SERVICE OUTAGE

Blogger.com has been having a lot of trouble in the last 24 hours. It has been hard to get posts up and I did not manage to get up today's offering here until several hours later than usual. So forgive me if I once again preach the little sermon I always do on such occasions:

ALL blogs have some downtime. Blogs hosted on blogspot are well-known for it but other hosting services have their failures too. As any systems expert will tell you, however, the key to system reliability is redundancy and I have taken that onboard as the way to beat all the service outages that regularly have all us bloggers weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. So what I do is put up extra copies ("mirrors") of my various blogs. As an old computer hand from way back (I wrote my first computer program in 1967), it takes me only a couple of minutes to do, so I do it. It is compiling the blog that takes the time. Putting up another copy of it is no trouble at all.

So if this blog is unavailable when you try to log on, you have an alternative! You can find the posts elsewhere! Bookmark this site and you will always be able to find a second copy of any of my blogs.

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ANZAC DAY TODAY

Australia's national day, when we remember those who have fallen for their country in our many wars. I have put some comments up about it on AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Being myself an ex-"Digger" (Australian slang for a member of the Army), it is certainly meaningful to me. I rarely go to the traditional Dawn service, however, as I think it is primarily an occasion for those who have lost loved-ones in war. And, blessedly, the only close relative of mine (my uncle Freddy) who died in war, died when I was too young to remember him -- though he was much beloved by older members of the family.

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A GOOD RANT FROM DICK MCDONALD

Some mornings I get up to find I am in an alternative universe. A universe populated with Marxist lunatics directing uneducated and misleading refugees of Pravda who in turn fill the propaganda pipeline with lies, deceptions and omissions. Spend a moment with me reviewing the present views of these moonbats:

1. Almost 60% of Americans believe the economy is in the tank. The reality is America's economy is blowing the doors off the barn. Guess who is misleading the public?

2. America is going bankrupt according to our moon bats. With a country worth $150 to $250 Trillion and a piddling, insignificant, smaller than a gnat $4.9 Trillion external debt, the deliriously misinformred are misleading the public.

3. Islam is believed by these loons to be a "Religion of Peace" irrespective of the fact that Muslims keep telling and showing us they are going to behead us all.

4. The loons fib that we can wait until 2042 before Social Security will go bankrupt; clearly ignoring the $13 Trillion unfunded liability presently hidden from public view. $13 trillion, almost three times larger our ENTIRE external debt. It is a fact the system is more than bankrupt right NOW.

5. One of America's two major political parties ran a traitor for President in 2004; and he almost won. Hailed as a hero in North Vietnam, he fictionalize atrocities and blamed his brother warriors for crimes they never committed. His testimony in front of Congress handed America her first loss in war. The depths to which our MSM will stoop is too far to measure.

6. Following Kerry's treason, I wake up each morning to an entire industry exclusively devoted to losing the Iraq war; never ending innuendos and lies with accompanying visuals. These are truly leftist traitors giving aid and comfort to America's enemies. And Hollywood's patriotism is so lacking, not one motion picture has been made supporting the war; just treasonous excuses and anti-American pap. And Americans are expected to be proud of their "Free Speech"; where exactly do I find that practiced in the good old USA?.

Read the rest here

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ELSEWHERE

Royal Prince is a patriot: "Prince Harry has threatened to quit the Army unless he is sent to the front line, it was reported today. The Prince and his older brother, Prince William, have both previously made it clear they are determined to see active service with their units. Harry, 21, was commissioned earlier this month as a Second Lieutenant in the Household Cavalry's Blues and Royals, the Army's oldest and most senior regiment. The Blues and Royals have been deployed in almost every major Army operation of the past two decades, including the Falklands, both Gulf wars, Bosnia and Kosovo. The Mail on Sunday reported that Harry told senior officers at Sandhurst before passing out on April 12: "If I am not allowed to join my unit in a war zone, I will hand in my uniform." Harry said in an interview to mark his 21st birthday last September: "The last thing I said was there's no way I'm going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country. "That may sound very patriotic, but it's true."

French protest against Islamization: "A far-right French politician launched his 2007 presidential campaign on Sunday denouncing what he called the Islamisation of the country and declaring Islam incompatible with France's secular values. Philippe de Villiers, head of the anti-immigrant Movement for France (MPF) party, also charged that Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport was endangered by Islamist radicals who he said had infiltrated the ground staff there. Villiers has stirred up controversy in recent weeks with increasingly tough statements about Muslims, which critics call racist and officials describe as exaggerated. France's 5 million Muslims make up the largest such minority in Europe. "I am the only politician who tells the French the truth about the Islamisation of France," he said in a Europe 1 radio interview kicking off his campaign for the election next year.... Saying France had to fight what he called its Islamisation, he said Paris should stop all mosque construction, impose a citizen's charter demanding the strict separation of religion and state and freedom to change religions and demand strict respect for the equality of men and women.

Yahoo info helped China jail user? "Yahoo Inc. turned over a draft e-mail from one of its users to Chinese authorities, who used the information to jail the man on subversion charges, according to the verdict from his 2003 trial released Wednesday by a rights group. It was the third time the U.S.-based Internet company has been accused of helping put a Chinese user in prison. Jiang Lijun, 39, was sentenced to four years in prison in November 2003 for subversive activities aimed at overthrowing the ruling Communist Party. Hong Kong-based Yahoo Holdings Ltd., a unit of Yahoo Inc., gave authorities a draft e-mail that had been saved on Jiang's account, Reporters Without Borders said, citing the verdict by the Beijing No. 2 People's Court. The Paris-based group provided a copy of the verdict, which it said it obtained this week."

San Francisco to hide its parasites: "For decades, the 20-square-block area in the shadows of L.A.'s downtown skyscrapers has been vexing locals and shocking visitors. Thousands of homeless crowd through a few, small streets of businesses looking for handouts by day and burrowing in cardboard encampments and doorways by night. In recent years, this skid row section has put a grimy, drug-and-crime infested face on what has become -- by sheer numbers -- the US capital of homelessness: a countywide count of 88,000 homeless each night. That number, once roughly equal with New York, has been rising in recent years while Manhattan's has fallen as homelessness and related struggles such as drugs, prostitution, and alcoholism in Times Square have dropped.... Earlier this month, Mr. Yaroslavsky announced approval of a $100 million plan that would remove downtown homeless concentrations, and set up five regional centers intended only for temporary shelter".

Wicked Thoughts has just put up a collection of Hollywood "wisdom" on matters political.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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