Exultate Justi

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

I admit it. I'm a geek.

Really looking forward to Spiderman 2. Everything's shaping-up nicely, from the reviews I've read.

Unfortunately, I (very, very foolishly) gave away my childhood comic book collection when I was a high school senior, and I regret it to this day. When I was growing up, I loved Spiderman, Captain America, The Uncanny X-Men (and the various spinoffs) and Batman (though I was obviously more of a Marvel guy than a DC one...). Of all of these titles, though, Spiderman captivated me the most.

With the X-Men films, and the first Spiderman (of course, I enjoyed the first Batman, too. Though it was a bit overwrought, I thought that Burton captured the essence of the story pretty well.), we comic book fans have finally been treated to some worthy film adaptations. From all appearances, the trend continues in Spiderman 2. Now...when can I get tickets?

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:54 AM |

Note to Self: When Setting Up a Fraud Scheme, Start Small...

$900 billion? $900 billion?!! This woman promised people that she would be the recipient of 9/10ths of a trillion dollars of government grant money, and no one thought it a bit, I dunno...odd?

DENVER - The attorney general's office announced Tuesday that they have won a lawsuit against a woman who was trying to convince people she could give them free grant money.

Carlotta Wilson did not have any money to give.

Attorney General Ken Salazar has fined Wilson $50,000 and told her she can no longer promise money that she has not been able to deliver.

9NEWS Reporter Amanda Martin spoke to Wilson Tuesday.

"I said the wrong thing in the beginning," Wilson said. "Like I said, I'm not going to say anything."

Wilson's former office at Parker Plaza is empty, but she is now borrowing a desk at the office next door. She wouldn't say what she is doing there.

"I do things, like I said, I'll talk to my attorney. I say the wrong things and it gets all blown out of proportion," Wilson added.

On August 26, 2003 hundreds of people lined up outside Wilson's office as she spread word that she was about to receive a large grant and would share it with those who had applied.

"I've asked altogether for 900-billion dollars," she said in August 2003. "It's money given out for free so people are here."

Investigators with the attorney general's office found there wasn't any money. They sued her and won to force her to stop telling people she could find them free money.

"She held out hope for people when there was no hope," Attorney general spokesperson Ken Lane said. "Everything about her sales pitch was fraudulent or at the very least, misleading."

Wilson says she has heard from the attorney general. "They're doing their job. There are scams, there are bogus things going on, I know that, but I am not one."

Woman's got problems.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:19 AM |

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Your Next Caption Target

Gimme some captions, folks -

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 1:34 PM |

Winner of the Caption Contest

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm late on this. After careful review (or at least the tossing of a set of darts...), our winner is David, of Exultate Justi's arch-nemesis site (kidding! He's a good guy - just a few tens of degrees off on some things. Just my personal, completely objective viewpoint on the matter, of course!), Tepid Sense of an Intrepid Destiny. Here's the picture, with the winning caption -

John Kerry threw back his medals again when photos of his service were unearthed. When asked how he still got 65 confirmed kills with a tomato for a helmet, Kerry replied, "back in those days, most people didn't understand what friendly fire meant. What could I do, I was going in cirles and was bound to hit something?"

Runner-up:

Me Brother In-Law Matt with:
When the Coast Guard posts a "No Swimming" sign . . . they mean it!

Congrats! You must be very proud.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 1:25 PM |

I can't believe she actually said that.

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." - Sen. Hillary Clinton, June 29, 2004

Man. Talk about your political tin ears...

Way to confirm every wealth redistributing, demagougic, patronizing, arrogant, and socialist-embracing image I have of the Democratic Party, Hil. Nicely done.

See also The Bleat from yesterday.

A minor political note, if you’re interested in such things. The other day a young girl came to the door to solicit my support for her presidential candidate. I asked her why I should vote for this man. She was very nice and earnest, but if you got her off the talking points she was utterly unprepared to argue anything, because she didn’t know what she was talking about. She had bullet points, and she believed that any reasonable person would see the importance of these issues and naturally fall in line. But she could not support any of her assertions. Her final selling point: Kerry would roll back the tax cuts.

Then came the Parable of the Stairs, of course. My tiresome, shopworn, oft-told tale, a piece of unsupportable meaningless anecdotal drivel about how I turned my tax cut into a nice staircase that replaced a crumbling eyesore, hired a few people and injected money far and wide - from the guys who demolished the old stairs, the guys who built the new one, the family firm that sold the stone, the other firm that rented the Bobcats, the entrepreneur who fabricated the railings in his garage, and the guy who did the landscaping. Also the company that sold him the plants. And the light fixtures. It’s called economic activity. What’s more, home improvements added to the value of this pile, which mean that my assessment would increase, bumping up my property taxes. To say nothing of the general beautification of the neighborhood. Next year, if my taxes didn’t shoot up, I had another project planned. Raise my taxes, and it won’t happen – I won’t hire anyone, and they won’t hire anyone, rent anything, buy anything. You see?

“Well, it’s a philosophical difference,” she sniffed. She had pegged me as a form of life last seen clilcking the leash off a dog at Abu Ghraib. “I think the money should have gone straight to those people instead of trickling down.” Those last two words were said with an edge.

“But then I wouldn’t have hired them,” I said. “I wouldn’t have new steps. And they wouldn’t have done anything to get the money.”

“Well, what did you do?” she snapped.

“What do you mean?”

“Why should the government have given you the money in the first place?”

“They didn’t give it to me. They just took less of my money.”

That was the last straw. Now she was angry. And the truth came out:

“Well, why is it your money? I think it should be their money.”

Then she left.

And walked down the stairs. I let her go without charging a toll. It’s the philanthropist in me.

Note to the Dems - it's my money. I earned it. I should keep it. I know what's best for my family - not you. This is the single most insulting comment I've ever heard creep from the mouth of a politician. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good?!!

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 1:00 PM |

I hate moving

We moved this past Saturday. Moved from the townhouse in which we've lived for the past five years - it was our first home purchase. It's still on the market, so, in the meantime, we've got two mortgages to pay. Ouch.

The move was pretty painless as these things go. We had plenty of (graciously) willing and able help, and luckily, my wife's desire for neatness and order tends to slam into my packrat-ism, with her tendencies coming out on top, so we didn't have too much stuff to haul around.

Still, I hate moving. There's something simultaneously thrilling and saddening about it. As we clear out the furniture, and begin to wade through the detrius of the years, we stumble over memories, and are caught unprepared for the conflicted emotion that ensues. I wanted to move. I wanted my own walls, and I love the house we bought. We're there now, and it's definitely home. It's far more than I ever dreamed we've have. That having been said, it's still strange. I went back to the townhouse last night at about 10:00 to retrieve a couple of itmes that had been left behind, and was once more reminded that our lives are dynamic - never static. Our routines are not permanent, no matter how they may feel so. The townhouse was empty and dark, and it no longer felt familiar. Just a building...a collection of sterile rooms.

We're in a kind of limbo right now. It will pass as we settle in, and as the new sounds and smells become woven into our daily lives, but for now, it's still a bit like being on vacation, and having nothing familiar to which we can return. Exciting, but still a bit intimidating.

The house does rock, though.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 10:08 AM |

Monday, June 28, 2004

Kills me.

Last week, I pointed toward a thoughtful piece on racism at Avery Tooley's Stereo Describes my Scenario. It was a great post, and, justifiably, generated a fair number of comments (some from me). One commenter inparticular, left his mark, however:

God never intended for Whites and Negroes to live together, let alone miscegenate. It's an abomination. Same thing goes for Asians, Arabs, Mestizos, etc. Races are grossly unequal in many important ways, among then intelligence. Another important one is aesthetics, with White women being considered the worldwide gold standard of beauty, Negro women at the bottom of the barrel, and the others somewhere in between. Not popular to say out loud, but nonetheless true. - commenter "Badonicus".

Crap. Crap shovelled by the metric ton.

I'm not going to link to his site. If you want to read his whole comment, you'll have to go read Avery's piece, and the comments that follow. Don't send your comments regarding our bigoted friend to Avery, though. The guy doesn't need that kind of headache.

I hate racism. Hate it, hate it, hate it. My lefty friends will likely seize on this opportunity to crow that my conservative beliefs are inherently racist, but then again, that line of reasoning is devoid of sense, so I'll leave it alone (and yes, I know that's a pretty blatant non sequiter). I'm not talking about opposing affirmative action, or supporting welfare reform...I'm talking about believing yourself to be somehow superior to another human being simply by virtue of your race. This is the absolute, unrivaled height of idiocy and self-delusion, and I'll call it that whenever it rears its ugly head. This is the same problem I have with any racial "pride" movement. How on earth does it make sense to take pride in something that's not an accomplishment? Race is what it is. To inflate it into some sort of acheivement is nonsense.

What kills me about this guy is that he tries to use scripture to justify his screed. In his comments, he references the book of Acts as a source to indicate that God hates "miscegenation". This is blasphemy. Racism is evil, and it is a sin - plain and simple. To celebrate its expression, and to then attempt to twist the Gospel into a message of white supremacy is the height of folly for one who claims the name of Christ...a folly that will not go unnoticed.

26You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. - Romans 3:26-29 (From the NIV - which will no doubt be another sign of my "apostacy" to these folks)

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 11:10 AM |

I ain't the same person I was when I bit that guy's ear off.

This from Mike Tyson who, for the past two years has, in his words, been living like a street bum - sleeping in shelters, and taking handouts from drug dealers.

He's always been a tragic figure, as well as a menacing one, but he long ago passed self-parody.

He's not the Tyson a remember from my childhood.

Image courtesy of the greatest 80s nostalgia site on the net, X-Entertainment.

I remember being at church on the Sunday following Tyson's first-round KO of Michael Spinks - the first big fight I remember seeing on pay-per-view cable. I've never followed boxing too closely (lest you think I'm trying to claim some sort of authority on the subject), but my friends and I were in total awe of this guy. He was a force - not a man. You didn't really cheer for Tyson - he always had the "bad guy vibe" about him - but you sure wanted to see who he'd crush next. After all, no one would ever beat the guy, right? "Baddest man on the planet", hardest hitter in boxing, etc.

Then came Buster Douglas in Tokyo, and, of course, the cannibal pugilism of the Tyson/Holyfield bouts. It was all downhill for Mike.

Years later, the guy is washed-up, bankrupt, a convicted rapist, and sporting a big ol' Maori tat on his mug. He's gone from contemptible to pitiful. It's too bad, really. All joking about his voice and manner of speech aside (hard to put aside, I know.), Tyson has always struck me as a deeply-flawed, but complex, intelligent guy who chose the wrong path time, and time, and time again. He's made his own bed, and he'll have to sleep in it now. It's just too bad he never became what he could have been.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 10:34 AM |

Last Week's Council Winners

Congratulations to Patterico's Pontificaitons, who won in the Council-Written category with Who Are You Going to Believe? Me, or Your Lying Transcript?, and to Protest Warrior HQ, who won with Operation Tiger Claw -- Debriefing. Great stuff all around, as usual. Check out the voting results in their entirety here.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 10:30 AM |

A Couple of Things

1. Congratulations to the people of Iraq, which became a sovereign nation (two days ahead of schedule) with Paul Bremer's handover of power early this morning. The days, weeks, and months ahead will not be easy. The foreign fighters and Ba'athists who have initiated the current campaign of violence against both Coalition troops and (primarily) Iraqis will intensify their efforts to destabilize the nascent democracy in Baghdad. They know the stakes: should a free and democratic Iraq flourish, the jihadis will have been dealt an inestimable blow in their efforts to mold the region into Taliban II. Iraq must be allowed to flourish. A democratic society featuring freedom of religion, speech, and the press is the single greatest bulwark against the spread of terrorism ever to have been devised.

2. In the comments section of my Al Gore "interview", Dem-leaning blogger David (check out his site Tepid Sense of an Intrepid Destiny. It's well worth a read.) became embroiled in a debate of-sorts with Ben over the latest online ad from the RNC, which can be seen here (you'll need Windows Media Player). I hadn't been online over the weekend (we were moving into our house), and didn't want to comment without actually viewing the video first. I've now had a chance to check out the video, and I feel ready to comment.

The gist of David's problem with the video is that, in his opinion, it compares various Democratic Leaders to Adolf Hitler. Similarly, the Kerry campaign has issued a mass email condemning the ad. It reads, in part:

Yesterday, the Bush-Cheney campaign, losing any last sense of decency, placed a disgusting ad called "The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party" as the main feature on its website. Bizarrely, and without explanation, the ad places Adolf Hitler among those faces.

The Bush-Cheney campaign must pull this ad off of its website. The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong.

The tenor of the email, of course, leads the reader to believe that the RNC is, therefore, using Hitlerian imagery to malign the Democratic Party, and their presidential candidate, John Kerry.

This is simply not true. The ad shows - quite effectively - the lengths to which the Democrats and their supporters have gone to demonize President Bush. It does so by using their own images and audio against them.

The ad, titled The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party: The Coalition of the Wild-Eyed, shows a series of video and audio clips of various Democratic luminaries in full-rage mode. Clips include Al Gore's "he BETRAYYYYED our country! He played on our FEARS!"-speech, wherein he roared about George Bush dragging "the good name of the United States through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prisons", Howard Dean shouting that he wants his country back, Dick Gephardt calling the President a "miserable failure", Michael Moore making his inflammatory Oscar speech, as well as selections from an ad submitted to last year's MoveOn.org anti-Bush commercial competition that directly compares George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, and indicates that he, like Hitler, is guilty of war crimes. The imagery is stark, infuriating, and relevatory. In response to the DNC's protests, the Bush campaign has placed the following note on its blog:

On Thursday, the campaign launched a web video titled Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed. The video featured Democrats who support John Kerry making negative and baseless attacks against the President. Interspersed in the video were segments of two ads that appeared on a website sponsored by MoveOn.org - a group campaigning for Kerry - in January.

On Friday night, John Kerry's campaign denounced our use of these ads, and called that use "disgusting."

The Kerry campaign says, "The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong." We agree.

- Where was John Kerry's disgust when he hired Zack Exley - the man responsible for encouraging the production of these ads as part of a MoveOn contest - to run the Kerry campaign's internet operation?

- Where was John Kerry's sense of outrage when Al Gore, just Thursday afternoon, compared the Bush Administration to the Nazis saying, "The Administration works closely with a network of 'rapid response' digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops.'"

- Where was John Kerry's anger when Al Gore in May spoke of "Bush's Gulag"?

- Why has John Kerry not denounced billionaire and Democrat Party donor George Soros for comparing the Bush Administration to Nazis. Soros stated, "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans. It conjures up memories of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit ('The enemy is listening')."

- Why has Kerry not spoken out against filmmaker Michael Moore who last October compared the Patriot Act to Mein Kampf. "The Patriot Act is the first step. 'Mein Kampf' - 'Mein Kampf' was written long before Hitler came to power."

We created this web video to show the depths to which these Kerry supporters will sink to win in November.

Is this the Democratic Party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who reassured his countrymen we have nothing to fear but fear itself?

No. This is John Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed, who have nothing to offer but fear-mongering.

The ad is damning. The simple fact of the matter is this: the Kerry campaign has not distanced itself from the fanatical elements of the Democratic party. This silent assent serves as a de facto endorsement of the numerous obscene Bush/Hitler comparisons that have issued forth from the hard left since 9/11. This is just wrong. There is nothing to be gained regarding the national discourse, and no actual debate to be touched-off by simple invective. Tim Graham says it well:

The chairman of the DNC is happily mugging at Moore's DC premiere and applauding his movie as a campaign tool. Kerry has hired people away from MoveOn.org for his campaign. He has distanced himself from neither group, nor from Gore's MoveOn-sponsored 'digital brownshirt' ravings. Meanwhile, Democrats quickly tied Bush I to his base of Buchanan and Robertson, who they thought were wild-eyed ideologues of hate. In every cycle, the media highlight the conservative base of the GOP and how the nominee will suffer from the 'hard right' associations. Now, Kerry and Terry have to embrace every Moore fan and MoveOn bake-saler to keep some Naderites in their camp, and it's not fair to point out the 'hard left' base?

This quote, as well as many other reactions can, as one might expect, be seen at Instapundit.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:44 AM |

Friday, June 25, 2004

An Interview with Big Al

And now, by popular demand (okay, okay...Ben asked for it, but given my tiny readership, one reader is a decent percentage.), a recount of my time spent with former Vice President Al Gore. We met at Barnes & Noble - in the "Fiction and Literature" section.

Me: Thanks for coming out to Denver Mr. Vice President. I know you've had a rather busy day, so if you don't mind, we'll move right to the questions.

Albert: Lungfish.

Me: I...ok, then. Umm...in regard to your comments yesterday - your very controversial comments describing what you call the President's "digital Brown Shirts"...

Albert: Purple toothbrush dishwasher.

Me: Pardon?

Albert: Well, googly-eye chairlift monkey-monkey, Whoop-whoop!!

Me: ...

Albert: Lockbox.

(A man steps from the shadows to tighten a bolt on Al's neck)

Albert: Whoa. Sorry about that. It's been real rainy here in Denver lately, huh? Humidity's not sitting well with me right now.

Me: Yeah. Rainy. Ummm, are you allright?

Albert: I'm fine, but I'd be doing better if "digital Brown Shirts" like you weren't always egging my house.

Me: Mr. Vice President, I assure you, I've never...

Albert: Somebody keyed my new car, too. Brand new Eclipse. I think it was that no good Glenn Reynolds...always going on about that blasted RX-8 of his. Tennessee traitor...more like a "digital Rommel" than a Brown Shirt, though.

Me: Moving on, then, can you explain yesterday's comments regarding Iraq and al-Qaeda in light of the memo described in today's New York Times?

Albert: Right Wing Attack Machine. R-W-A-M. The Times is just another part of it. They're lying. Lying, lying, lying.

Me: The Times? The New York Times?

Albert: Yup.

Me: Well, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask you about some other items involving statements you've made, as well.

Albert: Shoot.

Me: On September 23, 2002, you said the following: "We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." and "Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." Were you lying then?

Albert: No. Bush was. I was just going along with what he said, before I knew that he was a lying liar.

Me: But Mr. Vice President, throughout the 90s, various members of the Clinton Administration - including you - stated on numerous occasions that Saddam Hussein posed a threat, and that he was seeking connections with al-Qaeda. Was this a lie?

Albert: You're a liar, too. That guy over there is a liar, too, and so's that guy back near the CDs. Yeah, you! I'm looking at you, FUBU-guy!

Me: Focus, focus, Mr. Vice President. How do you respond to the following?

(Hands the VP a stack of pages featuring the following info, among other things:
CNN: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers. - February 13, 1999

The Guardian: Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials.

The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq. - February 6, 1999)

Albert: R-W-A-M.

Me: CNN? The Guardian?!!

Albert: Uh-huh. Bush is so clever...so devious, and so evil, that he was managing to lie preemptively. He used his mind-control rays to make me n' Bill lie, too. Not Madeline ALbright, though. She was goofy all on her own.

Me: I see. Huh. I guess Reynolds was right, then.

Albert: Oh, I almost forgot...Bush is also really dumb. He's really dumb, in a clever and smart sort of way.

Me: Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, eh, Mr. Vice President?

Albert: You know it. That's why I'm voting for John Kerry. Guy's brain is freakin' huge, like mine.

Me: Truer words have never been spoken.

Albert: Y'know, if I hadn't been robbed in '00, we'd have Osama bin Laden by now. I'd have flown over there and gotten him.

Me: Now really, Mr. Vice President...I don't think that an Afghanistan trip by Air Force One would have been well-received at that point in time.

Albert: I wouldn't have needed a plane.

Me: What do you mean?

Albert: I can fly.

Me: Ohhhh, so THAT's what's up with the blue unitard and the cape. Umm, one of your safety pins is coming loose, "Super-Al".

Albert: That's "Ginger" to you, mister Digi-Hitler! I don't like your attitude, you Digital Gestapo guy, you.

Me: Well, hey...if we're being honest here, I've got to admit that I think you're out of your gourd. That tinfoil hat you've got there doesn't exactly cause me to reconsider my suspicions, if you know what I mean.

Albert: ...Oughtta put YOU in a lockbox...

Me: Excuse me?

Albert: That's it. You leave me no choice. Here comes my heat vision...

Me: Okay, see, now you're just shining a laser pointer in my eyes. That's really annoying.

Albert: Yep. REALLY annoying. And, once I've done this for ten or twelve hours, you might someday face the risk of eye trouble...sometime. Maybe.

Me: Loser.

Albert: Digi-Himmler.

Me: I'm outta here.

Albert: Loooooooooooooooockbooooooooooooooooooooox!!!!!!!!!

Barnes & Noble PA announcement: Security to Fiction, security to fiction.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:09 AM |

Thursday, June 24, 2004

And here's your opening for Condi...

Cheney Curses Senator Over Halliburton Criticism

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 5:13 PM |

Guilty as charged

When I was in high school, I had planned on attending the Naval Academy, and, with any luck, going into aviation. After all, what guy wouldn't love to get paid to fly Tomcats, and Super Hornets, etc.? Unfortunately, blowing out my knee playing ball (and growing to 6'5") put an end to that particular dream. Still, I'm a big-time military aviation buff, and, due to my original leanings, am still quite the fan of Naval aviation.

As the proud owner of squadron t-shirts from VF-103 (Jolly Rogers), VF-102 (Diamondbacks), VF-31 (Tomcatters), and VFA-82 (Marauders), and someone who catches all kinds of heat for it from my Air Force buddy Jeff, I'll have to admit that I'm likely afflicted with the syndrome described below (hat tip IMAO):

Did you know that June is National NAS Awareness Month? NAS, or Naval Aviator Syndrome is a tragic disease afflicting many former Navy Airmen, and not a few civilians who have watched “Top Gun” a few too many times.
Please post these danger signs on your influential and respected website.

We’re NASSTY (Naval Aviator Syndrome SocieTY), and we can help.

Top Ten Signs your loved one is afflicted by Naval Aviator Syndrome

1. Always rides with one passenger. Passenger must sit in back seat behind driver and navigate. Passenger must answer to name “Goose”.

2. To depart house, parks car at end of driveway, applies brakes, revs engine to redline rpm, salutes smartly and pops clutch.

3. Welds pipe to front fender and connects it to gas tank. When the low fuel light comes on, announces “bingo fuel” and attempts to dock with a gasoline tanker on the freeway for “in-flight refueling”.

4. Paints crosshairs on windshield. Whenever a Yugo is aligned in the crosshairs, will depress 4-way flasher button and yell “Fox one”.

5. Feels uncomfortable unless accompanied on freeway by “wingman” who must drive one lane to the right, three cars back.

6. In case of engine trouble, will shout “Eject! Eject! Eject!”, pull the hood release handle and depart the vehicle through the sunroof.

7. Equips car with radar detector. When it goes off, throws tinfoil out the window and conducts “evasive maneuvers”.

8. When gassing up, requests attendant supply “0.12 thousand pounds of fuel”.

9. Purchases house with circular driveway. Enters driveway at 40mph. In the event the car is not perfectly aligned, shouts “Bolter! Bolter!” and accelerates out of the driveway at full speed.

10. Spends one day a week on the garage roof grading other drivers on their “landings” in the driveway.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 4:13 PM |

Racism

The always-thoughtful, never-pigeonholed Avery Tooley has written a meaty post on racism - both as a term, and as a concept. Whether you agree or not, his perspective is utterly valuable, and he deserves to be heard. His argument is strong. Go read it.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 2:19 PM |

Gore - Bush lied, people died, and I am Princess Kazooie of Moontasia!

In an hour-long address punctuated by polite laughter and applause, Gore also accused the Bush administration of working closely "with a network of 'rapid response' digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops."'

In the same speech, the former Vice President also railed against what he called President Bush's campaign to "eliminate certain snack foods".

I mean, this guy's been in office for nearly four years. In the meantime, has anyone seen my Peanut Butter Boppers? My Chewy Chalk? My Jello Pudding Pops? This Administration has cast a shadow across the land, Gore continued, and only I - with the help of my Tanooki suit - can return this nation to the light!

Sorry. The second paragraph is silly satire - but only just.

Brown Shirts? Brown Shirts? Somebody's stopped taking his meds, methinks.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 1:58 PM |

How very, very true.

It's hard to be politically correct when someone is trying to kill you.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 1:00 PM |

I didn't expect this.

Then again, nobody does.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 12:56 PM |

Coors & Schaffer - The News & The Post`

Much of the RMA's efforts of late have centered on (On. Not "Around". You can't have something centered "around" something else. BIG grammatical pet peeve for me. See also, "for all intensive purposes", and "could care less". GAH!) the upcoming primary battle between Pete Coors and Bob Schaffer, and on the question of which man is right for the job of defeating State AG Ken Salazar (who - no disrepct to Mike Miles intended - is the presumptive Dem nominee.), and ultimately, preserving the Senate seat now held by Republicrat (he is a former Dem) Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Joshua, Ben, Jonathan, and Clay, in particular, have featured a series of ongoing discussions about the Schaffer and Coors campaigns - each coming from a slightly different perspective. Check them out. They're connected, and well-informed on the issues at hand in this race.

Interestingly enough, the coverage of yesterday's Coors/Schaffer debate is handled quite differently by Denver's two major papers, with The News taking on what might be described as a bit of a "pro-Coors" slant vis-a-vis their more prominent focus (and relatively positive stance) on Coors' position on restoring Colorado's previous drinking age-minimum laws (18 vs. the current 21), and on Schaffer's defensiveness regarding his record as a tax-cutter.

The Post, on the other hand, is pretty hard on Coors, choosing to emphasize Schaffer's "A-HAH!" attack on Coors' knowledge (or apparent lack thereof) of international politics, and Coors' resultant admission regarding the identity of Canada's current Prime Minister (Paul Martin).

I must begin by saying that neither campaign is filling me with great enthusiasm at this point. Yesterday's debate - featuring what I would consider to be a cheap shot by each camp - didn't help too much along those lines.

I like Bob Schaffer quite a bit (as I've made clear in the past), but to my mind, he did himself no favors with his "Paul Martin" grandstanding.

"Paul Martin has suggested that that border be opened again and Canadian beef begin to flow into the United States," Schaffer said. "I'm curious, Pete, whether you agree with Paul Martin on this matter."

Coors ambled to the microphone and replied: "I don't know Paul Martin's whole position on this issue. I'm not sure I know who Paul Martin is."

Schaffer seized the moment.

"What I'm disappointed and shocked about is that you don't know who Paul Martin is," Schaffer said. "Paul Martin is the prime minister of Canada, our largest trade partner and our closest friend and ally to the north.

"When you walk on the floor of the United States Senate, friends, you need to know who the prime minister of Canada is."

While no one can debate the accuracy of such a statement, Schaffer's timing and tone were way off, and he came across looking like that kid in class who got beaten up a lot because he always insisted on making everyone else look stupid. Confidence is good, and is a necessity in a Senate campaign, but cockiness (and this little incident sure made Schaffer look a bit cocky) is always off-putting. It was a gotcha moment, and, at least to me, harkened back to Al Gore's constant efforts to puff-up his knowledge of foreign leaders at the expense of "Bumpkin Bush" during the debates of 2000. Not a comparison I'd want to draw as a Republican.

Meanwhile, the Coors camp hasn't acquitted itself much better with their accusation that Bob Schaffer isn't a reliable tax-cutter. Sorry folks - that dog won't hunt. Schaffer has a very solid fiscal record as a Congressman, and insinuations that he'll suddenly turn into a New Deal Democrat upon election won't stick. He's got a record to point to, and it's a pretty solid one. He did vote for a $.04/gallon gas tax increase that was designed to fund highway improvements, and, while this isn't necessarily something to brag about, it's not the end of the world, either - especially in light of his track record in other areas of fiscal responsibility.

Save the digs for Salazar, fellas. They're not becoming, and they're not going to endear you to the voters. Fight smarter - not dirtier.

As to the differing newspaper coverage? I suppose the conspiracy theorists out there might suggest that The Post is pumping Schaffer so as to help hand him the primary. Why, you might wonder, would the more liberal of the two papers push the candidate who's thought of as the more idealogically conservative of the two? Doesn't make sense on the surface, but if they believe that Schaffer is a leser threat to Salazar than is Coors, it would fit their slant pretty nicely. Do I think that this is what's happening? Nope. In reality, I think that it's probably just a natural side-effect to the "two paper" phenomenon. When you've got two outlets in one city, they're going to try pretty hard to differentiate themselves from one another. As such, it makes sense that two different reporters would have two different takes on the debate. It's fun to play in tinfoil hat-land occasionally, though.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:48 AM |

Will Colorado Bite "The Big One"?

From 9News.com -

ANTON - Colorado hasn't seen a major earthquake in over 100 years, but geologists are concerned the Front Range and Eastern Plains might be in danger of a catastrophic quake.

To find out for sure they're digging into a suspicious formation on the Eastern Plains near the tiny town of Anton. The scene looks like a construction site with an excavator taking big bites out of the sandy soil. However, the operation is actually a large science project. Geologists are digging a trench through a geologic formation called the "Anton Scarp" to find out if it is an earthquake fault. On computer enhanced topographic maps the scarp looks like a 95-mile slash across the plains. "Well, it's very unusual. This is not supposed to be faulted out here," says Vincent Matthews, a state geologist.

Charleton Heston, George Kennedy, Lorne Greene - we need you!!

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:35 AM |

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Hit & Run post

Did my part to save the planet - rode my bike to work today. Out of shape.

Observations:

1. Downhill good.
2. Uphill bad.
3. Leaky CamelBack very bad.
4. Shirt wet.

Have a great day, all. I may post more this afternoon, but I can't guarantee it.

Oh, and by the way, the folks at NoAdWare.net should be stricken with painful rashes. Using a pop-up ad to advertise software designed to eliminate those "irritating pop-up ads" is insulting to my intelligence, and, generally speaking, makes me want to meet the company's CEO on the playground at 3:00. Mano y mano, muchacho.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 10:14 AM |

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

South Korean Hostage Murdered (Originally posted at 11:19)

Kim Sun-Il, the South Korean contractor who was kidnapped by Iraqi terrorists, has apparently been beheaded. He was a believer in Christ, and is in a better place now, away from this dark world, but this fact will surely not ease his family's suffering in the short-term.

What follows are my (likely intemperate) off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts regarding this latest savagery:

I pray that vengeance is swift, severe, and just. I hope these creatures know fear. I hope they know helplessness. I hope that, in the split-second after their dank lair's door is kicked in and the Delta boys pour in like water from a breached dam, these animals taste the bile rising in their throats. I hope that they reach for their weapons - or just look like they're going to. I hope that one or two survive, and are humilated to be denied their "martyrdom". I hope for panic when those who don't survive open their eyes and see no virgins - only the reward to which they've damned themselves.

I am no better than they, spiritually speaking. Without Christ, I would be as doomed to hell as are they. This is not the point.

They have willfully chosen to terrorize an innocent man, and to gain great pleasure from his suffering. They have shed innocent blood, for no other reason than the fact that they could. They need to be humbled. They need to be brought low. They will be.

Maranatha. Please.

The violence of the wicked will destroy them, because they refuse to do justice. - Proverbs 21:7

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 2:19 PM |

Maybe It IS All About the Oil...

One of the Michael Moore-Left's favorite talking points since 9/11 has been the association of the Bush family with the Saudi Royal family, and, as Osama bin Laden is a member of that family (who in Saudi Arabia isn't a member of the Royal family?), the Bushes' secret relationship with the bin Ladens! Scandal! Conspiracy! Bin Laden evacuations!! Bush knew!! Plastic turkey!!

One of the other major contentions of the Lefty-Left has been that our invasion of Iraq (and, despite a serious paucity of evidence to that effect, Afghanistan) was undertaken for no other reason than to grab up all of their oil, which would presumably allow the Bush family (and perhaps the Trilateral Commssion, the Bilderbergers, and the Freemasons) to build more hotels on Broadway, and carry around even larger sacks of money with big dollar signs on them.

Huh. As it turns out, they may be right on one of those counts (the Iraqi invasion had a major oil-related motivation), though, if they are, they're incredibly wrong about the other. Oh, and also, if what the WorldTribune is reporting is true, they're wrong about the President's oil-related motives themselves, too, but who's counting?

The United States has sent a tough message to Saudi Arabia that did not rule out abandoning of the kingdom's oil sector.

U.S. officials said the Bush administration has warned that Americans would not stay in Saudi Arabia unless the kingdom takes significant steps to protect them. The officials said the warning came in wake of the Al Qaida execution of Lockheed Martin engineer Paul Johnson on June 18.

Now, this isn't too profound, really. Pundits have been punditizing this possibility as an unintended side-benefit of the invasion since the months leading up to it. What I'm wondering, though, is if this hasn't been the goal all along.

Could it be that the invasion of Iraq was the seizure of an opportunity to reduce the West's reliance on Saudi oil? Could it be that, should the Iraqi oil industry continue to grow and flourish under a democratically-elected government, the Wahabi-loving, Madrassah-funding Sheiks of the House of Saud will be left with little leverage, and no real power?

Could the invasion of Iraq be a brilliant masterstroke in cutting the legs out from under the Wahabists' financial network? Would this not, then, be representative of a vision within the Administration, once again, of Iraq as the central front of the war on terror? If indeed this piece were true, could not this move been seen as just an increasingly widespread and diversified effort to destroy the al-Qaeda network, and the other innumerable mom-n-pop terror shops that flourish under its financial support?

We've been told over and over that we must get tougher with the Saudis - a valid point, to say the least. Perhaps what we're seeing is the natural (and inevitable) emboldening of the US that springs from the introduction of another source of oil into the mix, and from the forseeable destruction of the Saudi oil monopoly. It's far too early in the game to make such an assessment, but I'm beginning to wonder if this little blip of a news story doesn't mark the beginning of yet another Rope-a-Dope on the part of the Bush Administration. If indeed this is the case, it's a brilliant move. Liberate a nation, destroy an odious and threatening dictatorship with a long record of supporting terrorism, and, in the process, force the hand of the Saudis by allowing another major oil player - one with which we are allied - to come to the table. The Saudis have always needed us more than we've needed them (yes, we need their oil, but if we don't buy their oil, their entire economy is shot to pieces), but we've not acted that way in recent memory, and, as such, we've given them little reason to truly reform. Saudi-funded Madrassahs have continued to mushroom around the world, and Wahabism marches forward. Perhaps the tide is shifting...only time will tell.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 12:04 PM |

Bio-Terrorist Field Test?

Likely not, but it arouses one's curiosity and suspicion -

Washington State Cows Splashed With Toxic Substance Die

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 12:01 PM |

Hitchens Perforates Moore

Though it's all over the blogosphere by now, Christopher Hitchens' piece at Slate is a true must-read. Here's a tasty morsel:

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The Majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:50 AM |

Blasted Canucks!

It's been confusing around here of late. Denver, which sees over 300 days of sunshine a year, and is normally well into the mid-80s for its daytime highs this time of year, looks like Seattle. Nothing against Seattle, but we've had almost a week straight of days with substantial precipitation (we need the moisture, but c'mon!), and we're all growing gills and webbed feet. Today, the source of this menace became clear. This from today's online Denver Post:

Canada Blamed for Wet Weather

Blame Canada.

On Monday, the first day of summer, Denver sloshed through its sixth day of rain - the effects of a low-pressure system that has been hanging over western Canada for the past week.

The jetstream usually flows north across Canada but dipped over Colorado last week, and a succession of fronts marching down from Canada has held it in place.

Figures. I made a joke about Tim Horton's the other day. I wonder if I brought this wet plague down upon us...

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:46 AM |

Kerry in Denver

Michael's got a great line in his post on John Kerry's fundraising visit to Denver:

But I do think it rather ironic that Kerry is making the case for government to do major research on the same day the the first private astronaut takes flight. To quote (or paraphrase) a former head of the National Institute Health, "If the federal government had been in charge of finding a cure for polio, we would have the best iron lung money could buy, but no cure."

Well said.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:44 AM |

Monday, June 21, 2004

This can't be good

Hmmmmm.

Iran Confiscates U.K. Military Vessels

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:58 AM |

What a day

Yesterday, of course, was father's day. Normally, I've tended to take this day for granted. I buy a couple of cards (or, to be more accurate, my wife buys a couple of cards) for my dad and my father in-law, I fill'em out, and that's that. Not this year.

This year, I got a card. It had a kitty on it, and was covered with glitter. It was from my ten month-old daughter, and it was the coolest thing I've ever been given.

I'll not go into detail (a sigh of relief ripples through my readership), but I'll say this - two years ago at this time, we were confident of two things - 1. We wanted kids, and 2. We were unlikely to be able to have them. Then, in August of last year, we brought home our little girl from the hospital. God is good. He is good through the pain, the tears, and the disillusionment. He is good despite my ingratitude, and my faithlessness. He is good.

Yesterday, I was reminded of how great a dad I've been blessed with. His example has shown me what it means to be a good husband and father.

Yesterday, I was reminded of how completely amazing my wife is. She's gorgeous, she's smart, and she's a far better person than am I. She is singular. There is no one like her. She even got me a DVD I've wanted for quite some time - the 25th Anniversary edition of one of my favorite films of all time - Jaws. So may great performances in that film, by the way, and so many lines that work for just about any situation you'll ever find yourself in.

Stuff like:
Brody: We're gonna need a bigger boat.

and

Quint: Hoo-PAH!

Yesterday, I held my little girl in my arms as she awoke from her nap. She laid her head on my shoulder, and closed her eyes as she smiled.

In my head, I'm ranting and raving about all manner of screedly things - stupid letters to the editor in The Post, media non-coverage of new information concerning the 9/11 Commission's non-revelation, and any number of other things. But I'm not going to write about those things today. There's plenty of time for that later in the week. I'm still getting over yesterday, though. So, no spleen-venting on this blog today...because yesterday rocked.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:30 AM |

Another giant leap

Congratulations to Burt Rutan, Paul Allen, the entire team at Shaped Composites, and to Mike Melvill - the first civilian astronaut in human history. This is outstanding - truly history in the making.

I have but two questions. When do they start selling tickets, and where can I get one?

SpaceShipOne rockets skyward earlier this morning

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:17 AM |

Friday, June 18, 2004

Is this a good or bad thing?

A three-word email I just got:

You're really complex.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 4:06 PM |

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy...

From 9News.com:

Al-Arabiya TV says al-Qaida cell leader Abdulaziz al-Moqrin has been killed. He is believed to be the leader of the group that claimed responsibility for the beheading of American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 4:01 PM |

Whew...[gasp]...so...tired.

I'm a slug right now. My bench press (for reps) is below 250 for the first time in quite awhile, and my endurance is shot. My weight's up to around 235-240 (I'm 6'5"), and I'd much rather have it in the 215-225 range. Better on my crunchy knees.

I'd really love to get back into martial arts (1+ year Shotokan, 2 yrs. Enshin karate/Sabaki method), but with the new house, money's going to be tight.

Man...I've gotta hit the bike and the weights.

Random thoughts.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 1:19 PM |

A visit to the opposition

Though he and I disagree very strongly on most (if not every) issue about which we post, I respect David's willingess to engage in well-reasoned, substantive debate. Check out his site, Trepid Sense of an Intrepid Destiny, and read what he has to say. Just as I'm sure he feels that I'm full o'crap, I think he's dead-wrong. But in order to figure out whether or not your own beliefs measure up to the standards of logic and yes, truth, it only makes sense to read those with whom you disagree.

Be polite! I don't want to hear about any flame wars originating from my readers, pretty please.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 12:31 PM |

This Week's Council Winners

Congratulations to the winners of this week's Watcher's Council competition -

Patterico's story of media bias in A Tale of Two Letters, and So, What Did the U.N. Know?, by our non-Council pick, Ubique Patriam Reminisci.

The full vote results are here. Good job, ladies and gents!

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 12:13 PM |

Hostage Paul Johnson beheaded

Pray for his family.

May his killers be brought to justice. Soon.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 11:48 AM |

Agenda Setting 101 - How The Denver Post Became Colorado's LA Times

Inside most newsrooms in second-tier big cities like Denver, the comparison in the headline above would be seen as a compliment. This view is purely indicative of the degree to which most of the traditional press has fallen out of touch with much of its readership/viewership.

A quick perusal of the current online edition of The Post is relevatory -

MORE NATIONAL POLITICS STORIES:

- Kerry at Civic Center on Monday
- Interactive election guide
- No Kerry-McCain ticket
- Poll: Kerry leads Bush by 7 points

Note the absence of scare quotes around the word poll. Such treatment is certainly merited, given the fact that the poll to which the headline refers is none other than the now-discredited LA Times poll that featured a laughably-imbalanced poll sample (13% more Democrats than Republicans were polled). There is no mention of yesterday's Pew Research poll showing the President up by four points. Hugh Hewitt has dogged the LA Times beautifully, and is a great source of info on its descent into irrelevance.

Look to the left-hand side of the site, and you're greeted with a sidebar showing hotlinks to a featured set of stories detailing the evolution of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal. Note the lack of a similar treatment for the murder of Nick Berg, or the estimated 5 to 7 million Shiites who simply "disappeared" under Saddam Hussein (according to National Geographic).

The Post - traditionally the more leftward-leaning of Denver's two papers (The Rocky Mountain News is by no means conservative, but its more overt displays of bias tend to be limited to its editorial pages) - took a sharp turn to the hard left a few years back with the hiring of its current Editor In-Chief, Gregory Moore. The paper has since become little more than an echo chamber of liberal ideology - offering consistently slanted reporting on everything from illegal immigration to the war on terror.

Though, to its credit, the Post features a wide selection of Colorado-based blogs (including this one) in its "Bloghouse" section, it remains a testament to both the growing influence of the blogging community, and the fading relevance of "old" media.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 10:19 AM |

Putin buckles his knees with a nasty curve. The count is now 0-2 on the "Saddam had no terror links" meme...

The laughable assertions of the 9/11 commission aside (they're now backpedalling furiously at any rate), there has never been any legitimate way in which to argue that the regime of Saddam Hussein offered no support to Islamic terror groups - including al-Qaeda. Saddam's very public offerings of tens of thousands of dollars to the families of Palestinian Intifadites, his provision of safe haven to Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, and yes, everyone's favorite Iraq-based (for more than three years) al-Qaeda thug, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, establishes as much of a "paper trail" as you're ever likely to find. It's not as if terrorist organizations draw up contracts for collective bargaining agreements, etc. As I've said over and over and over and over again, terrorist organizations tend to be extremely fluid in both their operational constructs, and in their allegiances and working agreements.

Now, just a day after august insitutions like The New York Times triumphantly parrotted the 9/11 Commission's finding that there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement in the attacks of September 11th (NOTE: the Commission never said that there was no tie between Iraq and al-Qaeda, as is being reported. They simply stated that there is no conclusive evidence that Iraq helped in planning the attacks of 9/11/2001), Russian President (and staunch opponent of the US-led war in Iraq) Vladimir Putin has revealed that in the days following 9/11, Russian intel services provided the United States with information indicating that Iraq was planning attacks against the United States and her interests - including strikes against targets inside the US:

"After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services, the intelligence service, received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests," Putin said.

There was no immediate comment by Administration officials, though they have, in the past few days, begun to take a more aggressive tone in agruing for the evidence of an Iraq/al-Qaeda relationship.

This story is developing. Hang on...

UPDATE:
In a remarkable display of lousy timing, a lack of common sense, and utter disingenuousness, Democratic Senator and Presumptive Presidential nominee John Kerry spent the day dumping on the war, and the President's justification for it.

Let your freak flag fly, John-boy!

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:22 AM |

CRIKEY!!!!!

House-sized meteorite hits Australia.

Sure hope Tim, Mike, PM Howard and the rest are OK.

God has seen Young Einstein, and he is not pleased.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:00 AM |

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Happy Birthday!!!

To my big brother Todd, and my Father In-Law Peter. Love you guys!

Todd, sorry to hear about Tina. Praying for you, Kori and the kids.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 12:48 PM |

Where are the tapes?

National Review's Nick Schultz writes of the horrors of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, as recorded on video -

The swordsman-torturer, not sufficiently satisfied with his first effort, raises the sword again and drives down once more on the man's immobile hand. This time he severs the fingers closer to the knuckles as blood spurts cartoonishly from his hand spilling over and down the concrete slab. The victim emits a wail I have never heard — could never imagine hearing — from a grown man, this time louder, harder than the first.

...In the third clip, a prisoner sits on the ground, his arm tied with white cloth, strips to a wooden board resting on a gray concrete slab. A man stands before him with a sword, this blade is wider than the last. He, too, strikes down on the man's hand, severing it from his right arm as the prisoner recoils in pain. The camera then quickly darts to the man's hand resting on the dusty ground several feet away as it was launched a considerable distance from the prisoner due to the force of the torturer's chop.

...In another clip a hooded and blindfolded prisoner is led to a room where he is forced to kneel, hands tied behind his back. Another man sits before the prisoner with thick metal tweezers and a scalpel. With his left hand he grabs the tip of the prisoner's tongue with the tweezers and pulls it forward from his head. With the scalpel in his other hand he slices through the prisoner's tongue, cutting it out of his mouth and then dropping it on the floor.

This ritual is repeated for more prisoners who are lined up, squatting in a row like parts on an assembly line waiting for processing, sitting ducks surrounded by dozens of men bearing witness to a Baathist tongue lashing.

These horrors were the product of Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen - not, as Teddy Kennedy might assume, US soldiers.

With that in mind, I've a few questions -

Where are the tapes?

And, while we're at it, where is the outrage? Where are the jackals of the press? Where is the suffocatingly repetetive coverage of this depravity? Where are the hourly press conferences denouncing these acts and the animals who perpetrated them?

Could it be that these videos - like the video of Nick Berg's sadistic murder - might well shock a cynical American public back into reality? Could it be that it might suddenly become quite clear why we're in Iraq? Might it possibly be the case that such revelations - experienced in the visceral medium of video - might cause some who are wavering in their support of the war in Iraq to instead wonder why we didn't go in sooner? Could it be that a display of these tapes, or tapes of Nick Berg's murder, might vaporize the absurd notion that the humiliation and abuse of Ba'athist thugs at the hands of a few cretins wearing US uniforms is co-equal with the ritualistic torture and slaughter of political dissidents by Saddam's forces (Teddy Kennedy's personal opinion, it would seem)?

Could it be that our fantastically objective media is suppressing these videos?

Just wondering...that's all.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 11:18 AM |

Globalization...as employment catalyst

Today's Rocky Mounatin News features this somewhat eye-opening piece on the impact of globalization on Metro-area job growth:

Global Contribution

From the piece -

Nearly one in 10 workers in the metro area owes his or her job to the growing globalization of the economy.

...The study, conducted by local economist Tucker Hart Adams and two colleagues on the faculty of the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies, found:

• Eighty-three foreign companies in the metro area that directly employ 17,099 workers, few of whom are foreign nationals. In addition, at least 743 metro Denver companies get at least some of their revenue from exports. They employ 29,035 to handle the export portion of the business, the researchers estimate.

• Using "multipliers" from the federal Department of Commerce that estimate additional economic activity, the researchers add another 76,774 jobs from globalization for a minimum of 122,908 jobs in the Denver area - 9.5 percent of all employment in Denver.

• Internationalization contributes $5.1 billion in personal income, $4.2 billion in retail spending and $367 million in personal state and local taxes to the metro Denver economy.

Interesting stuff, no?

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:21 AM |

My brush with lessened obscurity

I listened to Hugh's interview with Pete Coors yesterday. Not too bad, but not too great, either. Part of my support (tenative) for Schaffer is a result of my belief that, based on what I've seen, Coors might well get chewed up and spat out in a debate with Salazar. Schaffer will hold his own, to say the least. The flipside, however, is the matter that I discussed yesterday - though Schaffer is a solid debater with a great conservative track record, he's just not well known by the state's voters - or at least those who aren't dedicated politicos.

Coors is solidly conservative. His answers to Hugh's questions on the issues were spot-on, and I've no doubt that he means what he says. There are many criticisms that can legitimately be levelled at Coors, but the one that's emerged in some quarters of the Schaffer camp (that Coors is a RINO) holds no water.

I've got no problem with Coors as an idealogue, but I've got to say that his manner doesn't instill a great deal of confidence in his abilities as a viable candidate. I hope I'm wrong, as I'd have no problem voting for the guy (and will do so, should he come out on top in the primary) - even if I still have my reservations. Bottom line is, as I've said before, hold the Senate seat. Period. End of story.

I had to attend a couple of meetings after Hugh's time with Coors, so I switched off. My wife and I closed on our new house yesterday, so I stayed late at the office to make up for the time I missed during the day. I wasn't able to listen to the end of the show, so imagine my surprise upon getting home, and receiving calls from my Brother In-Law and my friend Sean informing me that this blog was mentioned by name on Hugh's show. Granted, I hear that it was in the last three or so minutes of the show, but hey, I've got to admit that it's still neat to have heard about it (Though I've not actually heard what he said. That's what I get for not listening to the entire show, huh?

Interestingly enough, an actual mention on the air doesn't seem to result in the "Hughrricane" of hits that a link on his site does. Joshua, Ben and Clay are likely seeing this phenomenon in action today. Congrats, guys, and keep up the excellent work!

Hold the Senate!

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:54 AM |

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Musical Schizophrenia

In the past thirty minutes, I have listened to the following songs:

Boom - POD
The horizon has been defeated - Jack Johnson
Elegantly Wasted - INXS
Bullets - Bob Schneider
When will I ever learn to live in God? - Phil Keaggy
Meant to live - Switchfoot
Fanfare for the common man - Aaron Copland
Superstition - Stevie Wonder
Couldn't stand the weather - Stevie Ray Vaughn

Two songs by guys named "Stevie", two by San Diego-based Christian groups, one by a guy who, with four fingers on one hand, shouldn't be able to play the guitar at all - let alone spectacularly, one by a great American composer, one by a very laid-back Hawaiian, one featuring a now-deceased lead singer, and one from the soundtrack of a Sandra Bullock movie.

I like 'em all...what can I say?

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 3:56 PM |

Duly Chastized by the Chancellor

Hugh Hewitt's on our collective case. Sheesh...Owens gives the guy control over the Collegiate peaks and suddenly he's John freakin' Denver.

He's right, though. Most of us in the RMA (there are some exceptions. Clay, Ben, and The Mangled Cat have been fairly regular commenters) have slacked in our coverage of the race for the race for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

The importance of this race can't really be overstated in the context of the national balance of power. That having been said, it's been rather difficult for me to get too exorcised about the race to the primary. On the issues, Bob Schaffer and Pete Coors are nearly indistinguishable. This is a good thing, in one sense, in that either candidate would likely make an effective, conservative Senator. Unfortunately, it also creates a bit of a problem. When the candidates hold similar views on an issue, the debates tend to turn to personality differences, which can quickly morph into personal attacks, which, in turn, can, before you know it, lead to a landslide victory for Kenny Salazar. We Republicans have a nasty tendency to turn on our own, and I fear that this is what's happening in Colorado.

A brief history of the race thus far -

Colorado became a state in 1876. Oh...wait. Not that much history...

Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell - a Korean War vet, an Olympic Judo medlaist, and the Senate's only American Indian (Northern Cheyenne) - announced in March of this year that he would be resigning from the Senate due to health concerns. Given the razor-thin margin by which the Republicans hold their Senate advantage, this casued no small amount of panic at the RNC. In the first few weeks after Campbell's announcement, the competition was fierce. Unfortunately, the competition was centered on a race to see who could drop their name from consideration most quickly. The first chooice of the state GOP was, logically, Governor Bill Owens. He's been through a bit of a rocky year himself, and declined to enter the race, as did several other prominent Republicans in the state. FInally, former Congressman Bob Schaffer - a heck of a decent guy, and a very capable legislator - stepped up to the plate, and announced that he would, in fact, run for Campbell's soon-to-be-vacant seat. And there was much rejoicing. Gov. Owens announced his support for the Schaffer campaign, and we seemed to have our candidate.

Then, all hell broke loose. At a April press conference, beer guy and local icon Pete Coors (he of the commericals) announced (with Gov. Owens' support) that he would enter the race for the Republican nomination, as well. Owens' flip-flop was understandably unnerving to Schaffer's camp, and to much of the state's GOP membership, in general.

The stage is now set for a potentially nasty primary which, I fear, will end up draining away much of the energy that should rightfully be directed toward the defeat of Ken Salazar (the presumptive Democratic nominee, and the State's AG) in November.

Here's the situation as I see it -

Both Bob Schaffer and Pete Coors are solidly conservative guys with nearly identical views on every major issue. Coors is a political neophyte, though the Coors family has a long history of conservative activism (i.e., the establishment of the Heritage Founation). Schaffer, in contrast, is a seasoned legislative veteran. He's a polished speaker, and will likely clean Coors' clock in the pre-primary debates.

Schaffer's Upside -
Bob Schaffer is a thoroughly decent man. A few years back, when my wife and I were newlyweds, we served as sponsors for our church's high school youth group. During this time, we were fortunte enough to have Bob speak to one of our high school bible study groups about the political process. The fact that Schaffer was willing to travel to Parker and sit around a coffee table with a bunch of high school kids, talking about the American political system spoke volumes to me. I deeply like the guy.

He served three terms as a Congressman, and then stepped down to fulfill a term limits pledge he had made at the start of his Congressional career. He served honorably, and, along with Rep. Tom Tancredo (my congressman) was, to me, the most reliably conservative legislator in the state.

Schaffer's Downside -
Colorado is a state in constant population flux. My wife is a native, and I moved here in 1978, at the age of three. We're rarities. Much of the state's voter base is new, or relatively new to the state. As such, they may never have heard of Bob Schaffer. He's been out of the political picture for a few years now, and, as the saying goes, "out of sight, out of mind".

Also, whether we like it or not, Pete Coors is the state party's "anointed one". He's got the Governor's blessing (Owens is quite a popular Governor), and the fundraising clout that comes with it. Schaffer hasn't, to this point, energized his supporters in such a way that they are eager to open their wallets. I'm not saying that he can't raise the money, but to this point, he hasn't. The time remaining is limited, and if he doesn't show that he has the horses to run, he's going to get plowed under in a race with the popular Salazar.

Coors' Upside -
Two words: name recognition. This factor has been pretty well downplayed by the Schaffer camp, but the fact of the matter is that Pete Coors doesn't have to spend millions to get the public to recognize him. If they've watched a Bronco game at some point in the past five years or so, they've probably seen his face. The Coors family is iconic in Colorado. You can't really overstate the importance of the Coors name in this case. Coors can get the money he needs to win. Of this, there can be no doubt.

Also, from all appearances, Coors is a deeply conservative man, and is quite shrewd. The Coors Brewing Company has done quite well under his leadership, and, though it's not directly applicable, the company's growth does shed some light on Coors' abilities as a decision-maker.

Coors' Downside -
Everything we think about Coors' potential as a legislator is, by necessity, the result of simple speculation. He is an unknown quantity. He hasn't been spectacular in his speaking appearances thus far, and doesn't, at this point, seem like the type of guy who'd be likely to strike fear in the hearts of the state Dems. In addition, he's had trouble gaining the acceptance of much of the state's Republican base. He is perceived to have encroached on territory that is rightfully Schaffer's. Gov. Owens' poorly-handled endorsement/non-endorsement of Schaffer hasn't helped Coors in this regard.

The Bottom Line -
November is going to be tough. Ken Salazar is exactly the type of Democrat that Coloradans have traditionally embraced enthusiastically. He's very much in the mold of former Gov. Roy Romer - folksy, plain-spoken, and, though his stances on the issues are decidedly left-of-center, able to carry off a very centrist image. In addition, he's a native Coloradan, and has the support of much of the Hispanic community (a big-time demographic in Colorado), and of the rural community (especially in the South, from whence he comes). He's going to be a very tough opponent.

The bad blood currently flowing back and forth in the Republican camp is not helpful in this case. Schaffer has every right to be upset at the ham-handed way in which this whole thing has been handled by the state's GOP big boys. He played by the rules, and, unfortunately, got slighted by the Governor. This fact has fired-up most of Schaffer's hard core supporters to the point that some are threatening to abandon the GOP should Coors beat out Schaffer in the primary. This is a spectacularly bad idea, folks. My own loyalties lie with Schaffer, and I may very well vote for him in the primary (though, if Coors continues to gain momentum and Schaffer continues to fall back in the fundraising race, this is not a certainty). That having been said, I will not hesitate to cast my vote for Coors should he be the nominee in November.

Not to beat a Limbaugh drum here, but the bottom line is this: we need to keep this Senate seat, and the more we take pot shots at each other, the less likely we are to do so. Salazar is motivated, well-known, and well-funded. We need a candidate who has the horses to catch and pass him - in terms of motivation, notariety, and funding. Though I believe that Bob Schaffer could be that candidate, I am willing to shift my allegiance should it become clear that this is not the case. For all of the shouting by my fellow Schaffer supporters, we've not seen that Bob can generate much heat outside of the conservative base. Like it or not, that's the perception, and unfortunately, in the world of politics, perception quickly becomes reality.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:06 AM |

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Caption Contest

In the spirit of my beloved MST3K's Caption This! (formerly at the Sci-Fi Channel's website), I'd like to announce the first ~~annual~~ weekly photo caption contest. Everyone else's got one, so why not me, right? When all else fails, go derivative, I always say!

The winner will receive fame and fortune in the form of kudos from this site, and, if the winner has a site, a prominent link to the site. Hmm. Maybe more fame than fortune, I suppose. Or, on second thought...very little of either in that prize, but hey! Here's your photo - should provide much fodder -

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 4:32 PM |

A Tragedy Unfolds

[SOAPBOX]
I am not a "social Gospel" guy, perse. That is, I find that the degree to which much of mainline Christianity has chosen to emphasize the social aspects of the faith has been incredibly detrimental to the spiritual, eternal aspects - the message of Christ as personal Lord and Savior.

That having been said, we in the Evangelical community in the States have borne witness to (and been largely responsible for) an all-too-common overcorrection wherein the very act of serving the poor, the needy, and the suffering has been painfully underemphasized. Of course, there are countless groups and individuals within the Evangelical church who give their time, their talent, and their treasure in the service of others, but they tend to be the exception, and not the rule. I count myself in the number of those who have all-too conveniently forgotten Jesus' admonishion in Matthew 25: 34-40 (NIV):

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

If we in the church - who, through Christ's willingness to die for our sins are each day reminded of His compassion and grace - are not willing to care for those in need - the suffering, the hungry, and the ill - who will? More importantly, what answer will we give to Christ when one day we see Him face-to-face?

-Statistics tell us that more than 5 million people worldwide were newly infected by HIV in 2001
-14,000 people infected with HIV each day
-42 million people worldwide are currently infected with HIV
-22 million people have died of AIDS since the epidemic started and one in four of these were children.
-HIV/AIDS has left more than 14 million orphans to struggle for survival
-By 2010, this number is expected to exceed 25 million

This is a great evil, and potentially, a tragedy unparalleled in our lifetimes. An entire continent is in peril. These orphans - precious children like yours or mine - need help. Luckily, the Evangelical church in America has begun to move on this front, and is rapidly becoming the greatest source of private funding to help the suffering in Africa. We've got a long way to go, though.

Blood: Water Mission is an organization founded by Christian band Jars of Clay to act in concert with other groups (like World Vision, etc.) in combatting this growing disaster. Check them out, and make a donation. If you're a churchgoer, see if your congregation has any sort of organized effort underway to provide assistance to the suffering in Africa (and in your own community). While I personally support President Bush's initiatives to provide increased financial aid to fight this problem, I feel that the bulk of the responsibility truly lies with private organizations - especially the church. The saving message of the Gospel of Christ will ring hollow should His church allow this tragedy to grow unchecked. We're responsible for being "Jesus in the flesh" to the suffering of the world.

We have been blessed, and now it's time to bless.
[/SOAPBOX]

UPDATE - Good motives do not, of course, good policy make. While I am a staunch supporter of AIDS relief efforts in Africa, I desire to see the work that is done, done wisely, and effectively. NRO offers a glimpse of what can go wrong when the activists get involved.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 3:36 PM |

Polling and The LA Times

Suggested Los Angeles Times headline:

Support for Bush plunges among New England Democrats; Kerry "will absolutely not vote for George W. Bush"

OR

Majority of Democrats Favor Kerry

STOP THE PRESSES!

I hate polls. Rasmussen, Zogby, Gallup, CNN/USA Today - doesn't matter. Even when my guy is way up, I hate them. To run an opinion poll five months out from a general election is preposterous, and, in many cases (as in the case of the Times'ongoing effort to completely vaporize any semblance of credibility that it had left), it's straightforward push-polling, featuring polls populated with questions like this -

If President Bush were to stop punching kittens, would this increase or decrease your likelihood of viewing him as the Antichrist?

We have prognostications all over the place for the run to the White House. This guy thinks that President Bush will utterly Dukakis-ize Kerry, while this one believes that, like his father before him, Dubya will be a "one and done"-kind of guy. Personally, I've no idea which way this thing's going to go, though I'm highly skeptical of dreck like the LA Times recent poll (So what if we stacked the table with Dems? I'm sure it had no bearing on the outcome of the poll!).

Certainly, as a Conservative, and as a supporter of the war on terror, I'm pulling for the President, and will gladly cast my vote for him in November. I'm not neutral, and I'm not objective. I just wish that the national media and the major polling services would admit the same.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 11:51 AM |

Monday, June 14, 2004

New Grips for The Ruger

Just fitted the P90 with some new Hogue grips, and they're mighty comfy (mine now looks just like the one below). I've got 100 rounds of .45 ACP that are just itching to get sent downrange

On the downside, this now means I've got one less excuse for not being able to hit a darn thing...

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 5:22 PM |

Family and remembrance

The services are over, President Reagan's body is finally in its final resting place in Simi Valley, and my (temporarily) Chicago-based family is trudging back to their regular life in northeast Illinois. It was a good weekend. A busy weekend, but a good one.

Most of us watched the President's funeral services (from the National Cathedral) on Friday morning, and the California burial service that followed in the evening. I got choked up far more than I had thought I would.

I am the youngest of four siblings, who now range in age from 29 to 42. We all remember Reagan. His 1980 election was the first in which my sister (the firstborn) was able to participate. She remains proud to have voted for the man, and I remain jealous that I was not able to do so. My first two elections ('92 and '96) didn't exactly turn out the way that I'd hoped they would, but I did better in '00. Still, it would have been an honor to vote for Reagan.

As I've said before, his Presidency was a thread that ran throughout much of my childhood. It still seems surreal that he's no longer in office, let alone that he's no longer here.

Some observations from the weekend -

- Had a great time with Chris, Julie, and the kids. We miss you, and, well, you know the rest...

- Ronald Reagan will be deeply missed. He was a man of character who, though imperfect, responded to the challenges faced by his Administration, and left the world a better place, and allowed the nation to once more hold its head high. Thank you, Mr. President.

- President Bush (41) is one very decent, classy man. To see him get choked up put one heck of a lump in my throat.

- The Reagan family is, from an outsider's perspective, a bit sad. The inter-familial friction between Ron & Nancy and their kids, as well as Michael and Maureen and Ron and Patti has been well-documented, but it was still a bit jarring to see played out on national television.

- Ron Jr.'s not-so-subtle slap at both GWB and his step-brother marred what was otherwise a moving, well-spoken eulogy for his father. Poor taste, Ron.

- Patti looks lost.

- The music selections at the Washington service were quite good, and the hymn from the 2002 Vietnam flick We Were Soldiers (The Mansions of the Lord) was a surprising and effective touch. I wonder who came up with that one.

- After my amazing wife (I married far above my pay grade), my brothers are my best friends. I never realize how much I take them for granted.

- I never knew how incredible it would feel to see my nine nieces and nephews gather around my daughter and fuss over her. To them, she's just part of the family...cousin #10, and we never thought we'd get to see it happen. God is good.

- Buying and selling a house, arranging financing, and getting ready to move all have one thing in common. They suck.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 11:15 AM |

The Council Speaks!

Last week's Watcher's Council winners were INDC Journal's INDC Journal Interviews Michael Berg, which offered a truly unique (and chilling) insight into the mind of the leftist father of murdered American Nick Berg, and Rant, by the tremendous Tonecluster.

The voting results may be seen in their entirety here.

Read 'em all!

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 11:11 AM |

Thursday, June 10, 2004

The Great Game

It's getting really rough around here. The Rocks had themselves a 5-run lead deep into the game yesterday, and they promptly blew it, and lost to the dreaded American Leaguers 7 to 5. Figures. It's never been easy being a baseball guy in the Rocky Mountains.

I'm a baseball nut. By now, anyone who's ever glanced at this blog knows of my affection for The Karate Kid, but relatively few know that my all-time favorite movie of any genre (closely followed by the aforementioned KK) is Barry Levinson's 1984 adaptation of Bernard Malamud's strikingly depressing novel The Natural. Greatest baseball movie ever made, period. Robert Redford (who attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship) is one of the few big screen ballplayers to look like a credible athlete (Kevin Costner - PLEASE!), the cinematography is ethereal, and Lefty goofball Randy Newman's score is, to my mind, the single greatest piece of American orchestral music to come out of the late 20th century. It's iconic.

Each spring, I re-read David Halberstam's incredible account of the historic Red Sox/Yankees rivalry (in light of America's baseball-crazed '40s and '50s) - Summer of '49. I can't recommend it highly enough, by the way.

I grew up pulling for essentially four teams, which were then pared down to two, and then one. I loved the Dodgers in the early 80s (Steve Garvey), the Reds (my family's from southern Ohio), the Braves (we had TBS growing up), and the Cubs (ditto with WGN). Eventually, I shifted my allegiance to just the Cubs and Reds, and then, just the Cubs (though I still like the Reds, as well). My athletic idol growing up was Cubs 2nd baseman Ryne Sandberg, who, to my mind, is the best ever to play the game (at 2B). I began watching (and pulling for) the Cubs in around 1986, and was beyond excitement when they made it to the NLCS in '89. I loved that team - Sandberg, Mark Grace, Andre Dawson (still the best bat speed I've ever seen), Shawon Dunston, Luis Salazar (Luis Salazar?), Greg Maddux...great team. Lost to the Giants, but a great team, nonetheless.

I loved playing ball in high school. As a tall guy, I got thrown over to first base, where I stuck. I liked playing first, and occasionally got to play the outfield a bit. A good time, overall. I was a decent player, and got a bit of attention from a couple of college programs (Baylor and, strangely enough - as I'm not a Mormon - BYU), but I'd never have made it in a Division 1 program. I was way too green a player. I'd thought about walking on at the University of Denver (my alma mater), where a good friend of mine (Jamie Roberts) was a pitcher. I probably wouldn't have made it, but I never even got the chance. They cancelled the program in 1996, and eliminated the oldest collegiate baseball program west of the Mississippi. Way to go, Title IX. There are no longer any division 1 baseball programs in the state. CSU cancelled theirs in '97, and CU eliminated theirs several years earlier. There have been rumblings of a revival at CU, but I'm not holding my breath.

In 1991, National League President Bill White made the entire region's heart skip a beat when he announced that Denver would be the recipient of one of two expansion teams that would begin play in 1993. I was beyond thrilled. I'd grown up going to Denver Bears (and later, Denver Zephyrs) games, and I couldn't believe that we were finally hitting the big time.

Denver has a long baseball history, with the first minor league team beginning play in 1886, when the Denver-based Mountain Lions won the Western League pennant. The Denver Grizzlies were the holders of the Western League pennant from 1911-13. The Grizzlies became the Bears when they joined the AAA American Association in 1955, and they went on to win titles in '57, '71, '77, and '80. The 1911 Grizzlies finished with a record of 111 wins, and 54 losses. No other club in Western League history matched their .673 winning percentage.

Through the 20s and 30s, countless baseball greats barnstormed through Denver, and in 1991, I watched as many of the greats who stormed through town in their youth gathered to take the field one more time in a historic Old-Timers game. Someday, I can tell my daughter that I watched Bob Feller pitch to Willie Mays. He threw him a rosin bag, no less. Granted, it's unlikely she'll care, but hey...

During my senior year, I listened to the first-ever Rockies home game as I rode to play in a ball game against archrival Aurora Christian. They killed us, but the Rockies won, and I was in heaven. We were a big league town.

Since that time, of course, the Rockies have achieved a level of mediocrity that few teams can (or would like to) match. But they're still my team. I'm a Denver baseball guy, so I pull like crazy for my Rocks. Todd Helton is easily my favorite player in the game today, and I truly hope that sooner or later, he gets to play on a winning team here in Denver. I hope, and I cheer, but at the end of the day, I keep my Ryno rookie card and my Cubbies hat close at hand, too. One of these days, one of my teams has got to win, right?

Man, it's hard being a baseball guy in the Rockies.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:35 AM |

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Tornado blogging

As I write, the tornado sirens are going off, and I've been watching a very wicked-looking wall cloud to the North. Hang on to your hats, ladies and gents...

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 3:04 PM |

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Reagan

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free. - President Ronald Reagan, 1984 Normandy, France.

I've not read any of my fellow bloggers' tributes over the weekend, because I didn't want to simply rehash anything that I'd read in writing about President Reagan.

I was only six years old when Ronald Wilson Reagan was elected 40th President of the United States in November of 1980. I have no recollection of that event. What I do remember is the optimism in my house, and the enthusiasm that my parents expressed about his election. I remember a similar feeling in 1984, when, at the age of ten, I drew my very first political cartoon. It was a rather disjointed affair, wherein one of my childhood comic strip dogs (Spot, I believe), gets the family mail, only to shred it completely when he notices a letter with a Walter Mondale stamp. Not subtle, not elegant, and not too effective...but hey, I was ten, for crying out loud. I thought I was a regular Bill Buckley.

When I look back, no small part of my enthusiasm for all things 80s is due to the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. I loved the man. I felt safe with him in the White House, and that took some doing. These darn kids today (with their rock n' roll, and their ice cream sodas!) - who have never known even the abstract fear that the Soviets might one day rain down thousands of ICBMs on this country, who cock their heads like dogs hearing strange noises when you slip up and describe "West" or "East" Germany - face a completely different world than the one in which I grew up. It wasn't too long ago, really, but there was a time when the Soviet Union loomed like a storm on the horizon, and each day, in one way or another, reminded you that they were out there, and that they were dangerous.

In 1982, I saw a movie with my family called Night Crossing. It was a Disney movie about two families who lived in East Berlin, and longed to cross over to the democratic West. The probelm, of course, was the massive Berlin Wall. The families (the film is based on a true story) concoct a plan to use a hot air balloon to cross over at night, and eventually, make their way to freedom. The movie, I'm sure, would seem like the most surreal of fictions to a modern audience. This is Ronald Reagan's doing. It is his legacy. He rendered the Soviet Union, and indeed the entire notion of East Bloc/Warsaw Pact communism irrelevant, and banished it to history. That we now laugh at Cold War shoot-'em-ups like Red Dawn is no accident. It is the result of one man's vision for this nation, and for a world unburdened by the specter of Soviet totalitarianism.

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the President of my childhood, and the nation seemed to shine under his leadership.

I thank him, and I miss him. He was, is, and will always be a hero to me.

Goodbye, Mr. President. Enjoy your rest.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:28 AM |

It's finally official

Yesterday, my wife and I stood, holding our daughter, in front of a Douglas County Judge, as our adoption was finalized. It was one of the best moments of my life. After 10 amazing months (exactly), our little girl is officially ours.

I am a very proud daddy.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:21 AM |

Friday, June 04, 2004

15 years ago

Late in the evening of June 3, 1989, Chinese troops, tanks, and personnel carriers poured into Peking's Tiananmen Square, and began a brutal effort to squelch the burgeoning student-led protests for democratic reform that had begun seven weeks earlier.

Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Chinese students - as well as countless uninvolved citizens - were gunned down, beaten to death, or crushed by armor in the square. On June 5th, a striking photo appeared, taken from a news video feed. The photo showed a single man with a briefcase, holding up a column of Chinese main battle tanks. Each time the lead tank tried to turn and make its way past him, he would follow suit, once more blocking its path.

This anniversary - has been marked once more by China's silence, and its continued crackdown of any sort of commemoration in the Square. Some reforms have been made, of course, but these have been largely (if not wholly) economic. China remains a totalitarian state with no real freedom of expression, religion, or press, and, of course, no true democratic process.

One author who would take a different view of the anniversary is Sinomania editor Ben Calmes, who, in his column Tiananmen 1989 - 15 Years Later: A Perspective indulges in not a small degree of moral equivalence when he writes the following:

Neither the USA nor China has much experience handling large unsanctioned demonstrations. Riots are rare in both countries but when they occur they are often put down with brute force.

When Chicago police fought protesters at the Democratic Party national convention in 1968, crowds chanted "the whole world is watching!" The young protesters believed television would shame the authorities by broadcasting their actions.

But two years later students were gunned down during protests at Kent State University in Ohio.

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s riots were put down in USA cities, including the capital, with troops and tanks.

In addition, Calmes opens his piece with a long and detailed bait-and-switch dealing with the definitely tragic (and misguided) 1932 putting-down of a demonstration by 20,000 WWI vets who had marched to DC to demand bonuses that had been promised them for their service. In the protests and the ensuing police action, two protestors were shot and killed, and two infants were asphyxiated by clouds of tear gas used by the police to disperse the crowds. Tragic? Absolutely. Avoidable? Likely so. Comparable to China's wholesale slaughter of hundreds if not thousands of unarmed, peaceful demonstrators in 1989? Not even close.

The fact that Calmes sees no substantive difference between isolated incidents of brutality and the government-sanctioned slaughter of peaceful protestors is both disturbing, and enlightening.

Given the lengths that some in the West (both Left and Right. My own party has not been blameless in this regard.) are apparently willing to go to in order to apologize for the actions of the Chinese government, is it any wonder that they feel no pressure to reform?

Let us hope that it's not always so. China is a slumbering superpower, and her totalitarian government poses a very real long-term strategic threat to all of Northeast Asia, and, in fact, to the world. Nothing is more illustrative of this fact than the massacre at Tiananmen, and the deafening silence that has followed it.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 1:38 PM |

The Council Speaks!

Your Watcher's Council winners for the week are INDC Presents: National World War II Memorial Dedication Weekend (Part One), by INDC Journal, and Pictures, Pictures, Pictures, at everyone's favorite Iraqi blog, Iraq the Model. Congrats to both of our outstanding winners. You can check out the voting results in their entirety here. Read 'em all. You won't be sorry.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 10:12 AM |

Thank you

I don't know who you are, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the gift of Saving Private Ryan: The World War II Collection on DVD. I've owned this film on VHS for quite awhile, but had intended to buy it on DVD. I was just going to buy the basic version, so this one, with all of the extras (and the DTS sound!) is a real treat. Thanks a bunch. I'm thrilled that it came before the anniversary of D-Day. I think I know what I'll be watching on June 6.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 10:09 AM |

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Terrorism - who's overly-simplistic?

Last night, as I drove to Target to buy some grape-flavored Children's Tylenol (think I'll get gift certificates for product placement? Nah...me neither.), I was listening to our local 50,000-watt AM station, KOA. The host was Denver attorney and media utility infielder Dan Caplis, who was addressing what boiled down to one topic -

Iraq as the "central front" in the War on Terror (vis-a-vis the President's comparison of the WOT to WW2).

Caplis spoke in support of this assertion, and invited callers who disagreed to chime in. As any good Denver talk radio listener would expect, one of Dan's first calls was from the ubiquitous "Cord in Boulder". Cord is a fixture on the lines of the Mike Rosen show, and is a disaffected socialist, living in the People's Republic of Boulder via a trust fund. He spends his days calling talk radio programs, and taking conservatives to task for our wide-ranging variety of ignorance and/or foolhardiness.

On this fine evening, Cord decided to take on Caplis' assertion that Iraq was, indeed, the "central front" of the war on terror. He rambled off a laundry list of reasons for disagreement, but at the end of the call, it had all boiled down to a single question that he asked Caplis in reference to Iraq -

Where's Bin Laden?

This, of course, is the essence of the Left's criticism of our action in Iraq. Ironic, of course, given the fact that the constant cry of the Left is that the Right is overly-simplistic in its view of terrorism, what with our use of terms like "evil", and our lack of attention paid to "root causes", etc. Yet, with one three-worded question, Cord managed to encapsulate the utterly unrealistic view that much of the Left holds regarding terrorism, terrorists, and terrorist motivations.

By asking Where's Bin Laden?, Cord has established the fact that, in his mind, should any attack - no matter how clearly terrorist-oriented in nature or origin - occur wherein the party responsible doesn't hold up a sign, or provide a business card with This attack brought to you by Abu Sayaaf - an officially-licensed subsidiary of al-QaedaCo™ emblazoned on it, then those responsible are simply not terrorists. Ergo, Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq had no involvement with terrorism, and neither do the PA, the PLO, HAMAS, etc. In other words, the only valid equation to be referenced in this case is the following: Terrorism=Only al Qaeda/Only al Qaeda=Terrorism.

Once more, with feeling -

terrorism is not a monolithic entity. There are over 350 groups listed with the Federation of American Scientists as supportive of terrorist tactics of one form or another. Of these, more than half are one flavor or another of Islamic in nature. These Islamic groups - even those with seemingly overwhelming religious or ethnic differences - are always seeking ways to expand their operational reach, and their effectiveness. In nearly every case, terrorist groups can overcome philosophical differences to find ways in which to cooperate with one another. In the past, for example, the IRA (nationalist, Catholic) has cooperated with the ETA (nationalist, secular), which has worked with the Tamil Tigers (nationalist, Marxist), who learned the art of the suicide bomb from Hezbollah (Shi'a/Islamic).

al Qaeda is not a centralized entity. This, of course, is where the Leftist model of "only al-Qaeda=terrorism" falls apart. Al Qaeda isn't even al Qaeda, in many cases. It is a collection of partially- or totally-autonomous groups scattered across the world who subscribe to all or part of the Wahabi branch of Islam as promoted by Osama Bin Laden (among others!). In the Philippines, you are faced with two groups who have, at one point or another, had ties (real or purported) with the al-Qaeda network: Abu Sayaaf, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Yet, in both of these groups, al-Qaeda's philosophy serves as merely a pretense for their overall goals of establishing independent Islamic states in the Southern Philippines.

Pragmatism trumps ideology. There is only one word that can be used to describe both the notion that Saddam Hussein was not involved in the perpetuation of Islamic terrorism, and that he would not have worked with al-Qaeda (or vice-versa): nonsense. Saddam Hussein provided support and shelter to countless wanted terrorists through the years, funnelled millions of dollars to their causes, and openly encouraged attacks against the West by these groups.

Again, there is much precedent for a situation in which al-Qaeda would work with the Ba'athists of Iraq - even if they declined to acknowledge this relationship publicly. A terrorist network thrives on money, and requires vast sums of it to continue to function. As pressure has increased on the Saudis to crack down on the funds that pour from the nation (and from parts of their largely-secular royal family) and into the coffers of the Wahabist movement, the terrorists have begun to seek other forms of funding. There are many indications that Iraq had begun to offer funds to al-Qaeda, and, as early as the mid-1990s, there was a belief within much of the intel community that Saddam Hussein had offered safe haven to Osama Bin Laden.

The long and short of the situation is this: we face a worldwide ideology, and the hundreds of groups that adhere to it in their own ways - not simply one giant, identifiable institution. Al-Qaeda may be the most well-known of these groups, but they are not alone, and will be assisted by countless others who hold some version of the same end goal in mind. That goal? The restoration of the Caliphate, the purging of all Western influence from Muslim lands, and the imposition of Sharia law across the entire region (which includes most of Europe). As a bonus, most of these groups (including al-Qaeda) would also like to see the actual elimination of the United States, as well as Israel, of course.

Here's the thing that's got to make the Wahabists laugh, and laugh, and laugh. They love it when we in the West argue about root causes, and changing our own ways be more sensitive to their worldview. Why? They want us dead. All of us. Left or Right, prowar or antiwar. Doesn't matter to them. To the guy who believes that the US is at fault for 9/11, and that we're truly the world's worst terrorists? They love that. Here's the thing, though...they still want you dead, too. Keep on trying to find out what it is we've done to make them hate us so, but the answer is quite simple: we exist. They don't want you dead because of what the US has done...they want you dead because of who we are.

They'll want us dead (and take steps to that effect) whether the man in the White House come next January is named Bush or Kerry. To think otherwise is simply an effort to disregard reality. Oh, make no mistake about it - I'm a conservative. I want the President to win re-election for any number of reasons. In the final analysis (as far as terrorism is concerned), though, I'd simply prefer that the occupant of the Oval Office make the efforts of terrorists to kill us as difficult as is possible. I've made my choice accordingly.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 12:56 PM |

Bam! Biff! Zap!

Looks like a good ol' fashioned flame war has started, with Christian bloggers (specifically, some members of the Rocky Mountain Alliance and La Shawn) as its intended targets. Sigh. Kinda funny, really, since the RMA actually features a Jewish blogger, and an atheist. Celebrate diversity, right?

Here are the posts so far -

Damascus Road
1.

La Shawn's Corner
1., 2.

Tepid Sense of an Intrepid Destiny
1., 2.

More Reservoir than Tarantino
1., 2.

A couple of Lefty bloggers - TrueBoy (of More Reservoir than Tarantino) and David Wiener (of the previously-referenced Tepid Sense of an Intrepid Destiny) have begun a "campaign" of sorts (mostly, it would seem, on TrueBoy's part), hoping, it would seem, to so frighten and befuddle we simple-minded Christian sheep as to cause us to either commit ritual suicide (seppuku, anyone?), or to cast off our backwardness, and begin living the good life - unfettered by our beliefs in a flat earth and evil spirits as the cause of tension headaches. Oh, also, they wish to stomp on our illegitimate President, and to see conservatives rounded up and shot (kidding! Only just, though...).

Yesterday, I mentioned that this blog was one of those listed at David's (Duke's) site as suitably representative of conservative "babble", as he put it. No harm, no foul. David has left several comments at this site, and, though I disagree with him in no uncertain terms, he has been a gentleman (his comments in response to being banned from commenting were, shall we say, a bit "intemperate", but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt). His points have been made and countered, and we have had what, for all intents and purposes, would appear to have been a civilized conversation on the issues of the day. As such, I will not be banning David from making comments here. And, unless they insist on becoming vulgar in their comments (a distinct possibility, given this lovely screed), folks from More Reservoir than Tarantino are also welcome to comment here.

While I am not interested in a pissing contest, for lack of a more descriptive term, I will entertain any substantive comments, and will (eventually) respond to such. However, by his own description, N8 has said that he is not interested in debating some things seriously.

And, the problem I have, and it is a problem, is that I don't care about intellectual discussion, I don't want to make any points or prove anyone wrong, and I am not afraid to express my personal hatred for them and their kind.
I would be most commonly referred to as, a SHOCK TROOP.

So be it. He has made his decision (he is an atheist), and I have made mine (I am a Christian). Terrific. Move along now. Fear not...I will waste no time attempting to proselytize you. It's not, TrueBoy, as you've said, because your soul isn't worth it -

but apparently, our souls aren’t worth it. oh, well. maybe there’s a faster way to get to heaven. I mean, i can always pay 10 bucks to watch james caviezel get whipped to a bloody pulp.

But rather, it's because there's no debate to be had when one of the parties involved is so convinced of his own intellectual superiority that he views the other as nothing more than a slack-jawed yokel. You've no actual questions about Christianity; merely a hate for it. As long as we're honest about where each of us is coming from, that's OK. I won't waste time giving answers to oh-so clever questions about God making a burrito so big that even He couldn't eat it, and you won't attempt to use my site as a soapbox from which you crap all over those things that I, and many of my readers hold dear - just for giggles. There. that's my proposal. Now, should you have honest questions (questions for which you seek real answers), I'll be happy to discuss them with you. Otherwise, we'll agree to disagree about spiritual issues, and move on.

I will ban no one from the comments section for simple disagreement. However, should things turn vulgar, or the tone of the questions become that of pure mockery or plain derision, we are at an impasse, and I will kill the thread. Again - no pissing contests here. Make a point, use some common courtesy, or sit down and shut up.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 9:04 AM |

Watcher's Council - Last Week's Results

Sorry for the delayed posting! Last week's winners were Religion and Politics, by Four Right Wing Wackos, and Strength (Part 1), by the verbose, yet incredibly eloquent Bill Whittle at Eject! Eject! Eject!

Also receiving a significant number of votes was National Police Week INDC, at INDC Journal.

You can find each of the nominees that received votes listed here.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:33 AM |

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Pot. Kettle. Black.

(from Lefty blog Tepid Sense of an Intrepid Destiny, which is actually a pretty good site, despite my picking on it here. It's well-written, and is solidly representative of the hard Left.)

Here are some sites to go to if you want to read Conservative babble...it's amazing how many of them have a chip on their shoulder about the 2000 election. Oh... and keep an eye out for their oh so accurate analogies to WWII.

http://www.polipundit.com/
http://www.clubforgrowth.org/blog/
http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/
http://vikingpundit.blogspot.com/
http://strategicintelligence.blogspot.com/
http://mangledcat.com/
http://viewfromaheight.blogspot.com/
http://exvigilare.com

Classic.

The only people I know who ever mention the 2000 election are my Left-leaning friends who become apoplectic when I dare disagree with their ever-present assertion that "Bush stole the election!"

After all, to them, It's a given. Self-evident. How can you possibly deny it, you deluded tool of the conservative (no, really!) media?!

Just for the heck of it, go through Duke's front page and count the references to the 2000 election, and then perform the same exercise here. Should make for an interesting comparo, eh?

Hmm. I can't think of any instances when I've made an analogy between WW2 and the War on Terror (I don't disagree with the analogy necessarily - I've just never made it), but I suppose I'll now be forced to do just that in order to live up to the billing! D'OH!

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 4:12 PM |

Another 80s sitcom kid hits rock bottom, and starts digging.

Not little Andy! Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

Brian Bonsall, who played the saccharine-sweet (but rapidly aging) Andrew Keaton on Family Ties was arrested in Boulder after giving this reply when asked by a police officer how much he'd had to drink before heading out for a drive -

Plenty.

Truly brilliant.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 2:42 PM |

Hit & Run

No time to elaborate, but thanks to the intrepid Mr. Abramson, you've more reading to do. Check out these pages from The Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs' excellent (and permalinked) blog, No Left Turns -

On Judge Phyllis Hamilton's ruling on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban (very disturbing piece. Again, as the child of an adopted daughter who would have been a prime candidate for abortion, and the uncle of a niece with Down's Syndrome, I am absolutely unwilling to view this issue from a simply political perspective. It is a primal issue that in the vast majority of cases comes down to a simple battle between self-absorbed expedience, and mercy.) -

Acciental Childbirth

On Memorial Day -

Dialogues - Memorial Day Speech

Also, at some point over the long weekend, enough folks dropped by that I passed 25,000 total visitors since I first began tracking such figures in November of 2002 (I actually began my first blog - Blogorado in February of 2002). Thanks a bunch. Hopefully, your time spent here is never (completely) wasted.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 12:55 PM |

Memorial Day weekend - a recap

Sorry for the lack of blogging yesterday. It was a hectic day, and I was nowhere near a computer (not too bad a thing, really).

I'm sore, I'm sunburned, and I've got no business blogging today, given all of the work on my plate. As such, this will be a short post. I've got a pretty long list of topics for the week, so hopefully, I'll make up for lost time, but in the meantime, here's a recommendation -

If you live in the Denver area (I don't know about the policies of other National Cemetaries around the country), you've got to make an effort to help out with decorating the grave markers before and after Memorial Day. It's a pretty humbling experience, and lends itself to not a small amount of introspection and meditation on sacrifice, and on the great cost that has been paid by so many through the years.

Not all of the sacrifices made by our service men and women occur in combat, of course. On Saturday, I was stopped in my tracks by one gravestone in particular. The first name and middle initial were the same as one of my brothers', and around the marker were toys of all kinds - not in packages, but opened, and obviously played-with. Legos, Hot Wheels cars, and Pokemon cards - all left by a cousin, a friend, or maybe a parent. The grave was that of a little boy - the son of an Air Force Master Sergeant. He had lived for six years. Was his dad deployed when he died? Was it an accident, or a lingering illness that took their boy away? I wonder, and I hurt for his parents.

Ft. Logan really tends to need help on the day after Memorial Day, when the news crews and cameras aren't around.

It's a different crowd on the day after.

On Saturday, it took just over two hours to plant flags on each of the more than 70,000 graves in the cemetary. We had the, shall we say energetic assistance of approximately 3.4 million Cub Scouts, and they made short work of the 200+ acres covered by Ft. Logan.

Yesterday's crowd was probably 1/10th the size of Saturday's (if that), and was made up in no small measure of older guys - retired vets, mostly. It was an honor to walk the acres with them, and to listen in as they told stories about their days in the service. Four of the guys I worked with yesterday were WW2 vets - one Marine, two former 134th Infantry guys, and a retired Sailor. The Marine chatted it up with two of the Cemetary workers that he picked out as fellow Marines. He was dead-on. One had been in the Corps about ten years ago, and the other had just gotten out. "Once a Marine, always a Marine" was the quote.

While we worked (I pulled around 1,500 flags in the 3 or so hours I was there), we talked about some of the markers we saw. Many were vets of WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. There were quite a few from WW1, and even a couple from the Spanish-American War.

Our progress through the rows would sometimes come to an abrupt halt, stopped by the sharp report of the first of three volleys from seven M-1 Garands echoing across the grounds, followed by the sound of Taps, played by a lone bugler, and blown by the breeze. In these instances, all work stopped, and each of us would stand at attention, facing the direction of the ceremony. Once the last notes of that sad song were played, we'd resume. It was surreal.

We were interrupted four times in those three hours. In each case, these rituals marked the burial of a veteran of the Second World War. Accroding to estimates, we're losing nearly a thousand of these men and women a day. The Greatest Generation is slowly slipping away from us, and the loss we'll experience as a result is incalculable. If you're blessed with the opportunity to speak with these guys - whether they be family, friend, or complete stranger, say "thank you", and wish them well. The old guy holding up traffic in front of you may have helped to save the world once. He may have landed in the first wave on Omaha Beach, fought and frozen at Bastogne, witnessed the sinking of the Arizona, or slogged through the carnage of Tarawa, Bouganville, Iwo Jima, or Guadalcanal. He may have served stateside, or helped to polish the plastic of a ball turret destined for the belly of a B-17. In any case, we're losing a truly awesome resource, and at a minimum, we owe these men and women our thanks, and our respect.

This isn't a political issue - it's an American issue. Whether Left or Right, we all have a debt of gratitude that is owed to these men and women. They aren't perfect, any more than the rest of us are. That having been said, they accomplished the extraordinary, and then went back to their lives. They came home, and they became, husbands, fathers, and grandfathers. They became salesmen, farmers, doctors, and teachers.

They went on to lead quiet, workaday lives, but they were lions once, and we owe them.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 8:59 AM |

Patronize 'em!

Currently Reading/Recommending

What's in my ears right this minute

The Rocky Mountain Alliance of Bloggers

Meaty Links

Evangelical Links

Reach

Other Quality Blogs

80s Nostalgia!

Aloha Links