The Bleg from the Core I

Thanks to your prayers, my financial situation has been very much improved over the past 18 months: I have a steady day job, I'm doing a little writing on the side (yes, I know, it's been a while since you've seen anything, but I have just finished one article and I have a couple more in the works), and I was able to refinance my mortgage a few months ago, which cut my monthly expenses by $150. If I hadn't been able to do that, I would have had to put my house on the market.

But I still have to cut expenses further. Please consider helping me to foot the bill for my websites and Internet access. In a way, it's not a whole lot. The Blog from the Core and ELCore.Net cost me $32/month, and my cable-modem Internet connection costs me $40/month. On the other hand, $72/month is more than I can afford for very much longer. (That much, if freed up, would cover my electric bill and phone bill. Believe me, I do not live extravagantly.)

I think it's worthwhile to keep The Blog from the Core going. It's been six months since I last published any stats. Here are the stats from the middle of last week (as of 23-Nov-2004 12:26 PM EST); I haven't bothered to update the figures since then, partly because when I checked earlier today the figures hadn't been updated on the server for the weekend yet.

And here are the stats from the past three Octobers (October 2004 being the last month for which I have complete stats):

Note, from 2002 to 2003, the stats didn't quite double; from 2003 to 2004, though, they pretty much tripled.

Here are a couple of graphics showing considerable growth over the past few months.

And here are some stats from the Ecosystem at The Truth Laid Bear; I haven't bothered updating the graphic since the middle of last week because the TTLB site keeps saying "Database being updated — check back again later for full details":

As a reminder, Faithful Reader, The Blog from the Core exists primarily to share articles and poetry, especially, that I think are interesting or important. In that respect, it's a wider continuation of informal e-mail lists I used years ago to share things with friends and relatives. It's also an outlet for my thoughts and feelings, too, which some people (to my continuing amazement) actually want to know about.

Though I naturally try to keep up with current events, I also like to blog items of more enduring interest. Thus, the archives are truly a trove of reading material. I usually keep a week's worth of blogs on the main page: take a look at what's on the main page on any given day, and that will likely give you a pretty good idea of the kind of material one can find in the archives.

Please consider helping to support my efforts when you can. I have no desire to make money from The Blog from the Core or ELCore.Net, but I really can't afford to continue to lose money on them. If a handful of folks can throw a handful of dollars in donations my way every month or two, it will make all the difference in the world. I plan to post a reminder bleg towards the end of each month — when the bills come due.

Thanks.

P.S. Links to articles of interest are always most welcome.

[Follow-up: Re: The Bleg from the Core I.]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 11/29/04 09:34:31 PM
Categorized as Blog Stuff.

What's Up With This?

The other day, I read some pundit somewhere say that his viewing of the new movie Alexander gave him more laughs than any other movie since Airplane. Airplane, you must know, is a broad, slapstick parody; Alexander isn't supposed to be.

Reading this article, yesterday, by the Baltimore Sun's television critic, David Zurawik, makes me wonder if it's supposed to be Alexander or Airplane:

.... Some television professionals predict the end of the existing model of anchor-driven nightly newscasts, whose roots extend to the pre-World War II, pioneering radio reports of Edward R. Murrow and William Shirer. Others foresee one or more of the networks abandoning the nightly news business altogether. Still others suggest that the mainstream journalistic tradition of striving to maintain objectivity may be challenged by an overtly partisan media dominated by ideologically driven cable channels and Internet bloggers.....

Anybody who can get past that last sentence without falling on the floor laughing has a stronger constitution than I do.

"At some point between now and 2008, either MSNBC or CNN may break off from the pack and decide to become the liberal alternative to Fox, thus freeing Fox to find a more frankly ideological formula as well," New York University Professor Jay Rosen wrote in a provocative post-election article on his Web log, PressThink....

CNN. May. Become. The. Liberal. Alternative.

This must be genius the likes of Mel Brooks.

It just must be.

[Follow-up: What's Up With This? II.]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 11/29/04 06:11:17 PM
Categorized as Media.

"Why We Are In Iraq"

This speech by David Horowitz at FrontPage Magazine, Nov. 26, came highly recommended:

My subject tonight is one that nobody really wants to talk about because nobody is really ready to confront it. It is what I call the "unholy alliance" between radical Islam and the American left, and its effect on the politics of the Democratic Party. My theme, in part, was announced by Osama bin Laden himself in one of his fatwas on al-Jazeera TV. On February 14, 2003 -- about six weeks before troops from the United States and Britain entered Iraq, bin Laden said: "The interests of Muslims and the interests of the socialists coincide in the war against the crusaders."

He was referring to the fact that, four weeks earlier, millions of leftists had poured into the streets of Europe's capitals and also into the streets of Washington and San Francisco and New York. Their goal was to prevent the United States and Britain from toppling Saddam Hussein. They chanted "no blood for oil"; they called the United States "the world's greatest terrorist state"; they called the American government an "Axis of Evil"; and they compared the American president to Adolph Hitler.

Of the two groups that organized the anti-Iraq protests, one was International ANSWER, a front group for the Worker's World party, which is a Marxist-Leninist party aligned with the Communist dictatorship in North Korea. The other — a group the New York Times described as "moderate" — was the Coalition United for Peace and Justice. It was led by Leslie Cagan, a veteran 60's leftist and pro-Castro enthusiast and a member of the Communist Party until after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Coalition itself was composed of organizations that ranged from the Communist Party to Muslim supporters of the terrorists' jihad.

When the leftist protesters in America failed to save Saddam Hussein, they marched their activist troops into the Democratic presidential primary campaigns to support the candidacies of anti-war Democrats. In particular, they supported Howard Dean, who condemned America's war in Iraq and hinted that, if elected, he would make peace at the earliest possible opportunity and withdraw American forces. It was the left's rear guard attempt to produce the result that their protests had failed to accomplish: an American defeat in Iraq. With the resources of the left squarely behind him, Howard Dean was propelled to the front of the presidential pack until his nomination appeared so inevitable that just prior to the Iowa caucuses he was anointed by the titular heads of the Democratic Party, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. So leftist had the Party become....

How is it possible that people who think of themselves as advocates of social justice can lend aid and comfort to Islamic radicals who behead people and blow women's heads off with AK-47s when they are suspected of having sexual relations outside of marriage? How can self-styled progressives embrace these people? They embrace them under the logic that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and their enemy is the United States. They do it under the delusion that is common to all radicals. It's the radical analog to the 72 virgins that await jihadists in heaven. Think of how sick our enemy is. The Muslim martyrs in Palestine kill their own children by strapping bombs to them, to 14-year-olds, and telling them if they blow up Jewish 14-year-olds — and if they are lucky enough to be male — they will go straight to heaven and get 72 virgins. They're committing mass murder to get into paradise. That is exactly what the left does. Why does the left want to destroy America? To get into paradise. Call it socialism, call it Communism, call it social justice. It's a dream of paradise that is so enticing it will justify any crime necessary to achieve it.

The radical left does not understand that the root cause of social problems is humanity. There will never be a socially just world because the world is always going to be run by human beings, and human beings are in their nature corrupt, selfish and fallible. If you don't understand that, you are simply delusional, in denial. Thus radicals have the same goal as jihadists, which is paradise. And the same enemy, which is the Great Satan, i.e., us. You cannot read a page of Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn or Michael Moore and not understand that America is the great Satan, the root of the world's evil, worthy of destruction. It is this faith that forges the unholy alliance.

To confront our enemy we must reverse the perception. The mantra of the left is the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Out of simple consideration of self-defense, we must adopt the view that the friend of my enemy is my enemy.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 11/29/04 05:52:56 PM
Categorized as Speeches and Suchlike.

Gardner Punished for Anti-Kerry Stance

That's how it looks, anyway.

So writes Mary Laney at the Chicago Sun-Times, today:

.... Gardner's story is one that bears telling. He volunteered for the Navy, enlisting on his 18th birthday in February 1966. After training, he was shipped to Vietnam and served for two years as a gunner in the swift boat division. His superior, for four months, was none other than Lt. j.g. John F. Kerry.

"I had confrontations with him there. He nearly got us rammed by the VC one night because he wasn't watching the helm. I heard the motor coming close, turned on the spotlight, and the boat was only 90 feet away, coming fast. The VC was aiming an AK47 at us. I shot him out of the boat. We pulled a woman and a baby off the boat. Kerry wrote it up that we captured two VC and killed four more on the beach. None of that was true. The only thing true on Kerry's report was the date. The woman was catatonic and wouldn't call her baby VC and there were no VC on the beach. If we had seen that report before Kerry sent it up the chain of command, he would have been court-martialed and never allowed to run for office. And that's just the San Pan incident. There was much more. He is a self-aggrandizing bold-faced liar. I believe he caused the extension of that war."

Gardner told this story and others to radio stations and he wrote a piece for the local paper. Then, he says, he received a phone call from John Hurley, the veterans organizer for Kerry's campaign. Hurley, Gardner says, asked him to come out for Kerry. He told Hurley to leave him alone and that he'd never be for Kerry. It was then Gardner says, he was threatened with, "You better watch your step. We can look into your finances."

Next, Gardner said he received a call from Douglas Brinkley, the author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. Brinkley told Gardner he was calling only to "fact check" the book — which was already in print. "I told him that the guy in the book is not the same guy I served with. I told him Kerry was a coward. He would patrol the middle of the river. The canals were dangerous. He wouldn't go there unless he had another boat pushing him."

Days later, Brinkley called again, warning Gardner to expect some calls. It seems Brinkley had used the "fact checking" conversation to write an inflammatory article about Gardner for Time.com. The article, implying that Gardner was politically motivated, appeared under the headline "The 10th Brother."

Twenty-four hours later, Gardner got an e-mail from his company, Millennium Information Services, informing him that his services would no longer be necessary. He was laid off in an e-mail — by the same man who only days before had congratulated him for his exemplary work in a territory which covered North and South Carolina. The e-mail stated that his position was being eliminated. Since then, he's seen the company advertising for his old position. Gardner doesn't have the money to sue to get the job back....

See also Never in Cambodia.

(Thanks, Deacon.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 11/29/04 05:28:33 PM
Categorized as Political.

Liberty and Virtue

Vide.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 11/29/04 07:44:26 AM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff.

"On the Election and its Aftermath"

Musings at Rerum Novarum.

Lege.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 11/29/04 07:36:57 AM
Categorized as Political.

"Democrats Don't Understand 'Evangelicalism'"

An article by David Steinmetz at yesterday's Tribune-Review:

Some analysts, stunned by the victory of George W. Bush in the 2004 election, suggested that he had won re-election because of the support of right-wing evangelical Christians or fundamentalists (the terms were used interchangeably). A few even braced for the introduction of an unwelcome theocracy and spoke darkly of secession.

Amazingly, nobody laughed....

Democrats like to regard themselves as more cosmopolitan than Republicans. But they have been woefully unsophisticated in their analysis of evangelicals, whom they tend to paint in monochromatic hues. Evangelicals seem to them to belong to an alien "retro" America, whose values they do not share.

In point of fact there always have been, and still are, evangelicals in the Democratic Party, including former President Jimmy Carter, who once caused distress in the media by announcing he was "born again." At least 22 percent of self-identified evangelicals voted for John Kerry, a number buoyed by black evangelicals, who vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates.

Unfortunately for Kerry, evangelical support for Democrats has eroded since 2000, even among blacks and Hispanics, but especially among evangelicals for whom abortion and gay marriage trump all other considerations....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 11/29/04 07:11:56 AM
Categorized as Political.