Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Pride
As an American living in Canada (there, I admitted it), nothing makes my heart swell with pride more than a great American President’s speech.
THE PRESIDENT: My fellow citizens, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision. For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war. That regime pledged to reveal and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Saturday, March 15, 2003
Sugar and spice
Wente writes about the strange case of Elizabeth Smart. Her fairy-tale return has been heavily edited, it appears, to fit the modern success story. The heavy editing job the media and her family has done may have omitted some important truths.
The blond, angelic, apple-cheeked Elizabeth is the archetype of virgin innocence...But fairy tales are generally scrubbed up and expurgated for tender modern sensibilities...The tale of Elizabeth Smart has a dark side, too. The dark side is what really happened to her over these past nine months.
The Mormon religion is central to SLCity, and its devout followers may have been victimized by their fervent beliefs.
Faith is a good thing, but zealous faith can be very dangerous and the root of many evils.
Americans are so loyal
One thing about Americans - when you slam their leader, you pay the price.
“They were just outraged is all we can say. Most them called just to say, `Dump the Chicks.’ So that’s what we are doing”
Jim Jacobs, president of WTDR-FM in Talladega, Alabama
Read the story here
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Not Smart
The Elizabeth Smart case gets more interesting as the hours go by. It appears that Ms. Smart’s mother took pity on the “homeless” individual and invited him into her home.
Elizabeth’s mother, Lois Smart, has said she met Mitchell in downtown Salt Lake City in November 2001 when he asked for money. She gave him $5 and hired him to help her husband work on the roof. He worked for about five hours, and family members say they didn’t see him again.
A lesson from this would be to be very careful who you let into your home, especially if you have kids, extra special if they are girls.
Another lesson would be to not take the homeless at face value. All have taken different paths to their situation: most are there by choice. Many don’t want help. Many are dangerous. Many will take advantage of you: it’s best to let the homeless industry (churches, government) to deal with them.
Elizabeth is incredibly lucky.
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
There is good news
There is sometimes good news in the world. Elizabeth Smart has been found.
Missing teenager Elizabeth Smart was found alive in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy and has been reunited with her family nine months after she was abducted from her home. “We just believe in miracles and thank God she’s alive,” Elizabeth’s uncle, Tom Smart, told CNN. Police say they are convinced she was kidnapped. A man and woman are in custody.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Biggie that please
Who said all lawmakers are politically correct? Thank God those in the US are not.
Show the flag and pass the ketchup was the order of the day in House cafeterias Tuesday. Lawmakers struck a lunchtime blow against the French and put “freedom fries” on the menu.
And for breakfast they’ll now have “freedom toast.”
Monday, February 24, 2003
DP link
An interesting opinion piece on the recent repealing of all death row inmates in Illinois.
Is the death penalty, by its very nature, “arbitrary and capricious” as the governor of Illinois and the Reverend Jesse Jackson have suddenly erupted into insisting?
No. And they should be made to prove that it is.
Saturday, February 22, 2003
Relevant Reagan
Right Wing News has a great entry about a speech President Reagan gave in 1964.
Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then?
Evil never changes - and rising against it in 2003 is more important than ever.
Tuesday, February 4, 2003
Free Space Willy
Since it takes a tragedy to make people wake up sometimes, perhaps now is the time to evaluate the NASA bureaucracy and how it may be hindering safety and development.
There’s no news in space exploration because the business is in the grip of a giant government bureaucracy. As Edward Hudgins notes in his new book for the Cato Institute in Washington, access to space is dominated by NASA, a classic Big Government bureaucracy “that has retarded as much as facilitated activities in space.” The NASA bureaucracy performs all the functions one expects of a state monopoly: It dominates space spending, hogs development, lobbies for bigger and bigger mega-projects, and squeezes out the private sector.
Saturday, February 1, 2003
Space shuttle blows up
The space shuttle Columbia, with seven astronauts aboard, broke up as it descended over central Texas Saturday toward a planned landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Israeli astronaught - pieces landing in Palestine, TX - strange coincidences if you believe in that sort of thing.
Transcript of timeline leading up to explosion.
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
September 11
Tomorrow will be a traumatic day (although not nearly as traumatic as 2001). Already the U.S. is gearing up for some invisible enemy (at least according to the Breaking News on CNN). Personally, I don’t think anything will happen. Bin Laden and/or whoever was behind the terrorist attacks don’t follow anniversaries like we do, so they could care less about doing something tomorrow. If they ever try anything again, they will do it when everything has settled down and no one’s expecting it. Although it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever get to that “untouchable/invincible” state again (or, more to the point, the States will ever get to that state again - no one cares what happens to Canada and with a leader like Chretien, who can blame them?).
I hope they don’t rebuild where the WTC stood. I realize that in Manhattan, that’s prime real estate, but they should just leave it and make a park or something like in Oklahoma City. Too many people died too tragically for them to build anything there. Actually, they should just keep those two lights that they have beaming into the sky. That’s about as perfect as they can get it.
There’s an electronic memorial quilt for 9/11 that is a nice thought. Should anyone care to check it out, the address is here. Should you even get that far, our patch number is 6x196445.