22 Ways to be a good Democrat...

Bookworm posted this....

22 WAYS TO BE A GOOD DEMOCRAT

IT’S NOT SO HARD, EVEN A CAVEMAN CAN DO IT….

1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.

2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.

3. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are more of a threat than nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Chinese and North Korean communists.

4. You have to believe that there was no art before federal funding.

5. You have to believe that global temperatures are more affected by soccer moms driving SUVs than by scientifically documented cyclical changes in the earth’s climate.

6. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial, but being homosexual is natural.

7. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.

8. You have to believe that the same teacher who can’t teach fourth graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.

9. You have to believe that hunters don’t care about nature, but loony activists who have never been outside of San Francisco do.

10. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.

11. You have to believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make The Passion of the Christ for financial gain only.

12. You have to believe that the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.

13. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.

14. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell.

15. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.

16. You have to believe that Hillary Clinton is normal and is a very nice person.

17. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried is because the right people haven’t been in charge.

18. You have to believe that conservatives telling the truth belong in jail, but a liar and sex offender belonged in the White House.

19. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag, transvestites, and bestiality should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.

20. You have to believe that illegal Democratic Party funding by the Chinese Government is somehow in the best interest of the United States

21. You have to believe that it’s okay to give federal workers the day off on Christmas Day, but it’s not okay to say “Merry Christmas.”

22. You have to believe that this message is part of a vast right wing conspiracy.

As a charter member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, I endorse this message...

Lawsuit over "hostile work environment"

This just tops all...(From WSJ)

Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights.

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."...

...Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor...

...Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was "fascist demagoguery." Then, after consulting a physician about "intellectual distress," she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.....

Don't I wish I could sue certain people for inflicting "intellectual distress" on me!

Caves everywhere...

We're back...

Right now I'm too tired to even consider blogging about the profundities of our trip to the Holy Land. It was awesome. Charlene and I saw so many things, they are a blur in our minds, and we haven't digested them at all.

But here's an interesting (at least to me) historical note. I have always tended to disregard the story that the stable where Jesus was born was a cave. It sounded a bit improbable. A cave?.

Actually, it would be improbable for it not to have been a cave. Judea is mostly limestone, which forms caves very easily. You see caves everywhere! And the pale limestone makes for very clean and pleasant cavities----not at all dirty or gloomy. People in Judea still build houses in front of, or over, caves. You can see them dotted in strata along the hillsides. Or you see caves with fences across the front, for livestock.

Ancient Bethlehem was just a little place, about the size of a football field, with one or two-room houses built over caves. There would not have been an inn; you would stay in someone's home. with your relatives presumably. And the cave/stable would be a reasonable retreat to gain a bit of privacy for a birth.

This is a picture of an excavated cave, in the Church of the Nativity complex. It's just a few steps from where Jesus was born. (Those columns have been added to ensure support of the roof.)

Also strange and intriguing to me was how small and close-together things in Israel are. Nothing is remote, in our sense of the word. You could drive from Jerusalem to Bethlehem in 5 minutes, if it were not for the security checkpoints. Or to the Dead Sea in half an hour. And it's very common to be able to stand on a high place and point out a dozen famous historical sites.

Oh, by his cockle hat and staff, And by his sandal shoon

Blogging will be paused for a while, because tomorrow, Charlene and I are off and away for our first overseas venture since 2001. Leaving our children home to run the circus. (Well, they really can't be called children any more—young adults—and considering all the pets one night call this a zoo.)

Where are we going? You will be amazed. Saturday night we will shall sleep by the shores of the Sea of Galilee, in Tiberius! We are off to the Holy Land with a group from our parish. I'm not bringing a computer, nor planning to blog along the way. But I shall bring back pictures, and tales of derring-do.... See you in about 10 days.

Jerusalem du cote du Nord, by DAVID ROBERTS, Scottish, 1796-1864

Tree guys...

We had our trees trimmed today.

I was very interested in how the tree guys maneuvered by ropes, since I'd recently read about that in a great book, The Wild Trees, by Richard Preston, which is about a bunch of scientists who clamber about in the canopies of the tallest Redwoods, 350 feet or so above the ground. And they learned their rope techniques from arborists, after having poor results from rock-climbing gear.

There's another guy on the other end of those ropes you see, on the ground, tightening or loosening. And the trimmer has most of his weight supported, and can move out on thin branches, chain-sawing away with the appearance at least of great ease.

The book is a lot of fun. A good read.