Merry Christmas!

For our Libertarian/Conserative/Republican friends:

Here’s wishing all of you a

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!

For our Liberal/Democrat friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2006, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Good News

This is the only good news Michael Totten could find in Egypt. It came in an exchange with Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh, who was showing him around Cairo:

“Can we talk about politics out in the open?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “We can say whatever we want.”

“Is it because we’re speaking in English?”

“No,” he said. “We could do it in Arabic, too.”

“You’re not worried about the secret police?”

“Not any more,” he said. “It is a real change from last year. Last year there was no way. But it’s better now, more open. Do you know why?”

“No,” I said. “Tell me.”

“Because of pressure from George W. Bush.”

That is the only piece of good news I have to report from Egypt.

The rest of Michael’s excellent post is a litany of the many political problems and challenges Egypt faces. It’s sad, and (despite the above) not particularly optimistic. When I finished reading it, I felt very sad for the Big Pharaoh, who seems to be torn between wanting to help Egypt become a modern secular society and escaping to America (or Canada, his second choice apparently only because it would make it easy for him to visit America. There’s some interesting discussion, with some local insight, on the situation in Iran as well. Though sad, it’s an insightful piece and well worth reading…

New Rules

The Junkyard Blog does what it does so well with a terrific satire piece that you won’t want to miss. As a taste, here’s the conclusion:

To review: Do not invade countries harboring terrorists. Do not capture terrorists and keep them for any duration, and do not interrogate them about ongoing or future attacks. Do not profile terrorists, making it easier to stop them. And do not monitor communications between terrorists or anyone else. Republicans and conservative Christians are the real enemy, so forget about that mumbling, swarthy guy with the bulges under his sweater who looks to be between 18 and 35 and concentrate on the owner of your local tire store who happens to go to church and votes Republican. Because he’s the real enemy!

So basically, just so we’re all clear on this, when you’re fighting terrorists who want to destroy your civilization, you can’t do a damn thing about it except demonize people who have no connection to terrorism whatsoever. Hey, if you’re lucky the caliphate will at least bring good health care when Dar al Islam reaches your neighborhood.

Have a nice day. Inshallah.

Now take a moment and go read the whole thing!

Toleration

Tolerate this!, says Jay. And he further comments:

Liberals seem to live by the axiom, “Do as I say, not as I do.” No matter what grand ideals they profess, they hold themselves entirely blameless for disregarding them; regardless of how contradictory their words and deeds are.

Take the professed Liberal doctrine of “diversity” and “tolerance” for instance. Ah, such noble, admirable ideals! Everyone will get along just fine if we just accept and embrace that we’re all different and we can all get along. Such an idyllic, utopian world view!

And what a frickin' pity that Liberals wouldn’t recognize such principles if they reared up and bit 'em square on their ass.

Hell, judging from the conduct of the average ACLUer and their Leftist cohorts in the Democrat party, the only “diversity” they respect is the kind that’s put on display by those goose-stepping clowns who parrot the Liberal platform word-for-word. Everyone else of every race, religion and ideology who refuses to kowtow to the Leftist agenda gets marginalized as an “Uncle Tom,” “extremist,” or “hater."

Add to that mix the Liberal hypocrisy in which they claim that they’re “inclusive” and “tolerant” of differing views. They pay a lot of lip service to such virtue, but when the rubber hits the road, these “inclusive, tolerant” Leftists expect everyone in the mainstream to keep their views to themselves while every Left-wing lunatic fringe group gets to monopolize the public square.

The sheer magnitude of this hypocrisy has become painfully apparent in the past several years, especially during the Christmas season. No longer content to criminalize public displays of any and all things Judeo-Christian, Liberals now seek to annihilate any and all public reference to the birth of Christ during the very season in which that birth is celebrated.

Seems these “tolerant, inclusive” people just aren’t content with getting the Ten Commandments removed from the public squares of a nation that is over 90% Christian. And these “tolerant” little Liberals certainly weren’t very happy about a harmless three-letter word spelled “G-O-D” that was in our nation’s Pledge of Allegiance and on our currency. Oh no…now they have to destroy every reference to the reason for the season while propping up fake holidays such as Kwanzaa.

Suffice it to say that I think it’s high time that the majority shrugged off the tyranny of this ridiculously small Leftist fringe and told them, in no uncertain terms, to practice some of that tolerance they preach and keep their intolerant, mean-spirited, anti-Christmas bellyaching to themselves.

As usual, click on the thumbnail for a larger view…

Final Moments

The rednecks I know wouldn’t be a bit surprised by this news item:

The National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had “covertly” funded a project with the U.S. automakers for the past 5 years, whereby the automakers were installing black-box voice recorders in 4-wheel drive pickup trucks and SUV’s in an effort to determine in fatal accidents, the circumstances in the last 15 seconds before the crash....

They were surprised to find in 38 of the 50 states the recorded last words of drivers in 61.2 percent of fatal crashes were, “Oh Shit!"

Only the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas were different, where 89.3 percent of the final words were: “Hold my beer, I’m gonna try somethin."

Christmas Dogs

At right are you can see a collection of four not-particularly-happy dogs. From left to right, there’s Lea, Mo’i, Jet, and Daisy Mae. The first two are ours; the second two belong to our good friend Sharon Shepard.

Lea, Mo’i, and Daisy Mae are all agility dogs of varied accomplishment — with Daisy Mae being the studly jumper/weaver/runner amongst them. Jet is still just a puppy (as was obvious trying to get him to stand still for this photo session!), but one fine day he too will run an agility course.

Looking at these pictures, don’t you just wonder what kind of loony would do this to his dog? Their expressions tell you exactly what they think of this evolution!

As usual, click on the small photo to get a larger version.

Iraqi Elections

That the inimitable Mark Steyn would kick some butt after the spectacularly successful Iraqi election was, of course, inevitable. And he doesn’t disappoint:

From “Iraq vote leaves Dems looking like the losers"

...pick almost any recent statement by a big-time Dem cowboy and tell me how exactly it would differ from the pep talks Zarqawi gives his dwindling band of head-hackers — Dean arguing that America can’t win in Iraq, Barbara Boxer demanding the troops begin withdrawing on Dec. 15, John Kerry accusing American soldiers of terrorizing Iraqi women and children, Jack Murtha declaring that the U.S. Army is utterly broken. Pepper 'em with a handful of “Praise be to Allahs” and any one of those statements could have been uttered by Zarqawi.

And he concludes with this:

The Anglo-American political tradition is the most successful in the world in part because of the concept of “loyal opposition.” Yes, the party out of office opposes the party in office and hopes to supplant it, but not at the expense of the broader political culture. A party that winds up cheerleading for a deranged loser death cult is the very definition of pointless self-defeating sour oppositionism. So, as Zarqawi flails, Dean and Murtha and Kerry flail ever more pathetically, too. Just wait till the WMD turn up.

Ouch!

That man does have a way with words.

Just wait, indeed.

And go read every last word!

Dear God

There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job it was to process all the mail that had illegible addresses .One day, a letter came addressed in a shaky handwriting to God. He thought he should open it to see what it was about. The letter read:

Dear God,

I am an 83 year old widow, living on a very small pension. Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had $100 in it, which was all the money I had until my next pension check. Next Sunday is Christmas, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with. I have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me?

Sincerely,

Edna

The postal worker was touched. He showed the letter to all the other workers. Each one dug into his or her wallet and came up with a few dollars. By the time he made the rounds, he had collected $96, which they put into an envelope and sent to the woman. The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of Edna and the dinner she would be able to share with her friends.

Christmas came and went. A few days later, another letter came from the old lady to God. All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened, it read:

Dear God,

How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? Because of your gift of love, I was able to fix a glorious dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day and I told my friends of your wonderful gift. By the way, there was $4 missing. I think it must have been those thieving bastards at the Post Office.

Sincerely,

Edna

Surrender Monkeys

Bingo! (click on thumbnail to see it in all its glory)

Ouch…

Tip of the hat to “All Things Conservative"…

Sharp Testimony

Tip of the hat to Anil for this good one:

If you ever testify in court, you might wish you could have been as sharp as this policeman. He was being cross-examined by a defense attorney during a felony trial. The lawyer was trying to undermine the policeman’s credibility.

Q: “Officer — did you see my client fleeing the scene?"

A: “No sir. But I subsequently observed a person matching the description of the offender, running several blocks away."

Q: “Officer — who provided this description?"

A: “The officer who responded to the scene."

Q: “A fellow officer provided the description of this so-called offender. Do you trust your fellow officers?"

A: “Yes, sir. With my life."

Q: “With your life? Let me ask you this then, officer. Do you have a room where you change your clothes in preparation for your daily duties?"

A: “Yes sir, we do."

Q: “And do you have a locker in the room?"

A: “Yes sir, I do."

Q: “And do you have a lock on your locker?"

A: “Yes sir."

Q: “Now why is it, officer, if you trust your fellow officers with your life, you find it necessary to lock your locker in a room you share with these same officers?"

A: “You see, sir — we share the building with the court complex, and sometimes lawyers have been known to walk through that room."

Gift Idea

Oh, my.

I can think of a few liberal politicians that are clearly in desperate need of this product. And also in dire need of the related facial tissue version.

Oh, my.

Tip of my hat to our friend Dr. B. (aka the “Merchant of Pain” — how fitting!).

Ivan and the Eland

This is a followup to yesterday’s post about our photo safari at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Josie (our driver) commented on our post, and asked for pictures of Ivan and the eland. Ask, Josie, and ye shall receive!

Ivan is the rather large male giraffe in the photos at right, and the eland (a Patterson’s Eland) is the roughly one ton antelope that Ivan is bullying. Yup, Ivan’s a big old bully. He just herded that poor eland around wherever he wanted it to go. I’m sure the eland isn’t used to such bullying, as he’s rather big and bad himself — but what are you going to do when you have Ivan after you? I know that if I had Ivan’s big, bony head swinging at me like a spiked wrecking ball, I’d probably get all humble, too. And then there’s those monster hooves, which Jeanne (our guide) told us can go whizzing around at very high speed, doing lots of damage to things like rib cages, skulls, and tank armor (I added that last category myself after seeing one of Ivan’s hooves up close and personal).

What is a little hard to absorb from these photos is the scale of the tussle going on. In motion, we saw two rather ponderous beasts dancing in slow motion; ponderous really only because of their size. In some of the other photos (in my original post), you can see Ivan’s head as he feeds from Debbie’s hands — it is enormous! Now look in the photos at right, and even though Ivan’s head is bigger than the eland’s head, that eland is still darned big. It’s the size of a fairly large cow — and look how Ivan towers over him. That poor eland couldn’t poke Ivan in the ribs no matter how hard he tried…

As usual, click on the small photos at right to get a larger version…

Wild Animals

Last Christmas (yes, almost 12 months ago!), our good friends John and Grayle gave us a gift of a “photo safari” at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Just this past Wednesday, we finally scheduled it. The photo safari is a very interesting and unusual sort of thing: you get onto the back of a small flat-bed truck, outfitted with rails, seats, and a canopy for shade. There’s a driver and a guide (Josie and Jeanne for our safari), both very knowledgeable not only about the biology (which we expected), but also about the history and lore of the individual animals (and that we didn’t expect). It lasted almost four hours, and at the end of it we were fairly tired — certainly not from physical exertion, but more just from the intensity of the experience. It was non-stop, wall-to-wall close encounters of the animal kind for the entire trip. And I took a lot of pictures — only about one in ten are posted here! In fact, there are so many pictures that I’m only going to mix a few in with the text; the rest will all be at the bottom. As usual, you can click on any photo for a larger version.

We arrived an hour or so before the photo safari started, so we decided to just wander around a bit. We hadn’t been to the Wild Animal Park for five years or so, and the map showed quite a few changes. Our plan was to go check out the new things, but a park employee mentioned to me that there was a baby lion in the nearby nursery, and it was just about time for it to be fed. That sounded way too good to risk missing, so we practically ran over to the nursery — and ended spending all our free time there. Koza, the baby lion, was only four weeks old — and so cute it oughtta be illegal! I didn’t want to risk a flash upsetting Koza, so I didn’t take any pictures of him. He weighed 11 pounds; to us, his most striking feature (especially as compared with house cats) were his truly enormous front paws. His behavior was practically identical to a housecat kitten of the same age, just on a very different scale. We envied the caretaker, who had the wonderful job of delivering some attention and loving to Koza. Debbie would give just about anything for a chance to do that, I think…

After the pleasant interlude with Koza, we walked a short way to the administration building. The caravan was scheduled to leave from there at 10:30. As we walked in, Jeanne (our guide) walked out to meet us, and told us the news we were hoping to hear: that we were the only people on the photo safari today! I had carefully planned the particular date (with some help from the Wild Animal Park staff) to (a) maximize the probability of good weather, and (b) minimize the probability of too many other people joining us. Each of the trucks can hold up to about 15 people, and they have six trucks — so you could (if you were unlucky) have as many as 90 people along with you. That would be a much different — and much inferior — experience as compared with ours. It was just the four of us: Josie, Jeanne, Debbie, and myself. What also helped was that Jeanne and Josie figured out pretty quickly that they didn’t need to be careful or circumspect around old farmers like Debbie and I — we just all had a nice time together. It was very cozy and friendly, not really much different that an outing with particularly well-informed family or friends…

Now I completely forgot to take a picture of Josie and Jeanne, and that’s a shame, because you’d probably like to see them after you hear the rest of this. Josie (our driver) has an email address that proclaims her to be a fox, and we’ll agree with that (even though she’s missing that bushy red tail <smile>). And Jeanne (our guide) has an email address that brags about her hiccups (which we didn’t experience, but heard stories about). What an interesting job they have, doing these photo safaris! I can imagine that it is sometimes rewarding, and sometimes frustrating (depending on who your customers are) — but no matter what, you get out to see and know these exotic animals every day. We heard some stories about people who actually went out and then wanted to come back early; 'tis hard for us to imagine, as despite being almost four hours long, it was over all too soon from our perspective.

The variety of animal and bird life we saw was a bit overwhelming. There must have been three or four dozen mammal species we saw, and a couple dozen bird species. The truck was a great way to see them — we could (and did!) get very close even to animals that would have been quite dangerous had we been on foot. Yet we never felt threatened in the slightest, even with gazillion-pound rhinos bumping up against the truck. And being in the open air meant perfect visibility — no windows to interfere with seeing or photos. We also learned some things that surprised us, such as the fact that a giraffe’s front hooves are quite heavy and dangerous — and that they swing their heads about as weapons (which is why their heads have bony protuberances all over them). We were only allowed to feed two kinds of animals (giraffes and rhinos), and we could only touch one (the rhinos). Debbie had a lot of fun feeding both of them (as you can see in some of these photos). Personally I was more interested in getting that kind of close to some of the members of the goat and sheep family, or the antelopes — there were a lot of them I found to be quite beautiful and interesting..

The first thing we saw as we left on our safari was an island full of chimpanzees (Bonobos). In the photo at right (an extreme telephoto), if you squint and use your imagination, you can see that the adult female is tending a small baby. This mother didn’t let this baby off the leash (she used her arm and hand as a leash and collar). There was another, older youngster who scampered and played up a storm — lots of fun to watch.

Our safari took us through several paddocks (three, I think), each with animals from a different part of the world. Jeanne told us what all of them were as we drove around, and interesting little tidbits of information about each — and of course we forgot almost all of it, almost immediately. But we sure enjoyed the style — not at all the monotonous monolog one so often finds on guided tours, but rather a very interactive talk, with answers to our questions in as much depth as we could handle. What I most enjoyed was the stories — such as the history Jeanne told us of a Chinese deer called the “Pere David” deer, after the friar who discovered them. It seems that they existed only on the emperor’s grounds, until Pere David and some other Europeans asked for some animals. The emperor had plenty of them, and so was happy to make the Europeans happy with a few deer — and it’s a good thing he did, because after various disasters in China, most of the living Pere David deer were in Europe!

Well, that’s about enough yakking. Now it’s all about the photos…