As a nation, we have a real problem.
Well, we have a number of them, but here I refer to an issue at the top.
I'm referencing our First Lady and our Potential First Lady (or Man).
The current holder of that position, Laura Bush, just has too many questionable qualities for the tastes of Mr. & Mrs. Average American.
For instance, grace.
Who needs a first lady who responds to hard questions from media with grace?
And poise.
Laura Bush has so much poise, one might consider her "poise-on."
She has a brilliant command of the English language...who needs that?
And she smiles a lot.
My gosh! If you're going to go around smiling all the time, what will those dignified potentates from other lands think?
Speaking of dignified, not since Barbara Bush have we had a First Lady who conducted herself with such dignity and charm.
And there is no mistaking that, whatever you may think about her decision-making, she loves The United States of America from the bottom of her heart.
No, no, no.
See what we need (and sadly missed out on) is a First Lady who can cuss and scream like that Heinz lady could.
We need someone who has only been proud of America since her husband decided to run for her highest office.
Someone who can get caught "off-mike" saying words that are generally banned from family programming would make a great First Lady, don't you think?
The new First Lady should be filled with ambition, so that someday, she, too can run for the world's most powerful position.
Perhaps we should consider a First Man, preferably someone who can point a finger at folks, especially if they are judges, and lie with a straight face.
A man who believes that things are true, not based on whether or not they actually happened, but based on the fact that he said them...and if he said them they become true because he said them...that's what we need.
We need a First Man who knows how to entice young ladies to satisfy his need for control and passion while he is serving in the post.
Whether we get a First Lady or a First Man, we must be sure we get the kind of person we deserve who can stand along side our new President and be his (or her) confidante, advisor and lover (or loverette), properly demonstrating what the First Lady of The United States of America should be.
Isn't that the kind of First Person you want?
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
UN-REWRITTEN HISTORY
Let's start by making it clear: For the first time in recent history, The United States of America was attacked on its own soil...the Twin Towers on 9/11.
Contrary to what some would have you believe, we were not attacked because we had a greater or lesser presence in some Middle Eastern country.
We were not attacked because we had engaged in some military action on foreign soil.
We were attacked because a large segment of a very vile and hate-filled religious belief system saw us as "The Great Satan," and believed that they were scoring points with the Moon God (whom they call Allah, and whom they try to make us believe is "just another way of expressing the God we all serve.")
We went to battle these vile types in their county (Afghanistan), for the expressed purpose of keeping them from doing it again.
They were driven from their country and given safe-haven in another land, and they were rendered basically ineffective, at least for the time being.
While driving them from their country we got word from what should have been trusted sources, sources that were trusted by former President Clinton, Presidential hopeful, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and many other Democrat leaders as well as many Republican leaders, that Iraq was planning or helping to plan similar attacks against us with WMDs (weapons of mass distruction).
That it turned out not to be the case (according, at least to some) is irrelevant, in that everybody thought it WAS the case.
So we launched a preventive strike.
It, so far, has worked.
Now we are not the bad guys here.
In fact, seven times we Americans have taken arms and sacrificed the blood of our troops, in the defense of Muslims ( Bosnia , Kosovo, Gulf War 1, Kuwait , etc.), who had not really done anything to deserve our defense.
In the course of war, things are sometimes done that should not be done.
A reading of the Bible reveals that sometimes when Israel faught and/or won battles they disobeyed God and took spoils they should not have taken.
When you are dealing with such huge numbers of human beings, things happen.
That does not excuse them, it just recognizes that not everything is perfectly controlled all the time, precicely because we are human.
And so there are sometimes atrocities committed by segments of armies.
Some armies cut off the fingers of prisoners.
Others apply high voltage to inappropriate portions of anatomy.
Women prisoners are routinely raped, beaten and tortured.
But not by our troops.
There are no documented cases of that kind of torture committed by US military personnel.
There is "waterboarding," about which there is political argument as to whether it is an appropriate form of interrogation, but that does not even come close to the horrible things mentioned above.
How does our treatment of prisoners fare overall?
We give them three meals a day, sanitation facilities, exercise time, and time to exercise their religious belief system, by devotional time, prayer time, and even by providing them with free copies of their religion's sacred book.
How terrible of us!
Do we subject them to interrogation?
You betcha!
And well we should.
These are not nice, reasonable people. They are people who will do their best to kill anyone, including you, who subscribes to the American Dream, thinking that by killing us they will gain favor with their God.
Here are some facts to consider:
We were attacked by Islamic Arabs.
Most Arabs and Muslims have to live under savage dictatorships.
The majority of them are poor, because their governments take all they have.
Their governments breed hate for the US in their religious schools, mosques, and government-controlled media.
The U.S.A. is the biggest financial supporter of poverty stricken Arabs, while wealthy Arabs blame the U.S. for all of their problems.
Some Arab governments pay the families of suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves trying to rid the world of "The Great Satan."
The governments that encourage suicide bombers think babies, pregnant mothers, the elderly and a vast aray of citizens are fair game.
Muslim extremists have killed more Arabs than any other group, including the U.S.A.
Terrorists take refuge in "holy sites," knowing that Americans respect those sites so much that we are reluctant to persue them there, yet those same terrorists are gleeful when one of our holy sites is damaged or destroyed (think: Sait Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in NYC).
Now we have people who think we should withdraw from our war on terror by withdrawing troops from Iraq.
"We're turning it into another Viet Nam," they say.
They are insane.
They, in fact, would be guilty of turning the war into another Viet Nam by doing what their kind do...quitting before the job is done.
Not one of them is any better on any level than the terrorists.
Contrary to what some would have you believe, we were not attacked because we had a greater or lesser presence in some Middle Eastern country.
We were not attacked because we had engaged in some military action on foreign soil.
We were attacked because a large segment of a very vile and hate-filled religious belief system saw us as "The Great Satan," and believed that they were scoring points with the Moon God (whom they call Allah, and whom they try to make us believe is "just another way of expressing the God we all serve.")
We went to battle these vile types in their county (Afghanistan), for the expressed purpose of keeping them from doing it again.
They were driven from their country and given safe-haven in another land, and they were rendered basically ineffective, at least for the time being.
While driving them from their country we got word from what should have been trusted sources, sources that were trusted by former President Clinton, Presidential hopeful, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and many other Democrat leaders as well as many Republican leaders, that Iraq was planning or helping to plan similar attacks against us with WMDs (weapons of mass distruction).
That it turned out not to be the case (according, at least to some) is irrelevant, in that everybody thought it WAS the case.
So we launched a preventive strike.
It, so far, has worked.
Now we are not the bad guys here.
In fact, seven times we Americans have taken arms and sacrificed the blood of our troops, in the defense of Muslims ( Bosnia , Kosovo, Gulf War 1, Kuwait , etc.), who had not really done anything to deserve our defense.
In the course of war, things are sometimes done that should not be done.
A reading of the Bible reveals that sometimes when Israel faught and/or won battles they disobeyed God and took spoils they should not have taken.
When you are dealing with such huge numbers of human beings, things happen.
That does not excuse them, it just recognizes that not everything is perfectly controlled all the time, precicely because we are human.
And so there are sometimes atrocities committed by segments of armies.
Some armies cut off the fingers of prisoners.
Others apply high voltage to inappropriate portions of anatomy.
Women prisoners are routinely raped, beaten and tortured.
But not by our troops.
There are no documented cases of that kind of torture committed by US military personnel.
There is "waterboarding," about which there is political argument as to whether it is an appropriate form of interrogation, but that does not even come close to the horrible things mentioned above.
How does our treatment of prisoners fare overall?
We give them three meals a day, sanitation facilities, exercise time, and time to exercise their religious belief system, by devotional time, prayer time, and even by providing them with free copies of their religion's sacred book.
How terrible of us!
Do we subject them to interrogation?
You betcha!
And well we should.
These are not nice, reasonable people. They are people who will do their best to kill anyone, including you, who subscribes to the American Dream, thinking that by killing us they will gain favor with their God.
Here are some facts to consider:
We were attacked by Islamic Arabs.
Most Arabs and Muslims have to live under savage dictatorships.
The majority of them are poor, because their governments take all they have.
Their governments breed hate for the US in their religious schools, mosques, and government-controlled media.
The U.S.A. is the biggest financial supporter of poverty stricken Arabs, while wealthy Arabs blame the U.S. for all of their problems.
Some Arab governments pay the families of suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves trying to rid the world of "The Great Satan."
The governments that encourage suicide bombers think babies, pregnant mothers, the elderly and a vast aray of citizens are fair game.
Muslim extremists have killed more Arabs than any other group, including the U.S.A.
Terrorists take refuge in "holy sites," knowing that Americans respect those sites so much that we are reluctant to persue them there, yet those same terrorists are gleeful when one of our holy sites is damaged or destroyed (think: Sait Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in NYC).
Now we have people who think we should withdraw from our war on terror by withdrawing troops from Iraq.
"We're turning it into another Viet Nam," they say.
They are insane.
They, in fact, would be guilty of turning the war into another Viet Nam by doing what their kind do...quitting before the job is done.
Not one of them is any better on any level than the terrorists.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
TYRANT-A-SAURUS-REX
There once was a tyrannical CEO of a small, almost insignificant newspaper in a fast growing metropolitan area.
He had never run a newspaper before he bought this one, but he had read a lot of them and figured, "How hard could it be?"
When he bought the newspaper, it was on a slow, but steady rise in both readership and income.
Over a brief period of time, this CEO made sudden and unusual changes to the newspaper.
There were pictures where most newspapers put text and text where most newspapers put pictures.
"We don't want to be like them," he proclaimed. "We want to give the people a choice."
Whereas most newspapers had discovered over the years that there were certain things they could do to attract readers and certain things they could do that would repel readers, this brilliant CEO figured he could bypass those conventions and do things his own way.
When his employees, some of whom had been in the newspaper business for a quarter of a century, tried to help, he rebuffed them, scolded them and insisted that they let him run his business his way.
The first year of his ownership, the newspaper actually increased in readership and income.
"Just look at me!" shouted the CEO (who really spent a lot of time shouting, as that was his concept of what enthusiasm was). "We're doing OK! We didn't meet all of our expectations, but we're doing OK."
But the second year things did not go so well.
"We have to make more changes so people will buy my newspaper."
So he put the captions for the pictures under different pictures. Some of the captions he just put at the bottom of the page.
"This will give the readers something to do as they read. They'll love it!"
They didn't really love it.
In fact, the next year revenues went down again.
"Those stinking employees of mine have caused this!" He, of course, was yelling as he said it.
"Let me set them straight!"
And so he did.
As he whipped his employees in line, he once again believed that he had fixed the revenue problem, so his enthusiastic yelling increased.
Revenues dipped again.
"We know God won't let this newspaper fail. After all, this is HIS newspaper. I have asked Him to bless us and He, therefore, must do so."
"Let's get rid of some of the features that people love and replace them with features by authors no one has ever heard of."
It was his idea of how to make changes that would bring in more revenue.
Well, the fourth year revenues fell to a new, all-time low.
One of his employees suggested that changing the phone number to the call-in opinion column needed to be reconsidered.
"After all," pointed out the employee, "People know the old number. They're used to calling it."
"We were getting too many calls for things other than opinions!" retorted the wise CEO. "Just be quiet. I know what I am doing."
Yeah. He knew what he was doing.
After all, he was the sole decision maker, having micro-managed every minute detail of the business. No suggestions from any employee, no matter how experienced they might be, were even tolerated, let alone implemented.
One could reasonably conclude that whatever state the newspaper was in was totally, one-hundred percent, absolutely at the feet of the CEO, and nowhere else.
But he was too blind with arrogance and pride to see it.
And one day the newspaper simply ceased to exist.
No one in the fast growing metropolitan area noticed.
He had never run a newspaper before he bought this one, but he had read a lot of them and figured, "How hard could it be?"
When he bought the newspaper, it was on a slow, but steady rise in both readership and income.
Over a brief period of time, this CEO made sudden and unusual changes to the newspaper.
There were pictures where most newspapers put text and text where most newspapers put pictures.
"We don't want to be like them," he proclaimed. "We want to give the people a choice."
Whereas most newspapers had discovered over the years that there were certain things they could do to attract readers and certain things they could do that would repel readers, this brilliant CEO figured he could bypass those conventions and do things his own way.
When his employees, some of whom had been in the newspaper business for a quarter of a century, tried to help, he rebuffed them, scolded them and insisted that they let him run his business his way.
The first year of his ownership, the newspaper actually increased in readership and income.
"Just look at me!" shouted the CEO (who really spent a lot of time shouting, as that was his concept of what enthusiasm was). "We're doing OK! We didn't meet all of our expectations, but we're doing OK."
But the second year things did not go so well.
"We have to make more changes so people will buy my newspaper."
So he put the captions for the pictures under different pictures. Some of the captions he just put at the bottom of the page.
"This will give the readers something to do as they read. They'll love it!"
They didn't really love it.
In fact, the next year revenues went down again.
"Those stinking employees of mine have caused this!" He, of course, was yelling as he said it.
"Let me set them straight!"
And so he did.
As he whipped his employees in line, he once again believed that he had fixed the revenue problem, so his enthusiastic yelling increased.
Revenues dipped again.
"We know God won't let this newspaper fail. After all, this is HIS newspaper. I have asked Him to bless us and He, therefore, must do so."
"Let's get rid of some of the features that people love and replace them with features by authors no one has ever heard of."
It was his idea of how to make changes that would bring in more revenue.
Well, the fourth year revenues fell to a new, all-time low.
One of his employees suggested that changing the phone number to the call-in opinion column needed to be reconsidered.
"After all," pointed out the employee, "People know the old number. They're used to calling it."
"We were getting too many calls for things other than opinions!" retorted the wise CEO. "Just be quiet. I know what I am doing."
Yeah. He knew what he was doing.
After all, he was the sole decision maker, having micro-managed every minute detail of the business. No suggestions from any employee, no matter how experienced they might be, were even tolerated, let alone implemented.
One could reasonably conclude that whatever state the newspaper was in was totally, one-hundred percent, absolutely at the feet of the CEO, and nowhere else.
But he was too blind with arrogance and pride to see it.
And one day the newspaper simply ceased to exist.
No one in the fast growing metropolitan area noticed.
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