For now, at least.
The QOR Survey is wrapping up this week.
It's up once more on Lileks, who spends much of his valuable time and real estate taking on Garrison Keilor, whose insufferability has periodic spikes.
And it's up on Gerard's place, American Digest.
Thanks for taking it, here or there or anywhere.
Something of the results next week, once the chads have been closely examined.
I promise.
The Mother of All Focus Groups continues, and will for a few more days.
People are still logging in and taking the survey, and I'm pleased to say that the results are quite encouraging.
If you would like to join in, have your voice heard as well, you can do so by clicking on The QOR logo below:
And the rest, if not history, may be . . .
The future.
Update:
Two days into the survey, and looking good.
protein wisdom picked it up, and as I went to bed last night the comments there - worth reading, if you want to see how your fellow man sometimes thinks - were numbering in the hundreds, not all of them . . . complimentary.
But hey, this is the Wild West we're dealing with here, so no surprises there.
Responses to the survey are in the thousands.
Thanks to all who have taken the time to respond, and to do so thoughtfully, as the responses show on their face.
It will stay up for awhile longer, so if you are not among those whose voice has been heard, at least metaphorically, get with it, boys and girls.
Otherwise, and as said a few times before on this site:
Stay tuned.
Much, much, more to come.
Further Update:
Like the Energizer Bunny . . .
Still going.
But, I hope . . .
Less obnoxious.
And Still Going:
If you have not taken our survey, please do so and let us know how you feel, what you think, about our plans.
If you have already taken the survey - and you can only take it once; a second attempt will be rebuffed - thank you, and pass it along . . .
Please.
I have no idea:
Feel free to write your own caption on this one.
If I write anything, it's just going to get me into trouble with the distaff side of the family.
TLOML will tsk-tsk a bit and put on that long-suffering look of hers.
One of my daughters, who has already told me she considers me a dirty old man (a compliment, as far as this old man is concerned, and as far as she is concerned, too, she tells me) will tell me it's in bad taste, and she will certainly have a point.
I know I've used that title before, but I'm not going back into the archives to see where . . .
Or how.
I'm just going to go Bogart on it:
Here's lookin' at you, kid.
And leave well enough . . .
Alone.
By the time November rolls around - or more likely, lurches drunkenly onto the scene and falls on its face - we will have had it up to here with ism's, I'm sure.
Truth to tell, I already have, and it's only July.
Still, revisionism is the word that captures this sort of thing, in this instance and no doubt many times more in the months ahead, so I grit my teeth - can you tell from the way I strike the keys on the computer keyboard? - and relate this, from The Ace, to you:
If I Hadn't Been Wrong, I'd Have Been RightDuring his whirlwind stop in Iraq Obama found time to give an interview to ABC news. When asked if his judgment about the surge was wrong, he answered...
"Here is what I will say," Obama said, "I think that, I did not anticipate, and I think that this is a fair characterization, the convergence of not only the surge but the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they had had enough with Al Qaeda, in the Shii'a community the militias standing down to some degrees. So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct."
The Ace is the one doing the bolding there, not me.
Do the words - even the concepts - "cause" and "effect" have any meaning for this man, or his handlers?
Apparently not.
As long as we're slouching around yet another Obama story - part of the daily gafforama - and sighing our way through the Ace's offerings on the subject, let's put this one into the mix as well:
At a morning background briefing, reporters parried with senior advisers on the characterization of Obama's speech Thursday in Berlin as a campaign rally. The outdoor speech at the Victory Column could draw thousands of people, similar to the size of Obama events in the United States."It is not going to be a political speech," said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. "When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally."
"But he is not president of the United States," a reporter reminded the adviser.
See, the press does pay attention . . .
At least sometimes.
Even if, for those following Obama about in Iraq, the unspoken thought is . . .
At least not yet.
Because, as the MSM makes abundantly clear - reminds us here at home - the question isn't whether, nor is it when.
Will he take the oath of office only after his triumphant, ticker-tape parade past the New York Times building, standing with chin jutting out at home plate just before the first swing of the wrecking ball in the about-to-be dismantled Yankee Stadium?
Or will the possible symbolism be too dangerous even for The Man Of Change?
Now that's a fair whether question.
Stay tuned.
Ah, but this one is not in 1950's America but in that grand, and most liberal, country just north of here.
North of there, too, come to think of it.
From a writer up there, passed along by Dust My Broom (also up there):
Today is the last day of the first week of school for students across the troubled communities of North-east Scarborough.If you actually go inside a high school, and actually spend some time listening, watching, and talking to the people who actually work inside high schools, you will observe a few things.
Firstly, the halls seem to have a steady flow of gangbangers moving about under the cameras. Although there are posters proclaiming a dress code, it does not seem to be enforced. Baseball caps, gang colors, and the chicken walk of the affiliated Crips and Bloods are to be seen both during movement between classes, and in the so-called 'no movement' times. Much as criminals do not respect the Canadian gun registry, they do not seem to respect school authority, either.
Secondly, there is a new crop of grade nines for the gangs to recruit from. The announcements from the principals bunker have begun. Those who flaunt authority by indulging in bullying behavior will suffer the full weight of the Safe Schools Act. But in the teachers lounge, it is whispered that the troublemakers are just getting transferred to other schools.
The lesson is an important one in the Rule of Law in Canada: just as the evil Catholic Church transferred their sodomite priests, so too is the Toronto District School Board just transferring the gun toting criminals. While it was reprehensible for the Catholics to do this, it appears to be acceptable for the School Board. If it was not, the Toronto Star would have said something, wouldn't they?
Just in case you thought that we still had a monopoly on that sort of thing.
We don't.
After forty years as a lawyer - you will recall that I am now in recovery from that - you would think that I would understand the need to be most careful in matters of language.
Well, most of the time, but as recent experience demonstrates, not always.
For reasons not to be belabored here - or at least not yet; later on, maybe - I've been focused on a document many of us know well, and in fact have pretty much memorized in part:
The Declaration of Independence
And not just because we have celebrated the country's birthday, measured from the issuance of that Declaration, earlier this month.
I would have said, before getting out the reading glasses and checking it out, that the rights described in that precious, founding document were said there to be . . .
Inalienable
Wrong; quite wrong:
The word used by the founding fathers, more than once in the Declaration, is . . .
Unalienable
Does that make a difference, really?
I believe it does, and I believe the difference is a major one.
Inalienable means, as any lawyer (indeed, even former lawyers) could tell you, that the rights described - life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - are personal, individual, and cannot be transferred by those to whom such rights have been given to anyone else.
Unalienable means that those rights, given to each of us by our Creator (again, the language of the founding fathers, reflecting a consensus about the foundation of our system of government that later agnosticism, secularism, does not change), cannot be taken away from us by anyone, and certainly not by the very government thus being established.
And yet, as has been pointed out innumerable times here before, and will be again, those rights have been taken away, or compromised, or limited, by our government over the years and, unforgivably, we have let it happen without any real protest, without much objection, without mounting up and riding to the barricades where free people should be expected to be ready to lock and load to defend their God-given rights.
Unalienable.
It's not an everyday word for us, or at least not anymore.
Say it to yourself a few times, discover how it feels on the tongue, in the back of the throat, passing the lips.
It is our word, people. It declares a ban on unwarranted, unapproved (at least by us) intrusions into our lives by those whom we have elected or otherwise designated to govern us. It protects, and should protect for all time, our individuality against the imprecations of collective governance.
Freedom - the sort of freedom described in the Declaration - isn't free, and it can, if we are unmindful of the need to be eternally vigilant, be lost if, through neglect or complicity with the seekers of a less limited power and authority over us and our affairs, we do not rise in its defense each time its loss, in whatever measure, is threatened.
And as usual, unforgettable, at least for a day or so.
Two rooftop watchers of our 4th of July parade, which took place, naturally, on July 3.
Before the parade . . .Passes by.
Oh, and by the way.
It's available in ringtone, too.
I knew you would want to know that.
One reason why there is a "quiet car" on many trains these days.
If her skirt were longer or her legs shorter, this might have come to pass even sooner.
How do you say "fed up" in Russian, anyway?
What's scary . . .
. . . is that there are people who can identify all 100 movies in under 2 minutes.
So . . .
How'd you do?
RSS 2.0
