Feckless

I looked in the dictionary this morning and found this definition:

Feckless (adj.) 1. Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective.

2. Careless and irresponsible


I would like to add a third definition and a photograph to the online dictionary.

The third definition would simply be “United Nations” and the picture would be of Kofi Annan.

Not to bore you to tears, but I’m posting the entire UN Spokesman’s daily briefing issued on the UN Website Wednesday because the site changes each day and is poorly archived. My main reason in posting the entire text is to show you how ridiculous the UN's daily briefing is.

Here it is…

"ANNAN RETURNING TO U.N. HEADQUARTERS TO OVERSEE RELIEF EFFORTS FOR ASIAN EARTHQUAKE

* The Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, will be cutting short his vacation and returning to New York on Wednesday to oversee the UN’s relief efforts following the devastating disaster that struck south-east Asia.

* He is expected to meet with the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, as well as the heads of a number of UN humanitarian agencies on Thursday at headquarters.

* Over the last two days the Secretary-General has spoken to the leaders of all the countries hit by this disaster to, not only express his condolences, but also to see what they need most urgently.

* He has also been in contact with leaders of major donor countries to review the international relief effort and to underscore the UN’s coordinating role.

SENIOR UN OFFICIAL TO TRAVEL TO ASIA TO OVERSEE UN'S RELIEF EFFORTS

* The UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, said in a press briefing that he would be sending his deputy Margareta Walhstrom to the region to oversee the UN’s work on the ground.

* Egeland said that the death toll keeps rising as access to devastated areas increases. He noted the particularly hard hit province of Aceh on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. He said that UN teams currently on the ground report that the provincial capital of Banda Aceh one in four resident is believed to be dead.

* In Banda Aceh, UN teams say that the lack of infrastructure is making any relief work very difficult. In that area, the UN has set camps for relief workers. Egeland stressed the need for relief workers to be self-contained in their food and shelter needs so as not to be a burden on the already over-stretched local authorities.

* He noted that for each dead person there were four wounded. Health facilities that were not destroyed are now completely overwhelmed. The continuing challenges will focus on food, water and shelter for hundreds of thousands of people from Somalia to Sri Lanka to Indonesia.

* Regarding donations, Egeland said $220 million had already been pledged or given in cash towards the relief efforts. He added that there was an almost equal amount given in in-kind donations and military assets.

* He said that the response from traditional donor countries has been phenomenal. He also noted that there had been a tremendous response from new donors, notably in Asia.

* Egeland announced that a large coordinated appeal would be launched on January 6th in New York. However, UN country teams have identified the following immediate emergency needs: $70 million (Sri Lanka); $20 million (Maldives) and $40 million (Indonesia).

U.N. REFUGEE AGENCY TO AIRLIFT EMERGENCY SHELTER SUPPLIES FOR UP TO 100,000 PEOPLE IN ACEH, INDONESIA

* The UN Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is mounting a major response to the catastrophic tsunami and earthquake disaster in the Indonesian province of Aceh, where it is set to airlift emergency shelter supplies for up to 100,000 people.

* UNHCR is working closely with the United Nations country team in Indonesia in a coordinated response to the catastrophe, and a senior UNHCR staff member will be part of a UN assessment mission to Aceh set for Thursday.

* UNHCR is planning to airlift some 3,500 lightweight tents from its regional warehouse in Dubai. In addition, 20,000 kitchen sets, plastic sheeting for 20,000 families and 100,000 blankets will be airlifted from the agency's central warehouse in Copenhagen. The total value for this first phase of assistance is $1.8 million. The dates of the airlifts have yet to be confirmed.

* An additional 14 UNHCR logistical and field staff will be deployed to help with the Aceh airlifts and distribution of relief supplies to the affected population.

* In Sri Lanka, UNHCR is using its seven offices and 95 staff across the country to continue delivery of emergency relief supplies of plastic sheeting, plastic mats, cooking sets and clothing from its warehouses to the needy population in the war-affected areas and in the south.

* In Thailand, UNHCR is making an immediate contribution of $50,000 to the UN Emergency Relief Fund for the emergency shelter needs of the local population whose homes were washed away by the tidal waves.

* UNHCR will be part of a UN Country Team from Kenya that will conduct an assessment of the situation in Somalia, where hundreds of villages are said to have been destroyed.

UNICEF: MILLIONS AT RISK OF WATER-BORNE DISEASE

* UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, warned today that without immediate, wide-scale action to provide safe water in the communities hit by Sunday’s massive ocean flooding, millions of people will be at grave risk of water-borne disease.

* “Standing water can be just as deadly as moving water,” said UNICEF’s Executive Director, Carol Bellamy. “The floods have contaminated the water systems, leaving people with little choice but to use unclean surface water. Under these conditions people will be hard put to protect themselves from cholera, diarrhoea and other deadly diseases.”

* Children, who make up at least one-third of the overall population in the worst-affected countries, are particularly vulnerable to water-borne diseases.

* “Hundreds of thousands of children who survived the massive waves that destroyed their communities now risk getting seriously ill from something as simple as taking a drink of water,” Bellamy said.

* She added that securing safe water supplies and educating people about water and sanitation hygiene is a major component of all of UNICEF’s tsunami relief efforts, now underway in the hardest-hit countries.

U.N. DISASTER OFFICIAL CALLS FOR TSUNAMI EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS TO BE SET UP BY END OF NEXT YEAR

* According to the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), tsunami early warning systems could have saved thousands of lives following the recent quake in South Asia.

* Sálvano Briceño, Director of the ISDR Secretariat, said he wants to see that every coastal country around South Asia and Southeast Asia has at least a basic but effective tsunami warning system in place by this time next year.

* The World Conference on Disaster Reduction to be held in Kobe, Japan, on 18-22 January will provide a timely opportunity to learn from Pacific countries’ experiences and to transfer knowledge of tsunami early warning systems to those surrounding the Indian Ocean.

* A special session will be held to work out how such a system could be developed for the region.

OK, I have the following comments on the above “announcements.”

Where the heck is the outrage from the media that Kofi Annan is still on vacation when the world needs the UN? Kofi can stay on vacation, but Bush (who happens to bethe US leader, not the world’s leader) can’t continue his “working” vacation without being labeled as “insensitive?”

“Kofi also has called all of the donor countries to review the relief effort and underscore the UN’s coordinating role.” In other words, Kofi is saying that the UN basically can’t do anything tangable but that he still wants to make sure that all the money goes through his office so he and Kojo can take their cut.

Thank God that the US, Japan, Australia, and India have formed a partnership to sidestep the UN and coordinate the relief work ourselves.

Next, why isn’t Comrade Egeland personally traveling to the disaster region rather than sending his deputy? And why is he surprised that relief workers have to be self contained and self-sufficient in a disaster area? Further, why does he think that the UN's primary role in this matter is to "appeal" to donor countries for relief funding? Why should we give it to the UN rather than spend it directly.

It also seems that the UN is full of last minute revelations of amazement regarding what it takes to respond to a disaster of this magnitude and that “the lack of infrastructure is making any relief work very difficult.” Well Duuhhhh! Where have they been working for the past 60 years, downtown Atlanta, Georgia?

No, downtown NY City?

The UN has PLANS to airlift supplies for up to 100,000 people SOMETIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE. It has already been nearly four days and people are dying of thirst and starving to death. How long are the survivors supposed to wait?

And finally, the UN thinks that it would be a good idea to have a Tsunami warning system set up in the Indian Ocean within a year. Geee Whiz, we’ve only had one in place in the Pacific protecting Alaska and Hawaii since 1947—and it only took the loss of a few hundred lives to get it implemented. The UN sits by and watches the loss of a hundred thousand lives before it "SPRINGS INTO ACTION."

Remember the earlier definition of Feckless? I rest my case...your honor.

Bush Offers Unlimited Aid

I just can't believe this has happened. Look at this excerpt from today’s edition of the Washington Post:

Crawford, TX - President George Bush, in a uncharacteristic display of emotion, ripped most of his clothes off in front of reporters today while running around hysterically in circles foaming at the mouth, finally dropping to his knees, tilting his head back, looking to the heavens, and screaming “Good Gawd Almighty, what have all us mean old Republicans done to cause such suffering and death.”

When the president had regained his composure, he continued the news conference wearing only boxer shorts. Mr. Bush was quoted as saying that he was "taking full responsibility for the recent earthquake and Tsunamis in Asia."

In anticipation of the impending Congressional investigation of the events leading up to the failure of the Bush administration to anticipate and stop the earthquake, the president announced the establishment of a new cabnet level position, appointing Mr. Idont Knowhatodo, Nancy Reagan's former psychic, as Tzar of Avoiding Natural Disasters.

Mr. Bush further indicated that he had recently issued an executive order instructing the Treasury to load every single US dollar on a massive fleet of Air Force C-130 and C-17 aircraft which would be issued flight plans commanding them to fly to the areas affected by the disaster to conduct an airdrop of their cash cargo along the beaches over the heads of the surviving victims. "We can't wait any longer to start relieving their suffering. Didn't that French lady years ago say something about letting the people eat cash? That was cake? Oh well, they can buy a whole bunch of cake with the cash we're sending."

The president announced that he would be cutting his vacation short in order to personally pilot an aircraft in an additional special fleet of aircraft scheduled New Year's day to dump all of the gold currently contained at Ft. Knox over the UN headquarters buildings in New York City and in Geneva Switzerland.

Democratic leaders indicated that this response was “a bit insensitive” and that they saw the president's actions as "unnecessarily using the massive international suffering for political gain."

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said the offer was “too little too late…”

It’s a joke, get it?

Nearly $1.5 Billion Down A Rat Hole

The title of this post tells you everything you need to know about the United Nations. Their 2004 operating budget is actually $1.483 billion, of which the US’s “assessment” was $363 million and Japan’s “assessment” was $280 million. Together, the US and Japan pay 43.4% of the total operating budget (24.5% and 18.9% respectively.) The other 189 member nations pay the remaining 56.4% of the budget, with Germany (8.4%), the UK (5.9%), and France (5.9%) making up the balance of the top five “assessment” payers.

Well isn’t that special? But what about Russia and China, two of our number one detractors in all issues Iraqi as permanent members of the UNSecurity Council (excuse the pun?) China, home of 1.3 billion people, pays just $29 million (2%) annually. I couldn’t find Russia’s numbers, but they are less than the number fifteen “assessment” payer Switzerland’s 17 million (1.1%.)

As a footnote, I should mention that the US is currently withholding $268 million from prior year “assessments” and Japan is holding back $19 million in protest of various disagreements dating back to the Clinton Administration.

So before you lapse into a coma with all of these figures, I’ll let you ask me “what is my point?”

Just this. We’ve already handed the UN $131 million this year of the $363 million we owe them. In our defense, our Congress continues to withhold “assessment” payments while Kofi Annon is Secretary General and the Iraq Oil For Food Scandal continues to develop. You do remember that the UN sat on their collective hands while Kojo Annon and various member nations accepted bribes from Saddam and facilitated his skimming of as much as $21,000,000,000 (that’s Billion with a “B”) that could have served the UN to feed Iraqi’s and pad the coffers of various UN programs to help out this weeks Tsunami victims?

The US upped our assistance offer to $35 million today after Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, stuck his thumb in our eye rhetorically on Monday. Comrade Egeland had a little pow wow with members of the press today and back-tracked a bit. “He added that his earlier comments about Western countries being ‘stingy’ in their aid had been misinterpreted. The international assistance from the US and Europe, Egeland said, had been overwhelmingly positive. He called the response ‘immediate and generous.’”

In the words of JFK, I’d like to “ask not what (the world) can do for the UN, but rather what the UN can do for (the world that supports it.)” Look at this somewhat lame list of cow manure...er...um..of responses to date by the UN:

"Today the the World Food Programme (WFP) sent its first truckloads of relief food to twelve devastated districts in Sri Lanka. The commodities are part of a WFP stockpile in the country that can provide an emergency ration to 500,000 people for two weeks."

Feeding 500,000 for two weeks…not bad if they actually pull it off… But what about the next six months after that?

"In Sri Lanka and southern India, UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, is providing blankets, sleeping mats, clothing, oral rehydration salts, medical supplies, shelter equipment, water purification tablets, and 500-litre water tanks."

Again, a good start, although I doubt blankets are much help with 85 degree days and 80 degree nights.

"The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has committed up to $1 million and additional staff for rapid health assessments, hygiene needs and health supplies, including water purification tablets. UNFPA is focusing on the special vulnerability of women and girls in disaster-affected areas. Its priority areas include emergency obstetric care, the establishment of temporary health facilities, and the provision of equipment and supplies."

Holy Bejesus, a whole million dollars? Give me a break here, would you please…And your complaining because the US started out offering ONLY $15,000,000?

"Meanwhile, theWorld Health Organization is preparing to supply at least 15 new emergency health kits (each designed to cover the basic health needs of 10,000 persons for three months) and 13 trauma kits (each covering 100 interventions) to the affected countries."

Now let me see, health kits for 150,000 persons for three months, 1300 trauma interventions…this is basically like putting a Bandaid on your leg when you just cut your foot off with a chainsaw. They can’t be serious…

"Because flooding and stagnant water create favorable conditions for mosquitoes, WHO is strictly monitoring the epidemiological situation through the “roll back malaria” regional program. It is also mobilizing at least 15 diarrheal kits (each designed to treat 100 severe cases of diarrhea and/or cholera) for use in the region."

So 1,500 people won’t be crapping their asses off on the side of the road under one of the few remaining palm trees…

This little disaster has already killed nearly a hundred thousand people and has displaced hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. All the UN can muster is a few truck loads of food and some first aid kits?

Where are the heads and brains of the reporters at these press conferences that they can't think on their feet and ask questions of Comrad Enegland like I just did. You don't need a calculator to see that the UN's proposed response is a fraction of what they should able to finance and implement on short notice. (Maybe the reporters could use a nice dose of UN supplied laxitive to help them find their heads and brains.)

I say that the US taxpayers should demand that our government refuse to pass another single extra dollar through the UN in support of this recovery effort. The US should step in and manage the process and expenditure of our funds directly.

I've got to go to bed now...I have yet another news induced headache...anyone got an Aleve?

I Told You So

Am I good, or what? This morning’s edition of the Washington Times has an article entitled “UN Official Slams US As ‘Stingy’ Over Aid.” Read the entire article for yourself.

The US government is giving $15 million.

“But U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland suggested that the United States and other Western nations were being "stingy" with relief funds, saying there would be more available if taxes were raised.”

So Norwegian Jan Egeland thinks that we should raise our already high taxes and give more money to the UN. I would like to remind Comrade Egeland that the US taxpayers already provide over 24% of the funding for the UN’s 190 other do-gooder nations to spend outside our borders. We also donate most of the cost of the expensive waterfront property their headquarters building sits on in New York City.

And then of course there is all of the private giving by US citizens to charitable organizations like the Red Cross and the tens of thousands of hours our Doctors and Engineers and other experts will donate in time and services both here in the US and in the affected region.

It is so boring for the UN to be so predictable. I wish they could come up with something more original—like actually establishing an international system in these developing countries to warn of earthquake generated waves and of just plain old typhoons so thousands don’t die in Bangladesh the next time the wind blows over 74 MPH.

Would that be too much to ask???

UPDATE 12/28/04 PM

I made an error, working from memory, on the amount of funding that the US provides to the UN...its 24.48%, not 40%. So I'm not perfect...I corrected the text while working on a new rant.

It's A Crying Shame--Part II

I’m such a nerd. Really, I am. My favorite web sites are places that most Internet users never have even heard of much less ever visited or thought to do a Goggle search for information about.

Places like Spaceweather.com where you can go to find out about asteroids approaching the Earth’s orbit and Solar Flares leaping off of the sun to scorch our collective butts. What about the Microsoft Terraserver site that allows you to look at your neighbor’s driveway from satellite orbit to see if they were home on a given day? Or maybe Volcano live, Australian Volcanologist John Seach’s site giving you up to the minute accounts of the misbehavior of most of the world’s active volcanoes.

I hit these sites sometimes once every day or so just to see what is going on “in and around the world.” Moments after I learned that the earthquake occurred in Indonesia yesterday (immediately after it happened,) I said out loud that everyone should look out in the countries with facing ocean shores for the possibility of catastrophic Tsunamis. And I’m just a dumb old mechanical engineer, but boy was I ever right.

It’s a crying shame that there wasn’t someone out there that could have used what I consider to be amateur “geo-hobbyist” knowledge to save a few tens of thousands of these poor people killed as a result of this latest earthquake. I say that this task should have fallen on the shoulders of the United Nations.

But, Nooooo. These feckless, useless, mindless, bureaucratic, bunch of morons are too concerned with worrying about a one degree F increase in world wide temperature that they call “Global Warming” and shoving the Kyoto Treaty down our throats (or up our rear ends) to actually do something that might save lives in the foreseeable future.

Let me lay this out for you. We here in the United States started a Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in 1947 after a giant wave killed 147 people in Hawaii. We own it, operate it, and pay for it with your and my tax dollars. We also offer the results of our efforts to anyone that will listen. Operated under the auspices of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), they saw the earthquake on their seismographs as it happened, but they didn’t have anyone to notify in the Indian Ocean basin, resorting instead to random, frantic phone calls. Even our ally, the Government of India, lost most of an Air Force base and a number of military personnel.

They had, in many cases, two or more hours of time to get a warning out. Unlike a hurricane, the danger was generally limited to the immediate coastal area, not dozens of miles inland. Can you say INTERNATIONAL QUALITY SCREW-UP?

The death toll is in the low to mid-twenty thousand person range right now, but with the thousands of little islands and the remoteness of this area, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the final numbers in the fifty to one hundred thousand range. The long term economic and political toll will take years to ascertain.

As I said earlier, just watch the media begin to place blame, complain about the American response, and listen for the UN to start bitching about how it is somehow our fault or that our financial contributions are not enough. Anything to avoid acknowledging the fact that such a simple thing as a network of emergency management personnel like we have here in the US, an evacuation plan, and dissemination of available information in a timely fashion could have possibly saved tens of thousands of lives.

NOAA knew…Just like NOAH knew...

It's A Crying Shame

I’ve been all over the world. Well, not exactly “all” over the world, but I’ve traveled over enough of the world’s surface to realize that we here in the United States enjoy an entirely different standard from “almost everywhere else” when it comes to weather forecasting and other forms of information gathering and dissemination relating to “un-natural” natural disasters like Volcanos, solar flares, and asteroids.

I remember where I was at in 1997 when Princess Diana was killed—not because I gave a rat’s ass about the so-called British royal family mind you—because I was using a computer weather terminal in the pilot’s lounge at the hotel on Walkers Cay in the Bahamas that September evening, desperately looking for weather forecast information. While demonstrating the use of the terminal to my party, the headline describing Lady Di’s death scrolled across the menu screen. The girls were in shock while all of us guys were more interested in studying the local satellite weather picture.

I’ve traveled to Jamaica many times and suffered the anxiety and withdrawal symptoms of a “true weather junkie” afflicted with worrying about the tropical weather that potentially might affect our location in the middle of the Greater Antilles Islands. “No problem Mon, everything’s Irie” was not, in my opinion, an accurate weather forecast. The local Jamaican resorts intentionally omit “The Weather Channel” from their satellite feed to their guestrooms’ TV’s in order to control the stampeding heard mentality of their guests. I bit my fingernails off to the quick as a result.

Back in early September I posted Hurricane Ivan Is A Communist Threat, where I described the perils faced by the residents of the Caribbean Islands like Haiti and Cuba who’s population had limited informational resources and who’s own government imposed restrictions cost unnecessary lives during hurricanes and tropical storms—lives that would never be lost here in the US since the 1960’s with the advent of satellite weather observations.

And now we have this latest earthquake and tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. There is basically no excuse for the magnitude of the loss of life in this disaster. A warning could have been issued and many people could have escaped the immediate coastal areas. Just like the hurricane warnings here in the US, saying “never mind” in the event that the warning was unwarranted is a lot better than issuing a world wide “so sorry” as is the case in this instance.

What I want to know is, “where the hell is the United damn Nations when you really need them and they can really make a difference???” This disaster is right up their alley and they were asleep at the wheel.

While it is virtually impossible to pinpoint the time and location of the the next earthquake, it is possible to predict the possibility of the occurrence of Tsunamis with great accuracy once an earthquake has occurred. There could have been as much as three hours notice given in this instance had the UN spent some of the mountain of tax dollars we’ve given them over the past fifty years on something other than fancy New York real estate, limousines, and efforts to cover up the Iraq Oil for Food scandal and the ongoing sexual abuse and molestation of African teenagers by UN officials. Everyone knows that countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are short on funding, so this is an obvious area where the UN could in fact make a substantial contribution.

Will they even acknowledge any responsibility for allowing this disaster to occur?

Hell NO!

Just sit by and watch as we here in the US proceed to dump millions of dollars into the rescue and recovery effort while the socialists, commies, mainstream media, and the UN criticize our efforts as being too little too late.

I think that my head is going to explode...AGAIN!

What A Great Day

(Hope Yours was too)

I made my girlfriend, Pat, wait until almost eleven o’clock Saturday morning to open her Christmas presents. She is such a trooper. This came about because I didn’t wake up until I had to answer a phone call from my mother sometime after ten AM. I’m such a bum. In my defense, I had previously arisen about four AM and spent three hours reading and working on future writing materials.

We decided not to travel this year for Christmas. Pat is facing five weekly round trips to her office in Chicago beginning next week and I couldn’t even get her interested in flying to Key West, not to mention Pittsburgh or Alabama. I’m in Key West in mind and spirit right now in spite of the rainy 38 degree weather we have outside here on the island.

We invited everybody to come see us here on St. Simons, but you know how that goes…inertia and gravity and all that. Last year we did southern Alabama and Kansas City Missouri in five days including flying Delta on Christmas day. I’m still tired from that trip as I did all of the cooking in Alabama and wired a surround sound stereo system in KC. I also fell in love with Pat’s daughter’s little miniature Daschund puppy named “Olive” that liked to sleep on my chest while I snoozed on the sofa—but that’s another story.

This year we didn’t leave the condo all day and we didn’t have to get out of our PJ’s either. I cooked a brunch featuring Welsh Rarebit cheese sauce over English muffins, Canadian bacon, asparagus spears, and a poached egg. For dinner I heated up a spiral sliced ham, cooked giant lima beans with pork neck bones, baked sweet potatoes, and made a deep dish apple pie. See my The Redneck Gormet Blog for some of the recipes.

I was back in bed by 8 PM and as a result of the early departure I’m back on the internet now.

I hope that your Christmas day was everything that you wanted it to be also. Unfortunately, there are people out there stuck in airports, facing illness and death, or living homeless on the streets that saw Christmas as something other than the lazy blessing we enjoyed here. There are people living in Haiti and Cuba and Iraq that will never see a meal like I cooked for the two of us this evening. And there are several hundred thousand of our fellow Americans sitting in tents and manning armed fortifications around the world attempting to guarantee our right to run around in our stocking feet between piles of discarded wrapping paper all day.

One more week, then we all can have a new year and a fresh slate, we can inaugurate President Bush for his second term, and we can look forward to kicking some more “Insurgent” butt and hopefully see the Middle East a little closer to peace. I wish us all good luck.

A Bad Case of Krampus Runs

No, I’m not talking about an exotic intestinal disorder here, but I did have to read this Wall Street Journal Editorial story a couple of times in disbelief.

"SALZBURG, Austria--The holiday season has arrived in Salzburg with its quaint Christmas markets, cheery brass ensembles, steaming mugs of Gluhwein, and, of course, the perennial Krampus debate, which, when stripped of cultural nuance, can be summarized as follows: Should inebriated young men in oversized gorilla suits, with grotesquely carved, horned visages the size of a buffalo head and clanging cowbells strapped to their midrift, be allowed to assault women in public with impunity, generally to the merriment of crowds of onlookers, except, of course, for those who are shrieking or fleeing in terror?"

"The Krampus is to Salzburg what the bull is to Pamplona, an oversized beast that sends an adrenaline rush of terror through the cobblestone streets of the old town, all in the name of cultural heritage. For a full week during the start of the holiday season, scores of Krampuses stalk the cobbled ways of Salzburg and its surrounding villages. The Krampus is a hybrid-beast of pagan origins that has been affixed to the Christmas season and looks like he stepped out of the pages of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are." Only instead of inviting young boys for midnight monster romps, they stalk young women, fondling them, throwing them over their shoulders and whipping them with wooden switches until their shins and thighs are black and blue. They prowl the streets, wander onto public buses, and storm downtown restaurants where, after assaulting female patrons, they are treated to free schnapps to fuel their further fury. The anonymity provided by the Krampus mask combined with increasing amounts of alcohol consumption is not only feeding the violence but also a debate about this bizarre pagan holdover from a less civilized era."

Can you believe that something like this is still going on in 2004? Read the entire story and let me know if I’m missing something here. I’m not suggesting that a new law be passed or that we begin military intervention, but where the heck are Martha Burke, Jane Fonda, the National Organization of Women, and the rest of the "Feminazis" when you really need them?

Instead of wasting our time busting the chops of the Augusta National Golf Club and holding endless meetings on perceived woman’s inequalities like “glass ceilings,” I say that Mrs. Burke and her followers should immediately charter a Delta Airlines flight to Frankfort for a session of getting their butts pinched and their ankles switched by a sweaty Austrian in a horned gorilla suit.

Who knows, she might enjoy the cultural experience.

Come to think of it, maybe this is really just a TSA security screener training exercise designed to teach new recruits how to pat down women travelers at airport checkpoints.

Well, it could be…

Is This What Things Are Coming To?

"NEW YORK - "Access Hollywood" has named its "Top Ten Stars of 2004," with Britney Spears (news) in the No. 1 spot. The rankings are based on the number of stories the syndicated entertainment television show aired on each star. Spears — who was married twice, canceled a summer tour because of a knee injury and released a greatest hits album — topped the list with 119 stories.

Beyonce is in the No. 2 spot, with 102 stories, followed by Donald Trump, 94 stories; Michael Jackson (news), 84 stories; Tom Cruise (news), 72 stories; Jessica Simpson (news), 69 stories; Paris Hilton, 63 stories; Nicole Kidman, 62 stories; Jennifer Lopez (news), 54 stories; and Whitney Houston, 52 stories."

Ok, ok, ok. Picture me yelling out the words as I write these next few paragraphs. I’m going to write my own “Access St. Simons” description of “Access Hollywood’s” Top Ten Stars of 2004…

Britney Spears—Number 1 Pop Music Trash Slut and the primary contributor to the delinquency of 14 year old girls everywhere.

Beyonce—I don’t know who the hell this (he or she?) is and don’t care to waste a Google search looking.

Donald Trump—Ego Maniac Numero Uno and poster boy for the worst big hair comb-over on prime time TV. If I had his money, you’d need radar, a devining rod, an x-ray machine, and possibly ESP in order to attempt to locate me on my private island and get a picture to publish...this fool runs toward the TV cameras.

Michael Jackson—Living proof that enough cash can destroy your body and cover up almost any perversion 99% of the time. (I think that he is about to visit with the 1% negative odds in 2005)

Tom Cruise—Who cares, since I don’t ogle men (ditto for Jeff Gordon who didn’t make the list.)

Jessica Simpson—Any relation to Bart Simpson? Means about as much to me...

Paris Hilton—Britney should be so proud of her mindless bimbo protégé.

Nicole Kidman—Oh Mr. Cruise, control your woman…

Jennifer Lopez—Another so called “pretty” face attached to a set of surgically altered mammary glands that in my mind has a great deal of trouble justifying the oxygen she consumes. If I hear some gushing story about “J Low” one more time I’m gonna barf.

Whitney Houston—Living proof of the steep cost of drug abuse. Yet another parents’ nightmare “role model” for young girls everywhere.

And my own number eleven candidate:

Martha Stewart—A textbook case of a pompus, arrogant, self-aggrandizing bitch that broke the law, went to jail, and will make a tidy profit in the process.

Would someone please tell me why the hell any of these largely dysfunctional, mindless individuals are worthy of the amount of news coverage, public hype, and adulation that they get to begin with?

Is it because they make large amounts of money?

Or is it because a large percentage of our population is suffering from a terminal case of stupidity?

Since I can't earn one red cent watching the antics of these denizens of celebrity pop culture, I believe I’ll just stay out here in my own little piece of paradise and enjoy keeping my name out of the newspaper and off of the TV screen.

How about you?

We're All Gonna Die of Something--Get Over It

I’m ready to get on a boat and sail to somewhere that doesn’t have a hysterical media and a 24 hour news cycle. I’m not quite sure where exactly that is, but I’ll write to let you know when I get there if there is room for a few more people like myself that don’t read People magazine and are not obsessed with pop culture and the latest reality TV series.

Seriously, since we have now been introduced to the baby stealing “womb raider” (as opposed to "tomb raider") murderer Lisa Montgomery, we can all stop wondering who will provide the replacement for the recently concluded courtroom drama of the Scott and Laci Peterson murder case. This one is even better because they already have the body and the baby survived and was found in the hands of the murderer. You couldn’t have placed an order on E-Bay and paid a million dollars for a better, more TV friendly story line.

The producers, writers, and reporters in the main stream media can all stop worrying about what their next soap opera story will be and can collectively get on with writing endless, pointless expositions on all of the mind numbing details of the unfolding drama. Gretta Van Sustren on FOX News is already sharpening her knives and twisting her crooked mouth in anticipation of the next two or three years of yapping she gets to do on the subject.

I, on the other hand, just think that I’ll ask my physician what a nice dose of Celebrex, Aleve, or Vioxx “can do for me” and sail off into the sunset of my life enjoying a low cholesterol, low blood pressure, and painless, self medicated, self-induced, pre-mature death.

Just last Sunday it was announced that they were stopping a study of the prescription Arthritis drug Celebrex because of an apparent increased risk of stroke and heart attack in the study participants. Ok, I might say, I’ll just take something well proven and available “over the counter” like Aleve instead. WRONG, YOU PALEFACED REDNECK!!!

On Monday they announced that the popular over the counter alternative, Aleve, was also increasing heart risks in the same study. So what the heck are we supposed to think and do in this situation? This bunch of egg head Doctors and government busybodies apparently are running in circles, chasing their tails and looking publicly like a bunch of idiots. The only ones that seem to be happy are the medical malpractice trial lawyers who are at this minute producing TV ads and writing internet Web sites to advertise their services.

Here is my take on all of this idiocy, ladies and gentlemen. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE OF SOMETHING! If it weren’t for anti-coagulants like Heparin and Coumadin, I’d have lost both legs or died of a pulmonary embolism years ago. I have always said that I am going to live my life the way I want to and to hell with what everybody else and the media says. I’ve spent time overseas in the Philippines in the Navy during the Marcos regime and survived getting my head beat in in an Atlanta restaurant robbery. I’ve water skied, snow skied, sailed dozens of miles offshore out of sight of land in a boat by myself, flown an airplane, and scuba dived with a couple of hundred of sharks. I’ve done all of this and I’m still here to write about it.

I eat fried eggs for breakfast once a week, I cook with semi-sweet, unsalted butter every day, I eat pork, I eat beef, I eat sushi, I eat raw eggs in my Ceasar Salads, I drink wine, I drink beer, drink vodka, I pick my nose, and I fart silently in the corners of the Christmas store and walk away only to have the odorous emanations blamed on the next old blue haired lady that walks into the area behind me.

When my days are numbered and my time comes, I want it to be a closed casket funeral (actually I want to be cremated, my ashes cast into a concrete artificial reef, and dumped offshore in the ocean.) I want my body to be so worn out and aged and degenerated and abused that no one can possibly walk up and utter some inane sentiment like “He looks so good, I can’t believe he is gone to be with his maker.”

No sir, if someone like the undertaker sees my corpse I want them to say “MY GOOD GOD, HOW THE HELL DID HE EVER MAKE IT THIS FAR LOOKING LIKE THAT.” Use it up and burn it out is my motto. And if an aspirin or an Aleve or a Tylenol or God forbid—a Placebo—makes me think that things are a little better on Monday morning, so be it.. It is my decision to take one and I’m not suing anyone if my ticker quits ticking because, in the words of Jimmy Stewart: “It’s been a Wonderful Life.”

I hope yours is too…and by the way everybody--have a placebo on me!

Jessie Jackson Doesn't Know Sh*t From Shineola

Please excuse this post’s title if it offends you, but I can’t think of a more appropriate phrase to use here. I’m usually not inclined to actually use profanity in my posting, although I do use references like “%$#*@” where you can mentally fill in the blank with your favorite curse word or words depending on the situation.

Further, I’m generally not inclined to make personal attacks on individuals, although I made a previous exception in Michael Tells Us Mo(o)re Than We Need To Know. I prefer to instead allow the individual’s own words and actions speak for themselves and let the proverbial chips fall where they may. The Internet has a long memory.

This morning I want to talk about the latest utterance from the gigantic mouth of the irrelevant, irreverent, Reverend Jessie Jackson. If you haven’t already noticed, placing yourself between the Reverend Jackson and a TV camera or radio microphone could be hazardous to your health.

Jackson seems to draw each and every breath for the purpose of getting his inane thoughts and words into newsprint, his bug-eyed face onto our television screens, and to advance the goals of his professional reverse-racist “shake-down” organization, Operation Rainbow/Push.

There are several crisis situations affecting the continent of Africa. Mostly they involve one group of Africans killing another group of Africans. The United Nations has been guilty of sitting on their hands for decades while millions of lives were lost. Jessie Jackson and the balance of the black so called “Racial Leaders” here in the United States have not uttered a single word in protest. Likewise, the mainstream media and national leaders of colors other than black or brown have remained mute on these genocides.

When it comes to the actions or in these situations, inactions, of the UN, no one seems to have a problem. UN good, US bad. The UN sits idly by while millions die, but God forbid that the US actually does something with the intention of saving some African lives and that it produces any un-foreseen side effects.

“The Rev. Jesse Jackson (news - web sites) is calling for a U.S. congressional investigation into a report that U.S. health officials were warned that research on nevirapine was flawed. The warning was withheld from the White House weeks before President Bush (news - web sites) announced a plan in 2002 to distribute the drug in Africa, The Associated Press reported this week.”

Here is a little fact that the Irreverent Mr. Jackson needs to understand—80% of the worldwide cases of AIDS are in sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS is ultimately fatal 100% of the time.

The drug in question, nevirapine, while still being in the “investigative stage” of deployment, has been shown to be 50% effective in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus from the mother to newborn infants.

“Studies show that a single dose of nevirapine to an infected woman during labor and another dose to her newborn baby can reduce the chances of HIV transmission by up to 50 percent.”

Let me quantify this story for you in my own ever-accurate terms. A woman is HIV positive. Based on current medical therapy, the woman’s HIV infection ultimately will develop into AIDS, and AIDS ultimately allows her to develop some rare form of cancer, pneumonia, or other fatal condition.

In the mean time, the woman gets pregnant after contracting the HIV virus. By delivering a single dose of nevirapine to the woman during labor and a single dose to the newborn infant after delivery, the chance of transmission of the HIV virus is reduced by 50%. Instead of both the woman and her child dieing, at least half of the children survive to be killed by their fellow Africans and ignored by Jessie Jackson and the balance of the US “African American” population.

“In calling for the investigation, Jackson demanded that nevirapine no longer be distributed in Africa.”

By making this demand, Jessie Jackson is risking increasing the HIV infection rate of the infants born to HIV positive mother by 50%.

"This was not a thoughtful and reasonable decision, but a crime against humanity," he said Thursday in Chicago. "Research standards and drug quality that are unacceptable in the U.S. and other Western countries must never be pushed onto Africa."

And the complaint everyone is arguing about? There is some bureaucratic argument about the testing of the drug here in the US. The drug is proven effective, the moronic researchers are just having a turf war over the testing protocol. No one is saying the drug doesn’t work on the newborn kids, just that it limits the effectiveness of the future treatment of the child’s mother.

The choice here is to let the woman and her child face a guaranteed death from AIDS, or to give the child a 50% chance of being born free from the HIV virus while at the same time risking the possibility that the mother’s life cannot be extended to the theoretical maximum with future doses of nevirapine.

This is a fine line to be walking, but it seems to me that the use of the drug produces an acceptable benefit regardless of the risk to the mother. Regardless of what the American press and Jessie Jackson say, the African medical establishment wants continued access to the drug…

“Doctors working in the public health system, which serves the vast majority of South Africans, have privately expressed fears they will be pressured to stop using single-dose nevirapine for pregnant women before alternatives are available.”

"I'm of the view that we should use nevirapine till a better situation can be created," said Dr. Ashraf Coovadia, head of the pediatric HIV clinic at Johannesburg's Coronation Mother and Child Hospital. "To halt the program would cause damage to what we have already achieved."

Let’s face it folks, JESSIE JACKSON DOESN’T GIVE A TINKER’S DAMN ABOUT THESE AFRICANS—Jessie Jackson just sees an opportunity to get is ugly face into the news after being irrelevant and invisible during the presidential election cycle and to use this story to attack the US government and the Bush administration.

If everyone will just mail $5.00 to Jessie, he’ll shut the heck up and crawl back into his hole, waiting for another "perceived injustice" to occur so he can start blithering again.

“Hey Jessie, wanna buy some really good smelling shineola for use on those thousand dollar shoes you're wearing???”

I'm All Lathered Up

As I have mentioned earlier, one of my favorite blogs is written by the guys over at PowerLine. I started reading the writings of Hindrocket, The Big Trunk, and Deacon during the presidential campaign, about a month before they helped break the story about the forged CBS "Rathergate" documents on President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service.

I'd like to say congrats to them because they just won as the Best Conservative Blog over at Wizbang's 2004 Web log awards contest.

These guys are a bunch of Minnesota Lawyers who happen to take their jobs and their blogs seriously. They've been nationally published and made appearances on Fox and the other networks, yet they also take the time to acknowledge their E-mails. I wrote them yesterday with a comment on one of their posts and they actually wrote me back and thanked me for my comments. They have to get hundreds if not thousands of E-mails, but they obviously remember where they come from and I was honored to hear back from them. Maybe one day I'll write something that they will reference on their blog...who knows?

I always take the time to respond to my readers comments also. I appreciate you taking the time to read my ranting and raving.

So come on folks, let me have it--I promise to be gentle.

Patience Is More Than A Virtue--It's A Weapon

Dr. Henry Kissinger, the gentleman that was President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State back in the 1970’s, made a comment in his book, "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?," which changed the way that I think about world politics forever when I read it several years ago. Paraphrasing Dr. Kissinger, he stated “the Chinese government made political decisions based on the perspective of a civilization that is 3000 years old.”

Further, he pointed out that as a result of this millennia long history, the Chinese government and, by extension, their people think nothing of patiently waiting and watching geopolitical events that might take one hundred years or more to transpire. A time period such as this, from their political perspective, only represents the longevity of a few (three or at most four) generations of their despotic communist leaders. With their inherent strict control over education, religion, and the media, very little can and will change in China over what we here in the US consider to be a VERY long period of time. (Remember, the US is only 228 years old this year.)

In the US, one hundred years represents 25 election cycles for president. At the very least, 13 different men could be elected, assuming each was to serve the maximum of two four-year terms. Further, our presidents are elected from not one but from two or possibly three political parties representing in theory very different ideologies. The direction of the nation vacillates along in an ever-declining (some call it a spiral downward) direction away from the government envisioned by Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson.

Dr. Kissinger didn’t say it outright, but I believe that the Chinese think that they can defeat us without firing a single shot or launching a single nuclear warhead. They will instead just wait for us to implode politically. If they keep waiting, instead of “beating them,” our un(der)educated population and our liberal (read that socialistic or communistic) politicians will just keep on hammering away at the rest of us until they make our country “join them.”

In my earlier posting The Devils in the Details—Part II, I referenced the fact that China’s population is about 1,300,000,00, while the US population stands at 293,000,000. Over four Chinese for every one American. I suspect that if the truth were known, they are hungry for the freedoms that we take for granted. The average 18 year old Chinese man would die for the opportunity to move to the US, get a student loan, enroll in college, get a part time job, rent an apartment, buy a used car, and drink an imported beer or two every Friday night. He would also kick most of his fellow students asses when it comes to test scores and wouldn’t think of watching (or believing) what that unshaven sloth Michael Moore spews out in the media--telling us that the US is an evil, unfair place in which to live. “Sell that crappola somewhere else,” he would say.

As I also referenced in that post, if the Chinese government ever managed to allow the Chinese population to consume petroleum products at the same rate as all of us “Ugly Americans” manage to burn it in our SUV’s and water heaters, the Chinese could consume more than 80,000,000 barrels per day. That means that China could in theory use more oil each and every day than the quantity that is currently pumped out of the ground by every oil producer on the entire planet.

Forget about Iraq , Iran, Syria, North Korea, al Queda, al Quackka, al "whatever," and AIDS, for that matter—in another one hundred years the Chinese will still be waiting patently for us to screw up…if the US is even still on the world map by then.

What are you going to help me do about it?

Hey, Youse Guys...Have You Seen My Bomb??

From France, to Canada, and now to New Jersey.

Well folks, I hate to tell you, but the TSA yokels at Newark’s Liberty International Airport spotted, and then LOST, a fake bomb planted in luggage by their supervisors as a training exercise for screeners. And once again, in a style reminiscent of the French Airport Police, they couldn’t find the fake bomb once it insidiously slipped past them (probably while they were distracted strip searching someone’s wheelchair bound 99 year old grandmother.) As a result, the geniuses let the fake bomb get loaded on an airliner bound for Amsterdam.

What I want to know is, who are these idiots and who let them out from behind the counter at McDonalds? It was just last weekend that I was all riled up and demanding answers from the French and the Canadians as a result of them losing real explosives, security badges and uniforms. But nooooooo, not now…what can we possibly say? As a result of this little “incident,” how can we keep a straight face while challenging either country’s credentials and ability when it comes to airline security?

Tell me again…we put fake explosives in a suitcase at an airport and couldn’t find the bag before it was allowed to fly out of the country? They knew it was there and they couldn’t find it? Forget UPS or Fed-X, I say send your explosives by Delta and they have a better chance of getting there if this is any indication of our abilities.

Boy do I feel secure.

I think that, in order to level the playing field, they just aught to start letting everyone bring a gun and some explosives on board the airplane with them when they travel. They could even hand out prizes like “most original design,” and “most bang for your buck” and so on.

I guess, on a positive note, the good news is that 100% of the bombs on French and American flights in the last week have been of friendly origin.

I already feel safer, don’t you?

Coed...Schmoed...Get Over It...

I just keep on getting more insensitive and politically incorrect every day. Well, actually I’m NOT getting more insensitive, I just let a little more of my real thoughts and beliefs leak out of my head and onto the pages of “What I’d Like To Have Said” for your selective enjoyment or outrage. I guess you’ll have to be the judge each day, and today I’m probably going to piss a few people off.

The current topic is single sex educational institutes. When I attended Georgia Tech in the late 1970’s, our enrollment was seven men for every one woman. Since many of the women were enrolled in the college of management, I could actually go for days at a time without speaking to a woman unless she worked in a campus restaurant or was a professor. My parents seemed to think that I shouldn’t worry about it because I wasn’t in college to meet girls; I was there to get an education. The situation still had a “negative static pressure” (it sucked.)

It seems that the girls enrolled at Wells College in Aurora, New York are more than a little upset that the college has made the decision to admit men in their 2005 freshman class. Notice that I place emphasis on the word decision, the college wasn’t sued in court and tried in the media and in the court of public opinion and forced at gunpoint into admitting men. They did it for financial reasons.

The article states that “(a)ngry students staged a sit-in and took over the administration building for a week after the October decision. The Collegiate Cabinet called for a vote of no-confidence in the school's president. A group of alumnae started a petition to protest the change. Students and parents marched in a demonstration during Parents' Weekend.

Now they're in court.

Two students, freshman Lauren Searle-Lebel and sophomore Jennifer LaBarbera, filed a lawsuit to prevent Wells from accepting men until 2008, when both women will have graduated. A hearing is set for Thursday in Syracuse, 35 miles northeast of here.

The students declined to comment. Searle-Lebel's mother, Ellen Searle-Lebel, a 1973 Wells graduate, said her daughter “chose to go to a women's college … and was under the understanding that it was going to remain a women's college. It's pretty simple.”"

Railey Savage, 19, a sophomore from Freeville, N.Y., who helped organize the sit-in, says Wells is “populated by strong women who could be in leadership roles, who could be active members of their communities, who have found their voices. That's become really important to me, and I value and cherish it. And I want to keep it.””

I’m sure that, for the men enrolled at the Citadel and VMI in the early 1990’s, their all male corps of cadets, free from the sexual tensions and resulting impediments to learning that the presence of the opposite sex often presents, was important to them also. Unfortunately, the Federal court and a bunch of the US population saw things differently.

The lovely Miss Shannon Faulkner was used as a pawn of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Organization of Lesbians, er…um…make that…Women to break down the 150 year old single gender educational doors of The Citadel in Charleston, SC in 1995. Once admitted after a two-year legal battle, she lasted less than a month because she was not qualified physically to meet the rigors imposed on the “knobs” by the Corps of Cadets. Of course, being a woman, an immediate exception to tradition was granted to her by the school. She was not forced to have her “knob” (head) shaved on the first day of indoctrination. Let’s just say things went downhill for Miss Shannon from there. So what was the %$&@* point?

The primary argument used against The Citadel and VMI (and, for that matter, practically every other all male organization like The Augusta National Golf Club) is that the exclusion of women by these institutes and organizations unfairly prevents them from enjoying the business, political, and professional networking that the male members enjoy. The accomplishments and success of the graduates of these all male institutes is somehow viewed as being not of their own making, but rather primarily the result of where the men chose to go to school or hit a golf ball.

In the end, the colleges lost their legal challenges because they both accepted partial state funding. The idea of setting up separate but equal all girl institutes was rejected as not providing a true “Citadel” or “VMI” experience. Shannon Faulkner apparently got her fill in just a few short weeks, but the damage was done. In the five years after her admission, 43 women were admitted to the Citadel, but only one graduated. Was this result because of discrimination, one might ask—or a basic incompatibility with the program?

Now back to little Wells College.

Wells College is facing declining enrollment and a resulting funding problem. Being a private school, they fortunately don’t take much in the way of state taxpayer funds. It also seems that their illustrious all female alumni base is either real selfish or else they are preoccupied with marching, protesting, holding sit-ins, or perhaps having babies and raising families after graduation. Regardless of the reasons, Wells College’s endowment funding is not up to meeting the financial expenses of running an all woman college in 2004. You do realize that a college is a business and, like any business, red ink is bad news?

By admitting men to their student body, Wells College is killing two birds with one proverbial stone. They are seeking to expand their female demographic base while at the same time increasing their shrinking enrollment—and you know what, ITS ALREADY WORKING. Their 2005 freshman class jumped to 170 from 109 this year. Only 25 men are included in that figure. As a result, there will be 46 more women on campus next fall, but only 25 men—poor henpecked bastards…

"But Wells President Lisa Marsh Ryerson says the choice for the college is coed or dead. The college is running a deficit and relying on its $54 million endowment to break even. If that continues, Wells will wither, Ryerson says. “The solution is to expand the audience.”

Currently, 64 colleges in the nation are all-women, down from 300 in the early 1970s. And three of those colleges are planning to admit men as undergraduates next fall — Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass., Immaculata Women's College outside Philadelphia and Wells. Only two colleges are all men: Hampden-Sydney in Virginia and Wabash in Indiana."

Waahh—there are ONLY 64 all-women schools left, an 80% reduction in 30 years. I wonder how many were forced to defend their admissions policies in court and only admit a bunch of “girly men” after they lost a class action lawsuit? What kind of man would want to pay to go to college so they can study whatever the hell they teach in a ‘woman’s studies” curriculum. Not many, I suspect. The most telling statistic is that there are only two all male schools left in the US. I bet that most of those fell by the wayside to lawsuits filed by feminists and other interlopers who were jealous of being excluded from the pool of successful male alumni.

I find it ironic that Wells College voluntarily decided to go coed. They might also try teaching something that would actually equip their new male graduates to earn a respectable living once they have endured four years of radical feminism. A quick review of the Academic Programs at Wells only includes a handful of undergrad majors (math, molecular biology, chemistry, physics, computer science) that would likely yield an ability to produce some cash after graduation. The rest are either useless or require further work at the masters or PHD level to get even a high school teaching job. What the hell would someone want to borrow money or ask their parents to pay for four years of college to study “Ethics” or “American Culture” for any way?

I’ve had it up to here (pointing to the top of my head) with “American Culture.” And good luck to all of you 25 guys hanging out with three or four hundred angry women next fall in Aurora, NY…you’re gonna need it.

(PS: I'm having trouble with my HTML code editing working between MS Word and Mozilla Firefox. Please let me know by commenting if your browser shows any funny code inserted in my text)

Governing Sports

I’m still in the process of picking up my jaw off of the floor, so give me a minute here.

Ok, I think I’ve somewhat recovered.

I just got through watching the rebroadcast of The Beltway Boys this morning on Fox News Channel and one of their closing comments amounted to “Congress shouldn’t pass a law about the problems with BCS College Football Bowl matchups…but they should prod them a little….” This follows on the heels of John McCain's and other's calls for congressional action regarding steroids in baseball.

Sit down and let me tell you something. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS NO BUSINESS GETTING INVOLVED IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL BOWLS. FURTHER, THEY NEED NOT GET INVOLVED WITH THE ISSUE OF STEROID USE IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL.

As far as I can tell, the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution say nothing about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of a $2 beer and really good hotdog at a totally fair ballgame…”

We’re talking about amateur (in name only) and profession sports here people. You know, grown (or nearly grown) men playing children’s games. So what if some individuals make more that the gross national product of Haiti and Cuba combined for a years worth of “work.” It is still A GAME we are talking about. I say let the fans vote with their feet and their wallets when it comes to these issues.

I missed three home football games at Georgia Tech between 1979 and 1998. It took a stay in the hospital to make me miss the Georgia/Georgia Tech game in 1991. I also had season basketball tickets for five years at great financial expense. I love my Ramblin’ Wreck and my Yellow Jackets, who just happen to be ranked number three in NCAA division I basketball right now. Still, I have made the decision in the past few years to move away from Atlanta and I haven’t been to a Tech football game since 1999 or a Tech basketball game since 1998. You see, my life's priorties changed.

I have gone through the same evolution when it comes to Braves baseball, Falcons football, Hawks basketball, and The Atlanta Thrashers Hockey team. While I’d gladly drive to Atlanta from St. Simons for mid-ice tickets to a Thrasher's hockey game, I only casually watch the other Atlanta “pro” teams and, in spite of the Braves 13 year division winning streak, I haven’t been to Turner field since 1999. I make the decisions, not the government. I just can’t get that excited about pro sports (college sports is another story…)

Baseball is facing a major issue with the steroid “scandal” and the potential of Barry Bonds upsetting Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron’s record next year. Once again the computers and humans behind the BCS college football ranking have let the fans down by not allowing match-ups that satisfy everyone. Poor Auburn Fans. I say WAAAAH, get over it!

Vote with your feet and your wallet. Don’t let the government do your talking for you. As long as the dollars are flowing, the seats are full, and the TV revenues are over flowing, the owners and players and hangers-on will keep on delivering a less than quality product and you get what you deserve as a result.

It’s just a game, people…

Zero Tolerence Equals Zero Intelligence

Over the past 40 or so years I have enjoyed watching movies, TV shows, and cartoons that portray unusual ways to cause bodily harm and death to your adversary. Now wait a minute. Don’t everybody be getting all excited and riled up when I make this admission, because it is not quite what it looks like on the surface.

You see, I’m not talking about really bad, blood and gore movies full of machine guns and explosions like “Scarface” or the “Rambo” movies. I’m talking about James Bond films, cartoons like “The Road Runner & Wyle E. Coyote, and the “Andy Griffith Show” featuring Mayberry’s Deputy Barney Fife.

Ian Flemming’s secret agent James bond always thrilled movie goers with the latest, greatest, often concealed, high-tech weapons that he had at his disposal for use in thwarting the designs of whatever maniacal madman might be trying to take over the world. Wyle E. Coyote could always buy a giant cannon or extra powerful slingshot from the latest ACME catalogue for use in his attempts to capture the Roadrunner. And finally, as everyone knows, Barney Fife had made his whole body into a weapon as a result of his correspondence course in Karate.

Then there is ten year old Porsche Brown of Philadelphia, a little girl that has single handedly managed to threaten the safety of each and every one of her fellow elementary school classmates. She accomplished this act by bringing a pair of 8” scissors to school in her backpack.

Little Miss Brown didn’t actually threaten a classmate by brandishing the scissors in a threatening manner in order to get arrested, handcuffed, and lead away from school in tears. Noooo, the teachers belatedly found the so-called “deadly weapon” in the little girls backpack while searching the children for some missing personal property stolen from a teacher’s desk. If Porsche had actually stabbed someone with her scissors or done an unauthorized haircut on one of her classmates, I could see getting a little worked up, but this is ridiculous. The article makes no mention of whether the missing items were ever found and what punishment was delivered to the culprit. They probably let him go with a warning…

I got to say it Folks. THIS “ZERO TOLERANCE” STUFF HAS GOTTEN ENTIRELY OUT OF HAND!! Teachers and school administrators alike have been allowed to replace intelligent thought and common sense with a ridiculous set of idiotic rules designed in theory to make schools safer. What they are doing instead is teaching kids living in a world full of shades of grey that every situation can be viewed on the basis of black and white, with no room for the application of good judgment or rational intelligent thought when considering any mitigating circumstances that might be present.

Under the guise of keeping drugs and weapons out of school, innocent items like toy guns, Tweety Bird key chains, souvenir 12” baseball bats, pencil sharpeners, and Advil tablets are being hysterically confiscated and the offending child whisked off of the school grounds to jail—much to the relief of the moronic government school imbeciles charged with supervising the process. They don’t have to consider and think any more, they just close their eyes and minds and recite the rules.

Many times, when the legal authorities drop the charges, the school responds by mandating even more severe penalties just to prove their point. In this case, the local police dropped the charges against Miss Brown, but the school still is trying to save face by having a hearing to determine when and if she can return to class. IDIOTS!

Under today’s rules, I wouldn’t have made it past the sixth grade considering some of the stunts I pulled. There would be a Fox News investigation and an episode of “60 Minutes” introducing me to the civilized world as a 12 year old “Hannibal Letcher.”

Here is my problem with “zero tolerance.” You can’t cover every possible situation that theoretically occurs, and you can’t by default eliminate every item that could be used as a weapon from the school ground. A kid could pin another kid on the ground and shove a mechanical pencil through his adversary’s nostril, into his brain, and fatally injure the victim. A big bully could in a matter of a few seconds beat another student unconscious with a metal lunchroom tray. Are we going to ban mechanical pencils and force the kids to eat off of paper plates in order to make our schools safer? I wonder what are they using these days to cut open the belly’s of the preserved frogs and worms handed out in biology class-- spoons and spatulas from the lunchroom? What are kids supposed to use to cut construction paper for class projects--a laser beam?

By the way, why isn’t paper considered a weapon since it can cause a paper cut? I’d like to see that one come up in court…..

Talking To God On The Great White Cell Phone

I have seen the public and private use of telephones and the evolution of telephone technology develop astronomically in my somewhat limited but ever extending lifetime. You see, when I was born (a looooong time ago during the Eisenhower presidency when there were only 49 states,) our little town of Ozark, Alabama still featured a majority of residential party lines and still used four-digit or five digit dialing (in the words of Forrest Gump-I was too young to remember being born.)

By the time I was old enough to actually dial the phone and know someone else who would answer and care to converse with me, our family had not one but TWO phone company owned, wall mounted, rotary dial telephones—one in the kitchen and one in the “family room in the basement. Our new house was PRE-WIRED for a telephone. The phone number was 774-8487 and a three minute, long distance, government regulated, AT&T call to the next county cost $8,000—so no one called long distance back then unless you were rich or someone was dead or dieing.

In spite of our highly developed telephonic sophistication, even my parents didn’t have a phone in their bedroom. You didn’t need one back then, because no one ever dared to call after dark unless someone was dead, dieing, or looking to be one of the above in short order. My father would personally see to it. Of course there were the occasional prank calls featuring questions like “do you have Prince Albert in a can” or “is your refrigerator running”—simple things for simple minds.

There were phone booths everywhere and a local call cost you a whopping ten cents. I dare you to try to find a pay phone today except at the airport (or possibly the police station?). Kids and hobos (ok, ok, ok, urban outdoorsmen) alike routinely played their favorite game--payphone roulette-- by pressing the coin return button hoping for a ten-cent prize to fall out.

I worked at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta part time while I was in college in the late 1970’s and I was amazed that their hotel rooms had telephones in the bathroom adjacent to the toilet. “Who the heck were these people that they couldn’t sit down and have peace and quite in such a personal, private, situation?” How things have changed today…you can’t use a public restroom or pay for a head of lettuce at the grocery store without listening to some moron droning on endlessly about something that could have waited until they got home. These same people call home to say they are turning into the driveway…

The first time I saw a remote phone was on the TV show “Hart to Hart.” You know, the 1970’s weekly show about the wealthy California detective couple that drove around in their Benz convertibles with the black telephone handset attached to a radio-telephone the size of a small file cabinet mounted in the trunk?

I got my first cell phone in 1990. I was a big shot owner of my first Georgia Corporation and the portable 3-watt “bag phone” cost over $600 as I recall. The Bellsouth sales rep actually came to my office, delivered the phone to me, and gave me instructions on how to use it. Local calls were $.60 per minute and $1.00 or more per minute when you were “roaming” out of your home service area (which usually began somewhere down the street a few hundred yards,) in addition to a $3.95 roaming fee. Long distance charges were extra. Good God I spent a lot of money on that phone—I remember making one phone call driving up interstate I-85 when I was working on a project bid that cost $75 for less than an hour.

Cell phones were still a novelty back then and I couldn’t take mine with me into a meeting or a restaurant without someone asking to “look” at it. Complete strangers would actually ask to place a call just to act like a hick and tell so-and-so “guess where I’m calling from?” I must admit that there was a certain amount of ego rush associated with having a cell phone back then, but the novelty soon wore off when the bills came in and it was soon reduced to just another tool of doing business.

I am currently dragging my fourth evolution of cell phone technology around with me and, in spite of the reduction in size and promised improvements in coverage area and performance, fully half of my calls end in the words “IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, I’LL CALL YOU BACK IN A MINUTE.” They aught to have a button that you can press that will utter those words (or some variation thereof) automatically when you loose the signal after having five bars on the signal meter just two seconds earlier.

Then the “airphone” came to Delta airliners back in the mid 1990’s. Suddenly mobile phone technology was “in the air” instead of just “on the air.” The seatback mounted phones allowed you to talk to your bookie, sell some stock, or spend an extra precious half-hour worrying about the voice mail you just retrieved at thirty-five thousand feet. I admit that I wasted a few hundred dollars making unnecessary calls just because I could. “Hey honey, guess where I am….”

Up until recently, commercial airliners have continued to be a sanctuary for all of us weary mobile phoners, giving us a requiem from the mindless blathering of insensitive young cell phone users once the airplane pushed back from the gate. Ahhh, the sound of silence as the self-important chick with the b*tch attitude in the seat behind you is forced to shut up about the “blaa-blaa” merger for 55 minutes between Charlotte and Atlanta.

Sorry folks, but it looks like the FCC is about to let things change when it comes to cell phone usage on commercial flights. As a result, I may just start taking the bus…wait a minute…there might be more cell phones on a Greyhound bus than on a Delta flight. The difference is the bus passengers use prepaid minutes. AHHHHHH!

Let’s face it, many times I wish for the days when I wasn’t supposed to be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I believe that I’ve suffered mentally and physically as a result of the so-called technological improvements that I’ve paid so much for over the years.

I still maintain the organizational skills from that era. I used to do projects in Malaysia and Great Britain and it just required that you to plan your day around calling time zone to time zone. Back before E-mail and Fax machines and pagers and Federal Express, people still got business done and managed their personal lives quite well. You could actually go home and be at home mentally and physically.

My holiday wish for everyone is that we slow down and enjoy our lives.

Get over yourself—if you will.

And take that damn cell phone out of your ear, because if it rings once more while I’m trying to eat dinner and you start yelling some mindless drivel, I might just need to use the pay phone at the police station as a result…

Update: December 12, 2004

My favorite talk show host, Neal Boortz, has proposed a solution to defend yourself when and if they allow the use of cell phones on airliners in flight. Here is what your do.

When your neighbor takes a call in flight and becomes obnoxious, just pick up the "SkyMall" catalogue conviently located in your seatback pocket and begin reading loudly out loud. When he or she hangs up, you stop reading...sounds like a plan to me!

Just In Time For Christmas--Homeless Iraq War Vets

It’s the Christmas season and we are all looking forward to visiting family and friends during the holidays. Many Americans spend a good deal of their time and money in an effort to help the less fortunate citizens of our great nation, especially at this time of the year. As a result, I know I’m walking a fine line with this post, but I’m going to do it anyway and try to not come across as too “insensitive.”

This article in the Washington Times under the headline “Homeless Iraq Vets Showing Up At Shelters” is complete crappolla and just has to be debunked by an expert debunker like myself. The author attempts to hang a liberal dose of guilt on us over the plight of “homeless Iraq war veterans” while at the same time taking a few cheep shots at the military in general and the Iraq war effort specifically. I’m not going to let them get away with it.

“Washington, DC, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.”

First things first. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with professional “advocates” touting the poor condition and impending doom of every pitiful form of humanity from illegal Mexican immigrant fruit pickers to one-armed Polish wallpaper hangers. These “advocates” come to us with pious expressions of compassion, demanding our hard earned tax money or other financial support, all the time attempting to cover the fact that they themselves are making a tidy living on the payroll of one or more “advocacy” organizations that pay for everything from their memberships in private country clubs to the license tag on their new Volvo or Saab.

Like the race warlords Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, these mostly self-proclaimed “advocates” have a vested personal interest in maintaining the continued suffering of their specific repressed demographic of humanity while at the same time lamenting their conditions. According to the “advocates,” the number of their victims is always growing as their conditions are continuing to deteriorate. If everyone were actually successfully relieved of their often self-imposed suffering, these “advocates” would find themselves out of a job and would have to actually go out and work for a living rather than chasing microphones and TV cameras all day.

THEY CERTAINLY CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN!

Now, as to the specifics of this latest “news” item…Buried 25 paragraphs down in the story is this little tidbit of information...

“Interviews and visits to homeless shelters around the Unites States show the number of homeless veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan so far is limited. Of the last 7,500 homeless veterans served by the VA, 50 had served in Iraq.”

Think about these numbers for a minute while I get my calculator…let’s see…50 divided by 7,500, that equals 0.006667. For the non-engineers or non-math majors out there, that’s two thirds of one percent. Hardly an imposing trend! I suspect that if they did another survey next week, the number of homeless Iraq vets could easily rise or fall by 50 percent and still not indicate anything to start a new charity category over.

"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

I’ve got news for The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans and Ms. Boone, if you go out and look at 100,000 average people in the US population over a two year period, I suspect that you will find at least 50 people who’s life choices and personal actions result in them being described as “homeless” for a short period of time. Most people who aren’t raging alcoholics, drug addicts, or legally insane also manage to be homeless by the government’s so called “official definition” and still not have to sleep in a doorway or eat out of the McDonald’s dumpster. They do this by sleeping on a friend’s couch, moving back home with Mama, or they go to an existing shelter while they get their act together.

UPI’s star “homeless vet” has to this to say about how he became homeless:

“I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while," Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by US Vets, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans.

"Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months after returning from Iraq in September 2003. "One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets," he said."

"A gunner's mate for 16 years, Arellano said he adjusted after serving in the first Gulf War. But after returning from Iraq, depression drove him to leave his job at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He got divorced.”

Read the entire article and then help me see if I have this situation straight in my mind. After spending 16 years in the Navy, Mr. Arellano is honorably discharged while recovering from a shrapnel wound to his left thumb. He returns home to his civilian life and wife and proceeds to get a divorce, pack his truck, and move away.

I’d like to ask Luis these questions. “Did your wife suddenly start beating you?” “Did she have another man living with her when you returned from serving your country in the war?” “What planning did you make regarding your move, and how could you get all of your “stuff” in your truck unless it was a moving van?”

“One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets…” It looks to me like Luis made a conscious decision to put himself in his current situation. As I have said many times before--you have the God given right in this country to be STUPID, and it is neither my obligation nor that of the government to save you from yourself.

Then there is star homeless veteran number two.

“Lance Cpl. James Claybon Brown Jr., 23, is staying at a shelter run by U.S.VETS in Los Angeles. He fought in Iraq for 6 months with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines and later in Afghanistan with another unit. He said the fighting in Iraq was sometimes intense…Brown acknowledged the mental stress of war, particularly after Marines inadvertently killed civilians at road blocks. He thinks his belief in God helped him come home with a sound mind."

Don't tell the liberals, but here is a young veteran who's religion has kept him from going crazy. Isn' that supposed to be impossible? Aren't you supposed to entrust your sanity to the government and a healthy dose of Prozac?

As usual, the UPI reporter can't resist tossing a few standard stabs at the war and the military. They quote Corporal Brown as saying:

We had a few situations where, I guess, people were trying to get out of the country. They would come right at us and they would not stop," Brown said. "We had to open fire on them. It was really tough. A lot of soldiers, like me, had trouble with that."

"That was the hardest part," Brown said. "Not only were there men, but there were women and children -- really little children. There would be babies with arms blown off. It was something hard to live with."

"Brown said he got an honorable discharge with a good conduct medal from the Marines in July and went home to Dayton, Ohio. But he soon drifted west to California "pretty much to start over," he said.

Brown said his experience with the VA was positive, but he has struggled to find work and is staying with U.S.VETS to save money. He said he might go back to school."

So again I’d like to point out that, contrary to the article’s headline, this guy decided to leave his home in Ohio VOLUNTARILY and move to California. He’s staying in the shelter to save money. Sounds like the first smart decision he has made since he left Dayton. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him or what? Also, he says that his experience with the VA was positive. What's up with that?

“Peter Dougherty, director of Homeless Veterans Programs at the VA, said services for veterans at risk of becoming homeless have improved exponentially since the Vietnam era. Over the past 30 years, the VA has expanded from 170 hospitals, adding 850 clinics and 206 veteran centers with an increasing emphasis on mental health. The VA also supports around 300 homeless veteran centers like the ones run by U.S.VETS, a partially non-profit organization.

"You probably have close to 10 times the access points for service than you did 30 years ago," Dougherty said. "We may be catching a lot of these folks who are coming back with mental illness or substance abuse" before they become homeless in the first place. Dougherty said the VA serves around 100,000 homeless veterans each year.”

So I respectfully ask, which is it?

Is there a crisis with homeless Iraq War veterans or isn’t there. Is it the American people's fault, the Government's, or the individual's?

All I see here is a sensational headline backed up by a bunch of facts and figures that add up to nothing.

Is it just me???