Google's Blogger Enforces Sharia Law?

Lately I have had Blogger take down (i.e. they censored) a couple of my older posts that were critical of Muhammad or of his fake religion, Islam.  They featured Photoshops of Muhammad and the Quran.  The first showed Muhammad as Cyrano de Bergerac, as part of "everyone draw Muhammad" day.

The second showed a young boy peeing on a Quran.  This was a response to an Islamic cartoon showing a young boy peeing on the Statue of Liberty.

The problem, per Google, was that these depictions were a violation of Pakistani law.  So now we have a major US corporation enforcing the laws of a Muslim hell-hole over the Constitution of the United States.

Feeling Silly

Time to Shed Bad Old Habits: Football and Hollywood

The National Football League
News media report that the athletes of the National Football League are still insisting on the right to "take a knee" during the national anthem before games.  Last season the public boycotted football games because of this, reducing audience size by 8% in 2016 and 9.7% in 2017 (see here for details).  The players don't seem to care, they want to protest again for the 2018 season.

The players can protest until they are blue in the face, it's their right.  I will exercise my right not to watch or even care about professional football.

Hollywood
If ever there were a venue or culture that is 180 degrees opposite my personal values, it is Hollywood.  Their movies are leftist propaganda, for the most part, preachy sermons to us ignorant and unenlightened masses about the most current perversions, myths and falsehoods.  It seems 99% of all actors, producers and directors are far-out leftwingers with green hair, tattoos, nose rings and a Marxist mentality.  And they hate with a burning fury like no other, hate President Trump, hate normal people, that is, those of us who are not gay, illegal, atheistic or anti-American.

Their latest idiocy is to promote "transgenderism," where it is considered highly desirable to identify with the gender that you are not, to dress the part, and to invade public restrooms, showers and dressing rooms of the opposite sex; not to mention competing in women's sports with pecker attached, and winning racing and wrestling events because such "transgenders" are really men with more muscle mass and testosterone.

Even more sick is their latest support of pedophilia -- supporting those who want to have sex with children.  Hollyweird supports depravity and revels in it.

So I rarely, if ever, go to the movies anymore.

A Southern Dilemma: How Not to Antagonize New Black Conservatives; Dealing With Dinesh D'Souza

Over at Twitter I am very pleased to see the number of black conservatives who have joined the MAGA ("Make America Great Again") movement.  I link to every black conservative I find.  However, I see many of them buying into Dinesh D'Souza's interpretations of American history, which I believe are flawed and downright dishonest.  I say that as a well-read Confederate descendant who regularly disputes the Northern Myth, that the North and the 19th Century Republicans fought the Civil War to free the slaves and make black people full equals in the American dream.

I generally avoid arguments with fellow conservatives on Twitter about this history, to avoid disunity in our support for Donald Trump, and to avoid hard feelings between us.  The here and now is more important than what happened 150 years ago; nevertheless, wholescale distortion of that history by D'Souza does grate on me.  He is insulting my ancestors, my family, and indirectly, me.  And he is not the only culprit:  recently Rush Limbaugh spouted some ahistorical nonsense, comparing modern Democrats to the Confederates of the 1860s.

Yesterday a prominent conservative listed all the sins of the Democratic Party.  I found his interpretation superficial.  Among other claims he made was that "Democrats started the Civil War."  No, Democrats did not.  They exercised their Constitutional and natural right to secede from a political union, much as the U.K. recently did from the European Union.  It was Lincoln and Lincoln alone who decided to go to war to prevent the South from leaving, and even plotted with his generals to push the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter, for propaganda purposes, as recommended by his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Wells.

Some Republicans (like D'Souza) hate to hear it and even deny it, but yes, the two political parties have indeed changed sides since the 19th Century.  Lincoln's GOP was authoritarian, anti-Constitutional, believed the Federal government to be superior to the states, supported corporate welfare for Northern businesses, high taxes, and all sorts of political shenanigans to ensure the GOP's hold on power -- like illegally forming a new state, West Virginia, to give Lincoln more electoral votes, marching the army to the polls with orders to vote for Lincoln, shutting down opposition newspapers and jailing the editors, arresting and imprisoning thousands of people on suspicion alone, illegally suspending habeas corpus, and the list goes on.  Lincoln was the biggest tyrant in U.S. history, and he didn't care much for black people.

The Democrats of that time period resented and opposed the high taxes that fell mainly on the South, believed in a small and limited federal government that was the servant, not the master, of the states.

I am a Republican today because it is NOT the same party of 1860.  Race relations has little to do with it.  However, I am happy that black people are progressing in modern society, making more money, enjoying a better lifestyle, and more and more of them are becoming my allies and friends.

Disqus Commenting System -- Doesn't Work With Chrome?

When I view this site with Chrome browser, I am unable to access the Disqus Commenting System.  This isn't true all of the time, but lately it is true most of the time.

If you are unable to see a place under each post for comments, try a different browser.  The system seems to work better with the Microsoft Edge browser and the Firefox browser.  However, there is no doubt that most of this problem originates with Disqus.  I may have to look into a different commenting system.

Update:  Well now I am using Edge and I can see the comment section for all the posts below this one -- but not for this one!  Weird.

Another Update:  I notice Disqus stops working in Edge whenever I delete or edit old posts, or add new ones; however, if I click out of Saberpoint and then reload it, Disqus begins working again. Try that if you have trouble.  (This doesn't work for Chrome -- it just doesn't work, period).

UPDATE:  I deleted Disqus from my blog and reinstalled it, and now it works.

A Visit to Mount Rushmore

I continue on my "what I did on my vacation" series.  Be happy you are not a captive for dinner and forced to watch slides.  Last month my wife and I visited Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.  I took the picture herein.  Here's what Wikeleaks says about it:

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, a batholith in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota, United States. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture's design and oversaw the project's execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. Mount Rushmore features 60-foot sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. The memorial park covers 1,278.45 acres and is 5,725 feet above sea level.

Some interesting facts about Mt. Rushmore:  It was never completely finished.  Congress stopped funding construction in 1941, leaving Abe Lincoln's hair and ear unfinished.

Originally, Thomas Jefferson was to be to our left of Washington, but Borglum decided he didn't have enough rock to work with, so "erased"  the sculpture and redid it to our right of Washington.

Teddy Roosevelt did not have enough accomplishment to justify his inclusion in the sculpture, but he had been a personal friend of Borglum, and so was included.

Only George Washington has his chest and lapels sculpted.  The other three presidents are heads only. 

Yee-HA! California Makes Guns Legal

Hooray!  Somehow the Ninth Circuit of the Court of Appeals got something right.  They ruled that it is Constitutional for citizens to open carry guns for safety in California.

I live in California.  I have a gun.  Where can I get a good holster?

Note:  My commenting system isn't working for some reason.  I'll see if I can find out why.

A Visit to Devil's Tower

On our bus tour last month, we stopped at Devil's Tower in Wyoming.  Devil's Tower is probably most famous today for being featured in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."  Devil's Tower is where the space aliens meet the US military and a bunch of scientists in a great intergalactic powwow.

In the movie, the chief character, played by Richard Dreyfus, and a lady companion, scale the sides of Devil's Tower to get to the top, where they witness the historic meeting with beings from another planet.  The scaling part was pretty bogus, because the sides of the Tower are very steep, and are only rarely scaled by experienced mountain climbers.

Devil's Tower was formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago.  This type of lava formation looks like giant strings of magma, and that's what it is.  It is known as columnar basalt.

I took the photo at the left.

Note:  Devil's Tower was the first declared National Monument of the United States, dedicated by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

My Visit to Custer's Last Stand -- the Little Big Horn

Where Custer Fell 
(Custer's stone is the one in the middle
with a black face)

My wife and I took a vacation last month, a bus tour of South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.  One of our more memorable stops was at the sight of Custer's Last Stand in Southeastern Montana.  General Custer and his 7th Cavalry were there to force the Lakota Sioux back onto their reservation, and get off the Crow reservation that the Lakota had invaded.  The battle took place on June 25-26, 1876, 142 years to the month that we were there.

The Sioux had some legitimate grievances (getting kicked out of the Black Hills of South Dakota, that had been previously granted to them as a homeland  -- the reason:  gold was discovered therein).

Scattered Tombstones
Where Dead Fell & Were Originally Buried

The Crow had some legitimate grievances against the Sioux, who had taken over one-third of the Crow reservation.  The Crow, among other tribes, had supplied Indian Scouts to assist Custer, as they wanted their land back.

Custer had received bad intelligence from the army, indicating the number of Sioux warriors was much smaller than the 2,000 that were there.  So he ordered Major Marcus Reno to attack the village where women and children were present, and Reno killed a number of wives and children.  Understandably annoyed, the braves counterattacked and killed 40+ of Reno's troopers, and his remaining force was barely able to escape. Then they attacked Custer's force, cutting off his path of escape, forcing it into a less than defensible hilltop, where all soldiers and Custer were quickly killed.

Monument to the Dead
(Buried Around this Stone)

Two days after the battle, other army soldiers arrived on site and buried the dead, roughly in the same spot where they died.  The spot where each man was found was marked with a wooden stake, later to be replaced by marble headstones.

Today the marble tombstones are still there, marking the places of burial, but the soldier's remains are not.  The remains of the soldiers were removed (in July 1877)  from their shallow graves and reburied atop the hill behind the death site, where they are better protected from weather and predators.  The site is today marked with a large granite monument listing the names of the soldiers and Indian Scouts who died there.

The remains of the officers, however, were placed in coffins and shipped back to their families.  Custer's remains were reburied at West Point.

It was sobering for me to stand behind the place where the Last Stand took place, only 20 feet behind the spot where Custer died.  His tombstone there has a black painted face to make it stand out.

To see actual size of images, click on each.

Note:  The monument picture only shows one side listing names.  The actual monument has names listed on all four sides.

My Take:  I used to think the Indians were the good guys, the troopers the victims and Custer the prize ass who got them all killed.  I don't think that any more.  Maybe it's because blood is thicker than water and the troopers were "my tribe," and the Sioux were not.  Sitting Bull had called Indians to come off their reservation and join him in a great, last fight against the white man, knowing full well it was a fight he could not win.  A lot of lives were lost for nothing.  Also, I resent the wholesale slaughter of wounded troopers and the mutiliation of their bodies:  limbs were cut off, scalps were taken, Tom Custer's head was beaten into jelly, and others were disemboweled.  The US Army took care of the Sioux in later battles in 1876 and 1877, and good riddance.

Twitter vs Blogger

I haven't been blogging much lately.  I have been using Twitter for my daily dose of liberal head banging.  On Twitter the debates over current events are more timely and immediate.  I like that.

Liberal Reaction to Trump's Summit With Putin