If you are looking for a place to help the victims of Katrina, I suggest you donate to the Salvation Army:


http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/

(Please note the site is very slow to load because of volume. You can also locate your local Salavtion Army site by using search engines such as Google and Yahoo.)

The Army is looking for monetary donations at this time since it is far more efficient for them to buy what the victims need rather than compile a bunch of stuff given for hurricane relief. They are serving hot meals and providing all sorts of other relief in the effected areas.

There are some rumblings out there that Katrina was made more severe due to global warming. This coincides with general reporting in the media that global warming makes the incidence of hurricanes more frequent and more intense. I have generally dispensed with this notion but not done so precisely. Let me get a little more specific. Here are some comments by the most important hurricane scientists of our time:

• Dr. William Gray, the world's most famous hurrican scientist (in an interview given to Discover.com)
  

  
  Q: You don’t believe global warming is causing climate change?
  
  A: No. If it is, it is causing such a small part that it is negligible. I’m not disputing that there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and '40s, and then there was a slight global cooling from the middle '40s to the early '70s. And there has been warming since the middle '70s, especially in the last 10 years. But this is natural, due to ocean circulation changes and other factors. It is not human induced.
  
  Q: That must be a controversial position among hurricane researchers.
  
  A: Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical as hell about this whole global-warming thing. But no one asks us. If you don’t know anything about how the atmosphere functions, you will of course say, "Look, greenhouse gases are going up, the globe is warming, they must be related." Well, just because there are two associations, changing with the same sign, doesn't mean that one is causing the other.
  
  Q: With last year’s hurricane season so active, and this year’s looking like it will be, won’t people say it’s evidence of global warming?
  
  A: The Atlantic has had more of these storms in the least 10 years or so, but in other ocean basins, activity is slightly down. Why would that be so if this is climate change? The Atlantic is a special basin? The number of major storms in the Atlantic also went way down from the middle 1960s to the middle '90s, when greenhouse gases were going up.
  
  Q: Why is there scientific support for the idea?
  
  A: So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more. Now that the cold war is over, we have to generate a common enemy to support science, and what better common enemy for the globe than greenhouse gases?
  

  
  
  
• Dr. Max Mayfield, Director, U.S. National Hurricane Center (in a paper published on Colorado State's web site)
  

  
  "Many individuals have queried whether the unprecedented landfall of four destructive hurricanes in a seven-week period during August-September 2004 is related in any way to human-induced climate changes. There is no evidence that this is the case. If global warming were the cause of the increase in United States hurricane landfalls in 2004 and the overall increase in Atlantic basin major hurricane activity of the past ten years (1995-2004), one would expect to see an increase in tropical cyclone activity in the other storm basins as well (ie., West Pacific, East Pacific, Indian Ocean, etc.). This has not occurred. When tropical cyclones worldwide are summed, there has actually been a slight decrease since 1995. In addition, it has been well-documented that the measured global warming of about 0.5 degrees Celsius during the 25-year period of 1970-1994 was accompanied by a downturn in Atlantic basin hurricane activity over this quarter-century period."
  

  
  
  
• Dr. Chris Landsea, Research Meteorologist, Hurricane Research Division
  Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory NOAA (in a letter explaining why he was leaving the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).)
  

  
  "I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record."
  

  
  

I could go on and on ad nauseum with this stuff. There is nearly a limitless supply of top hurricane scientists in this country who have stated consistently for years that to date no connection between global warming and hurricane frequency or intensity. I don't know if I can possibly be any more clear than I have been. It would be a trivial matter for someone with the proper financial resources to publish a complete book of all the comments reputable hurricane scientists have made declaring the lack of a connection. Still the media acts as if the weight of science proves otherwise.

It is clear that reasonable people can have differences of opinion on a variety of topics. But when one segment of the population (the news media) completely ignores the weight of existing reputable science and continues to inflame the public on such a hot-button issue, the only conclusion one can rationally reach is that the segment is deliberately lying for some hidden reason. And finding a hot-button issue about which that segment is completely wrong and deliberately lying, one can only reasonably conclude that the source can no longer be trusted to report on any related topics. In other words, it is entirely unreasonable for the average American citizen to claim to have any knowledge on the subject of global warming when the source of that knowledge is the popular media.

There are a lot of news reports coming out of the storm ravaged southern coast. It is extremely difficult to know what is true and what is not. There is apparently looting going on but it is not clear what the extent of this is. I just read a report that prison inmates are rioting and taking hostages in the process. There have been comments that no single person or agency is in charge of determining priorities with respect to the deployment of assets. It sounds as if anarchy has broken out. As I said I cannot tell fact from fiction but I do think now is the time to restore absolute control over the situation. When things get really bad like they seem to be in these areas, it is time to establish martial law. If the situation is not anarchic, none of what I have to say is relevant.

If there is no single person or agency in charge of the situation, President Bush must step forward and establish one that is in control of all others. This is only necessary in times of crisis but if this situation is now in crisis mode, it is an absolutely necessary first step. People react differently to difficult times. They will follow a leader when one is firmly established. There is much work to be done and it is simply insufficient to throw a bunch of resources at a problem. Somebody has to make the tough decisions and coordinate efforts.

If looting is going on and is extensive, a very tough policy must be established. If somehow a nuclear bomb were to go off in this country (the current situation does not seem to be far removed from that), I would hope our government would shoot to kill looters and others who were acting in a manner which promoted anarchy. I realize this is callous and perhaps a bit dictatorial but we simply cannot allow chaos to rule the day when there is a disaster. I understand that fathers are going to steal food for their babies. But grown men and women cannot be allowed to simply steal everything in sight because there is a disaster. To do so creates anarchy we simply cannot tolerate because it harms so many other people. I'm not interested in protecting the property of others at this point. I'm really after order. We must establish order even if it means killing some of those who are panicking and in so doing promoting disorder.

This country has some great capabilities in terms of physical and human assets. We do not need the military or national guard to accomplish lots of productive things. But we do need to have a centralized prioritization of asset utilization in order to work efficiently. I'm not talking about a strong central government in all aspects of our lives. I am speaking of controlling a chaotic situation. You just cannot have everyone at once trying to close the breech in levies using different means. One group must function as the brains.

We will get past this disaster as a nation. It is just too big to do so as a combination of moving parts. It occurs to me that this is a very important exercise for this country. If terrorists ever succeed in what they hope to accomplish here, we are going to need the lessons learned over the coming months to help us get through that. We need to do things right for Louisiana and the rest of the gulf coast. Now is the time for strong leadership.

There is an editorial in the New York Times (registration required) today which speaks of the need for legal protections for bloggers. The piece begins by discussing a person who was in the middle of changing jobs when both her current and future employers discovered she was blogging. The future employer rescinded its job offer and the current one fired her. The author notes that the unemployed blogger was not writing anything about her employers or even her job. She goes on to note that blogging provides social benefits which should be considered. The piece concludes by saying that maybe bloggers should have special protections under the law. At first I thought this notion was stupid but after considering what exactly is going on here, I'm not so sure.

Employers have the right to control what you do while you are on the clock. That gets a little tricky if you are salaried but, in any event, they can control you when you are at your place of work or while you are actually working in your given capacity. They also have the right to prevent you from doing anything harmful to the company. You cannot divulge trade secrets or do any number of things which might harm morale or even company efficiency. Employers' power is far greater than anyone supposes because they can fire you for just about anything. You can be fired for being too tall or too short, for being overweight or, presumably, underweight, for smoking or drinking (both and and off the job), you can be fired for not dressing a certain way, because your boss or your co-workers don't like you, and just about anything else. But even this is limited by certain sensibilities our society has. You cannot be fired because you belong to a given ethnic group, because you are handicapped in almost any way, or because you are gay. You cannot be fired because during your vacation you chose to stand side by side with peace protesters or attended one of the political conventions. Yet somehow blogging crosses the line into what is not protected.

The whole concept of blogging needs a little discussion here. A blog is pretty much a piece of software which allows you to write stuff, edit it, and post it to a web site. It is not conceptually different from MS Word or any other word processing software program except in as much as it has the added tool of being able to accomplish file transfer onto a web server. When Geocities broke onto the scene, it consisted of free web server space and programs which allowed you to design a web site. Blogs are kind of like this except that they require far less technological savvy and provide a much more refined finished product.

The spectrum of web sites designed on Geocities was and continues to be fairly broad. There were sites about the site owner's favorite breed of dog or bird, obsession with vampires or quicksand, family history or history in general, or choice of career. Blogging is not necessarily different except that with greater frequency more people are blogging than were creating web sites on Geocities. Also, because there are more people doing it, there is growth in areas such as people doing amateur news reporting and publishing stuff about their jobs. Businesses worry that their employees will achieve broad audiences on their blogs and then do something detrimental to the company. But is it reasonable for employers to simply demand that none of their employees have a blog?

We have a right to free speech in this country but that right ends at the doorstep of our employers. We cannot complain about the environment or someone's politics in the workplace. We are supposed to limit our activities to those things which pertain to our job while we are working. If a person vehemently espouses an unpopular political position in the middle of a business meeting, that is unquestionably grounds for dismissal since it does not pertain to doing one's job. But our right to free speech is magically again bestowed upon us as we leave the workplace. I don't see how blogging is really any different.

If blogging did not exist, employees' web sites would eventually be the issue. But if the web didn't exist, would we allow employers to control what was written and disseminated via home printing presses - those $100 printers sold by the millions? Theoretically, if the web did not exist employees could print up a couple thousand flyers saying "working for X company stinks because ..." and then distribute them at key commuting points for potential workers. The employer would never be able to figure out who distributed the flyers. They are able to figure out who bloggers are mostly by accident although the identities of bloggers are ultimately susceptible to "outing" by anyone who is a reasonably good detective.

I suppose the trick here is that an employee owes an allegiance to his or her employer and should never do anything which is directly or indirectly damaging to them. Beyond that, a company should not be able to control the actions, outside the workplace, of any human being. The employer should not be able to do anything which the government cannot except as it has an impact on the workplace. As such the burden of proving that a given hobby does have an impact on the workplace or the individual's ability to perform the job function should rest squarely on the shoulders of the employer. Dismissal by an automobile manufacturer on the grounds of blogging when the blog is about poodle grooming or breeding crosses the line of what is reasonable.

Like every other technological innovation, the internet has created more questions than anyone including our legal system can quickly answer. Blogging is no more than any other development on the web. Eventually our legal system will catch up with what is going on today even if it is then behind the times with respect to additional subsequent innovations. The author of the Times op/ed piece is calling for laws which protect bloggers from being terminated by their employers. At the very least we need to have some clear lines of when an employer can and cannot enter our personal lives after hours.

The Financial Times is reporting that more Americans than ever are without some form of healthcare coverage. They are citing the actual numbers of Americans, as opposed to the overall percentage. Based on population data from the US Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans without coverage is actually less than it was in 1998.

I've said before on this blog that the number of Americans without healthcare coverage is meaningless, unless these Americans were denied healthcare itself. As it stands now, no American is denied healthcare service. Anyone who cannot afford healthcare is offered coverage through a State's Medicaid program, and every state has one.

Moreover, every hospital emergency room is required by law to treat people, without discrimination due to their ability or inability to pay. And, each physician in the USA has taken an oath to treat anyone who has a need for healthcare, despite their financial circumstances.

The issue of children without healthcare coverage is often played up by media because it sells copies, and is played up by the liberals, because plays into their hands of "big-brother government". But any physician faced with a child in imminent threat of danger, will glady drop what they're doing to help that child. I know of no physicians who will send a child away.

The state of healthcare we're in today is thanks to our federal government for having screwed up the marketplace for healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid has made it so affordable for Americans to seek treatment, that they abuse it. They seek healthcare for things that don't require immediate attention. This causes the demand to go up. And anytime demand goes up, costs go up.

Hence, the solution is to reduce demand, by taking away "free healthcare". This will cause the cost of healthcare to drop, making it more affordable for people to see a doctor, and even afford their own healthcare insurance.

Ted Rall, the man who lives to hate, is now worried that we as humans, are destined to be forgotten, blaming digital media.

His argument is that paper at least can be read, even if it degrades, while CDs, DVDs, and hard disks, eventually fail completely.

But even paper is useless, unless someone takes the time to record history. Thus, history is not preserved on its media, but preserved by those who seek to preserve it.

Let's not be stupid. We know that digital information can be copied from one hard drive to another, or from a tape to a DVD, or a DVD to the next technological breakthrough in recordable media. The USENET postings, which are considered by many to be first application of the Internet, dating as far back as May 11, 1981, has been transferred from one media to another many times over, and has since been replicated many times over as well.

Weblogs, the latest craze in web publishing, is causing more history to be recorded than ever before. Each person who writes a weblog is effectively recording history, and recording opinions, as they happen each day. And those blog postings are being replicated across multiple blog aggregators.

Yes digital media itself eventually degrades. But those who seek to preserve it will ensure it remains preserved. Just like those seek to preserve paper, does so as well.

So in the end, if any history is lost, its not because of the media, but because of choice.

Here's one blog you can use to follow the situation in the ravaged areas:

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

I'll post more as I see them.

There's no question that the news media has been doing a "bang up" job of covering Hurricane Katrina. Reporters from every major outlet are in the field finding and reporting stories of those who have lost property, been injured and even died. It is nice for these folks to have something to chew on besides the essentially boring political garbage they have been covering for the past many months. But in doing this reporting of a terrible national disaster, they just can't seem to help themselves. They simply must take pot shots at Bush in the process.

Today AFP reported that "Katrina will not be a unique event" due to global warming. In other words, global warming is partly to blame for the severity of damage caused by a storm that was exponentially weaker than some other storms in that area. Reputable hurricane scientists have put forth the notion that hurricane frequency and severity is more tied to salinity than it is to global mean temperatures. Salinity has been going up in recent years as part of a normal cycle. Just about every reputable hurricane scientist has been saying for several decades that we were in a lull period which would undoubtedly be followed by a much stormier period. We are now most likely in that period. There's nothing more on that angle. And global warming should not even enter the discourse unless someone wants to have their credibility called into question.

During the day yesterday I heard some reporters (the ones anchoring shows - not those in the field) claiming that somehow we had dodged a bullet because the storm veered off to the east of New Orleans. As it turned out, New Orleans and other places in the vicinity were in no way spared by the storm. Damage is obviously widespread and extreme. It is a catastrophe. I wish some of these folks would hold their tongues at least until the true extent of damage could be ascertained. It is bad karma to exclaim that "we really dodged a bullet" this time. I'm not so superstitious as to believe they somehow caused damage by stating that it wasn;t so bad. I just wish they'd observe a little discretion.

Also, there have been a number of really stupid things said by certain people who should know better. Chris Mathews was interviewing some guy from that area and referred to the gulf coast as "red neck Riviera." Is that really called for? Is this a reiteration of what liberals said after the presidential elections? Somehow those states who voted for Bush are the ones those states which voted for Kerry always have to help out? I live in a liberal state. I don't feel that way. The term red neck is almost as derogatory as liberal panzy. So all I can think of to say is "Hey Mathews and all you candy assed liberal panzies, shut up unless you can think of something constructive to say." At times like these, we really need you to learn how to keep your mouths shut.

Finally, any number of comments and news articles took a moment out to claim that somehow our National Guard units are understaffed due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is patently obvious this is not the case. In the states affected there are tens of thousands of National Guardsman ready to help out. If you count in units for other states, there are too many National Guardsman for the functions they would fill. Most such units will not be deployed.

Difficult times often show people as they really are. These are extremely difficult times. Those folks in the media who don't have good things to say should take extreme care what they do say. Their comments are all being recorded so that when their credibility is on the line, say in the next elections, we'll have plenty to ask them about.

Thought I'd just keep you all abreast of what the peaceniks in Crawford are up to. Here's their most recent e-mailing:

Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans
Against the War and Veterans for Peace are closing up headquarters in
Crawford (although they are still having some fun and making some great
things happen meanwhile - David Rovics is there right now playing for them!)
and setting out on a bus tour to D.C. to follow Bush back to the White House
until he speaks to Cindy THERE!

The first stop on the tour is AUSTIN!

So, come on out Wednesday in support of the military families and to send
off the bus on it's tour in style. Despite what you may have read online at
this point (or in the Chronicle), the rally will actually begin at 5:00 pm
at the Capital sidewalk at 11th St., with Cindy and the bus crew arriving
around 5:15pm so we can march to City Hall for a rally, starting around
+/-6pm. Details are in the works for various aspects of the event, not the
least of which is addressing the issue of the differing times put out there,
but it's coming along well, if very very late---forgive us, events in
Crawford have overwhelmed and in some cases, literally incapacitated us -
preventing our timely attention to the first tour stop.

5:15 - BUS ARRIVES AT CAPITAL, 11th and Congress
5:40 - MARCH to CITY HALL, Cesar Chavez and Guadalupe
6:00 - RALLY
7:00 - VIGIL

So--more details are forthcoming, but look forward to meeting Cindy, all the
military families and vets camping and touring with her and a lively march,
some heartwrenching speeches and a vigil following as dusk (and I imagine
TAPS) closes our ceremony.

Dick Underhill of Veterans for Peace will be the master of ceremonies;
former diplomat Ann Wright is sure to say a few words; Jim Hightower will
introduce Cindy and some fine poetry and song and comaraderie will surely be
worked in.

Please join us and spread the word.
Thanks, from a whole host of fabulous, but very tired and very dedicated
anti-war activists!

I've been saying this for a while so I figured I'd give you the official word. The reason for the slump at our nation's movie theatres is .... the movies suck.

According to a survey of internet chat rooms and message boards conducted by Brandimensions and reported by Reuters, people are staying away from the movies because of the low "quality of the movies themselves."

Is this a surprise to anyone not associated with the motion picture industry? What are the causes? Who is to blame?

In my humble but learned opinion, the reduction in quality of films available is due to a general malaise being experienced by the writers, directors and actors who make the films. These folks expended a great deal of psychic energy in the most recent Presidential elections in an effort to defeat the conservative movement. And after the election they continued to complain to anyone who would listen about the Republican party's hold on our nation's government. Sean Penn went so far as to move himself to Iran. Robert Redford and others complained that they might have to move to Canada. Some enterprising stars took up a new hobby - liberal radio commentator. Whatever these elite individuals did, they spent little energy working on their next entertainment ventures. They got burned out and pessimistic when their efforts went for naught. The result has been a rather small and low quality selection of films for the general public to view.

In short, it's Bush's fault.

Whenever a derogatory term enters the popular discourse, it is necessary to examine the explicit and implicit meanings intended and decide for ourselves whether they constitute a truthful representation. One of the more recent entrants is the term "McMansion" which can be defined as a big house (like a mansion) but cheap (like McDonalds food) in relative terms and having negative impacts on nature and community. By big house what is commonly meant is space from around 2,500 or 3,000 square feet to around 4,000. Cheap really depends on where in the country you are talking about but generally refers to what someone not (or not yet) in the "executive ranks" can afford. This typically includes middle management, two earner blue collar families, or young families of the upwardly mobil. A fair representation is any buyer who is south of the upper middle income bracket. "Negative impacts on nature" is hard to define as it is as nuanced as any liberal position on any issue. Similarly, "negative impact on community" is a complex comment. "McMansion" is a term having many and varied layers of meaning which generally say far more about its purveyors than they do about those who would purchase such a home.

Homes and neighborhood are as complex as anything in America. A given price level yields a tremendous range of housing products across this vast land. $400,000 will get you a cardboard box and 100 square feet in some of the lesser neighborhoods of Manhattan or a 3,000 square foot "McMansion" on a half acre or more in some less "desirable," less urban and less urbane locations. The realtors' mantra of "location, location, location" explains some of the extreme price differentials between seemingly similar neighborhoods. But "location" pure and simple is only part of the equation. Real people look at a variety of elements which comprise "location" when they make housing decisions.

The notion of home size is an interesting study of its own. Frequently one can see the "best" neighborhoods consisting of communities and towns where there is no more land for development. These towns have relatively smaller lots and homes but the income levels of residents are far above those of surrounding communities. They are close to such amenities as urban professional and executive job markets, "artistic and cultural centers," and certain other components the wealthy feel are necessary for urbane living. Commonly they are near the places where real mansions owned by genuinely wealthy people are located. A better neighborhood might be adjacent to another town with identical buildings and circumstances but if one inquires why homes in one community are 40% or more greater than those in the "better neighborhood," one is often told that if "you don't know the difference, I can't help you." In every broader housing market there exist these "better neighborhoods" which a mid-level executive, couple of teachers, or young family can not even hope to attain without sticking with lunches of peanut butter and jelly on Wonder bread and dinners out at Applebees (choosing the cheaper items on the menu) maybe once each month. As a result, a large portion of would-be home buyers don't even look at these neighborhoods.

When home buyers make the decision to eschew the "better neighborhoods," they begin looking around at all the available alternatives to "executive living." More often than not they find existing homes in established neighborhoods which are decent but somewhat older, smaller and requiring a lot of fixes. Even these may chase the typical young family who may not have enough time after work to get acquainted with Home Depot or Lowes. So they look outwards from there and grit their teeth over the expected commute. More and more frequently they discover old small towns which have lots of land where new home builders are busy slapping up 2,500 - 3,000 sf. center hall colonials or similar buildings (depending on where you are in the country). Once a potential buyer contemplates the given level of deprivation expected with the home buying event, one quickly measures the differences between surviving in 1,500 sf. of used space with no closets, in need of major repair now or in the foreseeable future, and enjoying 3,000 sf. of brand spanking new space including his and her walk-in closets which needs only the cosmetic, decorating finer touches. Other things being equal more and newer space always seems better.

One of the first elements of almost any home buying decision is the quality of local schools. If you've got kids, you want to know that local schools can help turn them into the sort of adults you hope they become. Even if you don't have kids, you would prefer to know that most of those young whippersnappers are more interested in extra-curricular activities for their college resume than they are in taking your car for a joyride or stringing up your pet cat. The quality of local public schools gives you an idea of the quality of a neighborhood.

The schools in the new "McMansion" neighborhoods are not generally as good as their counterparts in the "better" neighborhoods or those adjacent thereto. But beneath this "better school" layer there is a phenomenon which occurs with greater and greater frequency. When large numbers of this kind of buyer move into an area of newly minted "McMansions," the schools magically begin improving rapidly because the student component comes from homes which will not tolerate substandard academic performance nor setting of the school bar too low. "We didn't mortgage our future so you could slack off or learn easier subject!" So the school element of "other things being equal" begins to equalize with the "better" neighborhoods.

The cultural elements of the "better" neighborhoods are often pretentious attempts at mirroring the big city. And these aspects of life are often available to those in the outlands when and if they need them via a relatively short car ride. I can think of one neighborhood with very expensive, not very big homes which sees itself as within a stone's throw of the local cultural center. The would-be artists in this center are not very talented but somehow they get by. The cultured residents of the "better" neighborhoods think of these artists as their very own but are noticing the owners of not very distant "McMansions" are patronizing the same institutions with greater frequency and shoving the well to do out of the way in the process. This causes some of the animus between upper middle America and others which may have part of the blame for the birth of the term "McMansion" to begin with. These are the "negative impacts on community" many complain about.

"Negative impact on nature" is perhaps the last front in the battle against "McMansions." We are reminded of urban sprawl almost daily and there is some truth to the notion. If you extrapolate the current rate of growth in home building, eventually every square inch of land in this nation will be filled with housing and industry. But that's not a reasonable expectation as there are efforts in densely populated areas to make sure that this does not happen. Often communities which are growing rapidly set aside space for forests, wetlands and other natural habitat. Also, whereas deer, foxes, coyotes and other wildlife do not prowl the city streets of densely populated areas, they can often beeen seen in the McMansion neighborhoods with their half or full acre lots. Housing can pose some stresses on local wildlife but not nearly the impact cities and densely packed neighborhoods of 5,000 sf. lots do. In short, wildlife can actually flourish in the "McMansion" neighborhoods.

The neo-conservationists are not finished with the "negative impact on nature" argument once the wildlife myth is exposed. They continue the onslaught by waving the global warming flag. Obviously a 3,000 sf. home requires more carbon spewing power than a 1,500 sf. one, doesn't it? Not always! Often a circa 1950 1,500 sf. dwelling is so energy inefficient when compared to a newer 3,000 sf. one that it can takes more power to heat and cool. Those making the global warming argument often need to put their copious dollars where their mouths are and seal up their own neighborhoods to compete with the energy efficiency of the newer "McMansion."

I guess it is time to figure out where exactly I'm going with this piece! I don't want to color myself an advocate of the "McMansion" but on the other hand I simply want to question why we need to have such a vitriolic term in our society's discourse. I believe the foundations of the term are close cousins to the notion of "nouveau riche" of bygone times. The upper levels of management and income simply do not want anyone living better than themselves on lesser incomes. They do not like having their local cultural centers filled with lower management, blue collar workers, teachers, and the like. They have filled their lives with notions of grandeur even if they personally cannot afford the real mansions located down the street. They'll do just about anything to maintain their own superiority. And advocating a simple term like "McMansion" makes themselves feel better about having settled for a small space in a cluttered place.

Today, the "Grand Old Portal" was launched, a human-edited search engine of Republican-friendly websites. Claiming to help people find the "right" websites, I decided to run a search for our blog, "political dogs". Unfortunately, we didn't show up on the results.

Upon reviewing their criteria for inclusion into their website, it clearly says that...

To have your site listed in the Grand Old Portal your site must be clearly marked as a republican website. We will not approve any websites that do not support the Republican Party.

Political Dogs, however, doesn't blindly support the Republican Party, in that we don't give the GOP any blank checks. It seems however, that the Grand Old Portal does.

It looks like Bill O'Reilly was right, even the Republicans have Kool-Aid drinkers!

Best of luck to you all. It's obvious this is going to be a bad one even if it isn't as strong as Camille. Please be safe. I know of at least one who is riding this out. May God protect you.

LLWS final score: Hawaii 7 Curacao 6 in extra innings. The kids from Curacao were outstanding but the kids from Hawaii came back, never giving up and tied it in the 6th with an incredible rally. Then in the 7th inning the pitcher from Hawaii through the ball the equivalent of major league baseball 100 mph! The adrenaline flowing through his veins was almost something you could feel through the TV set.

We previously posted a piece about how a father of one of the kids on the team from Hawaii had quit his job in order to see his son compete in this world series. At the regional, the father held a sign saying "Shorty this was worth it." I wonder how he feels now!

Congratulations to Hawaii ... and Curacao.

500 human beings are killed by elephants each year. There are about 1 million African elephants on the planet. There are something like 20 million Iraqis on the planet. Of this number, some are "insurgents" or terrorists and many are not. Those Iraqis who are insurgents kill almost double the number of human beings elephants do. It is important to note that not all Iraqis are insurgents. But it is also important to note that not all elephants kill humans. On a "per capita" basis, Elephants are a far more dangerous group than are the Iraqi insurgents.

It is also noteworthy in comparing elephants and Iraqi insurgents, elephants who have killed a human are far more dangerous than those who haven't. Most often an elephant which has "tasted blood" must be destroyed because there is no way to make it safe again.

I lost a friend today.

I just learned that my next door neighbor is getting divorced. I didn't hear it from him, I heard it from another neighbor. I don't know the circumstances, perhaps it doesn't matter. But I don't think I'll be seeing him around anymore.

In the past few years we've gotten to know each other, I found him to be a good friend. He and I were quite different people, but there was something we shared in common that led us to become friends. It's hard to find good friends.

Interstingly, while he was growing up his parents divorced too. He ended up mixing up with the wrong set of friends, dropped out of high school, and started doing drugs. But he later straighted himself out, acquired an Associates Degree in college, and entered the Navy where he still serves today. He's already completed two tours of duty in Iraq.

He could have just settled himself as a burden on society, either on public assistance, or in prison. But he took responsibility for himself, and turned his life completely around, and accomplished the "American Dream".

But seemingly overnight, it all disintegrated.

The real tragedy, however, is with his son. "I want to grow up to be just like my Dad", is what he told me once. I remember that because it struck a familiar chord with me.

My Dad was in the Navy too, and my parents divorced when I was seven. Before all that happened, he used to take me to the Naval Base in San Diego to show me the ships. I remember him taking me aboard his ship and introducing me to his fellow sailors. He showed me the guns, explained what the other guys were doing, the mess deck, his bunk bed, the whole tour. I remember him telling me about his travels overseas, the time he spent in Vietnam, and how he got each of the stripes and pins on his uniform. And I remember thinking how I wanted to grow up to be like him.

But after my parents divorced, I kinda lost sight of all that.

My mom remarried when I was ten, but my new step-father didn't really want to be my father, and we never bonded. He wanted to have his own son, which happened only a year later. My father remarried as well and ended up with a new son too. The way I saw it, both my mother and father each ended up with new families, and I felt like I had lost everything.

A boy needs a father to take him by the hand, and inspire him, and guide him, and show him how to become a man. A single mother simply cannot do that. A woman only knows what kind of man she prefers; she doesn't know to raise a boy into the man he needs to be. A mother cannot remarry and expect her new husband to bond with her son.

Perhaps my neighbor and I understood each other because we grew up facing the same kinds of problems. All I can do now is shake my head in sorrow that another marriage failed, and another son has to go through the same childhood. It seems a phenomenon that's become the norm now. To me, it's still a tragedy.

People used to say, "California, here I come!".
Now they say, "California, how come?"

- Red Skelton

Bill Lockyer, the State Attorney General in California, is suing several fast-food chains and potato-chip makers because they don't put warning labels on their packaging that eating french fries or potato-chip may cause cancer.

The subject is on acrylamide, a chemical that naturally occurs when potatoes are deep fried in oil.

How long have people been eating deep fried potatoes?

Before I ask my question, let me say that I mean absolutely no disrespect to those who have given their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan. I also mean no disrespect to the families of these brave souls who gave their lives in the cause.

My question is where are we storing the 48,000 plus body bags we have not used yet? If you recall at the outset of the war in Iraq, several members of Congress indicated that we would need 50,000 body bags for the early stages of the war. That was a couple years ago. Thus far we have used something like 1,900 of these. But 48,000 some odd bags takes up a lot of space. So I'm wondering where we have them stored.

I suppose I also wonder what the protesters would have said if we had suffered even 2% of those projected casualties in the first month or two. Would their anger have been as strong as it is now? Does body count have any bearing on the strength of peaceniks' venom? Do the circumstances of any war have any impact? Must the devil be knocking directly at our door before any sort of violence is justified? For example, during World War II, while the Nazis were enslaving, torturing, and killing the Untermenschen (jews, slavs, and others), if they posed no direct threat to the land mass of the United States, why should we ever engage them in battle? Japan obviously attacked our territory but after the initial surprise attack, they might very well have left us alone. They were, after all, working to enslave people on mainland Asia. They might not have been interested in capturing the U.S. So fighting them must be immoral too.

Last night I watched former Secretary of Defense (under Democrats Kennedy and Johnson), Robert McNamara who declared that the U.S. should only act militarily in a unilateral fashion when the 50 states are directly threatened. Besides the fact that McNamara was a thoughtful and erudite speaker, I found his statements about unilateral military action to be almost as wrong as his approach to Vietnam. Under his theory, we would never have engaged Japan even after Pearl Harbor because they did not present any sort of invasion threat. Similarly, we would have allowed Italy and Germany to capture all the middle eastern oil producing nations since they were not then and are not now a part of the 50 states.

The current breed of peaceniks seems to take the same approach as McNamara. Many Democrats do as well. In McNamara's case I suppose you can write this off as a sort of PTSD that leaders are subject to. If you send a bunch of people off to their death following a policy which you later conclude is absolutely wrong, presumably you carry too much guilt for a single person. That is how McNamara strikes me. And the fact that the current liberal peaceniks sound so similar combined with the fact that it was liberals who led us into Vietnam, I suppose maybe we should be kind enough to shuffle these broken people off to a corner where they can receive treatment while the real business of protecting the U.S. takes place.

More than 3,000 pro-Bush, anti-Cindy protesters will converge on Crawford Texas today. Meanwhile hundreds are expected to hold a somber Saturday ceremony honoring soldiers in Iraq.

We need your help to get out the peace message. If you are a militant Islamic fundamentalist, if you believe Saddam is the rightful leader of Iraq who has been illegally arrested, if you think Iraq was right to invade Kuwait, if you think the Taliban was a kind and benevolent government who had the best interests of the Afghan people in mind, if you believe "Palestinians" have a right to all the land Israel currently occupies, if you think the Jews should be pushed into the sea, the Crawford Peace House needs your help. We need you to be out there to improve our numbers and counter the huge throngs of pro-Bush supporters who will arrive at Crawford's football stadium today. We need you because we want to convince the American people that there is weight behind our movement. Please check in at the Crawford Peace House and please, please, please leave the militant placards at home. We don't want anyone to know what we are really up to.

Tonight while catching a baseball game, I saw the first of what may be a large number of TV commercials made by candidates for mayor of New York City. The only thing I could think of, while trying to figure out who the particular guy on the commercial was, was is it possible that anyone will put up a good fight against mayor Bloomberg? I mean to ask, is it possible that New Yorkers lack intelligence to such a degree that they would elect someone else to the position?

I'm no Bloomberg fan. I don't live in the city and I no longer work there. The guy is not a conservative or even slightly right of center. I have no vested interest in the guy being re-elected. I just cannot see it possible that anyone would be so monumentally stupid as to not see the kind of job he has done.

Then again anything is possible in New York.

In Britain, protests are springing up to complain about the deportation of Iraqi nationals in the country illegally. I think we should protest in this country too. Why should we not be deporting people who are here illegally? What basis in law is there for not deporting illegals?

US prosecutors are set to protest the sentencing of an admitted Islamic terrorist caught with a bomb in his car on the way to blow up LAX. The convicted terrorist received a sentence which will run until 17 years from now when he'll get out of jail (if he doesn't get off early for good behavior!) at the ripe old age of 55. The U.S. Western District Judge John Coughenour who sentenced him added that he believed the sentence reflected "the fairness and transparency of the U.S. justice system."

You see, this is the problem. We have become so obsessed with "civil rights" and "fairness" that we have sewn the seeds of our own destruction. This judge is off his rocker. He has put one man's "fairness" ahead of the rest of our safety. May he one day suffer the fate he has bestowed upon the rest of us.

This begins a series of pieces in which the Crawford Peace House's activities will be examined in order to understand exactly what is going on in Crawford Texas this year.


June 8, 2003

Crawford Peace House decided to target August for protesting in town since Bush would be on vacation there at that time. It only took them 2 years to find Cindy Sheehan to help promote the event! Remeber the big protests in 2003 & 2004?

Hadi agreed to lead interfaith silent worship every 2nd Sunday of each month. Hadi is Hadi Jawad, a pro-Saddam Iraqi national. (For fun google "Hadi Jawad al qaeda" and see what pops up)

June 12, 2003

The new webmaster for the organization's site decided "It is my opinion that members should not be listed on a web page." No reasons for hiding the membership were given.

August 13, 2003

Calendar reminder sent out a reminder for an event they had planned but there were problems as follows:

"Since planning this, we have learned that there are two other anti-war events planned for the same day, that many of us will also join--if you are already going, please join us! In conjunction with Veterans for Peace and several other vets groups, we are launching a national campaign to Bring Them Home Now, believing that the continued occupation of Iraq by US troops leads only to perpetual violence and disruption for both Iraqis and our soldiers. Please visit our campaign website for more information, www.bringthemhomenow.org, and our Military Families Speak Out site, www.mfso.org."

Oct 21, 2004

One member of the group notes that in only 12 more days we will have a new President of the US.

May 4, 2005

The group plans an event to honor Gene Stoltzfus who traveled to Iraq before the first Iraq war. Remember that one? That was the war where we defeated an invading army who had victimized their neighbor - Iraq was then a little uninterested in peace as a way of life.

Anyway, this has gotten too long. There' plenty for you to do so go get busy!

Want to know who these peace organizations standing shoulder to shoulder with Cindy Sheehan really are? Check out their web sites. No don't go right to their sites, those have been cleansed of their historical advocation of the Palestinian and other Islamic fundamentalist, terrorist organizations. You just need a little creativity and a time machine to view these as they have been in the past. Luckily for you there is such a time machine in general circulation. It's called the "way back machine." And here are some valuable links to the way back record for some of these sites:

United For Peace: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.unitedforpeace.org/

Coalition for World Peace: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.coalitionforworldpeace.org/

Crawford Peace House: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.crawfordpeacehouse.org/

If you peruse through these sites you will undoubtedly discover that a very large number of people associated with the peace groups in this country are Iraqi nationals who supported Saddam, Taliban collaborators, and those who support Palestinian bombers and al Qaeda.

In short, the peaceniks are not former hippies who just want to give peace a chance. Rather, they are operatives of Muslim fundamental radicals. Interesting isn't it? Why has the press not investigated this and blown the cover off of it?

While you are surfing around on these sites, make sure you sign up for their mailing lists so you can stay abreast of their strategies and inform your friends and relatives about this fraud. The newsies cannot be counted on to properly explore this.

Today, while researching something unrelated, I cane across an advertisement for aclu.tv which is a site dedicated to the ultimate overturning of the Patriot Act sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU sees the Patriot Act as using the attacks of September 11 to steal all that is good about America. They are committed to fight tooth and nail to bring it down one piece at a time, if they must, or all at once, if they can. The ACLU would have us believe that the country is not worth saving if its citizens do not have these inalienable civil rights they so adamantly defend. But one is left wondering what good civil rights will do any of us if we have been murdered by terrorists.

I have been a bit surprised by the causes of the ACLU over the past 10 or 20 years. As a child I thought civil liberties were a primary motivating force behind the American Revolutionary War and the ACLU stood as a defender of all that was good and wholesome in our country. I never really paid all that much attention to the organization's causes until recently when I observed them coming to the defense of pedophiles and detainees in the war on terror. The ACLU imbued those enemies taken from the battlefield with constitutional rights our nation's founders gave their lives to establish. The detainees sided with a theocracy which saw civil rights as a luxury only the corrupted west would engage in.

The ACLU sees and promotes civil rights as existing in a vacuum, separate and apart, indeed superior, to other aspects of life. They see and promote civil rights as if these afterthoughts to the origination of our country were actually the founding principles. They take what was second fiddle and try to pretend it was primary.

Last night I had the opportunity to find nothing useful on the tube. So I surfed until something caught my attention. I suppose I have surfed past C-SPAN 3 millions of times, never bothering to stop because the kind of history they broadcast appeared to be of the most boring type, simple lectures by scholars which must be far too theoretical to hold my attention. I was quite wrong.

The show I caught was a "dry lecture" by two experts on the mindset of people at the time of the Revolutionary War and just after it. The two researchers had looked into the way the people of the time viewed certain concepts such as those about "self-governance" and "personal freedom." By viewing auto-biographies of persons who lived at the time and by examining dictionary definitions of important terms, these scholars concluded that the people who formed this country had views which do not comport with those of today's ACLU. They saw "self-government" as an acknowledgement that the people of the colonies were able to exert self-control in order to live peacefully within a society. Personal responsibility was the founding principle which made democracy a possibility. They did not seek "personal freedom" so as to allow an individual to do whatever they want. Rather, they saw democracy as a possibility precisely because their experiences told them that human beings could exercise self-control and thereby live in a society which governed itself.

The colonies had originally been allowed to to develop with a high degree of self-determination because it was logistically impossible for the England and its government to keep tabs on what was going on there. The colonists were in large measure left on their own to figure out how to live in a society. Instead of becoming a "wild west" of murder, theft, and corruption, the society forged by these original pioneers became rather orderly. The towns, communities and states which developed had protections and rights for their citizens never even dreamed of by the established governments of Europe. Ideas about local government were formed long before a single shot was fired and new generations grew up only knowing the form of government which was prevalent in the colonies. Then England tried to bring the colonies back into the fold and benefit from the economic prosperity found here. Large portions of the colonial population had never known real rule by England and as such they rebelled in order to keep that which they had always known.

Civil rights were certainly evident in the colonies but they did not exist in a sort of vacuum of absolutes. Citizens who committed crimes were treated harshly. Absolute freedom outside of societal duty and communal norms was never even contemplated. After the war for freedom, framers of our constitution were eminently aware of the pitfalls of anarchy and similarly aware of the pitfalls of an overbearing central government that was too large to be in touch with the people. But they were not overly concerned that the new government they were forming would seek to control people at the local level. They believed self-governance (governance of one's individual self) would be the principle under which people would protect each other's rights while still established acceptable norms of behavior. Their primary motivations for limiting the central government was to provide the latitude by which the states and local communities could establish and apply local standards of behavior. They were not limiting the federal government in order to provide individuals with inalienable civil rights. They were limiting the federal government because states were well qualified to deal with these issues.

Today we hear so-called "liberals" and members of the ACLU speak as if this nation was founded on principles under which the individual was free to do as he or she wished no matter how extreme a particular behavior might be. We hear these folks speak as if the founders of this country wanted weak government at all levels and therefore created principles of personal freedom at the federal level so these absolute freedoms, existing in a vacuum, would trickle down from the master plan - the umbrella of the federal government. That is just not the case.

A primary purpose behind the establishment of a federal government recognized that the several colonies could not stand by themselves for defense purposes. The very war for freedom had taught the colonists that there was a need to band together for the common good - the defeat of those who did not want this newly formed nation to stand. They established a federal government specifically as the means by which the states could accomplish together what they could not alone - primarily defense against foreign powers. In forging this central government they also recognized that it was no simple task. They would have to forge principles under which the states could co-exist in a manner so as not to hurt the union. They were forced to enter some fairly complicated areas having to do with the freedom of the individual even if their concept of the individual presupposed a modicum of local control over behavior. This is why, while our founding documents contain complex concepts, they are remarkably brief. But they never presupposed the individual as primary, the individual's personal freedoms as superior to all other considerations. This is simply a lie the ACLU and some liberals would like us to believe.

Our freedoms in this country are many. But the first freedom enunciated by our founding documents is the freedom to life itself. The terrorist declared war against our country and society is a direct threat to that freedom. And if the central government cannot provide that freedom, all others are moot. The ACLU in its war against the Bush administration and the Patriot Act has forgotten its history and is now engaging in a direct attack against the prima facie civil liberty upon which all others are based.

I stumbled across the website of these two guys, Kent and Kyle Healy, 21 and 19 respectively, who recently co-authored a new book entitled, "Cool Stuff They Should Teach In School".

The book is not a commentary, it's more of a personal-enrichment book, teaching people the skills that our schools don't bother to teach. You know, the stuff you need to know to survive.

Isn't that an oxymoron?

Why don't our schools teach kids the "people-skills" they need to know to get ahead in life? Why don't they teach practical skills like handling your money, managing credit, Stock Market 101, etc.?

Wouldn't you agree that the stuff you had to learn in high school you never really use today, like Algebra, Chemistry, English Literature? I'm not saying to kill these classes, but make them optional for the students who plan to major in subjects that require such higher learning. Instead, let our schools teach the basic fundamentals of math, reading, writing, history, biology, and health. Then by the time kids hit high-school, teach them how to survive the next 60 years of their lives in the real world.

Personally, I think they should make things like Personal Finance, Business, and People Skills, all required courses. There should be classes on Safe Driving Skills, Turning Ideas into Money, Investing Your Money, and stuff like that. I also feel they should require a course on "thinking". I'm not sure how we'd go about teaching kids to "think", but let's suffice it to say that schools right now don't teach them to think; they merely require them to memorize facts and processes out of text-books.

In any case, I think requiring these types of courses at the high-school level will go a long ways towards creating responsible adults, fewer bankruptcies, greater self-esteem, more entrpreneurs, and less government dependence. This may even result in our government having to spend less tax dollars in the long run, you think?

Prologue:

A few months ago Dave and I got together for a business trip in Nashville, and we did a tour the Jack Daniel Distillery in nearby Lynchburg. As part of the presentation, it was noted that Jack Daniel was only 13 years old when he took ownership of the distillery, back in 1863. He moved the distillery to a new location, hired men, and travelled around the country selling his product, before he even grew out of puberty.

Moreover, when Jack was younger, he was adopted by a married couple who were 14 and 16 years old respectively, and they happened to be one of the wealthiest couples in Moore County, TN.

Take a look at the 13, 14, and 16 year olds today, and tell me that we Americans are still just as tough. Of course, people were tougher back then out of necessity. But I think the point is clear that we as a People today, are satisfied to depend on government for our needs.

Liberals have found a cause they can get behind. They are against the conservative tendency to ridicule Cindy Sheehan. According to liberals, Cindy is just a grieving mom who has "tapped into" the feeling a majority of Americans share - opposition to the war. The only problem is Cindy Sheehan offered to take her son to Canada in order to avoid going to Iraq. She also offered to run him over with her car so he could be too injured to go to war. This is the position with which liberals are aligning themselves!

Has anyone bothered to tell Cindy that there is currently no draft so had she taken her son to Canada, he would not have found a community of like-minded draft dodgers? Why is it that Cindy cannot get it through her head that her kid volunteered for the service? Why does she not come face to face with the fact that her son voluntarily re-upped after the war started? Why does the left not understand that they should not align themselves with someone protesting the draft when there is no draft?

Does the left lack the courage to complete a job already started? I know they would like us to never question their patriotism and conviction in the war on terror but they are coming to the defense of a woman who thinks the action in Afghanistan was wrong. This is guilt by association but they are coming to her defense which means they must to some degree agree with her.

That's the message the Associated Press would like to get across. The AP currently has a story about a family that has been harassed following the errant identification of their address as being associated with an alleged terrorist. The errant report was broadcast on Fox News. Fox News. The AP notes that the folks harassing this innocent family spelled terrorist as "terrist." In case you miss the meaning, what they are saying is conservatives (obviously the only people who would watch Fox) are so stupid that they spell words like this incorrectly.

This kind of thing seems to be a new war on Fox News. Fox has been ridiculed by leftist media organizations since it hit the scene. But this seems to be more of a direct war against Fox. Kind of laughable, don't you think?

These are our partners in the war on terror - the Italians. They are a weak nation which cannot be trusted in a difficult war. Today there are reports that an Italian aid agency hid Iraqi insurgents as a trade to get their two hostages back. In other words the Italians are willing to negotiate with terrorists. They are too weak to stay the course. We should let them out of their responsibilities and let them fly by themselves. Then years from now when they become the object of a terrorist attack and need our help we should tell them we do not help nations which support Muslim fundamentalist terrorists.

Did you read the news today? Did you see all the interviews of people who lost sons and daughters in Iraq or Afghanistan and yet still stand in support of George Bush and the efforts in Iraq? Or the analysis of how Cindy Sheehan is a simpleton who hasn't got a clue about how, from where and by whom we were attacked on September 11? Or the several stories about how the military exceeded all recruiting goals this year? Did you see the coverage of all the good things going on over there in Iraq and Afghanistan? The schools, hospitals, etc. being built? What about the discussion about how the Chinese believe global warming is due to solar activity? Did you see anything about "Able Danger" or how the Sep 11 Panel failed to even explore what happened? Did the coverage about Iran's nuclear plans shock you? Did you read the op/eds about the "International Freedom Center" and the protest against it? Did you see the article covering Jane Fonda's tour around the country to protest every war the United States has ever fought in, including the Revolutionary thing? What about the heavy analytical pieces discussing the motivations and ultimate goals of Islamic fundamentalists? Did you read that article exposing the reasons sovereign countries are funding the insurgency in Iraq in order to continue to control the region so they can hold onto their oil money, push Israel into the sea, and ultimately continue to be the center of the universe for Islamic Theocracy as a world dominating ideology?

You missed all that? It wasn't there? I suppose you are right, the news is not covering the news. The humungous, gigantic, institutional news monsters are not giving us any reason to tune them in or buy their papers because they just are not covering the news. They pick and choose everything they lay before you and I, and in so doing continue to demonstrate their complete bias.

I flipped through CNN the other night and saw Aaron Brown interviewing some guy I never heard of who was described as a conservative radio commentator who had been removed from the air because of something he said which I didn't catch. Brown gave the guy a short leash to spout his particular version of events which I guess I also missed. As Brown said good night to the man, he smirked and wished him well - the not very hidden message was conservatives are stupid, raving maniacs. He then went on to discuss Pat Robertson's ravings? Are we to believe this was the most important news of the day? Brown's show is supposed to be a recap of the most important stories of the day with slightly different take on things because his sources are there on the ground reporting the real news.

And though the news was rather sad, I just had to laugh.

Perhaps the only thing surprising about Pat Robertson's request to assassinate Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez is that he backed off and tried to explain himself.

"I said our special forces could take him out. Take him out could be a number of things including kidnapping," Robertson said on his "The 700 Club" television program.

"There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted," Robertson added.

Puleeeeze Pat! We know what you meant.

But don't take me wrong on this. I support Pat's right to free speech, so long as he's willing to accept the consequences. But now that he's trying to rephrase himself, it looks he didn't.

How many of us here have never expressed the desire to see another figure head assassinated? Like Osama bin Laden? Kim Jeung Il? Adolph Hitler?

If it's ok for the rest of us to say stuff like this to other people, then why was it wrong for Pat Robertson to say something similar about another iron-fisted dictator? If Pat Robertson is guilty of anything, it's being honest about his feelings.

Furthermore, Pat Robertson is known for saying quirky and hard-hitting statements. Let's not lose sight of who we're dealing with here.

For the rest of the world denouncing Pat Robertson, keep in mind that he's just a religious leader like any other. In Iraq and Iran, there are Mullahs who publicly call for their faithful to spill the blood of their enemies. Folks there are probably seeing Pat Robertson as an American Mullah.

So should we Americans claim to hold higher standards and ethics than people in other parts of the world?

Are you kidding? The fact is that each and everyone of us Americans desire the same the thing that Pat Robertson desires, the assassination of dictators that seek to undermine us. Let's not kid ourselves.

A Chinese study purports to coordinate global warming "trends" with solar activity. The study finds direct correlation between the amount of energy output by the sun and our temperatures. Put another way, 1 billion Chinese officially do not believ in anthropogenic causes of global warming and I doubt anything published in U.S. media will ever change their minds.

Cindy Sheehan stated on little watched MSNBC that she would not feel differently had her son been killed in Afghanistan. She notes that the people we were after in Afghanistan were al qaeda not the country of Afghanistan itself. In other words, we are against these individuals who hold a certain ideology and since an ideology cannot be a country, we shouldn't have gone there. She says we are obviously having little success in Afghanistan because we still have not captured Osama bin Laden. Nobody bothered to explain anything about the history of Afghanistan or of the ideology of the Taliban to her.

This is the person who wants to speak to the President of the United States to instruct him on how to conduct the war on terror. This is the person liberals are clinging to as demonstrative of the way the American people should be thinking. I understand that not everyone can be educated on history, political and religious ideology, international affairs, etc. but this woman has been made an icon of the peace-loving left.

Can someone please put their arm around the grieving mom and escort her from the public stage. She really needs some help understanding her son's death. Please, please, please stop using her. This is a mom who has lost her son and is in terrible pain as a result. Nobody in the media should be interviewing her. Nobody who doesn't have her personal best interests at heart should be permitted to be near her. She's too fragile to be used as a puching bag. Have a little mercy, please.

Tucked away in the section of my local newspaper which I seldom read is a Gannett New Service article written by Kathy Shayna Shocket entitled "Divorce is now thread in fabric of U.S. lifestyles." The piece lists a number of celebrities who have been married multiple times and says "statistics show almost half of those who marry split." The piece even notes that John Kerry was a Roman Catholic who was divorced. The gist of the thing is to say that the stigma of divorce is waning.

It is one thing to say that half of all marriages end in divorce and quite another to say that half of all people who get married get divorced. This may seem to be a trivial numbers game but if half of all people who get divorced at least once do so twice, that converts to just a 37% rate for all people who ever get married. Said another way, if a large percentage of people who get divorced once remarry and then get divorced again and again, they form an ever growing portion of total divorces.

To use celebrities as the gauge of whether or not divorce has a negative stigma as this author has done is almost silly. Celebrities have for as long as I can remember viewed marriage as similar to what junior high scholers used to call "going out with" or "going steady." Movie stars have for a very long time switched partners as easily as they have outfits for the Academy Awards. I no more try to emulate the marital habits of Tom Cruise than I do try to emulate other aspects of his life. There is no question that far too many ordinary people in this nation do try to emulate movie stars who happen to live lives these people can in no way even hope to emulate. It is a sad fact but something I certainly do not want to convey to my children or anyone else's children.

In case the author didn't notice John Kerry did not win the most recent campaign he ran. I'm pretty sure this was not due to his being divorced even as much as it may have been related to his choice of a second mate! But the author notes that Kerry is a divorced Catholic. That is actually not possible in any real sense. One must obtain an annulment if one wants to continue receiving sacraments within the Roman Catholic church. Many people do this for just that reason and I could go on for hours about just that but it isn't the point of this editorial. I suppose you can continue to go to a Roman Catholic church and shove a host in your mouth or drink the wine but this is, to a believer, a fraud before God. You are simply not receiving a sacrament because the church does not permit it.

The stigma of divorce may be waning in this country. So are good manners, work ethics, self-control, honesty, persistence, morality, etc., etc. This author has chosen to hail the changing marriage ethic which may eventually erode our society because she thinks "marriage is stupid" or for whatever reason she has. But the fact of the matter is "stigma" frequently attaches to things which are truly negative in an absolute sense. Situational ethicists may scoff at the notion of judging anyone else's behavior. And one day I too may find myself at the alter of divorce. But the fact remains that divorce is quitting. Quitters never win and winners never quit.

Apparently an editor at my local newspaper saw this article as the piece of garbage it is and that's why it was published in the throw away section. Too bad the rest of the paper was not sufficiently interesting to prevent me from reading it.

A Maryland couple has come up with a way for Americans to thank the men and women who serve our country in the military. They have started a non-political, non-profit group called Scrapbooks for Soldiers.

Tony and Julie Leggieri of Frederick, MD collect photographs from people, along with words of encouragement and thanks to our soldiers, assemble them into scrapbooks, and send them military bases, both here and abroad.

The Leggieri's are asking the public to send them photos, of individuals, families, civic groups, people with their pets...anything goes (within reason). Pictures can be either emailed or sent via U.S. Postal Service and only need to include the person's name, city, state, and if they wish, words of thanks and/or encouragement.

OK, OK! Let's knock it off. Our heads are beginning to spin from the knee-jerk reaction to the news "Able Danger" identified some of the hijackers who attacked us on September 11 and that information was suppressed due to an institutional policy that prevented information in favor of "civil rights" of non-U.S. residents. What we do not need here is a bunch of quicky press releases which claim "we didn't know about that" followed by others saying "Oh, yes you did."

It is apparent by now that there was a "data mining" operation which may have identified some of these guys. Let's lock that one down. We need to know what they found. We have people saying they were involved in this operation, knew who at least Atta was, and tried to get this information to the appropriate law enforcement officials. That needs to be understood. If the operation existed and the information was found and then suppressed, something is broke and we need to make sure it was fixed. A genuine investigation is needed and needed quickly.

The press was very quick to lay blame on Bush after 8 months in office. His staff had just barely had time to order and fix replacements for the keys removed from keyboards by the infantile members of the Clinton administration who destroyed the personal property of the citizens of the United States as they were leaving office. We have a continuous need for government in this large, complex country and part of that is facing up to mistakes of the past. We, the voters will not stand being lied to when our personal safety is involved. Let's get the ball rolling so we can get past this thing. It will not just go away.