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???

Free At Last, Thank God Almighty (And Mozilla) I'm Free At Last

I finally got frustrated enough with my computer problem to take an extreme, semi-religious measure. I just dumped the Microsoft Internet Explorer off of my computer entirely after installing a free copy of the Mozilla Firefox Web browser. I’ve had a copy running on our other computer for several months and it works wonderfully. No Pop-ups. No, as I like to say, crappola!.

You see, like many individuals (and most governments), I have had a love hate relationship with Bill Gates and Microsoft since it’s inception. My friend Andy’s father bought him one of the original IBM PC’s when he entered graduate school at Georgia Tech back in 1982 and it came in his door with MS Dos 1.2 or something or other on a 5-1/4” floppy disk (there were no hard drives for PC's back then, kids!). From that day forward, he and I set out, at work and at home, on an apparently endless, life long journey of upgrading our computer’s operating systems on a yearly basis.

Microsoft has perfected the cottage business of selling you a software product, immediately informing you of its deficiencies, and then attempting to sell you a “new and improved” product to correct the aforementioned problems, only to come back to you in six months if not weeks with another product and another request for some more of your hard earned cash. With the advent of the Internet, our Washington State benefactor expects us to visit their website practically every day to download some “Free” patch that fixes their latest security deficiency “du jour.”

I avoided the Windows operating system like the plague until windows 98 came out, preferring instead to fool around with DOS autoexec.bat and config.sys files and occasionally firing up windows 3.1 if I had some program that wouldn’t run in DOS. When web browsers came along, I liked Netscape navigator, but the “battle of the computer nerds” made Microsoft Internet Explorer easier to use in my old age and less painful in light of my time worn lack of enthusiasm for technical mumbo-jumbo these days.

In the big picture, Internet Explorer is the most popular Web browser. Why? It comes pre-installed on your computer, with Windows. Beyond this attribute…IT SUCKS!

Remember, Mozilla Firefox….it’s good for what ails you (and your computer.)

My Computer Needs A Flu Vaccine

If my access to the Internet had a doorknob, somebody would most definitely have a broken foot due to my door slamming on same with great force…

I’ve smugly bragged many times in the past to friends and strangers alike that in all my 15 years of owning my own personal computer I’ve never had a hard disk crash and that I’ve never had a virus on one of my computers…until now. Well, something evil has descended onto St. Simons Island and, as a result, I’m afraid that my posting may be limited this week because MY COMPUTER HAS BEEN INVADED BY FORCES FROM HELL.

Late last Thursday night or early Friday morning (I don’t remember exactly when) I had an “event” that occurred while I was writing a blog post. I had about a half dozen Internet Explorer windows open at the time and I didn’t think much about it at first, but it seems that I’ve been “spybotted” or “virused” or something and it has one of our two computers acting like a drunken sailor on shore leave. My girlfriend, Pat, left town this morning with the healthy computer in her luggage and now I’m sitting here running virus scans, diagnostics, doing voodoo chants, Indian (sorry… make that Native American) rain dances, and generally patting this old Dell notebook on the back trying to get it regurgitate whatever is ailing it.

I am not inclined to make my blog efforts into commercial sites yet, so any pop-up ads or advertising you see while reading my efforts is probably the result of some of the modern “door-to-door” salesmen (ok, ok, ok, salespersons) out there that refuse to take “go to hell” as an answer and continue to poke their feet into our doors through our computers and inject their products into our online lives. I’ve had about enough of their marketing efforts. The bug in my machine slows everything down as it reads the files I’m looking at and highlights words in the text like they are hyperlinks. Then when you click on the link, it sends you to a “barganbuddy” page with ads on the specific word topic you click on. For the record, I don’t need a date, a mortgage, Viagra, a cheep vacation, or anything else your pop-up ad or other intrusive internet ad may be selling. Actually, I could use something for my bloodpressure about now…AHHHHHHHH!!!!

I’ve scanned and removed and repaired and just when I think things are back to normal, I reboot and it all starts all over again. Whatever happened to me last week, this computer can’t open a browser window and act normally and I have as yet to get the $#%@*& problem fixed.

For the old folks out there, it feels like I’m using an old IBM PC-XT with a 300 baud Hayes acoustic modem (the ones you had to dial manually and lay the telephone handset on top of.)

French Ineptitude Spreads to Canada

I’ve started yelling, and the way I feel right now I just might not stop yelling until New Years, if ever. Somebody help me please.

I was searching the Web this morning, looking into “airport (in)security” and I found this Reuters article about the Canadians “misplacing” nearly one thousand airport security screener uniforms and badges in the first nine months of 2004.

“Federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre ordered a probe by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority and will receive a report on Monday. Lapierre said Jacques Duchesneau, president of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, will make public the results of the investigation.”

They say that like the US, Canada has invested billions of dollars upgrading their airport security since 9/11. I’d say that, based on this revelation, they need to spend a few billion more. Then there is little closing item:

“Some of the lost items were discovered on eBay, an online auction site.”

So let me get this straight in my mind. An aspiring terrorist can now go to E-Bay and buy a Canadian TSA uniform, a badge, and next week possibly some good vintage French plastic explosives?

I think that my head is going to explode…AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

"Pardonnez-Moi," Have You Seen My Explosives?

We've got some good news, and some bad news from France this morning.

Bad news: The Scottsman reports that as of 6:00 AM the C4 explosives are still missing.

Good news: The French Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, told the Gendarmes (doesn’t Gendarmes mean “Keystone Cops” in French?) to cease and desist with the free plastics explosives give-away program.

"The procedures that were used on Friday night will no longer be allowed," said Pierre Bouquin, a spokesman for the Gendarmes, who conducted the training. "We’re going to stop practising this on the bags of travellers," he said.

What I want to know is why that loudmouth socialist French President Jacques Chirac wasn’t the one doing the explaining. He certainly doesn’t mind opening his smug yap when he wants to publically criticize the US and our leaders. But nooooo, instead he puts his boy Raffarin out to do his apologizing…figures.

I'm still waiting for Tom Ridge or John Ashcroft to get off their overpaid bureaucratic butts and light a fire under the French transportation officials. Am I the only one that feels this way? Saying "oops," "sorry bout that old chap," or being embarrassed isn't a solution, it a reaction.

We should demand a solution people!

Par Le Vous Frances?

Par le vous Frances? Well, if you can, would someone please send the French people a message for me? Please tell them that their police force working at Charles de Gaulle airport are making the entire population of France look fairly damn stupid to the rest of the civilized world.

”Police at Paris' top airport lost track of a passenger's bag in which plastic explosives were placed to train bomb-sniffing dogs, police said Saturday. Warned that the bag may have gotten on any of nearly 90 flights from Charles de Gaulle, authorities searched planes upon arrival in Los Angeles and New York.”

Can you believe this? The French airport police last Friday planted several ounces of plastic explosive in an unsuspecting passenger’s bag as an exercise to test the abilities of their bomb sniffing dog(s.)

The dogs caught the bag, but then the French version of the Keystone Cops let the bag get away from them.

Then they let the bag get put in the hold of an airliner.

Then they let the airliner leave Paris.

Then they reported that as of Saturday night, the explosives were still missing.

"Indeed, it's possible that someone will have a surprise when he opens his bag," they say.

I'd say that "a surprise” is a bit of an international grade understatement.

Ok, I have a few questions for the French law enforcement “professionals,” as well as a serious recommendation as to what the US authority’s response should be as a result of this situation.

First question… WHAT THE &%#@*% WERE YOU THINKING!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Next, why did you have to put the stuff in some civilian's bag in the first place? Why couldn’t you just put together your own “loaded” bag and add it to the luggage mix in the airport operations? Then, once you realized the bag was loose, why didn’t you stop everything at de Gaulle and find it. And finally, why did you let it fly?

“ "These dogs must be trained in the most realistic situation possible ... to be the most effective," (Police spokesman Pierre) Bouquin said.”

Sorry Pierre, but if you did feel it was necessary to put the C4 in some unsuspecting passenger’s bag, why didn’t you idiots at least write down the person’s name and travel destination?

We here in the United States close down entire airport terminals and cease all landings and takeoffs for hours at a time if someone so much as burps and it smells funny. Yet, you French Fools put plastic explosive on one of 90 airplanes and then let it leave to some unknown destination—potentially beyond your own borders?

If you can’t stop explosives from being loaded on an airplane when you KNOW that it is in the airport, how can we expect you to prevent Abdul or Mubarik, one of your lovely, peaceful, indigenous Muslim residents from boarding an airplane with hidden, unknown explosives?

The lame excuse for letting the bag fly is that there was no detonator included in the planted package. Well, suppose some real dangerous person finds the C4 and manages to make or buy a detonator for future use. I, personally, appreciate receiving frequent flyer miles and other perks from airlines, but handing out do-it-yourself bomb kits at the airport doesn’t do much to enhance my feeling of security.

This is a serious problem, folks. The traveling American public, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Homeland Security Administration should demand an immediate audit of the entire French Security operation and if we are not satisfied with the results, we should ban all flights originating in France until remedial measures are taken.

The French are going to aid and abet the death of us all before long if we insist on keeping up the politically correct illusion of their being our friends and ally.

Baah Humbug...


UPDATE: Sunday Afternoon 12/05/04

I just got back in from Christmas Tree shopping and the first thing I did was jump on the internet to see where this story was going.

First,the bad news: As of 4:30 PM EST this afternoon the explosive material is still missing.

Now the good news: It seems that the French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has instructed the Gendarmes (that's French for "Keystone Cops") to stop using live explosives placed in innocent citizens' baggage to conduct training exercises.

I have a suggestion...In the future, why don't they run Jacques Chirac through the airport with a load of C4 shoved up into his personal nether regions and let the dogs practice sniffing him out.

I'd call that killing two birds with one stone... so to speak...

Weird (Rocket) Science

Just when I though, egotistically, that I had seen everything, now I’m pretty sure that I have. A news article I read tonight states the following:

Government researchers have found elevated levels of toxic rocket fuel in milk bought at Virginia stores, according to FDA records released this week.

As a contentious US citizen and consumer of milk, the first thing I want to know is, what made the “government researchers” start looking for “rocket fuel” in cow’s milk--as if cow belches and their posterior gaseous emissions weren’t already enough of a published threat to the environment in the first place? You know what I mean? At first I thought that this Hampton Roads, Virginia news story was a parody, but apparently it is not.

Really, can you just see it?

A bunch of highly educated nerds sitting around the conference table at the FDA on Monday morning, each armed with pocket protectors, glasses taped together with scotch tape, financed by a chunk of government cash, and the boss says: “Hey Virgil, take a half million bucks and go out and look for rocket fuel residue coming out of cows utters.” Is this type of exercise even legal for a grown man to do in most states unless a female registered nurse or some other authority personally witnesses the inspection process?

After making light of this story, I have to come back to one of my re-occuring themes—this story is totally useless, unmitigated crappola, delivered under the guise of being NEWS. Here is where the guilty news organizations give themselves away as wasting our time and where the FDA is exposed as wasting our tax dollars

“The results noted perchlorate in virtually all the lettuce and milk. In high doses, perchlorate affects thyroid function. Researchers tested three samples of Virginia milk and noted perchlorate levels near or exceeding seven parts-per-billion. While there is no nationally-mandated limits, Massachusetts caps concentration at one part-per-billion; California, six.”

Here are the facts on this issue. First of all, even the EPA admits that perchlorate is a naturally occurring chemical. This means that its presence in meat or milk or lettuce is not necessarily NASA’s fault. The FDA Website also mentions that there are other sources of perchlorate besides rocket fuel, including Mother Nature. Further, perchlorate is not automatically called rocket fuel, this is just more media hype. Like I just said--it occurs naturaly in nature.

Back in the 1980’s I did several projects for Morton Thiokol, now called ATK Thiokol. You might not know of Morton Thiokol, but they are a sister company of the Morton company that makes the salt commonly found on your dinner table. There is no coincidence that they both had the same name. They both make products containing salt—just different kinds of salt.

You see, table salt is sodium chloride, a compound containing sodium and chlorine (NaCL). That’s one Sodium atom attached to one chlorine atom. The vilified “perchlorate” is actually potassium perchlorate. That’s two chlorines attached to one potassium atom. So what is the difference to me and you?

Both compounds are mined out of the ground and refined for their end use. Sodium Chloride is refined for human consumption. Potassium Perchlorate is refined to make solid rocket motors that blast satellites and the space shuttle into orbit. The ingestion of both substances interferes with the thyroid function. Ever hear of Iodized Salt? We have to add Iodine to normal table salt to keep it from screwing with our thyroid gland and causing everyone to be running around with a giant goiter growing on their neck.

Any more questions?

OK…End of discussion…

Wanted--One Big Damn Muffler

I’ve been ranting about this topic for years, and today I heard the Godfather—Rush Limbaugh—mention it on his radio show using the same basic argument. I said to myself—self, you were right all along, and now Rush is stealing your thunder.

What Rush was talking about today was this Associated Press story about Mt. St. Helens being the largest polluter in the state of Washington. I’ve been saying for fifteen years that it’s not people that are the major polluters of the earth’s atmosphere, it’s the earth itself--and I aught to know a little about pollution (besides the words coming out of my mouth.)

You see--I spent over twenty years in the air pollution control business. First as a staff engineer, then as the owner of a company that built industrial smokestacks. I’ve seen the business from the inside out and looked at the government regulation and legislation on an up close and personal basis.

News flash—Most, if not all of the air pollution provisions enacted in the past ten years are mostly a bunch of well-intended crappola. The Kyoto treaty—absolute, total, complete, scientific mumbo jumbo—designed to allow the Chinese and the rest of the third world to dump everything they want to into the environment while at the same time attempting to cripple our economy with a bunch of “curtailment measures” designed based on voodoo science at best. Bill Clinton wouldn’t sign it, and George Bush shouldn’t either.

Most news stories on pollution generally have two things in common. They all are introduced by some sort of scary headline predicting the end of the world, as we know it. The stories are then backed up by either a bunch of generalizations and opinions offered by the author or they are filled with mind numbing, out of context facts and figures that cause the average reader’s eyes to cross. The final result is usually doom and gloom, backed up by a liberal portion of blame placed squarely on the shoulders of capitalism and the American way.

Here is my take on air pollution. Yes, we do need to prevent the wholesale dumping of heavy metals like mercury into the atmosphere. Yes, we can limit what other man-made compounds we allow to escape from the industry we require to support our lifestyles. No, we don’t need to excessively freak out over carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide--the hated “green house gasses.” No, we don’t need to allow the rest of the developing world to place unfair and unnecessary restraints on our economy by limiting our industry and energy production efforts.

I was trying to learn how to fly an airplane in 1991 when the monster volcano in the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo, decided to destroy about half of the south Pacific. Can you say ten feet of ash and mudslides? During that summer, three out of four times, I would schedule a flying lesson at Cobb County’s McCullum Airfield, drive to the airport at the appointed time, only to have the flying lesson cancelled because we could not see Kennesaw Mountain (which was only two miles away) because of the yellow/brownish haze that covered the mid-latitudes of the entire earth for months during the eruptions. What a complete and total “un-natural” natural disaster, and it's not like we can pass a law or sign a treaty to prevent it from happening again in the future.

Anyone got a big damn Muffler?? Sooooooo, back to today.

Here is my bottom line on this issue:

We have come a long way from the 1940’s and 1950’s with factories belching soot and smoke everywhere and owners turning their back while PCB’s and Dioxin were dumped in the creeks in their back yards. We still have a long way to go. BUT…

Just remember, just when we think that we can sit back all smug and happy with our efforts, Mother Nature comes along and Farts or Belches a big old cloud of sulfur and methane (or shakes the hell out of Japan and California) and we all realize that all of our self edifying efforts are for naught.

So stop your whining and go out and plant a tree or something…

Rearranging The Furniture On The Deck Of The Titanic

Arrogance and over confidence, basic design flaws and miss-management. All of these were contributing factors in the loss of over 1500 persons on the passenger liner RMS Titanic on April 14, 1912. The owners and the passengers were described as having been lured into a “false sense of security.”

I’m afraid that a large portion of the world’s population is in the very same position when it comes to placing their faith in the United Nations to referee international relations. Whether it’s the failure of the UN Human Rights Commission evidenced by inaction to civil war and genocide in Africa, the unending issuance of non-binding, toothless resolutions to Saddam's Iraq by the corrupt UN Security Council, the inept handling of North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear aspirations by the IAEC, or the unfolding wide-spread corruption of the Oil for Food program in Iraq--all of the evidence points to the UN being a broken organization that at least needs a major dose of fixing. I say it needs replacement in its entirely.

Not to worry however, Masseur Kofi Annan, psychic statesman that he is, has anticipated the problems and is about to propose a solution. The ship is still going down though, the captain is still on board (he won’t leave before 2006 unless forced out) and I’m afraid that his efforts amount to rearranging the furniture on the sinking ship’s deck.

“The United nations unveiled a sweeping proposal to overhaul the organisation, including the Security Council, in what would be the most comprehensive UN reform since its founding in 1945.

After bitter divisions over the war in Iraq, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan ordered a high-level panel last year to come up with the blueprint and help the United Nations adapt to the global realities of the 21st century.

The panel's report released Tuesday proposed more than 100 recommendations, including some -- an expansion of the Security Council and a definition of terrorism -- that have eluded UN diplomats for years.

"What is needed is a comprehensive system of collective security, one that tackles both old and new threats, and addresses the security concerns of all states -- rich and poor, weak and strong," Annan said in his preface to the report.”

Since the United States contributes approximately 22% of the budget of an organization composed of 191 nation/states, I say that it is time for us to put our mouth where our money is and demand our own major changes in the UN operations and membership and the immediate dismissal of Kofi.

The UN is today and always has been an anti-Israel and anti-American organization composed primarily of nations ruled by corrupt despots and dictators. The idiots, OK, OK—diplomats, at the UN have been fighting for over five years and have yet to even come up with a mutualially agreeable definition of what terrorism is. The so-called Human Rights Commission is a laughing stock as long as it includes member nations like Cuba and Syria.

Here are a few more tidbits from the report:

"There is little evident international acceptance of the idea of security being best preserved by a balance of power or by any single -- even benignly motivated -- superpower," the panel said."

By using the word “superpower,” our ears shouldn’t be burning here in the US? And I say that we not give a damn whether there is “international acceptance” of our massively superior military capability—it is what it is.

"The yearning for an international system governed by the rule of law has grown," it said. "No state, no matter how powerful, can by its own efforts alone make itself invulnerable to today's threats."

Gee whiz, the idea of “governing by rule of law” seems a bit familiar. We have a Constitution here in the US that is over 230 years old that is based on that premise. What we are not going to accept is the rule of “international laws” designed by dictators and corrupt socialists to separate our citizens from the protections of our constitution while we at the same time pay a quarter of the costs and provide free real estate in New York City.

"Annan intends to use the report as a basis for widespread reforms he would like to see carried out before his tenure ends in 2006, and he commissioned it while acknowledging that divisions over Iraq had brought the international system to a "fork in the road."”

Forget “fork in the road” Mr. Annon, I say “stick a fork in it, it’s done…”

Update: December 1, 2004

I've done two posts on the UN Oil For Food Scandal, beginning with my November 12th writing "It's My Party And I'll (Lie) If I Want To." I wish I could do more that rant and rave, but I can point out the story to everyone since the mainstream media is doing their best to avoid it.

Here is more information from someone that should know. Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has a great article today in the Wall Street Journal calling for the resignation of Kofi Annon.

A good read...

Ye Shall Know The Tree By Its Fruit

Every time we here in the US turn around, the world media and the citizens of that all knowing, always tolerant utopia of Europe are right there to criticize our actions and point out errors in our decision making process. “We just need to be more tolerant and considerate of other world viewpoints,” they say.

Well, I’ve resisted commenting on this topic in an effort to let things develop and see what kind of play it gets in the US media. I’ve stood it as long as I can, and it is time to speak out myself…Here goes.

In the King James version of the Bible, in the book of Matthew (Chapter 7, verses 15-20) it is said:

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”

I’d say that the citizens of Europe are getting a pretty good opportunity to learn about the “fruits” produced by their large Arab immigrant population that have been allowed to swell in a virtually unchecked fashion in the years since World War II. In the past thirty years, Muslim immigrants of every description have been actively encouraged to move to Europe legally—unlike our indigenous illegal Mexican population—to fill labor positions considered beneath the self-image of the cosmopolitan denizens of Paris, The Hague, and Berlin.

This kettle has apparently been simmering for some time, but only recently, with the November 1st murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (great, great nephew of artist Vincent Van Gogh) following on the heels of the murder of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn just weeks before the election in 2002, has the pot come to a full, obviously deadly, public boil.

“Van Gogh, 47, had received death threats after his film ‘Submission’ was shown on Dutch TV. It portrayed violence against women in Islamic societies. The film was made with liberal Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who fled an arranged marriage. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been under police protection since the film was aired. She has also received death threats and has renounced the Islamic faith.”

You know the Netherlands, that nirvana of tolerance and the self-proclaimed Eden of political correctness. Live and let live, love and let love, whatever your drug, whatever “floats your boat,” bring it to the Netherlands and they’ll pass a law to make it legal so you can do it in public. Well folks, the Netherlands, of all places, is getting a little worried about their native towel heads.

And then there is our so-called ally, the Republic of Germany that is getting more than a little concerned about successfully integrating their growing Muslim minority into their society.

"“Pointing out the problem doesn't make you a racist," said Leopold Bongart, who has taught German language courses in Neukoelln since the 1970s.”

Would someone please tell this to the NY Times and the rest of the domestic media here in the US? Further, would somebody light a match under the world wide Muslim population that supposedly isn’t bent on world conquest and implementing jihad?

There are a couple of brutal facts that every non-violent Muslim, Islamist, or other defined follower of Muhammad is going to have to face. They are going to have to do two things. The first step is to demand that their political and religious leaders publicly denounce the killings, the jihads, and the proclamation of a “fatwa” against anyone who expresses an opinion critical of the actions of the HUMANS that follow their lovely, peaceful religion.

Secondly, that they un-categorically disassociate themselves from any person and any government that does not do the same. Then, let the chips lie where they fall, and let the militaries of the US and our allies be the dealers of the cards.

Robert Spencer, author of Jihad Watch has this to say:

“If the murder of van Gogh does indeed turn out to have been committed by a Muslim enraged at his "blasphemy," it has precedents. In 1947, Iranian lawyer Ahmad Kasravi was murdered by Islamic radicals after he had been accused of attacking Islam. Four years later, Iranian Prime Minister Haji-Ali Razmara was killed after Muslim clerics issued a fatwa calling for his death. In 1992, Egyptian writer Faraj Foda was murdered by Muslims enraged at his "apostasy" from Islam -- another offense for which traditional Islamic law prescribes the death penalty. Foda's countryman, Nobel Prizewinning novelist Naguib Mahfouz, was stabbed in 1994 after accusations of blasphemy. Under Pakistan's blasphemy laws, many non-Muslims have been arrested, tortured, and sentenced to die on the slimmest of evidence. And of course, there is the Ayatollah Khomeini's notorious death fatwa against Salman Rushdie.”

“But for such things to happen in Iran and Egypt, two countries where Islamic radicalism is widespread, is one thing; to have a "blasphemer" gunned down on the streets of Amsterdam in broad daylight is another. Europe has for thirty years encouraged massive immigration from Muslim nations; Muslims now comprise five percent of Holland's population, and that number is growing rapidly. Yet it is still largely taboo in Europe -- as in America -- to raise any questions about how ready that population is to accept the parameters of secularism. When Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn tried to raise some of those questions in 2002, he was vilified as a racist -- in line with the continuing tendency of the Western media to frame questions regarding Islam in racial terms, despite the fact that the totalitarian intransigence of the ideology of radical Islam is found among all races. And Fortuyn himself, of course, was himself ultimately murdered by a Dutch assailant who, according to The Guardian, "did it for Dutch Muslims."”

”The deaths of Fortuyn and van Gogh indicate that the costs of maintaining this taboo are growing. One prerequisite of the peaceful coexistence of ideologies in secular society is freedom of speech -- particularly the freedom to question, to dissent, even to ridicule. Multiculturalism and secularism are on a collision course: if one group is able to demand that its tenets remain above criticism, it no longer coexists with the others as an equal, but has embarked on the path to hegemony.”

I hate the loss of Van Gogh’s life, but if this is what it takes to wake up the balance of the world's population to the threat that radical Islam poses to the stability of our governments and the safety of my family and yours, then so be it.

We are in World War Four (World war three was against the Russians) and it is time to take off the kid gloves and get down to business.

We're looking for rotten fruit and the trees that it grew on...Go get 'em George...

Saving Ourselves From Ourselves

Suppose you are having a party this holiday season, a BIG party. You usually have a small get together for a few friends every year, but this one is going to be special. You’ve been planning it for weeks and now it’s time to buy all of the supplies. You arrange for some close friends to help with the preparations, visit the local warehouse club for supplies, stop by the grocery store, and finally you run by the liquor store to purchase the libations.

As you and the store proprietor go over your list, you finally come to the final item, Champaign, and he tells you that he doesn’t have any—he’s already sold out. It seems that all he originally had for sale was domestic Champaign and because of recent diplomatic conflicts, he doesn’t have any imported Champaign.

So what do you do now? After calling around, you finally locate someone who says that they might be able to help you with your purchase and you arrange to stop by the next day to discuss delivery. You learn that the “distributor” can supply you with four cases of fine Champaign imported from France. The deal is contingent on you paying $70 cash per bottle, plus tax, for Champaign that would normally cost $35 per bottle. After thinking about it for a minute, you drive to the ATM and return with the $1700 needed for your purchase. It’s an extra expense, but you head home confident that your party will be a success and your guests will appreciate your efforts.

The next day there is an unexpected knock on your front door and when you answer you find a police officer and a government agent requesting to come inside and ask you a few questions. It seems that current law prohibits you from buying and drinking Champaign made outside the United States. After a few minutes of conversation, you watch their truck drive away with your hard won party drinks—and you get no refund.

Now that you have taken the time and patience to read through the above story I ask you the following question. What business is it of the imperial Federal Government of the United States what I choose to purchase and drink in the privacy of my own home, as long as all of the taxes are paid and I willing to pay the asking price? Why does it matter to the bureaucrats where my beverage is made?

Unfortunately, the government has gotten into the business of regulating a vast portion of our lives including the products which we are “allowed” to purchase, usually under the guise of assuring quality and safety. However, based on a number of cars I’ve owned over the past thirty years, government involvement rarely assures quality and with the Fen Phen debacle and the recent recall of the drug Vioxx, their promise of protecting our safety with regulation is certainly suspect.

USA Today printed a story yesterday about the federal government riding to our rescue again in the recent flue vaccine shortage. I think that you’ll agree that we can all sleep better tonight as a result of their efforts…NOT!

“Thousands of doses of flu vaccine smuggled from France through Saudi Arabia were destined for black-market sales in New Jersey, federal officials said Tuesday.

The smuggling scheme is the latest, and perhaps boldest, criminal act to arise during the nation's unprecedented flu vaccine shortage. As health officials dole out a limited supply of vaccine, police are dealing with price gougers and vaccine thieves.”

Can you believe this situation? As I stated in my earlier post, Hillarycare Preview, the imperial federal government is already responsible for the flue vaccine shortage in the first place. If it hadn’t been for their intervention in the vaccine market in the 1990’s, chances are that everyone that wanted a flue vaccine shot today could get one for a modest cost. But nooooo, a “modest cost” wasn’t good enough for the bureaucrats, it had to be sold at prices below production costs or given away for free and as a result the vaccine manufacturers ran for the hills looking for more profitable enterprises.

What the government has done is step into the free market, screw around with the basic formulas of supply and demand that normally dictate product pricing and availability, and now they are criminalizing the actions of those who seek to fill the vacuum that developed in the wake of their efforts.

You can rest easy now ladies and Gentlemen, thanks to the diligent efforts of our law enforcement and US Customs officials, another 8,000 doses of non-approved flue vaccine has been taken off of America’s streets and placed into the dumpsters where it belongs. A few men won’t run the risk of experiencing unnatural cravings for brie cheese as a result of taking the vaccine only approved for French consumption. Untold numbers of American women are saved the torture of beginning to not shave the hair on their legs and in their armpits as a result of ingesting the French poison.

Thank God for our all knowing government.

"Freedom's" Just Another Word

(For Nothin’ Left To Lose)

Janice Joplin’s 1971 hit song ”Me and Bobby McGee” includes the words “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” I’ve often contemplated the meaning that the songwriter, Kris Kristofferson, had in mind when he wrote these words. I mean, the words sound good in a sorta romantic way, but I’ve also heard that “freedom isn’t free” as applied to the efforts of the American soldier over the past 230 years.

So which is it? Either way, it sounds to me like freedom is expensive, but it shouldn’t cost you everything you have in life. Which brings me to this morning’s topic--President Bush’s New Freedom Commission on Mental health. I’ve been following this program for the past six months or so and, in my opinion, this program is bad news. Here is why.

This “New Freedom” program study was begun in April 2002 and has since gotten up a pretty good head of steam. Basically, it is a national program designed in theory to improve and standardize the mental health screening and treatment provided to all Americans. Like most Government efforts, it sounds good on paper. But as I always like to say, the Devil’s in the details.

Here is how it will work. In conjunction with the assistance of the pharmaceutical companies, the government is going to begin by screening the mental health of all of the approximately 52 million children in public schools, including preschool aged students. They are not just looking for “stark raving mad,” “crazy as a loon,” or “a few bricks shy of a full load” personalities. They will be evaluating the overall “social and emotional development” of each child. BY WHO’s STANDARDS WILL THE CHILDREN BE JUDGED?

In the beginning the program will be administered by the individual states, and Texas, Illinois, and Pennsylvania are already on the band wagon with their own pilot programs supported by federal funding. In addition to the kids, the six or seven million teachers and other employees of the public school system will be evaluated. As a result of the screenings, anyone determined to have a diagnosable form of “mental illness” will be prescribed one of the latest, state-of-the-art psychotropic drugs like Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Effexor and Remeron. Can you say “massive profits for drug companies?”

What is not clear at the present time is what, if any, say the parents and children will have in submitting to the evaluations and actually taking the prescribed drugs. It appears that at first everything will be voluntary, but you know the government…they believe that they know what is best for you and me.

Here is what disturbes me about this newly found “Freedom.” There is already a great deal of pressure being brought to bear by teachers on the parents of so-called “hyperactive” children to use medications like Riddlin to control behavior that forty years ago was managed with ordinary corporal punishment and a large dose of good parenting. Will this new program not increase the number of kids on psycho-modifying drugs beyond the 9 million already on them?

Further, will the potential mandatory evaluation and treatment potentially infringe on the rights of parents to raise their own children as they see fit? I’m not promoting withholding necessary medical care from anyone, but is the imperial Federal Government the best arbitrator of the administration of these type of critical services?

Maybe, like myself, you don’t have kids or your children are already out of school. Why, you then ask, should I care about the movement to have the Federal government in the business of Mental Health screening? Because the government intends to expand the program to include EVERYONE, including you and I.

Imagine if, in order to get something you need like a drivers license or a business license or some professional license like those for pilots, engineers, doctors, or lawyers, that the government required that you have a mental health screening. OK, that’s not so bad you might say, because you don’t want your airline pilot or your brain surgeon to have too many bats loose in his cranium.

Well, here is the problem. You know the government. It’s just a matter of time until they make your drivers license or your business license contingent on you not only having the screening, but that you also have to take the drugs that they prescribe for you. What would then keep them from coming to your house or your work and hauling you off to JAIL or locking you up in the looney bin, er um insane asylum…er, I mean “Freedom Center” if they find that you have gone off of your meds without their permission?

There is quite a battle going on right now in the congress regarding funding for this program and, like me, a number of individual representatives and senators are fundamentally against it.

All I know is that, in my personal experience, the declaration of sanity or the lack thereof is a highly subjective, widely variable discipline. I hope we can slow this potential monster down, or at least bring it out into the light of day so more parents and regular people can be involved in the decision making process.

Wake up and smell the java!

Liars Figure and Figures Lie--Part II

I love details. I really love details that give an issue perspective.

As I continue my ranting and raving about world events and the media’s presentation of same to the public, I continue to enjoy grabbing the few little tidbits of information that manage to leak out of a given story and put it into terms that everyone can understand.

Here is the amazing story of a young girl apparently successfully treated after the onset of the symptoms of rabies. They have yet to determine the long term effects of the illness on the girl’s mental capacities, but recovery from the disease is apparently nothing short of a miracle.

Rabies used to kill a lot of people here in the US before the development of the vaccine. There have only been a few dozen deaths in the past ten years because of the wide spread availability of the vaccine. Growing up in the rural south, the two things we were most afraid of was a rabid animal and getting “lock jaw” (tetanus) from getting cut running with rusty scissors. No kid in their right mind wanted to face “ten shots in the stomach” or whatever else the rabies treatment used to entail.

Based on the CDC statistic reported in this article, rabies still kills one person every 15 minutes. A little math tells me that that equals about 35,040 people each year (365 days per year times 24 hours each day times 60 minutes per hour divided by 4.)

The point of my story is this: where is the US government’s, the UN’s, and the media's outrage when it comes to this issue? I mean, thirty five thousand people. To read the papers and listen to the TV, sharks and air bags and bird flue and mad cow disease and anthrax are all imminent threats, but Rabies? Old News.

I say NO NEWS is worthy of your attentions without checking the facts for yourself.

I'd Rather...But Not Dan Rather

Well Folks, its official. Dan Rather announced yesterday that he is stepping down next March as the anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News. CBS executives are trying to tell us that good old Danno’s retirement is unrelated to the “Memogate” scandal regarding President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service during Vietnam, but I beg to differ. The results of the “independent investigation” into the “alleged” forged documents forming the core of the story are yet to be made public, and the producer of the segment, Mary Mapes, is still lurking around behind the scenes at CBS.

Rather’s retirement is simply an obvious effort at damage control—they still want Dan’s sullen scowl on the Sunday and Wednesday “60 Minutes” segments. Stay tuned for more high quality, partisan BS—we’re counting on you Dan.

What we are witnessing today is the culmination of yet another evolution in the way information—specifically news—is disseminated in our society, and it is a GOOD THING. Other forms of media have endured this type of evolution and survived—TV News will too, but not without major changes in the names involved and the motives behind the decision making process. On behalf of the Internet Bloggers I’d like to say that “We have only begun to fight…”

Take the written media, specifically newspapers, for example. William Randolph Hearst, publisher of the NY Journal, and Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the NY World amassed fortunes running their ”Yellow Journalism” empires in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, and yet competition in the newspaper industry served to ultimately balance out their egos and the fiction dispensed as news by these two media giants. We need another dose of reality for newspapers like the NY Times today, and I assure you that the Internet is looming on their horizon as well.

For Hearst and Pulitzer, there was an incident similar to “Rathergate” at the beginning of the Spanish American war. Following the explosion of the Battleship US Maine in the harbor in Havana Cuba in 1898, both the Journal and the World published a so-called “suppressed” cable message that purported that the death of the 260 crew members was not an accident. The public furor resulting from the story based on the false cable served as a major incentive for President McKinley to declare war with Spain. So much for the idea that a fake document cannot influence history in a substantial way if its veracity is allowed to go unchallenged.

Almost one hundred years later, we have seen the rise and fall of yet another form of journalism--the network news broadcast. We just don’t buy what they report as news anymore. People have too many sources of news to buy a single viewpoint, and the cable news shows and more importantly, the internet, will go down in history as the reason for the change.

I am proud to be, in a small way, a part of this revolution. The fact that you just read this posting to my blog indicates your desire for another point of view. I hope you will keep reading in the future.

Six Dead In Wisconsin...Film At Eleven

Here we go again. In Wisconsin today another moron has gone off his rocker and shot and killed a half dozen other hunters in an argument over a tree stand located on private property. Several more people were wounded.

Just watch the media celebrate this news event with endless coverage and listen to the politicians and professional “TV talking heads” pontificate about “what we as a society need to do to stop such incidents.”

Would everyone just stop for a few minutes here and think, please?

The anti gun spin has already started, even on Fox News. “What kind of gun did he use,” they all ask. Like it matters to the dead people what caliber the bullets were, what length the barrel was, or whether the gun’s stock was wooden or composite. “Did it look like a military weapon, or did it look like an antique?” Pluueaseeeee!

This story has made it all the way to the country of Turkey. (Is Turkey hunting legal in Turkey…just wondering?) In the Turkish Press they say:

“Vang, a naturalised American citizen originally from Laos, was carrying a high-powered SKS assault rifle, that was out of ammunition, when he was arrested.”

Well thank God that his evil “SKS Assault Rifle” ran out of ammunition or the entire state of Wisconsin might be dead. And this from Louisville, Kentucky’s Fox41 News:

“Asked to leave, the trespasser, wearing blaze-orange and carrying a semiautomatic assault rifle, opened fire on the hunters and didn't stop until his 20-round clip was empty, leaving five people dead and three wounded…Van was carrying an SKS 7.62-mm caliber rifle, a cheap but powerful semiautomatic weapon, authorities said.”

“Police identified the shooter as Chai Vang, 36, a hunter from St. Paul, Minnesota, who is a member of the Twin Cities' Hmong community. While authorities do not know why he allegedly opened fire, there have been previous clashes between Southeast Asian and white hunters in the region."

"Locals have complained that the Hmong, refugees from Laos, do not understand the concept of private property and hunt wherever they see fit. In Minnesota, a fistfight once broke out after Hmong hunters crossed onto private land, said Ilean Her, director of the St. Paul-based Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans.”

Could this story be any more perfect for the media? “Another dang foreigner has committed a heinous crime with a GUN.” AHHHHHHHHHH, everyone run for the hills.

Now here is a little information—some call it facts and figures—to augment the hype that you’re going to be inundated with over the next few weeks. First of all, as you may recall by reading my previous postings, I grew up hunting on my grandfather’s 350 acre farm. I own three rifles and two shotguns. As of this moment, I also happen to not own any bullets.

In spite of having access to the property today, I have not spent a single minute in the woods hunting for the past twenty years because of my fear of this exact situation—poachers—and getting shot, accidentally or otherwise. Our land is literally overrun each fall with individuals that know they are on private property and that they do not have permission to be there hunting.

My uncle used to place a salt block in a clearing across the lake from our houses so we could enjoy watching the deer feed in the late afternoon. He stopped when someone shot a doe within one hundred yards of my mother’s house. The trespassers tear down the “posted” signs that my cousin places around the property almost as quickly as he puts them up. My mother asked the game warden what she could do about the poachers and he told her, paraphrasing, “that if she could call him and hold the intruder until he could get there that he would write them a ticket.” Needless to say we haven’t seen many tickets written.

My first point here is this. We don’t need more laws that will take my guns away from me. My guns, residing comfortably in the closet, are not a threat, and three of the five are of the hated “semi-automatic” variety. What we need is effort and money spent to enforce the laws that we already have on the books. It’s already against the law to shoot at somebody, folks. I can’t throw a chair or a rock or a punch or a basketball (did you see what the NBA players were up to this weekend) at you without risking running afoul of the law.

My second point has to do with the bad reputation people like Mr. Vang give gun owners and the hunting population. You never see national headlines that read “300,000 armed citizens take to the woods on opening day of deer season, no one killed…” No, of course not. Yet it happens every year in many if not most states. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, they close schools and businesses shut down because they know that on opening day of deer season most of their students and employees are going to be in the woods, in camouflaged attire, chewing tobacco, and looking for something to shoot—LEGALLY.

My final point is to address the weapon that Mr. Vang was wielding (you only wield a weapon when committing a crime, right?) The SKS is an inexpensive imported rifle designed by a Russian named Simonov in 1947. It was replaced in the mid 1950's by the AK-47, another weapon of military origin that is vilified by the anti-gun mobs and the media. The Chinese and various other countries also manufactured the SKS with Russian approval.

While the SKS is rugged and quite capable of surviving being carried through the woods in all kinds of weather, it is not a “sniper” weapon or even considered to be that accurate. In fact, it sorta sucks when it comes to long range hunting, so I propose that Mr. Vang was enthusiastic but not very well informed when it comes to his choice of weapon.

There are any number of standard looking hunting rifles like my Marlin 22 magnum that cost a lot less than the SKS and which are equally deadly at any range within 100 yards. I’ll also point out that, while this weapon is not legal for deer hunting due to it’s small caliber, it was quite capable of terrifying a number of rabbits and squirrels with great frequency in Lower Alabama in the early 1970’s. By the way, the standard clip holds ten rounds.

What the logic out there seems to be is that scary looking guns with large(r) capacity ammunition magazines are more trouble that “average” looking guns with small(er) capacity magazines. I propose that any old inexperienced moron with a great big old dangerous looking gun is no more a threat than a polished killer with a pea shooter.

The crime is shooting at people, not owning a certain type gun.

Get It?

What You See Isn't What You Get

I’d like to apologize for the lack of new posting recently, but I’m tired. You see, for the past few weeks I’ve been charged with designing a real life illusion and this week we started construction.

By building an illusion, I mean that I am in charge of construction of the set for the Agatha Christie play ”The Mousetrap” that our local theater company, The Island Players, is staging this winter. For those of you out there that like me are not long time regulars in the theater business, “The Mousetrap” is the longest continuously running play in history, having been staged in London’s west end theater district since 1952.

By the assertion that I am new to the theater business, I mean that I have acted in exactly two plays in the past 35 years, one in grade school in the late 1960’s and one this past spring when I played the character Hannibal in John Patrick’s play “The Curious Savage.” Let’s just say that I’m a character in real life, but my acting skills need a little work I believe. I’m still eager to learn.

Working with the theater is fun, but it can also be very hard, demanding work. The show must go on...as they say. The coolest part of working with The Island Players is that they occupy a 60 year old building that was originally constructed as a single screen movie house, and it sits about 50 yards from the Atlantic Ocean. Every time I drive up and park my car there I think about how lucky I am. I bet we have the only community theater on the entire east coast of the US with such a great venue.

My 25 years of design and construction experience do give me a certain advantage when it comes to theatrical sets. The only thing is, a set doesn’t have to withstand rain (well, sometimes they do), wind, and other environmental conditions and your average set only has a lifespan of a few months if not weeks.

The whole process really makes me crazy as it goes against everything I’ve ever practiced in building industrial smokestacks and houses for Habitat for Humanity. Just about the time you get everything framed with lumber, covered with foam or wood or whatever, painted, furnished, and decorated, then along comes the end of the play and it’s time to tear it all down again and start over. It’ really sorta sad, as you can really come to feel like a place depicted by the set actually exists and you’re comfortable sitting there in a chair looking at the bedroom door or whatever.

The current setting is a Manor House in post World War II England—14' high walls, giant fireplace, large arched entryways and a 12’ high palladian window. We will even have a snow machine outside the window. If things work the way I plan, it is all gonna look absolutely real and look 150 years old to boot.

I’ll post a picture in a few weeks when things start to come together. In the mean time I have a few rants rattling around my skull that I will try to get out in the next few days.

Dang, What's Happening In Pyongyang?

I made reference in my earlier post, "It's My Party And I'll (Lie) If I Want To," to the pomposity of Kofi Annan's title of "His Excellency." I've also mentioned the arrogance of members of foreign leaders cabinets being called "Secretary General" and "generally" using the word "General" in their title. "General" this and "general" that...give me a break, please.

Then there are dictators like Saddam, Kadaffi, and Idi; and numerous other egomaniacs, present and past, that have and had their picture or statue or other likeness plastered all over every public square and on every square inch of their own abodes. A few women I've known that were obsessed with pasting "Glamour Shots" of themselves all over their homes had nothing on these yokels.

And then there is this item today.

The BBC is reporting that the pictures plastered everywhere of the little troll leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, are being taken down:

"An unnamed diplomat told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass that at receptions hosted by the North Korean foreign ministry, guests had recently only seen pictures of Kim Jong-il's father, Kim Il-sung, and a mark on the wall where a portrait of the North Korean leader used to hang."

We all know that most communist countries are extremely secretive when it comes to the internal workings of their gun wielding governments, particularly on issues relating to the health of their leaders. So what in the heck is going on in North Korea--maybe they're just updating the pictures to show the results of Mr. Jong-il's new membership in the Hair Club for Men.

Then again, it would be impossibly convenient for the world to lose the threat of Yasser Arafat AND Kim-Jong il in the same month.

Yet, we can always have hope...

Can't Win For Losing

First Abu Ghabri prison. Now this. You mark my words; the recent successful Marine assault on Fallujah is going to end up being defined by the main stream media as a reason to stir public outrage over the apparent killing of a critically wounded “insurgent” by a US Marine.

“Not a success” they’ll cry, “it’s a war crime.”

I am really tired of the double standard being applied by the world’s citizens and our liberal media to our war effort. They somehow believe that our solders possess some kind of psychic powers or operate some kind of new high tech equipment that can read the minds of people on the battlefield who are all dressed the same, civilian and “insurgent.”

In earlier times, honorable warriors went to battle shoulder to shoulder, wearing their country's uniform, under their countries’ flag, on a man to man basis. Churches and civilians were left out of the fray as much as was practical. The wounded were cared for as best as they could on the battlefield and the dead were often buried on the spot they fell. Spies and others caught fighting wearing the other side’s uniform or prosecuting the war wearing civilian clothes risked immediant justice by hanging or death by firing squad.

Not any more.

The US is fighting yet the latest in a series of “gorilla wars” that began with the UN lead Korean “Police Action” and as history predicts, the other side refuses to play by the rules of the Geneva Conventions and act as “honorable” men should act. Instead, these bloody killers use schools and hospitals as weapons caches and use their ancient domed Mosques as fortresses. They wear the clothing of religious clerics and average Iraqis and disappear into the population when the odds are not in their favor. They strap explosives on their bodies and hope that if they are killed or wounded they can blow up any member of the coalition forces who hazards to attempt to attend to their wounds or move their dead corpse to ensure a proper burial.

They fight this way because not because they are all cowards, but because they know how the citizens of the US think and what behavior we expect of our troops. They also know that the “embedded” media and our adversaries, the UN, the French, and the Germans, will demand that no matter what dirty tricks they utilize that we “play fair.”

Now a young Marine comes along-- tired and stressed out from being shot at by every shape, form, and manner of “insurgent” that has trickled into Iraq from Iran and Syria over the past year—and decides to not risk his own life and the lives of his platoon. They all cry "FOUL."

Since a member of the Marine’s own unit had been killed the day before by the detonation of a booby-trapped explosive attached to another “insurgent,” he decides it is safest to prevent another incident by using a few more bullets and a little less compassion.

You know what, I DON’T BLAME HIM ONE BIT!

If the world and the media want to prevent events of this kind from happening, a court marshal and months of harping about it in the newspapers isn’t the answer. They are complaining about the actions of the wrong people.

Instead, the TV talking heads and the rest of the world media should be demanding that the so called “insurgents” (I call them terrorists) get themselves some uniforms that will allow us to discern them from the civilians, move their bombs and ammo out of their schools and hospitals, stop putting snipers on the domes of their sacred buildings, and stop strapping explosives to their cars, their children, and their wounded.

If they don’t care enough about their elderly, children, women, and Mosques to not involve them in their Holy War, why should a boy from Alabama give a Rat’s ASS.

Is it just me?