A quick suggestion

Anybody out there who believes in Truth, Justice, or The American Way, should sprint over to Gates of Vienna and check out today's posts there.

We've been sold out. Bush is speaking tomorrow at a Mosque, where he'll likely spout more "religion of peace" piffle. The US government is working with unelected officials from our neighboring countries to create an American version of the EU. And a real live "moderate Muslim" in Britain, a member of Parliament no less, is resigning because of death threats. He had the audacity to force the government there to request extradition of a couple brutal murderers from Pakistan. These animals tortured and killed one of his constituents, and he thought they should be punished. The Foreign Office disagreed, and apparently so do many British Muslims.

The governments of the West are selling out their people every chance they get. And they're no longer even pretending to care what we think.

Something has to give. Either we run the show or they do. Perhaps it's time we show them who it is. Because before too long, it'll be too late.

Another solid candidate

And we don't need to fear... I was concerned that I'd have to give the "WTF was he thinking?" award for this week to the Indianapolis teachers.

But our leftist friends have come through. We have another, probably better, candidate. A writer in Hollywood (there's a shocker) named Peter Mehlman wrote a piece the other day in which he went a bit further than usual. Rather than explain to us in the usual detail that Bush=Hitler (I've written in the past that Bush never equals Stalin or Mao, both of whom did more damage to their own countries than to others. But the point there is that they were both Communists, and therefore Good. Hitler being a Fascist, was Bad. Never mind that Nazi means National Socialist. But I digress)

At any rate, Hitler, while he did slaughter millions of Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Slavs, mentally and physically Handicapped; started a war that killed tens of millions of people and so on; had one advantage over Bush: He meant well. Bush of course, doesn't.

The supreme irony here, of course, is that Mehlman, as most readers have likely already figured out, is... A Jew.

Of course, one could also point out that he comments about how "everyone from Helen Thomas on down" says Bush is the worst president ever. Not sure why, other than being 372 years old, leftist, and god-awful ugly, Ms. Thomas is so important that she rates being on top. Aside from her liberal credentials, which are impeccable. That right there could perhaps earn Mehlman a nomination.

But why pile on? At any rate, for his incredibly stupid comments, Peter Mehlman is nominated for the second "WTF was he thinking?" award.

Oh, and a big old hat-tip to Ace Of Spades for this one.

A new candidate

Well, after a quiet week, we have another candidate (two actually) for the "WTF was he thinking?" award. Not sure whether it's a case of he or she, but it doesn't matter. Any time a schoolteacher gives a kid an award for "Most Likely Not To Have Children" and "Sir Clowns-a-Lot", there's something seriously wrong.

So the two unnamed teachers in Indianapolis are nominated for the second round of WTF was he thinking. Congratulations.

Idiots.

Coolest thing ever

A video of England's legendary Zimmers. Watch and enjoy!







Oh, and to explain further, here's a bit more about them.

Scare tactics

Just saw this article on Yahoo. Apparently, with the leftists there on the verge of getting their butts handed to them in the election for parliament, they've discovered that democracy is dangerous:

"the left and centrists said a crushing right-wing majority was unhealthy and threatened democracy."

Of course, a crushing left-wing majority would be A Good Thing.

Poor babies.

Well this is just.... odd

Feel sorry for the girl's parents, but wow. What are the odds? I also feel badly for the manufacturer, cuz they're gonna get hammered.

Deservedly or not.

And the winner is....

Jimmy Carter. Congrats to the former president for being the first ever winner of the G-T-W "WTF was he thinking?" contest. It wasn't really even all that hard to pick our winner.

The first nominee was Phillip Wellman, the minor league baseball manager who inspired it all. He gets a pass because, while he was completely obnoxious and way over the top, he was presumably trying to be entertaining.

The second nominee was Gary Sheffield of the Detroit Tigers, for his "Hispanics are more common in baseball because they're easier to control" lecture. He gets a pass because, as more people commented on the topic, it turns out that there is some degree of truth to it. I never knew that players from outside the US are not "drafted" in the normal way. The teams just find youngsters (Thanks to Ernie Harwell for that term), bring them to the US, and pay them whatever they can get away with. Given the desperation of these kids to make it and avoid going back to a life of poverty in Guatemala or wherever, the money is appallingly bad.

In fact, Sheffield might deserve a degree of praise. Perhaps his comments will bring this out into the open, and force MLB to change the way they do business in Latin America. Not necessarily likely, but it could happen.

Which brings us back to Dhimmi Jhimmi. There are no excuses for his particular brand of stupidity. I still shake my head in wonderment when I read this:

'In the Soviet Union, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko laughed at Carter's human rights record behind his back, but knew how to manipulate Carter in public. Gromyko browbeat Carter, telling him the USSR's health care and housing trumped America's. "I couldn't argue," Carter winced in his book, "Living Faith." "We each had a definition of human rights, and differences like this must be recognized and understood."' (emphasis added)

As I mentioned in the original post, there's no logical basis for Carter's statement here. The facts would be easy for anyone to discover, especially if one has the CIA, the NSA, Congress, and the entire US government to assist your research.

So congrats to our worst ex-president. I suspect we'll be seeing him a lot more in the next few years.

And as commenter Eduardo Stump said, Carter might even be a candidate for a "WTF was he thinking?" lifetime award. Maybe I'll hold off on that kind of prestigious award until the next time he opens his ignorant mouth.

Which will likely be another week or two.

Cool bit of audio

Just found this clip. It's possibly the coolest song ever. It's from 1947. My dad had the song on a 78 speed record, but it was a special type of disc, so it warped and died.

I've been looking for it pretty much since I got on the internet, and just found this clip. Thanks to Stephen Howard for having it on his page.

Enjoy the dulcet tones of "Humphrey the Sweet Singing Pig", by The King's Jesters.





And if you doubt the coolness factor, check out the original record itself.

Hometown blues

Not that I really care anymore, since I haven't lived there for 20+ years, but I just looked up the old hometown, and looked at the census data.

In the time frame that roughly matches my lifetime, the population has declined by approximately 50%. The population's been dropping since the 1950s. This would seem to be a serious problem.

Sadly though, the people in charge are still clueless. The City Council takes long vacations to discuss urban problems, the Mayor uses City funds as his own personal bank account (allegedly), and throws a temper tantrum when asked about it, the schools are garbage (a study by the US government some years back found roughly half the population functionally illiterate), and on and on.

And they're unable- or unwilling- to do anything about it.

Fortunately, it's not my concern. Talk about "white flight", but the fact is that, to the best of my knowledge, every single person I know that lived in Detroit has either moved out or died. And that's over the last 20 years. To my knowledge, the last person of my acquaintance to live there was my uncle, and he passed away some 15 years ago.

It's a dead city, and it's providing a blueprint for other cities in Michigan. All the places that were built on the auto industry are following in Detroit's tracks. Flint, Saginaw, and now Lansing( my current home) are either dead or dying. All making the same mistakes. And it's not getting better, in part because of the idiot politicians around here. When you have a single-state depression, it's your own fault. Do something right- or at least, do something.

But they won't. And a lot of people are leaving. In a week or so, I'll be among them. Perhaps I'll be back, maybe even as soon as next year, but I don't see it. Other than my family, there's not really much here. Love the State, but the people... not so much.

So we'll see. It's been getting worse over the last 25 years, and the people running the State still haven't figured out what to do about it. So it just keeps getting worse.

Ah well. Just a few more days.....

Another nominee

Here we have another nominee for our brand new feature: Gary Sheffield, of the Detroit Tigers. Last week, Shef announced that if he were suspended for throwing a bat, he would inform the world about a huge conspiracy.

It turned out to be the fact that Blacks are not as common in Baseball as they used to be. Since it's obviously not a lack of athletic gifts, then it must be because baseball is actively trying to recruit more Hispanics. Why, you ask?

Well according to what he told GQ (hat tip to With Leather) it's because... '[It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them"'.

Brilliant, eh?

On the other hand, not unusual for him. Again via WL, here's a link to some of his all-time best.

So for managing to look like a racist, even though some of his best friends are Hispanic, and once again showing why athletes shouldn't be allowed to speak in public, Gary Sheffield gets a great big "WTF was he thinking?"

That gives us 3 nominees for the inaugural award. Anybody can vote, just leave a comment here. If nobody votes, then I get to decide. The winner will be in the running for the monthly award.

As a clarification, I've decided that I obviously have to nominate Phillip Wellman, the moron that started the whole idea. Together with Jimmy Carter, we now have 3 nominees. Oh the joy!

Warm fuzzy memories

Anybody that grew up in the Detroit area during the 70s, as I did, will remember certain things. I just found on youtube a video that puts it all together.




This is an absolutely iconic commercial for Detroiters of my age. It's for Faygo, the local soft drink, (and something to be experienced. Faygo Red Pop is awesome, and if you've ever had Rock & Rye, well consider yourself blessed).

A tiny bit of history. The boat they're on is one of the Boblo boats. Once upon a time, Boblo Island was the local amusement park. Located in the Detroit River on the Canadian side. (Fun fact I just discovered: It's actually Bois Blanc island. Heard the name, and never realized they were one and the same).

Riding the Boblo boats to the Park is one of the great memories of my youth. Truly a tradition there. On the other hand, I recall my last trip: I was 17, about to start college. My two oldest sisters had graduated college that spring, and for some reason we decided to go to Boblo. All I really remember was going on one specific ride... It was in the middle of the Park, and it was one of those spinny rides. That day reinforced something that I didn't keep in mind very well. I don't do spinny rides. I remember sitting between my sisters, moaning that I was gonna puke. They just kept telling me to look at them rather than outside the car, so I wouldn't.

My response was that if I looked at them, I'd puke on them.

In the end, I made it off in one piece. For the rest of the day, whenever we passed that ride, I had to look to the side- just looking at it made me queasy. Needless to say, I've never done a spinny ride since.

Anyhow, back to the commercial. I've loved it all along, and over the years, I've found some websites devoted to Detroit as it used to be, and this always gets mentioned.

True fact: A few years back, I was visiting a school friend and her husband and son. We were watching TV, and this commercial popped up. She and I were just standing up for something when it started. We immediately started singing along and swaying to the music just as they do in the commercial. Her family just stood there watching us, puzzled. As soon as the commercial ended, we came out of the reverie, and went about our business, like nothing had happened. Of course, we had to explain it to her husband...

That, my friends, is what you call effective advertising. When people sing along and immediately are transported back in time by your commercial twenty-some years later, you done good.

One final note: If you weren't grooving to this commercial, then I think you're dead.

A lesson on what I should have known

Do you recall the story of Jessica Cutler? She's the woman that started a blog called Washingtonienne, in which she wrote about her prolific and varied sex life. The part that caught the most attention was that she was working as a staffer for a congressman at the time, and her partners- one can't call them "lovers"-were also working for the Government. A big sex scandal was promised, with some chuckling that the evil Republicans would get their payback for the Clinton scandal.

Didn't happen, of course. Most of the people were too minor for anyone to care.

The blog lasted only a couple weeks before she was "outed" by another blog. In the end Ms. Cutler was fired, and one might say disgraced, over her admissions of sex for money, sex with up to 6 men (not at the same time), sex with married men, etc. A tawdry tale indeed.

Okay, enough background. I first heard of all this back as it was unfolding. I read the blog as posted somewhere, and even took part in some online discussions. I only made one post, and I do recall that the words "skank" and "pathetic" were among those that I used.

I also recall comparing her to a woman I once knew, who was so screwed up that sex seemed to be her way of finding a purpose in life. This particular woman asked me (her boyfriend had just dumped her, proclaiming that he didn't see her as someone he wanted to marry) "how can you sleep with someone for 5 years if you don't love them?"

Given how often this woman bragged about her prowess and appetite, and that her boyfriend was a stereotypical Frat Boy, I almost asked her if she was joking. But since she was pretty upset, I refrained.

At any rate, in my mind Jessica was equivalent to her. Perhaps so, perhaps not. Always tough to analyze someone you've never met.

And that was pretty much the end of my interest in the whole Cutler affair. Not long afterwards, she posed for Playboy. Yes, she's pretty attractive, though not IMHO gorgeous. I did see the pictures. Liked them too. And then I forgot about her. (insert "typical man" joke here, if you go that way)

But now, Jessica's being sued by one of the Washington men, claiming that it's an invasion of privacy "for public revelation of private facts". And she recently filed for bankruptcy, in part due to this lawsuit. Which brought it all back to my mind, and I've since glanced at her current blog.

So I was reading all this, some of her comments on the story that made her infamous, and the later events. And somewhere along the line, someone- I assume it was Cutler herself- pointed out that among other things, she lost her job; her privacy; and in some ways, her name. And while she's adapted well to it all, even turning the Blog into a "fictional" book, still she went through a lot. I kind of wonder how her parents took to the entire thing, for instance.

So it makes me wonder. Reading her current blogs, she might still be a "skank", assuming everything she writes is true. She might even be "pathetic", assuming my bit of psychoanalysis was correct. But it still must have been a bit of a hard time for her to go through, when the story first broke. And it's gotta be tough to have someone suing you. So maybe people were a bit hard on her.

I don't know. When you proclaim on your website that "I am a published author who jumps out of cakes for money", I think you're embracing your infamy. Shame doesn't appear to be part of her makeup, but perhaps it's something she covers up.

I dunno. I do think it was a bit harsh for me to proclaim someone I've never met a skank, and call her pathetic to boot. But then, I'm sure she heard both terms a lot in those days. I doubt she'd be bothered. Or even interested.

Doesn't matter. I doubt I'll ever meet her, and if I did, I don't imagine that I'd be introducing her to my parents, if you get my drift. From reading her blog, I doubt that if we met I'd be impressed, or vice versa. Likely, we'd say a few words and that would be it. No wild "he'in and she'in" either. Hell, I doubt even then we'd have much to say.

But still, she's a person and has to live her life. And for me to judge her on it, without remembering that the things I read over my cereal actually affect her, is wrong. She has to live with the outcome of whatever happened back then. All I have to do is pontificate on it.

Guess who's got the easier job?

I guess I'm finally learning not to judge people, a lesson I should've picked up a long time ago. Ah well. Sometimes I'm a slow learner.

Lovely summer in Michigan

Ugh. Yesterday, I finally got around to changing over my bed for summer. Took off the flannel sheets and the down comforter and replaced with something a bit lighter. So today it's all of 60 degrees out, and the weather forecast calls for a low tonight of around 40. Yeech.

But, this being the Midwest, no need to despair. Thursday it's supposed to be 90.

Wonderful, ain't it?

One for the WTF file

I'm always emailing hither and yon with a friend, over many issues. The other day, I sent him this quote:

'In the Soviet Union, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko laughed at Carter's human rights record behind his back, but knew how to manipulate Carter in public. Gromyko browbeat Carter, telling him the USSR's health care and housing trumped America's. "I couldn't argue," Carter winced in his book, "Living Faith." "We each had a definition of human rights, and differences like this must be recognized and understood."' (emphasis added)

It comes from the 7th part of this series about Carter's "leadership" of the US. As I told my friend:...this story tells me everything I need to know about him. If the man's incapable of responding to that lame of an assertion (read it again if need be), then his moral relativism and ignorance are staggering...

I mean, I think I could have rebutted it when I was 15. Of course, housing and medical care (not that the Soviets could have topped anything save a grass hut and witch doctor respectively with their system) aren't what I think of as "human rights" issues anyway. So dumbass caved on everything, just because he couldn't rebut an obvious untruth...

So for his inability to face up to a representative of a repressive and morally bankrupt regime, despite having the entire US Intelligence establishment at his service- which I suspect could have easily provided the ammunition to rebut Gromyko- Carter decided that "differences like this must be recognized and understood."

How stupid can someone be?

So for his complete inability to respond intelligently to what can only be called a taunt, I give "Dhimmi Jimmy" Carter a great big

WTF was he thinking?

************

A quick note. I'm thinking perhaps I should add to this new feature the ability to nominate people, and then select a winner every week, month, etc. Any comments?

A new feature

I was reading up on sports today, and I came across this link. I'm almost hesitant to link to it, because it's so incredibly over the top, but I had a thought.

As I sat here watching the video, all I could think was "WTF is this idiot doing? Is he trying to be funny, or what?"

So I've decided to start a new feature: "WTF was he thinking?" It'll be my little attempt to highlight the absolute stupidest things I see. It'll be random. Whenever I read something that pops that thought into my head, up it'll go.

I won't do a lot of commentary on the items I post. In this case, I'll merely mention that, if I ran the team this guy manages, he'd probably be out of a job before he gets to the clubhouse.

Completely inexcusable.

Telling it like it is

Just a quick post. I came across this piece by Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald Reagan.

I've never tried drugs. Of any kind. Never smoked a joint, never put anything up my nose, never even stuck a cancer stick in my mouth.

And I'm damn glad of it.

I couldn't imagine going through this kind of crap, just because I needed some way to keep awake for the whole night. Or whatever it is that prompts people to do drugs.

Robin Williams said it best years ago (paraphrase alert): Anything that causes paranoia and impotence? Sign me up.

It would be nice to see these kids get through it and fix their lives. But they seem to have the instant gratification gene. And on top of that, they also are young and successful enough to be indestructible, right?

Some time ago, I did a post on Britney Spears, and how tough things must have gotten for her. Now it seems Lindsay Lohan is in the same boat, more or less. But she has less excuse, I think. I still hope she can get it together, but I don't know. I'm not sure that Rehab is intended to be a mini-vacation. It should be a cast-iron bitch, methinks.

Maybe they should be tied down and have water dumped in their faces until they scream for mercy. Maybe that would work, maybe not.

Thank God I just don't know.

Later.

Another bit of progress

Here's a quick link to a story by Michael Yon, probably the best journalist of the entire Iraq war. Not for nothing is he sometimes compared to Ernie Pyle.

Does this show progress? Absolutely. Would CNN or Reuters do a piece like this? Doubtful.

Oh, and here's a nice little excerpt about our Al-Qaeda friends. Clearly, in their minds morality is for the other guys:

"...the Al Qaeda (AQI) terrorists who had brazenly made Anbar province a home base and slaughter pad with their marketplace car bombs, beheadings, and reputation for hiding bombs intended to kill parents in the corpses of dead children they’d gutted.

Over time, AQI provided ample demonstrations of their ruthless and reckless abuses of power over civilians, shooting people for using the Internet, or watching television, or other “moral transgressions” such as smoking in public. AQI’s claim of fundamentalist piety proved to be a thin veneer that was quickly eroded by blatant drug, alcohol and prostitute use. "

Did you notice the part about gutting the bodies of dead children in order to hide bombs and kill the parents? Or the part about using prostitutes?

Do as I say, not as I do. But hey, they're essentially abiding by the same rules as their prophet.

Sometimes I think that we need a better "final option" for these terrorists.... er, "freedom fighters" as so many people in the US call them.

Later.

History repeats itself

I just found a short article at Defensetech.org (with a hat-tip to military.com) about the weapons our troops are using in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It seems that many troops are requesting that the military ditch the M9 pistol ( a 9mm round) because it has insufficient stopping power. Some are specifically asking for a return to the venerable M1911 .45 caliber. In fairness, I've been hearing this for a couple years.

Well duh. The US adopted the 9 mm about 20 years ago (give or take) simply because our allies all use it, and this way we could have compatible ammunition. The .45 on the other hand was designed for the US Army during the Moro rebellion in the Philippines. It was designed specifically to give the troops a pistol with terrific stopping power, as a last-ditch defense.

Here's a little tip: When your military buys a new weapon, designed specifically to be used to stop fanatical Muslim guerrillas who are whacked out on their narcotic of choice, and it works brilliantly for about 80 years, think hard about replacing it for no good reason.

The saddest thing about this whole affair is that it's just so... obvious. I was in the Army when the switch to the newer pistol began (though I never used one). I clearly recall discussions with other officers and NCOs, in which we all-without exception- took the view that it was a mistake to switch, because the .45 was a more "lethal" round. But of course, the decision was made up in Washington (I assume), which someone once described to me as "where the rubber meets the clouds".

I just wonder how many of our soldiers were killed because they couldn't stop an enemy soldier, even with multiple shots. As the article says:

'"When speaking to experts and Soldiers on site, many commented on the limited ability to effectively stop targets, saying that those personnel targets who were shot multiple times were still able to continue pursuit," the report said.'

This is a tragedy. You need weapons that are lethal to fight a war. It's pretty simple. The .45 is one of the best weapons mankind has ever designed for close-range fighting, like that in a fight to the death (which is what our soldiers have to expect when fighting these animals).

I hope that none of the soldiers that have been captured by terrorists-like the 3 young men this month- were captured by assailants that had already been shot, to no avail.

That would be a crime.

Later.

A belated and quick note on Memorial Day

Here's a link to another article from Mark Steyn. I can't praise him enough. He's a brilliant writer, and I only rarely disagree with what he says.

Which I guess proves what a genius he is, right?

Anyhow, here it is. A little perspective on things.

Later.

The Pessimism of being a liberal

As some readers might know, I've recently been reading a lot of essays by the late Sydney J. Harris. Mr. Harris was an elegant writer and a very intelligent man. Reading his columns is a pleasure.

However, one of the things I've noticed while working my way through several anthologies of his works, is that he often takes a tone of Gloom and Doom when it comes to the future of Mankind. It's a bit off-putting to read an article written in the early 1960s, for instance, in which the writer opines about the dangers of nuclear weapons and the US/USSR Cold War.

One of the dangers of prophecy-assuming that the prophet doesn't really have The Gift- is of being wrong. And I'm certainly glad that Mr. Harris has such an abysmal record when it comes to soothsaying. But still, I have to wonder what leads him to such ends.

I suspect that it's because, being a Liberal (in the best sense of the word) he wished for an Ideal World; one in which things like nuclear weapons don't exist. Fair enough. But they do exist. And he was always reflecting on the danger to everyone, and how many millions of people would die in some unknown future war.

One of the columns I just read was about how the reality of war has changed since 1945 (again, bear in mind the essay was written sometime in the '60s, during the height of the Cold War). In it, he spoke of how, prior to Hiroshima, war was largely limited in area, and that civilians were largely safe.

Of course, to anyone with any knowledge of history, this assertion is almost laughable. Anytime before the 19th century, any civilians caught in a "war zone"- which I'll define as an area in which armies are marching and fighting- were liable to lose their crops, their livestock and their woodlands (armies needed fires for cooking and heat). If it was a "friendly" area, the men would often be taken as soldiers or laborers. In a hostile zone, the men would often be killed, buildings destroyed, and the women would be.... "recreation" for the invading soldiers.

By the way, this also held true in 1945, when the Soviets moved into Germany.

But in the view of Mr. Harris, this is untrue. Okay, we're all entitled to a misguided Utopian view of history. But he also mentions that in "modern"- meaning nuclear-war, millions of innocent civilians will die, and we humans need to adapt our ethical system to prevent that. None of this is new, in an intellectual sense. And none of it is inherently wrong, either. It's merely naive.

What liberals like Harris don't take into account, as many have said before me, is that Mankind can adapt to changed circumstances. Yes, nuclear weapons can kill millions of innocent people. But they have to be delivered somehow. The easiest way to do it is to use missiles. But missiles, whether nuclear armed or not, need to be accurate. And as you increase the accuracy, you also make it easier to destroy a target without nuclear bombs. A cruise missile can take out a factory or government building, so there's no need to drop a giant nuclear bomb on it. Remember, in WWII, when the atom bomb was created, aerial bombing was still very primitive. Claims from the various air forces aside, a bombing raid on Berlin, for instance, was going to be a smashing success if the majority of the bombs hit the City. It was necessary to send 1000 bombers, if you only expected 500 of them to hit the target.

Besides, any rational person knows that there's nothing to be gained by destroying the entire world. A nuclear war would be fairly limited. Nothing like what my Political Science professors called "Spasm War", where the Button is pushed and everybody launches all their nukes at everyone else. Nuclear war can be "won", with the proper exercise of strategy, an idea that the Soviets were very aware of. Nuclear weapons are a terror tool, and at this point, any country-including, of course North Korea-knows that if they were to launch nuclear weapons at another country, the retaliation would be far worse.

And human rights have progressed by a vast measure today. A hundred or more years ago, the "abuses" of Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib would have been ignored, in light of more important issues. Today, they are a major concern. Clearly, we have a better world when these non-existent scandals take center stage.

Well, at least the Western World is better. In many areas of the world, civilisation hasn't progressed too far. But a true liberal must view these areas as better than ours. The Law of Multi-culturalism says so.

Again, I don't hold Mr. Harris up for ridicule. I don't expect him to be able to see 30 years into the future, and know that in 2007 we can destroy individual buildings in the middle of a big city, without damaging any other structure. Nor do I hold him responsible for knowing that we can even use technology to ensure that the building is empty of people before we strike.

But he often spoke of his fear that if we don't get around our traditional ways of acting, mankind would be doomed. And this attitude still seems to prevail in the liberal community of today. Doom-sayers predict that Global Warming- sorry, "Climate Change"- will destroy mankind.

But, even if we assume-without basis, in my opinion- that this is correct, we still must consider that there are ways to prevent this catastrophe. Much of the Netherlands is below sea level. How? They use dikes to keep out the water, just as we do in New Orleans. (Of course, the dikes in Holland are actually maintained, which is one up on the latter). Sure, there might be problems, but they can be overcome, with innovation, technology, and effort.

So if the sea level rises by 10 feet or so, why is it impossible to somehow protect coastal cities like New York or Miami? If the Dutch could do it 300 years ago, I don't see why it's impossible now.

Too many trees being chopped down? There's a simple solution. Plant more. It's being done by lumber companies in the US today. And it's working well.

Wildlife in danger of extinction? There are ways to ban hunting, and also ways to track down poachers. Not to mention the ability to breed them in captivity. The American Buffalo (or Bison, for any pedantic folks out there) is a prime example.

Drought? It's possible to cause rain by seeding clouds. I'm not sure how effective it is, but if it helps some, that's better than nothing.

Ditto for the potential shortage of fresh water. I don't mean to play this down, because it does have the potential to be a crisis. Here in Michigan the levels of the Great Lakes are down, and it's well known that the Western US is always in danger of running out of water, which is why many western states, and even Mexico, want to take water from our Lakes. Which would be disastrous, I suspect. But still....

Isn't there anyway to draw water from the oceans, remove the salt, and use it? I would think so. It might not always be drinkable, but perhaps a system could be devised to use it for irrigation, plumbing, etc. I've been out west in the past, and the water that comes from the water system in desert cities is often undrinkable. In any case, I know that companies and scientists have to be hard at work on this problem. If someone can come up with a fairly cheap and effective way of converting salt-water to potable, fresh-water, they'll make billions of dollars. That's what we call "incentive".

So all these crises-or potential crises, to be more precise- have the potential to be solved by human technology. I see no reason to believe that we won't be able to find answers to virtually any question that arises, if we try hard enough. Maybe not in 2007, but perhaps by 2020. Or beyond.

I guess that's the advantage of being a conservative. I see where we've gotten, how we've mastered our environment, and think that almost anything is possible. No, we probably won't convert the entire earth into a Garden of Eden, but we can live, thrive, and survive, to quote the Blues Brothers.

But for a liberal, the world must be a perfect one, inhabited in strict accordance with liberal dogma. Working towards perfection isn't enough. It must be achieved, and quickly. And the very term "perfection" must be defined in accordance with liberal values. Nothing else is good enough.

But this idea flies in the face of all logic. It's in the striving for perfection that we achieve greatness. And what we've got today, especially in the United States, is greatness.

And everyone except a liberal knows it.

Later.