Pepsi Implosion

Let me start by saying that I don't understand the appeal of Mountain Dew. This whole Pepsi thing is bringing out the closet and not-so-closet Dew addicts. Irish Pennants, Write Wing Conspiracy, and one of the callers to Hugh Hewitt's show have confessed their addictions--and I've only scratched the surface of bloggers blogging on the subject.

And the subject is: Pepsico. Or rather, the commencement speech that Indra K. Nooyi, President and Chief Financial Officer, gave at Columbia University Business School (full text here). In this speech, she compared the five major continents (Australia & Antarctica were the ignored continents) to the fingers of the hand.

First, let’s consider our little finger. Think of this finger as Africa. Africa is the little finger not because of Africa’s size, but because of its place on the world’s stage. From an economic standpoint, Africa has yet to catch up with her sister continents. And yet, when our little finger hurts, it affects the whole hand.

Our thumb is Asia: strong, powerful, and ready to assert herself as a major player on the world’s economic stage.

Our index, or pointer finger, is Europe. Europe is the cradle of democracy and pointed the way for western civilization and the laws we use in conducting global business.

The ring finger is South America, including Latin America. Is this appropriate, or what? The ring finger symbolizes love and commitment to another person. Both Latin and South America are hot, passionate, and filled with the sensuous beats of the mambo, samba, and tango: three dances that – if done right – can almost guarantee you and your partner will be buying furniture together.

This analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents leaves the long, middle finger for North America, and, in particular, The United States. As the longest of the fingers, it really stands out. The middle finger anchors every function that the hand performs and is the key to all of the fingers working together efficiently and effectively. This is a really good thing, and has given the U.S. a leg-up in global business since the end of World War I.

However, if used inappropriately – just like the U.S. itself - the middle finger can convey a negative message and get us in trouble. You know what I’m talking about. In fact, I suspect you’re hoping that I’ll demonstrate what I mean. And trust me, I’m not looking for volunteers to model.

Discretion being the better part of valor...I think I’ll pass.

What is most crucial to my analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents, is that each of us in the U.S. – the long middle finger – must be careful that when we extend our arm in either a business or political sense, we take pains to assure we are giving a hand...not the finger. Sometimes this is very difficult. Because the U.S. – the middle finger – sticks out so much, we can send the wrong message unintentionally.

Unfortunately, I think this is how the rest of the world looks at the U.S. right now. Not as part of the hand – giving strength and purpose to the rest of the fingers – but, instead, scratching our nose and sending a far different signal.

That's the crux of her speech, the part that has caused the uproar. America is the middle finger of the world. In both the good and the bad way.

In writing, the strength and lasting impression of a sentence or a paragraph is what is presented last. Nooyi left her listeners with the emphasis on America as "The Bird" not America as the leader.

People are livid. They should be.

Ms. Nooyi has apologized. Twice. Unfortunately, her apologies ring of the "gee, I'm sorry you had to go and get your feelings hurt by what I said" variety. Pepsi's VP of Consumer Relations, Christine Jones, said in the second apology (an email), Indira Nooyi "clearly regrets the reaction that this unfortunate episode has caused."

Yeah, I'll bet. But does she regret what she said? Does she regret slamming the country that has treated her so well? Does she regret not mentioning the good that America does in the world? So far, there's no sign of any appropriate regret.

I went to the Pepsi website, and did a search on "nooyi" and didn't get any matches. On the parent company (Pepsico) website, their Latest News and Press Releases only showed a Mountain Dew promo dated 05/17/05 and a Response to Shareholder Question dated 05/05/05.

To quote Hugh Hewitt, "Where is the CEO?"

Pepsi is going without an official response to this slap in the face of America, but the issue isn't going away. The blogs are posting like crazy, and then some.

Helpful links: Pepsi's products, if you're boycott-minded. Pepsi's officers and directors.

I need a Coke.

MSM Bias Again

The Washington Post's Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray made the following charge in the opening paragraph of their article today (HT: Hugh Hewitt):

"With the Senate poised to open debate on President Bush's appellate court nominees, a bipartisan group of senators carried on furious negotiations yesterday aimed at heading off a constitutional showdown that threatens to poison relations between the two parties and disrupt normal business in Congress."

Where have these journalists been? Buried in a cave trying to get an exclusive interview with Osama bin Laden? Because, certainly, they haven't been following events in the Senate.

There is nothing that threatens to poison relations between the two parties. It's already been poisoned by the minority Democrats, as they obstruct the duty of the Senate to "advise and consent" on the President's judicial nominations.

As far as disrupting normal business in Congress, that would be the Democrats also. They have threatened to bring Senate business to a halt if the Republicans force the elimination of the use of a filibuster for judicial nominations.

The power to head off a constitutional showdown lies entirely with the Democrats. The power to eliminate the poison from the Senate floor lies entirely with the Democrats. The power to allow the normal flow of Senate business lies entirely with the Democrats.

Too bad the Washington Post and its writers don't get it. They continue, "At issue is the extent to which Bush and the Republican majority in the Senate can reshape the federal judiciary and, most important, the Supreme Court, if vacancies occur there."

They say this as though there's something unusual about a majority party (especially one that was largely elected over the issue of the judicial nominations) shaping the federal judiciary. What do the writers think happened while Clinton was in office?

The American electorate put President Bush back in office and gave more of a majority to both the House and the Senate, so that President Bush's policies could be implemented and his judicial nominees could actually be seated on the bench. They did not put the Republicans in power so that the Democrats could control the course of our judiciary and our nation.

The Mainstream Media's bias is showing. Again.

I've Officially Started

Recently I stopped in at Barnes & Noble, and there was a couple finishing up a book-signing. Phil Shrout's book, America at Twelve Miles an Hour: A View from the Edge of the Road, was the story of the summer bicycle trip that he and his wife took a couple years ago. They left the Oregon Coast and bicycled to the Georgia Coast when they were in their early fifties.

I chatted with them, asking how long their trip took, because back when I was in my twenties (Before Children) my then-husband and I rode our bicycles in Western Europe for four months. I was curious to find out how far we might have ridden. Instead, though, they inspired me.

As we talked and I told them a couple stories about what it's like to be on bicycles in France or Switzerland, they were impressed at how much I still remembered from a trip that was over 20 years ago. And I got to thinking...

I could write a book, just as they had.

The idea has been kicking around in my head for the past month. Today, at Quizno's, as I ate my lunch, I opened a Quizno's napkin and jotted down a few notes. These are the first words to hit paper about this book.

It's now official. I've started writing my book.

Buchanan and WWII

This is a mine field. I understand that. But I'm walking there anyway.

Disclaimer: I see Pat Buchanan's commentaries in WorldNetDaily, and much of what he has to say about US foreign policy--particularly Iraq--I disagree with. He strikes me as an isolationist, something I am not. That said...

On May 11, 2005, Pat Buchanan wrote a commentary entitled, "Was World War II worth it?" The focus of the column was on Eastern Europe and what they suffered under Soviet rule after WWII. Was World War II worth it for them? Probably not. These nations were free before the war, and afterward they wore the iron yoke of Soviet dominance and oppression.

Buchanan quoted a speech President Bush gave in Riga, Latvia, as he marked the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe: "For much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end the oppression. The agreement in Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. ... The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs in history."

President Bush was right, and Buchanan was right to quote him. But the accepted lessons of history as it relates to WWII have become sacred, and God help the man who challenges them.

On May 12, 2005, Andrew Metz of Newsday challenged Buchanan's commentary. Metz opens his column this way: "Was World War II worth it?In the inflammatory world view of Pat Buchanan, the short answer is no. The war that stopped the Nazis' global campaign and the mechanistic extermination of European Jewry was actually not worth the effort."

Metz continues, "He did not mention Jews or the Holocaust - the most outrageous omission for Yaffa Eliach, a Holocaust expert and survivor. 'For me it is very important to present the truth, to show the murder,' Eliach said. 'The idea was to kill Jews.'"

This is the sacred history of World War II.

Metz and Eliach are right to criticize Buchanan for omitting the Holocaust from his commentary. But they are wrong to limit the Holocaust to Jews.

The accepted number of dead from the Holocaust is ten million people. The accepted number of Jews killed in the Holocaust is six million. What about the other four million people? Don't Metz and Eliach care about them? Hitler's idea was to kill all undesirables, especially the Jews. But he also killed millions of Poles, Gypsies, handicapped people, and people in the Resistance. Sacred history dismisses these other victims.

Sacred history also ends the analysis of WWII on V-E Day. It ignores the aftermath in Soviet-dominated Europe. According to Anne Applebaum's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Gulag, at least 4.5 million people were killed in the Soviet gulag system. I don't have a count of how many people were victims of non-gulag Soviet oppression in the Iron Curtain countries, but these were also victims of the agreement at Yalta, an agreement that handed free countries to a man that both Churchill and Roosevelt knew to be a killer

Buchanan needs to quit forgetting the Holocaust when he analyzes the value of World War II. And Metz and people like him need to quit having their knee-jerk response of "they killed the Jews" and quit forgetting the other victims.

And all of us need to quit forgetting the past and present victims of genocide and mass bloodlust: The Armenians killed by the Ottoman Turks. The Holocaust victims of Hitler. The victims of the Soviet empire. The victims of Chairman Mao's revolution. The Vietnamese at the hands of the communists. The Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge. The Tutsis in Rwanda. The victims of government-imposed famine in Ethiopia, Chad, Zimbabwe. And the Christians and animists dying in Sudan in what the UN refuses to call a genocide.

We need to quit forgetting, because forgetting allows more murder and more genocide.

Harry Reid's Smear Campaign

Laura Ingraham is incensed. This morning on her radio show, she played Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's speech before the Senate in which he impugned the character of judicial nominee, Henry Saad. Laura's website links to a Washington Times article by Charles Hurt (here), which spells out the offensive part of Sen. Reid's speech.

Hurt quotes Reid, "'Henry Saad would have been filibustered anyway,' Mr. Reid said on the floor yesterday, about the Michigan Appeals Court judge who is nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. 'All you need to do is have a member go upstairs and look at his confidential report from the FBI, and I think we would all agree that there is a problem there,' Mr. Reid continued."

The problem is not what's in Henry Saad's confidential FBI file, but the fact that Senator Reid even knows about it, let alone that he's talking about it on the Senate floor.

As Hurt (and Laura on her show) explains, "Furthermore, a "Memorandum of Understanding" covering the use of FBI background reports limits access to committee members and the nominee's home-state senators. Mr. Reid would fall into neither category."

So Harry Reid has absolutely no business knowing what's in the confidential FBI file on judicial nominees, but he claims to know what's in the FBI file of a 6th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee. And in spite of the fact that Senate rules call for expulsion of senators who "disclose the secret or confidential business or proceedings of the Senate, including the business and proceedings of the committees, subcommittees, and offices of the Senate," Harry Reid has come right up to the line this rule has drawn (Standing Rule of the Senate 29, Section 5), and he may have crossed it.

If Reid has crossed that line, he needs to be expelled from the Senate, or at the very least stripped of his leadership post. And whoever gave Reid access to the FBI file(s) of nominees should be fired. If Reid has not actually seen the FBI file (which he shouldn't have but is implying that he has), then he's a liar intent on slandering and smearing a judicial nominee, and he should be censured and stripped of his leadership post.

The issue here is that Reid has raised accusations against one of President Bush's nominees in a forum and manner that leaves the accused (Henry Saad) completely without recourse. There are no charges that Saad can refute, because Reid didn't spell out anything specific. And because Saad has never seen, and is not permitted to see, the FBI files on him, he has no idea what charges might be in it that he could attempt to refute on his own.

This is an ugly, vicious, mean-spirited, political attack on the part of the Democratic leadership. Where is the outcry from the Republicans? Where is the call for Reid's removal from leadership and the Senate?

And where is the media? The Washington Times covered the story (link above), but CNN is silent, Fox News is silent, CBS News is silent, NBC News is silent, the New York Times is silent, and the Los Angeles Times is silent. ABC News gives it a brief mention at the end of page 2/top of page 3 of their article on the filibuster debates.

ConfirmThem.com has links to the Senate's contact information. Be sure to contact your senator about this, including Majority Leader Bill Frist to urge them to take action agaisnt Senator Reid. Plus, ConfirmThem has the latest on judicial nominees and an easy link to email the 5 key senators who are waffling about whether to change the Senate rules so the nominees can be allowed to come to an up-or-down vote.

President Bush in the Netherlands

President Bush is in the Netherlands to honor the Americans who died during WWII. Naturally, this brings out protesters and activists. As Reuters reports, while most busied themselves actually protesting, one man was hurt on a spiked fence as he tried to photograph the security arrangements.

A group of six activists, however, were busier. They were arrested trying to get into President Bush's hotel to see for themselves the shocking (yes, shocking) fact that President Bush has a "suitcase which allows him to activate nuclear weapons." The activists dressed as "citizen inspectors" in IAEA-like clothing (full story here).

"'We heard Bush carries a nuclear suitcase and can push the red button at any time to set off atomic weapons. We find this extremely shocking,' said Leo de Groot, a spokesman for the activist group."

Where have these activists been? Don't they watch any movies? It's common knowledge that all US Presidents have access to the atomic codes, and Hollywood likes to use this as a plot point in some of their movies.

Weren't these activists upset that President Clinton had access to the codes? Was his access acceptable, but the "Cowboy President" seems like more of a danger to them? Didn't they worry, four years ago, when the codes passed from Clinton to Bush?

You've gotta feel sorry for people who are so out of touch, so out of date, that they're only now figuring out little bits and pieces of reality. Let's just be glad, for their sake, that the activists didn't actually find the suitcase with the codes. The military aides responsible for it might have done worse to them than just arrest them.

State of Affairs

My job has become blog-unfriendly: Too much to do. Lots of pressure. Long hours. Lunch is just enough time to grab something to eat, post the day's Bread, check the news headlines (but not comment on them) and get back to work. Work late. Go home, walk the dog, and crash.

I'm burning out. And the only consolation is that I'm not the only one at work who's burning out. It's pervasive (sigh).

Stem Cell Progress

Another story, this one in The Times of London, about a breakthrough with stem cells. Again, the breakthrough is with adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells.

Sam Lister, Health correspondent for The Times, explains, "A team of British specialists has successfully treated more than a dozen patients with impaired corneas by transplanting human stem cells grown in a laboratory on to their eyes." Out of one group of ten patients, seven had their sight restored, and these were people whose corneas had been damaged by acid or boiling metal in their eyes, or who had congenital defects.

"The process involves taking stem cells, which occur naturally in the eye, and developing them into sheets of cells in the laboratory. These are transplanted on to the surface of the eye where they are held in place by an amniotic membrane, which dissolves away as the sheet fuses to the eye." The really exciting part of this process is that the transplanted stem cells don't appear to stick around. They trigger the eye to repair itself, and then the stem cells are shed from the eye. A year after the process, no trace of the donor's DNA was found on any of the patients' eyes. And this means that the patients would not need the immune-suppressing drugs that are required for standard-transplant patients.

The article concludes, "Nadey Hakim, a consultant surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital, London, said that it was likely that such action could be mimicked in other organs, thus reducing the need for organ transplants. Professor Hakim said: 'The hope is that stem cells will one day be used to generate large quantities of cells and tissues and possibly entire organs damaged by disease and injury. It is a dream.'”

Meanwhile, as a California resident, my frustration mounts. Every step of stem cell progress has been with adult stem cells (including umbilical cord blood). Embryonic stem cells have yet to prove effective in treating patients without causing severe side effects.

And what kind of stem cell research is California going to be asking its taxpayers to spend $6 billion on? The kind that doesn't work, of course.

Something is Rotten in Denmark

I missed the phenomenon when it started in Germany. Hamburg, to be exact. It seems that Germany has had over 1,000 toads simply explode, and now the toads in Denmark are exploding too. Here's the full story.

This isn't a case of animal cruelty, the way you might expect. No teenagers coming during the night and planting explosives inside the toads. No toad-seeking mini-missiles. According to the story, "Experts are at a loss to explain what is causing the toads' painful deaths, which primarily take place between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m."

"[T]he toads climb on to land, swell to up to three times their normal size, and burst, casting their innards up to one meter in the air, the Coppenhagen Post reports."

The experts, including curator of Denmark's Museum of Natural History, Frank Jensen, expect the cause to be something earthly, like the ozone hole or toxins in the environment. They point out that amphibians are especially susceptible to subtle changes in their habitat.

Let's hope they figure this one out before it spreads any more.

Update:

It looks as though they have figured this out already! Is it toxins? The ozone hole allowing too much ultraviolet radiation to get through? Some other environmental disaster caused by Evil Big Business ruthlessly raping the toads' ecosystem?

No!

It's crows. They've developed a taste for toad liver (full story here). "Based on the wounds, Mutschmann said, it appears that a bird pecks into the toad with its beak between the amphibian's chest and abdominal cavity, and the toad puffs itself up as a natural defense mechanism." Mutschmann is Frank Mutschmann, a Berlin veterinarian. "But, because the liver is missing and there's a hole in the toad's body, the blood vessels and lungs burst and the other organs ooze out, he said."

"Hamburg's Institute for Hygiene and the Environment regularly tests water quality in the city, and found no evidence that the toads were diseased. The institute even ruled out that the toads were suffering because of a fungus brought in from South America."

Still the Institute isn't ready to accept the crow theory just yet. Not until they've actually observed it. If there are more developments, I'll be sure to post them.

Outsourcing

I had lunch today with a few people from my previous job. I haven't seen them in quite a while, but they're working for the company I'm at now, and now that my department has moved to the main headquarters, we had a chance to get together and catch up on all the people we used to work with.

We're all in IT (used to be called DP until they new-and-improved the name), and it's getting pretty dismal out there. One of the guys mentioned the dreaded word, "outsourcing." That's the word that got so much negative press during the 2004 presidential campaign. It became a word that people could only say if they followed it immediately by spitting on the ground. But when he said it this time, it was to point out that the outsource companies in India and China are finding that they need Americans to do a lot of the work.

Meanwhile, the job-loss issue that I see over and over in IT is not outsourcing, but corporate mergers. When two companies merge, nearly all of the headquarters departments at the company being taken over are dissolved. A corporation only needs one payroll department, one accounting department, one IT department. A merger takes two of each of these (and more) departments and throws one of them out on the street.

Over the course of my career (25+ years) I have seen many, many more people downsized or merged out the door than I've seen outsourced. Forget the "peril" of outsourcing. It's corporate consolidation that's the bigger threat.

Happy People/Healthy People

OK, this study (courtesy of the London Telegraph) was performed in the UK, so it's possible that Happy British people are healthier than their unhappy British counterparts. But the results of the study square with what I learned during the course of getting my Bachelor's degree in Psychology--particularly in the Adulthood and Aging class. Our Aging professor lived for research, especially when that research involved trying to find ways to extend not only life, but vibrant, healthy life.

From the studies we looked at, we learned that optimists live longer than pessimists. People who see themselves as having some control over their lives live longer than people who see their lives as entirely outside of their control.

In the famous Nun's Study (link here), they researched a group of nuns in one convent who had grown old together. The researchers had, in the nuns, a common environment and lifestyle, which allowed them to find correlations to longevity (and Alzheimer's, but that's another story) that aren't as easy to find in the general population. What they found was that those nuns whose entrance essays (written at an average age of 22) used positive emotional words were the ones who lived longer. As the study article states, "Taking into account that nuns are less likely to engage in behaviors that are health risks such as excessive drinking and smoking, the authors agree that this may be part of why they lived a long life. But, they argue that 'the phenomenon represented by the use of positive emotion words in early adulthood writings did add years to their lives.'"

The thing that's different about the UK study is that it looked at the subjects over the course of a day, not over the course of a lifetime. The researchers apparently checked the various hormone levels of the subjects as the subjects reported their emotional states.

The Telegraph reports, "The main chemical difference in those who were generally happy was the lower amount of the chemical plasma fibrinogen in the blood, a major predictor of cardiovascular disease risk.

"The happier subjects also had lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone related to conditions such as type II diabetes and hypertension. Happy men also had lower heart rates throughout the day and evening, suggesting good cardiovascular health."

This study is encouraging to me because my parents, especially my father, are generally happy people, and so am I. Looks like we just might live forever. I hope you do too.

Uh Oh

Eeek! It's been a week since I posted anything. Too much overtime at work, and it's even been eating into my prime blogtime: lunch hour.

So, what to post on? Important things, like judicial nominations and their blockade by the Senate Democrats? The good news that happy people are healthier? Or life in general?

Chances are, this will take all day in bits and pieces of time, because work is still a pressure cooker. And, the posts will probably be a little of everything.

But. No time right now. Gotta work....

Great Job Opportunity

The Times of London is reporting a job opening for Chief Executive Officer of Her Majesty’s Government Communications Centre (HMGCC). James Bond fans would recognize this position as that of "Q," the man whose job it was to invent all those cool gadgets that Bond got to use.

There really is a Q: James Widdowson, the current CEO, is leaving his post and will need to be replaced. According to The Times, "As a result of the war against terrorism the unit’s role and resources have been expanded and the successful candidate will have funds of £27 million at his disposal and be in charge of 425 staff."

Not to mention, the salary. "Whoever is appointed will earn between £90,000 and £100,000 a year and will be expected to provide “inspirational” leadership with experience in cutting-edge technology and a strong sense of integrity."

"While Aston Martins fitted with missiles may be far-fetched, the British ingenuity which has created exploding rats, compasses hidden in buttons and booby-trapped camel dung remains prized by the secret services.

"One of the more urgent requirements of secret agents are tiny but powerful and long-lasting batteries to power the equipment they use.... A further area likely to be investigated by the new Q is use of nanotechnology for spying, as the art of miniaturisation gets down to molecular level."

This isn't quite my area of expertise. But if it's yours, see The Times article for more details on how to apply.

Judicial Nominations

I wasn't going to post anything today at lunchtime. Too much to do today, trying to get ready for our department to move locations over the weekend. But Hugh Hewitt made the Senators' email contacts too easy, and I sent a message to both of my Senators (Boxer & Feinstein -- what a losing combination!) and to Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist. Here's what I told them:

Almost identical messages to Boxer & Feinstein:

Sen. Boxer/Feinstein,

I urge you and your colleagues to stop blocking the votes of the President's judicial nominations. When Bill Clinton was president, the Democrats made a big show of demanding that all his nominations get an up or down vote. Well, that demand is still just as valid today as it was under Pres. Clinton.

Let the President's nominations get a vote on the Senate floor. If you reject them, fine. Just vote.

When you and your party derail the workings of the Senate, then there's no point in your being there. Obstruction will result in your replacement.

Will they get the message? Doubtful, especially Boxer, who never ever ever listens to her constituents. Ever. Unless they're way, way, way Hard Left. Feinstein listens on occasion.

Then I wrote to Senator Frist, who isn't obstructing the way the Democrats are, but whose attempts at compromise are amounting to cooperation with obstruction. What's the difference?!?

Sen. Frist,

The leading Democrats have made it clear they WILL obstruct the President's nominations and are even considering filibustering John Bolton and presumably any Supreme Court nominations. The time for seeking a compromise is over, because the Democrats will not compromise.

The Republican leadership, starting with you, must act NOW to change the cloture rule for presidential nominees and get these and future nominees the vote they deserve. If you dither any more than you already have, your support will start hemorraging. For the first time ever, I gave money in 2004 to John Thune's campaign, President Bush, and Bill Jones (vs. Sen Boxer). But if the Republicans don't grow a spine and grow it soon, I will have to consider that money wasted, and you Republicans won't see another dime from me.

We elected you to pursue the programs President Bush campaigned on, especially getting some sound judges on the appellate courts to counteract the lunacy of the left-wing judges. If you can't find the guts to get the job done, then you can kiss a presidential bid goodbye, and we'll find somebody who does have a spine.

Do it now, Sen. Frist. Do it now.

That about sums it up. I'm fed up with the Democrats running the Senate, when we elected Republicans to run the show. The Republicans can either do what we elected them to do, or they can make room for someone who will.

Update:

Here's what I sent to Senator John McCain, who is expected to announce that he will vote against changing the cloture rules. Similar to what I sent to Frist, but with some key differences.

Sen. McCain,

The leading Democrats have made it clear they WILL obstruct the President's nominations and are even considering filibustering John Bolton and presumably any Supreme Court nominations. The time for seeking a compromise is over, because the Democrats will not compromise.

The Republican leadership, including you, must act NOW to change the cloture rule for presidential nominees and get these and future nominees the vote they deserve. Your dithering and leaning toward the postion of the Democrats is counterproductive. For the first time ever, I gave money in 2004 to John Thune's campaign, President Bush, and Bill Jones (vs. Sen Boxer). But if the Republicans don't grow a spine and grow it soon, I will have to consider that money wasted, and you Republicans won't see another dime from me.

We elected Republicans to pursue the programs President Bush campaigned on, especially getting some sound judges on the appellate courts to counteract the lunacy of the left-wing judges. The idea that if you change the cloture rules now, it could hurt you when you're in the minority is ironic. Because, if you DON'T change the rules now, you WILL find yourselves in the minority very soon.

If you can't find the guts to get the job done, then you can kiss a presidential bid goodbye, and we'll find somebody who does have a spine.

Do it now, Sen. McCain. Do it now.

Our Military

"SARANAC LAKE, N.Y.--There are no longer generators running, or armored vehicles rumbling, or mortars exploding, and the roar of the silence is deafening to me. What I hear at night now is the gentle breaths released from the perfect lips of my sons. The same lips that I cannot kiss enough. The lips that make my eyes fill with tears every time they touch my cheeks."

So begins a column in the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Page, by Greg Moore. It's a beautiful piece about a soldier coming home from Iraq and the importance of his family. I recommend reading the whole thing.

What stands out for me, in addition to what Moore has to say, is the way this reveals the lie that's told by the Left (Schumer? Kennedy? The sound clips are running around my head, but I can't quite identify them.) that the military is manned by the hopeless poor who are unable to get a real job. Yes, Greg Moore is a member of the National Guard, which implies that he has a day job. But the quality of his writing reveals the kind of character and clear-headedness I see in the Marines who attend my church in Southern California.

Our military is not full of the oppressed, slack-jawed dolts that the Left would like us to believe. It is made up of strong, intelligent men and women who know their duty and strive to fulfill it honorably.

Another example of the quality of our military is David Rozelle, who lost a leg in Iraq and fought to come back to active duty, and is serving in Iraq again. His book, "Back in Action: An American Soldier's Story of Courage, Faith and Fortitude" tells the story.

I can't say enough about our military. And I can't thank them and their families enough for the sacrifices they make so that our nation and others can remain free.

May the Lord God bless them all.

Pope John Paul II & Communism

To start, I need to say that I'm a Never-Catholic. I was raised as a Protestant and always felt sorry for the Catholic kids who had to go to catechism after school, while I got to go home and play.

So the Pope has never been mine. I've seen the papacy of John Paul II as an outsider, but I respected the strong stands he took for the pro-life position of the Catholic church in the midst of global pressure to bend (or break) on these issues.

What I wasn't aware of was his stand against Communism. (Another disclaimer while I'm at it: I was raised by the public school system to be a liberal, feminist, anti-nuke (power & weapons), anti-big-business, pro-choice, rabid environmentalist. I grew up and came to my senses over time, but not until Bush-41's presidency, so I missed the whole Reagan fervor when it happened.)

When I watched the Reagan funeral and listened to the speeches and read the commentaries on his legacy, I got the impression that Communism was defeated by President Reagan, with a little help from British Prime Minister Thatcher. I don't remember hearing about the Pope's contribution at the time of Reagan's funeral.

Now, though, Pope John Paul's anti-Communist position is front-and-center in much of the coverage. And the best column I've read about it is Peggy Noonan's excellent piece for the Wall Street Journal Opinion page.

She says, "But I think I know the moment Soviet communism began its fall. It happened in public. Anyone could see it. It was one of the great spiritual moments of the 20th century, maybe the greatest.

"It was the first week in June 1979. "

This pre-dates Reagan and happened only a month after Thatcher became Prime Minister.

Noonan continues, "On June 2, 1979, the pope arrived in Poland. What followed will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.

"He knelt and kissed the ground, the dull gray tarmac of the airport outside Warsaw. The silent churches of Poland at that moment began to ring their bells. The pope traveled by motorcade from the airport to the Old City of Warsaw.

"The government had feared hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands would line the streets and highways.

"By the end of the day, with the people lining the streets and highways plus the people massed outside Warsaw and then inside it--all of them cheering and throwing flowers and applauding and singing--more than a million had come."

"The pope had not directly challenged the government. He had not called for an uprising. He had not told the people of Catholic Poland to push back against their atheist masters. He simply stated the obvious. In Mr. Weigel's words: 'Poland was not a communist country; Poland was a Catholic nation saddled with a communist state.'"

There is so much more in her column, all of it beautifully written. I recommend reading every word. More than once.

He was not my pope, but he was a man who carved his mark for Good on the world's stage, and I admire him for that.

May he rest in peace.

God Save Our Schools

The mind boggles sometimes at what's going on in the public schools. Here are two articles about some of that.

The first involves, of course, the ACLU and its relentless pursuit of the removal of God from the public square. According to the article, "The ACLU expressed outrage that, when Shane Tycer took the microphone to pray before the ballgame when the regular announcer was late, no school officials tried to stop him." They (the ACLU) have asked the courts to fine the Tangipahoa Parish School Board or throw one or more of them in jail over the incident.

My favorite quote from the article is, "'Public schools should be kept inclusive and secular in keeping with our founders’ ideas for religious liberty for all,' Cook said." Cook is Joe Cook, executive director of ACLU of Louisiana.

The logic of this statement is stunning. According to the ACLU's alternate reality, the Founding Fathers of our country felt so strongly about religious liberty that they wanted public schools (which didn't exist then) to be kept secular. By erasing religion from all public forums, we ensure religious liberty for all. This makes perfect sense, in the same way that "WAR IS PEACE," "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY," "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH," and "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" make sense.

The second story is one that I've heard before. School officials are concerned that the use of red ink by teachers on student assignments is traumatic to children. So they're switching to other colors, especially purple.

The thing that makes this article a little different from previous ones is that this time it was parents who complained about the red ink. "Red writing, they said, was 'stressful.'"
"'The color is everything,' said Foriska, an educator for 31 years." Another teacher, Justin Kazmark, said, "Purple is just a little bit more gentle."

It can only be the public educational system that brings people to conclude that red is stressful and purple is gentle. I have no doubts that twenty years from now, these same educators will be shocked to discover that children find purple to be a traumatic color.

It's not the color, it's what it's used for that brings the emotional association.

God save our schools.

Butterflies

The new carpet came last Thursday. I spent most of my spare time in March either mentally or physically getting things off the carpeted part of the floor. My commute time was heavily taken up trying to decide which things would fit in the kitchen or one of the bathrooms and which things would have to go into the storage unit I rented just for the new carpet.

Wednesday night my daughter and I moved the most of the non-essential heavy stuff out into the driveway, blocked from casual view by the cars. Bright and too early Thursday morning, with the help of a friend, we got the rest moved. The back door and laundry area were completely blocked with boxes, then the TV. The rack of DVDs got moved into the kitchen, blocked in by the piano, and then the couch that has recliners at each end and is too heavy to get outside. And my bathroom was so full of stuff, it was unusable. We kept my daughter's bathroom available.

But once everything was off the carpet, what a glorious day! There was nothing we could do but sit outside in our office chairs in the shade and watch the butterflies go by. We took our little dog, Abby, for a walk heading south along the street as the butterflies flew north. Flocks of Monarchs came at us, making a starburst pattern as the breeze blew them around and behind us. It was exhilarating.

After our walk, we napped in our chairs, Abby on my lap, and at 3:00, I got in the car to listen to Hugh. That's when I heard that Terri Schiavo had finally passed away, and I thought about her and the butterflies, about transformation and a glorified body in heaven.

And then the installers finished, and we had to move everything back in the house from outside. By the time we finished, it was late, and I had bruises at my wrists and on my knees and up one thigh. I got my daughter's bed put together and my box spring and mattress thrown on the floor, and I hit the sack so I could get up at 5:00 Friday morning to go to work.

It was like that in March: Full of Terri Schiavo and also getting ready for carpet. Full of the most crucial issues of life and also the mundane.

Now, as I go through April, I don't want the mundane to win.

Patron Saint of Blogging

Hugh Hewitt has mentioned that there isn't yet a patron saint of blogging. He offered St. Augustine of Hippo as the obvious choice, because of his prolific writing (Confessions, City of God, etc.) He also likes St. Hugh of Lincoln, but that's just vanity.

Personally, after having listened to How the Irish Saved Civilization on tape, I like St. Columba. He was a bard, a miracle worker, and legend has it that he wrote 300 books. He is also the patron saint of bookbinders and poets. Through his and his fellow monks' work at the abbey of Iona in Ireland and beyond, Western Civilization's writings were preserved and spread throughout Europe during the Dark Ages, so that they were still available to help spur and inspire the Renaissance.

Aren't these the descriptions of bloggers? Bards, poets, miracle workers, people whose work has the potential to save civilization.

I give you St. Columba, the patron saint of blogging!

Terri Schiavo XI

I had carpet installed this past Thursday and had to have everything off the carpeted areas ahead of time. So from Wednesday afternoon until Friday night, I had no TV, and I still don't have the internet re-hooked up at home (I was out of town over the weekend). The news about Terri's death and then Pope John-Paul II went unblogged by me (although I have to thank the rest of the blogosphere for filling in for me).

Here is the link to the Schindler family's statement following Terri's death. I can't begin to imagine their loss, and I'm impressed by their gracious thanks to so many people.

At the same time, I can't begin to imagine what compelled the people who argued that Terri's feeding tube should be pulled. It's a testament to how much our society has changed that these people got such sympathetic treatment by the news media.

If we go back far enough, say before WWII, society (including the universities, the government, and the news media) promoted the value of all life. These institutions and their leaders may not have been religious themselves, but they supported the Judeo-Christian worldview. Society frowned on unwed mothers, divorce, and juvenile delinquents. They locked up abortion providers and mercy killers.

After WWII, things began to change. People who held an anti-Judeo-Christian worldview began to gain leadership positions in the nation's universities, government, judiciary, and especially the news media. And the pillars of a life-affirming society began to crumble.

The difference between the people who wanted Terri's feeding tube kept in and those who wanted it pulled is their worldview. Those who see the world as created by God, with mankind created in His image and having a spirit, value any life as worth living and worth protecting. Those who see the world as being material in its totality--whatever is tangible or measurable is real, the spiritual realm is a delusion--see life as having value when it's useful or productive. For these latter people, Terri stopped being productive and became a drain on resources, and her life stopped being worthwhile to society.

These material-believing people are the ones who predominate in the educational system, teaching our children and young adults a godless view of life. They dominate the mainstream media, allowing a voice only to those who agree with them, and this helps to promote their values over the traditional Judeo-Christian values. And for the people who hold traditional values, it starts to seems as though all of society has gone to the other side.

Terri was important for her own sake. She was a woman who loved and was loved by her family, and whose story touched so many other lives. But she was also important because she became the catalyst to show our nation what we are becoming--a country divided over how it values life.

I have medical instructions (it's not really a Living Will, because Living Wills are normally designed to say NOT to recussitate or take extreme measures) that say to absolutely take whatever extraordinary measures are available to keep me alive, and especially to never, never pull a feeding/hydration tube. I don't believe that withholding food and water is moral/right/ethical/whatever word you want to use. I set up these instructions seven years ago, because I was already concerned that my life could be at risk if I didn't.

What I don't have is an organ donor card. I've also been concerned for years that if I had one and was seriously injured, that the medical community might see my organs as more important to somebody else than to me. With a lot of the discussion going on around Terri Schiavo, this looks to me like it's becoming more of a risk.

Even Laura Bush has spoken about the importance of having a Living Will, but as this article says, the Campaign for Children and Families, advises against a Living Will and argues in favor of using the "Will to Live" form. "'California's living will law assumes you want to be starved or dehydrated to death,' said CCF President Randy Thomasson. 'This is frightening. Most people don't know that signing the standard advance directive form could sentence you to a horrible death, by your own hand or someone else's.'"

If you want to be kept alive, look into the Will to Live form.

Terri Schiavo X

It's been a long, incommunicado weekend, but I've kept an eye on Terri's condition as much as I could. Some random observations and comments:

Michael Shiavo's attorney, George Felos, made the most apalling speech over the weekend, describing Terri as "beautiful" at a time when her brother described her as looking like a concentration camp inmate. As Bobby Schindler (Terri's brother) is quoted by WorldNetDaily, "I think Mr. Felos has some infatuation with death." (story link here)

Question: If Terri's type of death is supposed to be painless, even peaceful, why are they giving her morphine?

This is an interesting commentary by someone from the Left. Mark Polit, in Common Dreams, gets the central issue right. "There is no issue of self-determination, since their (sic) is no clear directive to act upon, and Terri is not able to express a preference. Even if Terri had made an off hand comment about what she would prefer, people who acquire a disability typically decide that living "that way" is far superior to dying. It is not up to a judge, a spouse, or a politician to determine when someone else should be rubbed out." He continues, "This has not been one of those "difficult cases" of end of life care, since Terri was not chronicly ill. She was not in pain (until they starved her). She was not kept alive artificially (unless you consider food and water artificial). She was not on a "machine" (a tube is merely a fork or spoon for people who can't swallow). Terri was a person with a disability. She was apparently conscious. And she was certainly alive. Since when has it become a progressive position to deny a person the right to their very existence?" Excellent question!

But then Polit goes on an anti-Right rant. "It is the right wing that promotes a culture of death, waging a war of aggression, torturing and murdering prisoners of war, supporting the death penalty, and seeking to roll back funding for health care for seniors and the poor." I don't get how he can be so right about Terri and so wrong about what the right wing stands for. Go figure.

Finally, Joseph Farah's commentary on Judge Greer's pastor is excellent reading. Pastor William Rice, of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida, asked Judge Greer to leave the church, telling the judge, "You must know that in all likelihood it is this case which will define your career and this case that you will remember in the waning days of life. I hope you can find a way to side with the angels and become an answer to the prayers of thousands."

This statement is a pointed reminder, not only to Judge Greer, but to each one of us to be sure we are on the side of what is right in all we do. We will usually never know until much later what the defining decisions in our lives will be, so we need to make sure that each decision we make is well thought out, prayed over, and one we will not regret in the future. May God help us all.

Terri Schiavo IX

Holy cow! I just saw this story about the $250 campaign contribution Michael Schiavo's attorney (actually his law firm) made to the re-election campaign of Judge Greer, "as did court-appointed attorneys representing the husband's interest, Pacarek & Herman and Richard Pearse."

The story states, "The Empire Journal notes that in Florida, a judge is not required to recuse himself if he receives a contribution from an attorney in a case over which he presides. Nevertheless, a contribution can establish the appearance of impropriety, and the state's code of judicial conduct requires a judge to remove himself in such a case. "

The story also mentions that the campaign contribution came on a day when it was the only contrubution, so it was not part of a fund-raising program. Which makes me question whether it's ethical for a judge's re-election campaign to target law firms. I would think that would open up a judge to having to recuse himself endlessly, because lawyers who contributed to his campaign would keep coming before him.

This seems so wrong!

And so does this. For yet another time, U.S. District Judge James Whittemore refused to reinsert the feeding tube while he considers a lawsuit filed by Terri's parents about the removal of the feeding tube.

Why is life such a difficult concept for these judges? Why, when it's a helpless, disabled woman, can't they seem to give her a stay of execution, when other judges give stays of execution to convicted murderers mere hours before they're scheduled to die (link here)?

I don't get it.

Terri Schiavo VIII

Hope for Terri is dwindling. It's been 7 days that she's been without food and water, and I heard on the radio that her family says she's wasting away.

The US Supreme Court has refused to hear her parents' appeal or to order the feeding tube reinserted (link to story here).

According to a WorldNetDaily story, "With legal and legislative options apparently exhausted, former Judicial Watch chairman Larry Klayman and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes are in Florida's capital trying to persuade Gov. Jeb Bush to use his executive powers to save Terri Schaivo's life."

It must have helped, because Jeb Bush filed for custody of Terri (link here). Frankly, though, I have my doubts about whether this will help. So far, every legal action has ended up back in the court of the illustrious Judge Greer. Any chance he's going to decide something different just because the governor asked nicely?

While we wait, here are some other related stories:

The "whole story" about Terri, according to WorldNetDaily.

The text of Gov. Jeb Bush's speech last night, saying they were doing all they could.

A Florida neurologist, who observed Terri three weeks ago, says Terri is not a vegetable (link here).

Dr. David Stevens, head of the Christian Medical Association, which represents 17,000 physicians, states that death by dehydration cruel and agonizing (link here).

Judge Greer had a similar (but not identical) case a few years ago and decided against the wife (link here).

A Michigan legislator drafts legislation to prevent adulterous spouses from making life-ending decisions (link here).

Terri Schiavo VII

I thought about writing about something else, but there's nothing more important right now.

As I left for lunch, the latest news I had on Terri was that the 11th Circuit Court three-judge panel (randomly selected: 2 Clinton appointees and 1 Bush appointee) decided 2-1 to refuse ordering Terri's feeding tube to be reinserted. Then the full 11th Circuit Court also refused. They said Terri's parents ''failed to demonstrate a substantial case on the merits of any of their claims.''

Hello???!!! If Terri were a mass murderer, they'd keep her alive and let even the most stupid, pointless case be presented. If she were an endangered insect or rodent or onion, they'd have to protect her life while even the most stupid, pointless case is presented. But because Terri is a harmless, helpless young woman, her parents have to "demonstrate a substantial case" in instantaneous legal filings? What's wrong with these judges?

Her parents are appealing to the US Supreme Court, but at six days into her starvation, Terri doesn't have much, if any, time to spare.

But then I saw the latest, and I have a little more hope. Florida's Department of Children and Families is considering removing Terri by force from the hospice where she has lived. Quoting WorldNetDaily, "Department secretary Lucy Hadi told the Palm Beach Post her staff is relying on a state law giving authority to intervene on behalf of a vulnerable adult 'suffering from abuse or neglect that presents a risk of death or serious physical injury.'"

"We're not compelled to look at prior judicial proceedings," Hadi told the Post. "What we're compelled to look at is the presenting circumstance and any allegation of abuse and neglect that we've received. So we have to deal with those and fulfill our statutory responsibility, notwithstanding anything else that may have gone on before."

Let's pray they get her out in time.

Terri Schiavo VI

I listened to Hugh Hewitt's radio show on the way home from work, and most of it was about Terri. The things Hugh said revealed why he calls himself, "the voice of reason in the West."

Hugh Hewitt is a professor of constitutional law at Chapman University in addition to being a talk radio host. It's from this perspective that he calmed down a lot of his callers and took others to task when they brought up some of the same issues I raised in my previous posts, particularly the question of the nurse's testimony about the way Michael Schiavo didn't allow proper medical care for Terri. Hugh's point was that this testimony, by not being permitted in court, was not open to cross-examination or rebuttal. We have no way of knowing if it's true. We only have our own gut feel about who to believe.

The important point (actually two) is that 1) Terri gets the feeding tube replaced so she doesn't die before the new trial takes place, and 2) a new trial must occur.

This is the crux of the emergency legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Bush--that there is a new trial that starts over with the fact-finding. Apparently, the way current law is set up, the original trial does the fact-finding, and all other courts must defer to those facts. If the original judge does a poor job of getting both sides of the case and getting to the truth, then the bad factual findings remain with the case forever. This is apparently what happened when Judge Greer first heard the case.

What Congress did is to say that there must be a new trial that starts over gathering testimony and medical evaluations, so the crucial questions can be answered. My list of the kind of questions I'd expect to be addressed in the new trial are:

Is Terri in a persistent vegetative state or not? Can her condition be improved with rehabilitation? Is Michael the appropriate guardian for Terri, considering his starting a new family? Did he provide the kind of care for her that a guardian is expected to provide? Did Terri actually say she didn't want to live as she is now? And is there a way to determine whether she has changed her mind and now wants to stay alive?

All of this will be pointless, however, unless a court orders her feeding tube reinserted until the new trial has been decided. As of this writing, she is still being deprived of nourishment.

Terri Schiavo V

I turned on Fox News Channel last night while I ate dinner, and there was Bill O'Reilly giving his "Talking Points Memo" about the legal situation surrounding Terri Schiavo.

I had been becoming less and less willing to sit through his show lately, because he's becoming so pompous, so sure that only he has all the answers. Well last night was it for me. No more O'Reilly. At the very least, he appears to have hired all of Dan Rather's fact-checkers to use on "The O'Reilly Factor." His Talking Points Memo was full of crucial omissions that skewed the facts.

Here's one of his points: "The key piece of evidence is provided by Florida doctors who examined Terri Schiavo and explained her condition to the court, quote:
'Theresa's brain has deteriorated because of the lack of oxygen it suffered a the time of her heart attack...at this point, much of her cerebral cortex is simply gone and has been replaced by cerebral spinal fluid. Medicine cannot cure this condition. Unless an act of God, a true miracle, were to recreate her brain, Theresa will always remain in an unconscious, reflexive state, totally dependent on others...'"

Which doctor are you quoting, Bill? One of the ones hired by Michael Schiavo's attorney, a man who is deeply involved in the right-to-die cause? The doctors hired by Michael Schiavo are the only doctors whose assessment of Terri were accepted as testimony. The assessments by other doctors, who say that she can recover more function and is capable of swallowing (because she's already swallowing her own saliva--no drooling for Terri) was not permitted in court by Judge Greer. And it was ignored by Bill O'Reilly. In fact, O'Reilly ignored the fact that this statement he quoted is in dispute.

In even more bad fact-checking, Bill O'Reilly said, "That happened, despite a new ABC News poll that says a majority of Americans agree that Terri Schiavo's 15 years of technological life should be ended."

Well, that ABC News poll has already been shown to be extremely biased. It made a statement before asking the question:

"Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 15 years," the poll informed respondents. "Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible. Her husband and her parents disagree about whether she would have wanted to be kept alive. Florida courts have sided with the husband and her feeding tube was removed on Friday. What's your opinion on this case – do you support or oppose the decision to remove Schiavo's feeding tube?"

Terri Schiavo has not been on life support and was not on life support before they pulled her feeding tube. When normal people hear "life support," they think of ventilators and heart/lung machines and other mechanisms designed to keep body functions working. They don't think of food and water as life support.

In addition, Terri does show some consciousness (she lights up when her parents come in the room), and there are doctors who have examined her and say that her condition can be improved.

So for ABC News to make misstatements like that--and to leave out the fact that Michael abandoned Terri for another woman with whom he has established another family--and then to claim that their results accurately reflect the views of the people is appalling.

Meanwhile, one of the nurses who used to care for Terri (and whose testimony was part of a federal lawsuit filed against Michael Schiavo in 2003 that didn't get anywhere) has told her story on Fox News Channel. According to a WorldNetDaily article, Carla Sauer Iyer stated that Michael Schiavo "had forbidden medical professionals to provide his wife with any therapy or rehabilitation and had attempted to hasten her death while she was a patient at the Pinellas Park, Fla., hospice she has lived in since 2000."

With all of these questions still unresolved, with all of this doubt about Michael Schiavo's dedication to his position as Terri's guardian, it seems best to wait. Put the feeding tube back in. Check out the stories going around. Re-examine Terri, using the newest technology. Once a diagnosis is in (and not just the 15-year-old diagnosis), and once a proper guardian is assigned, then the family and the courts can determine the best course.

It is always best to err on the side of life. If Terri lives for two more weeks, what's the harm if the ultimate decision is to let her die based on an accurate assessment? But if they kill her now without knowing the truth, there's no way to correct a wrong decision.

Keep Terri alive until we know the truth!

And I believe that once we know the truth, there will be no question that she must be kept alive.

Terri Schiavo IV

Congress finally passed a bill allowing Terri's case to be reviewed by a federal court, and President Bush signed it. Now her case is in federal court, being reviewed by a Clinton appointee.

I couldn't watch much of the news about the case over the weekend, because there was so much misinformation and mis-categorizing of Terri's condition, that I wanted to strangle the TV. The word "coma" was used (she's not in a coma), the word "husband" was used in reverent tones, and one man I didn't recognize (and didn't keep the TV on long enough to find out) said that the facts had been reviewed by 19 judges (Judge Greer is the only judge who has done any fact finding, and all the other judges who handled the case either deferred to his "facts" or did not look at the facts at all, but declared they didn't have jurisdiction).

The person I was most distressed by was Mort Kondracke, because as he said, he went through a somewhat similar experience with his wife, Milly. Just last weekend (March 13 I think) CBS showed a movie based on the book Mort wrote about Milly, and I made sure to watch it because I'd heard about Mort's faithful care of Milly as she suffered from Parkinson's Disease (the disease Michael J. Fox has).

But Mort said this weekend on Fox News Channel's The Beltway Boys that he supports Michael Schiavo's rights as a husband to make the decisions for his wife, in light of her expressed wish long ago that she wouldn't want to live that way.

Mort was absolutely not in the position Michael Schiavo is in. Mort stayed faithful to his wife and never abandoned Milly to go shack up with some other honey and produce two children with this other woman and then declare that he still loved Milly and had her best interest in mind.

In addition, I think Mort is missing a crucial detail about Milly's case. She had made written instructions not to use extraordinary measures, and she also told Mort that when the time came that she had to go into a nursing home, to let her die (this was shown at the end of the CBS movie). What was said in the epilogue was that when Milly went into the nursing home, she changed her mind about being allowed to die and fought on for three more years.

When Milly was well and when she was deteriorating, the idea of being incapacitated seemed like a life not worth living. But when she became incapacitated, she changed her mind. She realized that every precious moment of life, however difficult, is still worth living.

Terri Schiavo may or may not have said that she wouldn't want to live this way. But even if she did, she said it from the academic perspective of a whole, sound young woman. "Gee, that would be awful to have to live like that."

But now, when she still has people who love her and who she still loves, to not allow for her to have changed her mind is criminal. She lights up when her family comes into the room. She deserves to live out every precious moment of her life, because for her life is still worth living.

Mort, you're wrong. Terri deserves the same chance to change her mind that Milly had.

Terri Schiavo III

I just can't.

I can't post on what's happening to Terri, because I'm too upset. But I can't not post.

The bottom line on this whole broader issue is, as Hugh Hewitt put it Friday on his radio show, that we as a culture do not starve people to death. That's not what America is about.

We don't allow people to withhold food and water from the children in their care. We don't allow people to withhold food and water from the animals in their care. We don't allow prison guards to withhold food and water from inmates. We don't even allow the soldiers in Guantanamo Bay to withhold food and water from the terrorists.

But they're withholding food and water from a helpless woman, based on the hearsay of her estranged husband about whether she'd want to be kept alive if she were in a persistent vegetative state. But there's a real question about whether Terri is even in a persistent vegetative state, which could make her alleged wishes not even apply.

And if they can starve Terri to death, with these questions about her wishes and her condition, they can do that to any one of us at some time in the future if our condition becomes inconvenient or distasteful to the people around us.

Related news article links:

Terri's attorney claims that Terri said she wants to live.

The House & Senate reached a compromise on a bill that would give federal courts the ability to review Terri's case and cases like hers (much the way death penalty cases are allowed federal review)

Democrats are blocking a vote on the bill that would give federal review to Terri's case.

This is a commentary (not a news item) about the direction judicial activism is going, especially as it relates to Terri's case and Judge Greer.

Books on Tape

As I've said before, I listen to audio books on my commute, whenever Laura Ingraham and Hugh Hewitt aren't on the radio (including during most of the commercials). Because I'm cheap (and audio books are really expensive if you buy them at the bookstore), I depend on the public library for my supply of books to listen to. I've listened to a lot of non-fiction, most of which I never would have selected to sit down and read in book version, but oh, I'm so glad I listened to them! Here are some of my recommended books from the library's audio collection:

In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors - by Doug Stanton
The Indianapolis was torpedoed in the Pacific about 2 weeks before the end of World War II.

Five Days in London: May 1940 - by John Lukacs
This is during the five days when Winston Churchill first became Prime Minister and met with his cabinet to decide whether to keep fighting Hitler alone, or try to make some sort of peace with Germany.

The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany - by Martin Goldsmith
A biography of Goldsmith's parents, two Jews who survived Nazi Germany by playing in the Jewish orchestra.

Theodore Rex - by Edmund Morris
Book 2 in a biology trilogy of Theodore Roosevelt. This one covers his presidency. It begins the day he takes office when McKinley dies and ends the day he leaves office. Unfortunately, my library doesn't have books 1 or 3.

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence - by Daniel Goleman, Annie McKee, Richard E. Boyatzis
Actually, as I listened to this one, I wished I had it in book form, because it had so much practical information that I wanted to write down and mull over.

Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest - by Stephen E. Ambrose
Wonderful. This made me go out and buy the mini-series on DVD.

That's it for now. I haven't even hit the fiction, but I gotta get back to work.

St. Patrick's Day

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, and I had my Gaelic Storm CD at work that I played on the speakers for the occasion (usually I listen to music or the radio over headphones, so I don't bother the folks around me). Gaelic Storm is the band that played in the movie, "Titanic," in the party scene belowdecks in steerage. Lots of energy. I love it!

Here's a link to their website, where you can buy their CDs. Looks like they got a new fiddle player since their first release (which had Samantha on the fiddle--she was also in the movie), and they've removed all trace of Samantha from the website. Plus they got a couple new guys in the band. I keep meaning to get another one or more of their newer CDs but haven't done it yet.

I left work early yesterday, because I got a migraine. I only get migraines about once every year or two, which is just long enough to forget what's going on. It starts with "the vision thing," where I can't see what's right in the center of my vision. Like a spot that's missing from people's faces or from the page I'm trying to read. After a while of not being able to see what I'm looking at, the spot grows and turns into an arc that slowly gets bigger and bigger, until it passes out of my peripheral vision and I can see everything again. Then the headache shows up (or not sometimes).

Yesterday it was a dull ache with woozy disorientation and a little queasiness. What I needed most was some sleep, so I went home at 2:30, after I got all my work to a good stopping point. At home, I had some ravioli to try to fight the queasiness, and then my daughter begged me to please, please, pleeeeeease take her to Denny's (there's no food in the house that you can call a meal) and then to the library. So I did.

At the library, I turned in my audio books and checked out 3 more, including one I'm really excited about. It's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, an autobiography by Richard P. Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. My friend the astrophysics major recommended it to me long enough ago that I wasn't sure if this was the right book, so I called her from the library and spoke in hushed tones to confirm that I had the right one. I did. And I've got to say that just the first few opening pages (where he comes close to burning down his parents' house at the age of 8) are worth the price of admission. I can't wait till my drive home, when I get to listen to more!

On my way home from the library last night, I stopped to pick up the mail after over a week of making the mailman shove the new mail in and mangle the old mail. I think he'll be glad to see my mailbox empty today. But in among all the mail was an envelope with some homework assignments from my Tour Director instructor!!!

I took an online class from her late last summer, made a resume, and sent it out to a couple local places (which is where the fall/winter work usually is), but they didn't want to hire me to work just on weekends. They need people who are available on some weekdays too. But about that time, my day job got swamped and I was working so much overtime, that I didn't bother to try pursuing local work just then.

Well, now my instructor (who is based in Southern California) is offering in-person training in April, so I signed up for it. But there's a lot of homework that I have to do before the class starts. So, instead of going to bed last night to give my migraine its much-needed sleep (it's usually sleep deprivation and maybe stress that brings it on in the first place), I stayed up looking over the homework assignments and thinking about them but not writing anything down. Because, if I wrote something down, that would mean I was staying up doing homework (which is bad), when really I was just looking it over before I went to bed (which is good). But I didn't get to bed until 11:30 (which is really bad).

New Pants

I ordered a pair of pants--actually 2 pair, one stone-colored and one black--from Chadwick's, and they came in last week.

I don't normally order pants from catalogs, because I'm a pear shape and the manufacturers tend to make pants for cylinder or apple shapes. What happens when I put on a regular pair of pants is that the back of the waist sticks out so far I could pack a lunch (or a backpack) and carry it around behind me inside the waistband of the pants. Not very attractive at all.

What made me order the pants? It was the description that filled me with cautious hope: "Adjustable button tabs at the waist." Here's the online catalog picture.

You can just see a tiny bit of the other button under the hip-free model's right elbow. So I rebuttoned the back elastic-filled tab to the forward buttons, and the pants fit great!

But that's not why I'm writing about these pants.

There was a tag attached to them that said, "Teflon." I now have two pair of Teflon pants. Who would have thought?

I've heard of Teflon frying pans (even owned some) and Teflon presidents. But not pants.

What does the Teflon do??? I can't tell. I dropped a tiny piece of chocolate on my stone-colored pair this morning, and it didn't slide right off the way fried eggs slide out of a Teflon frying pan. In fact, the chocolate spot is still there on my pants this afternoon.

So I'll have to run them through the washer without any pre-treating and see if the spot comes out. That Teflon ought to be good for something. If it doesn't work, then I'll have to treat them like any other pair of non-non-stick pants.

I'll keep you posted.

Justice

It has finally happened! Justice was served.

According to The Weekly Family Medicine Update, a publication of the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians (hat tip: WorldNetDaily), "a Stark County judge formally sanctioned a trial attorney for filing a frivolous lawsuit against a Canton-area physician."

It seems trial attorney Catherine Little filed a medical liability lawsuit, on behalf of her client, Benjamin Barbato, against Dr. Zev Maycon. "In the suit, Barbato claimed unnecessary severe physical, mental and emotional pain and suffering resulting from a perforated colon caused by a surgical procedure that Dr. Maycon did not even perform."

That seems to be the way things go, if what's bandied about the water cooler at work is to be believed. Doctors get sued if they so much as glance at the doctor who botched a procedure. And this all-inclusiveness in lawsuits is a big part of what's driving up the cost of medical malpractice insurance, which is what's driving up the cost of medical care.

So it's good to see an attorney get slapped with the $6000 court cost related to her shotgun approach to lawsuits. She's one attorney who may think again before filing this kind of lawsuit.

May this be the start of a beautiful trend.

Bummed

I'm so bummed. I typed up this great post yesterday at lunchtime, and when I hit the "Publish Post" button, Blogger choked and I lost the post.

I'll have to see if I can re-create it later. Meanwhile, more news keeps happening that catches my attention.

Too much work these days, too little time to blog.

Bummer!

Catching Up

I normally blog during my lunch hour. That's about the only spare time I have on my hands. But this week work has been all-consuming, and the stuff going on at home has been all-consuming there. So no posts this week yet, though I did start one on Monday (still in draft mode).

I decided to use today's post for catching up quickly on the draft and some other things that have been on my mind, however fleetingly. No particular order of importance.

Monday's attempted post:

I've been following Hugh Hewitt following the LA Times's pro-North Korea propaganda piece, both on his radio show and on his blog (here, here, here, and here).

Hugh has completely given up on the LA Times, because their front-page article about North Korea has proven that the Times has placed itself solidly on the side of a megalomaniacal, sadistic dictator.

Hugh was able to send some questions to the writer of the article, Barbara Demick, and he posted her answers, many of which make her seem like she's a reasonable person. Which makes me wonder whether the article was completely of her own doing, or if the LA Times editorial board specifically ordered her to leave out the negative aspects of the story.

Shark towing

There was a story out of New Zealand about three fishermen who had a shark the size of a car swim into their net. It hauled their boat out to sea before it tore its way through the net and swam off.

In describing the men's next decision, Sergeant Edward Keelan of Ruatoria police displayed the British Commonwealth's mastery of understatement. "Very quickly they decided that it might be best to start heading into shore as the company there mightn't be the best." Too right!

New Job Numbers

Interesting commentary by David R. Francis on the latest job numbers out from the US Labor Department. The good news is that 262,000 new jobs were added in February. The not-so-good news is a statistic that correlates with the job numbers. As Francis says, "In the past four years, the number of immigrants into the US, legal and illegal, has closely matched the number of new jobs. That suggests newcomers have, in effect, snapped up all of the new jobs."

He goes on to explain that this correlation is happening in Europe as well as the US, so if misery loves company, we've got it.

Stephen Ambrose Tours

Since I commute 60 miles each way to work every weekday, I spend some of that time listening to books on tape. The public library has a pretty good collection, and I've gone through a lot of the non-fiction section, including a couple Stephen Ambrose books. I loved Band of Brothers enough to buy the DVD of the miniseries.

Now I see that there are Stephen Ambrose Tours related to Ambrose's books, mostly to World War II sites. They look fabulous.

I'm also intrigued by the Civil War tour, since it covers the Western front of that war, along the Mississippi River. I've read the Michael/Jeff Shaara books on the Civil War, and those have focused more on the Eastern front with Lee's campaigns. It would be good to learn more about what happened away from Lee's battles.

A Start in Zimbabwe

It's a start, but it's an important one. Robert Mugabe has finally admitted that his land-grab policy in Zimbabwe is a failure. The question is, what will he do next?

Like most Americans, I never paid any attention to Zimbabwe, beyond speculating what its name used to be before it was one of the "Z" named countries.

As I've written before, I started taking my turn writing The Bread back in '96. Since it's an email devotional (that we recently added to the blogosphere), our responses came via email as well. I was thrilled to get replies from email addresses in South Africa and Australia. Once, though, I got an email from Trish, whose address ended with .zw, so I asked where she was from. Zimbabwe. From that moment on, Zimbabwe has been on my radar. I notice the news articles coming from there, and I think of Trish. I don't know anything about her, whether she's black or white, except that she's a Christian and she has access to email. When I started hearing about Mugabe's land grab, I feared for Trish's safety--not because I thought she was a farmer, but because of the violence directed at whites in general.

Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, is a madman, the typical "strongman" leader of a formerly prosperous country. Before the land grab, Zimbabwe's farms were the bread basket of sub-Saharan Africa. They produced enough grain to feed not only their own people but a large proportion of other African nations. Mugabe liked the wealth the farms brought to his nation. But he didn't like the fact that the majority of these farms were white-owned. He didn't think it was fair that whites owned the farms and blacks weren't reaping the benefit of them.

So Mugabe instituted a policy of "land reform" (farm confiscation), and he gave the farms to his cronies. But my description sounds too sanitary. Mugabe's thugs forcibly threw the farmers off their land, usually just before the crops were ready for harvest. There were reports that some of the new farmer owners burned the crops, slaughtered the livestock, and killed the white farmers who resisted. In a July 28, 2002 report, Anthony C. LoBaido quotes former white farmer, Cathy Buckle, describing the plight of another farm family (lucky ones who survived):

"At the end of a long and tiring day, I got home to the news that yet another friend had been forced off her farm. Given two hours notice to vacate her house, she lived through that day of hell which has now become commonplace in Zimbabwe. This morning she and her family are homeless and jobless, and their life lies in boxes and cartons on a friend's lawn," she said.

"The home they built, the lands they tended, the workers they employed are now just memories, and I could not find the words to tell yet another white farmer how dreadfully sorry I was for their loss and anguish. Within months, they will leave the country of their birth because they are farmers and know no other way to earn their living. They will have to go somewhere where they are allowed to grow food."

The condition of Zimbabwe is another piece of the Clinton legacy. As reported in WorldNetDaily, "Mugabe's African National Congress, backed by the United Nations, European Union, Russia, China and the U.S. State Department, took power in 1994." That would be under Secretary of State Warren Christopher's watch.

Bringing it back to today, David Blair's report gives this some perspective. "All but a handful of Zimbabwe's 4,000 white farmers lost their homes and livelihoods when armed gangs of Mugabe supporters began invading their property in 2000." Four thousand farmers feeding much of a continent. But that was before land reform. This is today: "About 400 white farmers remain in Zimbabwe, with about one third of this year's tobacco crop of 89,000 tonnes coming from only 250 white landowners."

Ninety percent of the country's white farmers are gone. The ones still farming (black and white) are unable to get loans for seed, because title for the land is held by the government and not the farmers, so production is down 70% since 1999.

It's good that Mugabe finally recognized the obvious failure of his policies. But if he doesn't start working to correct the problems, then the dire conditions in the markets, described by Cathy Buckle in the article quoted above (here's the link again), will only get worse.

I'm not holding my breath.

Lebanon Rising

Busy weekend at my house. I installed and ran Turbo Tax, because I still have to do the FAFSA for my daughter for next year's college, and the signature page has to be postmarked by tomorrow, and you need your taxable income (or something from your 1040) in order to complete the FAFSA. Looks like that's tonight's order of business.

My daughter did her taxes for the first time. Taxable income: $1029. Taxes withheld: $8.93. Tax refund: $9. Not too shabby, getting a return on tax withholding.

With all the taxes and fighting with a new printer (it doesn't recognize that I actually did take the tape off the color ink cartridge), I didn't get to follow the news much. Monday morning before taking the car to the shop I turned on Fox News Channel (I never turn on the TV in the mornings and don't know why I did this time). They showed the protesters in Lebanon in front of the government buildings, waving red and white flags and being rousted by gun-carrying men in jungle-green camouflage army fatigues. Police? Syrian army masquerading as Lebanese army? I didn't have time to find out.

Off to the shop and work, with worst-case scenarios running in my mind. Tiananmen Square? It certainly had the potential.

Last night I tried the news again, and they had announced that the Syrian-backed Lebanese government had resigned. What a relief! And another vindication for President Bush's approach to the Middle East. Yes, people long for liberty, and when they are given hope, they grab for their freedom.

I still remember seeing the news back in the 1980s (or was it the '70s?) of what Beirut looked like. To the news cameras, Beirut was a dry, dusty, bombed-out disaster area.

In the mid-80s I had decided to read through the Bible, and I was stunned to find references to "the cedars of Lebanon." This country is always spoken of in the Bible as a lush, beautiful land--an example of the glory of God's creation. And even in modern times, before their civil war, Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. How far it had fallen.

Certainly, the future of Lebanon hasn't yet been decided, but hope is growing. Today's WorldNetDaily commentary page has two columns on the events in Lebanon. Joseph Farah, himself a Christian of Lebanese descent, wrote on events there. He concludes with the following:

Honestly, I never really expected to see Lebanon so close to freedom and independence again. I hoped for it. I wished for it. I prayed for it. But now I can taste it – and so, apparently, can the Lebanese people.

Don't think for a moment this is all happening in a vacuum. There wouldn't be this hunger for freedom and people power in Lebanon today had the people there not just witnessed Iraq's first free election.

The people are taking Lebanon back. Freedom is on the march in the Middle East. It's time to turn up the heat on Syria and Lebanon.

Peter Brookes writes in the New York Post, with emphasis on the Syrian presence in Lebanon. His summary is very similar. "But Syria is swimming against the tide of history — revolutionary, democratic change is taking place in the Middle East. Thanks to President Bush's unwavering stance on freedom and democracy, a new, free Muslim world is just over the horizon."

Gotta love it. Stay tuned...