Food for Thought

It’s been a long time since I took a history class, and even longer since I took a “Civics” class. I’m not sure if they even teach what we called “civics” in high school anymore—what with all the time they have to spend teaching multiculturalism and secularism and tolerance. Then, of course, there is the time spent indoctrinating students with a large dose of general self-hate for our country.

I spent a little time looking up a few basic documents this morning in an effort to put the current state of world affairs into perspective for myself. Here is the first one of importance to me:

The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

Read this again, and try to understand it this time. I doubt that anyone alive today could still think like this let alone write it down so eloquently. We here in the US are so far from this today that I doubt we can ever go back to where we started. Our present government is definitely "destructive to these ends..."

Then there is the preamble to the US Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Who were these men? We certainly aren’t turning out scholars like this from today’s public (government) schools.

And then there is this little tidbit of information that I had never read before:

Charter of the United Nations

Preamble

We the Peoples of the United Nations Determined

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

And for these Ends

to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

Have Resolved to Combine our Efforts to Accomplish these Aims

Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

Sounded good on paper at first, didn't it? Now I ask you, after reading the citations from the first two documents, then reading the last rambling dissertation, is there any wonder why the United Nations is the completely lame, useless, feckless, wishy washy, piece of crap organization that it is today?

It seems to me that we've forgotten where we come from and where we were going...

Crazy For You

Ok, it’s time for my monthly political correctness rant, and this one involves perhaps the stupidest thing I’ve heard of yet.

It seems that a self proclaimed “mental health advocate” has a problem with the “Crazy for you Bear” offered for Valentines Day by the Vermont Teddy Bear Company.

“Mental health advocates consider the bear "a tasteless use of marketing that stigmatizes persons with mental illness," Jerry Goessel, executive director of the Vermont chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, wrote to the Shelburne-based company.”

"A straitjacket is not a symbol that we want to associate with sales of a teddy bear for loved ones over Valentine's Day," Goessel said. "And the use of commitment papers, legal documents committing an individual to involuntary treatment, is not something to be taken casually."

The Vermont Teddy Bear Company says that they appreciate their concerns and will discontinue the bear, but not until after February 14th. I don’t blame them one bit.

In an effort to prevent the potential mental anguish and harm to other social groups, I am hereby appointing myself as the “OFFICIAL ADVOCATE OF EVERY POSSIBLE SENSITIVE IDIOTS’ TENDER FEELINGS” and I’m going to address the rest of the selection of Valentines Day Bears in an effort to ensure that no one can possibly be offended. Check out the web site and I think that you will agree that there are some real problems here…

For instance:

“Fool for Love” bear--complete with a jester hat, I’m personally offended because everyone that knows me knows that I am a fool. I often travel to parties with my own lampshade to wear on my head…

“Love Bandit” bear—complete with a black bandit mask. I must protest on behalf of raccoons everywhere…

“Love Handle” bear--complete with “Keep on Lovin’” ball cap, work boots, denim jeans, and a red T-shirt that says “I’m in this for the long haul.” I’m also personally protesting this bear on behalf of rednecks everywhere—where do I call to get my class action lawsuit check?

“Burnin’ Love” bear--complete with fireman’s hat and fiery “love” tattoo on left arm. What an insensitive insult to our public servants… Oh the Humanity!

"Horny Devil" bear—ruby red bear in naughty outfit. Need I say more? Jerry Fallwell and the Southern Baptists will possibly be damaged for life and never get over this one.

Could someone please send Mr. Goessel and the rest of the so-called “Mental Health Advocates” a few prepaid phone cards so that they can call someone that actually gives a damn?

Or maybe we could all take up a collection and buy them a new microscope or a telescope to assist them in their livelong efforts spent looking for something that truly matters to worry about.

Looking A Gift Horse In The Mouth

My posting title might at first seem rather strange, even to someone who has heard the expression before. For all of you city slickers, “looking a gift horse in the mouth” refers to one of the methods used by persons knowledgable in all matters equine to determine the approximate age and health of a horse. Basically, you look at the horse’s teeth. This exercise, combined with a general vewing of the rest of the animal (legs, hoofs, etc.,) gives you a pretty good idea of the condition the horsey is in and care that it has previously received.

Further, looking a “gift horse” in the mouth is intended to refer to someone appearing ungrateful in receiving a gift. Which brings me to this instance of the Indonesian officials telling foreign military troops to get out of their country real soon.

They actually have the audacity to say that they need engineers and doctors, not military personnel. Well, I can tell you about one mechanical engineer (me) who won’t be burning any frequent flyer miles to jump on an airplane and rush to their assistance any time soon.

Of course they are painting their demands in pastel shades of compassion—saying that they are really just worried about the safety of the relief workers.

“Senior officials said foreign journalists would also be confined to major towns in the province, closing a post-disaster window of press freedom in the region which was locked down almost two years ago during a military offensive."

"Indonesian troops have already begun accompanying United Nations missions to help victims of the tsunami and liaison officers are to be posted on the scores of foreign navy ships and military and civilian aircraft bringing in thousands of tonnes of emergency supplies."

"Despite statements from Free Aceh Movement rebels, known as GAM, pledging the safety of volunteers, Welfare Minister Alwi Shihab said the government was concerned attacks on aid staff could scare off foreign assistance.”

You're damn right attacks will affect our attitude, Einstein.

And asking the troops to leave, to my way of thinking, is a bit insane because if anyone starts kidnapping or shooting I want a whole truck load of GI's standing by with night vision goggles and an intimate knowledge, ability, and capability to bring to bear the appropriate ordinance and firepower (what we call in Alabama opening an industrial strength can of whoop ass.)

Why don’t they all just come out and say what they mean…SEND YOUR MONEY AND GET THE HELL OUT. I say we take them up on their offer, and keep the cash for someone that really deserves and appreciates it.

Is it just me?

Can't See The Forrest For The Trees--Part II

In my earlier post, Can’t see the forrest for the trees, I complained about the stupidity of the government’s and TSA’s efforts to look for possible weapons on airplanes rather than looking for terrorists on airplanes.

You already can’t clip your fingernails on a 747 and, starting next month, with the new ban on cigarette lighters, you won’t have to worry about being assaulted by a wild eyed, swarthy, goat eating middle-easterner threatening to light your cigarette or burn your eyebrows off on a Delta flight.

I know that I sure feel safer as a result…NOT!

Now we learn that these geniuses at the TSA actually found someone that was on their vaulted “terror watch list” that had been allowed to board a British Airways flight from London yesterday and they still allowed the plane to take off. Three hours into the flight they woke up and forced the plane to return to England rather (but not Dan Rather) than allowing it to land in New York.

No big deal you might say—the system worked. No it did not work. The updated “terror watch“ list was not in the hands of the BA airline personnel. Further, the way the system works, most of the time, even if an individual is on the list, the airlines wait until the plane has departed to report the passenger manifest to US officials.

Understand? They’ve got us all taking off our coats and standing around in our stocking feet at airport checkpoints, they’re strip searching grey haired 95 year old veterans with war wounds repaired with metal plates in their heads, and all the while French Moroccan “suspects” are jumping on airplanes at Heathrow and flying off to parts unknown.

I guess that we just need to throw some more tax money at the programs and hope they get it fixed before Abdul or Mohammed gets another chance at us.

I think that I feel another migraine coming on…

I now have links!!!

I've been a bit delinquent in not establishing a link section in my Blog because I've been too lazy to figure out the HTML program coding to accomplish the task. Linking to other blog sites is a good way for me to increase the number of readers and that's what I'm trying to accomplish in 2005.

So, instead of a new post this morning, I did a quick tutorial on HTML coding for generating links and now you get a "Links section" in the left sidebar under my profile.

Be sure and stop by and visit Neal Boortz, Captain Ed, the guys at Powerline, and even check the weather on the Sun on the Space Weather site. I'm going to expand the list as I have the time and who knows, you might learn something as a result.

Mary Mapes Is History

(What’s The Frequency Kenneth?)

I’m in a hurry, but I still have time to dance like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof (don’t try to picture me like I really dance because I can’t.)

It seems that CBS News has fired four employees in response to the forged Texas Air National Guard Documents aired on the show 60 Minutes last fall. In addition to Producer Mary Mapes that chased President Bush for Five years beginning before the 2000 election, there were these casualties:

Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy.

And then of course there was our old friend, Dan Rather, who was given the sympathetic "graceful early out" last fall with the announcement of his retirement.

For those of you that wonder…there is a God.

Vengeance is (ours), sayeth the Lord…

Update: Jan 10, 2005 10:45 PM

I wrote this posting this morning (about 11 hours ago) just as the news broke that CBS had released their so-called "independent" investigation. Sorry that my title, using the "60 Minutes" show producer's name Mary Mapes, might have been obscure to some of you that didn't closely follow this story over the past four months. I really was in a hurry and didn't have time to write my usual long winded rant. Actually, I think that I've said all that I need to say on this subject and will just let it pass into history quietly.

The members of the conservative Bloggosphere are all celebrating tonight because we realize that any one of us has the opportunity to truly make a difference in the reporting of world events in the future--without having to go back to school to get a journalism degree.

And by the way, my subtitle--"What's the frequency Kenneth?" is a reference to an early "Dan Ratherism" (also used for the name of a song by the popular Athens, Georgia group R.E.M.) the details of which can be found on the Rather Biased Web Site.

Read it if you will. Goodnight Y'all...

Pucker Up For Peace?

Excuse me while I finish gagging…..OK, I’m OK.

Fox News just reported that John Kerry has landed in Palestine to meet with the newly elected Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, having spent time in Iraq over the past few days denigrating the US war effort. You do know that Kerry supports the Troops, but is really worried about how the effort has been handled by the administration to date?

The splinter group Hamas called for a boycott of the election but has announced that they will support the new leader. Former US President and Dictator-Butt-Kisser-in-Chief Jimmy Carter was on hand to make the sure the EU and our domestic leftists felt warm and fuzzy about the election’s fairness.

Watch for Hamas to try to have their cake and eat it too. Since they didn’t vote for Abbas, they will quickly abandon him at the first inkling of any policies that favor Israel. They might even send one of their wild-eyed child zealots over to his house to visit, with a complementary case of dynamite

The Fox News broadcast showed a video clip of Carter shaking hands and chatting with Abbas earlier today. On the wall behind the two was a large photo of Yasser Arafat. Perfect setting!

Kerry apparently wanted to be the first US politician to rush to the scene to congratulate Abbas. I suspect that the timing of Kerry’s trip was planned all along based on today’s photo opportunities and as an effort to upstage President Bush, who could really care less which towel head the Palestinian’s elect.

The European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana has already met with Abbas. And of course everyone in the media is endorsing the election as a landslide, a mandate, all and all a good thing. Abbas reportedly got over 62% of the vote in an election that had to be extended by two hours.

Some stories say the extension was needed to accommodate heavy voter turnout. Others say it was to encourage improved voter turnout.

In this Washington Post story they say that the voter turnout was low:

“An hour before polls closed, Hanna Nasir, chairman of the commission, told reporters in Ramallah that 43 percent of the 1.9 million eligible voters had turned out. In scattered municipal elections last month in the West Bank, voter turnout was about 81 percent.”

And of course our ever accurate CBS News headlines “Palestinian Landslide for Abbas:

“There was some confusion about voter turnout. Officials said close to 70 percent of 1.1 million registered voters cast ballots. However, in all about 1.8 million Palestinians were eligible, and a total turnout figure was not given”.

What I want to know is, with the Hamas boycott and a potential low voter turnout, how can Carter, Kerry, the EU, and the balance of the nay-saying liberal left so quickly endorse the election results and declare it a landslide/mandate?

Haven’t we listened to their hand wringing and requests for delays in the Iraqi elections because of their desire for every single Muslim faction to be included in the vote? What if it is proven that less than half of the eligible voters actually cast a ballot?

Low turnout, combined with the Hamas boycott should at least have been reason for them to run around in hysterics for a few weeks a la Florida 2000/Ohio 2004 looking for disenfranchised voters.

WHAT A REDICULOUS DOUBLE STANDARD!!

I guess that we will all just have to pucker up for peace…NOT!

(By the way, I’m taking up a collection of donations to fund a truck load of chapstick to send over to repair all of the damage done to the lips of the media and the liberals by the fawning butt-kissing frenzy we’re about to witness…just watch and try not to gag.)

A Good Learning Experience

My life has consisted of pretty much average experiences, punctuated with a few moments of spiritually inspired greatness where I knew that I had accomplished something far and above those around me. I’m not talking about the winning the Boston Marathon or finding a cure for Cancer here, just day to day stuff that I took a particular interest in.

Maybe I have selective memory, but it seems that every single time I have “raised the bar” and really excelled at something and selfishly looked forward to a nice pat on the back and some ego-stroking, I have ended up with a boot on my ass and a feeling of guilt for making others feel bad as a result of my own efforts. For instance…

When I was in the fifth grade, our class had a “dream house” competition. The contest in theory, involved the students designing and building a scale model of their own “dream house.”

I was excited about the contest. You see, since a very early age my dad and I had built model airplanes together. Flying model airplanes. By the time I was in the fifth grade I could take sheets and strips of balsa wood and glue together a tissue covered structure that would actually fly—without using a prefabricated kit. A house was going to be a no- brainer.

Instead of balsa wood (which was expensive) my dad suggested that we select and modify a floor plan I liked from a “Homes magazine” and build the walls of the house out of plain office file folders. The folder stock was rigid enough yet could be folded and painted and was cheep. And so we did.

Under his supervision I carefully drew the floor plan on one sheet of stock and each of the interior and exterior walls on stock with little “tabs” on each end that would allow them to be glued together. The whole process took four or five evenings, but the finished product was painted inside and out with different finishes and looked great. It even had little cardboard kitchen cabinets, interior colored felt carpeting, a contact paper kitchen floor and drive way, and a green felt lawn outside. The roof of the house was removable so that you could see the front porch, carport, and the interior rooms. I was really proud of my work.

The problems started when my mother and I delivered my “dream home” to the school library where all the homes were to be displayed. “A fifth grader couldn’t have built something that looked like that,” some teachers said. “He had too much help…blaa blaa blaa…” You see, the other kids had basically taken cardboard boxes and cut out doors and windows and colored bricks and shutters on the outside of their boxes. A few had interior partitions made of cardboard or construction paper, but nothing else built apparently at the last minute came close to what I had built in five evenings with my model building skills.

The contest quickly was converted to a display rather than a competition and the whole thing sorta just died away without any prizes or recognition. Oh well, it was a good learning experience…

Fast forward to the eighth grade and the science teacher announced a science fair. I was all over the opportunity. I again was interested in using my model building skills and interest in aviation to compete. I built a working, flying model hovercraft with two gas powered engines, of my own design, from scratch, and fly it did—about an inch off of the ground. I brought it to school with great pride to find that I was competing with the ordinary assortment of poster board displays of mundane “science fair” projects and vinegar and baking soda volcanoes, etc.

I flew my hovercraft in the parking lot in front of the gym. For some reason, the science fair was converted at the last minute into a “display” rather than a “competition.” Again people complained that I had built my hovercraft from a kit or that I had too much parental help. I even received a grade of “B” rather than an “A” over some technicality in my written paper. Oh well…a good learning experience.

In tenth grade we had the standard “term paper” assignment in English class. You know-- the dreaded stack of index cards and lists of “ibid” on the back of the minimum 2000 words? Again I figured if I was going to have to write a research paper, I should use my time researching something I was interested in. How about Hovercraft?

Having actually previously built a flying Hovercraft, it seemed to make sense to me. And so I did. Working for several weeks, I wrote a beautifully researched paper that also included my own knowledge gained previously and I did a nice color drawing for a cover sheet (for ten points extra credit.) I brought it in to school and turned it in to the teacher on the appointed day.

The paper came back graded “F.” “I was obviously guilty of plagiarism” said my teacher, “because every darn paragraph I had written didn’t have a reference.” How dare I actually produce original work in the process of developing a high school term paper?

My mom had to make an embarrassing (for me) visit to the school and bring my flying hovercraft in order to prove that I had original, personal knowledge of what I had written about. After much discussion and the involvement of the principal, I had my paper re-graded as a B+ and on my cover drawing my bitch of a teacher wrote “It wouldn’t be very pretty, would it…”

All in all a good learning experience…

As an adult I’m still subjecting myself to “good learning experiences.” The past ten months I’ve been involved with the local community theater company, first as an actor, and in the past four productions in various levels of responsibility in stage management and set construction.

I gave up trying to act because I’m not an experienced actor and I found the rehearsal schedule to be difficult to accommodate—particularly with the liberties many actors felt they could take in not attending. It’s hard to learn to act with someone reading the lines of a missing actor from the seating area. Somehow they seem to get the show together at the last minute, but I can’t stand the stress.

For the past two months I’ve been working as the Set Designer and Set Construction Chief for Agatha Christies play “The Mousetrap.” I have worked my ass off, putting in nearly two hundred and fifty hours, much of the time working by myself. I have also been able to produce, like my fifth grade dream home, a set that is several orders of magnitude above what has ever been produced here before. There have been a few hiccups in the schedule and the Christmas/New Years holidays prevented me from getting much assistance over the past two weeks. I also had a confrontation with the Director and producer last week when they cancelled our technical rehearsal (a rehearsal where the lighting, sound, and set building guys are supposed to get to see how everything works together) at the last minute last week, but I finished my planned work about 4:30 Thursday afternoon, just in time for the 8:00PM preview performance that evening and the opening show Friday night. I was dead tired, relieved to be finished, and excited to see my name in print in the program and for the public to see the results of my efforts.

Just like the earlier experiences that I just recounted, at 4:31 PM the shit hit the fan. The two thousand copies of the freshly printed programs arrived at the theater and guess what; there was no mention of my involvement as Set Designer and Set Construction Chief. They forgot…

What’s the big deal, you might ask? Well, in the theater business, being the set designer is a big deal, and getting mentioned in the program as such is basically the only recognition that you get, since the director and producer’s name are plastered all over the marquee and the cover of the program.

To make matters worse, when I pointed out that I wasn’t’ mentioned in the program, it set off a firestorm of arguments and infighting and blame placing and all of my hard work is now overshadowed by the ensuing political crappola. To add insult to injury, now the producer (who is guilty of being pretty much invisible to date during this production) IS MAD AT ME because the theater board made her print an “insert” listing my name and position to put in the program. I'm afraid that the insert, while accomplishing the task of identifying my involvment, makes me end up looking like an egotistical moron for complaining in the first place.

I just want to crawl under a rock somewhere. Is it just me, or does this kind of stuff happen to everybody?

Oh well, all in all, it’s been a good learning experience....

With Liberty and Justice For All

In The Index of Economic Freedom just published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, the US fell out of the listing of top ten freest economies in the world this year.

“The top 10: Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Estonia (yes, the former Soviet "republic"), Ireland, New Zealand, U.K., Denmark, Iceland and Australia, followed by Chile.”

Can you believe this?

The United States of by God America, the country that wrote the book on freedom and liberty, has allowed our stupid politicians and bureaucrats to take away one of the very freedoms that made us great in the first place?

Actually, I personally can believe this is so because I have some first hand experience with government regulation of business and the dis-incentives that exist as roadblocks into starting a new business.

For instance, there is the so called “Business license.” What a “Business license” really is is a tax on a new business, a TAX ON MONEY YOU HAVEN’T EVEN EARNED YET. The county wants their share of your profits UP FRONT.

Back in the 1990’s I owned and operated a company called Industrial Energy Systems, Inc. We built industrial air pollution control and energy recovery systems--very technical stuff (I told you I was a nerd.) IES operated out of Cobb County Georgia, but we never once sold a single thing to anyone in Cobb County and only a few times did we ever deliver a product within the borders of the state of Georgia.

This didn’t matter to Cobb County when it came to getting a business license. When I paid them for the license they based the license fee on the total income of the business, regardless of where the income came from. Since the license was mandatory, you had no choice but to pay the $200 or whatever and just shut up.

To add insult to injury, one year they changed the way they calculated the license fee to make everyone’s license due on January 1st rather than on the anniversary date of when you started your business. Mine had been in September. At the same time they also changed the “tiers” of license fees and the good news was my license fees went down—so much so that since I had just paid my fee a few months before the change, I HAD A REFUND COMING.

I gleefully spent a couple of additional hours of my time filling out the new license forms and providing copies of the income documentation and mailed the form away to Cobb County. I forgot about the process until six months later when, instead of a refund check, I got a bill from Cobb County for the license fee and a late fee for not filing.

After meeting with the Tax Commissioner personally and making calls to my County Commissioner, I was informed that due to the large quantity of filings they had been delayed in processing some applications and had misplaced a few forms, but since I had no proof that I had filed for my refund (I didn’t take the time to make a copy of my license application,) that I would have to pay the late filing fee. They admitted that they had more money than was required from me, that they probably lost my application because they had lost others requiring a refund, that they initially would have owed me a $75 refund, but since they were the government they couldn’t be bothered with details like RIGHT AND WRONG so instead I still owed them the additional twenty five bucks they needed to cover their $100 computer generated late fee. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS CRAP?

I paid the late fee…if I didn’t I would be assessed a late fee on my late fee.

Then there is the little game called Workman’s compensation and Unemployment insurance. What a complete and total shell game. I had a business in the early 1990’s with a business partner. Since we had less than three employees, Georgia allowed us to write a letter to the Workman’s Compensation Board excluding ourselves as owners of the business from participation in their Workman’s Compensation Insurance program. We had our own health insurance, so we opted out.

I also wrote a letter to the State Unemployment Insurance office attempting to do the same thing for myself with their product. Well, it turns out that you can’t legally opt out of participation in so called “Unemployment Insurance,” but the State of Georgia, being the highly efficient government entity that it is, didn’t bother to tell me so. Three years later, when my partner and I decided to dissolve our business relationship and close the business, the State of Georgia woke up and decided that we should have been paying for Unemployment Insurance all along and THEY WANTED THEIR MONEY.

Do you hear what I am saying? We were closing the businesses. We had never hired or fired anyone and the state never collected any premiums nor paid any unemployment claims over the three years we were in business, but the State of Georgia wanted all of their insurance premiums, WITH INTEREST, AND WITH LATE PENALTIES. Fifteen hundred dollars worth.

We paid them so the state wouldn’t collect late fees on their late fees. What a ridiculous rip off that was.

See, I didn’t even mention corporate taxes, payroll taxes, and the need to hire an accountant to help you wade through our cumbersome tax laws, but is there any wonder why they say we’re not in the top ten when it comes to Economic Freedom?

HELL NO....

Miami, We Have A Problem

(But At Least It’s Not A Wardrobe Malfunction)

In the fall of 1976 I was a senior in high school and spent a great deal of time playing the trumpet in the “The Pride of the Wiregrass, The Carroll High School Marching Band.” One hundred and forty members strong-- could we ever make some noise (and occasionally play some pretty darn good music.)

Since our football team made a habit of winning about two football games a year, the main reason for anyone to come to our town’s elaborate concrete multi-thousand seat high school football stadium was to see the halftime show that our marching band put on for each game. All of us teenaged musicians considered ourselves to be in “high cotton” back then.

What I want to know is, what the hell happened in the past twenty-eight years? Was there some memo from the Pope or Executive Order from the President that said that a halftime show couldn’t be successful with just the marching bands from the two respective schools delivering a spirited rendition of a few Broadway show tunes or some 60’s rock tunes?

Of course there is the prescient set by the USC Trojan band when they got to record with and perform the song ”Tusk” with the band Fleetwood Mac back in the 1980’s. What a long way down things have sunk since then.

When did it become necessary for every televised college football bowl game to relegate the respective educational institutions hard working marching bands to the role of scrambling around on the sidelines like so many oversized ants while a few scantly clad or skin tight clad, so-called pop divas undulate seductively on a stage surrounded by a freak show of unisex dancers and exploding pyrotechnics?

Case in point, tonight’s FedEx Orangebowl featuring USC and Oklahoma. Luckily, my indifference lead me to tune in at the end of a one sided first half that had yielded a four touchdown lead for USC. I just hate lopsided football games unless it involves Georgia Tech on the winning side and that rarely happens.

I tuned in just in time to watch the event that is now considered a “football halftime show” featuring Kelly Clarkson, Trace Atkins, and, of all people…Ashlee Simpson A.K.A. Saturday Night Live’s candidate for the Milli Vanilli 2004 lip sync award.

I felt sorry for Trace Atkins being the serious hard working artist that he is, but at least we didn’t have to look at anyone’s private parts tonight (such that I noticed…)

Tonight's problem was a sound system malfunction instead of one of the wardrobe variety.

As soon as Miss Clarkson took the stage it was obvious that there was a problem with the lead vocal microphone. Her first verse and part of the first chorus featured her doing her best “mute mime” impression while the base guitar and drummer ruptured everyone’s eardrums with the rhythm lines of the song she was attempting to perform. This chick, being an “American Idol” winner for whatever that is worth, kept her composure pretty well and the technicians finally sorta-kinda got the mike mix figured out although it seemed to fade in and out for the rest of the song.

Trace Atkins was next and the vocals to his country song were fairly evenly muted and almost indiscernible if I hadn’t recognized the song he was doing.

Next came Ms. Simpson whom I am sure was already petrified at the possibility of having a repeat of her earlier SNL debacle where she was caught lip syncing when the sound technician played the wrong vocal track. Apparently she was attempting to actually sing this song and in spite of the volume irregularities she managed to writhe, wiggle, undulate, and pelvic thrust her way through the process without having a conniption fit and running off of the stage like she did on SNL.

Meanwhile, the Sooner and Trojan bands were relegated to running around the edges of the midfield pop/country performance like an army of ants and at no point in the process could you tell if a single trumpeter was trumpeting or tromboner was tromboning. Where are Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nix when you need them?

Personally, I would really rather hear a nice John Phillip Sousa march just for old times sake once in a while….you know what I mean?

Off Our Radar Screens

If an airliner full of people crashes, your local and national media is right there to tell you about it with film of all of the gory details. Better not get on an airliner lest you die a horrible, premature death.

If there is a high speed car chase in LA and a news helicopter following the crack-head-idiot-car-thief drivers, Fox News is sure to break into regularly scheduled programming with live aerial footage of the suspects. Don't let a car thief run over you unless you want your relatives to collect on your insurance policy.

If a shark chews on the foot of a Ft. Lauderdale surfer, all the newspapers have front page stories the next day showing the bloody stump. For God's sake don't go to the beach unless you want to feed the sushi they tell us.

Then there are Tsunami. That’s right--Tsunami, not Tsunamis. (Octopus…Octopi…it’s the English language—I didn’t make up the spelling rules, I just try to adhere to them.)

My mother says she had never heard of a Tsunami before this recent international disaster. I admit that if it hadn’t been for the Professor on the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” I wouldn’t have heard of the threat of Tsunami before the age of 21 or so. But, as it turns out, I had heard of “tidal waves” and Tsunami and I knew before Christmas that they were usually caused by earthquakes under and adjacent to the ocean floor. I worried that there could be a tsunami immediately after hearing of the earthquake Christmas weekend. I was right.

What I did not realize is that there were 796 tsunami observed in the Pacific Ocean between 1900 and 2001. According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, 117 tsunami caused casualties and damage in that same period.

What I want to know is, where the heck has the mainstream media been over the past hundred years? I thought that it was the media’s self proclaimed job to hyperventilate over every single thing that could possibly cause a “boo boo” on your knee or potentially cause the loss of human life. Viaox, lightening bolts, children's car seats, air bags…most Americans should live their lives in wild eyed fear to hear the TV talking heads tell it, but Tsunami?

Off our radar screens…

UPDATE: Before I could even finish this post, I have to add "herd of cows" to present international threats.

It seems that the main airport in Sumatra was closed to relief flights when a cargo plane hit a herd of cows on landing.

Where is the Transportation Security Administration when you need them? Do they have a procedure to pat down a cow entering airport property?

Just Wondering...

United We Stand

Three Bushes trump an entire flock of gold cufflink wearing UN diplomats and mindless yammering Euroweenies any day in my book.

I think that we are seeing a significant chapter of history in the making as George Sr., George W., and Jeb Bush all step forward to help tackle the massive logistical nightmare that is the Asian earthquake/tsunami disaster.

The situation also has eerie reflections of what might have been politically forty years ago had JFK and Robert Kennedy not been assassinated. How low the Kennedy family has sunk with the useless drunken sot Senator Ted Kennedy and a few woman abusing nephews left to speak for what once was a great American family—even if they were Democrats. I’m still waiting for Senator Ted to step forward and pony up a few million of his family’s vast holding to finance the relief effort. Instead, I’m sure he’s frantically working on legislation designed to increase the US’s share of the UN’s funding and raise our taxes. Go get ‘em Ted.

I will even give the president credit for including the pantyhose-commander-in-chief Bill Clinton in a bipartisan effort to raise money. Actually, I don’t mind seeing Clinton’s gigantic mouth and ego brought to bear to publicly ask all of the compassionate left wing liberal elite and the Hollywood misfits like Barbara Streisand to put their money where their mouths typically are.

I also expect Clinton to not pass up the opportunity to get a few digs in against his Bush/Republican benefactors and inevitably make the process all about him. He just can’t help himself.

And then there is the UN and Kofi Annan. What a waste of oxygen.

Can't See The Forrest For The Trees

It continues to amaze me how we here in the US go about attempting to defend air travelers from the threat of terrorism. All 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were of Saudi or other native Arabic descent. Not one of them was a long haired, sun-tanned south Alabama redneck on vacation nor were they a 95 year old German grandmother in a wheelchair, yet that is exactly who the TSA screeners are assaulting with wands and pat downs at airport checkpoints while Abdul and Mohammed and Rashee breeze through the gates unfettered.

The solders of Allah’s success was not a result of the deadly threat of the “box cutter” knives they wielded, but rather the lemming-like mentality that air travelers had been taught dating back to the “take me to Cuba” hijacking craze of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Pilots and passengers alike had been led to believe that cooperation with the assailant’s demands was preferable to standing up and kicking the asses of anyone that started misbehaving on an airplane.

Not anymore. You get out of your seat and start yelling about Allah while I’m on a flight and you’re going to feel what is like to have my 6’3”, 235 pound carcass opening an industrial strength can of whoop-ass and delivering it to you personally. I don’t care what the legal consequences are. I’ll make bail and then sue what’s left of your stupid butt in court. I might just get re-arrested for assaulting you again when and if I ever see you again.

I believe that most every red-blooded American man feels the same way.

Instead of devoting our law enforcement resources to the task of looking for potential terrorists, we spend most of our time and energy passing new laws aimed at looking for items that could be in some ridiculous way considered weapons. The latest items banned in the latest government’s Intelligence Reform Bill’s new “no fly” list includes cigarette lighters.

Cigarette Lighters…For some reason I don’t feel much safer.

Now, in addition to not being able to clip your fingernails in flight (I bite mine—can they ban teeth?), we are all spared the risk of some rabid cigarette smoker loosing his mind in a nicotine starved fit of insanity and lighting up a cigar or cigarette in the restroom of a Delta 767. The really bad news is that the smokers in the crowd will potentially be prohibited the ability to run to one of those airport “smoker’s aquariums” (you know, the glass walled smoking areas often found in airport concourses) between flights after enduring a white knuckled, nicotine free, two hours on a flight between Atlanta and Chicago.

Some smokers I know may actually become terrorists if they are forced to go too long without a fix of nicotine as a result of this new hair-brained exclusion. In the future, expect to find large roaming herds of wild eyed smokers, feverishly lighting up entire packs of cigarettes outside the front door of an airport near you.

And I’ve got news for you. Nothing has changed relative to the basic security of commercial aviation, except that stupid, careless, or otherwise amateur terrorists like that moron “The Shoe Bomber” are excluded from the list of threats. If a smart guy like me or some of my friends (this means you, Tripp) wanted to assault a commercial airliner, none of the laws and bans we have passed to date would prevent us from doing it. The only thing that has changed is that the price of delivering the threat has gone up.

The Islamofascist terrorists don’t want to kill every single American. They don’t have the time and resources to accomplish that. What they do want to do is to scare us into changing our way of life. They want to cause us to stop supporting Israel. They want to get our military and our influence out of the middle east so that the kleptocrats and other little weird beard dictator wanna-be’s can dominate their people at will.

If we truly want to prevent a future terrorist attack, Al Qaeda or otherwise, we will start carefully screening the origin and background of everyone getting on an airplane—paying particular attention to anyone of middle-eastern descent.

To hell with political correctness. Profiling is not racism—it’s just common sense.

Feckless

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

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

2. Careless and irresponsible


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

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

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

Here it is…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UNICEF: MILLIONS AT RISK OF WATER-BORNE DISEASE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, downtown NY City?

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

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

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

Bush Offers Unlimited Aid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a joke, get it?

Nearly $1.5 Billion Down A Rat Hole

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Told You So

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

The US government is giving $15 million.

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

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

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

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

Would that be too much to ask???

UPDATE 12/28/04 PM

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

It's A Crying Shame--Part II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOAA knew…Just like NOAH knew...

It's A Crying Shame

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hell NO!

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

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

What A Great Day

(Hope Yours was too)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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