PATRIOT DAY -- NEVER FORGET

"Where were you when the world stopped turning, that September morn?" ~Alan Jackson

When the radio alarm went off that morning, we knew immediately something was wrong, because Rick Hamada was shook up. Marine Corps Base Kaneohe at Kailua, Hawai'i is several hours behind Ground Zero's time zone, so the planes had already struck but the Towers had not yet collapsed. Husband went to work at his squadron, daughter went to school. Around noon, Hawai'i time I went to pick up daughter and a couple friends. It took 3 1/2 hours to get back on base because every car was stopped at the gate. We didn't leave again for 3 days. Every business on base was closed and armed squads patrolled the streets.

The first guess-timates of the number of casualties were wrong.

Two thousand nine hundred ninety-six WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN.

NOTE: This Tribute was posted a week or two ago (linked so you can read comments if you wish)...I have since been assigned a second name to honour, and will post that Tribute separately.

PROJECT 2,996

Remembering: James D. Cleere

I found a reprint / repost of a Washington Post list of House Document No. 107-285, Commemorative Joint Meeting of the Congress of the United States In Remembrance of the Victims and Heroes of September 11, 2001. It gave me my idea of how to write this Tribute. You see, I volunteered to write and post a Tribute after finding my way to a site called Project 2,996. The name I was assigned belongs to a man who was...well...a man who was in one of the Towers of the World Trade Center that day.

It's a very plain-looking list, as are most of the other reprints of that long long list - no frills or fanfares, no candles or flowers or flags waving in the breeze. Most of us live lives that don't come with public fanfare or frills or parades or widely posted Tributes. The Americans killed that horrible day were mostly just like you and me...going about their business in the ways they knew best. Though they worked in a talked-about building - or compound, as there were more than 2 "towers" - their everyday lives involved the same kinds of things we all do - taking out the trash, answering the phone, losing a cell while crossing a bridge, talking to the kids, the grocer, the neighbor, folding a load of laundry, picking up a prescription, grabbing a quick bite. Ordinary...yet so very extraordinary, and now never to be forgotten.

James D. Cleere was living his life. He was 55. He was from Newton, Iowa.

He was sentenced to Death by the murderers that day because of where he was and who he was. They did not know him personally, or care about him or his family or his friends. They didn't know how he got from Iowa to New York City, where he'd gone to school, or what he had for breakfast every day. They only cared that he die that day because he was in that building.

I didn't know him, either. But I will never forget him.

James D. Cleere was on the 49th floor of the South Tower, in the offices of Seabury and Smith Insurance, when the hijacked Flight 175 out of Boston slammed into the building at 9:03am on September 11, 2001.

James D. Cleere - you are not forgotten.


This Tribute was posted earlier in this week - here's a link so you can read the comment(s).

Remembering: Brian Bilcher

Unlike Mr. Cleere, Brian Bilcher was an easy name to research. Being a member of Squad 1, FDNY means he was well-known and well-loved and remembered by so many people. Details are not difficult to come by. Many have memorialized him, and done so better than my paltry research and writing skills will do. There's a letter from his mother that made this crusty ol broad tear up some... Brian Bilcher's name graces the tribute pages and lists of every firefighting unit in the country that has posted a remembrance, I think.

Firefighter Brian Bilcher, you will never be forgotten. May God continue to bless your friends and family and your beautiful son Grant.

You dedicated your life to helping others and saving lives. You gave your life so that others may live. Thank you, your Brothers and Sisters and Friends and Co-workers... from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

And, on this anniversary of the attacks on our country, to everyone who's been on the front lines - or the rear echelon - of the Global War On Terror, fighting to protect our way of life - and our very lives - THANK YOU, too. Thanks go to your families and friends and anyone else who loves you and supports you in your efforts, whether serving on Active Duty or keeping a candle in the window to light your way home...Thank You.

Read more Tributes here.

Project 2,996: Brian Bilcher

Unlike Mr. Cleere, Brian Bilcher was an easy name to research. Being a member of Squad 1, FDNY means he was well-known and well-loved and remembered by so many people. Details are not difficult to come by. Many have memorialized him, and done so better than my paltry research and writing skills will do. There's a letter from his mother that made this crusty ol broad tear up some... Brian Bilcher's name graces the tribute pages and lists of every firefighting unit in the country that has posted a remembrance, I think.

Firefighter Brian Bilcher, you will never be forgotten. May God continue to bless your friends and family and your beautiful son Grant.

You dedicated your life to helping others and saving lives. You gave your life so that others may live. Thank you, your Brothers and Sisters and Friends and Co-workers... from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Project 2,996: James D. Cleere

NOTE: This Tribute was posted a week or two ago (linked so you can read comments if you wish)...I have since been assigned a second name to honour, and will post that Tribute separately.

I found a reprint / repost of a Washington Post list of House Document No. 107-285, Commemorative Joint Meeting of the Congress of the United States In Remembrance of the Victims and Heroes of September 11, 2001. It gave me my idea of how to write this Tribute. You see, I volunteered to write and post a Tribute after finding my way to a site called Project 2,996. The name I was assigned belongs to a man who was...well...a man who was in one of the Towers of the World Trade Center that day.

It's a very plain-looking list, as are most of the other reprints of that long long list - no frills or fanfares, no candles or flowers or flags waving in the breeze. Most of us live lives that don't come with public fanfare or frills or parades or widely posted Tributes. The Americans killed that horrible day were mostly just like you and me...going about their business in the ways they knew best. Though they worked in a talked-about building - or compound, as there were more than 2 "towers" - their everyday lives involved the same kinds of things we all do - taking out the trash, answering the phone, losing a cell while crossing a bridge, talking to the kids, the grocer, the neighbor, folding a load of laundry, picking up a prescription, grabbing a quick bite. Ordinary...yet so very extraordinary, and now never to be forgotten.

James D. Cleere was living his life. He was 55. He was from Newton, Iowa.

He was sentenced to Death by the murderers that day because of where he was and who he was. They did not know him personally, or care about him or his family or his friends. They didn't know how he got from Iowa to New York City, where he'd gone to school, or what he had for breakfast every day. They only cared that he die that day because he was in that building.

I didn't know him, either. But I will never forget him.

James D. Cleere was on the 49th floor of the South Tower, in the offices of Seabury and Smith Insurance, when the hijacked Flight 175 out of Boston slammed into the building at 9:03am on September 11, 2001.

James D. Cleere - you are not forgotten.

"...we females want to talk all the time about everything. Conflict is just another excuse to gab."

Betsy Hart at JewishWorldReview.com:

One of my own best women friends recently sent to me a piece that her husband (without comment, it turns out!) had e-mailed to her: "How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It" by Barbara Graham from O, the Oprah Magazine. Its subtitle says it all: "Forget everything you've heard about frankness, sharing your feelings, getting him to express his. Research into the functions of the male mind makes it clear that discussion may be the fastest way to shut down communication. (Oh, you noticed that, have you?)"

Graham sat down with psychotherapists Patricia Love and Steven Stosny. They teach extensively on gender differences, and last year co-wrote "How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It."

Stosny explains that "talking about feelings, which is soothing to women, makes men physically uncomfortable. There's literally more blood flow to the muscles. They get fidgety and women think they're not listening."

"Durh!" Any woman worth her salt knows men are different than women and should NEVER be required to replace the women who are close to her in her life, just as any man worth his salt will not expect his woman to be his 'buddy.'

Now, if we could convince the super-intellectuals that there are deeply ingrained differences in the genders, that each of us is part of the Whole, not The Same, we'd be MUCH better off as a Society...not to mention that we'd have MUCH happier marriages AND children.

Chick fil A Giveaway!

Wear your favorite team logo to Chick-fil-A on Monday from 10:30am to closing time, get a FREE Original Chicken Sandwich...that would be the one buttered...with a pickle. The BEST!

Sounds good, I'll have to find my Hawai'i shirt again...or Navy...or borrow a Gator shirt from Handsome Son-in-law! Don't have one for the Northern Lights, which is MY alma mater...*sigh*

Well, I'm outta here for now, we're going for an overnight stay-cation in the camper...in the front yard. Needed to move it and open it and clean it, don't feel like fighting crowds, traffic, and drunk drivers, so here we are. Gotta love it!

Y'all stay safe. Thanks for stopping by.

UPDATE: What a yummy lunch with hubby! TONS of Gator gear and Jaguar jerseys, with a smattering of Georgia and Florida State University. Saw one Clemson, a Navy Hockey, and one Florida State College at Jacksonville (formerly Florida Community College - Jacksonville). I had the only Hawai'i shirt and My Chief was wearing the only Padres shirt I saw.

What would Bush do

Rich Lowry at JewishWorldReview.com:

But Obama will need three especially Bushian qualities if he is to spare his country a humiliating retreat or an underresourced, inconclusive slog in Afghanistan: sincerity, perseverance and courage.

I don't know about you, but those aren't qualities I've seen much in evidence recently, either in BarryO personally or in his Administration. Arrogance has replaced even the smallest hint of humility in the White House leaving no room for courage of any kind.

Uphold Volunteer Volunteerism

Read the American Spectator. This is from Tuesday, columnist Matthew Vadum:

As I wrote last week, about 60 groups including ACORN, Apollo Alliance, Color of Change, and Rainbow PUSH Coalition are trying to help the Obama administration modify the meaning of 9/11. They want to turn each Sept. 11 into a National Day of Service focused on the importance of bicycle paths, ethanol, carbon emission controls, putting solar panels on your roof, and radical community organizing. It has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign.

Might be just me, but as I read what these self-described "organizers" want 9/11 to be, I couldn't help but remember something I was told a long time ago. Wish I could quote it exactly, but it was something to the effect of - "If you're forced to do it, you are not a volunteer. Forced 'service' is slavery." (from my online dictionary: involuntary subjection to another or others. Slavery emphasizes the idea of complete ownership and control by a master)

Surrender - on the installment plan (Thomas Sowell but NOT on Tuesday)

Thomas Sowell's column, today from Townhall.com, where there are dozens of other great analyses.

From the column:

It is not just a question of looking backward. The decision to second-guess CIA agents who extracted information to save American lives is even worse when you look forward.

Years from now, long after Barack Obama is gone, CIA agents dealing with hardened terrorists will have to worry about whether what they do to get information out of them to save American lives will make these agents themselves liable to prosecution that can destroy their careers and ruin their lives.

This is not simply an injustice to those who have tried to keep this country safe, it is a danger recklessly imposed on future Americans whose safety cannot always be guaranteed by sweet and gentle measures against hardened murderers.

Those who are pushing for legal action against CIA agents may talk about "upholding the law" but they are doing no such thing. Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the Geneva Convention gives rights to terrorists who operate outside the law.

What IS the rationale for giving murdering terrorists more mercy than they ever showed their victims...or anyone else, for that matter.

Never Forget

It's almost time for me to post the Tribute I wrote this year for one of the 2,996 people killed in the attack on our country as part of Project 2996. It seems the 11th of September is being put forth by the Adminstration as a day of Service? Bull.

September 11th is the anniversary of the ATTACK on our country by devout members of a religion, many of whose members wish the destruction of the Western World, Civilisation as we know it. I'm not going to "serve" that section of Mankind, sorry, BarryO. They would like no better than to enslave us, and I refuse to bow to their wishes. Take your organization skills to the field where Flight 93 ended. Watch video of people jumping from the upper floors of the World Trade Center. See the heroism displayed at the Pentagon. Why would I want to forget that?

I will remember that our country was attacked. Our citizens and guests were murdered. I will NOT forget.

Little League World Series Champion CHULA VISTA!

I've had a touch of flu or something all weekend, so didn't do my usual routines...finally feeling up to sitting here and reading (despite my wishes to commiserate with Swampie about her job). My Chief had to make do for himself while I lounged on sofa and snored away in bed most of yesterday AND today. We DID watch the final game of the Little League World Series together, as has become custom, and congratulations to San Diego County's own Chula Vista!!! Woo Hoo!

When My Chief came home from his 'mandatory fun' meeting at work, he brought me a get well card and a bag of Chili Cheese Fritos. I have something to live for! These things are supposedly bad for my heart... and arteries... maybe even my brain... but they are SO good for my SOUL.


Oh, what the heck - let's see TWO non-pc commercials from my younger days...

Bob Tyrrell, founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator

Holy Crow. I knew I liked reading Bob's columns...and I know he must be good at tearing the masks off clowns and impostors, but THIS one really takes BarryO and His Band of Merry Marxists to task. Whew! Make sure you read the comments, too, especially Becky and Grzmlyk.

Here's just a taste of Bob's genius:

My belief, based on reports in the news and from my private network of seasoned agents and provocateurs, is that this White House is a carousel of incompetence. How else do we explain the ravening push on all fronts, health care, the environment, fiscal reform, intelligence reform, and a foreign policy of humility and apology? Unsurprisingly, on every front the President is in trouble. Remember chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's, callous enjoiner, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste"? This White House is a serious crisis.

Ya think???

Headache

I have a headache. Not that you give a rip one way or the other, but it is MY blog...gotta go get the Pixie in a few minutes, don't feel like doing much at all, so here's a fun column I can't seem to read all of...lots of good things in the sidebar there, and if you have a spare moment, think about those within short distance of wildfires. I'd rather have a headache.

Anyway, here's Lori Borgman at JewishWorldReview.com, on RELAXING - which is highly overrated, in my opinion:

Every fall I love reading essays by people who wax poetic about the melancholy they experience as they close up their summer cottages and return to the city. But now I'm wondering what it is they do all summer.

Had to get Teddy out of my sight...so back to BarryOCare

Robert Tracinski at JewishWorldReview.com:

I have news for the president: Brother, you ain't my keeper.
...

If the person invoking it is asking for your help, it means: you are my keeper. It is your job to work and struggle and produce wealth, so that you can support me and provide for my needs. To take a timely example, it means the union worker who wants billions of taxpayers' dollars to keep GM afloat, or who wants the UAW to be put in line in front of Chrysler's creditors, so that he can continue to collect inflated wages and a bloated pension. It is the manifesto of a leech.

...

But the way Obama means it is even worse. He does not view himself as a man in need of keeping; he views himself as the keeper. He invokes that line about being his brother's keeper in order to sell us on a health-care bill that will require all health-insurance plans to be designed and approved by a government overseer, and in which we will all be pushed into accepting health care provided by the government, on the government's terms.

...

The morality of altruism—the idea that we are our brother's keeper—is supposed to be a morality of benevolence and good will, but it actually offers men a choice between two roles: the keeper or the kept. It is the moral code of a kind of saccharine tyranny, a combination of maudlin appeals to pity and condescending authoritarianism.

...

That's the code that we need to affirm in response to Barack Obama's injunction about being our brother's keepers. We need to tell him that he is not our keeper—that we do not want to be keepers nor to be kept, but to be free and independent men.

Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment

Scum at a molecular level. Liar, cheat, thief. Pompous A**hole.

Tell me, someone - anyone - why this worm deserves a kind or respectful word?

From Three Beers Later:

"Then Kennedy threw himself on top of the woman. The waitress implored Mr. Kennedy to 'Get off me!'

"Another waitress entered to find 'things all tipped over and Kennedy was on top, [the waitress] was in the middle and Dodd was on the bottom.' At that point the sandwich was disassembled." -- Washington Times

Unlike a commenter at GrouchyConsvervativePundits, I don't feel sorry for his family, either. They know what he was - commenter SwampWoman:

Of course, the fact that he was attempting to deny the healthcare to the masses that HE was the recipient of will be overlooked.

I thought of referring to Teddy as a pig, a dog, or maybe a weasel (though he WAS an Elected CongressWeasel, that's just part of a previously named Group of Scum), but reverse-anthropmorphising only makes my brain hurt for the poor creatures used as illustrations. I've made an exception with 'worm' only because it fits so well...so does maggot. From Kae's link - The Australian, some small understatement:

In 1969, Kennedy accidentally drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick in Massachusetts, killing a female companion, Mary Jo Kopechne.

The scandal deepened when it emerged that Kennedy had swum to safety from the car, leaving Kopechne, then waited until the following day to report the incident.

My final bit on this topic comes from Robert Stacy McCain:

Forgiven by the media, liberals are shameless about such things. And so, in subsequent years, Americans were often subjected to the shameful spectacle of Ted Kennedy, the Chappaquiddick swim champ, lecturing us in moralistic tones about this, that and the other.

Whenever Kennedy would inflict his pompous self-righteous liberal moralizing on us, I'd always hear Ann Coulter's immortal words: "Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment."

And so I've used that line for the last time. And the knowledge of that finality is the only sadness I feel about Ted Kennedy's death.

Read the whole thing.

A user and abuser and a taker by nature has left the building - after FAR too long and ruinous stay on this planet.

UPDATE! Piece of Work In Progress has a GREAT visual!

What could go wrong...

...shamelessly reprinted from The Patriot Post email I got this morning.

Let me get this straight.

Obama's health care plan will:

• Be written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it.
• Be passed by a Congress that hasn't read it (but exempts themselves from it).
• Be signed by a president who smokes (and also hasn't read it).
• Have funding administered by a treasury chief who did not pay his taxes.
• Be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese.
• Be financed by a country that is nearly broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

---

What could possibly go wrong:

The phone rings and the lady of the house answers, "Hello?"

"Mrs. Sanders, please."

"Speaking."

"Mrs. Sanders, this is Dr. Jones at St. Agnes Laboratory. When your husband's doctor sent his biopsy to the lab last week, a biopsy from another Mr. Sanders arrived as well. We are now uncertain which one belongs to your husband. Frankly, either way the results are not too good."

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Sanders asks nervously.

"Well, one of the specimens tested positive for Alzheimer's and the other one tested positive for HIV. We can't tell which is which."

"That's dreadful! Can you do the test again?" questioned Mrs. Sanders.

"Normally we can, but the new health care system will only pay for these expensive tests just one time."

"Well, what am I supposed to do now?"

"The folks at Obama health care recommend that you drop your husband off somewhere in the middle of town. If he finds his way home, don't sleep with him."

"Repentence for a misspent youth"

Jonathan Rosenblum at JewishWorldReview.com:

...Western liberals were also prone to the illusion that all dilemmas of public and private life can be resolved by experts, psychotherapists and other "engineers of the human soul." The most learned of men, Berlin nevertheless insisted that intellectual elites have no business presuming that they know better than the man or woman in the street.

Really good column, telling me about a book I'd wouldn't pick up in a hundred years, written about a man I never heard of. The author is Michael Ignatieff. Wow. Explains a LOT about the way BarryO and His Band of Merry CongressWeasels and Their Friends - in the education system, the legal system, the health care system and every government bureaucracy around the country - think, and what they're headed for...not that I didn't know before, but this gives me extra insight.

Belief in a single rational solution to every problem leads as well to nasty politics. Marxists have a term for those who fail to acknowledge the rational solution: "false consciousness." False consciousness can infect entire social classes, and when it does they must either be re-educated or eliminated. In non-totalitarian regimes, ridicule replaces re-education for all those too stupid to accept the consensus. Perhaps that explains why so many writers to the Yale Law Magazine find calling George W. Bush an idiot the height of sophisticated wit. Even "jokes" about Sarah Palin's Down Syndrome son and "retarded" family are not beyond the pale.

Does your government scare you YET?

Thomas Sowell on Tuesday

This column is BRILLIANT!

Some of my favorite lines - single lines or paragraphs - compelling bits of words put together that say more than any 5 random columnists can say:

--Students are discussed largely as passive recipients of good or bad education.

But education is not something that can be given to anybody. It is something that students either acquire or fail to acquire. Personal responsibility may be ignored or downplayed in this "non-judgmental" age, but it remains a major factor nevertheless.

--The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one's own behavior.

--There can be grave practical consequences of a dogmatic insistence on external explanations that allow individuals to escape personal responsibility. Americans can end up ruining the best medical care in the world in the vain hope that a government takeover will give us better health.

--"...there is a small minority of workers who do not rise and a large number of people who seldom work and who— surprise!— have low incomes as a result.

Seldom is there any thought that people who choose to waste years of their own time (and the taxpayers' money) in school need to change their own behavior— or to visibly suffer the consequences, so that their fate can be a warning to others coming after them, not to make that same mistake.

It is not just the "non-judgmental" ideology of the intelligentsia but also the self-interest of politicians that leads to so much downplaying of personal responsibility in favor of external explanations and external programs to "solve" the "problem."

Project 2,996: James D. Cleere

I found a reprint / repost of a Washington Post list of House Document No. 107-285, Commemorative Joint Meeting of the Congress of the United States In Remembrance of the Victims and Heroes of September 11, 2001. It gave me my idea of how to write this Tribute. You see, I volunteered to write and post a Tribute after finding my way to a site called Project 2,996. The name I was assigned belongs to a man who was...well...a man who was in one of the Towers of the World Trade Center that day.

It's a very plain-looking list, as are most of the other reprints of that long long list - no frills or fanfares, no candles or flowers or flags waving in the breeze. Most of us live lives that don't come with public fanfare or frills or parades or widely posted Tributes. The Americans killed that horrible day were mostly just like you and me...going about their business in the ways they knew best. Though they worked in a talked-about building - or compound, as there were more than 2 "towers" - their everyday lives involved the same kinds of things we all do - taking out the trash, answering the phone, losing a cell while crossing a bridge, talking to the kids, the grocer, the neighbor, folding a load of laundry, picking up a prescription, grabbing a quick bite. Ordinary...yet so very extraordinary, and now never to be forgotten.

James D. Cleere was living his life. He was 55. He was from Newton, Iowa.

He was sentenced to Death by the murderers that day because of where he was and who he was. They did not know him or care about him or his family or his friends. They didn't know how he got from Iowa to New York City, where he went to school, or what he had for breakfast every day. They only cared that he die that day because he was in that building.

I didn't know him, either. But I will never forget him.

James D. Cleere was on the 49th floor of the South Tower, in the offices of Seabury and Smith Insurance, when the hijacked Flight 175 out of Boston slammed into the building at 9:03am on September 11, 2001.

James D. Cleere - you are not forgotten.

That sucking sound you hear...is the stimulus!

Mark Steyn comments on the projects funded by the stimulus plan in his state.

Still, what do I know? Evidently, it's stimulated the sign-making industry, putting America back to work by putting up "PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK" signs every 200 yards across the land. And at 300 bucks a pop the signage alone should be enough to launch an era of unparalleled prosperity, assuming America's gilded sign magnates don't spend their newfound wealth on Bahamian vacations and European imports. Perhaps if the president were to have his All-Seeing O logo lovingly hand-painted onto each sign, it would stimulate the economy even more, if only when they were taken down and auctioned on eBay.
...
...there are diminishing returns to his serial thousand-page, trillion-dollar boondoggles. They may be too long for your representatives to bother reading before passing into law, but, whatever the intricacies of Section 417(a) xii on page 938, people are beginning to spot what all this stuff has in common: He's spending your future. And by "future" I don't mean 2070, 2060, 2040, but the day after tomorrow. Democrats can talk about only raising taxes on "the rich," but more and more Americans are beginning to figure out what percentage of them will wind up in "the richest 5 percent" before this binge is over.

So, how does it feel, traveling to a Third World country without ever crossing a border?

Question about 'rights'

If you have children...I'd like your take on this topic.

Do your precious babies have unrestricted use of the computer, or possibly their own? Are they allowed on social networking sites? Do you oversee the way these sites are used by your children?

Do you (or they) consider it a violation of their right to free speech if when they post something to a page belonging to someone else they get a reply they don't like and with which they (vehemently) disagree? Do you believe children (under 18 and living in your home) have the Right to Free Speech? Is anyone - including parent - having and expressing an opinion counter to said child's opinion or view considered repression and oppression of THEIR First Amendment Right?

I'm trying very hard to keep my temper, considering the sources...but it sure is giving me the Opportunity for Growth I was told about when I first decided to change my life...lying and stretching the truth and convenient selective memory and name-calling and dragging up the past to no good end tends to make me grumpy. Your thoughts are ALWAYS welcome here, thanks for stopping by!

UPDATE: Another question - when posting to the site of another, are your precious babies sure it's ok with Mom and Dad if they swear, insult, or lie to or about the person whose site they comment on - because that's just what said child is like, he/she doesn't 'care' what anyone thinks (no chit, Cherlock?) and so what?

*sigh*

Thomas Sowell, Part IV

Pretty durn good analysis. Too bad our Elected CongressWeasels aren't this thoughtful. Or down-to-earth. Or honest.

Whose Medical Decisions? Part IV:

What we also should stop to think about is the mindset behind this legislation, which is very consistent with the mindset behind other policies of this administration, whether the particular issue is bailing out General Motors, telling banks who to lend to or appointing "czars" to tell all sorts of people in many walks of life what they can and cannot do.

The idea that government officials can play God from Washington is not a new idea, but it is an idea that is being pushed with new audacity.
...

The thing most associated with America — freedom — is precisely what must be destroyed if this is to be turned into a fundamentally different country to suit Obama's vision of the country and of himself. But do not expect a savvy politician like Barack Obama to express what he is doing in terms of limiting our freedom.

Thomas Sowell, Part III

A few hundred words in one column can barely scratch the surface of the discussion that NEEDS to take place and the information that NEEDS to be passed along to the American People about the "Health Care Rationing" bill. Here's the next installment from Mr. Sowell.

Please, THINK about this, people...you're not just being blind-sided, you're being lied to at every turning:

Amid all the controversies over medical care, no one seems to be asking a very basic question: Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance?
...
Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans do not have medical insurance, hardy souls who have actually read the mammoth medical care legislation being rushed through Congress have discovered all sorts of things there that have nothing whatever to do with insuring the uninsured — and everything to do with taking medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and their patients, and transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats.
...
Deception is not an incidental aspect of this medical care legislation, but is at the very heart of it.

Thomas Sowell, Part II

Part Two of Thomas Sowell's column:

It is not just a question of what the government will pay for. The logic of their collectivist thinking — and the actual practice in some other countries with government-controlled health care — is that you cannot even pay for some medical treatments with your own money, if the powers that be decide that "society" cannot let its resources be used that way, or that it would not be "social justice" for some people to have medical treatments that others cannot get, just because some people "happen to have money."

Fiji water ain't exactly green...unless it's from the MONEY!

I used to buy Fiji water for Lovely Daughter because I love the bottle...when we lived in Hawai'i. Now, if I have to drink water, I get it from the tap and I add Country Time lemonade packets to it. Much better and half the price. John Stossel says I might be on the right track...

Thomas Sowell Tuesday with Cal Thomas, too - Decisions, Decisions

We're going to keep beating this drum. Who do YOU think should be making decisions about YOUR medical care? Some government flunky who works for a Political Appointee of the Administration? Your own doctor, in accordance to YOUR wishes? Thomas Sowell at JewishWorldReview.com on The Man Who Would Be In Charge of the "Death Panels."

At one time, it would have been none of Dr. Emanuel's business if your physician prescribed the latest medications for you, rather than the cheaper and obsolete medications they replaced. It would have been none of his business if you preferred to have a nice hospital room with "amenities" rather than being in an unsanitary ward with inadequate nursing care, as under the National Health Service in Britain.

The involvement of government gives Dr. Emanuel the leverage to condemn other Americans' choices — and a larger involvement of government will give him the power to force both doctors and patients to change their choices.

As for a "death panel," no politician would ever use that phrase when trying to get a piece of legislation passed. "End of life" care under the "guidance" of "some independent group" sounds so much nicer — and these are the terms President Obama used in an interview with the New York Times back on April 14th.

Here's Cal Thomas:

Anyone wishing to revise America's medical system and model it after Britain and Canada ought to thoroughly examine how these health care systems function before plunging into the same pool. A reasonable conclusion is that these systems require long waits and treatments (if you can get them) that are inferior to the U.S., based on government "guidelines" that frequently approve care only if the patient is deemed "worthy of the investment."

As a symbol, Adolf Hitler has been overused, but the philosophy behind the horrors he unleashed can be found in the beliefs of some of those who would use the power of the state to determine who gets help and who doesn't.

El Campeador has this little bit of 'fluff' from FoxNews, about the FABulous care you'll get when we're all covered by British-style "health" care.

Charlotte, of Oswestry, Shropshire in England, was prescribed Tamiflu via the flu hotline, but when she didn’t feel any better, she was admitted to the hospital on July 29 where she died two days later after her lungs collapsed.

The 16-year-old girl died after being misdiagnosed with the H1N1 virus, when she really had tonsillitis, London’s Daily Mail reported.

Charlotte Hartey’s condition was diagnosed over the phone, like many other H1N1 viruses in the United Kingdom, but when complications arose from Charlotte’s real affliction – tonsillitis – the teenager died.

A post-mortem exam showed Charlotte died from “natural causes.”

Remember - BarryOCare will give you EXACTLY what the British people get. Aren't you excited??? YES WE ARE!

Fifty years since...

I have no real memory about this - I wasn't quite 4. I've been to Yellowstone - more than once - I think the first time I may have been 8 or 9, could have been 11 - but, as I said, I was so young AND had never been there at that time of the quake. My only memories are from after, and of course pictures.

Mama Nature isn't a kind, gentle, cuddly nurturer. Mother Earth can be a real killer, and has been since Time began.

from Patriot Guard Riders website

...we stand in flag lines

...we stand for hours in silence

So we can see one moment like this.............


(tip of my cap to My Chief, who sent this in an email this morning)

Tea Party Commercial

Created by a teenager...which is no surprise. Created with such passion and patriotism? While not surprising to those of us who live in the real world, it is such an inspiring work from such a young man! Good job, and thank you!
Tip of my cap to GrouchyConservativePundits!

Tax Code

There's a BRILLIANT post at Are We Lumberjacks? that explains - with a very simple analogy even I can understand - how our tax structure works.

An analogy works best when it's written from a point of view I can understand, in language I can grasp with ease. This one has ALL that!

LIFE, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness...with WHO in charge of the LIFE part???

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

Jonah Goldberg at JewishWorldReview.com:

When it comes to civil liberties, liberals are often distrustful of government power. But, for reasons that baffle me, they are quite comfortable with Uncle Sam getting into the business of deciding, or providing "guidance" on, which lives are more valuable than others. A government charged with extending life expectancy must meddle not just with our health care, but with what we eat, how we drive, how we live. A government determined to cut costs must meddle not just with how we live, but how we die.

Analysis and translation - for those of us not fluent in NewSpeak and Legalese

I heard some of this listening to Rush today. Amazing stuff. If there was a town hall happening near me, I'd print it out and take it along, pass out copies. Maybe I'll post it on the bulletin board at the laundromat!

The Health Care Bill: What HR 3200, ‘‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” Says.
by John David Lewis.

Grandpa John's: Terminological Clarification

I offer here an outrageously funny replacement for the name BarryOCare, the socialist health care plan that shows up as a topic on fairly regular occasions - and a welcome addition to my sidebar, too!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Patriotic Readers of All Ages, from Steve Burri at Grandpa John's, I give you 'The Dingell-Barry Bill.'

Maybe more later, after I wipe the tears from my eyes and clean my monitor.

*whew*

(Thanks, Paco!)

"Drunks" by Jack McCarthy

We died of pneumonia in furnished rooms where they found us three days later when somebody complained about the smell.

We died against bridge abutments and nobody knew if it was suicide

and we probably didn’t know either except in the sense that it was always suicide.

We died in hospitals, our stomachs huge, distended and there was nothing they could do.

We died in cells, never knowing whether we were guilty or not.

We went to priests, they gave us pledges, they told us to pray, they told us to go and sin no more, but go. We tried and we died.

We died of overdoses, we died in bed (but usually not the Big Bed)

We died in straitjackets, in the DT’s seeing God knows what, creeping skittering slithering shuffling things.

And you know what the worst thing was? The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.

We went to doctors and they gave us stuff to take that would make us sick when we drank on the principle of so crazy, it just might work, I guess, or maybe they just shook their heads and sent us to places like Dropkick Murphy’s.

And when we got out we were hooked on paraldehyde or maybe we lied to the doctors and they told us not to drink so much, just drink like me.

And we tried, and we died.

We drowned in our own vomit or choked on it, our broken jaws wired shut. We died playing Russian roulette and people thought we’d lost, but we knew better.

We died under the hoofs of horses, under the wheels of vehicles, under the knives and boot heels of our brother drunks.

We died in shame.

And you know what was even worse, was that we couldn’t believe it ourselves, that we had tried.

We figured we just thought we tried and we died believing that we hadn’t tried, believing that we didn’t know what it meant to try.

When we were desperate enough or hopeful or deluded or embattled enough to go for help we went to people with letters after their names

and prayed that they might have read the right books that had the right words in them, never suspecting the terrifying truth, that the right words, as simple as they were, had not been written yet.

We died falling off girders on high buildings, because of course ironworkers drink, of course they do.

We died with a shotgun in our mouth, or jumping off a bridge, and everybody knew it was suicide.

We died under the Southeast Expressway, with our hands tied behind us and a bullet in the back of our head, because this time the people that we disappointed were the wrong people.

We died in convulsions, or of “insult to the brain”, we died incontinent, and in disgrace, abandoned .

If we were women, we died degraded, because women have so much more to live up to.

We tried and we died and nobody cried. And the very worst thing was that for every one of us that died, there were another hundred of us, or another thousand, who wished that we could die, who went to sleep praying we would not have to wake up because what we were enduring was intolerable and we knew in our hearts it wasn’t ever gonna change.

One day in a hospital room in New York City, one of us had what the books call a transforming spiritual experience, and he said to himself “I’ve got it .” (no, you haven’t you’ve only got part of it) ” and I have to share it.” (now you’ve ALMOST got it) and he kept trying to give it away, but we couldn’t hear it. We tried and we died.

We died of one last cigarette, the comfort of its glowing in the dark.

We passed out and the bed caught fire. They said we suffocated before our body burned, they said we never felt a thing , that was the best way maybe that we died, except sometimes we took our family with us.

And the man in New York was so sure he had it, he tried to love us into sobriety, but that didn’t work either, love confuses drunks and he tried and we still died.

One after another we got his hopes up and we broke his heart,

Because that’s what we do.

And the worst thing was that every time we thought we knew what the worst thing was something happened that was worse.

Until a day came in a hotel lobby and it wasn’t in Rome, or Jerusalem,

Or Mecca or even Dublin, or South Boston, it was in Akron, Ohio, for Christ’s sake.

A day came when the man said I have to find a drunk because I need him As much as he needs me (NOW you’ve got it).

And the transmission line, after all those years, was open, the transmission line was open. And now we don’t go to priests, and we don’t go to doctors and people with letters after their names.

We come to people who have been there, we come to each other. We come to try and we don’t have to die………

Because another one died Friday...that's three this year that we know personally...

Project 2996

The anniversary of the attacks on 9-11 is only 4 weeks away.

Have you forgotten?

UPDATE: I've been assigned the name of a man who was killed in the attacks, and will write a Tribute to be posted here on September 11.

Maybe you should think about doing the same?

I'd love to hear the backstory on THIS one

From the Billings Gazette, which is the daily paper my mum gets in Big Timber, we find another instance of Patriotism...but I'd sure like to know the story behind the note this Marine received! I know I'd have to be "stupid drunk" to steal anything that belonged to a Marine...ever...no matter HOW old he is!

Paco Says...

The Democrats have made, I think, two fatal errors: they have come to believe their own mendacious propaganda, and they have grossly underestimated the intelligence, and the courage, of the American people.

I agree with every word.

Paco is evidence that the smartest people in the country are NOT sitting on their bums in D.C. or writing for the New York Times. I may not agree with everything he says (can't think of an example right now, though), but his positions are well-considered, well-informed, and based on fact and experience, not what it'll get him and how much power he'll wield (PacoEnterprises notwithstanding).

Read it all.

Thomas Sowell Tuesday - Random THoughts

Random Thoughts from Thomas Sowell. I LOVE Tuesdays.

My favorites:
~Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people think in talking points, rather than in terms of real world consequences.

~Recently I was foolish enough to try to reason with an environmentalist. But it became obvious that he had his mind made up and didn't want to hear any evidence to the contrary. The Pope is more likely to have read Karl Marx than an environmentalist is to have read even a single book that criticized environmentalism.

~How long will it be before the public gets tired of the little know-it-all sermonettes by Barack Obama — especially since nothing that he is doing is actually working?

Patriot Guard Riders, we thank you for your service

What My Chief (retired) did with part of his Sunday...

American Flag Carried Across the Country to Marine's Daughter

PALM COAST, FL -- The daughter of a Marine who served in the Vietnam war received a surprise honor Sunday afternoon: her father's burial flag, hand delivered from California by the Patriot Guard Riders.

Sgt. Michael Gares died last week in Riverside, California of natural causes.

His daughter, 18-year-old Jennifer Gares, and her brother, Andrew, live in Flagler County and could not afford a plane ticket to fly out to his funeral.

During the funeral, which took place at Riverside National Cemetery, the Patriot Guard Riders stood in the family's place.

As a tradition, the serviceman's burial flag is handed down to a widowed spouse, a parent, or the oldest child in the family.

When the riders learned Sgt. Gares' family was in Florida and his burial flag was to be mailed back home, they stepped in, and organized a hand delivery.

"The way the vets feel, this is a flag of honor. It is treated with respect and a whole bunch of love from the combat brotherhood," said Ernest Tucker, a Vietnam Veteran.

For six days, the flag traveled on the back of motorcycles, from rider to rider, state to state.

Read the comments, too.

Shared via AddThis

UPDATE: I forgot to add...a movie that also shows true American Patriotism and respect for our Fallen Brothers is "Taking Chance," an HBO production. I don't watch movies. HBO lost me a couple decades ago. I watched this one, and it's on my Christmas list to be one of the few movies I actually own.

"Democracy" not "of the People or by the People" anymore

Mitch Albom at JewishWorldReview.com:

I would rather live in a place where people questioned what their government proposed rather than swallowing it blindly — especially a government whose members guard our tax money while taking bribes, shout morality and then get caught with their pants down, or lecture businessmen about private planes and then order a bunch for themselves.

What did Democrats expect with a bill like this? Roses and hosannas?

Byron York:

As a reporter, how does one keep from rooting for the home team? And as a government official, how does one flack for the boss while ignoring the questions any journalist should ask?

This week Douglass undertook to debunk a video going around the Internet showing Barack Obama, before he became president, endorsing a single-payer national health care system. “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan,” Obama said at a conference in 2003, as he was beginning a run for the U.S. Senate. “That’s what I’d like to see.”

A viewer might reasonably conclude that, at least in 2003, Barack Obama was a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan. Not true, said Douglass. In a video posted on the White House Web site, she explained that there was a lot of “disinformation” going around these days about health care reform. Opponents of reform have been “taking sentences and phrases out of context” to create a “false impression.”

“There are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there — they simply cherry-pick and put it together,” Douglass said, “and make it sound like he’s saying something that he didn’t really say.”

A few years ago, Linda Douglass the journalist might have asked just how Obama’s 2003 declaration of support for single-payer health care was taken out of context. Now, Douglass the White House spokeswoman didn’t even address the question.

Jack Kelly:

On Jan. 20, 2009, after an eight year run, dissent ceased to be "the highest form of patriotism."

Now, according to those who once assured us that even violent protests against the war in Iraq were patriotic, to express dissatisfaction with President Obama's plans for health care "reform" is mob rule, or worse.

Another man's little girl...

Late soldier’s daughter gets flag after ceremony

(Created: Friday, August 7, 2009 12:23 PM MDT)

MARTIN J. KIDSTON Independent Record HELENA (AP)

With her black shoes and freckled face, her blonde hair almost red in the sun, little Riley Ehret stood quietly outside the Capitol, taking in the moment with her wide, green eyes. The 7-year-old was wearing the same black dress and the same blue ribbon she had selected for her father's funeral. Her smile, however, was something new. And so was the flag clutched tightly in her arms and the Army Commendation Medal pinned upon her dress.

"Your father's attention to detail and situational awareness allowed his platoon to effectively accomplish all assigned missions," said a soldier, standing before the girl as he read her father's commendation. "His performance reflects great credit upon himself, the 116th Brigade Combat Team, Task Force Liberty and the United States Army."

Riley's father, Spc. Travis T. Ehret, earned the commendation as an automatic rifleman serving with the Montana National Guard's 1-163rd Infantry Battalion in Iraq. Ehret served three tours in the war, standing up for the principles he believed in and the country he loved.

Then he came home, where he died of injuries suffered in a Helena bar fight that occurred on June 20 — the day before Father's Day. It was why, when Sunday came — when Father's Day arrived — Ehret didn't return Riley's call. It was why the two would never speak again. But Riley wouldn't know that for nearly two weeks, not until a sheriff's deputy came knocking at the door in Belgrade. The officer told Riley's mother, Iselin Jensen, that her ex-husband — Riley's father — had been critically injured in a bar fight and wasn't expected to recover. Breaking the news to Riley was the hardest part. "I just looked at her and said, 'Daddy got in a fight, and it's not very good, and it doesn't look like he's going to make it,'" Jensen said. "I told her, 'He'll probably end up with the angels.' We didn't know that it happened over the Father's Day weekend. Riley didn't know why he didn't call and she was upset."

Days after the fight, Ehret was flown from Helena to a Billings hospital where he died on July 2 at 10:59 a.m. He was interred at the Yellowstone County Veterans Cemetery and remembered as a loving son and father, a man of his word who was proud to defend America's freedom on the battlefield. That day, the flag went to Ehret's mother. Riley didn't have her father, and she wanted a flag of her own to remember him by.

"Her dad died off duty, and the parents are divorced, so by protocol, the flag has to go to (Ehret's) mother," said Denny Lenoir, coordinator of the state Honor Guard. "Riley was extremely sad that she didn't get to talk to her dad on Father's Day, and that she didn't get a flag at his funeral."

But Lenoir set out to change that, and on Wednesday, the state Honor Guard came to attention on the steps of the Capitol to perform a ceremony the soldiers would later describe as touching.

With their brass buttons glinting in the morning sun, Spc. Moe Mayhew, Warrant Officer Lance Heppner, and Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Schaan unfolded the flag and ran it up the pole. Holding Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger's hand, her other placed over her heart, Riley watched the ceremony with pride and wonder, her freckled face warmed by the sun. The soldiers then folded the flag, perfecting each crease, and presented it to the girl with an unflinching salute. "This flag of the United States of America was flown over the state Capitol of Helena, Montana, on Wednesday, August fifth, 2009, in honor of your father for his dedication and faithful service to the United States of America while serving in the United States Army," Bohlinger told the girl. "The people of Montana are extremely proud of your father for his courage, his bravery and his commitment to the peace of this world and to the safety of our people."

With the video cameras crowding around, the reporters standing before her, Riley didn't smile. As Bohlinger held her hand, she looked at her shoes and simply said, in the smallest of voices, "My dad loved me." As for the flag she wanted so dearly? She clutched it in her arms the way most girls hold a teddy bear. "I'll take care of it," she said, following Bohlinger on a tour of the Capitol. "I'll put it somewhere in the house. When I get there, I'll pick out a place."

My Pixie

Twenty-two months ago today, my BEEootiful Pixie was born, and our lives changed forever...again. See how tiny she was?

I am a happy Grandma Daycare, while Mama and Daddy go to work to earn the money so they can pay the rent on the place where she has her own room.

A few weeks back, we bought potty chairs, one for each house. Then I bought a couple dozen pairs of cotton training pants. This week, on Monday, we began in earnest to bring about the natural progression.

Today, we had no wet panties, no puddles on the floor to mop up, and used only two diapers - one for nap time, one for going home at the end of the day.

I am so proud. And a bit sad.

*sigh*

Beware "Government Grant" Scams

Money is tight. People are nervous. The idea that you can get 'free money' from BarryO and His Merry CongressWeasels is probably more attractive than ever before. DON'T DO IT! There are dozens - maybe hundreds - possibly thousands - of scammers out there, doing exactly what cost this woman money she could little afford to give away. May as well give cash to the 'homeless' family at the off ramp as get taken by one of these scumsuckers.

Your government is not giving you a damn thing. There's no such thing as a free ride - for the average everyday workin' American Joe or Jane, that is. Every good thing has a price...and so do the crappy ones. You know, like 'free' medical care.

Dave Ramsey says when we fall for the lies, we end up paying the Stupid Tax. Don't be as stupid as your government - and the lowlifes who aren't your government - think you are! If it sounds too good to be true, you can bet your lil blue booties it's TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

BarryOCare = DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!

Thomas Sowell (you KNOW I love him):

Are decisions made by doctors who have treated the same patient for years to be over-ruled by bureaucrats sitting in front of computer screens in Washington, following guidelines drawn up with the idea of "bringing down the cost of medical care"?
...
What is both dangerous and mindless is rushing a massive new medical care scheme through Congress so fast that members of Congress do not even have time to read it before voting on it. Legislation that is far less sweeping in its effects can get months of hearings before Congressional committees, followed by debates in the Senate and the House of Representatives, with all sorts of people voicing their views in the media and in letters to Congress, while ads from people on both sides of the issue appear in newspapers and on television.

If this new medical scheme is so wonderful, why can't it stand the light of day or a little time to think about it?

Robert Tracinski:

You can see how Obama's demands undermine this whole system. To ask insurance companies to cover a patient after the tumor is diagnosed is to ask them to take on a known expense. Combine that with another Obama demand: that insurance companies can't charge higher rates for those who are at higher risk of getting sick. So if insurance companies have to take on a known expense and can't charge a higher rate for it, how are they going to pay for it? By raising everyone else's rates, redistributing their wealth to the new freeloaders.

This isn't insurance, it's welfare. And that's the whole point.

John Stossel:

I keep reading about health-care "reform," but I have yet to see anyone explain how the government can make it easier for more people to obtain medical services, control the already exploding cost of those services and not interfere with people's most intimate decisions.

You don't need to be a Ph.D. in economics to understand that government cannot do all three things. (Judging by what Paul Krugman writes, a Ph.D. may be an obstacle.)

Paul Greenberg:

Here's what some of us are looking for in a health-insurance plan: Will it allow us to choose our own doctor and our own insurance policy? Will it let those who provide our health care order the tests and treatments they consider necessary, or will it hamper them?

Do we get to consult our own physician or is our fate in the hands of Doctor Obama with his glib talk of red pills and blue pills, and how there's really no difference between them except in cost? Oh, and our president is an expert on tonsillectomies, too, and how many should be done. (When he talks medicine, he's almost as convincing as some doctors I know talking oh-so-expertly about politics.)

Another question: Will this country's great big new health-care system get all those lawyers off our doctor's back, and just let the country's physicians practice medicine? Instead of having to practice it defensively? Is there anything in this developing thousand-page mass of rules and regs that will lower the medical malpractice premiums that keep driving up the cost of health-care?

Will this bill give individuals the same tax breaks on their health insurance as businesses are now allowed? Will it let us take our insurance with us when we switch jobs or lose one? Will it encourage good health? By, say, giving discounts to those of us who don't smoke?

Issa to Emanuel: Back Off!

Methinks the Chicago Machine who've invaded Washington, D.C. may have gotten a tiny bit big for their britches...

In the press release, Issa's letter to RahmmyBaby has this beautiful paragraph:

At what point do you believe your practice of Chicago-style politics violates a public official’s right to speak out in favor of alternative policies. The American people have a right to know what role you played in developing the threatening letters to Governor Brewer and whether you intend to continue to engage in these tactics in the future.

Read this, then click the button at the bottom for the pdf version of the letter. I may print it out and tack it to my bulletin board, as a reminder that we still have a small handful of Elected Officials who aren't complete weasels. Makes me want to stand up and cheer, I tells ya!

It's Tuesday - it's Thomas Sowell

Samples from Mr. Sowell's column at JewishWorldReview.com:

"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away, while we are mindlessly repeating the catchwords of the hour, whether "change," "universal health care" or "social justice."
...
Ultimately, our choice is to give up Utopian quests or give up our freedom. This has been recognized for centuries by some, but many others have not yet faced that reality, even today. If you think government should "do something" about anything that ticks you off, or anything you want and don't have, then you have made your choice between Utopia and freedom.

Useless time-wasters

I wandered over to Margo's Maid's Shadowlands. She posts some of the strangest stuff. In continuing on past her links, I came upon this. Now, I'm an expert at doing something so I don't have to DO something (which is the reason these blogs exist, isn't it?), but it hasn't come this far just yet. So far, I've managed to stick with cooking and blogging to waste my time - and yours!

"...government made more promises than its economy can easily support."

As this column notes, California is having problems that are repeating at the national level. Do YOU think our Elected CongressWeasels pay any attention to that at all?

Robert J. Samuelson:
Here's the national lesson. There's a collision between high and rising demands for government services and the capacity of the economy to produce the income and tax revenue to pay for those demands. That's true of California, where poor immigrants and their children have increased pressures for more government services. It's also true of the nation, where an aging population raises Social Security and Medicare spending. California is leading the transformation of politics into a form of collective torture: pay more (higher taxes), get less (lower services).

Rest in Peace, Captain Speicher

It's been 18 years. I didn't know this young man. We were living in this house, with a little girl and a dog and a cat. We've lived in 4 other places since then, returning to this house 6 years ago. I remember the reports, watching the tv on top of the fridge while I fixed dinner and washed dishes. I have been kinda tearful for nearly an hour now. He was one of ours...and he is missed.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- After nearly two decades, the remains of a Navy pilot from Orange Park -- the first American lost in the Persian Gulf War -- have been found in Iraq, the military said Sunday.

News4Jax.com

Thank you for your Service, Captain Speicher. We will not forget.

(Thanks, Swampie)

Go see Paco...you won't regret it

Paco has picked up many of Tim Blair's commenters, and this post shows a couple of 'em in top form! They are SO creative and quick, I am in awe.

NOTE: Do NOT drink coffee or other beverages while reading the linked post.