Riehl World View

Finally, I Hope

Just a bloggy aside. For the last month, Typepad has been driving me nuts. Posts weren't publishing, the browser was timing out. And posting was more than a chore. I was having to cache, copy and save everything to not lose it when it didn't go through. Using different PCs and so forth, I knew it wasn't on my end.

Finally after getting through the first level of Typepad customer service, along with threatening to potentially move four blogs I am associated with - I made it to engineering and it seems like there was a bug in some javascript that was causing the problem.

The tech really stayed with the problem. I can't complain about that. The service has grown over the four plus years I've been here. As always, you get some good and some bad with that. But, hopefully, for now, problem solved and blogging won't be such a pain in the butt. It really was too much. Might be part of why I have been posting so lightly.

It got to the point where I was dredding hitting "publish", as each post was the same nightmare experience over and over, again.

The problem seems solved for now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, anyway.

Typepad Comment Changes

Comment changes: I suppose if you don't constantly read Typepad internal pages, you find out of chanes when readers do. Sorry about that.

Comment configuration has changed due to Typepad templates. I only have certain options. Given that, I've configured it so the latest comments appear at the top. This way, one needn't thumb back to comment each time if responding to a new comment.

Fifty comments per page is the max allowed. So I've set that option at fifty. Hopefully you won't find it too inconvenient, simply different! : )

So, Amanda Marcotte Doesn't Like Black People?

You might remember the last time feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte came under some scrutiny due to her short tenure with the Edward's campaign.

Well, she's making blog news, again, in what really looks like another sign of tension between two liberal interest groups due to the Democrat primary.

Via this blog, it seems Marcotte is accused of lifting material from a black, female blogger for an Alternet article. And given the response from the black female blogger in question, it appears there was already a rift of this sort. Make what you want of the controversy, but what it is, is a ground level example of how this year's Democrat nomination process is tearing at seams in traditionally aligned liberal groups.

I wrote what I wrote in response to all those feminists who, during the Full Frontal Feminism blow up, kept insisting over and over again that if “WOC” want book deals, they should “go get it them themselves.” That publishers weren’t skimming through the blogosphere looking for just anybody who’s a good writer. That you had to work for a book deal—you had to fight for it, show a little initiative, stop complaining, just do it. JUST. DO. IT.

As if there were no such thing as racism—as if there was no such thing as racism that is alive and well and present in the most cellular of spaces. As if simply opening a proposal and viewing the odd name at the top of the proposal doesn’t influence how the person reading that name will understand the rest of the proposal.

More On MRC

Stacy has a full round up, including additional pics and a Coulter anecdote. The guy has to be the hardest working dude in DC. I've yet to meet someone here he doesn't know.

The MRC DisHonors Awards

I was fortunate enough to have been invited to attend the Media Research Center's DisHonors Awards at the Grand Hyatt in DC last night. NewsBusters has a post on it here with a link to video of the entire event. Friend RS McCain snapped a pic of me with new media pal Mark Levin. (I added it, as the link didn't work for me.) Mark is actually a serious and kind individual, somewhat unlike his Talk Radio image. Regular listeners may know that he's cited this blog on more than one occasion on his show and has me in his links. He's a good man, great American and loyal conservative.

Yes, Ann Coulter was there. Tancredo and Pence represented the political element.

While much of the event was full of fun and laughter at the idiotic excesses of the liberal media, I'm compelled to focus my posting on the end of the event  which had me crying like a baby unashamedly in public for longer than I can ever remember doing. It was quite a moving close.

The full video tribute to Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy is here. T. Boone Pickens had planned to donate $50,000 to the Medal of Honor Fund. Murphy's Father and Brother were there to acknowledge the donation. Upon previously seeing the video, Pickens raised it to $100 k and at the event, after dining with Murphy's family, Pickens altered the check to make it for 1 Million dollars on the spot. It's great to see the fund get that kind of cash. Unfortunately, no amount of money can equate to a valiant young man's life.

For about the last half hour, I found myself fighting to hold back my tears. That is until I realized there may never be a more appropriate time to simply let yourself cry like that in public. If one cannot mourn such a heroic individual publicly, than who can one mourn is such a manner? That the New York Times didn't even report the awarding of the medal, yet fawned over Al Gore that day for his purely political Nobel Prize is a total disgrace. Little could make you despise the liberal bias in media more than that insult. That's noted in the video above.

Yes, it was a great and fun night. And I'd encourage anyone with the opportunity to do so, to attend one in the future. But for now, my thoughts rest on Lt. Michael Murphy, his heroic service to our nation and his family.

As Americans, we are all truly blessed to have produced such fine people. And they are worthy of every tribute and every tear.

Is It Just Me?

Is it just me, or has the primary portion of this year's political circus simply dragged on too long? I've talked to non-bloggers who keep an eye on politics, most seem burned out and disinterested at this point.

At least to me it seems as though we are looking at the same old stories from months ago. Clinton misfires. Obama tries to have it both ways. McCain is less than exciting and struggling for relevance, as the conservative base remains luke warm toward him.

I thought this years election was going to be highly interesting. Could it turn out to be boring? I can't really imagine that, what with either the first black, or female candidate on the Dem side.

I'm finding it hard to predict what might happen. The conventional wisdom says McCain wins just because .... He is the most like any past president, after all. But might we wake up one day and find that lethargy produced the unexpected and new?

Something is telling me we might. And if it's Obama, a lot of people are going to have to come to terms with an America far different than what they've conceived of in their lifetimes.

The More Things Change

Damn, all this talk of "change" this year and politics looks like the same old thing, more interesting by the brawl between Hillary and Obama. Did Hilly drop a grain of truth into the melee when she said Obama can't win?

I was thinking the very same thing. But then I started thinking about Clinton versus Bush in 92. There was no way Clinton was going to win that election. The dirt on him was coming out - there were pictures of Bush 41 being pulled out of the sea circa WWII, etc.

You can blame it on Bush, on "read my lips," or Mary Matalin - bottom line is, Bill Clinton won. I try to remember that when I start getting smug with any prediction.

Busy, Busy

Sorry for the light blogging - just been busy and had a travel day yesterday. Hopefully things will return to normal very soon.

Dan

Aww

Kicking a guy when he's down - or is it up, given his new home?

Check This Out: An Archivist's Blog

Check out this item from 1934 - with an update from a West Point grad. Fascinating when you find out the archivist for the township you grew up in is a blogger. From a posted national news item -- Oscar De Priest (Republican) Illinois, the lone "Negro" member of the House was upset as Democrats wouldn't allow him to eat in the House restaurant. But he was already falling out of favor at home in Chicago ... for opposing taxes on the rich. Somehow I doubt he would have thought much about Obama, or his church. heh!

Civil rights activists criticized De Priest for opposing federal aid to the needy, but they applauded him for speaking in the South despite death threats. They also praised De Priest for telling an Alabama senator he was not big enough to prevent him from dining in the Senate restaurant, and for defending the right of Howard University students to eat in the House restaurant. De Priest took the House restaurant issue to a special bipartisan House committee. In a three month-long heated debate, the Republican minority argued that the restaurant's discriminatory practice violated 14th Amendment rights to equal access.

The Democratic majority skirted the issue by claiming that the restaurant was not open to the public, and the House restaurant remained segregated.In 1929, DePriest made national news when first lady Lou Hoover, at DePriest's urging, invited his wife, Jessie Williams DePriest, to a tea at the White House.

By the early 1930s, DePriest's popularity waned as the economy plummeted because he continued to oppose taxes on the rich and fought Depression era federal relief programs. De Priest was defeated in 1934 by Democrat Arthur W. Mitchell, who was also an African American.

I grew up in what's considered "the bad part of town" - encompassed by this aerial image from the thirties. The home I grew up in was just being built to house more factory workers. My Grade and Elementary schools are pictured, one is now torn down. Lots of interesting items to check out.

I am the archivist at the Hamilton Township Public Library and if the good Lord wills it, I will be logging local history when I reach 100 in 25 years. I WILL be 75 in September, 2008.