Offsite Comments

One of the finest men in my life was my Uncle Fred. (Raises glass)

Gregory of Yardale: Thanks, cutting edge social observation from 1956.

Heh. I had been thinking the same, circa 1968, but 1956 is probably more apt.

Banhammering seems to have happened. Last thread, too. You can still smell the ozone.

Commenters are reminded that referencing a message number is unreliable as the number-comment relationship is subject to change after banhammer storms.

Referencing the nick-timestamp-(hash) line is the recommended substitute, although the reference can still be ambiguous if a commenter left more than one comment within a minute.

Techy types may be tempted to use the comment URL, but this is discouraged as being useful and consistent and therefore not in keeping with the rest of the blog technology.

Posted by: mindful webworker - blog heap o'links at June 30, 2015 09:38 AM (kWQPe)

Is that the original article? I may need to [search engine of choice] that myself, just so I can link it on that blog I don't have.

Yes, I took up the name when, a couple years ago, some idiot started trying to trash people like me, people who believe in the Tenth Amendment and Federalism, and think that the States should actually be handling things much more than they are.

They meant it as an epithet. I decided to wear it as a badge of honor.

Yesterday, on my bookmarks page that nobody knows about (niclink), I linked to a blog some guy doesn't have. Twice. Something about We Are No Longer a Constitutional Federal Republic, and You're Still Not Married. (Good stuff.)

I pointed these articles out to Milady, and had also previously read her a comment from yesterday that began, "As a Dedicated Tenther...." So, Milady asked me, "What's a Tenther?"

Uhhhhh... I admitted, I've never actually caught that by context, and following the AoSHQ rulebook I have not google.b.evil'd the term (laziness may have played a part in that). I would never admit my ignorance in public, though, for fear of looking foolish.

Oops.

I weakened. I goog'd "tenther." (Oh? Hey! Me, too.)

Fourth link on G00gle is "So How Nutty Is The Tenther Movement?"

*sigh*

♬ Sometimes you feel like a nut....

Churches That Oppose Gay Marriage Should Still Tax Breaks

Man, if they're going to start taxing breaks, ... wait, whut?

If you didn't put up a morning thread, trolls wouldn't be attracted to it. It's the morning thread's fault!

*!*

Ow. Ow. Ow. Trying to think Regressive is psychically painful.

Vic Snews in the ONT:

http://bit.ly/vnn-2015-06-30

_____

In case anybody found some spare change in the couch this morning (anybody but the couch f'er), here's a need.

A world-renowned banjo player, who brought joy to thousands of bluegrass fans is in need of your help.

John Hickman is a five string banjo picker who lives in Guthrie [Okla]. After battling health problems, racking up medical bills and being forced to quit work, the Hickman's house is falling apart with no funds for repairs. Now the community is coming together to raise the money....
KFOR
http://bit.ly/j-hickman

GoFundMe account (Yeah, GoFundMe, but...)
http://www.gofundme.com/wurbh2j

tl;dr

Vic: Old military expression, I am sure you remember it.

Yeah, I was just makin' a funny; I knew what you meant... I failed to serve in the military, but I picked that info up from some smart military blog.

I might not have been kidding about the bigger backhoe.

Vic We Have To Party: Well folks time to SSnS...

Dang! Shoot, Shovel & Shutup this early in the day?

Gonna be a long summer. Gonna need a bigger backhoe.

Morning? Glories!

Well, I never got a chance to read the ONT last night. Guess there may as well be no morning thread.

And I thought we'd married the morning thread yesterday. Fickle.

Drug dealer “loyalty cards” - reminded me of a funny story about drug dealer entrepreneurship, which I knew I'd told somewhere online, before. When I went to the archives, I found... it was over three years ago right here on WU - naturally! So, rather than repeat that story, I'll just link to the page.

http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/l.s.d/

"Sedalia Mo., 1973?, walking into the only giant rock festival I ever attended...."

Ben's morning thread, in its entirety: "If you like this blog so much why don't you marry it?"

Mr. 401-k article starts: "I like today's vignette so much, I may marry it."

Coincidence? Or sinister plot? Film at 11.

I guess sometimes maybe getting Willowed isn't a bad thing; some comments may be better left unread.

Think I'll go track down Vic's links on the ONT.

steevy: Ha!They actually showed one beta make [sic] sitting there while his woman explained why she was keeping her name.

Really?

* whips out umpire's whiskbroom from back pocket, dusts off soapbox and climbs on *

I don't know what "they" you're talking about, but I sure hope you're not saying that non-traditional naming in marriage is, in and of itself, indicative of some sort of emasculization. Them's fightin' words!

I'm from (or tail-end of) that generation that said, "Question Authority." Some took that as "Reject Authority," but I took it literally. I questioned, vigorously, and what I found was, Authority was sound thinking in most cases.

Some few things, not very important things, were merely traditional, not really vital.

Milady and I, once we got over living together (don't do it, kids), struggled with the name thing. She was well aware that keeping "her own" name was just keeping her father's name. (A snark folks always have had, and was made here just a few days ago.) In fact, her family last name had no tradition: it was something made up by her grandmother, possibly to avoid the likely true last name which was South American. ("White Hispanic," y'might say.)

But in one generation, her family made that name theirs, proudly. They're good folks. I could understand that name-pride, even if it can't be traced back to before the Pilgrims landed like my patrilinear heritage.

So, she went by her name and I went by mine, and the family name was hyphenated. Caused about as much confusion and problems for the world as... Y2K. Which is to say, occasional trivial hassles, no real problems.

We went even further. Our daughter's given last name is Milady's (even worse: daughter and Milady both share my MiL's name, so daughter is a III'd). Our sons' last name is mine. (There was that worrisome time before the boys were born... what if we had no sons!)

The family name is, we're all MyLastName-HerLastNames (yes mine first, sounds better mwah ha ha). I don't think the kids were damaged by this. Everything else, certainly, just not that.

I don't recommend it. I don't care what anyone else does. But that's my report, h8rs, and if you want to take my man-card over this, you'd better bring an army.

* stumbles backward off soapbox and falls in an undignified heap *

Willowed? Dammit.

Awoke, saw there was no EMT, went back to bed.

Awoke again, pondering how our nation was taken over by the Communists.

Spent some time with some of them this weekend.

Someone mentioned the mass importation of "dreamers" being plunked next door everywhere, and one of the Commies said, did you know that Obama has "deported more people than any other President?"

My reply: "That's a very interesting statistic." I did not add, "Are you including all of the deadly enemies of America he's been freeing from Guantanamo?"

Mom has strict rules about discussing politics in her house, that people used to obey, but both sides broke the truce, at times, over the weekend. I think we may be in for war.

Oh yeah...

Morning, Glories!

Online by the equivalent of duct tape and baling wire, but online. Briefly.

Milady & I saw the original Blue Man Group, and what a story about how we ended up there. For another night.

Maet, sympathy for that feline-sized hole in your life. Your Kitty looks a whole lot like our old pal Jack, who left us last year, and he was a real people-cat also. It's hard. Got some grit in my eyes.

So, Good Night, Gracies. Partying with my mom's family for her 95th bday has left me no time or brains to read comments, but I'll assume you're all up to no good as usual. God bless alla y'all.

Tangled Webs

What's wrong with more open non-citizen worker policies has a lot to do with matters like welfare and minimum wage and withholdings and unions and... If the dogpile of tyrannies were gone, there's not (so much) a system to exploit. A simplistic statement of a complex tangle of bad laws regarding citizenship and employment.

Bad laws cause more bad laws and then become self-referencing arguments for keeping the bad laws. Drug prohibitions lead to property confiscations and privacy violations, even when no drugs are involved, for another simple example.

And so with my subject here, Marriage and Family Life.

What difference does it make to The Government who is married to whom, etc.? Well, tax laws which favor or disfavor being married must define marriage. And, welfare which takes into account the family status must define family. Or re-define it, depending how the political winds blow. (Trying to keep this relatively succinct, more long comment than blog post, but that's the gist.)

Under limited government, there will still be a need for some sort of family arbitration, "because of the hardness of your hearts." But, just as people may make contracts privately and then turn to judges when disputes arise, so would failed-family disputes over property and custody fall to an impartial arbitrar which has no interest in how you got into that mess in the first place.

It is not the courts and Congress, after all, who should be "ruling" in matters of matrimony; not the regulators and bureaucracies who should define family. It is the moral and spiritual community, extended family and tribe if you will, which should be guiding young people into good relationships, discouraging aberrant behaviors, and sustaining them throughout their marriages. This is the true familial community, which the "takes-a-village" Communist would have replaced by tyranny.

There are good, strong families who create more generations of good families, not without problems, but with just that kind of spiritual unity which helps them deal with problems and resolve them well. The ones I know of all are dedicated to being part of the greater family headed up by Our Father.

(Wrap this up, guy.) Okay, no magic formula for achieving this. No tricks to eliminating the current clusterfluke of intertangled tyrannies. Just the same old same old: take this gospel, live it, let your light shine, tell the world, bearing in mind many will hate you and persecute you.

(tl;dr Post? Don't post? Post? Don't post?)

Ray Van Dun: I have a bad feeling that some human error may have occurred...

Heh. Like, what are the alternatives? Barring intentional sabotage or being struck by thunderbolt, it's all human, and since we know it works when done right, the only remaining conclusion was something wasn't done right.

Probably forgot to carry the 1.