directed against the majority. Lincoln once observed that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Hate Crimes laws, far from being the healing tool they were supposed to be, have only served to deepen our division.It’s time to remove so called hate crimes from the books.
My take on all of this is, that there are motives about all of this on the Democratic side that haven’t changed since a long before I wrote this six years ago. Those motives are not in the best interests of the country. More, they’re not in the interests of solving the stated problems. The such laws will in fact divide us further. Given some of the legislation the democrats have come up with in my lifetime alone, you have to wonder whether not that isn’t their goal; to divide us further.
* Some notes from Brit Hume, of Fox this evening;
Democratic Congressman John Murtha Tuesday called the recent Washington visit of Iraq Multinational Forces Commander General David Petraeus a “purely political move.”
He added — “Petraeus doesn’t talk to any of us. He only talks to the news media and so forth trying to sell this program.” Murtha later acknowledged that while Petraeus talked to “a group of members,” he said he didn’t talk to committees that act on military legislation.
In fact, Petraeus conducted two 90-minute top-secret level briefings to which all members of Congress were invited, and which 336 attended. Petraeus personally briefed Murtha and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a telephone call the previous day.
As far as his visit being political — a senior defense official tells Cybercast News — “Members of the military are inherently non-political. Moreover, General Petraeus was unanimously confirmed by this Senate. He is their man, reporting to them on operations in Iraq. There is nothing political about that.”
I must assume that nobody rises to the position John Murtha has risen to, being completely devoid of the ability to discern fact from fiction. On that basis I must conclude that John Murtha is willingly lying to the American people. It’s about time Murtha resign from his office. He does not deserve it. He no longer is worthy of the trust of any of the American people, most particularly that which elected him.
Tags: BitsBlog, Nightly Ramble
