J's Cafe Nette

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

kimsch from Schratwieser Consulting continues to be our webmaster and the other day I asked her to design some new color schemes because when I switched to Windows 7 the colors got much brighter. I also found out my computers (the old one, the new one, my husband’s and the laptop) were not displaying the colors seen by kimsch or by Sue.

I asked for something easy on the eyes and boy did we get it! Right now we are using the green theme, but we will be showing you the blue theme and the new “brown” theme in a few days just so you get to see all of them. I don’t know if I like the green or the blue more, but both are beautiful.

You will also notice our logo has been made smaller and appears in the header rather than under it on the right side now.

We hope you like the new look(s) and will comment on it.

We have also added a Twitter feature, Facebook feature and a Read Later feature for you to use.

Thanks, kimsch, for staying up so late to do this project. I didn’t expect it to be done so soon and I highly recommend her if you want a new design for an existing blog or want to start a blog with some “punch” in it.

Tweet This Post

The Anchoress:

Received an email from Fausta that Ed Morrissey, our good friend (and Blogfather) from Hot Air has had to rush his dear First Mate to the Emergency Room, apparently due to complications with the flu.

Tweet This Post

The Anchoress asks if Obama knows who we are and goes on to ask us what we know about him.

The forced definition of the American Presidency is sitting very uncomfortably with Barack Obama. There is nowhere to hide; there are no further personae to be invented and presented. The Jekyll and Hyde who has been singing endless encores of “This is the Moment” to America for nearly three years, has finally come upon a real moment, an authentic crossroad: he must now materialize into a defined entity with a known vector. Will that entity choose to define himself by a willingness to help a nation of free and energetic dreamers sustain the most exceptional and productive dream in history? Or will it choose to remain the poorly-marked outline of an aching, light-consuming void, delivering nothing but silence?

Until Barak Obama decides who he is, we cannot know him, and he cannot know America. And until he knows America, he cannot begin to understand the good-faith majority of us, who are longing not for a god, not for a king, but for a president worthy of our trust.

This is just a taste of what she is discussing and I encourage you to go over there, read what she has written, and ponder it.

Tweet This Post

Sometimes, late night conversations are the best. When you can go from muffins, to education, to grandchildren, to politics, you about have it covered don’t you think?

I am taking a bit of liberty here to tell you of a talk ~J~ and I had in the wee hours of this morning.

Was I still interested in blogging was the question ~J~ posed to me. Did I want to continue or was I simply willing to go on out of some sense of obligation to a friend?

The reply was simple. I have always enjoyed working with ~J~ here at the Cafe but lately it has become increasingly difficult to find topics of interest which do not include the name Obama, and that folks is simply getting very old.

Gosh, when was the last time (not just in the past few months but the two years prior) that you went through a day without hearing the name Obama? Think quick…ah, didn’t think you could remember.

Perhaps we just don’t understand. Maybe hip and cool has indeed replaced dignity and honor. Could it be that most citizens want to have our government control most facets of their lives?

Have we come to a place where America’s strengths and her symbols are no longer what we look to in times of trouble? Instead, we crave the equivalent of a rock star (with little or no experience) to steady our ship?

Have you heard anyone in this administration express how appreciative they are to be living in the beautiful home we gratefully pay for? Last I recall, an escape was necessary, as life in the White House was too constraining.

And, on and on, and on..teleprompters, abs, fashion, Oprah, Leno, weekend vacations at Camp David, congo lines, very expensive steak, vegetable gardens and did I mention legislation which neither Congress fully read nor did Mr. Obama prior to affixing his signature to what is now law?

Long story short, we will continue to plug along here at the Cafe.
If there is something of substance which has not be addressed in a million other places (and this is speaking for me), then it will be worthy of a post, otherwise it is nothing more than regurgitated material.

It won’t be easy. There’s not much out there (mainstream media, not on-line sites) which either bashes former President Bush or showers glorious praise on Barack Obama, but with a little work I am certain it can be had.

There are no sour grapes here. Republicans did themselves no favors in the last election. There is much work to be done for them to rebuild themselves into viable contenders. I suppose they could begin by reinforcing the positives about America. We don’t hear much of that lately.

Guess what I am trying to convey is that we are both weary, not of blogging, not of attempting to show that every administration has its strengths and weaknesses, not of holding politicians feet to the fire when it is warranted.

The weariness comes from something much simpler. We are watching a transformation (in fast forward) of our country which will take generations to undo (if ever.)

So, on we go. For those who have hung in there with us, please continue to do so. We do appreciate your readership.

And, ~J~, hope you don’t mind that I laid a bit of our conversation out here for all to see.

I’ll wrap this post with a little Frank…all the way back in 1986 and while late in his career, he still sang this song with tons of feeling (it’s neat to see Ronald and Nancy Reagan too):

Tweet This Post

Kate has posted a Prayer Request for her Grand-Niece.

Please stop by and show your support for this sweet little girl and her family.

Thanks.

Tweet This Post

Because we were experiencing outages for almost full days with no feedback from our hosting company as to what was going on even after putting in trouble tickets, I have made the decision to change hosting companies immediately.

As far as I know everything is done except to tell the old host we will not be renewing our contract with them. The changes should be seamless since our name is already propagated, but if we should experience some down time you will know why.

I hope this gives our site more reliability for our readers, and we now have more space to do what needs to be done behind the scenes. No more deleting pictures, Sue.

We will also be able to get some features we were unable to get with the other host as they didn’t have the latest php program.

Again, bear with us if there is some down time, but I don’t expect it. The new company was Johnnie on the Spot with answering my questions and moving the site to their host.

This would not have been possible without the back room support of our web master Kim at SC Themes. Thank you, Kim!

Tweet This Post

As any regular visitor can see, we have changed the look of our site. It basically gives us more behind-the-scenes help, but one thing you can do immediately is finally get the text to go larger or smaller. Look to the right of posts and you will see a “text size” option. Use the drop-down list to set it to your preference.

This is in the post areas only and not the sidebar area. You can go as large as 30 point type or as small as 8 or 10 point type.

We hope you like this new feature, and hope the design is pleasant to the eye.

Our thanks to Kim from S C Themes for our design work.

Tweet This Post

If you’re a regular on this site you will notice we have changed the look of our site again. We have three themes to use at any given time, but this theme is by far the one I like the most.

The gold and soft yellow show a happiness and optimistic outlook on life. It’s cozy and I hope you like it as much as Sue and I do.

Kim from Schratwieser Consulting, as usual, has designed this template.

I want to sing her praises as I can sometimes be a very demanding client, but she very calmly does the impossible every time.

If you ever want a site designed I highly recommend her for your site. You won’t be disappointed and she’s not as expensive as some of the larger design firms.

Enjoy this theme because I have a feeling it’s going to be up a long, long time. At least until she shows me something I like better.

Thanks, Kim. ><=d>

Tweet This Post

We have added the Newsmax/AP video feed of the day’s top stories to our sidebar. This is in addition to the Breitbart text stories also listed on the sidebar.

Tweet This Post

My beloved Red Sox, who have broken my heart many times in my life, have made me a very happy person tonight with their 11-2 win against the Cleveland Indians.

Now on to the Colorado Rockies for the World Series.

Because of the game I missed the Republican debate (hey, you have to have priorities), but I can give you a link that gives you a flavor of what the debate was like.

I did TiVo the debate and will try to watch it tomorrow, mostly for my own edification, as everyone else will have told you about it anyway.

Right now I think I need toothpicks to hold my eyelids open and will get back to regular posting on Monday after I have my allergy shot.

Go Sox!

Tweet This Post

At least I am and I left a message for Sue to do the same. Even God rested one day in seven.

Tweet This Post

As you may or may not know Rush Limbaugh has up for auction at EBay the original letter to his boss, signed by Harry Reid and 40 other senators, including Senator Clinton.

We have a real time widget on the sidebar right under the Verse of the Day to show you how much the latest bid is. We will keep this up until after the auction is over so you can see what the final bid is.

All bidders have to be qualified, so I feel confident all this money is for real and will go to help the charity designated by Rush.

I would hope the Senators would give an equal amount to put their money where their mouths are, but I think that’s hoping for too much.

We have also added a widget that will take you directly to Michael Yon’s page, even though he is on our blogroll.

Please check these things out.

Tweet This Post

I received an email from Guss today telling me he gave it his best shot, but blogging is not for him. He says he’s neglecting his dogs and work that needs to be done at the house and has cleared all his posts off his site.

I have asked kimsch to change the theme to Js Cafe Nette so we will have a different theme to put up every now and then.

I’m disappointed that he decided it wasn’t for him but I understand and support his decision.

I would also like to congratulate kimsch on her third blogiversary, which was Friday. Congratulations, Kim!

Tweet This Post

Ed Driscoll has addressed the evolution of mass media in its various forms just superbly.

If you are someone involved in the information business from mass media to talk radio or the largest or smallest blog on the web, this is a must read.

The twentieth century was the high point of mass culture—or “the overculture” as some call it. Any culture that could produce Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and The Honeymooners can’t be all bad.

But eventually, the connection between media elites and their audiences began to fracture. Though apocryphal, the line frequently attributed to Pauline Kael of the New Yorker in 1972 sums up the growing chasm between the overculture—particularly the media—and its audience: “I don’t know how Nixon won. No one I know voted for him.”

Just as the Big Three car manufacturers, with a once-monolithic hold on American consumers, seemed unaware that the public wanted a wider choice of cars (until Japan listened and responded), Pauline Kael’s in-crowd of coastal elites has, if anything, become even more clueless and resistant to emerging changes in the culture and dissemination of information.

How clueless? In 2004, Jonathan Klein, the former executive vice president of CBS News, described blogging as “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.” Last May, Time-Warner CEO Richard Parsons was quoted as saying, “The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war. The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”

Just how did the mainstream media (“MSM”) become so monolithic and unresponsive in the first place? And how is the rise of “Weblogs” helping to establish a new, more “fair and balanced” form of journalism?

Mr. Driscoll surely needs no help from me describing the balance of this piece. It is just one informative, terrific article.

HT: Instapundit

Tweet This Post

With Dan Rather’s announcement that he is suing CBS and Viacom over his dismissal from CBS, new life has been given to the Rathergate TANG report.

Mary Mapes has been writing at Huffington Post (I don’t read it) and I found this one piece of her quote to be quite interesting:

What was different in our case was the brand new and bruising power of the conservative blogosphere, particularly the extremists among them. They formed a tightly knit community of keyboard assault artists who saw themselves as avenging angels of the right, determined to root out and decimate anything they believed to be disruptive to their worldview.

Thanks to Captain Ed Morrissey for checking HuffPo and reporting on it. That’s where I got this quote.

I found the quote to be interesting because I have noticed something in the blogosphere.

The conservative or right wing bloggers (use your favorite term) have their blogs set up to have comments and trackbacks and are willing to share their information as long as they get credit for the original post.

It is hard to find a liberal or left-wing blog (use your favorite term) that allows trackbacks, although they do have plenty of comments. The difference is they delete any opposing views from their comments and almost always require the reader to subscribe and wait for a password to make a comment.

It’s something that has really dawned on me in the past week while helping Guss learn how to do trackbacks on his blog. There are no trackback codes to many of the liberal blogs and information is not shared easily.

To have Mary Mapes say the conservative blogosphere blew this story apart is indeed a compliment to the bloggers on the right, even if she didn’t mean it to be one.

Tweet This Post

Right Wing News sent out a questionnaire to 240 right/center bloggers asking 7 questions ranging from their opinions of the two major parties’ positions on the military to the presidential candidates.

50 blogs responded.

I’m not going to give the entire post, but I am going to give you a couple of the questions and answers to them:

6) If your preferred candidate doesn’t win the GOP nomination, will you

A) vote Republican anyway: 44 — 96%
B) vote Democrat, stay home, or vote for a third party? 2 — 4%

7) If Hillary Clinton turns out to be the Democratic nominee, which candidate do you think would stand the best chance of defeating her?

Sam Brownback
John Cox
Newt Gingrich: 2 — 4%
Rudy Giuliani: 24 — 50%
Mike Huckabee
Duncan Hunter: 1 — 2%
Alan Keyes
John McCain
Ron Paul
Mitt Romney: 1 — 2%
Tom Tancredo
Fred Thompson: 20 — 42%

Go over and see the other questions and the responses to them. It’s all very interesting.

Hat Tip to Sister Toldjah.

Tweet This Post

I want to take this opportunity to thank Sue from the bottom of my heart for the hard work she has put into this blog this week.

I didn’t announce it, but I’ve been away this week and she has carried the entire load in an exemplary manner all by herself, even with all her other commitments.

Sue, I love you and I owe you big time.

Tweet This Post

Yesterday, Guss surprised all of us by saying he was going to stay away from blogging on this blog until after the election due to the tit for tat that has been going on.

We are in the process of setting up a separate blog for Guss that will be his alone to manage.

The URL for the new blog will be http://gussescoffeehouse.com, but we have to wait up to 72 hours for the name to be usable in order for anything to be uploaded to Word Press and get his theme up and running.

We will be linking to that blog from here as it will be our sister (brother?) blog.

Guss is very excited about it and says he will probably be asking if there are any Independents or moderates from ether side who would like to blog with him.

If you know of any, you can contact me at j@jscafenette.com and I’ll pass the information along to him. He still needs to set up an alternate email address so everyone doesn’t have his personal email and know his real name.

I’ll be putting up a post as soon as Kim from Musing Minds and Schratwieser Consulting has the site ready to go live.

We are still going to be under the same principles and Guss will probably operate under the same rules we do although you will probably see a few cuss words over there.

We look forward to this new endeavor and hope you will all go visit him and make comments as soon as he is up and running.

Tweet This Post

The political season has started with a bang and J and I have, sometimes, different points of view. If I stayed and continued to post, it would be nothing but tit for tat and I respect her too much to do that. Hopefully, after the election, I will try my hand at blogging again. I have enjoyed myself immensely and I have gained the utmost respect for Republican views. Catch you on the rebound.

~J~ says: Guss and I have discussed the heat that will happen during a campaign. I have offered to set him up with a liberal blog that he would run and would be a sister blog of this one.

He’s still deciding what he wants to do with that idea, so I hope no one gets the impression there has been a rift here.

Tweet This Post

This is a post I wish for Daniel, K. Daniel, Jacob, Jakob or whatever alias you wish to use today to read and make one of your foolish comments on.

You will not be allowed to have your posts show as it is all spam. You use various IP addresses, names and URLs in your posts, but they all say something to the effect of :”I can’t say I agree 100% on your post (Insert title of post) but I’m not sure so I will have to research it more.”

The intent is clearly to get people who read your one-note comments to follow your link to whichever site you happen to be pushing in that post.

Please stop wasting your time and mine as you will not be published.

To all other readers: This character has also used the name “Anonymous” so I have banned that name from being posted. If you care to post a comment please use your real name or a blog name you wish to use as “Anonymous” will go for moderation.

I apologize for having everyone have to read this post, but trying to send an email to the person is impossible as he provides a fake email address.

Tweet This Post

Sue has already gone to visit family in another state, and I’ll be doing the same thing on Monday if my back and stomach cooperate.

That leaves Guss, who will be manning the fort for the most part but has promised to put up conservative or at least neutral posts as well as his regular liberal posts.

There won’t be much political news for a month anyway, since Congress has gone on its undeserved vacation. At least they won’t be passing any laws, stupid or otherwise, so we should be grateful.

I will have my trusty laptop with me, but the home where I’m going to be staying doesn’t have high speed internet service available, so I envision myself going to a coffee shop or something to do a couple of posts a day. I remember seeing a sign saying free wireless internet service on one of the restaurants that wouldn’t normally be one of my stops, but it will be now.

Big Mo, if you do another Presidents series post, please email it to me and I’ll post it as soon as I can. It sometimes takes me two hours to post it with all the photos in it, but I’ll get it posted as soon as possible.

With that I bid you a happy week and ask you to keep visiting us.

Tweet This Post

I know that lately visiting here seems like your in liberal territory. That’s not the case. Most of the posts you see are liberal because my fellow conservative Bloggers are either sick or have other obligations that need to be attended to. Please don’t stop visiting if you are conservative because things will change. Until then I’ll try to be a non biased liberal. Sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it.

Tweet This Post

Each of us has a hidden place
Somewhere deep within ourselves;
A place where we go to get away,
To think things through,
To be alone, to be ourselves.
This unique place, where we confront our deepest feelings,
Becomes a storehouse of all our hopes,
All our needs, all our dreams,
And even our unspoken fears.
It encompasses the essence of who we are and what we want to be.
But now and then, whether by chance or design,
Someone discovers a way into that place we thought was ours alone.
And we allow that person to see, to feel and to share
All the reason, all the uncertainty
And all the emotion we’ve stored up there.
That person adds new perspe ctive to our hidden realm,
Then quietly settles down in his own corner of our special place,
Where a bit of himself will stay forever.
And we call that person a friend.

Please feel free to post over this

-Poem by Carol Elaine Faivre-Scott

Tweet This Post

After reading Ayschlay’s excellent post on our pre-conceived notions of the major media today I went to the New York Times to see what was free on their site and to look at some of the articles that interested me.

Since I’m not much of a television viewer I noticed an article talking about the guests on this morning’s network news talk programs.

It seems all of them will be talking about Iraq.

I then went to the comments section, and instead of talking about the news shows people started bashing Cheney for wanting to go to war in Iran.

It disintegrated into this:

4.June 17th,
2007
2:55 am A rare treat is in store for those who abandon the pew for the arm chair this morning.The backslidden can watch Mitch [ Mitchell ] Mc Connell on Face the Cretins, aka face the Nation.
Mc Connell who looks like a crew man on the Flying Dutchman of Caribbean Pirates fame is with out a doubt the most unctous villian in all politics. He is the most partisan of all republicans. He never deviates from the White House line. He opposes any kind of campaign finance reform
not because of any deep seated constitutional foreboding but because it would harm the stranglehold the republican party has on the nation. If they can`t throw big business money around they can`t hood wink and scare the sheep people of the red states into locking stepping freedom down John Crapper`s invention.
He has not a single redeeming social skill that I have ever heard of. He is arrogant, boring, and condescending; in short the perfect reason Kentucky languishes in the back water of reality. His number two, a pretty decent guy, Jim, no-hit Bunning, has to go along or the Mc Connell juggernaught will bury him on some Fisheries and Brothels committee.
When you watch him you can almost see the smoke of Baghdad circling around his fat face like the smoke from his state`s number one agricultural product that he maakes certain will have government support. We should have an anti-Mt. Rushmore somewhere on an abandoned building in some rotten ghetto that he helped create. His but ugly puss should be right there next to Justice Taney, Charles Manson, Al Capone, and John Wilkes Booth.
Charles B. Tiffany
Kissimmee, Florida

— Posted by Charles B. Tiffany

This is the kind of reading I would expect from any of the far wing blogs on either side, but not published in a major newspaper.

This is nothing but an ad hominem attack, mostly on Mitch McConnell, and has no place in the public discourse.

This is a prime example of why our country is so divided right now. People cannot argue without making it personal, and they do that only when they really have no point to make.

It reminds me of a five year old saying, “You’re a poo-poo head.” It accomplishes nothing and contributes nothing to the debate, but it makes the writer feel better that he has publicly opened his thoughts and confirmed what people who know him probably already know.

We are a small blog trying to bring our country together as a people. We disagree on the methods of governing and even on the priorities of our government, but I can proudly say not one of our readers’ comments has had to be censored due to this kind of discussion or any other reason except to clean up some profanity occasionally.

This is a credit to the people who engage in dialog on this site and to the bloggers themselves.

This blog is a little experiment to see if liberals and conservatives can have discussions and debates over the issues and still walk away from the discussion with respect and friendship of the others.

We, as a whole, are not ideologically pure in the sense we are an echo chamber for one side or the other.

I deliberately set out to find liberals as well as conservatives so we can publish both points of view in one place for people to read and discuss.

I’m very proud of our blogging team and I’m very proud of our readers who have kept this site pleasant to visit. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to some blogs I’ve visited.

Every blogger on this team is a person who loves our country and wants only what he or she feels is best for it. We are all patriots.

And that is what this blog is.

Tweet This Post

I have extended an invitation to Truman to be a blogger on our site and write as often as Truman would like to write.

Truman’s interest in blogging here is to discuss faith and religious issues.

Please welcome Truman to our blogging team, as he adds to an already great team of bloggers.

Tweet This Post

In our never-ending effort to prove conservatives and liberals can actually discuss politics, disagree and still be pleasant to one another, it is my pleasure to introduce you to the newest member of our team, Ayschlay.

Ayschlay is a liberal-leaning person who is in higher education in the political science field.

I will let him tell you as much about himself as he wishes to disclose.

Let’s give Ayschlay a very hearty welcome to the Js Cafenette team!

Tweet This Post

Please welcome Barb from The Barb Wire, who will be doing postings on faith-issues.

She has her own blog and will be cross-posting her posts from the Barb Wire to here when she feels she has a good post we’d all be interested in reading.

Please give her a big welcome!

Tweet This Post

Please welcome “Guss” to our blogging team.

He says he will most likely not write about politics and will most likely write only occasionally. That’s until he gets the blogging bug.

Welcome to the team, Guss. ><

Tweet This Post

We have been experiencing some problems with long-time posters getting caught in our spam filter for some unknown reason.

I am now emptying the spam filter everytime I check the page and am checking for valid posts so I can rescue them. Big Mo and Hootsbuddy are two who have been caught in the black hole.

If you experience a problem with a comment not showing up please email me at the contact site on the sidebar which is j at jscafenette dot com. You know how to put it all together properly so it gets to me.

Thank you and again I’m sorry for the problem.

Tweet This Post

L T is busy putting a new roof on his new digs, Sue has other obligations through the day, and I have a sore left eye from eye strain looking at the computer so long.

We’ll try to update sometime today, so come back and check, but we make no promises. Thank you for visiting.

Tweet This Post