Just like the Martha Stewart saga, I can't add a whole lot to the Dan Rather story that I haven't already said in my earlier postings except to state how glad I am that it is over.
If it were really over...except it isn't...over.
Rather still works for CBS and will be on the air on the news magazine 60 Minutes. A lot of people out there still put a great deal of stock in what is said on 60 Minutes.
Isn't the program 60 minutes where Mr. Rather attempted to pass off forged documents on the American public? Documents that impunged the reputation of a sitting US president? Documents intended to affect the outcome of a presidential election?
Documents that practically everyone at CBS except Mary Mapes and Dan Rather have admitted were fakes?
Documents about which Dan Rather recently told David Letterman that he could have proved were real if "they had just had more time before they went on the air with the story?"
Hey Danno, you're now semi-retired...take all the time you need.
Prove the documents are real, YOU STUPID LYING, PARTISAN BASTARD.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Anti-Gun Insanity
The hysterical whackos are at it again in Illinois.
“Anti-gun lawmakers are seeking a ban on .50-caliber "sniper rifles," saying they're favored by terrorists and can shoot down aircraft from a range of more than 2,000 yards -- though they don't appear to be tied to any crimes here in the last decade, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis shows.
A spokesman for the National Rifle Association, which is pushing dozens of its own bills in the General Assembly, vowed to fight the sniper-rifle legislation backed by Representatives Elaine Nekritz (D-Northbrook) and Beth Coulson (R-Glenview).
"There isn't a single person in the United States that I know of who has been killed by one of these firearms," said Todd Vandermyde, an NRA lobbyist in Springfield.”
As I wrote back in November in “Six Dead In Wisconsin” and in September in ”1994 Assault Weapons Ban Expires,” why can’t the anti-gun morons get it through their thick skulls that dead is dead and if someone that knows what they are doing shoots at you with a .177 caliber pellet gun you are in almost as much trouble as someone firing a so called “sniper” weapon?
I have friends that shoot competitively that you do not want coming after your butt with a pea shooter. And by the way, you don’t want me looking for you with my old JC Higgens M-25 semi-automatic 22 caliber rifle with a Weaver 4X scope if I have an axe to grind with you.
It’s a slippery slope, and banning one kind of gun leads to banning yet another, Next they say that you can only own “x” number of guns (I have three rifles and two shotguns—so sue me) and finally no one legally has any guns except the police and the military.
And, of course, PEOPLE LIKE CRIMINALS who already have illegal guns or own guns illegally like felons.
Why do we have to keep going through this stuff every few months?
“Anti-gun lawmakers are seeking a ban on .50-caliber "sniper rifles," saying they're favored by terrorists and can shoot down aircraft from a range of more than 2,000 yards -- though they don't appear to be tied to any crimes here in the last decade, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis shows.
A spokesman for the National Rifle Association, which is pushing dozens of its own bills in the General Assembly, vowed to fight the sniper-rifle legislation backed by Representatives Elaine Nekritz (D-Northbrook) and Beth Coulson (R-Glenview).
"There isn't a single person in the United States that I know of who has been killed by one of these firearms," said Todd Vandermyde, an NRA lobbyist in Springfield.”
As I wrote back in November in “Six Dead In Wisconsin” and in September in ”1994 Assault Weapons Ban Expires,” why can’t the anti-gun morons get it through their thick skulls that dead is dead and if someone that knows what they are doing shoots at you with a .177 caliber pellet gun you are in almost as much trouble as someone firing a so called “sniper” weapon?
I have friends that shoot competitively that you do not want coming after your butt with a pea shooter. And by the way, you don’t want me looking for you with my old JC Higgens M-25 semi-automatic 22 caliber rifle with a Weaver 4X scope if I have an axe to grind with you.
It’s a slippery slope, and banning one kind of gun leads to banning yet another, Next they say that you can only own “x” number of guns (I have three rifles and two shotguns—so sue me) and finally no one legally has any guns except the police and the military.
And, of course, PEOPLE LIKE CRIMINALS who already have illegal guns or own guns illegally like felons.
Why do we have to keep going through this stuff every few months?
Martha Stewart
There, I said it.
And while I'm at it, Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, and Kobie Bryant et. al. can all go somewhere far, far away and I'll help take up a collection to pay their airfare. I just don't give a damn.
Oh, and FOX's Greta Van Sustren can be their co-pilot...
And while I'm at it, Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, and Kobie Bryant et. al. can all go somewhere far, far away and I'll help take up a collection to pay their airfare. I just don't give a damn.
Oh, and FOX's Greta Van Sustren can be their co-pilot...
Monday, March 07, 2005
What Is There To Not Understand?
Imagine this situation with me. You’re driving through suburban Atlanta, Georgia at night. You are in the Stewart Avenue (now called Metropolitan Blvd.) area of south Atlanta near the airport that is known as a high crime district. Prostitution, drugs, petty crime, a shooting almost every day—you get the picture?
As you cruise along at about 45 MPH with your windows rolled up and your doors locked, you see a police roadblock up ahead.
What do you do?
Do you a) maintain your speed because of the bad neighborhood and attempt to blow though the roadblock, or do you b) slow down and obey the commands of the officers?
If you chose option a, wouldn’t you expect the police to react rather adversely to your behavior? If you actually drove your car too close to an officer, might you not expect the police to use deadly force in response to your threat? As a minimum you could expect an ensuing police chase and the opportunity to spend a free night with crappy accommodations courtesy of Clayton County Georgia.
Now move this situation to Iraq, a country that has been under the rule of a dictator for 30 plus years and been under military rule of coalition forces for going on three years. You watch CNN and Fox news and work for your government’s security agency.
HOW IN THE HELL DO YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT YOU SOMEHOW THOUGHT THAT YOU COULD BLOW THROUGH A MILITARY ROADBLOCK IN A COUNTRY FULL OF SUICIDE CAR BOMBERS AND NOT GET YOUR BUTT SHOT OFF?
Yet after two plus years of coalition operations, someone actually is trying to say that people are still confused about what to do at roadside military checkpoints.
“The deadly shooting of an Italian intelligence officer by U.S. troops at a checkpoint near Baghdad on Friday was one of many incidents in which civilians have been killed by mistake at checkpoints in Iraq, including local police officers, women and children, according to military records, U.S. officials and human rights groups.
U.S. soldiers have fired on the occupants of many cars approaching their positions over the past year and a half, only to discover that the people they killed were not suicide bombers or attackers but Iraqi civilians. They did so while operating under rules of engagement that the military has classified and under a legal doctrine that grants U.S. troops immunity from civil liability for misjudgment.”
SO WHAT’S NOT TO UNDERSTAND?
JUST LIKE HERE IN THE UNITED STATES, YOU SEE A ROADBLOCK—YOU SLOW DOWN AND STOP.
Got It Now?????
As you cruise along at about 45 MPH with your windows rolled up and your doors locked, you see a police roadblock up ahead.
What do you do?
Do you a) maintain your speed because of the bad neighborhood and attempt to blow though the roadblock, or do you b) slow down and obey the commands of the officers?
If you chose option a, wouldn’t you expect the police to react rather adversely to your behavior? If you actually drove your car too close to an officer, might you not expect the police to use deadly force in response to your threat? As a minimum you could expect an ensuing police chase and the opportunity to spend a free night with crappy accommodations courtesy of Clayton County Georgia.
Now move this situation to Iraq, a country that has been under the rule of a dictator for 30 plus years and been under military rule of coalition forces for going on three years. You watch CNN and Fox news and work for your government’s security agency.
HOW IN THE HELL DO YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT YOU SOMEHOW THOUGHT THAT YOU COULD BLOW THROUGH A MILITARY ROADBLOCK IN A COUNTRY FULL OF SUICIDE CAR BOMBERS AND NOT GET YOUR BUTT SHOT OFF?
Yet after two plus years of coalition operations, someone actually is trying to say that people are still confused about what to do at roadside military checkpoints.
“The deadly shooting of an Italian intelligence officer by U.S. troops at a checkpoint near Baghdad on Friday was one of many incidents in which civilians have been killed by mistake at checkpoints in Iraq, including local police officers, women and children, according to military records, U.S. officials and human rights groups.
U.S. soldiers have fired on the occupants of many cars approaching their positions over the past year and a half, only to discover that the people they killed were not suicide bombers or attackers but Iraqi civilians. They did so while operating under rules of engagement that the military has classified and under a legal doctrine that grants U.S. troops immunity from civil liability for misjudgment.”
SO WHAT’S NOT TO UNDERSTAND?
JUST LIKE HERE IN THE UNITED STATES, YOU SEE A ROADBLOCK—YOU SLOW DOWN AND STOP.
Got It Now?????
I Was Right, They Were Just Stupid
It seems that little Italian communist Giuliana Sgrena was released because the Italian Secret Police arranged to pay a multi-million dollar ransom to her "insurgent" captors. The Italian authorities didn't tip off the US forces that she had been released because they didn't want us to know that they were paying for it.
In an interview with Hamid Mir, Osama Bin Laden's "official biographer", he said that "I met some criminals in the al-Mansoor area of Baghdad who offered me lot of money. They proposed that I trap one Western journalist for them; they will take the ransom and then I will get may share. I just disappeared from Palestine Hotel after that offer."
So these Osama want-a-be's that don't have financial backing have discovered that the Italians are willing to indirectly fund their efforts against coalition troops. Snatch a reporter, even one that is simpathetic to their cause, and hold her until someone ponys up some cash. I wonder how bad the conditions of her captivity really were? She could have been well fed and living watching CNN while the world worried about her plight. And I wonder who got a cut of the ransom money like that promised to Mr. Mir?
I wonder how many Rocket Propelled Grenades and Improvised Exposive Devices six million (see update below) dollars will buy? I wonder how many innocent Iraqis and coalition troops will be injured and killed as a result of Comrad Sgrena's "independent" reporting efforts in Iraq?
The domestic and Italian leftists and the media should quit their whining and admit that these people brought the firepower of the Americans on themselves through their own incompetence.
With reporters like Giuliana, who needs "Osama" to fund terrorism?
Update: 9:20 AM
They paid six million, not a million ransom. Here is the Washington Times story.
What pisses me off is how Comrad Sgrena's story keeps changing to suit the facts that have leaked out publicly. First she was certain that they had targeted her as a journalist for the tone of her stories. Now she is certain that the US troops were targeting her because she was released as a result of a ransom? She says that the car was not speeding, but she also is quoted as saying that they were going so fast that the driver nearly lost control of the car avoiding rain puddles.
Expect to hear the bitching and complaining continue while the left attempts to impune our troops efforts in Iraq.
In an interview with Hamid Mir, Osama Bin Laden's "official biographer", he said that "I met some criminals in the al-Mansoor area of Baghdad who offered me lot of money. They proposed that I trap one Western journalist for them; they will take the ransom and then I will get may share. I just disappeared from Palestine Hotel after that offer."
So these Osama want-a-be's that don't have financial backing have discovered that the Italians are willing to indirectly fund their efforts against coalition troops. Snatch a reporter, even one that is simpathetic to their cause, and hold her until someone ponys up some cash. I wonder how bad the conditions of her captivity really were? She could have been well fed and living watching CNN while the world worried about her plight. And I wonder who got a cut of the ransom money like that promised to Mr. Mir?
I wonder how many Rocket Propelled Grenades and Improvised Exposive Devices six million (see update below) dollars will buy? I wonder how many innocent Iraqis and coalition troops will be injured and killed as a result of Comrad Sgrena's "independent" reporting efforts in Iraq?
The domestic and Italian leftists and the media should quit their whining and admit that these people brought the firepower of the Americans on themselves through their own incompetence.
With reporters like Giuliana, who needs "Osama" to fund terrorism?
Update: 9:20 AM
They paid six million, not a million ransom. Here is the Washington Times story.
What pisses me off is how Comrad Sgrena's story keeps changing to suit the facts that have leaked out publicly. First she was certain that they had targeted her as a journalist for the tone of her stories. Now she is certain that the US troops were targeting her because she was released as a result of a ransom? She says that the car was not speeding, but she also is quoted as saying that they were going so fast that the driver nearly lost control of the car avoiding rain puddles.
Expect to hear the bitching and complaining continue while the left attempts to impune our troops efforts in Iraq.
Are They Just Plain Stupid?
Or do they just think that we are?
I’ve had it up to here (pointing to the top of my every graying, balding head) with journalists. Particularly the variety called “war correspondents.”
Foreign and domestic, they are, by and large, in my personal estimation, useless, overeducated morons with a political axe to grind--having no intention of reporting the facts about what is occurring around them. Not to say that they are all bad, mind you, just that most of them are.
These individuals have jobs as reporters, but they have lost sight of the fact that, when it comes to world events, they are supposed to REPORT WHAT IS HAPPENING. Noooooo, that would be too easy, they are now editoralizers and commentators. They have either lost sight of who their audience is, or else they think that we are too stupid to read and listen to the facts and form our own opinions based on the evidence.
History has given us some really great war correspondents. Guys like Ernie Pyle, for example. Ernie Pyle was “embedded” with the US forces in Europe and the Pacific as a reporter during WWII. By “embedded,” I don’t mean that he slept in the Paris or Tokyo Hilton and made day trips to film a drive by “terrorist” car bombing and to send out an anti-war missive in time to be home for happy hour at the hotel bar.
By embedded, I mean that Ernie lived with the troops he reported on. He wore an Army uniform, he ate and slept with the troops and he died with the troops, as a Japanese machine-gun bullet killed him on the island of Ie Shima on April 18, 1945, at the age of 44.
Ernie won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, but he didn’t win it by despising the young American men he reported on while salivating for a “friendly fire” expose or an Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Ernie was famous for reporting on the lives of the men that were charged with defending our freedom and his life on a day by day basis. Here is an excerpt from an article entitled “Killing is all that matters”:
“WITH THE AMERICAN FORCES IN ALGIERS, December 1, 1942 - From now onward, stretching for months and months into the future, life is completely changed for thousands of American boys on this side of the earth. For at last they are in there fighting.
The jump from camp life into front-line living is just as great as the original jump from civilian life into the Army. Only those who served in the last war can conceive of the makeshift, deadly urgent, always-moving-onward complexion of front-line existence.
And existence is exactly the word: it is nothing more.
You dig ditches for protection from bullets and from the chill north wind off the Mediterranean. There are no more hot-water taps. There are no post exchanges where you can buy cigarets. There are no movies.
When you speak to a civilian you have to wrestle with a foreign language. You carry just enough clothing to cover you, and no more. You don't lug any knickknacks at all.
When our troops made their first landings in North Africa they went four days without even blankets, just catching a few hours sleep on the ground.
Everybody either lost or chucked aside some of his equipment. Like most troops going into battle for the first time, they all carried too much at first. Gradually they shed it. The boys tossed out personal gear from their musette bags and filled them with ammunition.
The countryside for twenty miles around Oran was strewn with overcoats, field jackets and mess kits as the soldiers moved on the city.
Arabs will be going around for a whole generation clad in odd pieces of American Army uniforms. “
Sound Familiar? Other than the reference to the Mediterranean and Northern Africa, this piece could have been written two years ago during the initial invasion of Iraq. Go to the link and read the entire piece if you have time and read more of Ernie’s work here.
Now let’s talk about the little Italian communist Giuliana Sgrena and the stir that her reporting efforts have caused in Iraq:
“The daughter of a World War II veteran, Sgrena was one of the founders of the peace movement in the 1980s.
Before joining Il Manifesto, she worked for the daily Guerra e Pace (War and Peace), but she made her name at the communist newspaper mainly through her avowed affinity with the Arab world.
"For my whole life, I have fought and written on behalf of the weakest," she said in a video put together by those who campaigned to secure her release.
With this in mind, the reporter refused to become embedded with the US military during the war - choosing, instead, to remain in Iraq on her own during the major hostilities of the spring of 2003.
She then returned to the country periodically, focusing on the suffering of ordinary Iraqis brought about by a war she was vehemently opposed to.
Sgrena's outspoken anti-war stance should have endeared her to Iraqi insurgents fighting the US-led forces, said friends and colleagues shocked at her capture on 4 February.”
Wrong, Comrad Sgrena. The only way to endear yourself to the Iraqi “insurgents” is to be an Arab man, grow a long beard, strap explosives to your body or install them in the trunk of your car, and end your life killing as many of your innocent fellow Iraqis while looking for your gaggle of eternal virgins.
And by founding “the peace movement in the 1980’s” isn’t Sgrena about 20 years too late? I thought that the American left started the “peace movement” in the 1960’s in response to the Vietnam War. Come to think of it, isn’t passivism and the “peace movement” was as old as history—supported by the coddled “intellectual” group du jour whom constantly criticize those around them that militarily defend their right to be stupid and complain about society’s ills.
So any way, this silly Italian woman “war correspondent” wanders into Iraq, on her own, because she is against the war and would never allow the American Military to support and protect her presence there. Instead, Sgrena and her fellow “war correspondents” over at Il Manifesto have been running around Iraq undermining the coalition’s efforts. Look at this excerpt from a story published under the headline ’My Name is Giuliana Sgrena: I write for a Newspaper Which Opposed the Sanctions and the War Against Iraq’:
“Sheik Hussein al Zobey, Sunni coordinator of the refugee camps inside the University of Baghdad, uttered an impassioned appeal for the journalist's release: "In the name of truth, free her. I appeal in the name of those who come to help us. I ask the kidnappers to free Giuliana, who has promised to help us. She has laughed and played with our children—and has cried with us."
"Truly moving is the involvement of the Iraqi people in Giuliana Sgrena's ordeal," writes Il Manifesto's correspondent from Baghdad, Stefano Chiarini. "Suffering daily abuses and violence from occupation forces or their proxies, the Iraqis themselves are subjected to routine hostage-taking by the occupiers. If the father is not at home, they arrest his son, or brother, or other relative. Under the pretext of looking for arms, American soldiers and their Iraqi trainees look for jewels and money. And, yet, the whole country has mobilised for the liberation of Giuliana." ”
This is yet another perfect example for the left and the Democrats and the other international “nay sayers” of what kind of animals we are dealing with in Iraq. It doesn’t even matter if you have adopted their side of the fight, if you are not an Arab Muslim you are a potential target. If you happen to be a white skinned woman, your life is even more worthless.
The only reason Sgrena was released was that it was politically expedient for her captors to do so, and she hasn’t yet learned her lesson. Continuing along the path of ignoring the military control and restriction issues brought about by the “insurgent” actions, she and her Italian "James Bond" wannabe protector jump in a used Datsun car and go screaming down a road toward a US Military roadblock.
This story in the anti occupation web site uruknet.info (written by Washington Post reporters) seems to make a case opposite the meaning of their own headline that “Observers Cite Other Shootings at Checkpoints:
“But the circumstances of Friday's shooting of Italian military intelligence officer Nicola Calipari made it particularly vulnerable to calamity, a military source said as he divulged new details of how the car in which Calipari and a newly freed hostage, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, came to be attacked.
The automobile was traversing onto a route -- the road to the airport -- where soldiers have been killed in shootings and by roadside bombs. U.S. soldiers had established an impromptu evening checkpoint at the entrance to the road about 90 minutes earlier and had stopped other vehicles.
They knew a high-level embassy official would be moving to the airport on that road, and their aim was to support this movement.But no specific coordination occurred between those involved in Sgrena's rescue and the military unit responsible for the checkpoint, according to the source, who said he cannot be named because the military's investigation into the incident is continuing.
Soldiers at the checkpoint have told U.S. military officers that they flashed lights, used hand signals and fired warning shots in an effort to stop the car, which they believed was traveling at more than 50 mph, a typical speed for that road. But Sgrena, who had just been released by Iraqi captors, recalled later that the car was not traveling very fast and that soldiers started firing "right after lighting" a spotlight -- a decision she said was not justified.
Sgrena was wounded by shrapnel in the U.S. barrage.The absence of advance communication between the Italians and the U.S. soldiers at the checkpoint appears to have put the occupants of the car in grave jeopardy, given what many U.S. officials describe as the military's standard practice of firing at onrushing cars from their checkpoints in Iraq."
In my view, the main contributing factor was a lack of prior coordination with the ground unit," the source said. "If requested, we would have resourced and supported this mission very differently."
Military officials in Iraq have said for two days that they cannot answer questions about U.S. rules of engagement because of a need to keep insurgents off guard. Officials have not said whether these rules have changed since the insurgency in Iraq worsened in late 2003. They also have declined to estimate how many civilians such as Calipari have been killed accidentally by U.S. forces -- at checkpoints or elsewhere in Iraq.”
So the bottom line here is that you are going to hear two versions of this story, no matter what the facts actually are. One is what I’ll call the Eason Jordan version saying that the US is targeting journalists. The other version, which makes sense for me, is that these Italian cowboys were running around in a war zone and failed to heed the rules of engagement and got their butts shot off.
Which version are you going to believe?
I’ve had it up to here (pointing to the top of my every graying, balding head) with journalists. Particularly the variety called “war correspondents.”
Foreign and domestic, they are, by and large, in my personal estimation, useless, overeducated morons with a political axe to grind--having no intention of reporting the facts about what is occurring around them. Not to say that they are all bad, mind you, just that most of them are.
These individuals have jobs as reporters, but they have lost sight of the fact that, when it comes to world events, they are supposed to REPORT WHAT IS HAPPENING. Noooooo, that would be too easy, they are now editoralizers and commentators. They have either lost sight of who their audience is, or else they think that we are too stupid to read and listen to the facts and form our own opinions based on the evidence.
History has given us some really great war correspondents. Guys like Ernie Pyle, for example. Ernie Pyle was “embedded” with the US forces in Europe and the Pacific as a reporter during WWII. By “embedded,” I don’t mean that he slept in the Paris or Tokyo Hilton and made day trips to film a drive by “terrorist” car bombing and to send out an anti-war missive in time to be home for happy hour at the hotel bar.
By embedded, I mean that Ernie lived with the troops he reported on. He wore an Army uniform, he ate and slept with the troops and he died with the troops, as a Japanese machine-gun bullet killed him on the island of Ie Shima on April 18, 1945, at the age of 44.
Ernie won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, but he didn’t win it by despising the young American men he reported on while salivating for a “friendly fire” expose or an Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Ernie was famous for reporting on the lives of the men that were charged with defending our freedom and his life on a day by day basis. Here is an excerpt from an article entitled “Killing is all that matters”:
“WITH THE AMERICAN FORCES IN ALGIERS, December 1, 1942 - From now onward, stretching for months and months into the future, life is completely changed for thousands of American boys on this side of the earth. For at last they are in there fighting.
The jump from camp life into front-line living is just as great as the original jump from civilian life into the Army. Only those who served in the last war can conceive of the makeshift, deadly urgent, always-moving-onward complexion of front-line existence.
And existence is exactly the word: it is nothing more.
You dig ditches for protection from bullets and from the chill north wind off the Mediterranean. There are no more hot-water taps. There are no post exchanges where you can buy cigarets. There are no movies.
When you speak to a civilian you have to wrestle with a foreign language. You carry just enough clothing to cover you, and no more. You don't lug any knickknacks at all.
When our troops made their first landings in North Africa they went four days without even blankets, just catching a few hours sleep on the ground.
Everybody either lost or chucked aside some of his equipment. Like most troops going into battle for the first time, they all carried too much at first. Gradually they shed it. The boys tossed out personal gear from their musette bags and filled them with ammunition.
The countryside for twenty miles around Oran was strewn with overcoats, field jackets and mess kits as the soldiers moved on the city.
Arabs will be going around for a whole generation clad in odd pieces of American Army uniforms. “
Sound Familiar? Other than the reference to the Mediterranean and Northern Africa, this piece could have been written two years ago during the initial invasion of Iraq. Go to the link and read the entire piece if you have time and read more of Ernie’s work here.
Now let’s talk about the little Italian communist Giuliana Sgrena and the stir that her reporting efforts have caused in Iraq:
“The daughter of a World War II veteran, Sgrena was one of the founders of the peace movement in the 1980s.
Before joining Il Manifesto, she worked for the daily Guerra e Pace (War and Peace), but she made her name at the communist newspaper mainly through her avowed affinity with the Arab world.
"For my whole life, I have fought and written on behalf of the weakest," she said in a video put together by those who campaigned to secure her release.
With this in mind, the reporter refused to become embedded with the US military during the war - choosing, instead, to remain in Iraq on her own during the major hostilities of the spring of 2003.
She then returned to the country periodically, focusing on the suffering of ordinary Iraqis brought about by a war she was vehemently opposed to.
Sgrena's outspoken anti-war stance should have endeared her to Iraqi insurgents fighting the US-led forces, said friends and colleagues shocked at her capture on 4 February.”
Wrong, Comrad Sgrena. The only way to endear yourself to the Iraqi “insurgents” is to be an Arab man, grow a long beard, strap explosives to your body or install them in the trunk of your car, and end your life killing as many of your innocent fellow Iraqis while looking for your gaggle of eternal virgins.
And by founding “the peace movement in the 1980’s” isn’t Sgrena about 20 years too late? I thought that the American left started the “peace movement” in the 1960’s in response to the Vietnam War. Come to think of it, isn’t passivism and the “peace movement” was as old as history—supported by the coddled “intellectual” group du jour whom constantly criticize those around them that militarily defend their right to be stupid and complain about society’s ills.
So any way, this silly Italian woman “war correspondent” wanders into Iraq, on her own, because she is against the war and would never allow the American Military to support and protect her presence there. Instead, Sgrena and her fellow “war correspondents” over at Il Manifesto have been running around Iraq undermining the coalition’s efforts. Look at this excerpt from a story published under the headline ’My Name is Giuliana Sgrena: I write for a Newspaper Which Opposed the Sanctions and the War Against Iraq’:
“Sheik Hussein al Zobey, Sunni coordinator of the refugee camps inside the University of Baghdad, uttered an impassioned appeal for the journalist's release: "In the name of truth, free her. I appeal in the name of those who come to help us. I ask the kidnappers to free Giuliana, who has promised to help us. She has laughed and played with our children—and has cried with us."
"Truly moving is the involvement of the Iraqi people in Giuliana Sgrena's ordeal," writes Il Manifesto's correspondent from Baghdad, Stefano Chiarini. "Suffering daily abuses and violence from occupation forces or their proxies, the Iraqis themselves are subjected to routine hostage-taking by the occupiers. If the father is not at home, they arrest his son, or brother, or other relative. Under the pretext of looking for arms, American soldiers and their Iraqi trainees look for jewels and money. And, yet, the whole country has mobilised for the liberation of Giuliana." ”
This is yet another perfect example for the left and the Democrats and the other international “nay sayers” of what kind of animals we are dealing with in Iraq. It doesn’t even matter if you have adopted their side of the fight, if you are not an Arab Muslim you are a potential target. If you happen to be a white skinned woman, your life is even more worthless.
The only reason Sgrena was released was that it was politically expedient for her captors to do so, and she hasn’t yet learned her lesson. Continuing along the path of ignoring the military control and restriction issues brought about by the “insurgent” actions, she and her Italian "James Bond" wannabe protector jump in a used Datsun car and go screaming down a road toward a US Military roadblock.
This story in the anti occupation web site uruknet.info (written by Washington Post reporters) seems to make a case opposite the meaning of their own headline that “Observers Cite Other Shootings at Checkpoints:
“But the circumstances of Friday's shooting of Italian military intelligence officer Nicola Calipari made it particularly vulnerable to calamity, a military source said as he divulged new details of how the car in which Calipari and a newly freed hostage, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, came to be attacked.
The automobile was traversing onto a route -- the road to the airport -- where soldiers have been killed in shootings and by roadside bombs. U.S. soldiers had established an impromptu evening checkpoint at the entrance to the road about 90 minutes earlier and had stopped other vehicles.
They knew a high-level embassy official would be moving to the airport on that road, and their aim was to support this movement.But no specific coordination occurred between those involved in Sgrena's rescue and the military unit responsible for the checkpoint, according to the source, who said he cannot be named because the military's investigation into the incident is continuing.
Soldiers at the checkpoint have told U.S. military officers that they flashed lights, used hand signals and fired warning shots in an effort to stop the car, which they believed was traveling at more than 50 mph, a typical speed for that road. But Sgrena, who had just been released by Iraqi captors, recalled later that the car was not traveling very fast and that soldiers started firing "right after lighting" a spotlight -- a decision she said was not justified.
Sgrena was wounded by shrapnel in the U.S. barrage.The absence of advance communication between the Italians and the U.S. soldiers at the checkpoint appears to have put the occupants of the car in grave jeopardy, given what many U.S. officials describe as the military's standard practice of firing at onrushing cars from their checkpoints in Iraq."
In my view, the main contributing factor was a lack of prior coordination with the ground unit," the source said. "If requested, we would have resourced and supported this mission very differently."
Military officials in Iraq have said for two days that they cannot answer questions about U.S. rules of engagement because of a need to keep insurgents off guard. Officials have not said whether these rules have changed since the insurgency in Iraq worsened in late 2003. They also have declined to estimate how many civilians such as Calipari have been killed accidentally by U.S. forces -- at checkpoints or elsewhere in Iraq.”
So the bottom line here is that you are going to hear two versions of this story, no matter what the facts actually are. One is what I’ll call the Eason Jordan version saying that the US is targeting journalists. The other version, which makes sense for me, is that these Italian cowboys were running around in a war zone and failed to heed the rules of engagement and got their butts shot off.
Which version are you going to believe?
Friday, March 04, 2005
I Will Not Be Silenced
When I entered the world of blogging last August, in the heat of the presidential election, I had no idea what I was getting into or how addictive it would be. For 25 years I thought that I was an engineer, but recently I’ve found out that I could be a writer one of these days if I keep working at it.
My classrooms are my online blogs and my teachers are my readers whom grade my efforts every day with the buttons on their mice. So far, the cost of my tuition has only been my time spent researching and writing my comments and opinions. Blogspot.com does not charge me for the space that my work occupies on their computer servers. If my reader base keeps growing at the current rate, later this year I will be forced to spend ten or fifteen dollars a month to pay for hosting services, but that time is still down the road a bit.
My blogs are non-commercial as I do not place advertisements on them and I have no intention to do so in the immediate future. I also have absolutely no commercial or direct affiliation with any political group. What I say and write is what I believe and no one can change that without making a convincing argument and presenting facts to support same.
Recently I have learned of a major problem out there on the horizon. It looms over the future of the blogosphere as we know it like the plague. It threatens to make what we do here every day illegal if we happen to mention politics in our writings.
We need your help.
It seems that certain politicians have had it with bloggers being able to use their free speech rights to express political messages. They want to use the McCain Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act to limit the activities of bloggers. They want to say that if I supply a link to a political candidate’s web site that I am supplying an “in-kind” political contribution.
They want to calculate the percentage of the value of my computer(s) and other hardware and the cost my cable modem internet service that is dedicated to political commentary and add that to the total.
If I have a wildly popular blog (which I as yet do not have) they want to give a cash value to my link and potentially charge me with a felony if the cash value of the link exceeds certain limits ($2000 for an individual.)
This is completely insane. CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, The New York and LA Times and Dan Damn Rather can spout whatever crap they want to say during a campaign, but I can’t write my silly little blog?
They are afraid of the bloggers and they want to silence us. As I said before, we need your help.
I wrote the following letter to my two state Senators:
The Honorable Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson
Gentlemen,
I am very concerned about the potential effect that the recent lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, upheld by Judge Colleen Kollar-Ketelly, will have on political speech on the Internet.
For the past eight months I have written a current events/political blog, "What I'd Liked To Have Said", which enjoys a small monthly readership.
I have no connections to any political party and I receive no funding from anyone to support the costs of writing my opinions and posting them on the internet. There is also no cost to my readers, both liberal and conservative, to visit my blog. In the free market economy of the "blogosphere," if I don't write anything worth reading, then my blog has no readers. It's just that simple.
Regarding this lawsuit and interpretation of the legislation, my concern is that individuals like myself will be unfairly limited in our rights to free speech regarding political issues while groups like 527's will be allowed to use virtually unlimited funding to spread their messages. The mainstream media will also be allowed to continue to spread obvious left wing biased stories without recourse from the public.
My real fear is that in the event that my blog happens to be successful and grow a large reader base as blogs like Powerline and Captain's Quarters have done that I could be shut down and charged with a felony for exceeding in-kind contribution limits by the FEC.
It is unfair that I can verbally say anything I want but that I cannot write the same thoughts and concepts and post them on the internet without fearing government intervention.
I will not sit idly by while my basic rights are infringed upon. My readers and many friends and colleagues on both sides of the political aisle stand as ready as I to defend the Constitution.
We demand a hearing on McCain-Feingold, with open testimony before the press and our colleagues, and we demand action to reform or repeal this dangerous and un-American muzzle on political speech.
We await your response, sirs.
Best Regards,
Virgil Raymond Rogers, III
I ask that you write your own letter to your state Senators and express your opinion on this matter. There is a web form over at Town Hall that will allow you to write an E-Mail accomplishing this task.
If we do not act firmly and quickly, the information revolution that is the blogosphere will fade into history and the political left will again control the dissemination of information in our society and world.
My classrooms are my online blogs and my teachers are my readers whom grade my efforts every day with the buttons on their mice. So far, the cost of my tuition has only been my time spent researching and writing my comments and opinions. Blogspot.com does not charge me for the space that my work occupies on their computer servers. If my reader base keeps growing at the current rate, later this year I will be forced to spend ten or fifteen dollars a month to pay for hosting services, but that time is still down the road a bit.
My blogs are non-commercial as I do not place advertisements on them and I have no intention to do so in the immediate future. I also have absolutely no commercial or direct affiliation with any political group. What I say and write is what I believe and no one can change that without making a convincing argument and presenting facts to support same.
Recently I have learned of a major problem out there on the horizon. It looms over the future of the blogosphere as we know it like the plague. It threatens to make what we do here every day illegal if we happen to mention politics in our writings.
We need your help.
It seems that certain politicians have had it with bloggers being able to use their free speech rights to express political messages. They want to use the McCain Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act to limit the activities of bloggers. They want to say that if I supply a link to a political candidate’s web site that I am supplying an “in-kind” political contribution.
They want to calculate the percentage of the value of my computer(s) and other hardware and the cost my cable modem internet service that is dedicated to political commentary and add that to the total.
If I have a wildly popular blog (which I as yet do not have) they want to give a cash value to my link and potentially charge me with a felony if the cash value of the link exceeds certain limits ($2000 for an individual.)
This is completely insane. CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, The New York and LA Times and Dan Damn Rather can spout whatever crap they want to say during a campaign, but I can’t write my silly little blog?
They are afraid of the bloggers and they want to silence us. As I said before, we need your help.
I wrote the following letter to my two state Senators:
The Honorable Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson
Gentlemen,
I am very concerned about the potential effect that the recent lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, upheld by Judge Colleen Kollar-Ketelly, will have on political speech on the Internet.
For the past eight months I have written a current events/political blog, "What I'd Liked To Have Said", which enjoys a small monthly readership.
I have no connections to any political party and I receive no funding from anyone to support the costs of writing my opinions and posting them on the internet. There is also no cost to my readers, both liberal and conservative, to visit my blog. In the free market economy of the "blogosphere," if I don't write anything worth reading, then my blog has no readers. It's just that simple.
Regarding this lawsuit and interpretation of the legislation, my concern is that individuals like myself will be unfairly limited in our rights to free speech regarding political issues while groups like 527's will be allowed to use virtually unlimited funding to spread their messages. The mainstream media will also be allowed to continue to spread obvious left wing biased stories without recourse from the public.
My real fear is that in the event that my blog happens to be successful and grow a large reader base as blogs like Powerline and Captain's Quarters have done that I could be shut down and charged with a felony for exceeding in-kind contribution limits by the FEC.
It is unfair that I can verbally say anything I want but that I cannot write the same thoughts and concepts and post them on the internet without fearing government intervention.
I will not sit idly by while my basic rights are infringed upon. My readers and many friends and colleagues on both sides of the political aisle stand as ready as I to defend the Constitution.
We demand a hearing on McCain-Feingold, with open testimony before the press and our colleagues, and we demand action to reform or repeal this dangerous and un-American muzzle on political speech.
We await your response, sirs.
Best Regards,
Virgil Raymond Rogers, III
I ask that you write your own letter to your state Senators and express your opinion on this matter. There is a web form over at Town Hall that will allow you to write an E-Mail accomplishing this task.
If we do not act firmly and quickly, the information revolution that is the blogosphere will fade into history and the political left will again control the dissemination of information in our society and world.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Stupidity Squared
(Bait and Switch Taxation)
In my last posting, Some People Just Aren’t Worth Their Salt, the Center for Science in the Public Interest caught my eye and I decided to do a little checking into their background and intentions.
First of all, like the names attached to most government legislation, the name of the “Center” made me suspicious of their motives. Their idea of “public interest” is probably quite different from my idea of “my interests.”
Now I’m sure that I am right.
Outside of a bunch of no-name PhD’s and Washington DC lawyers, the “Center’s” board of directors includes Miss Anne Bancroft. What the heck does Anne Bancroft know about anything but acting and cashing checks? Maybe marching in anti-war protests is also on her resume?
Next the words “Taxes” and “alcohol” caught my eye and I did a little reading about what the “Science Center” has going on in this area of “public interest.” Well, it didn’t take me long to figure out that their proposed solution was to raise state alcohol taxes to keep underage kids from drinking.
Instead of raising the price of legal adult’s cocktails, what about enforcing existing laws that are already on the books to keep kids from underage drinking? What about parents kicking their kid’s undisciplined asses, taking away their cars and cell phones and play stations and skateboards, and shoving their nappy heads off of the internet terminal and into the pages of a real hard bound book to learn something that might actually help them earn a living one day in the real world?
To support the “Center’s” thesis, they have three “state reports” published on their web site for 2004, Alabama, Connecticut, and Maryland.
I took the trouble to read the introduction to these “state reports” and guess what—the reports were not written by the states—they were written by the “center” on behalf of the states. The reports have basically the same wording if not the same logic and resulting logical errors. Here are some examples…
Alabama: “Entering fiscal year 2005, Alabama faces a revenue shortfall that may reach up to $510 million. In response, the Governor has proposed cutting the Medicaid program, reducing benefits of state workers, and instituting broad cuts in every state agency. Since Alabama must end the fiscal year with a balanced budget, it must cut services, increase revenues, or both. Raising beer excise taxes, last done in 1969, provides a rational, politically popular means of increasing state revenues.
Besides providing revenue, raising beer taxes may help reduce rates of alcohol-related problems, particularly among underage drinkers. Public opinion polls show that a strong majority support alcohol tax increases, especially when the money is earmarked for alcohol prevention and treatment programs.”
Connecticut: “Entering fiscal year 2005, Connecticut faces a revenue shortfall of up to $84.8 million. In response, the state government has cut education funding, raised tuition mid-year for state universities, and laid off state workers. The state faces continued decreases in revenues, and the deficit will likely grow. By law, since Connecticut must maintain a balanced budget, it must cut services, increase revenues, or both. Raising alcohol excise taxes, last done in 1989, provides one rational, politically popular means of providing needed new state revenues…(p)ublic opinion polls show that a strong majority support raising alcohol taxes, especially when the money is earmarked for alcohol prevention and treatment programs.”
Maryland: “Entering fiscal year 2005, Maryland faces an estimated revenue shortfall of $800 million. In response, the state government has steeply raised tuition for state public universities and has considered making further cuts to education and other state programs. The state faces continued decreases in revenues, and the deficit will likely grow. By law, since Maryland must maintain a balanced budget, it must cut services, increase revenues, or both. Raising alcohol excise taxes, last done in 1972 for beer and wine, and 1995 for liquor, provides one rational, politically popular means of providing needed new state revenues…(p)ublic opinion polls show that a strong majority support raising alcohol taxes, especially when the money is earmarked for alcohol prevention and treatment programs.”
Notice anything wrong with these three paragraphs? Besides being basically the same wording with a different state name tossed in, they all say that the respective state is facing a budget problem and is going to have to cut “programs” unless they find some more money to spend on the looser population. Can’t let that happen, can they? Nooooo!
And what is the proposed solution? RAISE TAXES, THAT’S WHAT.
Pick out a politically expedient group, declare that they are evil and even worse, that they are under taxed, and raise those taxes. Even worse, tell the public that you are going to use the money to keep kids from drinking and to treat all of the poor sots sitting around the public parks down town. That will guarantee that the tax increase will pass. Meanwhile, as a state lawmaker, with your fingers crossed behind your back, you actually intend to put most if not all of the money into the general budget to pay for the deficit spending you’re doing to buy the votes to get your sorry ass re-elected.
Isn’t that what they said originally—that there was a budget crisis? Forget about helping reform drunks and keeping The Beaver from drinking a Rum and Coke while the sitter isn’t looking, these morons just want more of our money to spend.
So you see, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (SCPI) should actually be called “The Center for Taxing the Ass off of Any Group Who Isn’t Paying Attention or is Politically Expedient to Tax.”
I’ve got to go take an Aspirin now.
In my last posting, Some People Just Aren’t Worth Their Salt, the Center for Science in the Public Interest caught my eye and I decided to do a little checking into their background and intentions.
First of all, like the names attached to most government legislation, the name of the “Center” made me suspicious of their motives. Their idea of “public interest” is probably quite different from my idea of “my interests.”
Now I’m sure that I am right.
Outside of a bunch of no-name PhD’s and Washington DC lawyers, the “Center’s” board of directors includes Miss Anne Bancroft. What the heck does Anne Bancroft know about anything but acting and cashing checks? Maybe marching in anti-war protests is also on her resume?
Next the words “Taxes” and “alcohol” caught my eye and I did a little reading about what the “Science Center” has going on in this area of “public interest.” Well, it didn’t take me long to figure out that their proposed solution was to raise state alcohol taxes to keep underage kids from drinking.
Instead of raising the price of legal adult’s cocktails, what about enforcing existing laws that are already on the books to keep kids from underage drinking? What about parents kicking their kid’s undisciplined asses, taking away their cars and cell phones and play stations and skateboards, and shoving their nappy heads off of the internet terminal and into the pages of a real hard bound book to learn something that might actually help them earn a living one day in the real world?
To support the “Center’s” thesis, they have three “state reports” published on their web site for 2004, Alabama, Connecticut, and Maryland.
I took the trouble to read the introduction to these “state reports” and guess what—the reports were not written by the states—they were written by the “center” on behalf of the states. The reports have basically the same wording if not the same logic and resulting logical errors. Here are some examples…
Alabama: “Entering fiscal year 2005, Alabama faces a revenue shortfall that may reach up to $510 million. In response, the Governor has proposed cutting the Medicaid program, reducing benefits of state workers, and instituting broad cuts in every state agency. Since Alabama must end the fiscal year with a balanced budget, it must cut services, increase revenues, or both. Raising beer excise taxes, last done in 1969, provides a rational, politically popular means of increasing state revenues.
Besides providing revenue, raising beer taxes may help reduce rates of alcohol-related problems, particularly among underage drinkers. Public opinion polls show that a strong majority support alcohol tax increases, especially when the money is earmarked for alcohol prevention and treatment programs.”
Connecticut: “Entering fiscal year 2005, Connecticut faces a revenue shortfall of up to $84.8 million. In response, the state government has cut education funding, raised tuition mid-year for state universities, and laid off state workers. The state faces continued decreases in revenues, and the deficit will likely grow. By law, since Connecticut must maintain a balanced budget, it must cut services, increase revenues, or both. Raising alcohol excise taxes, last done in 1989, provides one rational, politically popular means of providing needed new state revenues…(p)ublic opinion polls show that a strong majority support raising alcohol taxes, especially when the money is earmarked for alcohol prevention and treatment programs.”
Maryland: “Entering fiscal year 2005, Maryland faces an estimated revenue shortfall of $800 million. In response, the state government has steeply raised tuition for state public universities and has considered making further cuts to education and other state programs. The state faces continued decreases in revenues, and the deficit will likely grow. By law, since Maryland must maintain a balanced budget, it must cut services, increase revenues, or both. Raising alcohol excise taxes, last done in 1972 for beer and wine, and 1995 for liquor, provides one rational, politically popular means of providing needed new state revenues…(p)ublic opinion polls show that a strong majority support raising alcohol taxes, especially when the money is earmarked for alcohol prevention and treatment programs.”
Notice anything wrong with these three paragraphs? Besides being basically the same wording with a different state name tossed in, they all say that the respective state is facing a budget problem and is going to have to cut “programs” unless they find some more money to spend on the looser population. Can’t let that happen, can they? Nooooo!
And what is the proposed solution? RAISE TAXES, THAT’S WHAT.
Pick out a politically expedient group, declare that they are evil and even worse, that they are under taxed, and raise those taxes. Even worse, tell the public that you are going to use the money to keep kids from drinking and to treat all of the poor sots sitting around the public parks down town. That will guarantee that the tax increase will pass. Meanwhile, as a state lawmaker, with your fingers crossed behind your back, you actually intend to put most if not all of the money into the general budget to pay for the deficit spending you’re doing to buy the votes to get your sorry ass re-elected.
Isn’t that what they said originally—that there was a budget crisis? Forget about helping reform drunks and keeping The Beaver from drinking a Rum and Coke while the sitter isn’t looking, these morons just want more of our money to spend.
So you see, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (SCPI) should actually be called “The Center for Taxing the Ass off of Any Group Who Isn’t Paying Attention or is Politically Expedient to Tax.”
I’ve got to go take an Aspirin now.
Some People Just Aren't Worth Their Salt
Do you know where my title phrase comes from?
Of course you do…don’t you?
Salt (sodium chloride) hasn’t always cost less than a dollar for 26 ounces like it does today. I recently bought two containers of generic iodized salt for a buck and a half. If you want the name brand container bearing the little girl with the umbrella on the label (Morton Salt,) the same quantity will cost you a little over a dollar.
Americans take salt for granted today, but it used to be a rare commodity. At one time salt was actually used for money in some cultures.
The ancient Greeks traded salt for Slaves, thus the term “not worth your salt.”
Roman Soldiers were given a special salt ration called “salarium argentums” which is the predecessor to the English word “salary.”
The average human body contains about a cup of salt. My massive girth probably contains about a cup and one-half. I love salt, although I do routinely utilize pepper and a variety of other spices in my cooking and have recently discovered how to limit the amount of salt in many of my dishes.
A few years ago I started cooking with semi-sweet unsalted butter in order to control the amount of salt in my home cooked food. I also use coarse flake Kosher salt in many of my dishes during preparation because, in spite of not containing any Iodine, it tastes better. I’ll just take my chances on getting an enlarged thyroid.
Eating out is another matter. I find that, on a general basis, the crappier the food content, the more salt it contains. Fast food restaurants like McDonalds and Burger King cover the inherent lack of things like FLAVOR in their food by tossing in a pant load of salt into everything they sell.
As a result of the crappy flavor and high salt content, I rarely eat fast food. The only exception is when I am making an all day road trip, I find that it is easy to hit the drive through window and eat a couple of plain McDonald’s cheeseburgers held in the wrapper while propelling myself down the interstate highway at 70 MPH. Of course, when I get to where I am going, I have the urge to drink a couple thousand gallons of water to offset the couple thousand dollars (Roman Empire dollars) worth of salt that I consumed.
The thing about salt is that you know it is in whatever you eat because you can taste it the minute you put it in your mouth. You can even read the label before you put the genuine imitation manufactured polyunsaturated food product into your mouth if you want to know how much salt it contains. Just look under the category—sodium.
With this in mind, I thought that you would like to know that there are a bunch of doctors and busy-body do-gooder nannies out there that believe that you and I are too stupid to read a label or taste and spit out anything that we might try to eat that contains too much salt.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed a lawsuit against the federal government last month, “saying that salt is killing tens of thousands of Americans and that regulators have done too little to control salt in food.”
“Despite advisories to take it easy on sodium, Americans are now consuming about 4,000 milligrams a day -- nearly double the recommended limit to keep blood pressure under control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said.
So the CSPI renewed a lawsuit first filed in 1983 to ask federal courts to force the Food and Drug Administration to declare sodium a food additive instead of categorizing it as "generally recognized as safe." This would give the agency the authority to set limits for salt in foods.
"There is no way the FDA can look at the science and say with a straight face that salt is 'generally recognized as safe,"' CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson said in a statement.
"In fact, salt is generally recognized as unsafe, because it is a major cause of heart attacks and stroke. The federal government should require food manufacturers to gradually lower their sodium levels." ”
Sorry Dr. Jacobsen, but doing my standard check of the US Constitution, I do not find any words indicating that I have a right to “life, liberty, and a safe, nutritionally balanced, government regulated diet.” So what the hell are you up to here?
“The CSPI issued a report saying that processed foods and restaurant fare contribute almost 80 percent of sodium to the U.S. diet. Frozen dinners are especially high in salt, the report finds.
Depending on the brand, some salad dressings contain nearly a quarter of the day's allowance of sodium while others are low in sodium, the report finds.
One chain restaurant's breakfast contains two days' worth of sodium -- 4,460 mg -- the CSPI report said.
Chinese restaurant meals can be especially, high too. "A typical order of General Tso's chicken with rice has 3,150 mg," the group said.
Dr. Claude Lenfant, president of the World Hypertension League and a former head of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute supported the report.
"If we could reduce the sodium in processed and restaurant foods by half, we could save about 150,000 lives per year," he said.”
BUT what if I WANT to eat salty General Tso’s Chicken for three meals a day until my butt swells to the size of the Hindenburg and my heart explodes out of my chest? What if I want to eat Hardee’s Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuits each day for a mid-morning snack with a gallon of regular Coke and shaker of salt on the side?
This whole idea of people being too stupid to make their own decisions is getting on my last good nerve. Of course people are stupid. We raise them by the truck load here in this country.
One thing that we absolutely have here in the United States is the right to “life, liberty, and to be STUPID AS HELL” and there is nothing that the government should be able to do to stop it. I will defend your right to be stupid till the death. I will also demand that you be given the right to educate yourself and rise above your innate stupidity if you want to.
Unfortunately, common sense is a lost commodity these days and the government and the legal system are the culprits.
Here’s an example: You’re a young testosterone laden man making big bucks in your new job as assistant manager at McDonalds. Go out and buy a crappy, cheep “sport utility” vehicle, don’t wear your seatbelt, drink a six pack of beer, make sharp turns at 80 MPH, get ejected from the vehicle in the ensuing rollover accident, and suffer brain damage. What do you do? You hire a lawyer and sue the vehicle manufacturer and the jury will probably award you a zillion dollars to support your drooling stupid self and your extended family in luxury for the rest of your life. Isn’t America great?
Here’s another example: You’re a young estrogen laden vixen sporting your new fake boobs. Drop out of high school, have four or five illegitimate children by two or three different looser assistant managers at the McDonalds you work at. What do you do? You hire a lawyer, sue all the ex-boyfriends for child support, apply for welfare, apply for WIC, and move into the new public housing townhouses they just built down the street that just happen to be on the bus route. What a great country we live in.
And now the rocket scientists over at The Center for Science in the Public Interest wants the government to attempt to control MY salt intake. If they do force McDonalds into reducing the salt content in their kitchen, what is to prevent me from putting fifty of those little paper packages of salt on my burger. People are free to salt their own food, aren’t they? Are they going to take the salt shakers and paper salt packages out of the restaurants also?
In the future, what is going to prevent the government from coming to my house and taking away my three pounds of salt? How the hell can anyone justify the Government meddling in our lives in this way?
THINGS LIKE THIS MAKE MY BLOOD PRESSURE GO UP MORE THAN EATING A TON OF SALT. AAAAAAHHHHHH!
Now…where’s my salt shaker, I need some salty comfort food.
Of course you do…don’t you?
Salt (sodium chloride) hasn’t always cost less than a dollar for 26 ounces like it does today. I recently bought two containers of generic iodized salt for a buck and a half. If you want the name brand container bearing the little girl with the umbrella on the label (Morton Salt,) the same quantity will cost you a little over a dollar.
Americans take salt for granted today, but it used to be a rare commodity. At one time salt was actually used for money in some cultures.
The ancient Greeks traded salt for Slaves, thus the term “not worth your salt.”
Roman Soldiers were given a special salt ration called “salarium argentums” which is the predecessor to the English word “salary.”
The average human body contains about a cup of salt. My massive girth probably contains about a cup and one-half. I love salt, although I do routinely utilize pepper and a variety of other spices in my cooking and have recently discovered how to limit the amount of salt in many of my dishes.
A few years ago I started cooking with semi-sweet unsalted butter in order to control the amount of salt in my home cooked food. I also use coarse flake Kosher salt in many of my dishes during preparation because, in spite of not containing any Iodine, it tastes better. I’ll just take my chances on getting an enlarged thyroid.
Eating out is another matter. I find that, on a general basis, the crappier the food content, the more salt it contains. Fast food restaurants like McDonalds and Burger King cover the inherent lack of things like FLAVOR in their food by tossing in a pant load of salt into everything they sell.
As a result of the crappy flavor and high salt content, I rarely eat fast food. The only exception is when I am making an all day road trip, I find that it is easy to hit the drive through window and eat a couple of plain McDonald’s cheeseburgers held in the wrapper while propelling myself down the interstate highway at 70 MPH. Of course, when I get to where I am going, I have the urge to drink a couple thousand gallons of water to offset the couple thousand dollars (Roman Empire dollars) worth of salt that I consumed.
The thing about salt is that you know it is in whatever you eat because you can taste it the minute you put it in your mouth. You can even read the label before you put the genuine imitation manufactured polyunsaturated food product into your mouth if you want to know how much salt it contains. Just look under the category—sodium.
With this in mind, I thought that you would like to know that there are a bunch of doctors and busy-body do-gooder nannies out there that believe that you and I are too stupid to read a label or taste and spit out anything that we might try to eat that contains too much salt.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed a lawsuit against the federal government last month, “saying that salt is killing tens of thousands of Americans and that regulators have done too little to control salt in food.”
“Despite advisories to take it easy on sodium, Americans are now consuming about 4,000 milligrams a day -- nearly double the recommended limit to keep blood pressure under control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said.
So the CSPI renewed a lawsuit first filed in 1983 to ask federal courts to force the Food and Drug Administration to declare sodium a food additive instead of categorizing it as "generally recognized as safe." This would give the agency the authority to set limits for salt in foods.
"There is no way the FDA can look at the science and say with a straight face that salt is 'generally recognized as safe,"' CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson said in a statement.
"In fact, salt is generally recognized as unsafe, because it is a major cause of heart attacks and stroke. The federal government should require food manufacturers to gradually lower their sodium levels." ”
Sorry Dr. Jacobsen, but doing my standard check of the US Constitution, I do not find any words indicating that I have a right to “life, liberty, and a safe, nutritionally balanced, government regulated diet.” So what the hell are you up to here?
“The CSPI issued a report saying that processed foods and restaurant fare contribute almost 80 percent of sodium to the U.S. diet. Frozen dinners are especially high in salt, the report finds.
Depending on the brand, some salad dressings contain nearly a quarter of the day's allowance of sodium while others are low in sodium, the report finds.
One chain restaurant's breakfast contains two days' worth of sodium -- 4,460 mg -- the CSPI report said.
Chinese restaurant meals can be especially, high too. "A typical order of General Tso's chicken with rice has 3,150 mg," the group said.
Dr. Claude Lenfant, president of the World Hypertension League and a former head of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute supported the report.
"If we could reduce the sodium in processed and restaurant foods by half, we could save about 150,000 lives per year," he said.”
BUT what if I WANT to eat salty General Tso’s Chicken for three meals a day until my butt swells to the size of the Hindenburg and my heart explodes out of my chest? What if I want to eat Hardee’s Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuits each day for a mid-morning snack with a gallon of regular Coke and shaker of salt on the side?
This whole idea of people being too stupid to make their own decisions is getting on my last good nerve. Of course people are stupid. We raise them by the truck load here in this country.
One thing that we absolutely have here in the United States is the right to “life, liberty, and to be STUPID AS HELL” and there is nothing that the government should be able to do to stop it. I will defend your right to be stupid till the death. I will also demand that you be given the right to educate yourself and rise above your innate stupidity if you want to.
Unfortunately, common sense is a lost commodity these days and the government and the legal system are the culprits.
Here’s an example: You’re a young testosterone laden man making big bucks in your new job as assistant manager at McDonalds. Go out and buy a crappy, cheep “sport utility” vehicle, don’t wear your seatbelt, drink a six pack of beer, make sharp turns at 80 MPH, get ejected from the vehicle in the ensuing rollover accident, and suffer brain damage. What do you do? You hire a lawyer and sue the vehicle manufacturer and the jury will probably award you a zillion dollars to support your drooling stupid self and your extended family in luxury for the rest of your life. Isn’t America great?
Here’s another example: You’re a young estrogen laden vixen sporting your new fake boobs. Drop out of high school, have four or five illegitimate children by two or three different looser assistant managers at the McDonalds you work at. What do you do? You hire a lawyer, sue all the ex-boyfriends for child support, apply for welfare, apply for WIC, and move into the new public housing townhouses they just built down the street that just happen to be on the bus route. What a great country we live in.
And now the rocket scientists over at The Center for Science in the Public Interest wants the government to attempt to control MY salt intake. If they do force McDonalds into reducing the salt content in their kitchen, what is to prevent me from putting fifty of those little paper packages of salt on my burger. People are free to salt their own food, aren’t they? Are they going to take the salt shakers and paper salt packages out of the restaurants also?
In the future, what is going to prevent the government from coming to my house and taking away my three pounds of salt? How the hell can anyone justify the Government meddling in our lives in this way?
THINGS LIKE THIS MAKE MY BLOOD PRESSURE GO UP MORE THAN EATING A TON OF SALT. AAAAAAHHHHHH!
Now…where’s my salt shaker, I need some salty comfort food.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
More Inane Government Regulation
(More unintended consequences)
I missed this story last week, until I was reading what Captain Ed over at Captain’s Quarters wrote about his cousin being on a British Airways 747 flight that lost one of the four engines on takeoff from LAX and then actually continued on to London on three engines. Well, I’ve read it now and I have a few choice words to say about the subject.
WHAT THE HELL WERE THE BRITISH AIRWAYS AUTHORITIES AND THE PILOT THINKING?
“The fault occurred on take-off from Los Angeles but the pilot declined all opportunities to land in the US and instead continued on three engines for 5,000 miles to Britain.
The incident happened three days after a European regulation came into force requiring airlines to compensate passengers for long delays or cancellations. Under the new rules, if the pilot had returned to Los Angeles, BA would have been facing a compensation bill of more than £100,000.”
Do you follow me here? In order to save a few pennies over 191,000 US Dollars, the airline hauled 351 souls on an eleven hour, 5,000 mile trans-Atlantic trip with a crippled airplane. At a ticket price of $1000 per seat, the whole darned flight was only worth $351,000 and if that airliner had lost another engine in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and been forced to ditch, how much do you think the lawsuits would have cost them in the long run. A billion dollars, perhaps?
Forget the costs for a minute, let’s talk about deeper issues. As a pilot, I can assure you that the guys up front have enough to worry about every time they ride the three quarters of a million pounds of humans, fuel, and potential scrap metal that represents a fully loaded Boeing 747 off the end of 12,000 feet of concrete every few days.
My father, a US Army test pilot, described flying as “hours and hours of boredom, interrupted by moments of shear terror. Pilots spend almost half of their time training for emergencies and practicing emergency procedures. By the time something breaks in flight, if your response is not automatic and precise, you are usually dead or severely injured and the airplane is lost as a result.
Don’t let the “authorities” fool you, a multi-engine aircraft doesn’t have the extra engines just for backup—it needs every one of them to perform as expected. Some twin engine light planes out there built back in the 1950’s and 1960’s could barely maintain straight and level flight on one engine.
Another old pilots saying is that, “in a twin engine airplane, upon loosing an engine on takeoff, the operating engine will take you directly to the scene of the crash.” Get it?
Commercial airliners are another story, however. A twin engine Boeing 737, 757,767 or any of the twin engine Airbus A3XX’s must be able to attain pattern altitude and return to the runway on one engine, as long as the pilot performs the emergency procedures correctly. In the case of a 747, if it looses even two of four engines in flight it can still proceed safely to an alternate airfield in an emergency. BUT…
The idea of proceeding on a trans-Atlantic flight with 75% of the aircraft’s normal available power, past major airports in Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, and New York with connecting International flights and maintenance facilities, IS DOWN RIGHT INSANE.
And why was the pilot pressured to override his better judgment? Because of the glorious, all-knowing, idiotic, socialist, European Union’s stupid passenger rules:
“Some airlines are trying to avoid paying compensation for delays involving technical failures of an aircraft. They are citing a clause in the regulation which excludes delays “caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken”.
But the Air Transport Users Council, which advises passengers on how to obtain their rights, said airlines would still be liable in cases involving engine failure because the cause was likely to be poor maintenance (emphasis mine, VRRIII.) Simon Evans, its chief executive, admitted that the regulation could lead to airlines taking greater risks. “We recognize there is a possibility that an airline might take a decision to fly in order to avoid paying compensation.”
Captain Mervyn Granshaw, Balpa’s chairman, said: “The EU regulation is poorly drafted and increases the pressure on pilots to consider commercial issues when making judgments in marginal safety situations.””
So Mr. Simon Evans, chief “executive” of the "Air Transport User’s Council” says that the only reason that a Pratt & Whitney 4062 or a Rolls-Royce RB211-524 high bypass gas turbine engine, spinning for five hours at 20,000 RPM, 36,000 feet above the ground, would fail is because of poor maintenance?
I’m so sorry Mr. Evans, but I’m really tired of idiots like you, who basically know nothing except for how to make a living spending other people's hard earned money, expecting engineers like me to design complex machines that are affordable and absolutely foolproof. It just doesn’t work like that.
By the standards of the Egyptians, every single time a million pounds of sheet metal, steel forgings, and titanium castings takes off of this earth and fly’s through the air it would be considered the product of demons and witchcraft. Today’s aviation safety statistics are a miracle by the standards of airlines even thirty years ago.
Yes, the airlines should be penalized for scheduling too many flights at peak times. The number of arrivals and departures are based on ideal weather conditions at the major hubs and ideal equipment performance. Bad weather in Chicago or Atlanta causes delays and cancellations in Brunswick and Panama City.
I’m really tired of always being thirty minutes late because Delta can’t load an airplane full of self important morons with oversized carryon bags in less than a half-hour, but I’m eternally grateful for arriving safely, at my destination, in one piece a half day late because the pilot had the authority to not fly the airplane, even if it was something as stupid as a problem with a galley oven or a warning light on an auxiliary voltage regulator. I want ALL of the do-dads and thing-a-ma-jigs working the minute when we take off, and if something important like an engine decides to stop spinning or a wing falls off or the toilet seat fly’s out the bottom of the airplane you better by God put the airplane back on the ground as quickly as is possible.
You Got That?
I missed this story last week, until I was reading what Captain Ed over at Captain’s Quarters wrote about his cousin being on a British Airways 747 flight that lost one of the four engines on takeoff from LAX and then actually continued on to London on three engines. Well, I’ve read it now and I have a few choice words to say about the subject.
WHAT THE HELL WERE THE BRITISH AIRWAYS AUTHORITIES AND THE PILOT THINKING?
“The fault occurred on take-off from Los Angeles but the pilot declined all opportunities to land in the US and instead continued on three engines for 5,000 miles to Britain.
The incident happened three days after a European regulation came into force requiring airlines to compensate passengers for long delays or cancellations. Under the new rules, if the pilot had returned to Los Angeles, BA would have been facing a compensation bill of more than £100,000.”
Do you follow me here? In order to save a few pennies over 191,000 US Dollars, the airline hauled 351 souls on an eleven hour, 5,000 mile trans-Atlantic trip with a crippled airplane. At a ticket price of $1000 per seat, the whole darned flight was only worth $351,000 and if that airliner had lost another engine in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and been forced to ditch, how much do you think the lawsuits would have cost them in the long run. A billion dollars, perhaps?
Forget the costs for a minute, let’s talk about deeper issues. As a pilot, I can assure you that the guys up front have enough to worry about every time they ride the three quarters of a million pounds of humans, fuel, and potential scrap metal that represents a fully loaded Boeing 747 off the end of 12,000 feet of concrete every few days.
My father, a US Army test pilot, described flying as “hours and hours of boredom, interrupted by moments of shear terror. Pilots spend almost half of their time training for emergencies and practicing emergency procedures. By the time something breaks in flight, if your response is not automatic and precise, you are usually dead or severely injured and the airplane is lost as a result.
Don’t let the “authorities” fool you, a multi-engine aircraft doesn’t have the extra engines just for backup—it needs every one of them to perform as expected. Some twin engine light planes out there built back in the 1950’s and 1960’s could barely maintain straight and level flight on one engine.
Another old pilots saying is that, “in a twin engine airplane, upon loosing an engine on takeoff, the operating engine will take you directly to the scene of the crash.” Get it?
Commercial airliners are another story, however. A twin engine Boeing 737, 757,767 or any of the twin engine Airbus A3XX’s must be able to attain pattern altitude and return to the runway on one engine, as long as the pilot performs the emergency procedures correctly. In the case of a 747, if it looses even two of four engines in flight it can still proceed safely to an alternate airfield in an emergency. BUT…
The idea of proceeding on a trans-Atlantic flight with 75% of the aircraft’s normal available power, past major airports in Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, and New York with connecting International flights and maintenance facilities, IS DOWN RIGHT INSANE.
And why was the pilot pressured to override his better judgment? Because of the glorious, all-knowing, idiotic, socialist, European Union’s stupid passenger rules:
“Some airlines are trying to avoid paying compensation for delays involving technical failures of an aircraft. They are citing a clause in the regulation which excludes delays “caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken”.
But the Air Transport Users Council, which advises passengers on how to obtain their rights, said airlines would still be liable in cases involving engine failure because the cause was likely to be poor maintenance (emphasis mine, VRRIII.) Simon Evans, its chief executive, admitted that the regulation could lead to airlines taking greater risks. “We recognize there is a possibility that an airline might take a decision to fly in order to avoid paying compensation.”
Captain Mervyn Granshaw, Balpa’s chairman, said: “The EU regulation is poorly drafted and increases the pressure on pilots to consider commercial issues when making judgments in marginal safety situations.””
So Mr. Simon Evans, chief “executive” of the "Air Transport User’s Council” says that the only reason that a Pratt & Whitney 4062 or a Rolls-Royce RB211-524 high bypass gas turbine engine, spinning for five hours at 20,000 RPM, 36,000 feet above the ground, would fail is because of poor maintenance?
I’m so sorry Mr. Evans, but I’m really tired of idiots like you, who basically know nothing except for how to make a living spending other people's hard earned money, expecting engineers like me to design complex machines that are affordable and absolutely foolproof. It just doesn’t work like that.
By the standards of the Egyptians, every single time a million pounds of sheet metal, steel forgings, and titanium castings takes off of this earth and fly’s through the air it would be considered the product of demons and witchcraft. Today’s aviation safety statistics are a miracle by the standards of airlines even thirty years ago.
Yes, the airlines should be penalized for scheduling too many flights at peak times. The number of arrivals and departures are based on ideal weather conditions at the major hubs and ideal equipment performance. Bad weather in Chicago or Atlanta causes delays and cancellations in Brunswick and Panama City.
I’m really tired of always being thirty minutes late because Delta can’t load an airplane full of self important morons with oversized carryon bags in less than a half-hour, but I’m eternally grateful for arriving safely, at my destination, in one piece a half day late because the pilot had the authority to not fly the airplane, even if it was something as stupid as a problem with a galley oven or a warning light on an auxiliary voltage regulator. I want ALL of the do-dads and thing-a-ma-jigs working the minute when we take off, and if something important like an engine decides to stop spinning or a wing falls off or the toilet seat fly’s out the bottom of the airplane you better by God put the airplane back on the ground as quickly as is possible.
You Got That?
More Boring Stuff About Me
Strange goings on over at fellow Blogger Allan's Place.
He's got a Meme running that asks Bloggers to publish a list all the states that they have visited, lived in, and where they currently live.
Here is my own personal list for your edification or borement...
The states I've been to are listed in bold, the states I've lived in are underlined, and the state I'm in now is italicized...(hummm, insanity isn't listed for some reason...;-)
Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /
(My fellow bloggers may go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for your blog.)
Thirty-nine states out of fifty states--how about you?
As you can see, I've spent most of my time south of the Mason Dixon line. One trip to the Northeast, one to the Northwest, along with a little jaunt to Hawaii, and I'll have covered the entire US.
I would like to go back to Alaska again, however, since I was only there on the ground for a few hours way back in 1978 while waiting for a Air Force MAC flight on my way to the Phillipines. I missed Hawaii on the way home for that trip because our airplane broke and we took a chartered flight back to the US through Guam.
I didn't mention Japan, Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, and Jamacia yet did I?
He's got a Meme running that asks Bloggers to publish a list all the states that they have visited, lived in, and where they currently live.
Here is my own personal list for your edification or borement...
The states I've been to are listed in bold, the states I've lived in are underlined, and the state I'm in now is italicized...(hummm, insanity isn't listed for some reason...;-)
Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /
(My fellow bloggers may go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for your blog.)
Thirty-nine states out of fifty states--how about you?
As you can see, I've spent most of my time south of the Mason Dixon line. One trip to the Northeast, one to the Northwest, along with a little jaunt to Hawaii, and I'll have covered the entire US.
I would like to go back to Alaska again, however, since I was only there on the ground for a few hours way back in 1978 while waiting for a Air Force MAC flight on my way to the Phillipines. I missed Hawaii on the way home for that trip because our airplane broke and we took a chartered flight back to the US through Guam.
I didn't mention Japan, Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, and Jamacia yet did I?
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Less Than Nine Hours later
I’m really not this good—I’m just lucky, BUT, less than 9 hours after I wrote about the impending changes in Lebanon, the Syrian supported Government resigned.
“Lebanon's Syrian-backed Prime Minister Omar Karami, under popular pressure after the assassination of an ex-prime minister, said Monday his government was resigning.
"Out of concern that the government does not become an obstacle to the good of the country, I announce the resignation of the government I had the honor to lead," Karami told parliament in Beirut.
The government came under fire in parliament Monday over the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri in a huge bomb two weeks ago, while streets away thousands defied a protest ban to demand it stand down.
The debate had been expected to close with a no-confidence vote in the government, but after a lunch break Karami took the podium to announce the resignation of the government.
His speech was met by applause from opposition deputies who had seized upon public fury over the killing to demand the resignation and call on Syria to withdraw its troops from its tiny neighbor.”
I watched Farid Abboud, the Lebanese Ambassador to the US, on FOX News “Your World with Neal Cavuto” Monday evening and it was funny to watch Neal press him as he tap danced around the issue of a complete withdrawal of the Syrian troops. It’s just a matter of time however.
Fifteen thousand Syrians riding around in twenty year old Soviet jeeps are no match for the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese protesters backed by the 150,000 US troops with “up-armored” Humvees camping just a few hundred miles south in Iraq.
Let’s just hope that the Lebanese people can pull together to create their own government without the situation deteriorating into civil war. Watch the main stream media proclaim additional doom and destruction, predicting just that.
The American and international elite leftists would rather have a murdering dictator any day over a democratically elected government. They think that people are too stupid to decide their own destiny.
But they’re not…
“Lebanon's Syrian-backed Prime Minister Omar Karami, under popular pressure after the assassination of an ex-prime minister, said Monday his government was resigning.
"Out of concern that the government does not become an obstacle to the good of the country, I announce the resignation of the government I had the honor to lead," Karami told parliament in Beirut.
The government came under fire in parliament Monday over the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri in a huge bomb two weeks ago, while streets away thousands defied a protest ban to demand it stand down.
The debate had been expected to close with a no-confidence vote in the government, but after a lunch break Karami took the podium to announce the resignation of the government.
His speech was met by applause from opposition deputies who had seized upon public fury over the killing to demand the resignation and call on Syria to withdraw its troops from its tiny neighbor.”
I watched Farid Abboud, the Lebanese Ambassador to the US, on FOX News “Your World with Neal Cavuto” Monday evening and it was funny to watch Neal press him as he tap danced around the issue of a complete withdrawal of the Syrian troops. It’s just a matter of time however.
Fifteen thousand Syrians riding around in twenty year old Soviet jeeps are no match for the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese protesters backed by the 150,000 US troops with “up-armored” Humvees camping just a few hundred miles south in Iraq.
Let’s just hope that the Lebanese people can pull together to create their own government without the situation deteriorating into civil war. Watch the main stream media proclaim additional doom and destruction, predicting just that.
The American and international elite leftists would rather have a murdering dictator any day over a democratically elected government. They think that people are too stupid to decide their own destiny.
But they’re not…
Monday, February 28, 2005
Treason and Sedition
“Connecting The Dots”
I would assume that if you are reading my blog that you probably read a least a few other alternative news sources and that you get the majority of your news from somewhere besides the ABC, CBS, NBC evening news programs, the Clinton News Network (CNN), or the front page of the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation (Journal and Constitution) newspaper.
But then again, maybe you don’t…
Well, I have some news for you…there is a revolution taking place in world politics!
The revolution I’m talking about is taking place in the Middle East, right now, and hardly a whisper about it is uttered in the main stream media. Oh yes, they (the main stream media) begrudgenly mention the individual events as they occur on a disjointed basis.
The problem is that no one bothers to “connect the dots” when it comes to the overall trend. You can attribute this quality reporting to the swarms of like-minded individuals with high levels of formal journalism education that lurk around the TV studios and newspaper offices around the country. They are so wrong, and they just can’t admit it.
Well, I’m here now intent on loaning you a pencil and seeing if I can help you connect the dots on the bigger picture of what’s actually going on in the world.
First, a little history lesson.
Remember when the USA elected a former actor to replace socialist dictator loving pacifist Jimmy Carter as our President in the early 1980’s?
Remember when Mr. Reagan proceeded to take Teddy Roosevelt’s ”Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick” international policy and massively increase the size of our country’s “Big Stick?”
Remember the words “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall?” Remember when that wall fell? Remember how within a few years the Soviet Union broke apart?
Remember how John Kerry and Ted Kennedy and the rest of the liberals voted against increasing the size of our big stick?
Remember how all of the Euroweenies, the pacifists, most Democrats, some Republicans, and misinformed tiny school children ran around in circles worrying about nuclear holocaust as a result of our confrontational policies?
Remember how the main stream media predicted doom and gloom and death and destruction AT EVERY SINGLE TWIST AND TURN AND WAS POSITIVE THAT RONALD REAGAN WAS LEADING US DOWN THE ROAD TO CERTAIN DESTRUCTION?
Well, we are still all here (most of us) aren’t we, and now the face of evil has changed from communist to Muslim.
Remember how, between 1992 and 2000, the “panty hose raider commander in chief” Bill Clinton cut the armed forces budget by $50 billion and reduced military personnel by a half million?
Remember how today the main stream media loves to bitch and complain about President Bush under staffing the Iraq war?
Remember Donald Rumsfield saying “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had?”
Remember that there is no wonder that our troop strengths could be questioned since Clinton reduced the armed forces from 1.8 million to 1.3 million over his two four year terms?
Remember how you never once heard the media mention Clinton’s culpability for our current levels of low troop strength?
You see, the much heralded “Balanced Budget” that occurred during the Clinton Administration came from the belief that, having defeated our communist enemies, that we could cut back on military spending and focus on poverty and homelessness in America.
We thought we could shift spending from the military so that we could pay more American’s more money just for being lazy, useless, dumb assed Americans. Republicans and Democrats in congress went along with the idea. Meanwhile Osama and Saddam and the Syrians and the Saudis and the Iranian Mullas were cooking up a few jumbo portions of “whoop ass” with our name on it.
But after our 9/11 wake up call, President Bush brought what was left of Reagan’s military strength to bear on Afghanistan and today women are voting and civil stability has returned to a savage tribal country. Quote the Main Stream media….silence (and crickets chirping…)
President Bush turned our high tech military might on Saddam’s Iraq, kicked the vaulted Republican guard’s asses, and fought our way through a couple of years of chicken shit pansy assed “insurgency” featuring every dune-goon-towel-head-self-described-Islamic-Jihad-Muslim “terrorist” “insurgent” to get to the January elections. Quote the Main Stream media….silence (between calls of invalidity and laments of low Suni Muslim turnout…)
Which brings us to the recent world events: A FEAR OF JESUS HAS ARRIVED IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND KOREA, AND PRESIDENT BUSH IS HIS RIGHT HAND MAN.
As a result, let’s look at where we are since the January Iraqi elections. First there is Syria. Syria has a bad case of “big brother” complex when it comes to Lebanon—which they have occupied since the mid 1980’s. Syria decides to deliver a little St Valentines day massacre earlier this month and take out billionaire Lebanonese politician businessman Rafik al-Hariri.
As a result of the assassination, and emboldened by the 180,00 US troops camping just south of their border in Iraq, the Lebanese people have finally grown themselves some gonads. Syria has come under intense domestic and international pressure to remove their 14,000 “Security forces” that have occupied Lebanon for the past 15 years.
Syria suddenly wants to start reforming their grasp on the country and the resulting threat to Israel is slowly slipping away as thousands of protesters defied a ban on public demonstrations in Beruit on Sunday. Quote the Main Stream media: “No relationship to events in Afghanistan and Iraq what so ever, right?”
Remember Lybia? Daffi Quadafi unexpectedly tossed his hands into the air and declaired that he wanted nothing to do with nuclear weapons (or other WMD's) and we didn't have to send a B-2 bomber down there to get the consession. Imagine that?
Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, municipal level elections were held earlier this month and now they are talking about actually allowing women to vote in upcoming elections. Local level elections are mostly eyewash and much more needs to be done, but it’s a good first step. Quote the Main Stream Media: “Don’t you think for one minute that the Iraqi elections have at least some remote influence in this matter? Naaaaaaaa…”
Next comes Egypt, where Hosni Mubaric has decided to allow opposition candidates on the ballot for the presidency, a title that he has held since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Imagine a presidential election with one name on the ballot and a yes/no vote as the only possible response. Mubaric has been winning by 90% in the past, but things are changing now? Quote the Main Stream Media: “Nothing to do with president Bush’s aggressive foreign policy, I suppose?”
Unfortunately the Palestinian situation is still up in the air, but as these events in the surrounding countries coalesce I expect things to stabilize even further in this area. What is plainly clear is that none of these chest pounding oil tycoons and Hitler wanna-be's are willing to see their countries blowing up through night vision goggles on CNN and FOX News and they definitely don't want to be pulled sweaty and unshaven from a concrete sewer and spirited off to interrogation in the media's beloved Abu Grab-ass prison.
Now regarding the Main Stream Media’s position in all of this. What a bunch of mindless, inept, morons. I can say this because of what they failed to learn during the Reagan successes in the 1980’s. They insist on ignoring the 500 pound gorilla in the room and act mystified when events occur that would be obvious to an 8th grader in a good quality private school. And all of us pajama clad Bloggers just won't play fair and let their past transgressions and oversights fade from memory.
Their infinite supply of support and comfort to our enemies is tantamount to Sedition and Treason, but I guess that most Americans don’t even know the meaning of those words any more.
I would assume that if you are reading my blog that you probably read a least a few other alternative news sources and that you get the majority of your news from somewhere besides the ABC, CBS, NBC evening news programs, the Clinton News Network (CNN), or the front page of the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation (Journal and Constitution) newspaper.
But then again, maybe you don’t…
Well, I have some news for you…there is a revolution taking place in world politics!
The revolution I’m talking about is taking place in the Middle East, right now, and hardly a whisper about it is uttered in the main stream media. Oh yes, they (the main stream media) begrudgenly mention the individual events as they occur on a disjointed basis.
The problem is that no one bothers to “connect the dots” when it comes to the overall trend. You can attribute this quality reporting to the swarms of like-minded individuals with high levels of formal journalism education that lurk around the TV studios and newspaper offices around the country. They are so wrong, and they just can’t admit it.
Well, I’m here now intent on loaning you a pencil and seeing if I can help you connect the dots on the bigger picture of what’s actually going on in the world.
First, a little history lesson.
Remember when the USA elected a former actor to replace socialist dictator loving pacifist Jimmy Carter as our President in the early 1980’s?
Remember when Mr. Reagan proceeded to take Teddy Roosevelt’s ”Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick” international policy and massively increase the size of our country’s “Big Stick?”
Remember the words “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall?” Remember when that wall fell? Remember how within a few years the Soviet Union broke apart?
Remember how John Kerry and Ted Kennedy and the rest of the liberals voted against increasing the size of our big stick?
Remember how all of the Euroweenies, the pacifists, most Democrats, some Republicans, and misinformed tiny school children ran around in circles worrying about nuclear holocaust as a result of our confrontational policies?
Remember how the main stream media predicted doom and gloom and death and destruction AT EVERY SINGLE TWIST AND TURN AND WAS POSITIVE THAT RONALD REAGAN WAS LEADING US DOWN THE ROAD TO CERTAIN DESTRUCTION?
Well, we are still all here (most of us) aren’t we, and now the face of evil has changed from communist to Muslim.
Remember how, between 1992 and 2000, the “panty hose raider commander in chief” Bill Clinton cut the armed forces budget by $50 billion and reduced military personnel by a half million?
Remember how today the main stream media loves to bitch and complain about President Bush under staffing the Iraq war?
Remember Donald Rumsfield saying “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had?”
Remember that there is no wonder that our troop strengths could be questioned since Clinton reduced the armed forces from 1.8 million to 1.3 million over his two four year terms?
Remember how you never once heard the media mention Clinton’s culpability for our current levels of low troop strength?
You see, the much heralded “Balanced Budget” that occurred during the Clinton Administration came from the belief that, having defeated our communist enemies, that we could cut back on military spending and focus on poverty and homelessness in America.
We thought we could shift spending from the military so that we could pay more American’s more money just for being lazy, useless, dumb assed Americans. Republicans and Democrats in congress went along with the idea. Meanwhile Osama and Saddam and the Syrians and the Saudis and the Iranian Mullas were cooking up a few jumbo portions of “whoop ass” with our name on it.
But after our 9/11 wake up call, President Bush brought what was left of Reagan’s military strength to bear on Afghanistan and today women are voting and civil stability has returned to a savage tribal country. Quote the Main Stream media….silence (and crickets chirping…)
President Bush turned our high tech military might on Saddam’s Iraq, kicked the vaulted Republican guard’s asses, and fought our way through a couple of years of chicken shit pansy assed “insurgency” featuring every dune-goon-towel-head-self-described-Islamic-Jihad-Muslim “terrorist” “insurgent” to get to the January elections. Quote the Main Stream media….silence (between calls of invalidity and laments of low Suni Muslim turnout…)
Which brings us to the recent world events: A FEAR OF JESUS HAS ARRIVED IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND KOREA, AND PRESIDENT BUSH IS HIS RIGHT HAND MAN.
As a result, let’s look at where we are since the January Iraqi elections. First there is Syria. Syria has a bad case of “big brother” complex when it comes to Lebanon—which they have occupied since the mid 1980’s. Syria decides to deliver a little St Valentines day massacre earlier this month and take out billionaire Lebanonese politician businessman Rafik al-Hariri.
As a result of the assassination, and emboldened by the 180,00 US troops camping just south of their border in Iraq, the Lebanese people have finally grown themselves some gonads. Syria has come under intense domestic and international pressure to remove their 14,000 “Security forces” that have occupied Lebanon for the past 15 years.
Syria suddenly wants to start reforming their grasp on the country and the resulting threat to Israel is slowly slipping away as thousands of protesters defied a ban on public demonstrations in Beruit on Sunday. Quote the Main Stream media: “No relationship to events in Afghanistan and Iraq what so ever, right?”
Remember Lybia? Daffi Quadafi unexpectedly tossed his hands into the air and declaired that he wanted nothing to do with nuclear weapons (or other WMD's) and we didn't have to send a B-2 bomber down there to get the consession. Imagine that?
Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, municipal level elections were held earlier this month and now they are talking about actually allowing women to vote in upcoming elections. Local level elections are mostly eyewash and much more needs to be done, but it’s a good first step. Quote the Main Stream Media: “Don’t you think for one minute that the Iraqi elections have at least some remote influence in this matter? Naaaaaaaa…”
Next comes Egypt, where Hosni Mubaric has decided to allow opposition candidates on the ballot for the presidency, a title that he has held since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Imagine a presidential election with one name on the ballot and a yes/no vote as the only possible response. Mubaric has been winning by 90% in the past, but things are changing now? Quote the Main Stream Media: “Nothing to do with president Bush’s aggressive foreign policy, I suppose?”
Unfortunately the Palestinian situation is still up in the air, but as these events in the surrounding countries coalesce I expect things to stabilize even further in this area. What is plainly clear is that none of these chest pounding oil tycoons and Hitler wanna-be's are willing to see their countries blowing up through night vision goggles on CNN and FOX News and they definitely don't want to be pulled sweaty and unshaven from a concrete sewer and spirited off to interrogation in the media's beloved Abu Grab-ass prison.
Now regarding the Main Stream Media’s position in all of this. What a bunch of mindless, inept, morons. I can say this because of what they failed to learn during the Reagan successes in the 1980’s. They insist on ignoring the 500 pound gorilla in the room and act mystified when events occur that would be obvious to an 8th grader in a good quality private school. And all of us pajama clad Bloggers just won't play fair and let their past transgressions and oversights fade from memory.
Their infinite supply of support and comfort to our enemies is tantamount to Sedition and Treason, but I guess that most Americans don’t even know the meaning of those words any more.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Seeing Black and White
In a world full of shades of grey
In the course of writing this blog, I rarely get reader comments. It’s discouraging because I really want to hear from my readers and I usually take the time to respond to those who do comment and thank them for reading. If the commenter happens to disagree with my opinions, rather than berate or name call I simply take the writer’s opinion in stride or respond with more facts and details if possible.
Which brings me to this recent comment referencing my earlier posting entitled Minds Full of Mush:
“Did you read the article closely, or just see an opportunity for your own mushy mind to start ranting?
the article says that most of the letters were supportive of the soldier. i guess the majority of the kids just decided to ignore all of the evil indoctrination, right?
you're a fool to believe the post so blindly.
those kids get their opinions from their parents. you basically admitted that you didn't listen to your teachers. why would these kids be so different?
btw, from a teacher's pov, why would you be proud to have tortured your teachers? that's pretty lame. if you support the usa, then you'd realize that people died for your right to a public education.
think through things before you start blabbing. what's a blog anyway except just another way for mminds full of mush to find a place to voice their opinions?”
Since the commenter chose to do so anonymously, I am taking the liberty to publicly respond since I can’t send them a personal private rebuttal. So here goes…
First things first. I must have struck a nerve with this individual, whom I would assume is a school teacher, because they open their comment by quoting my own “minds full of mush” back to me in reference to my own mental capabilities.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion so I will accept their assessment of my intellectual faculties although I believe that holding different political and social views does not automatically define someone’s intelligence.
Next they quote The New York Post article saying that “(m)ost of the 21 letters Jacobs provided to The Post mentioned some support for the armed forces, if not the Iraq war, and thanked him for his service. But nine of the students made clear their distaste for the president or the war.”
Doing a little math (and I didn’t have to use a calculator), nine of twenty one is 42.8%. Nearly half of the letters expressed distaste for President Bush or the war in Iraq. If you are a liberal I guess that you would say that more than half of the letters were positive. The commenter asserted that somehow my assumption that the teacher (or other teachers) had been spouting anti-war and anti-Bush propaganda in the classroom was refuted by 57.2% of the letters not containing similar references.
I would somewhat agree with the argument that the kids get their opinions from their parents. However, with all of the single parent homes in today’s society and in light of the fact that by the age of 12 most kids from such households have spent at least 1/3 of their lives in the hands of strangers at daycare and in government schools, and assuming that the average kid spends 1/3 of their time (8 hours) sleeping, the parents at best have equal time with the children as the other individuals entrusted with their care and education. Therefore, my assumption that the teacher(s) was the source of the mis-information written in the children’s letters is not entirely unfounded.
Next my commenter challenges my intelligence for blindly believing The New York Post. I guess as an option they are suggesting that I should believe everything written in the New York Times or the LA Times? This story has been widely covered in the Main Stream Media and Fox News has an even more damning set of excerpts. One kid stated that because Bush was re-elected “that only 50 or 100 (solders) will survive.”
Give me a break here plueasssss. It’s one thing to disagree on politicts, but it’s another thing entirely to basically tell a young solder that he is going to die and possibly that you hope that he dies because of his politicts.
Next my commenter says “think through things before you start blabbing. what's a blog anyway except just another way for mminds full of mush to find a place to voice their opinions?”
Let me tell you, I spend a great deal of time thinking things through when writing my blog. I sometimes do research for days if not weeks before I address some subjects like the The Fair Tax Plan Is Really Fair. I spend two to four hours each day reading news and commentary from both sides of the political spectrum. I cringed my way through four hours of National Public Radio yesterday at the behest of my fellow craftsmen on our theater set project for the Island Players.
The rant in question here did come off the cuff, however. And by the way, Mr./Miss. Commenter, this is MY BLOG and I can say whatever I want to say in it and you are welcome to stop back by and read my writing and make further comments. You are also welcome to never come back as, just like a TV has a channel button, your mouse has a couple of buttons and by correctly using them you never have to read anything from my “mind full of mush” in the future if you don’t want to.
And finally, there is this issue: “if you support the usa, then you'd realize that people died for your right to a public education.” Excuse me, but the Constitution of the United States does not contain wording saying that I have the right to “life, liberty, and to waste twelves years of my life in the watered down liberal propaganda machines that we call public education.”
Public education is not free. Property owners like myself pay dearly for other peoples kids to go to government schools. I don’t have children, but the tens of thousands of dollars I have paid in property taxes since 1985 when I bought my first house entitle me to comment on and worry about what is happening in our government schools.
And many times, your beloved “free public education” is not quality education. Yes there are some excellent teachers in public schools. Yes I had a few myself in my day. Unfortunately I can count the number on two hands. The rest were angry, mindless robots that couldn’t teach their way out of a wet paper bag. Between their ineptitude, the federal and State Government’s meddling with the curriculum, and inane rules and policies, I wasted two or three years of my life screwing around in my free public education because the program was set up to teach to the middle one third of the students and the gifted kids were left to waste time and become discipline problems. By discipline problem I don’t mean bringing guns and drugs to school either. I was a straight A student that was graded down to a B sometimes in retaliation for my behavior.
Here is my final point about the news story that I did not make in my first posting. The purpose of sending letters to solders overseas is ostemsibly to offer encouragement and support. The word censorship brings a grimmace and knee jerk reaction from most people, but the teacher should have "screened" the content of the letters and suggested at least toning the rhetoric of the 12 year old's down a little.
I say that if the teacher was not the source of the mis-information, he should have taken the time to address with the children their concerns about things like massive civilian casualties, destroying mosques, etc. After spending a few weeks reviewing the facts, perhaps the children would have been less inclined to make the acusations contained in the first round of letters. I wonder if my commenter believes that "Bush's armies" are actually targeting civilians and journalists and blowing up Mosques just for shits and grins?
There is a time and a place for political advocacy, but delivering the type of garbage that this teacher allowed to be mailed to a young solder (who happened to not even be serving in Iraq) is completely unacceptable and Democrats and Republicans and school teachers of all subjects should be equally outraged.
And by the way Mr./Miss. commenter...Y’all come back now…ya hear?
In the course of writing this blog, I rarely get reader comments. It’s discouraging because I really want to hear from my readers and I usually take the time to respond to those who do comment and thank them for reading. If the commenter happens to disagree with my opinions, rather than berate or name call I simply take the writer’s opinion in stride or respond with more facts and details if possible.
Which brings me to this recent comment referencing my earlier posting entitled Minds Full of Mush:
“Did you read the article closely, or just see an opportunity for your own mushy mind to start ranting?
the article says that most of the letters were supportive of the soldier. i guess the majority of the kids just decided to ignore all of the evil indoctrination, right?
you're a fool to believe the post so blindly.
those kids get their opinions from their parents. you basically admitted that you didn't listen to your teachers. why would these kids be so different?
btw, from a teacher's pov, why would you be proud to have tortured your teachers? that's pretty lame. if you support the usa, then you'd realize that people died for your right to a public education.
think through things before you start blabbing. what's a blog anyway except just another way for mminds full of mush to find a place to voice their opinions?”
Since the commenter chose to do so anonymously, I am taking the liberty to publicly respond since I can’t send them a personal private rebuttal. So here goes…
First things first. I must have struck a nerve with this individual, whom I would assume is a school teacher, because they open their comment by quoting my own “minds full of mush” back to me in reference to my own mental capabilities.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion so I will accept their assessment of my intellectual faculties although I believe that holding different political and social views does not automatically define someone’s intelligence.
Next they quote The New York Post article saying that “(m)ost of the 21 letters Jacobs provided to The Post mentioned some support for the armed forces, if not the Iraq war, and thanked him for his service. But nine of the students made clear their distaste for the president or the war.”
Doing a little math (and I didn’t have to use a calculator), nine of twenty one is 42.8%. Nearly half of the letters expressed distaste for President Bush or the war in Iraq. If you are a liberal I guess that you would say that more than half of the letters were positive. The commenter asserted that somehow my assumption that the teacher (or other teachers) had been spouting anti-war and anti-Bush propaganda in the classroom was refuted by 57.2% of the letters not containing similar references.
I would somewhat agree with the argument that the kids get their opinions from their parents. However, with all of the single parent homes in today’s society and in light of the fact that by the age of 12 most kids from such households have spent at least 1/3 of their lives in the hands of strangers at daycare and in government schools, and assuming that the average kid spends 1/3 of their time (8 hours) sleeping, the parents at best have equal time with the children as the other individuals entrusted with their care and education. Therefore, my assumption that the teacher(s) was the source of the mis-information written in the children’s letters is not entirely unfounded.
Next my commenter challenges my intelligence for blindly believing The New York Post. I guess as an option they are suggesting that I should believe everything written in the New York Times or the LA Times? This story has been widely covered in the Main Stream Media and Fox News has an even more damning set of excerpts. One kid stated that because Bush was re-elected “that only 50 or 100 (solders) will survive.”
Give me a break here plueasssss. It’s one thing to disagree on politicts, but it’s another thing entirely to basically tell a young solder that he is going to die and possibly that you hope that he dies because of his politicts.
Next my commenter says “think through things before you start blabbing. what's a blog anyway except just another way for mminds full of mush to find a place to voice their opinions?”
Let me tell you, I spend a great deal of time thinking things through when writing my blog. I sometimes do research for days if not weeks before I address some subjects like the The Fair Tax Plan Is Really Fair. I spend two to four hours each day reading news and commentary from both sides of the political spectrum. I cringed my way through four hours of National Public Radio yesterday at the behest of my fellow craftsmen on our theater set project for the Island Players.
The rant in question here did come off the cuff, however. And by the way, Mr./Miss. Commenter, this is MY BLOG and I can say whatever I want to say in it and you are welcome to stop back by and read my writing and make further comments. You are also welcome to never come back as, just like a TV has a channel button, your mouse has a couple of buttons and by correctly using them you never have to read anything from my “mind full of mush” in the future if you don’t want to.
And finally, there is this issue: “if you support the usa, then you'd realize that people died for your right to a public education.” Excuse me, but the Constitution of the United States does not contain wording saying that I have the right to “life, liberty, and to waste twelves years of my life in the watered down liberal propaganda machines that we call public education.”
Public education is not free. Property owners like myself pay dearly for other peoples kids to go to government schools. I don’t have children, but the tens of thousands of dollars I have paid in property taxes since 1985 when I bought my first house entitle me to comment on and worry about what is happening in our government schools.
And many times, your beloved “free public education” is not quality education. Yes there are some excellent teachers in public schools. Yes I had a few myself in my day. Unfortunately I can count the number on two hands. The rest were angry, mindless robots that couldn’t teach their way out of a wet paper bag. Between their ineptitude, the federal and State Government’s meddling with the curriculum, and inane rules and policies, I wasted two or three years of my life screwing around in my free public education because the program was set up to teach to the middle one third of the students and the gifted kids were left to waste time and become discipline problems. By discipline problem I don’t mean bringing guns and drugs to school either. I was a straight A student that was graded down to a B sometimes in retaliation for my behavior.
Here is my final point about the news story that I did not make in my first posting. The purpose of sending letters to solders overseas is ostemsibly to offer encouragement and support. The word censorship brings a grimmace and knee jerk reaction from most people, but the teacher should have "screened" the content of the letters and suggested at least toning the rhetoric of the 12 year old's down a little.
I say that if the teacher was not the source of the mis-information, he should have taken the time to address with the children their concerns about things like massive civilian casualties, destroying mosques, etc. After spending a few weeks reviewing the facts, perhaps the children would have been less inclined to make the acusations contained in the first round of letters. I wonder if my commenter believes that "Bush's armies" are actually targeting civilians and journalists and blowing up Mosques just for shits and grins?
There is a time and a place for political advocacy, but delivering the type of garbage that this teacher allowed to be mailed to a young solder (who happened to not even be serving in Iraq) is completely unacceptable and Democrats and Republicans and school teachers of all subjects should be equally outraged.
And by the way Mr./Miss. commenter...Y’all come back now…ya hear?
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Someone Call 911
To my way of thinking, much of the activities conducted in the name of “Law Enforcement” these days are much like shooting fish in a barrel. Don’t get me wrong here, the police and other authorities generally provide an acceptable level of civil security but, if you dig into the details, you will find a certain level of incompetence and indifference with regard to even the most basic crimes.
For instance, let me drive down Interstate 75 at 15 MPH over the speed limit and I will most certainly owe the local jurisdiction a hundred or so dollars in the form of a speeding fine. Lets face it, the police love to enforce traffic laws because it generally involves a fairly low level of personal risk and it generates a great deal of revenue.
Next comes crimes involving “moral turpitude.” Oh boy do the local cops enjoy these indescressions. Have a few too many drinks, smoke a joint, or hire a prostitute, and they are on you like white on rice. Again, I’m not promoting the abuse of alcohol, drugs, or risking acquiring a sexually transmitted disease here, but since these so called “crimes” generally involve abusing your own body or are committed among consenting adults, I believe that way to much of our law enforcement resources are devoted to preventing people from making poor personal decisions while the real criminals run unfettered through our communities.
I believe that too much money and time is spent on these areas of law enforcement because the police know that it is easy to nab the perpetrator in these instances and there is a large financial reward in pursuing the conviction for the government. If these same resources were instead focused on real crimes like burglary, assault, and theft, our society would be a much better, safer place. The bad news is that these types of crime take a lot more time and energy and yield very little in the way of financial return for the authorities
That really sucks, because practically every single time (with one exception) that I have been the victim of a crime involving person or property, the police have either acted like I am imposing on them by asking for their assistance or they refused to get involved without making my life very difficult.
In 1979 three of my friends and I had the misfortune of interrupting a robbery in progress in a Pizza Hut in Atlanta near Georgia Tech. Before the event was over with, one of the robbers had taken my money, my watch, and pistol whipped me with a cheep gun, breaking the barrel off of the weapon on the back of my thick skull. All of us escaped that evening with our lives, but I bled all over a leather jacket my father had given me from the 1950’s and I never heard another word from the police after filing the initial report at the scene.
In 1981 someone broke into my home in an Atlanta suburb. Besides damaging the door they entered through, the stole a variety of irreplaceable personal items like my class rings and other jewelry—things that were invaluable to me and netted them $10.37 at the local pawn shop. The police reluctantly responded but didn’t even bother to dust for fingerprints—they just filled out a form. I never heard from them again.
In 1992, while attending a Georgia Tech basketball game in downtown Atlanta, someone smashed the passenger side window of my S-10 Blazer and removed the CD player from the dash, ripped the lid off the center console, and stole my bag cell phone. Upon discovering the damage, I walked one hundred yards down the street and asked an Atlanta police officer who was stationed in the intersection directing traffic if, when he was finished with his traffic duties, he would kindly come over and fill our a police report and investigate the scene.
His response? They didn’t respond to auto break-ins unless there was personal injury or assault. I would have to drive four or five blocks to the police station and they would fill the report. Again the officers acted like we were putting them out and refused to even dust the car for fingerprints, even though I had made my ex-wife keep her panicking hands off of everything and ride in the back seat to the police station. Incompetent idiots they were, and I never heard another word from them.
In 1999 someone broke the drivers side rear window on my Suburban ($350 worth) and stole my portable telescope and a couple hundred dollars worth of CD’s. I phoned my report into the police and they again refused to bother to look for any evidence. Us mean old rich white guys just got to suck it up and get with the program I guess is their attitude—you ain’t got insurance to cover that?
On New Years evening, 2002, I was on the beach in Mexico Beach, Florida. Mexico Beach is one of the last areas in the world where you can ride a horse on the beach, walk your dog, have a bonfire, and legally shoot fireworks. Some friends and I were on the beach setting up some fireworks for the enjoyment of our fellow revelers in “The Lookout Lounge” where our evening festivities were being held.
I was out front setting up a couple hundred dollars worth of South Carolina “mortar tubes” which are the best-darned fireworks available anywhere. I mean near professional quality fireworks. My girl Pat and another couple we had just met that evening (Benji was an air force staff sergeant) were standing fifty feet behind me where they were setting up and firing some little bottle rockets.
I turned around to say something to them just in time to witness a teenager step out a passing group of young punks and proceed to start yelling and screaming and sucker punch Benji for no reason. I vaguely remember covering the fifty feet between the melee and myself in about two seconds and I did a flying tackle on the 150 pound offender with my 225 pound frame and he went down like a ton of bricks. His co-conspirators then preceded to beat the back of my head with their fists and delivered a couple of blows with a tequila bottle that fortunately did not break.
When the dust settled, the county sheriff hauled two of the three punks off to jail and Benji and I belatedly shot our fireworks and celebrated new years. In Atlanta, the cops would have hauled everyone to jail and let the judge sort it all out. The only thing that saved me was the large number of witnesses and the fact that I never threw a punch, I just tackled the guy. Hurray for good law enforcement , FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE.
This past Tuesday I was over in Brunswick running errands and I made my bi-weekly visit to check on some vacant rental property I own. The bad news is that someone had kicked in the side door on one of my units. The good news is there was nothing to steal inside and other than the door they didn’t cause any damage.
As usual, I called the police and as usual, they acted like i was imposing on them to actually expect them to attempt to enforce the laws. “It could be a couple of hours before we can get a unit out there” said the dispatcher. “Never mind,” I said. I drove back home, got my tools, went by Ace Hardware, and a couple of hours later I had the door repaired.
I have a little message for the police…
KISS MY GLUTEUS MAXIMUS!
For instance, let me drive down Interstate 75 at 15 MPH over the speed limit and I will most certainly owe the local jurisdiction a hundred or so dollars in the form of a speeding fine. Lets face it, the police love to enforce traffic laws because it generally involves a fairly low level of personal risk and it generates a great deal of revenue.
Next comes crimes involving “moral turpitude.” Oh boy do the local cops enjoy these indescressions. Have a few too many drinks, smoke a joint, or hire a prostitute, and they are on you like white on rice. Again, I’m not promoting the abuse of alcohol, drugs, or risking acquiring a sexually transmitted disease here, but since these so called “crimes” generally involve abusing your own body or are committed among consenting adults, I believe that way to much of our law enforcement resources are devoted to preventing people from making poor personal decisions while the real criminals run unfettered through our communities.
I believe that too much money and time is spent on these areas of law enforcement because the police know that it is easy to nab the perpetrator in these instances and there is a large financial reward in pursuing the conviction for the government. If these same resources were instead focused on real crimes like burglary, assault, and theft, our society would be a much better, safer place. The bad news is that these types of crime take a lot more time and energy and yield very little in the way of financial return for the authorities
That really sucks, because practically every single time (with one exception) that I have been the victim of a crime involving person or property, the police have either acted like I am imposing on them by asking for their assistance or they refused to get involved without making my life very difficult.
In 1979 three of my friends and I had the misfortune of interrupting a robbery in progress in a Pizza Hut in Atlanta near Georgia Tech. Before the event was over with, one of the robbers had taken my money, my watch, and pistol whipped me with a cheep gun, breaking the barrel off of the weapon on the back of my thick skull. All of us escaped that evening with our lives, but I bled all over a leather jacket my father had given me from the 1950’s and I never heard another word from the police after filing the initial report at the scene.
In 1981 someone broke into my home in an Atlanta suburb. Besides damaging the door they entered through, the stole a variety of irreplaceable personal items like my class rings and other jewelry—things that were invaluable to me and netted them $10.37 at the local pawn shop. The police reluctantly responded but didn’t even bother to dust for fingerprints—they just filled out a form. I never heard from them again.
In 1992, while attending a Georgia Tech basketball game in downtown Atlanta, someone smashed the passenger side window of my S-10 Blazer and removed the CD player from the dash, ripped the lid off the center console, and stole my bag cell phone. Upon discovering the damage, I walked one hundred yards down the street and asked an Atlanta police officer who was stationed in the intersection directing traffic if, when he was finished with his traffic duties, he would kindly come over and fill our a police report and investigate the scene.
His response? They didn’t respond to auto break-ins unless there was personal injury or assault. I would have to drive four or five blocks to the police station and they would fill the report. Again the officers acted like we were putting them out and refused to even dust the car for fingerprints, even though I had made my ex-wife keep her panicking hands off of everything and ride in the back seat to the police station. Incompetent idiots they were, and I never heard another word from them.
In 1999 someone broke the drivers side rear window on my Suburban ($350 worth) and stole my portable telescope and a couple hundred dollars worth of CD’s. I phoned my report into the police and they again refused to bother to look for any evidence. Us mean old rich white guys just got to suck it up and get with the program I guess is their attitude—you ain’t got insurance to cover that?
On New Years evening, 2002, I was on the beach in Mexico Beach, Florida. Mexico Beach is one of the last areas in the world where you can ride a horse on the beach, walk your dog, have a bonfire, and legally shoot fireworks. Some friends and I were on the beach setting up some fireworks for the enjoyment of our fellow revelers in “The Lookout Lounge” where our evening festivities were being held.
I was out front setting up a couple hundred dollars worth of South Carolina “mortar tubes” which are the best-darned fireworks available anywhere. I mean near professional quality fireworks. My girl Pat and another couple we had just met that evening (Benji was an air force staff sergeant) were standing fifty feet behind me where they were setting up and firing some little bottle rockets.
I turned around to say something to them just in time to witness a teenager step out a passing group of young punks and proceed to start yelling and screaming and sucker punch Benji for no reason. I vaguely remember covering the fifty feet between the melee and myself in about two seconds and I did a flying tackle on the 150 pound offender with my 225 pound frame and he went down like a ton of bricks. His co-conspirators then preceded to beat the back of my head with their fists and delivered a couple of blows with a tequila bottle that fortunately did not break.
When the dust settled, the county sheriff hauled two of the three punks off to jail and Benji and I belatedly shot our fireworks and celebrated new years. In Atlanta, the cops would have hauled everyone to jail and let the judge sort it all out. The only thing that saved me was the large number of witnesses and the fact that I never threw a punch, I just tackled the guy. Hurray for good law enforcement , FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE.
This past Tuesday I was over in Brunswick running errands and I made my bi-weekly visit to check on some vacant rental property I own. The bad news is that someone had kicked in the side door on one of my units. The good news is there was nothing to steal inside and other than the door they didn’t cause any damage.
As usual, I called the police and as usual, they acted like i was imposing on them to actually expect them to attempt to enforce the laws. “It could be a couple of hours before we can get a unit out there” said the dispatcher. “Never mind,” I said. I drove back home, got my tools, went by Ace Hardware, and a couple of hours later I had the door repaired.
I have a little message for the police…
KISS MY GLUTEUS MAXIMUS!
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
They Should Be (Ho)axed To Death
I was trying to force myself to turn the computer off and get some additional sleep, but then I came across this CNN story about someone impersonating a military officer making a false notification of a soldier’s death.. What a heartless hoax.
You heard me right. Some anti-war moron showed up, in a uniform, at the Savannah, Georgia home of the wife of an Army soldier deployed to Iraq and proceeded to tell her that her husband had been killed.
"Right off the bat, she noticed some things were not right," Whetstone said. "The individual's uniform wasn't correct -- there were no markings or name tags. Plus, the person was alone, and she knew one person does not make (death) notifications."
Fortunately, the Army has been briefing the families of deployed troops because there have been previous incidents of fake death notifications being delivered by telephone.
Forget using schoolchildren to write anti-war letters, this sinks to a new low. If they happen to catch someone that has the gall to attempt to hurt the family of a soldier by falsely reporting a death, that individual should be deported within 24 hours of conviction to the middle east or North Korea.
That will teach them…
You heard me right. Some anti-war moron showed up, in a uniform, at the Savannah, Georgia home of the wife of an Army soldier deployed to Iraq and proceeded to tell her that her husband had been killed.
"Right off the bat, she noticed some things were not right," Whetstone said. "The individual's uniform wasn't correct -- there were no markings or name tags. Plus, the person was alone, and she knew one person does not make (death) notifications."
Fortunately, the Army has been briefing the families of deployed troops because there have been previous incidents of fake death notifications being delivered by telephone.
Forget using schoolchildren to write anti-war letters, this sinks to a new low. If they happen to catch someone that has the gall to attempt to hurt the family of a soldier by falsely reporting a death, that individual should be deported within 24 hours of conviction to the middle east or North Korea.
That will teach them…
Minds Full Of Mush
I heard mention of this story on the talk radio shows yesterday, and my blogging acquaintance Kat over at CatHouse Chat made mention of it in her blog and provided a link to the story.
It seems that a bunch of Brooklyn middle school children were taking a “social studies” class and had a letter writing assignment that has caused a bit of a stir.
You remember “social studies,” don’t you? You know, the one-hour rest that your brain got to take between math class and science class? The class that, in retrospect, should have been called “multiculturalism” when I took it? Who really gives a damn about life on Fiji spent eating breadfruit and running around in a loincloth, with your private parts flapping in the breeze, while the mean old USA has aircraft carriers and submarines destroying the marine ecosystem on which your entire culture’s very existence has been based for the past five thousand years, you know?
I’m certain that things in “social studies” class have only gotten worse in the past thirty-five years since I took it.
I used to cause my “social studies” teachers’ heads to spin around at 3000 revolutions per minute, ultimately separating from their bodies and flying around the room while screaming my name. I nearly caused my fifth grade “social studies” teacher, Mrs. Williams, to have a cerebral hemorrhage several times. If there had been such a thing as speed dial in 1970, my mother’s phone number would have been at the top of the list.
Any way, back to the goings on at the Brooklyn middle school, JHS 51 William Alexander. Teacher Alex Kunhardt’s little angels had an assignment to write letters to soldiers overseas. So good so far.
But…Apparently Comrade Kunhardt had been doing a little political demogogging in front of the old chalkboard or something, because the writers of 9 of the 21 letters sent to 20 year old PFC Rob Jacobs serving in South Korea were, shall we say, a bit “mis-informed” or just down right “insensitive.”
“Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border.”
“That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive.”
"It's hard enough for soldiers to deal with being away from their families, they don't need to be getting letters like this," Jacobs, 20, said in a phone interview from his base at Camp Casey.
"If they don't have anything nice to say, they might as well not say anything at all."
And this rhetoric is coming to a kid serving his country overseas from children only a few years younger, sitting comfortably in the homes that Pfc Jacobs is defending.
“One Muslim boy wrote: "Even thoe [sic] you are risking your life for our country, have you seen how many civilians you or some other soldier killed?"
His letter, which was stamped with a smiley face, went on: "I know your [sic] trying to save our country and kill the terrorists but you are also destroying holy places like Mosques."”
Excuse me Severely Mis-informed Muslim Child, but why don’t you save up your vitriol and write to the Muslim “Insurgents” that want to use your holy Mosques as armories and insist on blowing up your own Muslim people as they go to worship? What about writing a little love note to complain to the terrorists that worked under Saddam to kill hundreds of thousands of your fellow Muslims?
“The JHS 51 teacher, Alex Kunhardt, did not return phone calls, but the school principal, Xavier Costello, responded with a statement:
"While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation."”
Well of course Alex Kunhardt isn’t going to face the music that his efforts in his “Social Studies” class have produced. Alex Kunhardt has no gonads. Alex Kunhardt uses children as a tool to express his own warped political beliefs. For all I know, Alex Kunhardt has his “Kunhardt” for his own young male students and it is just a matter of time until Alex’s “Kunhardt” gets his stupid ass put in prison.
And by the way, Principal Xavier, why is it that you have no trouble censoring the information provided to your students by your teachers, but you will allow anything that comes out of their young “minds full of mush” to be written down and sent to young solders overseas?
If one of Principal Xavier’s parent’s as a roaring alcoholic and died as a result, would he sanction his parent’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor standing up at the funeral and saying: “ we all loved ole’ Xavier Senior, but good God, the man was a useless womanizing drunkard.”
Sorry Xavier, but we would never censor…
It seems that a bunch of Brooklyn middle school children were taking a “social studies” class and had a letter writing assignment that has caused a bit of a stir.
You remember “social studies,” don’t you? You know, the one-hour rest that your brain got to take between math class and science class? The class that, in retrospect, should have been called “multiculturalism” when I took it? Who really gives a damn about life on Fiji spent eating breadfruit and running around in a loincloth, with your private parts flapping in the breeze, while the mean old USA has aircraft carriers and submarines destroying the marine ecosystem on which your entire culture’s very existence has been based for the past five thousand years, you know?
I’m certain that things in “social studies” class have only gotten worse in the past thirty-five years since I took it.
I used to cause my “social studies” teachers’ heads to spin around at 3000 revolutions per minute, ultimately separating from their bodies and flying around the room while screaming my name. I nearly caused my fifth grade “social studies” teacher, Mrs. Williams, to have a cerebral hemorrhage several times. If there had been such a thing as speed dial in 1970, my mother’s phone number would have been at the top of the list.
Any way, back to the goings on at the Brooklyn middle school, JHS 51 William Alexander. Teacher Alex Kunhardt’s little angels had an assignment to write letters to soldiers overseas. So good so far.
But…Apparently Comrade Kunhardt had been doing a little political demogogging in front of the old chalkboard or something, because the writers of 9 of the 21 letters sent to 20 year old PFC Rob Jacobs serving in South Korea were, shall we say, a bit “mis-informed” or just down right “insensitive.”
“Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border.”
“That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive.”
"It's hard enough for soldiers to deal with being away from their families, they don't need to be getting letters like this," Jacobs, 20, said in a phone interview from his base at Camp Casey.
"If they don't have anything nice to say, they might as well not say anything at all."
And this rhetoric is coming to a kid serving his country overseas from children only a few years younger, sitting comfortably in the homes that Pfc Jacobs is defending.
“One Muslim boy wrote: "Even thoe [sic] you are risking your life for our country, have you seen how many civilians you or some other soldier killed?"
His letter, which was stamped with a smiley face, went on: "I know your [sic] trying to save our country and kill the terrorists but you are also destroying holy places like Mosques."”
Excuse me Severely Mis-informed Muslim Child, but why don’t you save up your vitriol and write to the Muslim “Insurgents” that want to use your holy Mosques as armories and insist on blowing up your own Muslim people as they go to worship? What about writing a little love note to complain to the terrorists that worked under Saddam to kill hundreds of thousands of your fellow Muslims?
“The JHS 51 teacher, Alex Kunhardt, did not return phone calls, but the school principal, Xavier Costello, responded with a statement:
"While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation."”
Well of course Alex Kunhardt isn’t going to face the music that his efforts in his “Social Studies” class have produced. Alex Kunhardt has no gonads. Alex Kunhardt uses children as a tool to express his own warped political beliefs. For all I know, Alex Kunhardt has his “Kunhardt” for his own young male students and it is just a matter of time until Alex’s “Kunhardt” gets his stupid ass put in prison.
And by the way, Principal Xavier, why is it that you have no trouble censoring the information provided to your students by your teachers, but you will allow anything that comes out of their young “minds full of mush” to be written down and sent to young solders overseas?
If one of Principal Xavier’s parent’s as a roaring alcoholic and died as a result, would he sanction his parent’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor standing up at the funeral and saying: “ we all loved ole’ Xavier Senior, but good God, the man was a useless womanizing drunkard.”
Sorry Xavier, but we would never censor…
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Choose Your Weapon Carefully
You just can’t make stuff like this up, even if you were crazy.
It seems that Pennsylvania law enforcement officers shot some chainsaw wielding moron 13 times yesterday.
“ Henkle, 40, allegedly struck Trooper Michael Hartzel in the shoulder, lower back and buttocks with the saw. The trooper was treated for minor injuries at a hospital and released."
"Henkle called 911 early Monday and said he was having a heart attack, but when police and an ambulance arrived, he was outside the house with the chain saw running, said Capt. Kenneth Hill, commander of the state police barracks at Wyoming.”
I know that I often get confused trying to decide whether to spend my afternoon cutting firewood with my new Stihl Chainsaw as apposed to having a Myocardial Infarction.
“About 10 state and local officers formed a semicircle around Henkle and ordered him to drop the chain saw, but he revved the saw and refused to put it down, Hill said."
"Police said they used pepper spray, then fired when Henkle lunged at Hartzel.”
Needless to say Mr. Henkle a.k.a. ”Paul Bunyan” was killed in the process.
He obviously had been watching too many video games or “Conan the Barbarian” sword wielding movies to be stupid enough to take on ten guys with 9 mm pistols.
In a follow-up interview after being released from the hospital for treatment of his injuries, Trooper Hartzel reported that the big blue Ox “Babe” was quite a tasty feature at the Policeman’s Benevolent League cookout…..
Sorry…just kidding ;-)
It seems that Pennsylvania law enforcement officers shot some chainsaw wielding moron 13 times yesterday.
“
"Henkle called 911 early Monday and said he was having a heart attack, but when police and an ambulance arrived, he was outside the house with the chain saw running, said Capt. Kenneth Hill, commander of the state police barracks at Wyoming.”
I know that I often get confused trying to decide whether to spend my afternoon cutting firewood with my new Stihl Chainsaw as apposed to having a Myocardial Infarction.
“About 10 state and local officers formed a semicircle around Henkle and ordered him to drop the chain saw, but he revved the saw and refused to put it down, Hill said."
"Police said they used pepper spray, then fired when Henkle lunged at Hartzel.”
Needless to say Mr. Henkle a.k.a. ”Paul Bunyan” was killed in the process.
He obviously had been watching too many video games or “Conan the Barbarian” sword wielding movies to be stupid enough to take on ten guys with 9 mm pistols.
In a follow-up interview after being released from the hospital for treatment of his injuries, Trooper Hartzel reported that the big blue Ox “Babe” was quite a tasty feature at the Policeman’s Benevolent League cookout…..
Sorry…just kidding ;-)
Monday, February 21, 2005
California Washes Into The Pacific Ocean
I’m sitting here watching Fox News and just shaking my head at the stories about the hysteria and damage caused by a little rain (by Georgia standards) in Southern California. Some areas have recently gotten nearly 9" and people are waterskiing down the street behind Ford pickup trucks out there today.
Since California receives most of it’s rainfall in the winter months, it would seem that their busy-body government officials and their government “licensed” civil engineers would be getting a grip on designing modern storm sewers to handle rainwater runoff. The California governments are obviously too busy passing Greenspace laws and outlawing logging and leaf blowers to pay much attention to such trivial matters as rainwater runoff and the resulting flooding it can cause.
I don’t mean to be insensitive to the suffering of the citizens of the left coast, but com’ on people—think about the situation for a minute.
We here in the Southeastern United states are required to design the structure of our homes and offices based primarily on wind loadings. Here on St. Simons, that would be a 140 MPH hurricane wind loading. We can thank Hurricanes Andrew and Opal for awakening the powers that be to revise the code upward from 110 MPH in the past few years.
In the northern areas of the country like Wisconsin, a combination of wind loading and snow loading controls the cost of the building structure. The roof isn’t supposed to collapse under a couple of feet of snow. They base the design on historical records of snowfall.
In California, seismic (earthquake) loads dictate the sizes of the wood, concrete, and steel found in a building. The codes were all re-written in the past 20 years and a lot of buildings have been modified and stiffened up as a result.
Aside from structural loadings, what is the common denominator of design in all areas of the world?
LOCAL RAINFALL HISTORY, that’s what.
Just ask the people in Bangladesh about the Typhoon in November 1970 .
“The greatest tropical system disaster this century occurred in Bangladesh in November 1970. Winds coupled with a storm surge killed between 300,000- 500,000 people. These cyclones usually cause the most misery, loss of life, and suffering in low lying areas in Bangladesh and coastal India”
Anybody out there but me know about that storm which happened before the existence of CNN, FOX, and the Weather Channel? I haven’t it heard mentioned once since the tsunami, which everyone is being lead by the news to believe is the greatest natural disaster in modern times.
Well, it was not.
Now back to the situation in California. I guess I don’t completely fault the homeowners, but, being an engineer, I have to wonder what the hell is going through the heads of the planning boards and the civil engineers on the southern west coast.
Like us here in Georgia, can’t they just take a glance at their metrological records and predict that they are likely to get ten or twenty inches of rain in a matter of days—once every fifty or one hundred years?
Well, now they know, and it will be interesting to see what, if anything they do to remedy the situation in the future.
In 1990 it rained 16” within 24 hours in my mother’s back yard and the river breeched the levee and flooded the town of Elba, Alabama 16 feet deep. As a result of additional floods in 1994 and yet again in 1998, the US Army Corps of Engineers just complete rebuilding the levee around town based on the new flood data. They also forced some people to abandon their homes and not rebuild in unprotected flood prone areas.
By the way, my Grandfather had the good sense to move himself and our family out of town onto a farm on nearby high ground in the early 1930’s as a result of a similar flood in 1929. We haven't had any problems since. See, intelligence runs deeply in my family.
So I guess the people in California will just keep on enjoying earthquakes, aftershocks, brush fires, floods, and mudslides in return for having the right to be near Hollywood and eat all the tofu that their stomachs will hold.
Well, they can have my share too...
Since California receives most of it’s rainfall in the winter months, it would seem that their busy-body government officials and their government “licensed” civil engineers would be getting a grip on designing modern storm sewers to handle rainwater runoff. The California governments are obviously too busy passing Greenspace laws and outlawing logging and leaf blowers to pay much attention to such trivial matters as rainwater runoff and the resulting flooding it can cause.
I don’t mean to be insensitive to the suffering of the citizens of the left coast, but com’ on people—think about the situation for a minute.
We here in the Southeastern United states are required to design the structure of our homes and offices based primarily on wind loadings. Here on St. Simons, that would be a 140 MPH hurricane wind loading. We can thank Hurricanes Andrew and Opal for awakening the powers that be to revise the code upward from 110 MPH in the past few years.
In the northern areas of the country like Wisconsin, a combination of wind loading and snow loading controls the cost of the building structure. The roof isn’t supposed to collapse under a couple of feet of snow. They base the design on historical records of snowfall.
In California, seismic (earthquake) loads dictate the sizes of the wood, concrete, and steel found in a building. The codes were all re-written in the past 20 years and a lot of buildings have been modified and stiffened up as a result.
Aside from structural loadings, what is the common denominator of design in all areas of the world?
LOCAL RAINFALL HISTORY, that’s what.
Just ask the people in Bangladesh about the Typhoon in November 1970 .
“The greatest tropical system disaster this century occurred in Bangladesh in November 1970. Winds coupled with a storm surge killed between 300,000- 500,000 people. These cyclones usually cause the most misery, loss of life, and suffering in low lying areas in Bangladesh and coastal India”
Anybody out there but me know about that storm which happened before the existence of CNN, FOX, and the Weather Channel? I haven’t it heard mentioned once since the tsunami, which everyone is being lead by the news to believe is the greatest natural disaster in modern times.
Well, it was not.
Now back to the situation in California. I guess I don’t completely fault the homeowners, but, being an engineer, I have to wonder what the hell is going through the heads of the planning boards and the civil engineers on the southern west coast.
Like us here in Georgia, can’t they just take a glance at their metrological records and predict that they are likely to get ten or twenty inches of rain in a matter of days—once every fifty or one hundred years?
Well, now they know, and it will be interesting to see what, if anything they do to remedy the situation in the future.
In 1990 it rained 16” within 24 hours in my mother’s back yard and the river breeched the levee and flooded the town of Elba, Alabama 16 feet deep. As a result of additional floods in 1994 and yet again in 1998, the US Army Corps of Engineers just complete rebuilding the levee around town based on the new flood data. They also forced some people to abandon their homes and not rebuild in unprotected flood prone areas.
By the way, my Grandfather had the good sense to move himself and our family out of town onto a farm on nearby high ground in the early 1930’s as a result of a similar flood in 1929. We haven't had any problems since. See, intelligence runs deeply in my family.
So I guess the people in California will just keep on enjoying earthquakes, aftershocks, brush fires, floods, and mudslides in return for having the right to be near Hollywood and eat all the tofu that their stomachs will hold.
Well, they can have my share too...
NASCAR's Back And....
Rednecks Everywhere Are Happy
We made a point of watching the Daytona 500 yesterday afternoon. What an exciting (though marred by caution flags) finish. I think that the race set a record for the number of cautions with 12 total.
Darned old Jeff Gordon held off "Little E" (who is driving more like his dad every day,) much to Tony Stewart's chagrin.
The network did a great job of cutting to commercials at just the right time thereby causing the TV audience to miss both of the big wrecks live so they had to show everyone replays. Some people I know were probably busting a blood vessel over those broadcast mistakes.
Rather than republishing it, I direct your attention to my NASCAR Hype posting that I did last August. It was the third thing that I ever wrote for an online blog.
I'm now one hundred and forty three rants later, and still going strong.
We made a point of watching the Daytona 500 yesterday afternoon. What an exciting (though marred by caution flags) finish. I think that the race set a record for the number of cautions with 12 total.
Darned old Jeff Gordon held off "Little E" (who is driving more like his dad every day,) much to Tony Stewart's chagrin.
The network did a great job of cutting to commercials at just the right time thereby causing the TV audience to miss both of the big wrecks live so they had to show everyone replays. Some people I know were probably busting a blood vessel over those broadcast mistakes.
Rather than republishing it, I direct your attention to my NASCAR Hype posting that I did last August. It was the third thing that I ever wrote for an online blog.
I'm now one hundred and forty three rants later, and still going strong.
