I am SO sick of hearing ‘censorship’, every time someone makes a private decision not to support someone’s asinine views.

The recent thing, in case you’re not aware of it, is a comment by someone called “The Daily Kos”, one of the biggest left-wing blogs out there. When Kos heard of the murder and mutilation of four US contractors in Fallujah recently, his response was “screw ’em”, on the grounds that they were ‘mercenaries’. He got a little bit of attention to that comment, including losing some advertisers, and everyone’s crying about censorship.

I want to remind people: Censorship is when the GOVERNMENT prohibits speech. I, or any other private individual, can never exercise censorship. The coercive act would be if you could force me to advertise on your site, regardless of what you said. So if a private advertiser chooses not to advertise because they don’t like what you’re saying, that is not a violation of your First Amendment rights. Is it censorship when Planned Parenthood doesn’t advertise on the Catholic Singles website? Or George W. Bush doesn’t buy time on Talking Points Memo? Grow up.

I’ve been pretty bad about getting my sermons on the web. I’ve finally uploaded several, the last four. There’s one on baptism in particular that you might find interesting, if you’re wondering why we sprinkle, and why we baptize babies as well. The link to the sermons is on the sidebar.

Reuters has an article here about how pollsters think that the recent Iraq images will change people’s minds about the war, presumably just as it did back in Somalia in 1993. That’s right, a “news story” about POLLSTERS speculating about what people MIGHT think. Does this seem even the slightest bit self-serving?

Maybe, Reuters, if you tell people often enough how they ought to react to a given stimulus, maybe they’ll react the way you’d like them to. I’m sure some people will.

Maybe, on the other hand, the experience of having an actual adult in the White House, having a real reason for being there, and having seen first hand on one sunny September morning the result of running everytime someone kicks us in the shin, will give the American people a different response this time. Maybe it will make people actually want to win this time. Maybe it will remind people that we’re in an actual war, with people who enjoy destroying life, and that we absolutely have to win, or one day those people will be celebrating a nuclear weapon going off in one of our cities. The people who did this will not be happy when we leave Iraq, or when we abandon Israel, or when we close all the bases. They will be happy when we are all dead.

A quote, paraphrasing from a Jew who was asked what he’d learned from the Holocaust: When people say they are going to kill you, believe them. We might have learned the same from 9/11. Many people did.

But not, apparently, Reuters.

Bill Whittle’s Chapter Two is up. Go check it out. It’s great, of course. A short sample:

Intellectualism, as it is practiced today, is a trap.

It is not a palatial hall of great minds looking for answers and then testing them in the real world; it is a basement in your parents house filled with lazy and filthy hippies eating your leftovers and drinking the last of your milk. Intellectualism is certainly not the same as intelligence, and more and more, it is becoming antithetical to intelligence. When well-off people who call themselves intellectuals drive their SUV’s to march in support of Marxism, you can see the chasm between intellectualism and intelligence in full flower. When elitists who fancy themselves brighter and more compassionate than the rest of us choose to support the Taliban, with its stoning of women and execution of homosexuals in football stadiums before mandatory audiences, over a representative democracy with unparalleled structural protections of minorities and freedoms of expression, then self-styled intellectuals have abandoned intelligence altogether, as well as morality, reason, compassion and indeed sanity.

Likewise, when coffee-house intellectuals dictate their worldview according to non-existent pipelines or supposed theft of oil revenues where no evidence of such theft can be produced but deposits into Iraqi national accounts can, then one has to ask one’s self if this intellectual badge is worth the mud it’s printed on.

Yes, that was a short sample, compared to the length of the whole thing. Well worth your time, though.

Katie loves tools. I think they’re her favorite thing, except maybe Veggie Tales. Right now she’s playing with my brand new Cable Tacker. Don’t worry, it’s still in the Lucite they encase everything in these days. What’s with that stuff? It used to be just little things, like a $15 Walkman, would be put into that molded plastic stuff that you need a blowtorch to remove. Now everything’s in it, it seems- larger and larger items all the time. It’s very annoying. I hate that stuff. Anti-theft I guess. That means I hate thieves even more for making it necessary to encase all commercial items from $5 to $500 in inconveniently large packages of impenetrable Astronaut-grade polycarbons.

The next question you may be asking is, what do I need a cable tacker for? And the answer, naturally, is that I have cable to tack. Not right now, maybe, but eventually. Everyone needs a cable tacker. What, you say you don’t have one? Well I say to you, RUN, don’t walk, to your local Lowe’s and buy one now. You never know when you’re going to be hit with a cable-tacking emergency.

Haier America is the WORST company in the country. NEVER NEVER NEVER buy their products. There, I said it. Haier’s actually a Hong Kong company, and I don’t know whether they’re the worst company in Hong Kong or not. But let’s not split hairs. I’m venting.

I was hesitant to say anything for some time, because I thought perhaps they’d do a web search on their company, or my name, or my name plus their company, read this review and my criticism, and be even slower to help me, though I think the only way they could be being less helpful would be by coming by the house and slashing my tires or something. Also, I’m pretty sure that the people I’m dealing with don’t know how to use their own phones, so probably using Google’s a bit of a stretch for them.

Anyway, I bought a certain Haier appliance, a compact washer-dryer combo unit, which was very cool in theory as it did both washing and drying in one drum. It was slow, and low-capacity, but very easy to use and did a good job cleaning the clothes. And you didn’t have to take stuff out of the washer and put it in the drier. It was all one unit. Cool. It’s the XQG50-11 unit, which I include so people might find this article in a Google search if they’re considering buying this product, and hopefully reconsider.

Except it wasn’t cool, actually, because after four months or so it stopped drying. What has followed has been a year of call-center hell. After I don’t know how many hours on the phone, three months after it stopped working, they finally just broke down and replaced the unit. After another few months, it did exactly the same thing. Their tech support center also did exactly the same thing, not returning calls, not telling me anything useful when I got them on the phone, and worst of all, not fixing the machine.

I am currently trying to convince them to just give me a refund. Actually, I should say that I am demanding it. That has appeared to increase my bargaining power. They said, as all corporations do, that they never ever give refunds. A tip for dealing with large corporations- they very frequently claim to never give refunds. This is always a lie. All companies give refunds, when faced with the possibility of losing a lawsuit.

The key to success with corporate call centers in general is to get the direct line to someone who cares about doing their job right (rare) or who has power in the organization, and bugging them until they fix your problem just to get you to go away. Relying on the random person who picks up the phone from the queue is spitting into the wind. Just dial into the general line and immediately ask for the name and direct extension of their supervisor. With enough insistence, they’ll eventually give it to you.

NEVER NEVER NEVER buy Haier products. They look cool, and are creatively designed, but they don’t work, and Haier won’t do anything about it.

Update:

Haier has agreed to give me an 80% refund. Their logic is, I did get some use out of the machine, and am therefore not eligible to get all my money back.

It worked for three months before it died. So that’s 20% of the expected use of the machine in their book? Therefore, they expect their machine to last 15 months before being worthless.

Don’t deal with this company. They’re crooks.

Still wondering what to think of Richard Clarke? Check out Lileks, or Powerline. Between the two of them, it should be pretty obvious.

I’m back from Classis, and I am licensed to preach. I sustained my examinations. One more hurdle finished. Thanks for all your prayers.

Well I’m off again, this time to Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s our Classis meeting for my denomination, the RCUS. I am going to be examined for licensure at that meeting. I’ve been working hard preparing for that for a long time now, so it’ll be a big weight off when it’s done. I’ll be back Thursday or so, and I’ll let you know how it went.

I think one of the best things about Bush is the great men with which he has surrounded himself. Cheney’s got a great speech here. An excerpt:

Sen. Kerry speaks often about the need for international cooperation, and has vowed to usher in a “golden age of American diplomacy.” He is fond of mentioning that some countries did not support America’s actions in Iraq. Yet of the many nations that have joined our coalition–allies and friends of the United States–Sen. Kerry speaks with open contempt. Great Britain, Australia, Italy, Spain, Poland and more than 20 other nations have contributed and sacrificed for the freedom of the Iraqi people. Sen. Kerry calls these countries, quote, “window dressing.” They are, in his words, “a coalition of the coerced and the bribed.”

Many questions come to mind, but the first is this: How would Sen. Kerry describe Great Britain–coerced, or bribed? Or Italy–which recently lost 19 citizens, killed by terrorists in Najaf–was Italy’s contribution just window dressing? If such dismissive terms are the vernacular of the golden age of diplomacy Sen. Kerry promises, we are left to wonder which nations would care to join any future coalition. He speaks as if only those who openly oppose America’s objectives have a chance of earning his respect. Sen. Kerry’s characterization of our good allies is ungrateful to nations that have withstood danger, hardship, and insult for standing with America in the cause of freedom.

I like that- If Kerry’s so pro-diplomacy, why does he go around insulting our best allies?