While other family members are recovering, I am still sick. My cold is turning into the flu.

Personally, I blame the French.

Happy New Year to everyone.

As is the entire family - so not doing much but playing Sid Meier’s Pirates and watching Cartoon Network.
Quick thoughts:

Was I the only one whose first thought was, upon hearing about the tsunami, “Betcha we (USA) will be blamed for it,"?

The UN’s comments immediately after the disaster about the US being stingy was tactless. Of course, Turtle Bay is currently mired in so many scandals (Oil-for-Food, Sex Slaves for Peacekeepers, etc) that the lack of tact is the least of the UN’s problems. How long are we going to put up with that joke of an organization before we pull out of it and work bilaterally with the rest of the world?

Wonder how the Pirate-King is doing in CO…

Immigration has become an absolutely taboo topic on university campuses.

I was just told this by a noted professor at UC-Davis. His comment was in response to the silence that has greeted when I have approached colleges about setting up chapters of the ITPAA, inc.

I had figured that college administrators might be interested in anything that helped prepare their students for the real-world. I even thought the “collectivist” nature of an association might appear to their Leftist ideology.

Boy was I wrong.

While the ITPAA represents the interests of citizens and residents alike, and has a broad membership that cuts across all ethnic groups, they obviously won’t touch it with a ten foot pole. And the professor states why.

So this is what the American univerisity system has become: an institution run by Politically Correct dogma instead of free-thought and the exchange of ideas. This is the Left’s little utopia - what they would force upon society?

Have they no shame? Can’t they realize that they have become the very fascists that they supposedly hate so much?

During my days at UC-San Diego, I saw the juggernaut of PC dogma beginning, but I always thought it would be tempered by people’s innate common sense.

Obiously I was wrong.

For those of you who know me well, I tend to have serial obsessions. My current obsession is rebuilding my baseball card collection from the 1960s-70s. I’m also rediscovering my love of the game, and my heroes of the era: Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan and Pete Rose. Of the four, Pete Rose is an enigma. He is truly one of baseball’s all-time greats - and the Hall of Fame remains an empty shell without him in it. However, he has refused to admit his mistakes - that first step of recovery and to redemption. I believe that he will someday, and until he does, I am going to obsess about his cards.

Rose first appeared in the Topps 1963 set in a card shown below:

This card sells for several hundred dollars in good condition - thousands in excellent or better. He appears on the card with Al Weis, Ken McMullin and Pedro Gonzalez. If you don’t recognize those names, you shouldn’t. They may appear on the same card as Pete Rose, but they never matched his skills or longevity.

Pete Rose started his career in the majors in 1963 and finished 24 seasons later with a career average of .303.
Al Weis played for 10 seasons beginning in Sept 1962 and finished with a career batting average of .219.
Pedro Gonzalez played only 5 seasons in the majors and finished with a .244. I wonder why he quit. Injury?
Ken McMullin was the most successful of Pete’s “card-mates", playing for 16 seasons and ending his career in 1977 with a respectable .248 career average.

The above statistics come from the best baseball reference I have found on the web: The Baseball Almanac.

The Captain fires a broadside at the United Nations:

What has the UN done for America? They’ve ignored the terrorist threat by linking it to Israel’s status, creating a stalemate on the Security Council and an abject surrender on the Human Rights committees that abound at Turtle Bay (and are usually run by the worst abusers). They allowed Saddam Hussein twelve long years to ignore the cease-fire accords that kept him in Baghdad, and then once we finally bypassed the UNSC, we found out that member-nations like Russia, China, France, and Germany continued selling Saddam arms in violations of the sanctions they insisted would be enough to render him harmless. The oil-for-food program that we hoped would ease the sanctions’ bite on ordinary Iraqis instead was transformed by the UN into a vehicle to stuff billions of dollars into Saddam’s pockets, some of which went to fund terrorism in Palestine and almost certainly against the US.

Dear Santa
Recently the Kid started doubting your existence, thanks to that wonderful font of knowledge known as his “peers". I assured him that you exist because your spirit of giving and caring exists. I think he got the gist of my philosophical argument, and just to be safe agreed with me.

Now I recently wrote an article about the things I didn’t want for Christmas and why. Since Christmas is only three days away, I thought I would do a follow up on that article with the things I do want.

Note: these are things - not wishes like “world peace” or a conscience for Michael Moore and a hellfire missile up the butt of Osama Bin Laden. So here’s my list. Rest assured that if I don’t find any of these things under the Christmas tree, I will continue believing in you (if only to annoy the ACLU).

1. A Platinum Husband and Wife Membership at Targetmaster - Both the Wife (may Her name be praised!) and I have been talking about one of these for months now. She hasn’t shot since the Navy and would like to get some practice. The Platinum membership offers unlimited firearm range use, members lounge, reserved range time, free light gunsmith service, free guest privileges and free gun rentals - Including Full Auto. Now does that sound like fun or what after a long day at the office/treating GSWs?

2. Nvidia GForce 6600 AGP - While not quite as powerful as the 6800, the 6600 provides the best graphics bang for the buck in my opinion. Given how popular FarCry and Doom are in the house, it would be nice to find one of these under the tree so that I could chuck the old MX440-piece o’ crap from one PC, move the 9550 into it and replace the 9550 with the 6600. That way The Kid and I could frag monsters (and he could frag me) to his heart’s content.

3. 1962 Topps Lou Brock Rookie Card (Graded PSA 8 or better) - Lou Brock was my favorite baseball player as a kid. He was wicked fast and the all-time stolen base champ. I have several of his autographs, received at a time before autographs became a business. While this particular card isn’t the prettiest, it is his first and would be a nice momento to hand down to future generations.

4. 19″ flat-screen monitor - This would allow me to eBay a laptop, dump an ancient 15″ monitor, and move the Kid’s PC into the kitchen so that Wife (may Her name be praised!) can surf the Internet without having to stumble through the mess in the home-office.

5. A 6 Amp corded drill. I have a cordless drill and honestly, it seems to crap out just when I need it the most. I want something big and powerful that will drill through the hardest wood.

That’s all! No cars, jewelery or expensive clothes - all of which would be completely lost on me. The rest I can manage on my own (books, trains, etc). Thanks for everything that you have brought me in the past, and while some may scoff at your existence, rest assured that I don’t.

Sincerely,
Scott

Update: Phelps and I continue to argue about this here;

Discovery.org is the playground for Intelligent Designers. While hanging out there, I’ve noticed some things:

First, there are 2 biologists listed as CSC Fellows: Michael J. Behe, and Paul Chien. Both of these biologists are tenured and have written extensively about Intelligent Design. Behe has written a book called Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. Here’s a review of the book at the Boston Review (for the lazy: it’s a pretty scathing critique of it).

Beyond those two men, there are well over forty who are either on the board or also are fellows. The majority of these are lawyers, former Senator Slate Gordon of Washington, philosophers and other non-biologist types including software designers. This makes me wonder exactly what the agenda of Discovery.org is - since it is evidently greater than pushing Intelligent Design. As I learn more about it, I will post it here.

Next, the organization keeps a library of recent articles about ID. Discovery fellow Jonathan Witt (link), holder of a Ph.D. in Literary Studies from the University of Kansas, wrote an article that appeared in the Seattle Times called “Entertaining the notion of a place of wonder” (link)
The main point of this article is that the incredible complexities found in Nature cannot have occurred naturally.

This argument is refuted here.

Yet what bothers me most is that one cannot simply torpedo one theory without offering another to take its place. No ID supporter has step forward to offer evidence that supports the ID hypothesis. I can’t say I blame them, since it is much easier to try to poke holes in an existing theory than it is to formulate one to replace it, especially when that replacement theory involves proving the existence of a Supreme Deity.

For ID to overthrow Evolution requires nothing less than proof that God exists. For those of us who accept God purely on the basis of faith, such materialistic evidence is impossible by definition. That is why I have no problem believing in God AND accepting Evolution as fact - since proving the existence of God would prove Him to not be God at all.

That’s a tall order, and one which all ID believers have shied away from. Nevertheless, the attacks on Darwin continue, and will, as long as those who refuse to accept the existence of God faith alone continue to argue against Evolution and/or natural selection.

A few weeks back the Pirate-King told me how to lock-down this site so that spammers couldn’t post in the comments.

I have implemented a system by GudlyF that allows comments but blocks the spam robots (or forces them to evolve at least).

After finishing that, I cleaned up the site. I deleted over 6,500 spam posts.

I was wondering what was eating my bandwidth here. Now I know.

And to you spammers out there who may happen upon this post:
May your tongue be used as a litter-box by a thousand unneutered housecats.

Thank you so much!

Update: The cat’s alive for now…

About six years ago the family started feeding a scraggly looking stray that took up residence outside our house. The cat was a tortoiseshell, thin and a bit scrawny; definitely on the runtish side of things. While she took us up on our free meals, she never let us get near her, choosing instead to dash off into the yard to seek the cover of the rose bushes and peonies.

Five years ago next month, we had a terrific snowstorm that dumped over a foot of snow on our neighborhood. For weeks we had noticed that the scrawny cat named “Chalupa", after a Taco Bell ad campaign running at the time (thank you Madison Ave…), had an injured paw, forcing her to run with her rear leg held up close to her haunches. Instead of getting better, the leg seemed to be getting worse, and as the snow fell I noticed blood tracks on the path.

Taking advantage of the situation, I leapt at Chalupa, who avoided me with cat-like grace. However, she had not planned on a yard covered in the equivalent of 7 feet of snow for a man, so that grace didn’t get her very far before I had her hissing and spitting in my arms.

I took her in, and let her go in the basement where it was warmer and away from the other animals. Days later we had her to the vet, where she had her paw looked at, and arrangement for her spaying were made.

For the next year, Chalupa was a shadow in our household that could only be glimpsed out of the corner of your eye as she padded silently from one hiding place to another. The other cats were livid, but livid is the default setting of cats if you ask me, so it didn’t bother me - though the kitty equivalent of protest signs - peeing on the carpet - did.

Chalupa wasn’t comfortable in the house, and so taking advantage of an open door one Summer day, she bolted and disappeared into the neighborhood. She was gone for several days, and I started to get worried, visions of smushed kitty on the roadway being seen by one 0f the family running unedited and in the special Director’s Cut in my head, I finally got up the nerve and checked out the ASPCA.

There she was, alone in a cage and strangely happy to see me. Is such a thing possible for a cat? I took her home after bailing her out with $35 cash, and a remarkable thing happened over the coming weeks: Chalupa became one of the nicest, sweetest cats we owned.

Whereas she had hidden from us, she was now usually nearby. At night she alone would choose to sleep with us, curling up on our pillows near our heads. Changing position during the middle of the night would result in a sharp “meowp” as she complained about being disturbed. She was a true sweetie, and the first cat that had gravitated to me since I was a kid (Wife is the usual recipient of feline honors).

That’s pretty much been the story for the last 3 years.

Unfortunately, little “Lupa” has become quite sick with some kind of liver ailment. As I write the Wife is taking her to the vet again to see if anything can be done. The prognosis isn’t good, and we now have the prospect of having to explain the euthanizing of a pet to our child. We have decided that if it is the only option, then we will have it done but only after explaining the situation to our child.

While this isn’t any earthshaking news in the grand scheme of life, especially given what is happening today and what has happened in our world in the past, it is going to be for our child. I’ve researched the subject on the Internet, and information/knowledge/the truth seems to be called for when a pet is put to sleep.

Sometimes being a parent sucks.

Rumor has it that the administration may offer Sen. Joe Lieberman (D - CT) the lead of the new combined intelligence service. So far Lieberman has turned down the posts of Director of Homeland Security and UN Rep.

In a case of chickens coming home to roost, should Lieberman take a post in the Bush administration, his senate seat would be filled with a Republican, pushing that party closer to the magic number of “60″ where it can torpedo any attempts at Democratic fillibustering. The chickens have been out on the range since December 2003 - when former VP Al Gore threw his support behind Howard Dean - and later, the Democratic establishment through its anti-Dean support behind Kerry instead of the more conservative Lieberman.

While the article linked to above doubts that Lieberman would take the position, it is intriguing to imagine him doing so since, in my opinion, the Dem Party leadership screwed him royally.

Google ad irony:

The Evolutionary Cage Match continues here.

The challenge to ID believers remains:
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Evolution and Natural Selection have been proven. The existence of a supernatural being driving evolution is an extraordinary claim.

Where is the extraordinary proof supporting that claim?

Prove ID to me and I’ll teach it myself.

HonestReporting.com has released the Dishonest Reporting Awards 2004. Needless to say Europe figures prominently in the awards (what is it about Europeans hatred of Jews? Killing 6 million not enough?), but the USA doesn’t leave unscathed.

I’m in a nasty intellectual dust-up over at Dean’s World on Evolution. Come over and watch me go ape on some and make a monkey out of others (and myself)!

I wrote about it almost three years ago here.

Pirate-King has an interesting post about the cliches of TVLand. The one about girls being smarter than boys reminds me of a commercial the Kid & I saw last night on CartoonNetwork.

We were in the midst of Static Shock - a rather politically correct yet watchable show whose main character is a dread-locked high school black kid cum superhero. A commercial for Connect4 appeared - the game where you have to drop plastic coins to form four in a row. In it a 9-ish year old girl is playing a similarly aged boy. She then proceeds to kick his ass in this game, leaving him whining and frustrated - in a happy sort of way that you’ll never see in real life.

“You know, girls aren’t smarter than boys,” I said to The Kid.
“Girls are stupid,” the Kid replied.
“No, they’re just as smart as you are,” I said.
“They aren’t smarter than me?” the Kid asked.
“Some girls are, and some girls aren’t - just like with boys.”

Not that this matters. The commercial failed to make either me or the kid want to buy Connect4 - it’s sole purpose for appearing before us. The Kid’s got other things like video games and special train engines and cars on his “wish list".

Parents 1 - Pop Culture 0.

The Pirate-King has begun his journey across the Red Sea - as in “Red States". While I’ll miss knowing that he’s only a few minutes drive away, I know that I’ll be in contact with him electronically for a long time. Besides, it takes a big man to cry and a bigger man to laugh at that man - and the Pirate-King is that bigger man!

He has an interesting story posted about how small deeds can have big consequences. While the story itself may be apocryphal, there is no doubting the truth it portrays:

We are all connected - and our actions impact others in ways that we cannot fortell.

Once I mentioned to a coworker at my job at a video store that I had received a rejection slip from my first choice university. “Have you appealed?” she asked. I admitted that I didn’t know I could. “Write a letter, and show why you really want to go there.” I did - and three weeks later received a fat envelope filled with stuff including a letter that began “Welcome to the University of California - San Diego".

At UCSD I refined much of the critical thinking that the Jesuits had instilled in me during high school. I also met the woman who was destined to become my Wife (may Her name be praised!). As a result I traveled around the world, lived in places that I hadn’t even heard of, and learned languages and ate things that would gag most people.

The terrible thing is that I cannot even remember that girl’s name! But her one conversation, one bit of advice, completely changed my life forever.

With this knowledge comes great responsibility. We must strive to be nice and considerate of one another at all times - not only at special times or using grand gestures.

As they say in Tanzania, “Safari njema!” Pirate-King. “Tu-tau-nana!"- Until we meet again!

Michael Barone has an excellent read on the use of non-violence to overthrow regimes:

Nonviolent protest, Ackerman and Duvall argue, means “separating governments from their means of control.” They admit that nonviolent protest does not always work. Some dictators are too ruthless; some populations – Germans in Nazi Germany – are not willing to oppose their rulers. But nonviolent protest can be a force more powerful than busy policymakers, preoccupied with negotiating with governments, are inclined to think.

We are seeing non-violence at its best in Ukraine, as Barone states in this essay. I’ve always believed that non-violence could have been used successfully by the Palestinians had their goal been the creation of a state alongside Israel. The reason that this was never attempted, however, is that was never the goal: the true goal was the annihilation of Israel and the subjugation of the Jews living there. Therefore violence was the only choice to achieve that aim since the Jews would never submit to their own destruction.

I just came back from having lunch with the Pirate King, and thought I’d pass along an interesting experience I had during the short drive back.

As I pulled up to a traffic light, I noticed that I was behind a “man in a hat". Now everyone must know that anyone wearing a hat most likely drives 10 mph below the speed limit in his aging American car, so being behind one isn’t usually a good thing for those who are perpetually pressed for time. However just before I started cursing my luck, I noticed that he had a bumpersticker on his car that said “351st Bomber Group” below a drawing of a B-17.

The drawing immediately held my attention. B-17s are beautiful machines in the same way A-10 Warthogs are. Other planes may have sleeker lines, but only these planes are the best at keeping their crew alive to fight another day. These planes are some of the toughest ever manufactured, and the B-17 Flying Fortress flew so many missions that it should have been called the B-17 Liberator - because that plane helped liberate Europe. For those of us who see beauty in functionality, the B-17 is to planes what the woman that your momma wants you to marry is to women. She may not be the prettiest thing around, but she will cook, clean, cherish you and mother your children better than any Hollywood Starlet. The B-17 was the plane crews married, and she took care of them better than any other WW2 era plane around.

Here’s a link to the 351st. These guys were the rock stars of their era. According to the link they flew 9,075 sorties, lost 125 aircraft, dropped 20,770 bombs and suffered 974 casualties. The 351st took part in some of the most famous missions in WW2 history over Schweinfurt, Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg. They also have the most decorated pilots of the war.

Here’s a pic of one of their beauties:

Here’s a pic taken from one of a German ME-109 off the wingtip:

Keep in mind that was the enemy whose job it was to kill you. Had there been P-51s nearby, that guy would never have gotten so close. But the B-17s did not have air support by friendly fighters during most of their mission. They were all alone over enemy territory with just luck, their skills, and their planes to keep them safe. For nearly a thousand men, it was not enough, but for the vast majority like the “man in a hat” it was.

The men who did this job must have had balls of steel. They helped defeat the worst tyranny the planet has ever seen, and now the dwindling few are wearing hats and driving slowly in their cars into the unknown.

I now feel honored to have gotten so close to such a man, and will remember this the next time I come up behind a man driving and wearing a hat.

It’s that time of year again, time to think about ourselves, contemplating our own navels until we collapse into a blackhole of pure selfishness. So in keeping with that spirit, I thought I would list the things I don’t want for Christmas and why. Rest assured that should I receive any of the gifts below, they will be exchanged for something useful and more appreciated, like a back-wax.

1. Big ass flat screen HD TV – The pictures look great when they aren’t moving. However the moment they do, it’s like watching a show through a rain spattered windshield. Plus in two years all the current HD flat screens will be obsolete, and the ones that replace them will be almost free. Walking into an electronics store and seeing these dimly lit overpriced monstrosities makes me wonder if they are broadcasting submliminal messages like “Ignore the crappy picture. You want one of these". Well, I can’t and I don’t.
2. Fahrenheit 9/11 – If I wanted to waste 2 hours of my time on hateful lies, twisted facts and propaganda, I’d watch CBS Nightly News with Dan Rather.
3. Apple iPod – I’m old school. If I can’t blast it from my car stereo and feel it through the soles of my feet, I don’t listen to it.
4. Anything made in China, except children. - No, I’m not creepy, just honest. The only decent export out of China today is children. Everything else, all the products, everything, is so shoddily made that I end up returning the things broken anyway. So I may as well return them new and get something better right away.
5. Hummer/BMW/Lexus - Not that the Wife (may Her name be praised!) would ever be stupid enough to buy one of these for me, but they are worth mentioning anyway just in case any of you win the Powerball jackpot and want to annoy me.
I live on the East Coast - not the Nevada salt flats. I don’t need a BMW to drive bumper to bumper on I-95. I need something nimble yet well-armed, maybe one of these. The advantage of a Toyota Technical is that on the weekend I could remove the 50 calibre machine gun and haul drywall from Home Depot.

I just learned from a gay football blogger of all people that Hanukkah begins tonight.

Happy Hanukkah!

I’ve been trying to figure out just what the hell Green Day is singing about in the song “American Idiot", so I googled and found the lyrics here.

I figured it was some kind of Lefty, Moore-ish rant. Truth be told, I can’t make heads or tails of it.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
Convincing them to walk you.

Who’s the idiot: Americans who support Bush and the War on Terror, the kids who buy their CDs or the songwriter who can’t get his message across? Convincing them to walk you? What, is that supposed to mean that I’m a poodle? Can I be a Rottweiler? But you said “we’re not the ones who’re meant to follow". So… WTF?

Punk is about being direct. I thrashed at an Exploited show where the British hardcore band sang “F*** the USA". You can’t get more direct than that. The lead singer got hit in the head with a beer bottle during that show too. One has to love Freedom of Expression.

I still listen to the Dead Kennedy’s and Minor Threat. I’ve pared back on the Goth because honestly, I’ve got plenty of drama in my life without needing to make more up. And I love my trance techno - even if it is the musical equivalent of a jackhammer. And there’s still the odd moment when I crank Ozzy Osbourne or Ted Nugent. Yes, an idiot I know once said something wise once: “The music you listen to at 16 will be the music you’ll listen to for the rest of your life". Smart man, that idiot.

Every time I hear about how Left American university campuses are, I think of this lyric from the Dead Kennedy’s Holiday Classic, “Holiday in Cambodia":

Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin’ that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slums got so much soul

Yep, Jello Biafra used plain speech to get his point across. So what is with Green Day’s artsy crap?

Punk is sure dead if Green Day claims the mantle of “Punk Band".

Update: 12/21/2004
It just dawned on me this morning who the true American idiot is: The kid who listens to Green Day, whines about Bush - then doesn’t vote.

If you want change, you have to do more than listen to a song about it. You have to do more than slap an anti-Bush bumpersticker on your car or post at SmirkingChimp.

Why didn’t these kids vote? I think it’s because their parents couldn’t do it for them.

Go ahead. Listen to Green Day. Whine about your world. Then do absolutely nothing about it.

I’ve installed new software that blocks the spammers who have taken to posting in the comments section - thanks to The Pirate King.

In Buddhism, one of the tenets of wisdom known collectively as the “8 Fold Path” is “Right Livelihood". Now I am about as far from Buddhism as one could be - especially one who drinks as much coffee as I do. But to me it is important to do a job that one can be proud to do. Now being an IT geek isn’t as glorious as say a Marine in Fallujah, but when the day is done I can say I did make the world a little better than I found it - or at least I tried to.

But there are parasites in the world who simply exist to feed off of others. I was reminded of this when I checked out eBay and looked for some Yu-gi-oh! cards for The Kid. Most of the hottest cards were being sold by scammers - sellers with IDs less than a month old with 25+ positive feedbacks through purchasing free products or $.02 recipes.

Yes, caveat emptor, but sometimes you just want to grab such people and slap em while shouting, “Just what the f*** is the matter with you?”

As I have written before, there is no balance in the Universe like the Taoists think. Evil, often under the guise of apathy reigns. Good is the exception.

I can’t change the world, but I can change me, so I try to worry about my own crap. Still, I would love nothing more than to cane one of those eBay scammers. I am not a violent man, but I do grow my own bamboo…

This is a continuing story. Last update was here.
Sister in law is still sober, and Girly Man continues abusing the system. Sister in law received her divorce papers on her 20th anniversary. That must be quite a job, serving divorce papers on people. It must be up there with jobs like bill collector or mortgage foreclosure specialist. Yes, some jobs have to be done by someone I suppose. Still, there no law that say you have to like the person who does it.

Girly Man continues his adultery in Sister in law’s house, and has refused to amend the Protection from Abuse order (PFA) to allow her to get her things. Meanwhile, Girly Man’s shiksa continues to play house, sleeping over regularly in front of sis-in-laws two teenagers.

Girly Man is seeking complete custody of everything along with child support. He alleges misconduct based on her drinking and has hired an attorney to prove it.

So now the wheels of justice begin their slow roll forward.

In a previous post I noted my 4th year anniversary of sobriety. My last drunken night was spent drinking with Girly Man, who drank me under the table that night. He still drinks.

He’s an evil, selfish, self-righteous moron, drinking drunk and adulterer. He knows nothing of loyalty and honor.

He is not a man in any sense of the word, so maybe I should stop calling him Girly Man and refer to what he truly is: nothing.

Link to the latest news from our local newspaper, the Delaware News Journal. I don’t read the thing. It’s not much of a paper really. It’s liberal, until the topic of banks and credit card companies come up. Then it’ s John Birch reactionary.

The slippery slope predicted by anti-abortion protesters seems to exist after all according to Hugh Hewitt’s Death by Committee posted at the Weekly Standard. Here’s the part that reminds me to brush up on my shooting skills at Targetmaster:

A parent’s role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent’s wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so rests with doctors.

As I wrote in the original Razor about Terry Schiavo, parents should have the ultimate say in matters of life or death over their children no matter how old their children are. No parent should be forced to see their child killed for any reason.

Got that Dutch?

Mothers and fathers are the creators of life. They are responsible for the well-being of their children. They should be the sole arbiters in matters of life and death of their children.

This decision is chilling, and once more proves how morally bankrupt Europe has become to even begin to entertain this.

Yesterday was my 4 year anniversary of sobriety.
Thanks to Linda for her refusal to be a co-dependent anymore.
Thanks to John Buckley and AA for being there when I need them.
Thanks to my Higher Power whatever it is (and no, it’s not Karl Rove).

In Swahili they say kidogo-kidogo, which is their “one day at a time".

Yep…

Thanks to Dean’s post of Pat Sajak’s article found here:

Somewhere in the world, a filmmaker creates a short documentary that chronicles what he perceives as the excesses of anti-abortion activists. An anti-abortion zealot reacts to the film by killing the filmmaker in broad daylight and stabbing anti-abortion tracts onto his body. How does the Hollywood community react to this atrocity? Would there be angry protests? Candlelight vigils? Outraged letters and columns and articles? Awards named in honor of their fallen comrade? Demands for justice? Calls for protection of artistic freedom? It’s a pretty safe bet that there would be all of the above and much more. And all of the anger would be absolutely justified.

Sajak puts the killing of Theo Van Gogh in language American Leftists can understand by discussing their sacred cow, abortion. His conclusion?

If I were Michael Moore, I would much rather rail against George W. Bush, who is much less likely to have me killed, than van Gogh’s murderer and the threat to creative freedom he brings. Besides, a man of Moore’s size would provide a great deal of “bulletin board” space.

Thank you for joining the Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge. You are a member of the team proudly known as Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom!.

You can invite other bloggers to join your team now. Fundraising begins December 1 and ends December 15. We handle almost everything. All you have to do is link to your fundraising page and encourage your visitors to make a donation. Have fun! Brag and boast. Taunt and tease. Whip the blogosphere into a fundraising frenzy. It’s for a great cause. Here is information you need.

INVITE OTHER BLOGGERS TO JOIN YOUR TEAM
Use this link to invite other bloggers to join your team
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LINK TO YOUR FUNDRAISING PAGE
Starting December 1 use this link to encourage people to donate.
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A sham of a mockery of a travesty of a sham.
Yet another reason why the UN building needs to be turned into condos…

The contortions necessary to arrive at this conclusion resulted in a decision that there is no right of self-defense under the U.N. Charter when terrorists are not state actors. But just in case anyone missed the point, Judge Tanaka spoke of “the so-called terrorist attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers against the Israeli civilian population” (emphasis added) and Judge Elaraby (Egyptian ambassador to the U.N. until 1999) affirmed a “right of resistance” on the grounds, judicially speaking of course, that “violence breeds violence.”