MacBigot Cached Glances

Think the Presidential ‘Book of Secrets’ depicted in the movie ‘National Treasure II‘ was too far-fetched? Perhaps the movie just didn’t go far enough to explain that in addition to alien abductions and the answers to half the conspiracy theories ever concocted — there are personal secrets of our Presidents that are protected by the same legal barriers.

The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978…

…was further defined by Executive Order 12667, by Ronald Reagan, on January 18, 1989.

…which was revoked and replaced by Executive Order 13233, by President George Walker Bush, on November 1, 2001.

…which was revoked and replaced by Executive Order 13489, by President Barack Hussein Obama, on January 21, 2009. (He was inaugurated the day before, on January 20, 2009).

Never mind all the campaign speeches in which he told throngs of Believers that on his first day in office, he would do their bidding before anything else. Instead, the Icon of Change first did what every politician since the beginning of time has done — he covered his own ass.

Okaaaaay, once more for the kids in the back row (who were too busy carefully forming spitwads to pay attention in History or Math class to realize that they might need this stuff to be able to VOTE effectively as adults):

From WashingtonPost.com:

“Projected Deficit
In the first independent analysis, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that President Obama’s budget would rack up massive deficits even after the economy recovers, forcing the nation to borrow nearly $9.3 trillion over the next decade.”

“WELL, AT LEAST WE AREN’T GIVING THE SAME TAX BREAKS TO THE RICH THAT BUSH WAS, RIGHT?”

That’s correct, we won’t be — nor will YOU be getting the same tax breaks. Oh, you didn’t know that YOU benefited as much as ‘those evil rich folks’ from Bush’s growth-incentive tax plan? Here’s what you gleefully gave up when you elected The One as your ‘Tax Savior’ (we’ll post another chart with a third column after Obama’s fourth year):

Think I’m making this up? Here’s just the beginning: “Backdoor taxes to hit middle class” (news.yahoo.com) [PDF archive]

For a clearer picture of why the Progressives hope American voters are too stupid, ignorant, and uninformed to do the math, take a moment to read the illuminating post from last year: How Taxes Work — or, ‘How to Pay for Beer’.

There are ‘media professionals’ who we used to rely on to be objective, that now are firmly in the camp of more government, less individual freedoms — purely on the basis of their own philosophical wants (and completely aside from any evidence that such a utopia can be engineered despite the thousands of years of human history that says otherwise). Those media people, like Chris Matthews, who act as the mouthpiece of some imagined Moral Majority use tactics like ridicule, defamation, and sheer volume to shout down anyone who dares ask the right questions.

Think the government is taking too much and representing you too little? You’re a TeaBagger (some may consider this link NSFW).

Wonder out loud if the government has a right to change the rules or business and finance ‘just to even out the playing field’? Your professionalism, work ethic, and personal life are now targets for the Leftist media to drag through the streets like the entrails of a half-dead dog.

Find it odd that our President has no paper trail, no historical archive of college term papers, no certifiable birth certificate? You’re a kook, and as crazy as the ‘Moon Truthers’.

Want Congressional ‘transparency’ to stop being an ongoing campaign slogan, and to actually occur while it might still do some good? Your elected representatives are just acting in an obstructionist fashion by demanding to sit at the table, and asking C-SPAN to be let into the room.

Do you find it easier to find Socialist similarities between what is happening now under Obama’s watch, with the Left-heavy Congress patting each other on the back behind closed doors — and Hitler’s rise to power — despite all the ‘BusHitler’ name-calling of the last 8 years? You’re a Racist.

So the real question here is, “Are the Progressives/Liberals who run our three branches of government CORRECT — Are You Stupid?“

…because the 9-year-old has chosen it to sing in her school talent show (they’re using it to raise money to send for Haiti relief). (LYRICS)

I’d spent a few days hunting around the ‘net, looking for the backtrack recording. Failed.

I’m a keyboardist myself — but I’ve tried to pluck it out on a little guitar we have laying around. It’s a beautiful, but simple song… so if there was any chance in (hot place) for me to pick it up in time for her audition on Monday, I’d handle it. But the woman who promised to love, honor, and not hold back the positive criticism has not (yet) been impressed — so she’s trying to track down a friend of the family who might have a couple of hours to spare.

Now, after a week of struggling (my fingers just don’t bend around a fretboard yet), I just found (and bought) the backtrack and legit chord sheet from JJ Heller’s site — unfortunately it looks like they ship a CD, rather than sending it electronically: http://www.jjheller.com/store.asp …so it likely won’t be here by Monday.

I’m hoping Miss Twinkle Toes can audition with JJ’s original recording in a couple of days, if her school is understanding enough (I doubt it). But just in case, I’ll keep trying to get more comfortable with those cord changes on my own…

Below is my favorite version of it — with JJ playing the harmonica. The Wife likes the studio recording with occasional smatterings of piano (no harmonica); but she’s not always right, you see.

I wish the woman who promised to love, honor, and do my darning had seen this video in time…

“This isn’t the Democratic party of our fathers and grandfathers. This is the party of Woodstock hippies. I was at Woodstock — I built the stage. And when everything fell apart, and people were fighting for peanut-butter sandwiches, it was the National Guard who came in and saved the same people who were protesting them. So when Hillary Clinton a few years ago wanted to build a Woodstock memorial, I said it should be a statue of a National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie.”

- John Ratzenberger at a rally for Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown

Voter fraud watch:
Phony Calls Tell Massachusetts Residents Pro-Life Group Opposes Scott Brown (LifeNews.com)
Massachusetts Senate Race Voter Fraud Watch (MichelleMalkin.com)
Scott Brown’s abortion problem (ThePhoenix.com)
RCP.Com: All Polls (But Kos) Now Favor Scott Brown (ConstitutionClub.org)
Scott Brown’s Misguided Response to Mike Capuano’s MTA Endorsement (BlueMassGroup.com)

With the help of their DVR, my wife’s mother has collected every episode of her new favorite show, The Sing-Off. We’ve watched the second and third episodes this Sunday, and love the fact that they didn’t waste our time with a bunch of tone-deaf weirdos that have no business being handed 15 whole minutes of fame.

So I took a couple of minutes to locate some of our favorite contestants on the web:

The SoCals
Nota
Beelzebubs
Voices of Lee

H/t Examiner.com:

The Canadian Centre for Home Education (CCHE) has released the results of a research project titled: Fifteen Years Later: Home-Educated Canadian Adults (pdf).

Studies suggest that homeschoolers succeed academically as compared to schooled peers, but do they grow into socially well-adjusted adults? This new study suggest that they do.

Findings

When measured against average Canadians ages 15 to 34 years old, home-educated Canadian adults ages 15 to 34 were more:

• Socially engaged. 69 percent participated in organized activities at least once per week, compared with 48 percent of the comparable population.

• Highly paid. Average income for homeschoolers also was higher, but perhaps more significantly, while 11 percent of Canadians ages 15 to 34 rely on welfare, there were no cases of government support as the primary source of income for homeschoolers.
• Happier. 67.3 percent described themselves as very happy, compared with 43.8 percent of the comparable population. Almost all of the homeschoolers (96 percent) thought homeschooling had prepared them well for life.

Another from the mailbag:

Did you ever wonder why there are no dead penguins on the ice in Antarctica – where do they go?

Wonder no more ! ! !

It is a known fact that the penguin is a very ritualistic bird which lives an extremely ordered and complex life.

The penguin is very committed to its family and will mate for life, as well as maintaining a form of compassionate contact with its offspring throughout its life.

If a penguin is found dead on the ice surface, other members of the family and social circle have been known to dig holes in the ice, using their vestigial wings and beaks, until the hole is deep enough for the dead bird to be rolled into and buried.

The male penguins then gather in a circle around the fresh grave and sing:

“Freeze a jolly good fellow”

“Freeze a jolly good fellow.”

Then they kick him in the ice hole.

You really didn’t believe that I know anything about penguins, did you!?!?

Yes, I’m sooooo lazy!

• Virtual Keyboard
  
• Play Online Piano
  
• CMagics Virtual Piano
  
• Interactive Online Piano
  
• e-board interactive piano

I’ve never done this before — and as there hasn’t been a reason for me to try, I never new how easy it is to create an ISO image for the Windows realm (I regularly mount an ISO image in Parallels as a disk, but never created one for myself).

Jeff Geerling has provided the answer:

1. Open Disk Utility (located in Applications>Utilities folder).
2. Drag your disk image into the left-hand pane (where all your drives are listed) of Disk Utility.
3. Click on the file you just dragged into Disk Utility (should appear in the left-hand column).
4. Click on the ‘Images’ menu, then choose ‘Convert…’
5. When the ‘Convert Image’ dialog pops up, select ‘DVD/CD Master’ from the ‘Image Format’ pop-up menu.
6. Name your file, with ‘.cdr’ at the end of the filename, then click ‘Save.’
7. Disk Utility will convert the file to an ISO image. After this finishes, replace the ‘cdr’ at the end of the filename (in the Finder) to ‘iso’.
8. Now, the disk should be burnable on a Windows PC [Ed. Note: or, mountable in Parallels as a Windows-format CD!]

Note: Another way to do this is to use the program ISOlator.

Now, for my next trick, I need to make this ISO file bootable (because doing the above procedure kills the bootable nature of any ISO that you touch with Disk Utility). For that, we’ll be taking advantage of some tips from:

Editing a Bootable PC ISO Image using OSX (macosxuser posted at MacOSX.com)

My intended end-game is that I have a Ghost boot disk, and I have a handful of very large Ghost image files (15Gb total) that I want to coexist on the same ISO, so that I can use the same Vista image built for our Dell-using people (with some minor modifications to the hardware drivers) on the MacBook Pro laptops with Parallels that I am deploying to our media designers and Oracle programmers.

Yes, I could have recreated the image from scratch with the Vista install disk — but the intention here is to give our Mac-using programmers access to a Windows test environment so that they ’see’ what the rest of the staff sees when running our internal apps on a Vista-bearing Dell laptop.

More mirth from the mailbag:

IF ARCHITECTS HAD TO WORK LIKE WEB DESIGNERS

Dear Ms. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year.

Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be completed within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house that he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often.

Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

From the mailbag:

Five reasons to believe computers are female:

1. No one but the Creator understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. The message “Bad command or file name” is about as informative as, “If you don’t know why I’m mad at you, then I’m certainly not going to tell you.”
4. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.
5. No matter what your initial investment, you find yourself spending half of every paycheck on accessories for it.

However, another group of computer scientists (all female) think that computers should be referred to as if they were male.

Their reasons follow:

1. They have a lot of data, but are still clueless.
2. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem.
3. As soon as you commit to one you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better model.
4. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.
5. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the night.

Kim Jossfolk contributed this ‘net’-worthy gem:

A pretty little girl named Suzy was standing on the sidewalk in front of her home. Next to her was a basket containing a number tiny creatures; in her hand was a sign announcing FREE KITTENS.

Suddenly a line of big black cars pulled up beside her. Out of the lead car stepped a tall, grinning man.

“Hi there, little girl, I’m President Obama. What do you have in the basket?” he asked.

“Kittens.” little Suzy said.

How old are they? asked Obama.

Suzy replied, “They’re so young, their eyes aren’t even open yet.”

“And what kind of kittens are they?”

“Democrats,” answered Suzy with a smile.

Obama was delighted. As soon as he returned to his car, he called his PR chief and told him about the little girl and the kittens.

Recognizing the perfect photo op, the two men agreed that the president should return the next day, and, in front of the assembled media, have the girl talk about her discerning kittens.

So the next day, Suzy was again standing on the sidewalk with her basket of “FREE KITTENS” when another motorcade pulled up, this time followed by vans from ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN.

Cameras and audio equipment were quickly set up and rolling, in time to watch Obama glide over to little Suzy.

“Hello, again,” he said, “I’d love it if you would tell all my friends out there what kind of kittens you’re giving away.”

“Yes sir,” Suzy said. “They’re Republicans.”

Taken by surprise, the president stammered, “But… but… yesterday, you told me they were DEMOCRATS.”

Little Suzy smiled and said, “I know. But today, they have their eyes open.”

From the mailbag:

While trying to escape through Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden found a bottle on the sand and picked it up. Suddenly, a female genie rose from the bottle and with a smile said, “Master, may I grant you one wish?” Osama responded, “You ignorant, unworthy daughter-of-a-dog! Don’t you know who I am? I don’t need any common woman giving me anything.”

The shocked genie said, “Please, I must grant you a wish or I will be returned to that bottle forever.” Osama thought a moment, then grumbled about the impertinence of the woman and said, “Very well, I want to awaken with three American women in my bed in the morning. So just do it and be off with you.

The annoyed genie said, “So be it!” and disappeared.

The next morning Bin Laden woke up in bed with Lorena Bobbitt, Tonya Harding and Nancy Pelosi at his side.

His manhood was gone, his knees were broken, and he had no health insurance.

Praise be to Allah, and the wisdom of his followers.

Maybe your kids are old enough that they’ve figured out email accounts are ‘free’, and they’re already ‘out there’, ‘in the wild’, keeping in touch with all their friends.

But if they’re not, you may be wondering whether there is a way to let your kids talk with others by email without letting them off the leash entirely — there is a lot of disgusting junk that lands in most open email accounts these days, and predators that you would like to shield your children from as long as possible.

Older children might just need the firm, guiding hand of a responsible adult — but younger children, to whom you might not be ready to explain the 14th ‘male enhancement’ advertisement that has arrived this week, might be better off in a safer, ‘gated community’ approach to email.

In addition to strict filtering, most of these services allow you, as a parent, to restrict incoming messages to only those senders that are listed in the child’s address book.

So if you’re looking for an inexpensive gift this season, how about giving your kids their own email accounts?

Below is a list of several sites that will provide email accounts for free or at low cost — but don’t just choose by price; each of these is designed just a little differently, and are aimed at slightly different audiences.

Look for one that best fits the maturity and needs of your children — and then let grandma and your kids’ other email-savvy friends know in advance so that there will be a handful of messages waiting when they log in for the first time!

—–
PikLuk.com (FREE, both email and web safety targeted at very young children, only work on Windows)
ZillaDog.com (FREE, no limits to number of children)
ComputerMail.net (FREE, ad-suppported for unlimited family size)
KinderStart.com ($14.95/year for one child)
Zoobuh.com ($30/year for each child)
KidMail.net ($30/year for your whole family)
SurfBuddies.com ($36/year for up to five kids)
KidsEmail.org ($58/year for up to four kids)
KidSafeMail.com ($54/year for up to four kids)
Safe2Read.com ($28 for up to 10 kids)

Schools and other kid-centric organizations looking to provide safer-than-normal email environments should look into vendors that specialize in meeting stricter federal guidelines. A good examples is Gaggle.net.