musing minds

Today we’ll be going to my sister’s house for the family Thanksgiving gathering. Because there are so many people there (and because it’s at someone else’s house) there won’t be any leftovers. My personal tradition is to cook a “Leftover Thanksgiving Dinner” on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Today, my sister will do the cooking, tomorrow it will be me.

mmmmm skin…..

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
he chastens and hastens his will to make known;
the wicked oppressing now cease from distressing:
sing praise to his Name, he forgets not his own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine;
so from the beginning the fight we were winning:
thou, Lord, wast at our side: all glory be thine!

We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
and pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation:
thy Name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

Words: Nederlandtsche Gedenckclanck, 1626;
trans. Theodore Baker, 1894.

Music: Kremser

Family & Friends

Voting for Spades is over, the top vote-getters are as follows:

Raw vote totals, without bonuses:

255 — Regime Change Iran — 20%
174 — Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler — 14%
159 — Babalublog — 13%
79 — Jihadwatch — 6%
69 — Resistance is Futile — 6%
65 — The Queen of All Evil — 5%
52 — Stop the ACLU — 4%
46 — Riding Sun — 4%
39 — Little Green Footballs — 3%
32 — A Nation of Riflemen — 3%
28 — Peace Like A River — 2%
19 — The Middle Ground — 2%

We garnered 3 votes (but as we said before, it is an honor just to be nominated)

Final Hearts standings:

Michelle Malkin –Ace of Hearts
The Anchoress –Queen of Hearts
Atlas Shrugs — 10 of Hearts
SarahK — 9 of Hearts
Lorie Byrd — 8 of Hearts
Ann Althouse — 7 of Hearts
Soldier’s Angel — 6 of Hearts
SondraK — 5 of Hearts
Sister Toldjah — 4 of Hearts
Blonde Sagacity — 3 of Hearts
Karol at Alarming News — 2 of Hearts

The Jack and King of Hearts have been reserved for male bloggers and the voting for them will be later.

Congratulations Ladies!

The Carnival of True Civil Liberties is up at Stop the ACLU.

We will be hosting the next Carnival of True Civil Liberties, here, Monday, November 28, 2005.

The deadline for submissions is 9 pm (EST), Friday, November 25, 2005.

You can use the Carnival Submission Form at Conservative Cat.

The voting is open for Spades in Aaron’s Deck O’ Bloggers and we’ve been nominated for a place in the deck.

Vote here!

And, we must say, it is an honor just to be nominated!

Imagine a football game where team X is up 28-3 against team Y in the fourth quarter. While team Y makes an occasional good tackle or decent block now and again, team X is pretty much dominating all aspects of the game.

Now imagine if this is an away game so you can only watch it on TV, and the station that’s airing the game does not show it in its entirety. You are never told what the score is, and only those occasional good tackles or decent blocks of team Y are aired. Team X’s scoring drives or other good plays are never shown.

I guess you would think team X was losing.

Update: It may be hard to avoid coverage of team Y’s starting quarterback getting taken out of the game (ok I have to interrupt the metaphor to let you know that I’m talking about reports that Al-Zarqawi may have been killed in the assault referred to above.)

Jeanette answers the question For Those Who Don’t Know Why.

Go read it. You will not be sorry.

The nominations are now open here

Nominations close Saturday, November 26, 2005.

We would be eligible for (not that I think we’ll win) Shameless plug though – please nominate us!:

Best Blog

Best Group Blog

Best Conservative Blog

Best of the Top 251-500 blogs

The Anchoress and Oh How I Love Jesus have been nominated for Best Religious Blog

Bill Hemmer just interviewed Terry McAuliffe on Fox News Live… (all emphasis mine)
{Rep Murtha’s name has been corrected}

Ian (that wonderful young man) has posted the video at Political Teen.

Hemmer: Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe is my guest here now in D.C. and we welcome you, Terry, here. Welcome to Washington.

McAuliffe: Very good to see you.

Hemmer: It is downright nasty in this town.

McAuliffe: Well…

Hemmer: Is this just the precursor for what we’re seeing in midterm elections, 12 months from now, in November of 2006?

McAuliffe: I think, Bill, people are very upset. We’ve lost over 2,000 troops, we’ve spent 200 billion dollars, we have a mess on our hands in Iraq today. And it’s not, you know they’re trying to blame the democrats, I remind you that two days ago they voted in the United States Senate, bipartisan, 79 to 19 a no confidence vote in George Bush and Dick Cheney. And you saw Senator Hagel the other day come out against the Republicans saying it would be unpatriotic not to ask these kind of questions.

{A “No Confidence” vote? Is that what that was? I’m sure McAuliffe wishes that the United States had a Parliment. Then, an actual no confidence vote would result in new elections, almost immediately. Too bad for him we don’t have a Parliment. We have regularly scheduled elections and McAuliffe is stuck with President Bush and Vice President Cheney until noon on January 20, 2009.}
Continue reading →

This is Raven (left) and Bitsy (right). Bitsy likes to cuddle, so she cuddled with Raven last night, and Raven let her for a while.

Although the headline at Fox News (story by Associated [De]Press[ed]) is U.N. Summit Lets U.S. Keep Control of Internet Domain Names (emphasis mine).

As if the U.N. Summit can give us permission or something…

A U.N. technology summit opened Wednesday after an 11th-hour agreement that leaves the United States with ultimate oversight of the main computers that direct the Internet’s flow of information, commerce and dissent.

…

“If the Internet had been developed in Australia, I don’t think we would have had so much heat on this discussion,” ICANN chief Paul Twomey, an Australian, remarked of the tension surrounding the U.S. control of the Internet.

The U.S. not only invented the internet, it performs its oversight duties exceedingly well.