Pious Agnostic

Fishy, fishy, fishy

posted at 4:53 PM Jun 30, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

The Obligatory 'Sorry I haven't been blogging' Post

Actually, I'm not really that sorry.

I've been Tweeting, though, and if you want to see what I'm up to, you can go here.

posted at 5:39 PM Mar 31, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Instapundit quotes a reader:

The real story in that poll is not merely that “swing-district voters oppose ObamaCare.” No, the real story in that poll is that voters will punish their congressman if he votes FOR ObamaCare, but they will treat him better at the polls if he votes “NO.”

This far more pointed and potent message just isn’t getting through, Glenn. It directly refutes the White House narrative, which says the opposite: that if ObamaCare fails, swing-state Dems will suffer more in November. That Big Lie has now been poll-tested, and proved false. If this message gets through to the swing-state Dems, I believe ObamaCare goes down to defeat this week.

Say that this is true, and Dems vote against Obama/Pelosi/ReidCare, and voters reward them in swing states. Suppose that as a result, Republicans don't win the House in November. Would this be a win, or a loss?

I say a win. I'll accept Democrats who vote in their own self-interest as long as they vote for (or against) the things I want.

posted at 5:42 PM Mar 15, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

An amazing column that I urge everyone to read...and share:

A prayer from the living world

posted at 10:45 AM Feb 27, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Robot Drum Circle Makes Human Hippies Obsolete

Instapundit comments "aren’t they obsolete anyway?"

posted at 8:22 PM Feb 22, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

When Films are Ruined by ‘Special Features’

Recently I rented a DVD of the award-winning 2003 documentary Winged Migration. Famed as one of the most unique and beautiful films ever made, Winged Migration literally takes the viewer up into the sky as it follows birds on their long-distance seasonal flights around the world. Somehow, seemingly as if by magic, the cameras are right there amongst the migrating birds, and you feel as if you are flying thousands of feet in the air with your fellow avians over landscapes which range from the picturesque to the breathtaking. When the film was over, all I could say was “Wow!”

And then, I made the terrible, terrible mistake of clicking on “Special Features” in the DVD menu. Ten minutes later, I realized retroactively that I didn’t like the film after all. In fact, I hated it.

Why? Because among the special features was one of those short “The Making of…” mini-documentaries which divulged the secrets of how they filmed Winged Migration. And it revealed that the film was all a lie. A beautiful lie, but a lie nonetheless.

Very interesting, and something I haven't considered but in retrospect I agree with.

Use caution.

posted at 8:40 PM Feb 10, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

The message here is....

...they're taking over, so get on their side early.

posted at 6:45 PM Feb 8, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Thanks a lot, dip-shit.

posted at 8:45 PM Jan 24, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Jeeze, he's just not that into you....

posted at 9:14 PM Jan 23, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Fact: Conservatives have been saying for 8 years that the McCain-Feingold “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002" was unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.

Fact: This week, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that the McCain-Feingold “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002? was unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.

Fact: Democrats / Liberals / Leftists from Obama on down are screaming bloody murder.

posted at 10:36 AM Jan 23, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Glenn Reynolds links to this Conrad Black post about Obama, and quotes:

He is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic and intoxicated by what he modestly called ‘the gift’ of his own articulation. And as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent. . . . It has been a year of fecklessness, amateurism, and posturing. Less that is useful has been accomplished by this president in his first year than by any president since Herbert Hoover.

See, here's the thing: this comes as no surprise to me, nor to most people who voted against him in '08. This characterization is exactly what I perceived and is one reason I didn't vote for him.

I wonder if any people who didn't see it before are seeing it now.

posted at 10:20 AM Jan 23, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Mark Steyn: Obama can't say who we're at war with

The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate, and you can't blame the world's mischief-makers, from Putin to Ahmadinejad to the many Gitmo recidivists now running around Yemen, from drawing the correct conclusion.

Regardless of his successes or failures, Obama will enter history like FDR: those who loved him can see no wrong, and those who didn't can see no right.

posted at 11:00 AM Jan 10, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Where are the WMD's?

Interesting.

Recently neutered Christmas panty-bomber has been indicted:

A six-count indictment handed down Wednesday charges Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, attempted murder and other charges.

Six counts, huh? That seems like a lot, so like liberal critics of Bush's reasons to go to war against Iraq, I think I'll just ignore five of them and concentrate on WMDs.

If the investigation doesn't find fully-staffed and funded WMD labs and turn-key delivery systems in Abdulmutallab's underwear, then the entire case will fail and I'll have to march in the streets proclaiming his innocence.

posted at 10:03 AM Jan 9, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Slightly On The Grid

Oh, I'm back, but there are still about 1,145 things I still need to install on my home computer before it's fully functional. And I'd do it, too, except I keep getting distracted by things, like this perfect example of the lawyers art:

[Yansane's] attorney said “[o]ther people could have had access to the apartment, so maybe if a rocket launcher was located there, as is stated in the offense report, maybe it belonged to somebody else.”

Love it! Lawyer dude knows full well that the rocket-launcher belongs to his client. Hey, I should have tried this when I was a kid.

"Mom, other people might have access to my underwear drawer, so maybe if the stack of Playboys you mention really was found under my tighty-whities, then they were placed there by somebody else."

Nah, Mom would have seen through that in a second.

posted at 9:48 AM Jan 3, 2010 by Rob Ritchie

Slightly Off The Grid

Grrrr.....

I was loading Vista SP 2 on my home computer, and it crashed. Hard. As in, it's become a brick and not a computer.

So, I'm busy climbing back out of this hole, reinstalling the OS and everything else.

I really, really hate this.

posted at 2:08 PM Dec 29, 2009 by Rob Ritchie

posted at 10:48 AM Dec 24, 2009 by Rob Ritchie

Mark Steyn sums up Copenhagenmas.

posted at 8:55 AM Dec 20, 2009 by Rob Ritchie

The Known Universe

Simply amazing....

posted at 4:26 PM Dec 19, 2009 by Rob Ritchie

Evil both personal and industrial: Why One Auschwitz Survivor Avoided Doctors for 65 Years

posted at 4:19 PM Dec 11, 2009 by Rob Ritchie

Steven Den Beste writes about Government by Wishful Thinking.

It's well worth reading.

posted at 4:39 PM Dec 7, 2009 by Rob Ritchie

More on Climategate

I admire expertise, and scientific expertise especially; like any intelligent citizen I am willing to defer to it. But that puts a great obligation on science. The people whose instinct is to respect and admire science should be the ones most disturbed by these revelations. The scientists have let them down, and made the anti-science crowd look wise. That is outrageous.

posted at 6:04 PM Nov 30, 2009 by Rob Ritchie