May 8th ... The Adventure Begins Anew

I admit it ... I'm a Trekkie!! I can't wait for May 8th — I know it comes out May 7th in the wee hours of the morning, but I can wait a day. Everything I've heard is that it's going to be awesome. I'm ready for the adventure to begin again.

Awesome Songbird

AMAZING
Must be seen and heard to be believed!
NEWS STORY

Netbook computing ...

I've been looking at these really little computers in the under 3# class called Netbooks. They don't have a CD/DVD but otherwise they have a lot of capability. They have USB ports, built-in camera, the usual awful mousepad (I hate those!) and a reasonable sized screen and keyboard with 1 GB of memory and in my case, a Dell Inspiron iM10-2634, a 160 GB harddrive and of course wireless internet. This one came in at $399 and came with Microsoft Works and a few other minor utilities. I downloaded Firefox and Open Office to get started fooling with it. So far with just an hour or so under my belt I'm pretty happy. I have not done too much with it yet, but that will change pretty quickly. One thing I really like is how light it is — 2 pounds 9.5 ounces. More later.

The Return to Sizzle ...

OK OK I know that Spitzenpopper has been really political and I didn't start it with that in mind so I apologize. It's supposed to be about neat ideas that pop up and get you thinking and not all about politics all the time. So I need a place to talk about politics since I'm keyboard addicted ... and I created one where the political stuff will go.

Chesterton and Shaw were once guests on a BBC show. When told they could discuss anything they wished except religion and politics both walked out. They contended that there was nothing else worth talking about.

Obviously that is a bit of hyperbole ... but among the most important things to talk about are Religion and Politics. Religions is about ultimate ends, and Politics is about the material ends of man in society. There can hardly be two more important things. So I've created a special blog to conduct the political stuff called Political Brambles with Brer Rabbit as its mascot. Come and visit and comment if you like.

Where Have You Gone Mr. Jefferson

Hard to add much to this. The Congress has forgotten that they serve the people and the executive would be kind. We need Washington and Jefferson back, not to mention Madison.

Semper Fi

My family is a military family. I am proud of my father, career U.S. Navy, Annapolis class of 1940 who retired as a Rear Admiral (AEDO #1). I am proud that I served, even though it was only two years in the Army and that all three of my sons have served, one in the Marine Corps, one in the Army, and one currently in the Navy.

Like Robert Hall (image is of Bob in 1965) whose site you should visit, "I'm Tired" too of all the phoney baloney we are fed daily by our press, our leaders, our spin-doctors. The United States was built on hard work, integrity, dedication, and commitment. Those are all things in very short supply these day. I encourage you to read "I'm Tired".

To encourage you I'd like to include a little excerpt below:

I’m tired of being told that Islam is a “Religion of Peace,” when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family “honor;” of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren’t “believers;” of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for “adultery;” of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur’an and Shari’a law tells them to.

There's a lot of very plain common sense in Hall's essay. We need more people to stand up and speak up for a restoration of common sense before there is nothing left to save.

Politics as Usual ...

I'm not sure what exactly is happening in Virginia in the Virginia Republican Party whose Central Committee voted yesterday to depose the Chairman Jeff Frederick who was only elected last September. All sorts of charges have been floated, so many really that they all end up looking like trial balloons to see what will stick and gain traction. The Washington Post story had this little clip:

After six hours of debate behind closed doors, the party's governing board, the State Central Committee, voted 57 to 18 to remove Frederick, 33, a conservative delegate from Prince William County.

"I ran for chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia with the hope of changing our party so we could once again be a major party in Virginia [and] so we could achieve real progress for our state and our families,'' Frederick said after the vote. "Unfortunately, the headwinds to change course were just too great. . . . Too many are still invested in doing things the old top-down way. I'm sad for our party and for our grass roots."

First Vice Chairman Mike Thomas, a leader in the movement to remove Frederick, took over as interim party chairman, a post he has held three times since 2003. The committee will select a chairman May 2.

Now frankly I don't know if Frederick did anything worthy of removal. The whole thing smells like a railroad job by the moderate wing of the party to oust a conservative. Transparency this is not, at least so far. The cost in grass roots support is hard to gauge but may be significant if they can't get a better story together than they have floated so far. The next calibration point will come on May 2nd when we see who the committee selects as a chairman. If it looks like a real conservative then maybe they'll weather the storm at the convention. If not, there will likely be hell to pay.

The Return of the Ghouls

The death tax is back. Apparently for Democrats the hard-earned property of the dead is fair game for government. The Bush administration had the death-tax on the way out. The politics of greed and envy favored by the Democrats is back. I'm sure that will do wonders for the incentive of the segment of the population that already pays far and away the most taxes. I personally think that if you don't pay at least 10% of your income in taxes you should not be allowed to vote. You're not contributing enough. Certainly those who pay no taxes ought not to be able to overrule those who do.

Getting Started ...

Sometimes it's just hard to get started and that's when you say things like "I'll do it when I get around to it!" So in honor of getting started, here's a complimentary round TUIT for each and every one who stops by Spitzenpopper.

The Pied Piper and His Rats

The freedom of the press has been abused beyond all belief by the run up to Obama's election. One has to wonder what has happened to the alleged media's rugged independence and zeal for the truth.

The truth is that we have elected the most callow, self-absorbed, poorly equipped person in history to be the president of the United States. What is scarier is that his philosophy of government can be summed up as "fear and exploitation" for a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. We can look forward to one manufactured crisis after another interspersed of course among the real ones that he is inducing now with his profligate policies. When the smoke clears, who will clean up the wreakage?

A Government of Thieves

Walter Williams, like Thomas Sowell, is one of my favorite economists. He's a direct no-nonsense, straight from the shoulder kind of guy when it comes to cutting to the chase. In his column yesterday which you can read at Investor's Business Daily he asks the rather obvious questions:
Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him?

He goes on to answer a resounding "No" to each. Somehow we seem to have forgotten that just because the gubment does it, doesn't make it right. Stealing is no less stealing when done by the government. Indeed, done by the government it is the rankest form of tyranny. A citizen has a chance against a brigand. He can possibly defend himself. But against the force of the government the citizen can rarely do more than submit. We have travelled a long way down the path toward tyranny and in steps that individually seem small, but collectively have brought us to this point.

The scary fact as Williams goes on to point out is:
Unfortunately, there is no way out of our immoral quagmire. The reason is that now that the U.S. Congress has established the principle that one American has a right to live at the expense of another American, it no longer pays to be moral.

Williams makes a clear and powerful point. We have long gone over the brink and we are far gone. It is not clear that there is a recovery from this point. Perhaps collapse is all we can look forward to and perhaps in the far future another free state will arise. This one was once a city on a hill, a great hope for freedom. If we work at turning back the tempest, perhaps it can be again.