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Macon County Commissioners

Coverage of the meetings of the Macon County Board of County Commissioners.

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Coverage of the meetings of the Franklin Town Board of Aldermen.

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Coverage of the meetings of the Macon County School Board.

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Photos from my photoblog.

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Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Links To Share

I've found a website that stores bookmarks for those surfing from public terminals (which I do a lot of), or just want to share them with others. After much furious hunting, pecking, cussing, repecking, I got some of them up.

Then came the fun part. Getting the doggone thing linked from here. I just simply cannot get it to work in the sidebar. I suspect it has something to do with using a proxy server. I will put the link a couple of ways in this post to see if it works.
It works if I type the address in the address bar. Here goes:

Click Here

http://www.mybookmarks.com/public/Thunderpigfaves

http://www.mybookmarks.com

What's going on here? At least the top link works.

Ours is not to worry or wonder why,
Ours is but to link or die.
(with apologies to the original author.)

Monday, November 28, 2005

Hey! Look what I found!

I fell so very stupid. I have never had ANY formal training about the internet. And I just discovered the most amazing website, EVER!

I found it by following backward links from Project Rho, another great site I've been plaing with for the last couple of months.

Michelle Malkin on Top Of the Morning !!!

Get Thee Hence!!!

Sorry such a late notice, I just found out.

Update:9.34amOk, she's gone. If you missed it, too bad.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Happy Thanks Giving !!!

Things I am Thankful for...
1. God
2. My Family
3. My nation
4. Those who have, are, and will serve in our armed forces.

Appropriately enough, William F. Buckely's 80th birthday falls on Thanks Giving Day, 2005.

This man had quite an effect on me in my teenage years, providing me with a firm foundation of political belief after President Ronald Reagan kindly pointed the way toward conservatism.

Reagan brought my attention to a "shining city on a hill," and Mr. Buckley taught me the basic principles I could use to get to that city. Others have helped along the way, but I look upon WFB as providing guidance at a critical juncture in my life, when I wavered between choosing Good or Evil. I made a few missteps, and whenever I was restored to my senses, WFB was there.

Less than a decade ago, I discovered he had a magazine, then still later, a website. I quit my subscription over the Ann Coulter dismissal, but still read the mag in the public library. The only way I would renew is for The National Review to print a full and complete apology for their actions in that incident.

I still remain fond of WFB, and will spend a part of my Thanks Giving day comptemplating the man and the ideas he has shared with me over the course of my life.

I thank God for WFB, and I thank WFB for using the gifts that God has given him.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Rain today means... No work and much posting!


I will be updating this post throughout the day instead of posting 150 times today.

Axis of Islam is associated with some good blogs, he comments on some and the following are the ones I ran into a few minutes ago:
Intelligence Summit
Musulman
Pedestrian Infidel

Cut-N-Run Vote, courtesy of CDR Salamander.

I found an interesting article posted on Heads Up America. The article is entitled: "The real secret to defeating Islam" by David Kupelian.

No Apologies Radio is on! Check out the links on Immigration Issues! updated at 12.04pm

Curious Developments in Israel and Eurabia

What is going on in Israel?

Ariel Sharon has left the party he helped form, and is forming a new party with Shimon Perez, and others. I hope this gives Bibi Netanyahu a shot, although I believe Sharon and Perez will be able to form a majority coalition government.

Others report and analyze better than I. Links are below. Please feel free to add others in the comments section.

Security Watchtower
Drudge Report has links to MANY online news sources.

On the EU front, Fjordman has a disturbing essay on the nature of Eurabia, the new European Empire that is emerging.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

New Websites Launched



The misty rain moves in on Campbell Mountain.


Pajamas Media has changed their name to Open Source Media, I guess making a play on the Main Stream Media. OSM v MSM. I prefer calling the MSM Legacy Media, implying they are outdated. Oh well.

Another new site is called Threats Watch. This promises to be a wealth of information and analysis.

Hat Tip to Baron Bodissey for the last site, and prob the first as well, I simply can't remember, and with a web connection of 28.8k, I don't have the time to check. Add both these websites to your web browser.

I will post more today from my great aunt's house. She has 56k. WoW!

Monday, November 14, 2005

Dr. Jerome Corsi to appear on HUA

Dr. Jerome Corsi will appear on Heads Up America tomorrow, (Tuesday for those in Rio Linda) at I guess 3pm to 4pm. I gather he is an expert on abiotic oil. For those who can't tune to 1350 kHz on an AM radio, listen here.

Middle Earth, Anyone?

Here is what I tested out as:

Rohirrim
Rohirrim



To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?

brought to you byQuizilla

To which I can only repeat the words of our great king:

"Ride! Ride for ruin! And the world's ending! Death!
Forth Eorlingas!"

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Early Morning on Jonathan Creek



Taken at 7am in early November 2005 looking northeastward from one of the top lots.

The difference in time between the posts shows how slow photo uploads are at 28 k.

More Pictures !!!



This is why I need a camera with a zoom lens! Falcons don't look as good to the eye as they do through a regular lens.

By the way...all these pix are taken with a disposable Kodak camera. WoW!

Friday, November 11, 2005

What a stupid picture to post!



This is my truck at work, hauling stuff so I don't have to. This lovely beast gets just 6 miles to the gallon of gasoline, and has sticks of various sizes crammed into the emission controls, and the previous owner performed other mods trhat are interesting, most notably, a 305 racing engine with entirely too huge fuel jets that make stomping on the gas pedal too expensive for me to do often.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Asheville Election Results...Broad Analysis

There were serious errors in the Council Race Numbers in the third column. Thanks to a phone call, I've since corrected them. Hat Tip to Debbie.
Bobby 08:06 am 11/10/2005



These are preliminary numbers from the Board of Elections. I don't know if anyone else has done this, so here goes:

Mayoral Race

Candidate...................# Votes....%Votes....% Eligible Voters

Terry Bellamy...............10,534.....56.82.....19.10

Joe Dunn.....................8,004.....43.18.....14.51

Participating Voters........18,538.....33.62

Non-Participating Voters....36,609.....66.38

Just over 19 percent of eligible voters decided who the next mayor of Asheville will be. No matter who won the race, this is a sad statement.

City Council Race

Note that each voter can, but does not have to, vote for up to three candidates.

Candidate..................# Votes...% Votes....% Available...% Potential

Holly Jones................11,642.....24.03.....72.10.........21.11

Robin Capes.................9,737.....20.10.....60.30.........17.66

Carl Mumpower...............8,498.....17.54.....52.63.........15.41

Bryan Freeborn..............7,319.....15.09.....45.33.........13.27

Chris Pelly.................6,272.....12.95.....38.84.........11.37

Keith Thomson...............4,975.....10.27.....30.81.........09.02

Votes Cast.................48,443..............100.00.........29.28

Potential Votes not Cast..116,998...............70.72

Per Candidate..............16,147.67

The number of people staying away from the polls are sad here as well. No one was able to spur large numbers of people to the polls.

Note and Commentary

To avoid confusion, remember that there are 55,147 eligible voters, so in the council race, I multipied that number times three to get the potential number of votes that could've been cast. The available votes took the total number of votes cast and divided by three. That left 16,147.67, a number 2,390.33 less than the 18,538 who voted in the Mayoral Race. Not every one who voted in the council race chose three candidates. This had the effect of increasing their favorite candidate(s) odds of making the cut of the top three vote getters. I believe this is the tactic that allowed carl Mumpower to keep his seat on the council.

If any one losing campaign had managed to interest 5,000 voters, a mere 9 percent of eligible voters, their candidate would have been assured of a seat for their particulur race. That speaks volumes.

Why is it so hard to get people to vote?

Should a person should lose their franchise if they miss a certain number of elections in a row?

Or should we be glad these people don't participate because they either don't care enough to vote or know enough about the issues to vote?

Personally, I don't want people who don't care or are ignorant potentially canceling out my vote, there are alraedy too many ignoramuses voting.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Maybe they ARE French, after all !!!

Yesterday, to combat a growing wave of terror attacks, the French decided to impose curfews in the affected areas. Which resulted in the number of cars being burned being cut in half, proving that they are french-muslims, not muslim-french.

Here's how I imagine it went down:

Jean-Pierre Mohammed: "Mes amies, the police are planning to impose a curfew tonight. This will be our chance to show them who is in control!"

Ibrahim-le-Jardin: "A curfew! Mon Dieu! What time do we have to be back from torching trashbins and Car-BQing?"

Just like that, the French have peeled away the fun-loving terrorists from the serious. Wow.

City of Asheville Election results

.
Mayor

Terry Bellamy......10,534
Joe Dunn............8,004

City Council

1...Holly Jones.......11,942
2...Robin Capes........9,737
3...Carl Mumpower......8,498
4...Bryan Freeborn.....7,319
5...Chris Pelly........6,272
6...Keith Thomson......4,975

The top three vote getters will join ulta-liberal Brownie Newmamn and mostly middle Jan Davis on the Asheville City Council. Since terry Bellamy already had a seat on the council, the first order of business when the council next meets will be to select someone to replace Bellamy. the last time that was done, the council chose the 4th place finisher in the City Council race. This time, that would be Bryan Freeborn.

Commentary

Here are the political leanings of the City Council members as I understand them, painted with a very broad brush:

Ultra-Liberal
Brownie Newman
Holly Jones
Robin Capes

Standard Liberal
Terry Bellamy
Jan Davis

Conservative
Carl Mumpower

I understand that Bryan Freeborn is of the Ultra-Liberal stripe, since he accepted money last week from the Dmocracy Now PAC delivered by the person of Jim Dean, brother of the DNC Chairman, Howard Dean. If Bryan is chosen, that would make Brownie Newman the de facto mayor of Asheville. Let The Freak Show Begin!

Since I know little of the other candidate leanings, it may all be moot, at this point. One good thing to come out of this is the possibility of a backlash by the voters in 2009, a loooong way off in the world of politics.

Here are current voter registration numbers in the City of Asheville:

Democrat........28,117
Unafilliated....14,097
Republican......12,933

The only way for conservatives to advance is to conduct a long term voter registration drive to gain a few votes. By demographics, Asheville is a Liberal City. I'm just glad I live over 50 miles to the west, I can enjoy the show without having to deal with the repurcussions.

Sunday, November 6, 2005

Terrorist Attacks in France Day 10


Why are all these French-people so somber? Answers below. Why did I post it twice? Look hard. Do we have anything in common with them? How would people in your town react?


French citizens conduct a "silent march" in oprotest against the "riots". (I guess they're afraid to add their voices. The Muslims would get even angier, huh?)


As usual, the blogosphere has been the first to report on the terrorist attacks in France, with the Main Stream Legacy Media gradually turning to focus on the story, hoping against hope the french could bring things under control so they could credit the french with their 'enlightened european' approach.

The only 'enlightening' I've seen is by fire.

Even Fox News refuses to call it anything except rioting. Note: I've not seen the FNC coverage, so I'm just commenting about web coverage.

The BBC World Service (shortwave radio), reports "riots spread in France", and report the French as saying that "Gangs increasingly organized".

I was going to post about the inanity of the running count of cars set ablaze, trashbins torched, or the number of arrests, but The Belmont Club sorta beat me to it. There is other coverage on the site as well as thoughtful analysis.

At Winds of Change, there is reporting on a fiscal crisis as a contibutor to the problem.

More in line with my thinking, Little Green Footballs call it the "French Intifada Day 10, evoking images in my mind of Paleo-Stininan youths throwing rocks.

The Counterterrorism Blog also calls it an Intifada.

I will accept Intifada, but prefer to call it by its rightful name: Terrorism. Well, France has been under attack for ten nights, and still hasn't responded, except with policemen and firemen. Since the attacks have spread beyond the 'burbs of "Gay Paree", there is little excuse for not bringing out the troops. While there is little chance these thugs could gain control of the country, they can cause considerable harm to their infrastructure, but not their already tattered image.
In a way, the French are getting their just deserts for their policies of the past vis a vis (I always wanted to use that phrase) their Muslim Immigrants. It is also a picture of what may come our way with our illegal immigration problems.

Update: Fjordman has warmed the very cockles of my heart with a post reporting John Derbyshire's appellation. Dhimmis.
Have the French fallen into dhimmitude? I give then until Friday. If they don't make siginifant progress until then, I will considered France as under dhimmitude.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

The Smell of Liberals


I had to resort to reading the instructions...should work now. Posted by Picasa

I never thought I'd be posting a picture of a bare-chested man, so here goes.

Update: Forgot to tell where I stole it from. Little Green Footballs.

This is why I HATE the legacy media...

I nearly burst a blood vessel this morning while listening to NPR. (I was involved in Signals Ops monitoring enemy comms).

I heard a story about a New York Slimes story on secret prisons for al-Qa'ida run by the CIA.

Another is here.

I found these two links from Drudge.

I am going to paraphrase Pogo... We have read the enemy, and they are in the Legacy Media.

I urge you to send hate mail to both these establishments forthwith.

Update: Make that three...don't want to leave out NPR. Silly me.