Jimmy Buffett - Yellow Dog Democrat

So, Jimmy Buffett is touring the state of Florida today, stumping for Betty Castor (ugly Florida Senate Race against Mel Martinez) and by extension, John Kerry. When asked what he thought of Mel Martinez, Jimmy said "I really don't know anything about him . . . I don't get into . . . I'm a yellow-dog democrat".

This is something to be PROUD of?

For those who don't know, this post addresses the definition of a yellow-dog democrat.

So, he doesn't know anything at all about the man he's campaigning against . . . I wonder if he really knows anything about Betty Castor?

How Crucial to the free world are American Elections?

I was so impressed with this recent post by Alaa over at the Mesopotamian that
I have to post this as a MUST READ.

Alaa points out that the messages that will be sent to terrorists will depend on the outcome of this election. In his words:

Note that we are not saying that President Bush is perfect, nor even that he is better than the Senator, just that the present situation is such that a change of leadership at this crucial point is going to send an entirely wrong message to all the enemies. Unfortunately, it seems to me that many in the U.S. don’t quite appreciate how high the stakes are. The challenge is mortal, and you and we are locked in a War, a National Emergency; and in such circumstances partisan considerations must be of secondary importance. If you lose this war, you are no more, and you will have to withdraw within you boundaries cringing and waiting for terror to strike you in your homeland, afraid to move around, afraid to travel, afraid to do business abroad.

and then he closes:

Well if Senator Kerry is such a good man, and he may well be, then it would be prudent to wait just another four years to elect him, after the job is done. And if this is interference in your national affairs by a foreigner, I am not going to give you any apology for it.

No apology necessary, Alaa! The French, Germans and Canadians have been doing it for years!

Please, please click on the link and read his entire post - Alaa is a great writer and his reasoning skills are excellent!

Kayz Out

President Bush Visits Florida October 16!

After a sabbatical trying to get back into my routine disturbed by 4 hurricanes in 6 weeks, I'm thrilled to be back with pictures from Saturday's Victory 2004 Rally.

We had a great time, met lots of great people, even though it was a long, WARM, crowded wait for several hours in the Florida sun. We were just so glad to have sun, nothing else mattered!

My sister got to see the President in Sunrise where the President was at the Office Depot Arena on Saturday morning here's what she had to say about it: "President Bush was fantastic! He's so warm and friendly - great to see him in person. I was sitting only five rows back, directly in front of him - and I thoroughly enjoyed it!" (This even though her spouse ended up having to work and she had to go alone.)

"This picture is Mayor Jim Naugle (D) of Ft. Lauderdale. He was a very funny guy. He started out by saying, 'A lot of you may be wondering why am I even here? This isn't MY candidate. But I'm here to tell you today that MY party elected the wrong PERSON at the wrong place and the wrong time, and I believe George W. Bush is the RIGHT person at the right place and the right time.' Awesome speech and he really got the crowd pumped."

Crowd Shot

Introduction

Podium Shot

My family got to see him in Daytona Beach on Saturday afternoon. If you haven't checked it out, check out the video clip and scroll down here for the pictures from the day!

Entertainment

President at the Podium

Framed by Signs

George W.& Jeb (Florida Governor)

All in all, a good time was had by all - even my 10 year old daughter said, on our way back to our car (a good mile walk) "This was fun! I would like to do this again!" But then, I'm raising two staunch little patriotic conservatives . . .

Hurricane Frances

This picture was taken of our back yard in December of last year.

This picture was taken after the visit of Hurricane Frances.

It's hard to see the difference unless you realize that you're looking at about two cleared acres here - and the after picture was taken on the morning of September 6 - by that afternoon, we'd gotten about 4 more inches of rain and we literally had a lake extending into the woods surrounding us on all sides. Thankfully, no damage to our home or outbuildings, although the water did rise to within about two inches of the floor of our school building/workshop.

Hurricane Charley Struck!

Well, I can't believe I'm already online . . .

We live in the country about 15 miles off the East Coast of central Florida - we're just about an hour NE of Orlando - so Hurricane Charley plowed though our area. We spent Friday night about 30 minutes away with my two Great Aunts in their concrete block home. The hurricane passed over us there as well, we stayed up listening to the wind. The next morning we found that a huge oak on the corner of their lot was uprooted and lying across the road, but it had been removed around 2 AM. My Aunt's were very blessed to have little damage - only a weatherhead on the side of the house to be replaced. Screened gazebo in the back yard was fine.

We drove through the suburbs on the back way up to our place at 7:30ish Saturday morning.

As we were driving through the neighborhoods, we could see trees down all over and a few lying on roofs. We turned onto the main road that we live off of (we have 10 acres in the country) and there were lots of places where trees were down on both sides of the road - sometimes uprooted, and sometimes a path where the tops of pines were just "snapped" off.

We drove for about 9 miles to the dirt road we live on, and there were no cars behind us the entire trip and very few that we met although that road is normally quite highly travelled. As we turned onto our dirt road (its 7/10's of a mile) and turned the first corner (before we could see our home) my heart went into my throat. there were no less than four gigantic tall pines that had fallen directly to the west and were hanging on power lines - we were able to drive around them, though. But we could see that one neighbor lost about 7 big pines in their front pasture, another (closest to our place) lost about 5.

As we got closer, we could see our home, and it appeared to be okay. We drove up and found that so far as we could see, not so much as a shingle was out of place. There were a few young trees which were snapped off or blown down, but even the debris in our yard wasn't too bad. Then my hubby looked over at our "pump" house. We'd bought a big rubbermaid building back in the early spring and cut the floor so that it would go around our pump and then put the building up around it. Before we left on Friday, my hubby had put two five gallon buckets full of concrete inside it to try to anchor it. Well, I'm really thankful he did - the building blew apart - but nothing inside was damaged. We were able to find all the pieces of the building and put it back together!

Next we noticed that the huge steel building (like a big canopy) that we have sitting over my parents RV was sitting a bit askew. It had been ripped from the ground even though "anchored" by the people who installed it last year. Fortunately, my van was parked underneath it and it had "bounced" off the side of my van which probably kept it from going anywhere - otherwise it almost assuredly would have damaged the RV - and while aggravating, the relatively minor dent and scrapes to my van don't cause any trouble with driveability.

The most frustrating thing to me was the inability to contact anyone - no landline phone, no cell service available either. We worked around for a while in the heat putting things back together as well as we could and I had a splitting headache as I didn't get my coffee that morning, and I knew my family was frantic.

My folks showed up around 3 PM and "rescued" us - dad brought his generator which helped to keep us from losing all our food in our fridge and freezer.

At any rate, we expected to be without power for at least a week as there are not many people who live here and we knew we would not be a top priority, but thanks to a neighbor who is good with his chainsaw (he talked to our power co first) he was able to free the power lines and we actually got our power restored around 4 PM yesterday afternoon (Tuesday).

Finally got to talk to our pastor this morning who lives quite a ways a way - also in the path of the storm but West of Orlando - they sustained quite a bit of damage to their roof.

Gas in the Orlando area Eastward is hard to find unless you're buying premium, and I know that a lot of our neighbors here in Florida will be without power for a while. We just are so thankful that we weren't struck any worse than we were - but we truly did try to prepare. We spent Wednesday eve, Thursday and Friday morning trying to secure everything that could have become "projectile".

But I can say for sure that we don't care if another 40 years goes by without another of these storms!

Kayz Out!

Ranting for the Fun of it!

Okay, I'm really ready to rant now - considering I just managed to wipe out what I spent a good 20 minutes putting together and am having to redo it from memory!

First item up for ranting . . .

Signed on this morning and read that "insurgents" killed 7 Iraqis and 4 US troops. Insurgent is a word that is currently undergoing a meaning change. And I'm irritated that the "insurgents" aren't being called what they are - TERRORISTS!

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.

Pronunciation: in-'sur-jint
Function: noun
1 : a person who rises in revolt against civil authority or an established government; especially : one not recognized as a belligerent
2 : one that acts contrary to the established leadership (as of a political party, union, or corporation) or its decisions and policies

and then from WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University
we have:

n 1: a person who takes part in an armed rebellion against the constituted authority (especially in the hope of improving conditions) [syn: insurrectionist, freedom fighter, rebel] 2: a member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment

Now, get it in your head - these jerks aren't hoping to improve conditions - they're TERRORISTS!

On to the second item . . .

I'm really PO'd with the UN and eco-terrorists everywhere. These guys are so quick to push their agenda and try to control things in the name of "conservation", but where in 'ell were they in the early 1990's when the desecration of the Mesopotamian Marshes was going on? Why does the UN fail to highlight the real reason that the marshes were drained by Saddam Hussein? Why didn't they make a real hue and cry while it was going on? Could it be that they were hiding and complicit in the atrocities committed by Hussein? Do we really want these guys to have any say in our decision making process?

Third Item . . .

Hat tip to Jason Steenwyk at Countercolumn (formerly Iraq Now). I have to agree with him that I can't believe that this was deemed "newsworthy" by our incredibly "unbiased" media.

I guess anything goes when you're pushing an agenda . . .

Rant off -

Kayz Out!

Get a Grip Already!

After a lot of thought, I've recently come to the conclusion that a problem that we all have (no matter what nationality, race, or creed) is that we are overly curious.

Curiousity can be a really good thing when it spurs us on to be creative, expand our knowledge, search for answers to common (or not so common) problems.

Curiousity can be hideous when it creates within us the "trainwreck" mentality that only inspires us to gawk or do things that put money into the pockets of those who prey on that mentality. Here are just a couple areas that *I* believe our time and money could be better spent staying away from!

Example 1 - Fahrenheit 9-11
Frankly, as idiotic as his other works have proven to be with misstatements and misdirections
I can't fathom why anyone would PAY to see this drivel. He says he's not interested in the money - fine - then let him distribute it via the internet (which I understand he is now doing - but not before raking in big $$$) and forget selling it.

Example 2 - Wonkette
This is one that I've only read about thus far on the net - I have yet to ever link to her site, nor am I ever likely to do so. Michelle Malkin has an interesting tidbit on her blog - seems the Washington Host (they've turned from reporting as Post to whoring as Host) wanted to interview her regarding this skank's blog. Ya gotta love Michelle!

We need to look at where we spend our time, and what we put into our brain. Is it trash? Or is it worthwhile and expanding to our minds?

The Iraqi brothers Mohammed, Ali & Omar post very thought provoking posts - today's on the Fifth Authority is very well thought out and what I believe we, as a blogging community, must do - and that is to police the media. It is our job to do our best to get the word out when we see fallacies in reporting and to try to get people to think beyond what appears on their television screen or their newspaper.

Let curiousity inspire you! It has been said about many things before that if you're not a part of the solution, you're part of the problem. By demoting your curiousity to the low and base things that are out there, you ARE a part of the world's problems. Try promoting your curiousity toward things more lofty - you might find it lifts your spirits and you may see a way to be a part of the solution. In my opinion that old adage could be reworded: If you're not promoting the problems, you are a part of the solution!

Kayz Out