OK, THAT Does It For Me

Muslim…Schmuslim—They’re Mostly Primitive Idiots
(But We’re A Population Of Sophisticated Fools)

Have you been watching the “lamestream” media meltdown over the “Muhammed Cartoon” fiasco?

The whole thing has been like some slow motion train wreck or car crash where you WANT to close your eyes and make it go away, but the story just keeps on replaying over and over as media giants like CNN and the BBC look more retarded and unprofessional by the minute.

I think that the Washington Times editorialist Diana West said it best this week:

Not that we admit it: We dress up our capitulation in fancy talk of "tolerance," "responsibility" and "sensitivity." We even congratulate ourselves for having the "editorial judgment" to make "pluralism" possible. "Readers were well served... without publishing the cartoons," said a Wall Street Journal spokesman. "CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam," reported the cable network. On behalf of the BBC, which did show some of the cartoons on the air, a news editor subsequently apologized, adding: "We've taken a decision not to go further... in order not to gratuitously offend the significant number" of Muslim viewers worldwide. Left unmentioned is the understanding (editorial judgement?) that "gratuitous offense" leads to gratuitous violence. Hence, fear — not the inspiration of tolerance but of capitulation — and a condition of dhimmitude.

How far does it go? Worth noting, for example, is that on the BBC Web site, a religion page about Islam presents the angels and revelations of Islamic belief as historical fact, rather than spiritual conjecture (as is the case with its Christianity Web page); plus, it follows every mention of Mohammed with "(pbuh)," which means "peace be upon him"—"as if," writes Will Wyatt, former BBC chief executive, in a letter to the Times of London, "the corporation itself were Muslim."

Now, for me, here is the kicker.

Not only did most of these cartoons appear in the Danish newspaper in September or October last year, but World Net Daily reports that the Egyptian newspaper Al Fagr printed the exact same cartoons four months ago, durring the holy Muslim Ramadan holiday, and not a single peep of public protest was heard.

The blog Freedom For Egyptians has more details and published this image from the October 17, 2005 edition:



I don't know about you, but I've seen all I need to see and heard all I need to hear about this total non-story.

Once again, most of the professional journalists and so called business people running our nation's (and the world's) newspapers and TV stations have proven themselves to be partisian, morally bankrupt, idieolically challenged imbecils incapable of logical thought processes.

Like the words to the country song say: “if you don’t stand for something…you’ll fall for anything…”

And The Winner Was...

Little 'ole ME

The internet, without the mat, and at a 5x4 size doesn't do my work justice, but here is the basic image (click on the pic to enlarge):






The gentleman in the middle of the photo with his hand over his heart is my great, great grandfather Webb--circa 1890-1900. The little boy over his right shoulder is my great grandfather--father of my lovely grandmother Bessy Rogers that celebrated her 93rd birthday last Christmas.

The gentlemman playing the Creek Indian is in fact a real Indian that I photographed along with the two British soldier "re-enactors" that attended an event at Ft. King George in Darien, Georgia last fall after I had entered the competition.

All of the translucent black and white images of the people are superimposed via computer software over a color background photo of an open gravesite at Ft. Frederica, located just down the road from our home here on St. Simons Island.

Several people commented that, viewed from distances over ten feet, the image truely has a "ghostly" appearance.

That was my intention all along.

Imagine that???

News Flash...Second Place (UPDATED)

I Did It!!!!!


About 6:00 PM this evening Mr. Bryan Thompson, the Mayor of Brunswick, handed me a $250 check and a nice Certificate honoring my entry taking second place (The Heritage Award) in the Golden Isles Arts and Humanities Association's "Coastal Heritage Exhibit" running tonight through April 1st over at the historic Ritz Theater.

Needless to say that you could have tipped me over with a feather.

We're going out to celebrate and I'll have more to say later.

11:00 PM UPDATE...

It's later now, and we're home after having a few drinks down in "the village" and spending some time attempting to let what I've accomplished sink into my thick skull.

I am still in shock.

My little 16” x 20” unframed photo effort beat a marvelous watercolor painting in a 3'x4' frame that was for sale for over $4,000. My little Photoshopped photo beat all but one oil painting or photograph by artists that have spent years refining their craft.

You see, I've been a digital photographer and self proclaimed Photoshop expert for only about five years now, and the term “expert” is only loosely applied in self-edifying moments like NOW.

BUT...you know what?

I honestly believe that it was my writing--the background statement that I submitted with my entry--that moved me into a position to take second place in this art exhibit.

My composite photo was pretty good in my opinion, but it was my "mission statement" that got me across the finish line ahead of all but one of the other contestants.

Many artists took work that they had already completed and tried to coordinate it with a written message that tied it to coastal Georgia’s history. Some did in fact produce new original work based on this year’s Coastal Heritage Exhibit’s stated requirements, but their writing fell short in stating their message.

I, on the other hand, carefully reviewed the competition’s theme and produced my artwork and written message as a complete, unified package. I spent nearly 1/3 of my time writing and editing the theme description of my artwork, and I honestly believe that I have been rewarded for my extra efforts.

They said two pages—I gave them two FULL pages of words. Call me lucky or call me tenacious, you have no idea what this minor success means to me.

After my recent horrendous theater failures (what I like to call "political nightmares"), I was seriously considering going back to spending my time farting, belching, playing ancient Roman sailing tunes with my hands stuck in my armpits, all the while drinking beer, chewing on my #2 pencil erasers, watching “Girls Gone Wild” videos and carving lewd replicas of female body parts out of faded pieces of driftwood and construction debris.

Instead, now I'm recharging my camera battery and looking forward to firing up Adobe Photoshop in anticipation of the next competition.

Now would you smile and say "Cheese", please?

Click.....

Delta Union Pilots Vote

Our (Travel) Future Is In Their Hands


First there was Eastern...




Then there was Pan Am (one of my favorites)



And now...DELTA?



All the victims of UNIONS...Pilots unions, to be specific.

God help us all...

Me And My Big Mouth

Actually...I Let My Fingers Do The Talking


Back in 2004, when we moved from Atlanta to St. Simons, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, The Brunswick News. The week we moved in, the letter was published in the paper and one of my neighbors walked up, handed me a copy, and said something to the effect of "boy, you don't waste any time getting involved...do you?"

It was my first effort to communicate with the "powers what be" at any level other than bitching about my business license to Cobb County or yelling at customer service reps with the phone company or at Sears and Roebuck.

Since that day, I have become a regular contributor to the “letters to the editor” section, regularly write to my state representatives and US Congressmen, and engage in spirited E-mail debates with nationally published scientists and authors.

It’s amazing the response that an intelligently worded, non-insulting missive will elicit.

Captain Ed over at Captains Quarters has had just such a debate with the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum over the response of Conservative bloggers regarding the Islamic Muslim “cartoongate” issue.

Anne takes issue that Right Wing bloggers seem to be defending the freedom of the press to publish these “offensive” cartoons, while we lampooned Newsweek magazine when they published the false “Koran flushed down the toilet” story last year.

Although I fail to see the equality of the comparison of publishing an unverified accusation of wartime misbehavior as “NEWS” with the publication of an “editorial CARTOON”, I still wholeheartedly support Miss Applebaum’s right to write an EDITORIAL—as long as she gets her facts correct.

Where Anne went wrong in her editorial was in misrepresenting the Conservative bloggers as a monolithic bloc that all think and say the same things, the same way.

Continuing my audacious trend of writing to important people in high places, I tendered the following correspondence to Miss Abblebaum this morning via E-Mail:



Dear Anne,

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to engage Captain Ed over at Captain’s Quarters in a rational, intelligent debate regarding the recent “Muslim Cartoon” upheaval. It is refreshing to have a professional journalist of your stature step out from behind the newsprint pages and speak directly to the issues that we address daily here on the internet.

Further, the fact that your work is clearly identified as an “op-ed” piece rather than a “hard news” story certainly entitles you to express your own viewpoint, regardless of whether or not Captain Ed and I entirely agree with what you have to say. The blogosphere frequently laments gross examples of newspapers and TV networks blurring this (the op-ed/news) distinction on a wholesale basis.

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I’m somewhat biased in that I am a long time fan, follower, and correspondent with Captain’s Quarters and I find him to be sincere and even handed in his coverage of worldwide issues. I, like Captain Ed, am a conservative blogger, although I operate on a MUCH smaller scale and have many, many fewer readers than Mr. Morrissey enjoys. Politically I admit that I’m more of a Libertarian than a Republican, but I find myself identifying with the Right more than the Left on most issues, most of the time.

An important point that I would like to make here (or possibly reiterate on the Captain’s behalf) is that the blogosphere is not a monolithic block of monkeys typing on keyboards in their pajamas every evening. Bloggers like Captain Ed and the lawyers over at Powerline operate with fairly obvious ideologies, but without pre-approved agendas.

The logical development of their arguments and footnoting of their work via the inclusion of “links” to the source material makes their product extremely consumable to non-professional journalists like myself that have the luxury of being able to spend six or eight hours each day reading news and researching our work for inclusion on our own blogs.

If you will spend the time reading, I think that within the “Right Wing” side of the Blogosphere you will often find dissent and variation of opinion—although sometimes subtle—with Michelle Malkin, and John Hinderaker, and “Little Green Footballs,” and my little blog, What I’d Liked To have Said, often having common themes, but also pursuing the issue(s) at different levels with very different points of view.

Being an engineer by education, I tend to address issues like gasoline prices and “Global Warming,” not from an entirely political standpoint, but rather from a technical standpoint. You’d be surprised the number of ‘experts” that a little blogger like myself can get an e-mail interview with in the development of a story. As you probably know, the internet facilitates almost instantaneous “expert” status to someone like me that wants to take the time to spend a few days doing “Google searches” and that actually has the knowledge and education to understand the information that can be found online.

Yes, I also editorialize in my writing.

Yes, I get lazy sometimes and just parrot what Captain Ed or “The Hindrocket” says in my own words, BUT…believe me when I say that we (bloggers) are all watching each other and we will not tolerate intellectually dishonest or patently fraudulent words to stand unchallenged. We will eat our own and smile with faces stained with blood and feathers when and if the time comes.

Blogging, in its purest form, is suffering from its own popularity and the entry of “mainstream” elements into the blogosphere. I guess that it is a case of “if you can’t beat them—join them” or something.

Co-operative blogs like Huffington’s Post and Glenn Reynolds’s new right-wing “Pajama’s Media” conglomerate have been widely lampooned as all of us “have-not” bloggers watch some of the old line “big dog” bloggers try to parlay their success into a decent paycheck. It would appear to me and many of my peers that both efforts are spectacular failures to date, and that they have sold their souls to the devil in the process of becoming more mainstream and organized.

I think that blogging and earning substantial financial remuneration are ALMOST always incompatible. Money is worse than any editor, in that it changes your ability to say what you really want to say. When you are charged with writing editorial content like you are in your position at the Washington Post, I want you to feel free to say whatever is on your mind and let the chips fall where they may—just be sure to say that your writing is an editorial, not a news story.

You always do.

In closing, I encourage you to continue your excellent efforts and again engage us here in “the new media” when the time comes. I wish that you wouldn’t limit your opinion based on following the “big bloggers,” however.

Try clicking on some of the “links” on the sidebars of “Powerline” and “Captain’s Quarters” and go see what the architects and engineers with a few thousand readers each month are saying. You might be surprised at the quality and content of the writing that is going virtually unnoticed.

Remember the old question…”if a tree falls alone in the forest, does it make a sound?”

Best Regards,

Virgil Raymond Rogers, III
St. Simons Island, Georgia

Would Cindy Sheehan Please Phone Jimmy Carter?

The Blind Leading The Blind (Or The Insane)





Never mind, you're both hopeless...

Would Jimmy Carter Please Phone Home?

His Doctor Called, And His Prescription Has Expired

Would Hillary Clinton Please Phone Home?

Oh, Never Mind...

I Was Well Hung (Excuse The Pun)

And The Jury Wasn't (Hopefully)...


Just in case you were wondering, I made it to the theater with my print this morning in time for the "Coastal Heritage" Jury to give it a good going over.

I'm taking the rest of the day off.

Best Laid Plans...

Sheeeesh!


Sorry, but as my regular readers know, the blogging has been suffering the past few days due to our travel down to the Orlando area for a long weekend.

Our hosts had just moved into their new home in the past month and there was only one DSL connection working in the entire house—that being one in the kitchen , serviced by only a 6’ cable.

Laying on my back on the sofa for hours on end while reading the news and writing was out of the question since I had to share said sofa with three other adults, three teenaged girls, and two very active miniature Dachshund’s.

After a pleasant four day visit, we set out to make our return trip back here to the island, arriving in time to pick up my 16” x 20” print of the photo I made being exhibited at the Ritz Theater’s “Coastal Heritage” exhibit that opens this Friday.

I had originally scheduled to pick up the print last Friday afternoon, but Murphy’s Law took over when the Photo Shop ran out of the Matte paper stock I wanted. As a result, they were delayed printing until Monday afternoon while we were out of town, finishing in plenty of time for me to drop it by the frame shop on Wednesday morning to be mounted and matted.

I was a little nervous about making the Wednesday submission deadline, but they assured me by telephone on Monday afternoon that they had the paper and that the print would be waiting for me when we arrived back in town.

Wrong…AGAIN.

When I walked in the Photo Shop door at 4:15 PM today the owner slapped himself on the head and admitted that he had forgotten to make the print. To make matters worse, Pat called me on my cell phone and told me that I had a voice message from the Gallery asking that I deliver my entry today, not Wednesday, because the Judges couldn’t jury the competition any other time but Wednesday morning.

I was suddenly losing my mind. I had forty hours of time working with Photoshop editing five layers of images, I had known about the deadlines since early December, and now I had new shortened deadlines, no print, no mounting, no mat, and no frame.

Fortunately, the printer shoved my image ahead of everything else they were doing and had it in my hands by 5:15. I then called my angel the owner, Tina over at the frame shop, and she agreed to wait past their regular 5:30 closing time and mount and mat my print by 9:15 AM Wednesday morning.

I have to pick it up then and rush it across town to the Ritz Theater in time for it to be hung for the 10:30 Jury.

Wish me luck…

Next time I’ll start this process a MONTH early.

It's Pittsburgh

And I called it...

We watched the Superbowl with some of Pat's family in Orlando, Florida this evening.

Everyone but me in attendance had spent most of their life living outside Pittsburgh, cheering for the Steelers.

My personal interest was the Georgia Tech connection through Offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt who played defense and filled in as back-up quarterback in GT's 1980 3-3 tie with #1 Notre Dame. My friends Rusty and Grant and I will never forget that day, because Tech ended the season 1-9-1 in coach Bill Curry's first season as head coach.

I love great football, and it is so rarely played at a professional level--college ball almost always exceeding that of the so-called professional game every day, every minute.

Super Bowl Forty was a Great Game!

Fake Muslim Anger

I guess that for me it is hard to understand the current outrage in the Muslim world over a few cartoons originally published in Danish newspapers back in October last year and reprinted recently in virtually every publication in the world including right here on this blog last week.

Just in case you missed it, here is the image of Muhammad again:

(Please feel free to kick your cat or beat your wife or burn your house down if it will make you feel better)

After all, we here in the US have been subjected to GOVERNMENT FUNDED artistic stupidity like representations of Jesus Christ, nailed on the cross, suspended in a jar of Urine. Remember this image paid for by the National Endowment for the Arts?



A photo of Andres Serrano’s so called “art” sold at Christies Auction house in NY for $105,000 back in 2000.

Based on the Islamic model, I find it interesting that all of the members of the Primitive Baptist and Pentecostal Churches didn’t grab up their Bibles, Rattlesnakes, and cousins sisters wives, and pour out into the streets here in the US, “speaking in tongues” in irreverent protest.

Now two Jordanian newspaper editors have been fired from their jobs and ARRESTED after publishing some of the cartoons along with editorials defending the work and calling for calm in the Muslim community.

Jihad Momani and Hisham Khalidi are accused of insulting religion under Jordan's press and publications law.

Mr Momani was fired from the weekly Shihan after reproducing the cartoons - originally printed in Denmark - which have caused a global storm of protest.

One of the cartoons depicts Muhammad as a terrorist. Any images of the Prophet are banned under Islamic tradition.

'Abuse of freedom'
Mr Momani's arrest came earlier on Saturday, a day after Jordanian King Abdullah condemned the cartoons as an unnecessary abuse of freedom of speech.

Mr Momani's paper, Shihan, had printed three of the cartoons, alongside an editorial questioning whether the angry reaction to them in the Muslim world was justified.

"Muslims of the world be reasonable," wrote Mr Momani.

"What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?"

The Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Damascus Syria were stormed and set on fire yesterday.

The same thing happened to the Danish Embassy in Beirut Lebanon this morning.

What the news media doesn’t bother to tell you while flashing images of wild eyed towel head clad morons burning the Danish flag on the streets of the Gaza strip is that the “offensive” cartoons were actually published last October, and only became an issue recently when presented to the Muslim faithful by a few Imams in order to stir up trouble.

The complained-of cartoons first appeared in October; they have provoked such fury only now.

As reported in this newspaper yesterday, it turns out that a group of Danish imams circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries. When they did so, they included in their package three other, much more offensive cartoons which had not appeared in Jyllands-Posten but were lumped together so that many thought they had.

It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking. Peter Mandelson, who seems to think that his job as European Trade Commissioner entitles him to pronounce on matters of faith and morals, accuses the papers that republished the cartoons of "adding fuel to the flames"; but those flames were lit (literally, as well as figuratively) by well-organised, radical Muslims who wanted other Muslims to get furious. How this network has operated would make a cracking piece of investigative journalism.

Now the BBC announces that the head of the International Association of Muslim Scholars has called for an "international day of anger" about the cartoons. It did not name this scholar, or tell us who he is. He is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. According to Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, Qaradawi is like Pope John XXIII for Catholics, "the most progressive force for change" in the Muslim world.

Yet if you look up Qaradawi's pronouncements, you find that he sympathises with the judicial killing of homosexuals, and wants the rejection of dialogue with Jews in favour of "the sword and the rifle". He is very keen on suicide bombing, especially if the people who blow themselves up are children - "we have the children bomb". This is a man for whom a single "day of anger" is surely little different from the other 364 days of the year.

See, the so called religious leaders in the Islamic Muslim world realize two things. First that their followers are STUPID, and secondly, that they are easily manipulated.

IDIOTS...