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Bonnie: Lots of people claim to find blue cheeses strong and overpowering. If you're one of those, I suggest you try this creamy, mild buttermilk blue from Wisconsin's Roth Käse, as I think you'll like it.
Buttermilk blue is not only for those who enjoy veined cheese, but for those who haven't yet developed a palate for them. Seriously, this raw milk cheese is mellow yet bold; it's mild, tangy and creamy with just a hint of the wonderful blue veins. I suggest you give it a try. It just might change your mind about blue-ripened cheeses. Do enjoy it with a yeasty beer, a crisp white wine such as a Grüner Veltliner or Reisling or any red wine.
I find buttermilk blue great for eating along with dried fruits (figs, Craisins, or raisins), dark chocolate and honey, for adding to salads, dressings or dips, or for crumbling over pizza, burgers or risotto. Consider it for your upcoming holiday cheese board.
This past summer when I was in Des Moines, Iowa, to learn all about soy, Linda Funk, executive director of the Soyfoods Council, invited the group of food editors and writers on the trip to her home to sample soy foods.
But since Linda also represents various cheese companies from Wisconsin, we also had an incredible cheese spread to sample. I actually met Linda on a food editors' Wisconsin cheese trip when she was living in Wisconsin and working for the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board; we've been friends ever since. Luckily, I tried Roth Käse's Buttermilk Blue and then suggested to Bryan and Eric that we feature it as a Bite.
Bryan: A few weeks back, I had the chance to invite some friends over for a small dinner party. Co-authoring a food blog does have its perks, and the occasional foodie press package does make its way to my door from time to time. Hey, we really do try these products to let you know if they're good or not. They're certainly not all good, but when they are, they're a pleasure and a treat to enjoy, so why not share with friends?
The dinner was supposed to be a celebration of autumn. We had planned some great dishes to really highlight some of the great seasonal bounty: roasted pork tenderloin with pear chutney, mashed sweet potatoes, butternut squash soup, carrot cake. It seemed the main course would likely be the star. A funny thing about dinner parties: The majority of time spent eating often is in the "beforehand," the passed-apps period — the hour (or two) you spend with cocktails, wine small finger foods and cheeses. It can sometimes be this extended exposure that really causes you to take note of a food. At our dinner party, the finger food was tartlets, filled with a buttermilk cheese and apple-onion compote. Our cheeses were varied: Gouda, Plave, tipsy goat, Edam and two bleus… a cave-aged soft, traditionally styled blue cheese and Roth Käse Buttermilk Blue.
The cheeses stole the show. Granted, everyone raved about everything (it was all really good), but many of the comments were about the blue cheeses: so different, so refreshing and rich. I'll go ahead and say that I'm a true cheese lover (bread, wine, cheese — that's all I really need), but I'm definitely not a fan of the blues. Eat them, I thought — more tipsy goat for me. They blues are generally a little too funky for me. I can handle barnyard, but a blue always seems to offend my palate. But there was too much positive feedback. I went in for a taste.
Most all the cheeses slowly dwindled to their last chunks, pieces too oddly shaped to cut but too big to grab and eat (the host's scraps). Trying my leftover samples again, I was really wowed by the subtlety of the buttermilk blue. It was not only not offensive, it was oddly luscious, not overly pungent and surprisingly sweet. It will never be the go-to cheese of choice for me, but I will admit I have crumbled it into pita with turkey, chicken salad with grapes and almost every lettuce mixture I've had since the dinner party. (It was a big chunk of cheese). It might not make my top 10, but it might also be the only blue cheese I'll actually buy.
Eric: In the world of cheese, blue cheese is like the antisocial kid in elementary school who sits in the corner; it has a pungent smell and a defining unique taste, is covered in mold and is disliked by a select people. With these characteristics, I'm sure you're beginning to wonder why such a cheese adorns our list of the best products. The simple truth is that at one point, the antisocial kid grows up and finds a group of people who enjoy his taste and smell.
Roth Käse Buttermilk Blue is like no blue-veined cheese (bleu, Gorgonzola) I've tasted before. It doesn't have an overpowering taste. Instead, it's much more subtle to the palate. And that funkiness my brother mentions, found in most blue-veined cheese, is missing from the buttermilk blue. It's almost as though the cheese's mold is for show, that is, until you take your first bite and sample that defining taste.
One of the most popular main courses in the restaurant I work at is a Gorgonzola-stuffed veal cutlet. On most occasions when painting a picture of the dish in a guest's mind, I mention that the presence of the blue-veined cheese does not overpower the dish.


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Read: Romans 12:1-8
All of us have different roles in a church. It might not seem important but God honours every little action done for His Kingdom. It might be praying for your fellow members, or encouraging the lost, caring for widows and orphans, or leading the Sunday school and youth members to know Jesus. Mothers who take their children to church are also honouring God, though it might not seem as a big deal to others. Your attendance in church is an encouragement to the pastor and other believers. Every little action counts. If you are sharing the gospel through tracts or Christ's love to others, it will not go unnoticed in God's sight. Paul the apostle wrote to Timothy as an advice to his fellow believers, "Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life" (1 Tim. 6:18-19).
We do not have to do any action as an eye service to get favour from people, but we ought to do the will of God from the heart (Eph. 6:6). Let our hearts be genuine. Our God in secret would reward us in heaven for the things that we have done in secret to bless others. We are to be doers of God's Word and not just hearers alone (James 1). The doer of God's work will be blessed in what he or she does. The midwives Shiphrah and Puah rescued the Hebrew male children by disobeying Pharaoh's commands. The midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive (Exod. 1:17). God blessed them and provided them households (Exod. 1:21). Rahab the prostitute provided refuge for two Jewish spies in Jericho. Her action spared her life and her family's life (Josh. 2). Rahab will not be remembered for her former life as a prostitute, but as one of the great grandmothers of King David, after marrying Salmon (Matt. 1:5).
"And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ" (Col. 3:23-24). Faith without works is dead (James 2:26). So be a person of action for God's kingdom.


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Feature Request: How HomeKit could improve with CarPlayi0.wp.com/9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/02/carplay-alert-lead.jpg?resize=640%2C0&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1 640w, i0.wp.com/9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/02/carplay-alert-lead.jpg?resize=1024%2C0&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1 1024w, i0.wp.com/9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/02/carplay-alert-lead.jpg?resize=1500%2C0&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1 1500w, i0.wp.com/9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/02/carplay-alert-lead.jpg?resize=2000%2C0&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1 2000w, i0.wp.com/9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/02/carplay-alert-lead.jpg?resize=2500%2C0&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1 2500w" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto; margin: auto; display: block; clear: both;" class="">
CarPlay isn't expected to gain any major features this year according to recent reporting, but that doesn't mean we can't dream. One simple change I would love to see in some future update is support for HomeKit alerts through CarPlay. Going a step further, a dedicated Home app for CarPlay with a few key features could be very beneficial.
CarPlay prevents most alerts from reaching your car so you don't get distracted by a new email or tweet while driving, but that filter can sometimes catch useful alerts too.
For example, if you create an automation in HomeKit to automatically open your garage door or unlock your front door when you arrive home, the Home app requires confirming through an alert. Requiring confirmation on your iPhone prevents you from accidentally opening your garage or unlocking your front door when you're near your house but not going inside, but that alert does not come through CarPlay.
Apple doesn't actually have to make a Home app for CarPlay for alerts to come through either. Clock alarms and alerts from Reminders and Calendar are examples of apps that can send alerts through CarPlay without offering CarPlay versions of their iPhone apps.
For example, my wife's work appointment for a somehow mandatory staff meeting on our shared calendar came through CarPlay while I was driving this morning:
The current alternative to interacting with the iPhone is to use Siri each time you arrive home which is certainly convenient but not as efficient or proactive. Having an actionable alert that you tap to confirm would be way easier.
Here's how the system looks now:
And here's how it could look (ignore my poor Pixelmator skills):
Battery icon appears when using Wireless CarPlay
Going a step further, CarPlay could benefit from a dedicated Home app that launches to reveal favorited scenes (groups of smart accessory actions) like "I'm Home" and "I'm Leaving" so commonly used commands are a tap away.
HomeKit control through CarPlay is easily accessible through Siri today, but adding an on-screen interface optimized like the other CarPlay apps could prove very useful for drivers.
Additional apps like Waze would also be welcome, but supporting a third-party map sounds a lot less likely than one of Apple's own apps joining the scene.
For more on CarPlay:
- Best CarPlay apps for iPhone
- WhatsApp adds CarPlay app for messaging whilst driving
- Starting with 2019 Avalon, Toyota finally bringing CarPlay to select vehicles
- Review: Alpine iLX-107 delivers the future of driving with Wireless CarPlay for under $1000
Subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:
How to make a phone call with CarPlay
How do you make a phone call using CarPlay? There are options, so let's check them out.
There are a few different ways to make a phone call using CarPlay in your car. Most of them involve using your voice to state who you wish to speak to, but there are some other ways as well. From Siri to using your actual phone to initiate the call, you can get the call started in just a few easy steps. Safety is a top priority in the car, so don't let phone calls distract you.
So, how do you manage your phone calls in the car using CarPlay? Let's take a look.
- Using Siri to make a call
- Using the phone app to make a call
- Listening to your voicemail
- Answering an incoming call
- Things to keep in mind
Using Siri to make a call
Using Siri may be the easiest way to make a call while in the car, but some situations could cause it to be more difficult. If you are in a loud car or on a highway with a lot of other noise, Siri may have trouble understanding the command and figuring out who to call. Using Siri is pretty simple, and here is how you do it.
- Activate Siri by either saying "Hey Siri", using the control on your steering wheel, or pressing the on-screen home button.
- Say "Call XXXX" (replacing XXXX with name of person as it appears in your contacts).
- Confirm that they are who you wish to call.
Using the phone app to make a call
You can also make a phone call using the touch screen which may be easier for some and less ideal for others.
- Press the phone button on the screen.
- Say the name of the person you want to call or press the view contacts button.
- Select the correct contact to call.
If you press the view contacts button, it will first show you all of your favorite contacts, and you can then select other lists from there. You won't want to be fumbling around with scrolling through a list of your contacts while you are driving, so voice will be the best way while the car is in motion.
If you are having trouble with getting the right contact, you can always pull over safely and then select the contact from your phone to call through CarPlay. You won't want to pick up your phone to find the right contact on it while driving down the highway. Remember that CarPlay is all about being hands-free, so use your voice to make the call.
Listening to your voicemail
Depending on your profession, you may receive tons of voicemail that you need to listen to and keep up with. In most cases, you can listen to that voicemail right from your car. Select vehicles and aftermarket head units seem to have some trouble with Apple's voicemail system, making it so that you can't access it. Accessing it is simple, so here is how you do it.
- Open the Phone app.
- Tap the Voicemail tab on the top.
- Select the one you want to listen to.
If this doesn't work in your vehicle, you are not alone. There are a number of reports online of it not working properly, so you may need to disconnect your phone from CarPlay and listen to them the old-fashioned way.
Answering an incoming call
Not all of the phone calls in your car will be ones that you initiate. Receiving a phone call is even easier than making one in the car. While it may seem overly easy to understand how to answer it, there are actually a few ways you can do it, and here they are.
- Press the Green phone button on your steering wheel (if your car has one).
- Press the Green on-screen button.
- Slide to answer on your phone (if you are parked only).
That's it. It is that easy to answer an incoming phone call, and it automatically routes the audio through the speakers of your car.
Things to keep in mind
There are a few things to consider when making phone calls through your car. Naturally, the phone calls will be coming through the speakers of your car, so if you have passengers, they will also be able to hear the call you are making. If you want to make a private phone call, you'll want to disconnect the phone from CarPlay and use a headset to make it safe. Even if there are no other people in the car, you want to keep an eye on the volume level of your calls, as people around you at lights, in parking lots, etc may be able to hear parts of it.
CarPlay helps make you safer in the car, and while you are hands-free while making and receiving phone calls, that doesn't mean you don't need to pay attention. If you find yourself getting upset, overly excited, or distracted, you should still pull over to the side of the road or park in a spot to safely finish the phone call before getting back on the road.
Your favorite tips?
Do you have any favorite tips for making phone calls in the car using CarPlay? If so, be sure to share them in the comments!


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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
No Pledge of Allegiance?
The video's bad enough, but this quote from the article really did me in: "The moderator further irked the crowd afterward, saying she felt "disrespected" by being "forced" to include the pledge "in presumably a planned way." She felt disrespected? SHE DID, after dissing the Pledge? See, in her mind, it has to have been 'planned'..it's that nasty Rightwing that PLANNED this insurrection, according to her. OR she figures that deflection might take from the gravity and bad press of her having said they hadn't planned for the Pledge of Allegiance. Sorry, Ms. Tate-Bradish, trying to put the shoe on the other foot didn't work...Better go back for more ideas from the the supposedly nonpartisan League of Women Voters.
Then you get the left suggesting it doesn't make you patriotic to say the Pledge or wear a Flag Pin. NO, it doesn't, what's questionable is disallowing it....and then throwing a fit that the challenge is "planned"....
Do you think every meeting like this ought to start with the Pledge? Do you think the Pledge should be on the meeting's agenda? How the heck has the leftwing been so successful at making AMERICANS feel 'overboard' for flying a flag, wearing a pin or saying the pledge, for heaven's sake?
46 comments:
- heidianne jackson said...
it should be included - the fact that it wasn't didn't go over well with those attending the debate. since there was no agenda published that specifically excluded the pledge, how could this have been PLANNED??? oh, and btw, i noticed that no one FORCED HER to say the pledge...
it's amazing that we've let it go this far. but we're working on fixing that, aren't we?
- October 26, 2010 at 12:34 PM
- cube said...
I'm not a big going to meetings person, but when I do drag my butt to one, I am certainly not going to be offended by the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem.
I honestly think these refuseniks of Americana need some classes where their lifelong anti-American, commie-favoring agenda can be turned around. Good luck doing that during the current liberal school union environment.
Still, I can dream...
- October 26, 2010 at 12:43 PM
- soapster said...
For those that revere the Pledge anyone that wouldn't recite it or would (HEAVEN FORBID) recite it without the "under God" portion is sure to be targeted by the Republican machine. Be it known it is a socialist pledge.
It was modified to include God in it, perhaps we need to start a movement to issue corrections to it? Slowly, but surely, it might be read: "I pledge allegiance to no flag in these States of America. Allied for now, divisible at any time."
- October 26, 2010 at 12:46 PM
- soapster said...
- October 26, 2010 at 12:49 PM
- Ducky's here said...
I put out my American flag quite frequently.
Don't know where you get this idea that not conforming to your ideas of proper ceremony is suspect.
Maybe they should be treated like that woman at Rand Paul's event. One of Baby Doc's goon knocked her down and gave her a concussion. Unprovoked and clear assault and battery. Here's the candidates comment:
PAUL: And there was a bit of a crowd control problem. I don't want anybody though to be involved in things that aren't civil. I think this should always be about the issues. And it is an unusual situation to have so many people so passionate on both sides jockeying back and forth. And it wasn't something that I liked or anybody liked about that situation. So I hope in the future it is going to be better.
That's right, one of Baby Doc's brownshirts does the A&B but BOTH SIDES need to be civil. I'd start worrying about how many of these animals are out there, z. This may be more important than strong arming people into saying the pledge (a socialist pledge at that)
- October 26, 2010 at 12:59 PM
- soapster said...
If that boils your blood, check out this representative from MN.
Just as the Republicans are want to do, they immediately jumped on her proclaiming "Betty isn't one of us...".
They're right. Betty isn't one of them (whatever the hell "them" is).
- October 26, 2010 at 1:19 PM
- Z said...
Heidianne, nobody's forcing anybody to say anything, which is the whole point..thanks for the reminder, you're right.
Cube, me neither...I don't think a generation of kids CAN be turned around...I really doubt that.
soapster, the fact is "under God' IS in it now..just as "our creator" is in the Declaration and we have a president who's misquoted from that section 3 times in 2 weeks.
And, there is no harm to saying a pledge of allegiance and the thinking that those who want to say it are somehow suspect is chilling.
Ducky..just doing my job of exposing the left. Glad it got your goat.
By the way, what about this knocking down? Do you have the details? Let's hear how the Paul people intentionally gave her a concussion, okay?
BY the way, Rand's right...thanks for his input.
- October 26, 2010 at 1:21 PM
- Z said...
Soap, we've all seen that on the blogs...
I believe that was in 2002, wasn't it? Here's a bit from the link you posted:
"What really makes this an affront to all is that she was actually leading the pledge on the floor (Z: the words UNDER GOD are part of the pledge, after all) of the House. If she were just saying it as a part of the whole chamber it would have been fine.(Z: Wait! How's that translate to "not one of THEM" soapster!?) However, by omitting the words, "under God", she was actually showing her disrespect to her position, the Flag, God and the American people. Oh, did I mention that she likes to brag about her Catholic faith when running for re-election? "
THanks :-)
- October 26, 2010 at 1:24 PM
Soapy, the Pledge of Allegiance isn't the property of conservatives. It represents the American people's loyalty and love of America. Conservatives and Liberals say the Pledge, it belongs to all of us.
It stands for our allegiance to our country. I have no idea what you have allegiance to. Perhaps "hail Obama" would be more to your liking. He is doing everything he can to make us divisible.
He just told a liberal audience to get out the vote, and "punish the enemy". That would be us, conservatives.
I don't know about you, but I see no remblance of that to what this country has always stood for. To the best of my knowlege of the Presidency, no President has ever referred to his opposition as "the enemy". Until now.
Be careful of you wish for, it may not be what either of us has in mind.
Ducky, no decent, law abiding person would approve of assault and battery on another citizen, friend, or dissenter.
An incident like this is not to be tolerated, and the attacker belongs in jail.
If we don't stand up for what is right, we're lost.
- October 26, 2010 at 2:19 PM
When Pres. Reagan was in office he was flummoxing the Democratic side so well that Tip O'Neill, when stopped by a reporter, referred to the Republicans as 'the enemy'. I was shocked & remember it even today.
- October 26, 2010 at 2:51 PM
- Leticia said...
I love it when we are asked to Pledge Allegiance to the flag at football games, rallies, meetings, etc. I am proud that I am an American and would never be offended if asked to say the pledge.
She in no way was disrespected in fact, I believe she was the one who was disrespecting the audience.
I cheered with the crowd.
- October 26, 2010 at 2:56 PM
- Ducky's here said...
Ducky, no decent, law abiding person would approve of assault and battery on another citizen, friend, or dissenter.
Now what's the extension of that idea? Come on, Pris, you're so close.
- October 26, 2010 at 4:02 PM
- Z said...
SilvrLady, I can't imagine that of O'Neill...I didn't know discourse was that bad then and I've admired him all these years because I hadn't seen that kind of behavior.
Well, since Chris Matthews was his aid, maybe that's where Matthews got that awful behavior and unAmerican attitude?
Pris, Obama said PUNISH THE ENEMY? Are you kidding? I've laughed lately at the snide comments but never thought he'd stoop this low. He really is a very immature young thug who's so full of leftwing hate and conceit he honestly can't help himself.
I think we're seeing the real Obama these days, now that he's so desperate.
And, imagine, Californians are about to elect Moonbeam again...someone who did a rotten job once and wants to do it again.....someone with ZERO business experience and who, to say only one of his ridiculous ideas, wants to send EVERYBODY to the COLLEGE...even illegals! THEN, after all that money's spent, he says he needs to balance a budget!! There's no end to the stupidity. I really had hope but people actually hear Obama during this campaign swing and they get all riled up and actually believe his rhetoric. THIS must be the October surprise.
SURPRISE! Americans really CAN be that idiotic!
Leticia, God bless you..I couldn't agree with you more.
- October 26, 2010 at 4:03 PM
Surely, there can be no bias in the League of Women Voters, right?
I think this quotation was most telling: "It's not that I oppose reciting the Pledge," Scheurer told the Herald. "I opposed having my actions that evening being dictated by a mob."
When does an audience stop being an audience and start being a mob? Obviously, when they stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or perhaps when they refuse to sit down and shut up.
We do live in interesting times.
- October 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM
- Joe said...
The Pledge of Allegience is an expression of our love for our country and its ideals. Americans love to recite it before significant events like ball games, church events, Kiwanis meetings, public meetings, government meetings, etc.
That the audience wanted to say it in spite of the fact that it was not on the docket should not be seen as mob rule, but as the desire of Americans in the group to express themselves.
How badly was LWV hurt by this expression? How much longer did it extend the meeting...1 1/2 minutes?
What could possibly be wrong with the crowd wanting to say it together?
Who is the real bad guy (girl) here?
Sounds like someone felt their leadership threatened to me.
Soapster: It was written by a socialist, but it has evolved way beyond that and it is NOT a socialist pledge...not any more.
- October 26, 2010 at 4:31 PM
- Z said...
Mustang, we're all a MOB the minute we disagree with leftwingers..Oh, RACIST MOBS, sorry, I forgot the qualifier.
Joe...it's astonishing that we have to argue, isn't it? It's the PLEDGE and there are people with such disdain.......
- October 26, 2010 at 4:32 PM
- BB-Idaho said...
Can't do that down along the levee ....
- October 26, 2010 at 5:04 PM
- Ducky's here said...
It's like this , mustang check it out and understand why some of us don't want to go in this direction.
As the writer says, it's a hard road back once you go this route. And the mob's compulsion shouldn't be mistaken for "patriotism".
- October 26, 2010 at 6:30 PM
"It's the PLEDGE and there are people with such disdain......."
Should anyone have any doubts about who the real terrorists are any longer?
Progressives, dems, Code Pinkos, and every other commie loving mutt who was exposed by Old Joe...long ago...read the Verona Papers to catch up.
- October 26, 2010 at 6:36 PM
- Z said...
"fascists"..Ducky, when WILL you learn it's the left who's fascist?
Keep sluggin' :-)
- October 26, 2010 at 6:56 PM
- BB-Idaho said...
"when WILL you learn it's the left who's fascist?"
Oh dear. Ducky's linked article was based on the seminal work on the subject, Paxton's 'The Anatomy of Facism'. It is in my personal library, I've read it twice. I'd recommend it, although you will not learn 'its the left who's facist'.
- October 26, 2010 at 7:16 PM
- Joe said...
•Fascism: a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology.
•a political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy
Ducky, the article you linked to is way off the mark. But it fits your ideology, therefore you think it is accurate.
- October 26, 2010 at 7:19 PM
Ducky, if there is any danger in fascism emerging in America it will be from the socialist left. You know, like Russia and Italy in the 1920s, and Germany in the 1930s. Your president has led us dangerously close to achieving what Herbert Marcuse wanted all along. You're the fascist bastards.
- October 26, 2010 at 7:51 PM
- Chuck said...
Duck, let's compare incidents of people getting their foot stepped on by someone from the right against people getting beat up by union thugs.
Z, I think you said it with this
Then you get the left suggesting it doesn't make you patriotic to say the Pledge or wear a Flag Pin. NO, it doesn't, what's questionable is disallowing it
I don't think in a free society people should be forced to say the pledge, it is a personal choice. At the same time, a free society wouldn't prevent someone from saying it either.
- October 26, 2010 at 8:22 PM
- Z said...
BB, good to have you back; look at the comments and look to a centrist for a definition of fascist; who cares who wrote the book?
Joy Behar called SHarron Angle a BITCH today, does that mean she IS a bitch?
Joe, bless you. Who can argue that?
Mustang, they just can't see themselves. THey've heard "Rightwing fascists" so much they've actually thought it's true.
Chuck, thanks...no, a free society doesn't prevent or RIDICULE someone for saying it.
- October 26, 2010 at 8:39 PM
- Sam Huntington said...
I'm going to disagree with Chuck for a moment. Let's assume that the Pledge isn't all that important to begin with; it's a personal choice. Why bother? Why bother standing up when others recite the pledge? Why bother standing up when the flag passes in front of you at a parade. Why bother standing up and crossing your heart during the national anthem at a ball game? Why bother stepping forward to serve your country in the military, as part of Teach-America, or the Peace Corps? If it isn't important … if we don't value such things, then you can bet your last dollar no one will be much interested in doing them. Why not just lay down and give America to the first group of people who happen along? Its a personal choice. It isn't important. Who cares. Right?
- October 26, 2010 at 9:22 PM
- Z said...
But, Sam, some people just don't feel it..they're from this generation of lib-indoctrinated kids who feel, like Obama, that America's seen it's best days and it's another country's turn to be the world leader, etc etc.........they don't want to pledge anything.....
what do you do, blast them up out of their seats and stick their right hand over their heart when our own president disdains that?
- October 26, 2010 at 9:35 PM
Obama has dropped to a mere 37% approval rating.
That's right.
Obama is now around 7% less approved of than Bush in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
- October 26, 2010 at 10:01 PM
- October 26, 2010 at 10:05 PM
- Z said...
Anon, I just don't get it. HOw can he have such a low approval rating and STILL Americans could vote for liberal Dems? It's astonishing to me
- October 26, 2010 at 10:08 PM
l.a.i.o.r.t. ;)
- October 26, 2010 at 10:39 PM
- Z said...
Anon, do I need an interpreter?
- October 26, 2010 at 10:44 PM
"Pris, Obama said PUNISH THE ENEMY? Are you kidding? I've laughed lately at the snide comments but never thought he'd stoop this low. He really is a very immature young thug who's so full of leftwing hate and conceit he honestly can't help himself."
Obama said this on Univision, an hispanic network I believe.
Btw, I agree with your assessment. I don't think he'll be able to move to the center to work with the Republicans. I don't think he's capable of it.
Obama is so thin skinned, and childish, and so indocrinated in his far left ideology, he can't think any other way. Nor does he have the discipline to do so.
He may give it lip service, but he'll turn around and belie what he says.
- October 27, 2010 at 12:07 AM
- Chuck said...
Sam, let me explain.
I did not say it wasn't important, I have been doing both all of my life and have raised my children to do the same. I said it should not be forced in a free society and I stand by this. I do believe that in a free society it is a personal choice.
Should it be expected? Yes. But again, this is different from being forced.
Forcing someone to recite the Pledge or sing along with the National Anthem is something seen in a dictatorship like China.
Finally, I am of mind that if someone does not want to stand for the National Anthem I have no time for them. I do not, however, want someone to come along and force them to stand. This is false patriotism and I don't think we need it from them.
Finally, in a free society I reserve the right to be critical of their choice not to stand. This is something lost on the left who thinks they have a right to bash the country but no one has the free speech right to bash them for doing so.
- October 27, 2010 at 5:03 AM
I think the issue is one of social etiquette; taught to children by their parents, and reinforced by social institutions even when it is not. A gentleman removes his hat when entering a building. People speak in quiet voices while inside a church. We demonstrate respect for those who gave their lives by standing when the American flag passes in front of us; as civilians, we salute by placing our right hand over our hearts. These are all comparatively recent social expectations, by the way … none of which will result in the destruction of our country. On the other hand, if we (as a people) no longer demonstrate respect for the elderly, our parents, police officers, firemen and paramedics, school teachers, and local pastors, then we (as a people) will never get around to showing respect for our national flag.
- October 27, 2010 at 7:28 AM
- Joe said...
Mustang: You are correct, of course. The trouble is our young people have been actively taught that disrespect is always proper. Yet they, themselves, will cry, "foul" (or much worse) if they perceive that you have "dissed" them.
- October 27, 2010 at 7:49 AM
- Z said...
Yes, I think the point is;
Schooling. Media. THE LEFT..and we've been shamed into staying quiet, which has been planned for years. They've been setting it all up, laying the groundwork, and here we are. WHO KNEW?
- October 27, 2010 at 8:15 AM
- Z said...
Mustang has an excellent post up linking to mine here....check it out.
- October 27, 2010 at 9:42 AM
- cube said...
I hea ya, Z. Not when the unions gave such a tight grip on education... and everything else, including the voting machines in Nevada. *** sound of my jaw dropping***
- October 27, 2010 at 1:25 PM
- Leticia said...
Maybe after the Pledge was said, someone should have started chanting, 'USA! USA! USA!" LOL! I would have happily joined.
- October 27, 2010 at 2:03 PM
- Z said...
Leticia, FABULOUS! I love that idea! That Democrat woman might have thrown up, tho :-)
- October 27, 2010 at 4:07 PM
- sue said...
Z - I would not get upset if it were requested that the Pledge of Allegiance be said spontaneously. Why be upset about that?
I think if organizations planned that the Pledge be said before each meeting, then fine.
I like the Pledge of Allegiance. It reminds me of the things my country stands for, and of how I should stand up for my country.
I wouldn't mind if it weren't said, either. I don't like going to meetings but I would go along with a format that includes it.
Sometimes I'm glad to be reminded of things I might ordinarily think about. (Like things that are done at church.) It seems odd to object to the Pledge.
- October 27, 2010 at 7:55 PM
- sue said...
might 'not' ordinarily think about
- October 27, 2010 at 7:57 PM
- MK said...
Perhaps the cretin wanted to hear the mexican national anthem, or better yet, allah hu akbar. That should be diverse enough.
- October 27, 2010 at 8:04 PM
She's a control freak and wouldn't admit it in front of the crowd. Her microphone gave her a feeling of dominance and her President gives her a false sense of security. If he doesn't have to, she doesn't either. :P
- October 27, 2010 at 9:23 PM
- Z said...
MK...too true!
Jen, you're wise for your age :-)
- October 28, 2010 at 4:11 PM


text:
The Vegan Kind (Box 42)
Around this time last month I found out about The Vegan Kind. I was amazed & happy to hear such a thing existed! After a little stalking on their website & social media platforms I thought it sounded like a great idea, so I ordered my first box.
I was so please with my first box I decide it would be a great thing to share on my blog. Not only is this a brilliant company, 'The Vegan Kind' sending out yummy goodies, but it's a great way to share new yummy Vegan products.
Rebel Kitchen Chia Mylk
This mylk is coconut based with tasty chia flavours & it still manages to keep a clean ingredients list. It's organic which is great but means it doesn't contain added calcium or B12. However it's so tasty, full of yummy warming flavours, I had mine warm one evening, however I can imagine it also tastes great cold.
Price at £1.70 online with Ocado.
Good Hemp Seed Hearts
So these came just in time for me… I had just run out of hemp seeds, I have them every morning in my breakfast. However I had never tried Good Hemp before, to be honest I think this may have been my favourite product from the box. These are great quality hemp seeds & delisious as a topping on breakfasts & other meals. I would never have thought of trying Hemp Seeds on mean meals before. A product I would definitely buy again!
Price on the online store at £4.49
InSprial Salted Caramel Coconut Pecks
So I love Coconut, everyone knows this! So I knew I was going to love these. I also really like InSprials Kale crisps, so I just new this was going to be an all round success! These are super tasty for an after lunch snack, sweet but not sickly. Crunchy & moreish! I would happily eat these again!
Price on the online store at £1.19
Ten Acre When Bombay got Spicy
These were the only things in the box that I first saw & wasn't massively excited for. I'm not a crisp person, I'm one of those. However I do like spice & I decided to be open minded, & I actually really liked them! Great taste & good thick crisp, not like the mainstream crumbly tasteless ones! If you are a crisp person you will LOVE these, they are great, for me, I enjoyed them, but unless I'm in a crispy mood I probably wouldn't have them again.
Price at 0.89p online in Holland & Barrett.
Consider it Chocolate Cream Egg
So this was prettttty tasty! Certainly a great Easter Treat from The Vegan Kind. I never had a cream egg before, but this was so tasty that if you loved them before turning Vegan this would certainly be a great replacement. So sweet, tasty, sugar, yes a little bit sickly, but oh my gosh amazing! That's exactly what I want from an Easter treat! This will definitely be on my Easter Wish List 2018!
Human + Kind Conditioner
I wasn't expecting something that wasn't foody related in my Vegan Kind box, so this was a nice surprise! Firstly it smells AMAZING! Made for dry hair, which is perfect for my overly bleached locks! The ingredients are some of my favourites; Shea butter & Avocado Oil. After using this for a week my hair feels soft & light again, a brilliant product, plus it's cruelty free, the best kind of product!
Price on the online store at Euro 7.95
Overall a bunch of great products, amazing value for money & I'm looking forward to my May box. My favourite item had to be the Hemp Seeds, as they were tasty but so versatile & useful. Plus the bag lasts for ages! However I am looking forward to seeing the other products in the high street & purchasing them again!


text:
The Siebel 8.0 Customer Order Management: Pricing Configuration course is a technical course designed for members of the team responsible for configuring and administering pricing policies in a Siebel 8.0 Order Management (COM) implementation. Foundational concepts and Siebel Tools are first introduced so students can successfully complete technical labs in the course. The course next reviews basic pricing administration involving price lists, promotions, and volume discounts. The remainder of the course addresses more advanced pricing policies that are supported by Siebel dynamic pricing procedures. Students first learn about the underlying COM pricing architecture that is based on the Product Selection and Pricing engine. With this foundation students then learn how to configure advanced pricing policies such as discount matrices, attribute adjustments, and hierarchical account and product adjustments.
- Trajanje: 3 dana
- Cijena (bez PDVa): 11.850 kn
- Oblik učenja: Training On Demand (TOD), Classroom Training, Live Virtual Class (LVC)
- Preuzmite detaljan sadržaj: PDF format


text:
In this 5* hotel SPA complex you will feel heaven on the Earth!
Resort Borjomi the century before enjoyed an indisputable authority, as evidence by the fact that all the surrounding resorts were the property of the royal family, with the main residence in Likani. The main value of Borjomi is unique mineral water, which definitely can compete with other world-famous mineral waters.
5* Complex CROWNE PLAZA BORJOMI 5* is located in the famous resort Borjomi between a mountain slope and a small river, far from noisy highways within walking distance of the city park and natural spring of mineral water. The hotel has 101 rooms with panoramic views of the city or the surrounding area. The rooms are equipped with everything necessary for a comfortable stay.
In the complex:
Each room has a large LCD TV; safe; air conditioning; special pillows for sleeping; tea and coffee; mini-bar (for a surcharge); bathroom with toiletries. On the territory there is a business center; two restaurants; bar; cafe on the terrace; 6 conference rooms for up to 500 people; gym; children's room; Wellness&Spa center with a swimming pool, saunas and various relaxation zones;
Complex focuses on: SPA treatments.
In the spa centre:
- Reflexology;
- Geothermal massage;
- Hydrotherapy of the large intestine;
- Procedures for professional care of the body, scalp and face;
- Ayurveda treatments;
- Different types of massage (Hawaiian, Thai, Balinese, relieving stress, etc.);
- Himalayan salt hydrotherapy.
The price includes:
- Accommodation in a double standard room on 2 pax per 1 night;
- Free Wi-Fi internet access
- Gym, swimming pool, saunas (chamomile, mint, Finnish);
The hotel's medical staff will take care of your health and good mood.


text:
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About airchie
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Your Current Device(s)
Nexus One, Cyan 5.0.5
Please opena a Xiaomi (Mi-One and Mi-Two) Section
airchie replied to Sere83's topic in Other Devices+1 !!! I saw the Mi-2 recently and my jaw hit the floor. It looks awesome and I believe they should be very hacker-friendly? Can you tell us how easy it is to run custom ROMs etc on the Mi-1 you have? If anyone knows where to get your hands on these phones in the UK, please let us all know. Is there any issues with taking this phone to this country with regards to radios/language etc? Thanks in advance all. :)
Hi guys, I have a friend looking to spend no more than £100 on an android smartphone. I saw this and it looks like a great phone for the price. What's everyone's thoughts on it? Is there something better I should consider advising my friend to buy? Thanks in advance. :)
TOTAL noob requires assiatance!
airchie replied to Paul_D's topic in LG Optimus 2XYou could try a factory reset? That would lose all your data etc though so prob a last resort. What state is the phone in now, can you use it at all? Or does it fail to even start up?
restoring JUST sms/text backup in titanium backup.
airchie replied to Stevvie's topic in LG Optimus 2Xhttp://matrixrewriter.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=TB+-+User%27s+guide#Restoring_your_messages ;)
Basebands, RILs and custom ROMs...
airchie posted a topic in LG Optimus 2XHi all, I've recently updated my baseband to the 0622 version as described here: http://android.modaco.com/content/lg-optim...35-21-20110622/ Now, I'm giving Cyanogenmod 7.1 RC1 a try on my phone and seem to be having receprion issues. After doing some research, I'm thinking it must be related to having the wrong RIL installed. My questions are: 1. Am I right in thinking that RILs are generally installed along with a custom ROM? 2. How can I find out which RIL I currently have installed? 3. How can I copy/flash the correct RIL to my current setup? Thanks in advance. :blink: <ninja edit> Some further questions... 4. Are RILs/basebands affected by running different kernels? 5. Would there be an advisable baseband/RIL/kernel combo for a UK user on GiffGaff? Thanks in advance. :huh:
Micro HDMI Cable
airchie replied to airchie's topic in LG Optimus 2XNice one, thanks. :D
Micro HDMI Cable
airchie posted a topic in LG Optimus 2XHi guys, I just bought an Optimus 2X off ebay and its arrived in good condition etc. However, there was no HDMI cable in the box. Should there have been? Also, can anyone suggest a good place to buy a decent one cheap? Cheers, :D
Best place to buy Huawei U8800 in the UK?
airchie replied to That-Guy's topic in Huawei U8800 / Ideos X52nd That-guy, giffgaff is really good. Think I might get one of these to play with before giving it to my mum. Look forward to seeing your deal Paul, as my membership just ran out... :P
O2X for £330??
airchie posted a topic in LG Optimus 2XHi guys, I was thinking about buying the O2X from Play at £330. Had just about come to term with the spend and went to buy it but the price has gone up again. Does anyone know of anywhere else selling it cheap? Cheers, Craig :P
29 Mar: 2 must have apps for the 2X
airchie replied to PaulOBrien's topic in LG Optimus 2XI would seriously miss the coloured trackball notification on my N1 if I upgraded. If its possible to have the key lights light up in different patterns depending on email/sms/im/call reciept, then it would certainly lessen the blow. :D
Best phone to get?
airchie posted a topic in LG Optimus 2XAll, I've been watching the threads in this forum subsection with interest. It seems that this phone is showing how it should be done with it being easily mod-able and obviously extremely quick. Is there any other phones like this (other than the Nexus S) that are as easily modded and with such nice hardware? I'm due to change my phone soon as my Nexus One has dust under the screen (again) so I'm thinking this looks like the top contender for my hard-earned... I just want to be sure there's not any other phones out there I should be considering. Thanks guys. :D
My LG Optimus 2X root / hack / dev progress / findings braindump
airchie replied to PaulOBrien's topic in LG Optimus 2XThis thread is sounding very interesting. I currently have a Nexus One but I'm getting dust under the screen (again) and I'm looking for a new handset. I'm very disappointed with HTC and co locking down their phones and I want to be sure I get the same level of freedom with my next phone that I've enjoyed with my Nexus. Do you guys think the LG O2X is the way forward? I must admit, from reading this thread it seems Paul thinks so. If so, I may order one soon... :D Thanks in advance :D
Planning on getting a 2X? Shall we do a group-buy MoDaCo package?
airchie replied to PaulOBrien's topic in LG Optimus 2XHi guys, I can whole-heartedly recommend giffgaff. I too was thinking "where's the catch?" but I've been with them for a few months now and everything works as it should. There's even a nice little app on the market that adds in the relevant APNs and lets you check your balances etc. If you're planning on trying them out, you can order a SIM through my account and we both get a free £5 credit. :D http://giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/airchie Also, their forums are extremely good for getting specific questions answered. :D
Best place/price to get a Moto Defy?
airchie replied to airchie's topic in Motorola Defy / Defy+Nobody?? :(
Best place/price to get a Moto Defy?
airchie posted a topic in Motorola Defy / Defy+Hi guys, My friend is looking to get a moto defy and is wondering what the best place to buy it outright is? He's probably thinking of using giffgaff so would need it sim unlocked. Thanks in advance for any advice. Cheers :(


text:
Pedantry - Moved to http://pedantry.fistfulofeuros.net
ped.ant.ry \'ped-*n-tre-\
An ostentatious and inappropriate display of learning. (WordNet)
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Saturday, March 22, 2003
Good stuff in today's Guardian
First, Richard Dawkins editorial:
Bin Laden's victory
The population of the US is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the US leads the world by miles. You would think that a country with such resources, and such a field of talent, would be able to elect a leader of the highest quality. Yet, what has happened? At the end of all the primaries and party caucuses, the speeches and the televised debates, after a year or more of non-stop electioneering bustle, who, out of that entire population of 300 million, emerges at the top of the heap? George Bush.
I've got my issues with Dawkins, but not on this matter. Go man, go!
And did anybody know that Slovenia was holding a referendum on joining NATO tomorrow?
Slovenia split in run-up to Nato referendum
President Janez Drnovsek pledged this week that Slovenia would have no part in the war in Iraq, assuaging popular anxiety that joining Nato would mean having to follow US orders.
Slovenia is also holding its referendum on EU membership at the same time. The EU part is near certain to pass - it's polling around 80% yes - but what if Slovenia decides to join the EU and blows off NATO? That would be yet another blow to America and the UK, and a win for France and Germany.
Out of Friesia
(Read Part 1, 2.)
I feel that at this point I should provide some background information about Mennonites, and how they came to be in Russia. If I had Grandpa's library on hand, this would be a piece of cake. He had dozens of books on Mennonite history and culture. However, his books are in Canada, in his last house, and I am seven time zones east of them.
I am therefore warning you: I'm working mostly from memory and this is not a complete history. It's probably not fully accurate, it's not very serious, and it should be treated in the same category of historiography as that capsule history of America in the middle of Bowling for Columbine.
It all starts in the Reformation.
Menno Simons was born in 1492 in Friesia and was a religious radical. He went beyond the teachings of other Protestants to claim that baptism and communion did not bestow God's grace on people. He was the major - although not the only - figure in a movement called the "Anabaptists", so named because they rejected baptism as the road to salvation. His followers were primarily in the Low Countries - Friesia, Holland and Limburg especially - and in Switzerland and southern Germany.
They had a number of doctrines that were unique at the time. They rejected the legitimacy of the state and of monarchies. They rejected police and courts, and renounced violence altogether, refusing to go to war or to support executions. They felt that Christians should resolve their disputes in a Christian way, through the community and the church.
They were sort of medieval libertarian-socialists, living in their own communities apart from the rest of the world, handling their affairs internally and using shunning and banning as their only punishments. They did not view themselves as Protestants or Catholics, but as a sort of "third way." This - for obvious reasons - did not endear them to local government during the devastating religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries and Anabaptists spent most of that time trying not to get killed.
To escape this violence, many of the Swiss and Swabian Anabaptists went to America as did so many other German refugees, settling first in the area now known as Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This group included the Anabaptist Brethren, who later became Quakers and other groups; the Amish, who are relatively well known in the US; and the Mennonites who now live across much of Pennsylvania and the midwest.
There, they became involved in various peace movements, the anti-slavery campaigns, and the organisations their biological and ideological descendants founded over the years continue to play a role in American political life. I don't doubt many Anabaptist organisations participated in the recent anti-war marches.
The other group - the Low Country Mennonites - have a somewhat different history. Mennonites, for all their rejection of Calvinist doctrine, were known as an industrious bunch. In the mid-16th century, the various big-wigs of what is now northern Poland encouraged them to move to into the swampy and unproductive land of the Vistula River delta, where it was hoped they would be good little Hollanders and drain the swamps to produce useable farmland. They were only permitted in Catholic Poland under restricted conditions. They could not leave their reserves and convert the local population, although quite a few Poles wandered in over the years, leaving much sperm and a few common Mennonite last names like "Sawatzky."
The Vistula Delta
They were also free of regular taxation and military service, and were for the most part left to their own devices. It is in Poland that the Dutch Mennonite language developed - a sort of creole of Friesian, Limburgish Lower Saxon, north Holland dialects and the German used in church and in interactions with outsiders. Like all good libertarians, freedom from the clutches of the state - in order to sustain their own rather illiberal ways - became a major part of the Mennonite lifestyle.
This arrangement with the Polish nobility lasted until the mid-18th century. The first partition of Poland in 1772 made the Vistula delta Prussian territory. Mennonite doctrine - pacifism, piety, segregation and tax-free living - were not very compatible with the Prussian way of doing things. Things weren't looking good for the Dutch Mennonites.
It is with the accession of Catherine the Great to the Russian throne that things start to change. Catherine II - a German princess who married into the Romanovs and is generally believed to have been complicit in the removal of her unpopular and possibly insane husband - expanded Russia's borders and pressed for the modernisation of the state. To this end, she invited many thousands of Germans to settle Russia's immense and largely empty territory, bringing with them industry, culture and hopefully a tax base. Catherine the Great is credited with many things, but one thing that is often forgotten is that she was the first to try to modernise a country by providing internationals with tax vacations.
Catherine the Great
There is, in fact, an English translation of her offer to foreigners on the web over here.
For the Dutch - now Prussian - Mennonites, this was a dream come true, and over the course of the following century, most of them took her up on her offer, especially after she explicitly exempted them from military service, then and forever. Only a handful remained in Prussia, ending up living in Germany after 1870. There were still a number of Mennonites in the Vistula delta in 1945 when they were expelled after the Oder-Neisse line became the East German border.
In Russia, they thrived in their fertile, tax-free enclaves in Ukraine. They - along with the other Russian Germans - built much of Russia's heavy industry. However, any deal that good could never last, and it didn't. Alexander III - starting in the 1860's - began requiring all schools in Russia to use Russian and began raising taxes on foreigners. For a lot of Mennonites, this interference was the writing on the wall and a search for some new tax-haven began. At this point, yet another remote political event offered the Russian Mennonites a new land to settle.
Our story now shifts 8000km to the east, where we have to briefly talk about Louis Riel. Riel was - until fairly recently - regarded much as Americans regard Benedict Arnold: a traitor against his state, an insurrectionist, and a madman. In recent years, he has been rehabilitated, and made into something of an honorary "Father of Confederation" - the Canadian equivalent of the founding fathers, except we recognise that our country was founded by a bunch of politicians. Except for Louis Riel, a budding Ché Guevara born a century too soon.
In 1869, Riel started a rebellion in the Red River valley - the part of Canada now known as southern Manitoba. At the time, the area wasn't part of Canada, it was the territory of the Hudson Bay Company which enjoyed a semi-exclusive right to exploit and administer most of what is now Canada. The residents - mostly the descendants of French traders and aboriginal women known as Métis - did not appreciate a situation in which they were ruled by a board of directors living London. Louis Riel hoped to remedy this situation by taking control of the valley and negotiating self-rule of some form within the British Empire. He briefly established his independent state of Assiniboia in western Canada. The Canadian army put it down.
Canada in 1870, after the Riel Rebellion
Letting chartered corporations run physical territory was, by then, unfashionable in Great Britain and civil governments for colonies were all the rage. The lands of the Hudson Bay Company were turned over to Canada, giving it, with the exception of Newfoundland which only joined in 1949, its current borders.
But this only solved half the problem. French-Canadian nationalism existed even back then, and between Ontario and the Rockies, the French language and the Catholic church dominated the country. That was unacceptable. The French had rebelled once and inevitably would do so again. In 1885 Riel did just that, in a short lived rebellion in Saskatchewan. The US was expanding west, and looking lustfully at the undefended expanses of western Canada, and the Métis might decide they were better off under Washington than Ottawa.
This problem had arisen before in Canada. In the 1750's the British government had employed ethnic cleansing in Nova Scotia, incidentally founding Louisiana because that was where they sent the refugees. But the Peace of Paris at the end of the French and Indian war ensured the rights of French-Canadians, and ethnic cleansing was now also unfashionable. The only real option was to out-populate them. Fill the land with people loyal to the Queen (Victoria, that is) and turn the French and Métis into a minority in their own land.
The problem was that there was no readily available population to do so. Britain was industrialising. Standards of living were, in fits and spurts, rising. Transporting convicts was becoming passé as the Victorians reformed their prisons, and what transportation and emigration was taking place was mostly bound for Australia. For the British public, having to choose between the warm beaches of New South Wales and the frozen wastelands of Canada was a pretty easy choice.
So, who could they find who was foolish enough, stupid enough, or hard up enough to move to western Canada?
If Jeopardy had been played in Victorian London among the British diplomatic corps, and had Alex Trebek offered the answer "foolish, stupid and hard up" in the category of "International Affairs", the winning question would have been "What is Russia?" The "prison of nations" was teeming with inconvenient masses unloved by the central state.
Through a complex political deal between Russia and the United Kingdom, Russia's unwanted were encouraged to move to Canada, and thousands of Ukrainians, Germans, Poles, Finns, Doukhbours and some Russians themselves took them up on the offer. This emigration included many Mennonites, including my mother's grandfather, who came to Canada in 1876 when he was in his early 20's and is recognised as one of the founders of the small city of Steinbach, Manitoba.
Canada let the Mennonites have a deal not unlike the one they enjoyed in Russia. Two specific areas in Manitoba - in the middle of the pre-existing French communities of the Red River valley - were set aside for Mennonites and divided into quarter square mile sections, one per family. One was on the east side of the Red River, the other one the west. This geographic split resulted in a dialect difference in Mennonite Plautdietsch between the Mennonites who lived on one side and the ones who lived on the other. My mother refers to her dialect (from the east side) as ditzieda - "this-side-ish" - and calls the other dialect jonzieda - "that-side-ish." Unsurprisingly, the people from the west side of the river also call their dialect ditzieda and the other jonzieda.
After the Russian revolution, many of the Mennonites who had chosen to stay in Russia followed suit, coming to the prairies as refugees sponsored by the relatively wealthy Mennonites of Canada. That is where Grandpa re-enters this story, now a seven year old boy, with a family that no longer owns much of anything and wants to get out of the Soviet Union while there's still time.
(Next part by Sunday morning.)
Addendum: I should add that Mennonite migration didn't stop in Canada. In the late 1920's, Manitoba began forcing English-language public education on all its diverse ethnic communities. For many Mennonites, public education was the thin end of the wedge that would destroy their community and values. For them, it was Russia all over again.
So, they found new lands where their isolation could again be preserved, in Chihuahua, Mexico and the Chaco desert in Paraguay. Later, in the 50's and 60's, Mennonite colonisation expanded into Belize and Bolivia.
This unusually international scope to Mennonite demographics was brought home for me in a Mi Pueblo grocery store in Mountain View, California. There is a Russian Mennonite specialty cheese made in Manitoba called New Bothwell Cheddar. It really is an extraordinary cheese, but it's unavailable outside of western Canada.
At Mi Pueblo, I came across queso menonita chihuahua and bought some out of simple curiosity. It tasted a whole lot like New Bothwell.
Friday, March 21, 2003
'We're Good People': A Play In One Act
(once again via Electrolite)
Go. Read. It's worth it.
Shock and Awe
From - I can't believe this - from the Washington Times (via Atrios):
Will Bush be impeached? Will he be called a war criminal? These are not hyperbolic questions. Mr. Bush has permitted a small cadre of neoconservatives to isolate him from world opinion, putting him at odds with the United Nations and America's allies.
Well, I'll be damned. I would never in a million years have believed that the Moonie Times could publish something like this. Have they been hacked? Has hell frozen over? Tabarnac!
Also, in less shocking news, take a look at this post at Electrolite and notice the difference between leadership and jackassery.
Resistance was stiffer than expected in Umm Qasr
U.S. Marines poured over the Kuwaiti border just after dawn heading for Umm Qasr, but were almost immediately pinned down in a two-hour firefight with Iraqi soldiers armed with machineguns and anti-tank rockets.
So much for quick and easy and so much for expecting very little resistance. I'd been wondering why so many of the wonks were pressing this "it may not be over overnight" stuff after so much of "we're so strong they'll just fold up without a fight."
US, Britain Race Into Iraq, See War Over Soon
But at Umm Qasr, [British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon] said Iraq was putting up "stern resistance." "The Iraqis are not simply giving up in the way that some commentators have suggested that they would. And our forces are fighting," he told British television.
No word on Basra. It looks like the Americans haven't made it that far yet. If Umm Qasr put up stiff resistance, I wonder what the bigger centres will look like.
Update: 16:40 CET
Iraqis halt U.S. advance
NEAR NASSIRIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Resistance from Iraqi troops have halted U.S. forces advancing through southern Iraq near Nassiriya, a main crossing point over the Euphrates river.
And here I figured the Iraqis would just fold up in the south and try to defend the heartland around Baghdad. If this is what's getting through on the wires, I have to wonder what isn't getting through. Is it possible that the invasion is in serious trouble this soon?
There's nothing to do but speculate.
Update: 18:50 CET
France 2 is reporting massive bombing and speculating that the US has moved to this more aggressive strategy in response to difficulties prosecuting the ground war.
I haven't really blogged over the war since it started. Frankly, I haven't much intention to. There are other places you can go, where people spend far more of their time on it, and hash out whetever you want to hash out.
I considered posting a response to this from Rick Bruner's blog found via The 6th International. I got about half-way through when I realised how angry I sounded and stopped. It does little good now.
I'm actually somewhat disappointed in Mrs Tilton for finding this article so compelling. Except for an entirely excusable dalliance with evolutionary psychology - one I certainly would be hard put to condemn considering my own history as a former supporter of it - she usually has her head on fairly straight.
There isn't a single pro-war argument in the posting. The only pro-war case being made is in one sentence: I may be naive, but I do believe Saddam is a serious threat to the stability of that region, to the U.S., to the world and, not least, to his own citizens, who seem most neglected by all those who oppose war. It is naive to think that that makes war a better idea than continuing with containment and inspections or pressing for the expansion of the international presence in Iraq.
Frankly, lines like France can suck my weener are just begging for a fisking. The rest is a mixture of.. well, crap. Positions ostensibly taken by the war's oppenents, many of whom have simply said nothing more complicated than that peace seems to be working and peace is way better than war. Hoary clichés about European attitudes versus American ones. Really.
Bush could have taken the win without firing a shot. It's unlikely that Iraq has meaningful weapons of mass destruction and the new and more intrusive inspections regime made it even less likely to develop them. Keeping those troops there would still have given him the presence in the middle east he so clearly wants. It would also have established the international community in Iraq in such a way that a real alternative to Saddam Hussein - a domestic alternative - would have become much easier to support. Imagine if UN disarmament inspectors had been accompanied by human rights inspectors, and UN staff to distribute food and aid? That was exactly what France and Russia were proposing a month ago, but the US poo-pooed it. This could have been a big win for internationalism. The threat of force could have become a doorway to massive UN involvement in the country without war. It would have paved the way for international institutions to move directly into states to monitor human rights and armament. It would have set a precedent that the international community can actually support local people's aspirations instead merely furthering their own agendas.
However, it would have meant less glory for one George W Bush. I don't think there is any plausible argument the Bush is motivated by humanitarian concern for the people of Iraq. The only even vaguely plausible reason for going to war is the claim that American occupation is better than Saddam. That may be true, although it is by no means certain. America can be a harsh master, as many Latin American countries have found out over the last two centuries, and contemporary American leadership deals with problems by first reaching for their guns. However, letting whoever happens to be in the White House decide alone when war is justified is a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein could ever be. The gains to the Iraqi public do not outweigh the damage done by allowing American government to make decisions unilaterally about war without immediate provocation, or even credible pretexts.
Going to war when so many other options are available is inexcusable. And claiming that this hasn't been "unilateral" is nonsense. The decisions were made unilaterally, in America. To suggest that any other state in the "coalition of lip-service" had any say in this is to be blind, deaf and stupid.
Now what remains to be seen is who pays for the occupation. I expect America to go to Japan and the UK for money, and probably to hit the UN up for it too. In the Gulf War, the other states involved made large contributions to defray the costs, and US contributions to UN operations are fixed at 22% of the total. The people who made this mess need to pay for it, not the rest of the world.
But it won't work that way. I expect in the end, the UN will run the humanitarian operations, and the US will contribute a minority share. I expect France, Germany and Canada will end up paying plenty to rebuild a nation destroyed at least as much by American leaders as Saddam Hussein. Why will they do that? Because unlike America's leaders and so many of its hawks and counter to Mr Bruner's belief, those other nations' leaders and publics generally have a heart.
On to other topics...
I was at the protest in Leuven last night and I will be at the national protest in Brussels tomorrow. Are any other bloggers in Belgium planning on going? We could - I suppose - go as a group and represent ourselves as "expats for peace" or something.
One of the speakers at the Leuven rally last night - a very emotional Flemish poet reading a recent work on the war - was openly calling for a boycott of US and Israeli products. I doubt any real boycott is possible. The world economy is too interlinked, and too many companies have no real citizenship, for a boycott to do much good. But, not going chez McDo or buying Nikes does have the potential to underline the politcal case. I gather the boycott of American goods in the middle east is beginning to damage American firms.
It may even work here. Next to the location of last night's demonstration is a McDonald's. Somewhere in the ballpark of a thousand people were out in front of it, right at dinner time, and it was nearly empty. The kebap shop next door, however, was packed. I have noticed a disproportionate Kurdish presence among local kebap operators, so eating there could be viewed as an act of solidarity with the people of Iraq.
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Tout est chaos, à côté...
Some disturbing bits from the news today. First, this is going to have serious repercussions if it turns out America did it.
Wiretapping Found at French, German EU Offices
I live in Belgium, and I will be very unhappy if I start getting treated with suspicion over this.
Second, I want to point out this article in today's Le Figaro.
Le plan de défense de Saddam Hussein
It would be pretty foolish to put my money on Iraq in this war, but if Le Figaro is accurately portraying Saddam Hussein's strategy, he appears to be aiming for the longest and brutalest conflict he can, forcing the US to kill civilians in quite possibly record numbers, and maybe even - since this article claims his bunker is under the main international hotel - western journalists. Although I don't see any chance of survival for the Iraqi regime, the possibility that we're about to see a blood bath instead of a walk-over remains quite real.
This article made me think of something else I read a while back, and it took me a minute to find it.
War games rigged?
The US has the upper hand in weapons, so I suppose they could always resort to indescriminate bombing, but I think politically that would represent a US defeat. Someone who wants to make this hard on America may well be able to. This is something the war hawks just don't get: Saddam Hussein is not stupid, and now he has nothing to lose. Even if he has no effective weapons of mass destruction - and I suspect he doesn't - he has more than enough options if he really has 30,000 loyal troops and a chance to dig in. That is much of diplomacy seeks to avoid: the situation where one side has nothing left to lose. There is very little more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose.
Van Riper's description of America's untested tactics is all too plausible to me, as is the urban guerilla war proposed by Le Figaro, where every home, every car, and every street corner may well be packed to the brim with explosives and arms. A casualty averse America might well decide to simply wipe Baghdad off the face of the earth rather than get dirty fighting in it. Baghdad has 5 million people, over a fifth of the population of Iraq. Killing them all off will not endear America to anyone, including the ostensibly liberated.
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
How to Be Happy
Anybody who's come here from Brad Delong's blog looking for my review of Richard Layard's lecture, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it's almost 11pm and I have to work in the morning. My opinion of it is a little too complicated to just do a quick fisking, and frankly Layard doesn't deserve to be fisked.
I like to see social scientists thinking outside the box, and I agree for the most part with Layard's ultimate policy conclusions. But, I want to underline my problems with his methods and assuptions, and maybe outline a different way to go, one that is more heavily anthropological and less reliant on a quasi-econometric understanding of human emotion.
Tomorrow, I hope.
Unconfirmed report from Xinhua: Saddam has offered to resign
Saddam offered conditional step-down before Bush issued ultimatum: report
Xinhuanet 2003-03-18 14:03:56
(This is about 7am CET or 1am EST)
ABU DHABI, March 18 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein Monday offered a conditional step-down hours before US President George W. Bush gave him a 48-hour ultimatum to leave Iraq to avoid war, an Arabic website reported.
No mention yet in the international press. Xinhua has good Arab world coverage, but even they are quoting an unconfirmed website report. If true, it means that, once again, Bush is a man who can't take yes for an answer. For anyone who can read Arabic, the website is at us.moheet.com, and not as the Xinhua article reports. It looks like a regular news site to me.
Monday, March 17, 2003
Some good news on a Monday
It seems likely that a US invasion of Iraq will start in the next few days, possibly the next few hours. However, there is still some good news today, coming to us via Eschaton:
Brewery Magnate Joseph Coors, Who Helped Create Heritage Foundation, Dies at Age 85
"Without Joe Coors, the Heritage Foundation wouldn't exist - and the conservative movement it nurtures would be immeasurably poorer," the foundation's president, Edwin Feulner, said in a written statement.
Goodbye and good riddance. Now if only Richard Mellon Scaife and Rupert Murdoch would drop dead...
Sunday, March 16, 2003
Das Alter Buch
(Read Part 1)
Among the other documents included in Grandpa's magnum opus is a photocopy of the Alter Buch, or genealogy, started by my great-great grandfather, Peter Kornelius Martens. It is hand-written on unlined paper in German, using the old Fraktur script, also sometimes called "Gothic." Although I feel reasonably at ease reading German, the Alter Buch is completely illegible to me because I have virtually no knowledge of the old script - I can read it with great difficulty in print, but in hand-written cursive it's hopeless. For me, it would have been easier to read in hand-written Russian. The old German script was abolished by the Nazis in 1941 because Hitler believed it to have Jewish roots. Although after 1945 it was no longer illegal to use, it never recovered its pre-WWII popularity and nowadays it is rarely used and virtually never taught in school. It persisted among "diaspora" Germans in Canada for another decade or so after the war, but is by now forgotten most everywhere. Fortunately, Grandpa also transcribed the German into the modern script and translated it to English.
The Fraktur script
Many Mennonites are obsessed with genealogy. It's not about nobility - there is no status associated with discovering that you are descended from some worthy somewhere. I'm not quite sure where it comes from, but it is not a new thing. On the very first page of his record of the family, my ancestor has written Alter Buch! with a clearly visible exclamation mark. I can't understand the enthusiasm for family history that his punctuation indicates. Mennonites lived in very isolated communities centred on family and church, but the Martenses were among the most worldly and experienced of the Russian Mennonites, so this is a poor explanation. Alas, there is no way to ask him.
From the Alter Buch
1894 November 28sten ist unser Sohn Kornelius geboren. Uhr 10 Nachts. Gestorben 10 Jan. 1920.
The Mennonites in Russia, like many other German Russians, adopted the Slavic tradition of patronymic names. Each child's middle name was the name of the child's father. For the Russian-bilingual Germans, they would add the -ovich or -ovna suffixes to their middle names when they spoke Russian, and thus could fit in easily in Russian culture. The Martens line, however, had another interesting tradition. My great-grandfather's name was Kornelius Peter Martens, and his father was Peter Kornelius Martens, his grandfather Kornelius Peter Martens, and so on. It is unclear to me how far back this tradition went, but for a number of generations, one boy in the family had been named "Peter Kornelius" or "Kornelius Peter", alternating each generation. This tradition is clearly documented in my ancestor's Alter Buch, but it predates his record.
My great-grandfather was the last Martens so named. He chose to call his son Teodor Kornelius, retaining the patronymic tradition, but refusing to give his new-born son the name "Peter." Grandpa's name was later anglicised at the hands of British immigration and the Alberta school system to "Theodor Cornelius." He was known for most of his life as "Ted."
The period immediately following WWI was the end of an era in many ways, and the end of a naming tradition in a minor German family is the least of the things that disappeared. I don't know why my great-grandfather chose to put those names to an end. I like to imagine that he was a radical and a firebrand, sick of the oppression of the old Russia that pervaded every part of life and refusing to perpetuate it. But his death in 1920 from typhus means I will never know. It was not always the oldest boy who was so named, so he may simply have intended to father more boys in his life.
Still, small as it is in the greater scheme of things, it is the change with the most immediate effect on me. Had the name persisted, I would be "Peter Kornelius Martens." Who wants to have "Kornelius" as a name, even a middle one?
In this post, I'm going to print some of Grandpa's discussion of our extended family and their lives in Russia, starting with his own father.
M. V. Lomonsov Moscow State University
Moscow University circa 1904 (from Davidson Films)
My father had been a student at the university in Moscow. He had gone to the Kommerz Schule (business school) at Barvenkovo before going to the University of Moscow [now the Moscow State University] for five or six years. No doubt his studies were in anticipation of taking part in the family manufacturing business. The family had had a share in a farm implement factory that was four stories high and employed about 120 men. [The Martenses were kulaks and factory owners, that is to say, they were members of the hated bourgeoisie.]
Update: Added a section that I meant to include before, but forget due to my disorganised notes. Without a scanner, I'm doing this all by hand, so I miss stuff, or go back and find out that Grandpa made a mistake and have to correct it.
Nestor Makhno and me
I'm still reading Hobsbawm, and just finished the chapter on the Cold War. I find Hobsbawm is best read by doing a whole chapter in one sitting, then allowing it some time to sink in before embarking on the next chapter. Usually, it's just enough to time to read another book. Today, it was Dark Light by Ken MacLeod.
First, a very brief book review. For those of you who liked Cosmonaut Keep, you've probably already bought a copy of Dark Light and formed your own opinions. For those of you who haven't read Cosmonaut Keep, you'll need to buy it before making any sense of the sequel. For those of you who do not like any of MacLeod's novels and never have, don't bother, you won't like this book either. If, however, like me, you read but didn't like Cosmonaut Keep, but liked MacLeod's Fall Revolution books, I advise you to run right out and buy a copy of Dark Light. It's a lot better. There's a lot more sense to it and a much more coherent narrative, as well as a good bit of Marxist and semi-Marxist theory along with a nice rousing proletarian revolution. Good stuff. Though, the verb tenses switching back and forth - randomly from chapter to chapter - from the past tense to the present was a little weird.
MacLeod has a good quote attributed to him: History is the trade secret of science fiction. It's an appropriate quote for a socialist, and he demonstrates it in Dark Light.
What sparked this post, however, is a minor bit nearly at the end of the book:
"Bad news. What about the Party branch?"
What do Kronstadt, Makhno and the Barcelona Phone Company have to do with each other? Well, this is perhaps an obscure bit of history. Kronstadt is well known enough as the moment the Bolsheviks took action against leftist anarchists who had taken over Kronstadt island near St-Petersburg. The Barcelona Telephone Company refers to a violent incident in the Spanish Civil War when communists took action against an institution controlled by the anarchists. And Makhno... well, Nestor Makhno was an anarchist with a small army who took over a big chunk of the Ukraine during the Civil War. Later, he was exiled to Paris and still has his fans among the anti- and not-particularly-Marxist varieties of socialist radicals. All, in effect, refer to incidents when more orthodox communists took action against socialist anarchists.
The thing is, for some people, Makhno was a terrorist. I'm one of those people, and one of the reasons is that they terrorised my grandfather's parents, and my granfather used to tell the story regularly. Not that Grandpa could ever have entertained this thought, but getting rid of Makhno was one of the better things the Bolsheviks did. I have little sympathy for that kind of anarchist.
My paternal grandfather died shortly before this last Christmas, and I had to make a quick trip to Canada less than 3 months ago to go to his funeral. His death wasn't terribly tragic, at least for me. He was 84 years old and had been in poor health for some time. For me he hadn't so much died as just faded away over the course of several years. At some point, he ceased to be the Grandpa who spoiled me silly as a child, and became the clan patriarch whose philosophy, religion and outlook on life were utterly incompatible with mine. As I moved further from the family's homelands in Manitoba and took more control of my life as an adult, we saw less and less of each other, and when we did meet, Grandpa was less and less communicative as his health deteriorated.
However, I found myself crying for the first time in years on the flight back. What brought it on was the strangest thought: when I was a child, my father was Mr. Martens. That was what his students called him. My father died when I was 16 and after that, Grandpa was "Mr Martens" and hardly anyone outside the family ever seemed to call him anything else. Grandpa had only one son: my father, and I have only one brother and he's younger than me. That means that from now on I'm "Mr. Martens"
That was the thought that brought me to tears in the middle seat of a packed-full 747 somewhere over Greenland.
Over the years since his retirement, Grandpa had tried to compose a... well, I don't think memoire is the right word. It's more like a compendium of autobiographical correspondence and genealogical research combined with various reminisces and anecdotes. It fills four binders and one copy was made for each of the grandchildren.
Reading Hobsbawm talk about "the short twentieth century" reminds me that his generation - my grandfather's generation as much as Hobsbawm's - actually lived through pretty much all of it. That's a remarkable amount of change to live through.
People are your only real connection to the past, and to neglect my own people would be like claiming that I came out of nothing. So, along with my other reading, I've been moving slowly through this mass of text Grandpa left behind, with a half a mind to edit it down to something more manageable and adding some contextualising historical material, perhaps for my own future children to read, or to pass on to my less pedantically minded cousins.
This is the first bit, and it's the part that mentions Makhno. It's only lightly edited. I removed some material I thought was superfluous, edited spellings and sometimes syntax to more uniform and modern standards, changed the spellings of Russian place names to a the standard transcription, and moved several blocks around to provide better narrative flow. The text between square brackets are my own notes.
A photo taken from Khortitsa Island (from University of Toronto)
My earliest recollection is of a horse being sick. Mother thought I would have been about three years old when her sister Susan's husband Isaak Zacharias had come to visit, and their horse became sick. They lived at Osterwick on an estate known as Zachrisifeld in Russia. [These places are all in the contemporary Republic of Ukraine. My grandparents referred to the old country as Russia without exception, even though these events all take place after the establishment of the Soviet Union and during the Civil War that followed. They had little regard for changing borders or the new nations that replaced the old Romanov empire.]
Please let me know if this is at all interesting material. I'm quite serious about seeking feedback on it, but if it's really boring my readers to death I won't do it here. If it's interesting, I'll put more of it up.
Update: On rereading, I restored a paragraph that I think I shouldn't have cut as well as some maps and photos.
This is some print at the bottom of the page.


text:
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Post, Telecommunication and ICT has asked to take necessary initiatives to provide internet service at the same rate across the country. Such recommendation was placed in the 23rd meeting of the standing committee at the National Parliament House on Sunday, April 1, 2018.
Honorable Post, Telecommunication and ICT Minister Mustafa Jabbar and ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak attended the meting presided over by the President of the committee Mr. Imran Ahmed. Apart from them, Moazzem Hossain Ratan, Shawkat Hasanur Rahman (Rimon) and Kazi Feroze Rashid were also present in the meeting as committee members.
Currently, the approved call rate of mobile phones in Bangladesh is between minimum 0.25 taka and 2.00 taka, as it was informed in the meeting. Besides, the average call rate of different packages is 0.58 taka, whereas it was 9.60 taka in the year 2001. Due to introducing 10 seconds pulse service, subscribers can talk with more reasonable rate over mobile phones.
Total views: 4166


text:
April arrived in true Vermont style: with a blizzard. Luckily, we live in a state where friends and neighbors revel in the snow. We all enjoyed one more dose of sledding, skiing, snowshoeing, and snowball fights followed by a cozy night by the fire.
One week later, temperatures climbed past 75 degrees, we enjoyed the first blooms in our garden, and planted peas and spinach. Ahhhh, April in VT. After enjoying these mild days, I need to remind myself that a few more dramatic swings are likely before the weather turns truly springy.
With Easter right around the corner, I'm getting ready to do another batch of naturally died deviled eggs. Everyone's backyard chickens increase production as the days grow longer, so there are always plenty of delicious eggs to play with at this time of year. After hard boiling them and removing the shells, I'll soak a few eggs in each of the following solutions:
-Yellow: Boil water and add 1T turmeric. After solution has cooled, add a splash of apple cider vinegar and a dash of salt.
-Blue: Boil water and add 1/4 cup elderberries and 1 teaspoon baking soda. (If adding apple cider vinegar and a dash of salt, do so slowly to avoid volcanoes 🙂
-Red: Boil water and add three slices of beet. After solution has cooled, add a splash of apple cider vinegar and a dash of salt.
-Green, orange, purple…?: This year I'll be experimenting with combining the brines above to see what other colors are possible.
After they've soaked several hours (or longer), I'll slice my eggs in half and devil them. Mix egg yolks, mustard, mayonnaise, lemon juice, finely diced red onions, salt, black pepper and relish to taste. Mix until creamy and spoon filling into egg whites.
Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Spring!


text: Full Frontal Is Ready for the RNC, but Is Cleveland? 7/19/2016 11:19:14 AM by Glenn A city that includes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has no trouble attracting middle-aged white guys, but that didn't stop Cleveland from hosting the Republican National Convention where Donald Trump is poised to officially become a presidential candidate. A circus of this magnitude is impossible for sharp-tongued news skewers to ignore, which is why the team at Full Frontal is currently en route to the Forest City to show us what's going down at the gathering of the orange clown. Their journey has been documented and will be aired in a conveniently-packaged half hour special episode tomorrow at 10:30ep on Comedy. If you're the skeptical type, here's a quick look at what to expect: While it appears that the RNC is running smooth so far, some citizens of Believeland weren't so confident that everything would stay in place like Donald Trump's cursed-spider spun hair. The police are saying they're not properly equipped to handle a Trump storm that includes open-carry wack jobs brandishing big guns in the name of freedom, amid Trump protestors whom open-carry wack jobs have little patience for. Combine this recent unease between the public and the police, and things are looking pretty scary for local law enforcement, and citizens of the city. It's a far cry from the snooze fest Cleveland expected when it signed up two years ago, fully expecting a tepid celebration of Jeb Bush. In any case, the city is trying its best, and as Samantha Bee found out, they "Mostly Got This". Posts tagged with: Full Frontal RNC Samantha Bee Share: Tweet Print


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