I've been "away" for a few months. Health issues place restraints on wannado's ....

When I collect my thoughts and regroup my humor, I'll blog a progression of health-related excursions.

.... an Iraqi woman ... going to vote .... killed by a terrorist ... images from America that I'm old enough to remember without the aid of a history book ... I'm not sure the tears I shed for her yesterday will completely remove the anger and sorrow I feel about her death  .... 

I've been channel surfing since the voting began yesterday .... ever mindful of what it takes to stand up to terrorism and bravely walk toward the ballot box, exemplifying the courage to vote.

One compelling scene was that of a journalist who stood over the body of a young Iraqi woman, killed by a terrorist as she walked to vote.

What was her name?  Did she wish her family farewell before she began that walk?  Was she surrounded by friends?  Was she afraid?  Was she aware of her fate?  How will she be remembered? 

Yes, those simple questions and answers matter to me.

Rest in peace.

The courage to vote
Kathleen Parker

January 29, 2005

"No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women." - Ronald Reagan

Like most Americans, I've never had to be brave to vote. I just show up at the polls, negotiate the ballot, grab an "I voted" sticker and drive home satisfied that the world will continue to turn on its axis in the usual way.

Piece of cake, democracy.

Then again, not really. As I was pondering the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq - and wondering whether I'd have the courage to vote under such circumstances - I was reminded that not so long ago one group of Americans had to be that brave.

It was just 40 years ago in the United States that many African-Americans were prevented from voting and some killed for trying, as were whites who tried to help them. It was only after numerous acts of violence and, yes, terrorism against blacks that the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed.

Imagine that.

In Iraq, terrorists and insurgents loyal to the former Baathist regime try to terrorize men and women who wish only to exercise their right to control their own destiny. In the South of the 1960s, terrorists loyal to segregation and Jim Crow hid behind white sheets while they burned crosses and terrorized blacks who wanted only to control their own destinies. They behead; we lynched.

Imagine that.

It's interesting that when suicide bombers blow up a building and kill innocents in Iraq, we know to call it terrorism. When bombers detonated their evil in a Birmingham, Ala., church, killing four little girls, that, too, was terrorism. It was also terrorism when members of the Ku Klux Klan kidnapped and murdered three voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Miss.

There is at this historic juncture a certain poetic symmetry as events unfold. On the eve of free elections in Iraq, our own history is circling back on itself. Just a couple of weeks ago, former KKK leader Edgar Ray Killen, 80, the man accused of orchestrating the 1964 murders of civil-rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, was indicted and faces trial March 28.

Forty years. Justice is not always swift, nor is the march to freedom easy. Democracy, as we seem to relearn each election season, is hard, messy work. So that witnessing the birth of democracy in Iraq, counting the painful contractions from afar, is both breathtaking and awesome.

I imagine that Iraqis walking to the polls Sunday - anticipating the possibility of violence, a car bomb or a stray bullet - must feel what American marchers, black and white, felt on March 7, 1965, as they started across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., toward the state capitol in Montgomery.

Like today's Iraqis, all they wanted was to vote. They, too, must have felt their stomachs knot, knowing that armed state troopers at any moment might rain violence on their unprotected heads. Which, of course, they did. Insurgents in Iraq; state-sanctioned terror in America. We have seen this before.

We've come a long way.

 And so have Iraqis. In less than two years, they've been invaded, liberated, occupied and now face their first election with some 7,000 candidates and 111 political parties. Americans can follow the election through the a team of Iraqi bloggers, who will be reporting real-time from the ground, thanks to Jim Hake and his Spirit of America, a nonprofit, nonpolitical charity that donates money and resources to advance democracy.

Working with Friends of Democracy in Iraq, Hake has recruited some 15 Iraqis - including journalists, a naval officer, students and a psychiatrist - who will be blogging from different cities and provinces at the Friends of Democracy site (www.friendsofdemocracy.org). I, for one, will be riveted.

Whether or not one agrees with the war that brought Iraq to this point, no American can watch these proceedings without wonder and respect. We've been there. We've had our own revolutions and our own demons to pursue. More than anyone else on the planet, we should be cheering them on.

I don't know how those Iraqi men and women, some of whom reportedly have sworn a last will and testament in preparation to vote, will make the trek from their homes to the polls. Just as I don't know how those marchers in Selma made it across the bridge with their heads split and their shirts bloody.

But they did.

Here's hoping Iraqis will, too.

Yeah, I got angry.  First I was disgusted.  Then angry.

It was the image of a small frightened child being comforted by an older child in a supposedly safe venue in the stands above a basketball court that did it for me.

First of all, I don't even like men's pro basketball.  Grown men with body tattoos, gold chains and god-that-had-to-hurt-looking body piercings running up and down a court in baggy shorts (playing noooo defense while) swishing a ball through a net for money.  B.O.R.I.N.G.  Except for maybe the last nano-second of the 7th game in a best-of-seven series with the score tied 200-200.  (When I was in retail, we used to be leery of young men in baggy pants -- into which they could stuff merchandise when they thought no one was looking.)     

Maybe those over-paid kazillion dollar boyz in baggy shorts who play-for-pay will have to forfeit some of those big bucks in damages while sitting out the season.  Or maybe they can hit the pro wrestling circuit. (Forget it -- they wear tight pants in that league ....) Or take the rest of the season off (instead of a few games, as one bozo asked) to promote his music career.  At least NOW we know why some brawlball players put their hands into those baggy shorts while standing at the free-throw line (i.e., as baseball players are known for "adjusting" themselves) .... These bozos are SEARCHING for their brains!

Fans (including lots of impressionable kids who probably look at some of those idiots as role models) PAY to sit in designated seats where they have the right to cheer, holler and taunt (not throw things at, btw) players who perform less than professionally.  (Remember all those re-runs from the Christians vs Lions series and the original gladiator league?  Even then, there were rules of engagement.) 

Players don't, however, have the right to leave the court to enter the stands and attack fans.  Under any circumstances.  (I bet if we really really delved into word history, we'd find that the word "stadium" once meant, sta-di-heck-outta-um-stands.)  That's why the court has lines around it.  That's why the bench is also designated for players and team personnel ONLY.  That's why locker rooms are closed to fans.  Fans pay to see you play.  Get it?   

I hope the NBA commissioner has the guts to bounce a few balls himself.  (I doubt it.  But I still hope.)  I'd hate to see modern-day Rome-dome fall. 

Maybe someone will show the commish that image of those kids in the stands.

My side-bar reading list includes several references which, while I may read them regularly, do not necessarily reflect my personal opinion(s).  One such reference is The American Thinker. 

The article reproduced below approximates some of the tenets I have held for most of my adult years ..... Rather than TRYING to write them now, all I have to do is keep this link close at hand. 

Works for me. 

An open letter to Europe
November 11th, 2004

Hi.  Are you nuts?

Forgive me for being so blunt, but your reaction to our reelection of President Bush has been so outrageous that I’m wondering if you have quite literally lost your minds.  One of Britain’s largest newspapers ran a headline asking “How Can 59 Million Americans Be So Dumb?”, and commentators in France all seemed to use the same word – bizarre -- to explain the election’s outcome to their readers.  In Germany the editors of Die Tageszeitung responded to our vote by writing that “Bush belongs at a war tribunal – not in the White House.”  And on a London radio talk show last week one Jeremy Hardy described our President and those of us who voted for him as “stupid, crazy, ignorant, bellicose Christian fundamentalists.”

Of course, you are entitled to whatever views about us that you care to hold.  (And lucky for you we Americans aren’t like so many of the Muslims on your own continent; as the late Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh just discovered, make one nasty crack about them and you’re likely to get six bullets pumped into your head and a knife plunged into your chest.)  But before you write us off as just a bunch of sweaty, hairy-chested, Bible-thumping morons who are more likely to break their fast by dipping a Krispy Kreme into a diet cola than a biscotti into an espresso –  and who inexplicably have won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined, host 25 or 30 of the world’s finest universities and five or six of the world’s best symphonies, produce wines that win prizes at your own tasting competitions, have built the world’s most vibrant economy, are the world’s only military superpower and, so to speak in our spare time, have landed on the moon and sent our robots to Mars – may I suggest you stop frothing at the mouth long enough to consider just what are these ideas we hold that you find so silly and repugnant?

We believe that church and state should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life.  We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions. We believe that individuals are more important than groups, that families are more important than governments, that children should be raised by their parents rather than by the State, and that marriage should take place only between a man and a woman.  We believe that rights must be balanced by responsibilities, that personal freedom is a privilege we must be careful not to abuse, and that the rule of law cannot be set aside when it becomes inconvenient.  We believe in economic liberty, and in the right of purposeful and industrious entrepreneurs to run their businesses – and thus create jobs – with a minimum of government interference.  We recognize that other people see things differently, and we are tolerant of their views.  But we believe that our country is worth defending, and if anyone decides that killing us is an okay thing to do we will go after them with everything we’ve got.

If these beliefs seem strange to you, they shouldn’t.  For these are precisely the beliefs that powered Western Europe – you -- from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, on to the Enlightenment, and forward into the modern world.  They are the beliefs that made Europe itself the glory of Western civilization and – not coincidentally – ignited the greatest outpouring of art, literature, music and scientific discovery the world has ever known including Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Issac Newton and Descartes.

Europe is Dying

It is your abandonment of these beliefs that has created the gap between Europe and the United States.  You have ceased to be a Judeo-Christian culture, and have become instead a secular culture.  And a secular culture quickly goes from being “un-religious” to anti-religious.  Indeed, your hostility to the basic concepts of Judaism and Christianity has literally been written into your new European Union constitution, despite the Pope’s heroic efforts to the contrary. 

Your rate of marriage is at an all-time low, and the number of abortions in Europe is at an all-time high.  Indeed, your birth rates are so far below replacement levels that in 30 years or so there will be 70 million fewer Europeans alive than are alive today.  Europe is literally dying.  And of the children you do manage to produce, all too few will be raised in stable, two-parent households. 

Your economy is stagnant because your government regulators make it just about impossible for your entrepreneurs to succeed – except by fleeing to the United States, where we welcome them and celebrate their success.  

And your armed forces are a joke.  With the notable exception of Great Britain, you no longer have the military strength to defend yourselves.  Alas, you no longer have the will to defend yourselves.

What worries me even more than all this is your willful blindness.   You refuse to see that it is you, not we Americans, who have abandoned Western Civilization.  It’s worrisome because, to tell you the truth, we need each other.  Western Civilization today is under siege, from radical Islam on the outside and from our own selfish hedonism within.  It’s going to take all of our effort, our talent, our creativity and, above all, our will to pull through.  So take a good, hard look at yourselves and see what your own future will be if you don’t change course.  And please, stop sneering at America long enough to understand it.  After all, Western Civilization was your gift to us, and you ought to be proud of what we Americans have made of it.

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Could be.  And I wouldn't be surprised.  Or disappointed, to be honest. 

Seems as if "someone" has been monitoring mysterious unmarked planes from an alleged US "company" that transports "unidentified" individuals to countries (South American, Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, etc.) that condone the torture of prisoners. 

Oh no. ::::deer in the headlights stare::::

If this IS true (there's that word again ...), are these countries also listed in the coalition of nations involved with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan? 

Probably not. 

Just as among "other" countries that currently train Iraqi army and police,  their identity is protected (for good cause) as silent coalition-combatants in the war against terror.

Can you spell INTEL?  Homeland Security?  Global Terrorism?

-- And don't spew that "buy-the-world-a-coke" baloney about our military's "inhumane" treatment of detainees at Gitmo.  Compare Gitmo detainees' status with that of hostages who've been "detained" by the Taliban and Al Queda ....  

If you want the Gitmo detainees released so badly, start a neighborhood Adopt-A-Terrorist program. 

 
(subtitled)  "Sharper than a serpent's toof...." 

My daughter (obviously brain-washed a few months ago after being invited to a private screening [la-de-dah] of Michael Moore's Fahrenhype-tripe, retrograded from being an independent-thinking realist to a far-left, tunnel-visioned A.B.B. [anybody but bush] liberal-cajoling dimocrat) is still the apple of my eye.   In all things a-political, that is. 

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For starters, that is .... Dick Morris' two books on the Clinton's (Re-Writing History and Because He Could) should be required reading for every voter.  Morris is smart, determined and has the scoop on the antics of a woman desperate to crash an Oval Office her husband (wisely) locked her out of. 

Relying on Morris' knowledge (we forgive him for orchestrating Clinton's reelection) and the tenacity of bloggers are two web sites (with more to come...) to monitor this female Deaniac's stalking of the 2008 Dimocrat nomination:

Add them to your favs list.  Add a link.  Tighten your seatbelt and visit often.  The HillaryWatch has begun .... She will, of course, run for and (most likely) retain her Senate seat in 2006.  Then the fun will begin ...... Hillary, Edwards, sKerry, et al -- Stay tuned!

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