Thank God Katrina weakened and shifted!

Despite the loss of precious lives so far and to come, as well as the destruction in Mississippi and the massive water damage to New Orleans, I'm thankful that Hurricane Katrina got weaker and veered east of New Orleans before landfall. The devestation would have been, and was predicted to be, much worse.

Seeing the people in boats on the flooded streets of downtown New Orleans reminded me of a story about recognizing God's providence in a time of need. I'll see if I can retell it tersely:


The mayor of a town ordered the residents to evacuate as the nearby river threatened to overflow it's banks and flood the town. A rescue bus that was going thru town to pick up stranded citizens stopped at one man's house as he sat on the porch, awaiting the floodwaters. "Get in!" the driver yelled to the man. "Let's get outa here!"

"No thanks", replied the man, "God will take care of me. I'm staying right here, trusting in the Lord." And the bus sped off to pick up other people.

Awhile later, as the floodwaters rose to the first floor window sills, the man was looking out a second story window when a rescue boat pulled up to his house. "Jump in and let's get outa here!", hollered the boatman.

"Thanks anyway, but I'm trusting in the Lord to see me thru this flood. I'm sure He'll take care of me and spare me from harm. God bless you, though!" The bewildered boatman pulled away to look for others to help.

As the flood waters rose to cover most of the roof, the man was clinging to the chimney at the peak of the house when he heard a rescue helicopter approaching him. As it hovered above him, the pilot lowered a harness to the man and told him to strap it on and he would pull the man to rescue.

"Thank you very kindly, but I'm going to trust God to rescue me. I just need to wait on the Lord", said the man. "Are you crazy?!", the pilot shouted. "Get in the harness!"

But the man persisted, "I've been a faithful servant all my life, and I know that the Lord won't abandon me in my time of need. Thanks anyway, and Godspeed to you!" The pilot shook his head and flew away to help somebody else.

As the swirling torrent of water rose above the house, the man clung to the top of the chimney, and drowned.

When he got to Heaven, the man earnestly sought the Lord for an explanation to his abandonment and demise. "Lord, even after trusting in you so faithfully to rescue me in my time of need, why did you abandon me?"

"But my son, I sent you a bus, a boat, and a helicopter!"


We are His hands and feet in this world. It is we whom He has called upon to help those less fortunate around us, wherever we may be.
"We" can take may forms: churches and synagogues, the Red Cross, civic organizations like the Jaycees, the Lions, and the Shriners, or large outreaches like Samaritan's Purse or Feed the Children, etc. Even- as a last resort- the government.

So, when you are in a jam and pray to God for help, expect it to come through human hands.

Brad

Now I REALLY hope Bush won't see Sheehan...

...because Martin Sheen "arrived in President Bush’s adopted hometown Aug. 6 and promised to stay until she could question Bush about the war..."

I want him to eat his words if/when the president rightly refuses to give the radical leftist an undeserved second meeting. He's obviously not going to put his career on hold for too long for this foolishness. He's just not that principled.

I thought Sheen said he would leave the country if Bush was re-elected, and he's still here. I may be mistakenly lumping him in with Johnny Depp, but I kinda remember him saying something during the campaign about fleeing the US. Unless it was Sean Penn- but he's still here, too...

Brad

Testimony to progress in Iraq

This is a great reminder of the progress being made in Iraq:

"We are disagreeing. We are failing to reach compromises. But we are not killing each other." ~Barham Salih, a Kurd who is Iraq's minister of planning and development cooperation. (Source: Ashraf Khalil and Caesar Ahmed, "Iraqis Extend Deadline for Constitution", Los Angeles Times, August 16, 2005)

Context being everything, that is a welcome statement. Do the Dems and Repubs agree on much? So, neither do these adversarial factions. That's democracy.


On one of the Sunday news shows, Sen. Chuck Hagel reportedly said something like: The war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East.

And, like most people I'm sure, I immediately thought of the Israeli-Palastinian conflict of decades length; and the Iraq-Iran war; and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait; and the conflicts in Lebanon as well as the conflicts within Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey...

The Middle East destabilized by our current war against terrorism? When was it stable?!

More on this soon...

Brad

It may be too late to help Cindy Sheehan

Wow.

This stuff just gets worse. The more we learn about Mrs. Sheehan's radical campaign against our war on Islamofascist terror, the more bizarre she appears, and it may be too late for any kind of grief counseling to help. I thought we were dealing with a normal mother who'd painfully lost a son in war. But the more I read of her extensive history of radicalism, the less hope I hold out for her.

Here are some more comments by her, from the Aug. 15 "Best of the Web Today" column by James Taranto on OpinionJournal.com :

"Thank God for the Internet, or we wouldn't know anything, and we would already be a fascist state."
"...the mainstream media is a propaganda tool for the government."

"America has been killing people . . . since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bullshit to my son and my son enlisted. I'm going all over the country telling moms: 'This country is not worth dying for'. "
"...this morally repugnant system we have."

"We might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden if 9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through..."

"...they're saying... it's okay for Israel to have nuclear weapons. But Iran or Syria better not get nuclear weapons. It's okay for the United States to have nuclear weapons. It's okay for the countries that we say it's okay for. We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now."

"It's okay for Israel to occupy Palestine, ...and it's okay for... the United States to occupy Iraq, but it's not okay for Syria to be in Lebanon."

"As soft-spoken and sincere-sounding as Paul Wolfowitz is, is there yet any sane adult in this country whose skin does not crawl when this murderous liar opens his mouth and speaks?"

"In their secret hiding places, while celebrating newly won fortunes with their fellow brass, these men must surely congratulate themselves with orgies of carnal pleasure as they mock the multitudes who are yet so blind as to mistake them for God's devoted servants."

So much for well-reasoned civil discourse. She seems rather unhinged, to me. Whose writing her script, I wonder. Perhaps Michael Moore or George Soros. Or Howard Dean. Maybe even Ward Churchill?

Well, she has plenty of likeminded supporters, to be sure. And who wouldn't want David Duke on their side, eh?

Brad

Cindy Sheehan needs help

I say that, from a compassionate heart, not scorn or ridicule. She clearly is not dealing with the loss of her son very well. (courtesy of Veteransforpeace.org) To make matters worse, her anguish is being fueled by the worst sort of feverswamp malcontents, from MoveOn to Michael Moore to Maureen Dowd, and is being exploited by many other Leftists for their own political gain.

Losing a child is the toughest thing to endure that I can imagine, especially when you feel it was in a useless cause, or worse. Grief can do very damaging and unpredictable things to the mind and the soul. Especially when the shoulders you lean on are pulling away from you.
I can't presume to fully understand exactly how she feels, or to be able to empathize with her, but one needn't to have lost a child to be able to sympathize with her loss, and her struggle to deal with the grief.

However, Cindy Sheehan's exagerated slanders of the President and his administration indicate something besides an emotionally healthy person struck with grief. These are just some of the excerpts from a speech she gave Aug. 8, 2005 to a Veterans For Peace convention:

"...somebody's gotta stop those lying bastards. Somebody has to stop them."

"...the war criminals in Washington, D.C., they don't even lose a night's sleep."

"They sent these honorable people to die, and are so dishonorable themselves. "

"Then we have this lying bastard, George Bush, taking a 5-week vacation in a time of war. You know what? I'm never going to get to enjoy another vacation, because of him. My vacation probably - -this is really sad because I have a really cute dress I was going to wear to the banquet tomorrow night, but I'm either gonna be in jail or in a tent in Crawford, waiting until that jerk comes out and tells me why my son died."

"So what really gets me is these chickenhawks, who sent our kids to die, without ever serving in a war themselves. They don't know what it's all about. "

"... they put Terry Schiavo on, and I wrote something then called The Amazing Hypocrites and I asked why does she deserve life more than my son, and the Iraqi people?"

"... he (President Bush) doesn't care, he doesn't have a heart. That's not enough to stop his little playing cowboy' game in Crawford for 5 weeks.

"So anyway that filth-spewer and warmonger, George Bush..."

"... if I started hitting something, I wouldn't stop til it was dead."

"... I'm gonna tell them, "You get that evil maniac out here, cuz a Gold Star Mother, somebody who's blood is on his hands, has some questions for him."

" You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana, imperialism in the Middle East. You tell me that, you don't tell me my son died for freedom and democracy."

"You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine." **(Tellingly, this was the only place in the transcript of her speech where the editor commented, with: "(massive round of applause)" I say that's a telling point, because leftist organizations always seem to condemn Israel and support the Palestinians)**

"What can we do to get him out of power? And I'm gonna say the I' word. Impeach.
And we have to have everybody impeached that lied to the American public, and that's the executive branch, and any people in congress, and we gotta go all the way down and we might have to go all the way down to the person who picks up the dogshit in Washington because
we can't let somebody rise to the top who will pardon these war criminals.
Because they need to go to prison for what they've done in this world. We can't have a pardon. They need to pay for what they've done. "

"...my son was killed in 2004, so I'm not paying my taxes for 2004. If I get a letter from the IRS, I'm gonna say, you know what, this war is illegal; this is why this war is illegal. This war is immoral; this is why this war is immoral. You killed my son for this. I don't owe you anything. And if I live to be a million, I won't owe you a penny. " "You give me my son, and I'll pay your taxes."

As I said, and I mean it sincerely, I don't want to ridicule Mrs. Sheehan, but her family needs to get her some serious grief counseling, before she loses her mind. The bitterness and anger can fester and grow, if not addressed, and could destroy her. It's not healthy for her to be encouraged by the looney lefties that are exploiting her loss for their own political gain.

Brad

Parents, here's the story you've been waiting for...

Computer games can kill you afterall! If taken to extremes.

Ben Franklin was right again: "All things in moderation..." I think it was ol' Ben.


Brad

UN Oil for Food scandal finally breaking

At least my Senator, Norm Coleman, is all over the largest monetary scandal of all time. Claudia Rosett has doggedly been working on this for long time. Why, oh why would most of the media not be going after this?

Thu UN is one of the most corrupt organizations in history, precisely because it's very existence is supposed to prevent the kind of corruption many of it's members practice. But this shouldn't surprise us, really; look at the list of nations that comprise the UN. So many of them are dictatorships or socialist states, monarchies and other non-democratic systems.

Brad

What ARE they looking for??

Drudge has reported that the NYTtime is "looking into the adoption records" of John Roberts' children. (TOTH to Hugh Hewitt)

What, one wonders, are they hoping, hoping, hoping to discover? What "irregularities" might be unearthed; what favoritism may have been shown; what shortcuts may have been taken; whose palms may have been greased; what pressure may have been applied to whom, etc., etc., etc.? Is that what they're after?

Who the hell knows. They're certainly not content to simply review Roberts' public job performance record, his education, and so on, of course. There must be some evil deeds lurking in the past, awaiting discovery by some earnest young WoodwardBernstein wannabe.

Well, let's see where this goes, I guess.....

Brad

Timeless quote on "armchair quarterbacking" the war

"Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the newspapers. I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late. I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper." --Robert E. Lee (TOTH to The Federalist)


This great quote would apply, today, to the talking heads on TV, as well as liberals in the Congress and Senate. I'm sure that Teddy "Quagmire" Kennedy and his ilk think they could command a military campaign far better than the President and the Pentagon have done so far.

Clueless fools!

Brad

This is a "news" article?

Even though it's on Page One of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, this NYTimes article (free subscription req'd) by Jason Deparle is an exquisite example of opinionated commentary masquerading as news. I ache for access to high school and college journalism classes in which I could dissect this biased writing, sentence by sentence, loaded adjective by loaded adjective.

The article is about The Federalist Society , whose- well, let's use Deparle's terminology: "whose influence is the source of swelling myth, mystery, insinuation, denial and debate", around which there is "intrigue" due to it's "exercising secret influence", "behind the scenes".

The article begins with a Senate hearing quote from a U.S. Assistant Attorney General, Viet D. Dinh, "I am a member of the Federalist Society, and I do not know, quite frankly, what it stands for."
Deparle then sarcastically reports that the transcript for the hearing "does not say how many people...responded to (Dinh's comment) with disbelief". As if it would?! Or even could convey such a thing to us? Does Deparle infer that a Senate hearing transcript should register audience groans, gasps, head-shakes, eye-rollings, and smirks? How juvenile! This is not news reporting!

Deparle labels President Bush's selection of some FS members as Cabinet members, senior aides and federal judges "a new Washington ritual". Ritual? What the hell is an emotive word like that doing in a Page One news article? This isn't supposed to be creative writing! Deparle then conjectures "perhaps to deflect what many conservatives call unfair attacks by liberals, the nominees have repeatedly claimed to know little about the group's beliefs." He tries to see into the minds of the nominees. That's not news reporting. And, the phrase "repeatedly claimed" is one which, the most common usage of, implies insincerity, and is usually in the context of a proven or near-proven falsehood. That's not news reporting.

When he continues: "In the latest version of this routine, White House aides have worked hard to put distance between the society and John Roberts," in what way would he quantify how hard they've worked, the degree of effort they've exerted? That's subjective judgement he's sharing with us, not news reporting. I don't personally consider phone calls, sending emails or letters, issuing press releases, or even giving a press conference to be hard work, especially for those people. That's what they do.
But Deparle wants to paint a picture in your mind; "White House aides have worked hard to put distance between..." I picture four or five very concerned guys in suits trapped in a canoe, frantically trying to paddle away from a raging waterfall ahead, or the swift torrent near a dam that threatens to suck them over the edge...they're paddling to beat hell..paddling to save their lives, trying to put distance between themselves and catastrophe...

Deparle cites three lawyers, members of FS, who helped Paula Jones sue Bill Clinton, but claims they "played..covert roles", and "also worked behind the scenes to disclose Clinton's affair with... Monica Lewinsky". How many of us had any knowledge of who was working on these issues? We rarely know the names of background contributors to legal matters, especially civil suits. And especially before they break into the news.

He cites Bush v. Gore as having "stopped the Florida recount and ensured Bush's election" when referring to, now Solicitor General, Ted Olson, who argued the case at the Supreme Court, and is a member.

At least he labels democrats.com as a "liberal blog", then says they called the FS "the conservative cabal that is attacking America from within."


All in all, Mr. Deparle should try to write in a more straightforward news style, and the editors should not place such obviously biased opinion-writing on Page One in the news section.
And I'll try to consider the source: the New York Times, the same people who gave us Jason Blair.

Brad