Here’s Help

Microsoft Windows Vista, the company’s new consumer-oriented computer operating system, which will be available to individual consumers next month, has a marketing slogan of “Clear, Confident, Connected.”

How they can say those words with a straight face is a mystery, considering that the WordPad program in Vista will not be able to open Microsoft Word (.doc) word processing documents, unlike WordPad in Windows XP.  In fact, nothing in Vista itself will allow for that.

Since so many people use MS Word, many documents are in the .doc format.  Therefore, an app that will at least read .doc files is a virtual necessity for computer users, especially if those school lunch menus at your kid’s school are in that format.

What is likely the case is that Microsoft thinks that people will gladly purchase Microsoft Works or Microsoft Office to fill that need.

They won’t have to.

Rearranging Folding Chairs on the Deck of the Titanic

The latest Slay/Mokwa plan to combat city crime:  Structural reorganization within the St. Louis City Police Department.

KSDK:

Recently, St. Louis made a list of one of the most dangerous cities in America.

And for about a month after the list was released, Slay/Mokwa did everything they could to deny the ranking and obfuscate the methodology.  After the FBI’s stats vindicated the Morgan Quinto methodolgy, denial was out the door.

Mayor Slay cites one reason: criminals who continually commit crime while on multiple probations.

While they eventually plan to hire 40 additional police officers, they also want to work closely with judges, church leaders, and educators.

Those two paragraphs are contradictory, because the same “judges” who keep the revolving door open by means of “multiple probations” are ones that Slay/Mokwa want to “work closely” with to reduce crime.  Also, I don’t know what good “church leaders” in this city will do, especially considering that when you’re dealing with city churches, you’re dealing with far-left UCC and similar denominations, whose ideology would blame “white racism” for black crime.  Even the few “conservative” churches in St. Louis don’t want to heed any racialist reasoning for anything.

Their goal, they say, is simple: to make citizens safer.

Remember, Slay/Mokwa did and still do oppose CCW viruently.  Feel safer?

“A lot of issues have to be addressed and we can all do a better job. And the chief is saying they’re stepping up and they’re going to do a better job, and I can tell you we’re going to do a better job and do more. And judges, I believe, I would hope, here’s what we’re going to do as a judiciary: to make sure we have a more efficient system and can handle the cases that are over here and address the issues that we all have,” said Mayor Slay.

That quote of Slay’s is 89 words long yet says nothing.  About the only other place where such voluminous but empty rhetoric earns praise is business school.  To think, all I need are zero words to say nothing.

How We Know ‘Zero Tolerance’ Has Gone Too Far

First Amendment Center:

The mother of a high school senior who posed in chain mail with a medieval sword for his yearbook picture sued after the school rejected the photo because of its zero-tolerance policy against weapons.

Patrick Agin, 17, belongs to the Society for Creative Anachronism, an international organization that researches and recreates medieval history. He submitted the photo in September for the Portsmouth High School yearbook.

Then what of American and World History textbooks in Providence, R.I. high schools?  What of internet sites that show pictures and images of weapons?  Are they to ban and/or censor those things?  After all, warfare is a pretty big element of the historical sciences.  I shouldn’t joke about that, because the libs are liable to do just that.

Understanding Limbaugh

LoS Blog has this short paragraph from Elizabeth Wright rationalizing (but not justifying) Rush Limbaugh’s recent contempt and hatred toward Southern Heritage and the Southern Cause. Limbaugh has taken to bashing “confederate kooks” in recent weeks because some people have had the audacity to call him and point out historical truths about Dictator Adolf Lenin’s reign of terror and brutality between 1860 and 1865.

This is perhaps emblematic of the widening rift within the body of thought known as conservatism. The rift was always there, but now, prominent members on both sides are now acknowledging its existence. Limbaugh et al. are (or lean toward) neo/cosmo, and LoS, this blog, et al. are (or lean toward) paleo/nationalist/populist.

I Knew He Was A Winner

Last month, I specifically cited Missouri Circuit Court Judge Robert Dierker of the 21st Circuit as one that should be retained, being mindful of the fact that no judge has ever been rejected in the history of the Missouri non-partisan plan.

He has a new book out, called The Tyranny of Tolerance.  The topic of the book is self-explanatory.  I hope Judge Dierker has ambitions for higher elected office.

A Good Reason For Secrecy

UK Guardian via AR:

The techniques of secrecy and deception employed by the British National party in its attempt to conceal its activities and intentions from the public can be disclosed today.

Activists are being encouraged to adopt false names when engaged on BNP business, to reduce the chance of their being identified as party members in their other dealings with the public.

There’s a good reason for that.  The Metropolitan Police Department of London (“The Met”) has an official policy of not hiring or taking recruits who are BNP members.  This is probably indicative that many other firms and institutions in England have the same policy.

Federalization Games

Des Moines Register via AR:

Gov. Tom Vilsack and Maj. Gen. Ron Dardis, in a letter Tuesday to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, said they will not cooperate with federal immigration officials in the future unless they act more responsibly and provide better coordination with state officials.

Maj. Gen. Dardis is of the Iowa National Guard.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Federal government “federalized” or “nationalized” the National Guards of Mississippi and Alabama several times in order to enforce desegregation mandates when faced with resistance by their state’s governors.  Of course, that terminology is misleading, because state National Guards are already “federal.”  Their training comes from the U.S. Armed Forces, and Guards(wo)men receive their paychecks from the same.  Legally, state National Guards are appendages of the U.S. Armed Forces on conditional loan to state governors.

Whether or not President Bush “nationalizes” the Iowa National Guard in the face of Gov. Vilsack’s recalcitrance will speak volumes about the elite’s non-desire to enforce immigration law, in contrast to the events of the decades of the 50s and 60s.

Music To My Ears

Jeb Bush:  “I have no future.“

Best news I’ve had all day.  Now I’m waiting to hear these words from every other Republican not named Hunter, Tancredo, Sensenbrenner, Pence, etc.