Donald's Blog
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This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison,
Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the
winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were
AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there. |
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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever,
and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything
that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool
of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the
site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc.
to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.
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June 12, 2013Somebody's out to get me, but it's not ObamaRand Paul in yesterday's Wall Street Journal and Cal Thomas in today's Morning Call are warning me that my civil liberties are being eroded. They do not mean my right not to be murdered by a terrorist; they mean my right, which had never occured to me, to keep my phone calls a secret, which anybody who watches TV melodramas knows is impossible anyway.
I've got news for these wavers of the Constitution: what we need nowadays is waivers. James Madison never saw a cellphone, and had no reason to fear Islamofascism. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor they wore uniforms and had big red circles painted on their airplanes; nowadays our enemies look like our neighbors. Furthermore, the authorities have always had the right to look at the names and addresses on our mail, but they didn't open it without a warrant; similarly, nowadays they can look to see (if they need to) who I have been calling, and who has been calling me. When Ethne calls me from her office on a slow afternoon to shoot the breeze, they couldn't care less, but if a guy who calls me about a second-hand lawn mower I'm selling on Craig's List has also been buying job lots of pressure cookers, then I want and expect the authorities to look at me.
Edward Snowden is a deluded jerk, in my opinion; I don't need him protecting me from the big bad government. He has caused a lot of publicity about national security such that even the dimmest wannabe terrorists will henceforth communicate by smoke signal or by notes left in hollow trees, making me less safe. Thanks a lot, pal.
June 12, 2013The water feature
Here's Ethne's water feature, finished at last, the gravel scrubbed and a border made of scrap slate. With all the rain we've had lately the potato plants on the right are going crazy. It's lovely to sit out here in the twilight... when it's not raining.