A sad farewell

"And so, it has come to this."

so anyway, Kim du Toit has posted his last blog-post and is in the process of riding off into the sunset.

You can color me Severely.Bummed.Out. If Crayola makes such a color, and I'm sure they do.

The Other Side Of Kim was one of the first additions to the blogroll here at SupplySidePolitics 2.0. I'll miss him dearly. As will we all.

Kim and Connie: Godspeed. Thank you both for enriching my life with your wit and wisdom, the "Tech Support" pieces that helped me figure out how and why these inter-web tube-net thingies work, the pics of guns, cars, women, food, and of places that I'll probably never see for myself. Thank you for the everything that you gave us.

Please let us know if, when, and where we can find Kim&Connie2.0. We need you both.

thatisall

Friday 21NOV08

Another week of The Stoopid Business™ in the can

so anyway, I'm so not going to mention the "Natural Harvest" story that all the cool kids are yukking it up over. Seriously, that's some funny siht right there; do go read them all, and all the comments as well. Is it a spoof? Don't know, don't care; it's danm funny. Read them all.

But that's not why I stopped in tonight. Confederate Yankee has noted a trend that has been brewing for the past couple of months or so:

Fears of an Obama administration attempt to raise prohibitive taxes and reinstate bans on so-called "assault weapons" and standard capacity magazines have led to rushes on many kinds of semi-automatic rifles and pistols, especially those with high capacity magazines. Until recently, Obama's transition website indicated his intention to reinstate the ineffective 1994 Assault Weapons Ban that passed under President Clinton and expired in 2004 under President Bush.

Local news reports from other gun shops across the country seem to indicate that a run on military-style semi-automatics and ammunition of all types may continue for months as long-time shooters and new gun purchasers stock up in preparation for what many expect to be one of the most divisive, anti-gun federal governments in years.

Spend your money on canned goods and ammunition, kids. But not necessarily in that order.

more soon.

Veterans Day 2008

Thank you, very much.

Words fail me on days like this, because my fat, happy life is owed to people I've never met signing a check made payable to the United States of America, the amount to read "everything, up to, and including their very lives".

I'm not qualified to polish your boots. I'm not qualified to scrape the siht off your boots, prior to polishing.

Thank you.

The day is soon coming where I will have to stand up as you have. You did it voluntarily; for me it will be out of urgent necessity. Our Cause will be the same, but Your way is much more noble.

Thank you. So very much.

There's tons of sentiment out there (See Also: BlogRoll), I'll offer a small sampling:

McQ of Q and O fame:

Most of the time when you read tributes to vets, they're filled with the stories of those who've suffered in combat and we see pictures showing the battle-weary combat vets which pointedly make the argument about the sacrifices our veterans have made and continue to make.

But not all sacrifices are made on the field of battle. While infantry, armor and artillery are the combat arms - the tip of the spear - they, better than anyone, know how important the team that makes up the rest of the spear are to their success on the battlefield.

Those F-16s don't show up on target at the right time unless that kid flying the boom of a KC10 tanker at 30,000 feet at 2am doesn't do his job. That sabot round from an M1A1 fired at a threatening T72 isn't there unless the truck driver hauling ammo day in and day out gets that ammo where it needs to be when it needs to be there.

Veterans are the guys like the cook who gets up every morning at 3:30 am and begins to prepare breakfast for his guys and gals. The kid below decks on an aircraft carrier who makes sure the F/A 18 he's responsible for maintaining is in perfect shape and ready to fly. The nurse who holds a dying soldier's hand as he takes his last breath, wipes away her tears, straightens her uniform and heads out to do it again.

Darleen Click of The PW Pub has some personal remembrances.

Brevity being the soul of wit, Ragin'Dave and Kim offer their thoughts. Amen, brothers.

Thank you to all our Veterans. So very much.

Saturday 08NOV08

suddenly, post titles just write themselves

so anyway, as the dust settles on the whole election thingie, it's interesting to see the immediate reax to the outcome. By and large, the dextrosphere has been quite gracious about President-Elect Obama. We on the Right understand that the Office and the will of the people are due respect.

I offer up an example from my brother Thayrone, excerpted from an e-mail he sent painfully early on Wednesday morning:

".....Last night we celebrated the hiring of a new CEO to oversee our American job. But as I recall, we didn't hear our new CEO address or even mention any of the essential American job responsibilities during his job interview. He didn't even speak to, let alone mention, national security or sovereignty. But we hired him anyway. He got the job without ever addressing any of the most important responsibilities of the job he has to do. He never talked about his ability to be ready, willing and able to deal with:

1. Keeping our military and military readiness second to none

2. Closing our borders to illegal aliens

3. Overhauling our tax structure, such that it serves business and job growth

4. Taking our natural gas, coal, and oil out from under American soil and making us energy independent

We hired him anyway. Regardless, the responsibility of our American job remains. We need to get to work, get hard at work on it. It's time to go back to work.

Will our new President lead on those issues and responsibilities I listed above, will he take up for the challenge? Barak Obama at this point is still very much a wishful thinking over logic kind of guy (that's what the sea of shiny, happy, teary-eyed, beaming faces in Grant Park, Chicago voted into office). He's 'hope'. Hope is not a bad thing But hope is just that, wishful thinking. I invoke 'hope' every time I buy a lottery ticket. Being the first African-American President is irrelevant. It's historic but irrelevant on central American job issues. What's relevant is facing the hard reality of being substance over form. Barak Obama now has to face the reality of job we gave him. At this point I'm on his side. I'm rooting for him. I have to.

Barak Obama is our President. He's the President elect of the United States of America. And the fact that he now holds that office is reason enough to support him. At this point all we can do is support our country. Country first.

I'm personally giving him the benefit of the doubt. As Americans it does no good to be anything other than positive as we go back to work. We will make the best of this 'hope' as a country. We got through Jimmy 'the worst president in the history of Mankind' Carter. We'll get through this. And as seems always the case with America--something good will come from this election and it's result. Hopefully.

The "Our President" theme has been the predominant sentiment around the Right end of the blogosphere ever since the returns started coming in. I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to compare and contrast our response to the election results to that of the Left in 2000 and 2004.

Stark contrast, indeed.

Color me firmly in the "respect the Office" camp.

As a tangential leap, the whole flap over wearing (or not wearing) the flag pin on the lapel has really pissed me off. During the abysmal years of the (first and only) Clinton administration, I never once failed to sport a flag on the lapel whilst wearing a proper jacket. Nor did I shy away from flying The Colors from my front porch, or on my vehicle.

I'm an American, dammit. It's what I do. I may agree with, or dis-agree with the current administration, but in the big picture It's.Country.First. Period. Full Stop.

If your version of "Country First" is contingent on who holds The Office, I suggest that you are part of the problem.

There was more, but it's gotten late early again.

more soon

Friday 07NOV08

a "shout out" to "the gang": spike my counter, then I'll believe

[Sorry for the "shop-talk" in the sub-head, I'm just looking for some (not to be soon forthcoming) proof. The ball is in their court: Jason, Kelly, Matt, Carl, Andrew, Emma, Dawn, and the rest of the gang. Spike the counter in triple digits by Monday. I gotta believe that Tommie the Commie is somehow involved. Just a hunch.]

so anyway, sorry for leading off with the shop-talk. Trolls can be such a pain in the ass. Our regular programming resumes.....

As usual, there's much to discuss and once again not much time. So let's get right to it, shall we?

Via Rachel Lucas, it looks like those "working" for President-Elect Obama are still waiting for their payday.

Indianapolis - Lines were long and tempers flared Wednesday not to vote but to get paid for canvassing for Barack Obama. Several hundred people are still waiting to get their pay for last-minute campaigning. Police were called to the Obama campaign office on North Meridian Street downtown to control the crowd.

The line was long and the crowd was angry at times.

“I want my money today! It’s my money. I want it right now!” yelled one former campaign worker.

A former spokesman for the Obama campaign said 375 people were hired as part of the Vote Corps program and said people signed up to work three-hour shifts at a time. Three hours of canvassing got workers a $30 pre-paid Visa card.

The workers showed up to get their cards Wednesday morning at 10:00 am.

“There was a note on the door saying 1:00 pm and then at 1:20 pm everybody was like why is nobody here. They just got here and they’re trying to get it organized,” said Heather Richards, a former campaign worker.

…Eventually people did start getting paid, but some said they were missing hours and told to fill in paperwork making their claim and that eventually they would get a check in the mail.

“Still that’s not right. I’m disappointed. I’m glad for the president, but I’m disappointed in this system,” said Diane Jefferson, temporary campaign worker.

“It should have been $480. It’s $230,” said Imani Sankofa.

“They gave us $10 an hour. So we added it. I added up all the hours so it was supposed to be at least $120. All I get is $90,” said Charles Martin.

“I worked nine hours a day for 4 days and got paid half of what I should have earned,” said Randall Waldon.

Some people weren’t satisfied with filling out a claim form for money they felt was still due to them.

“They say that they gonna call you or they going to mail it to you, but I don’t know. We’ll see what happens,” said Antron Grose.

“Talking about they’ll mail it to us. I ain’t worried about that, man. They’re not going to mail nothin’,” said Martin.

All the cool kids are linking to this one. I gotta laugh, as the presumptive "volunteers" are now figuring out that it's too late to go all "John Galt" on (then) Senator Obama's campaign.

Elsewhere, MichaelW of Q and O fame tips us to Volokh:

There are two versions of American exceptionalism. American-American exceptionalism is "we're richer because we're better." European-American exceptionalism is "you're better because you're richer." Both sides agree on exceptionalism, and just see different causes and implications. The Europeans expect us, on account of our wealth, to live up to (their) ideals, while we think that our wealth ought to prove to them that our ideals are better than theirs. No one of any importance seems to think that the United States is a normal country.

I gots more, but it's gotten late early again.

more soon

Monday 03NOV08

tomorrow, you vote. Choose wisely. so anyway, here we are. Tuesday we'll cast our votes for the next President of the United States. May doG have mercy on our souls. Do go vote. Do not believe the polls that the liberal Main Stream Media (redundancy alert) are pushing in your face 24/7. If you do just a little digging, you'll find that most of the polls show the race as within the margin of error. Besides, the only polling that counts is the actual voting. In 1980, Carter had a lead over Reagan on Election morning; Reagan took 49 of the 57 states. Both Gore and Kerry were leading in the polls in the week prior to the Election, and we know how those elections turned out. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? I thought not. It has been my pleasure blogging this whole election thingie for you; I, like William Ayers, only wish I could have done more. more soon