Farrah and Michael make three

Though the title of this post refers to the oft cited belief that famous deaths come in threes, my focus is instead about the lives. After Ed McMahon passed, we didn't have to wait long for Farrah Fawcett and even less time for Michael Jackson to follow.
Focusing on Jackson, I have long felt sorry for him, as I feel he was another young star who, like many, proceeded to have a very difficult life. He was such a good singer and dancer, and undoubtedly the king of pop for a long time, but we're all aware how his life seemed such a tangled mess.
After very successful careers, Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett experienced great difficulties later in life, but all too frequently it seems in popular culture that those who soar the highest at a young age find they are floating up there with no real support, no connection to reality. Their fall back to
Earth is all the more perilous than the mere mortals around them. Michael Jackson was an enigma in life. In death, I hope he rests in peace.

Hurry up and waste

Beginning, at least, with the fiasco which was the TARP bailout last October, the Federal Government has undertaken a series of initiatives which can not wait. The stimulus package a few months ago had to be passed so quickly that no one could even read it before they voted on almost 800 billion dollars. That bill alone was almost $3,000.00 for each and every man, woman and child in the United States. They would most likely have been better off in stimulating the economy if they had just given that amount to each person in the U. S.
Instead, the money went to a wide variety of special interest projects, many of which won't kick in for a couple more years. And, like the TARP last year, we don't even have any idea where much of it is going.
Now, at the same time that we are told Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has the largest amount of experience of any recent nominee to the court, the Democrats insist the vote must take place soon. Any delay is obstructionist. And healthcare reform has to happen now, regardless of the cost, which may be between one and two trillion dollars, according to the OMB (the president's Office of Managemnent and Budget) and the CBO (Congressional Budget Office). This while we are looking at having a budget deficit which might approach two trillion dollars this year alone, and twelve trillion dollars total.
This approach, of pressing everyone into panic and rushed votes without time to investigate and debate the merits of opposing ideas, is used when someone feels that the light of day and the scrutiny that debate would bring will not serve their purposes. Everyone needs to slow it down and take a breath, look into what is being proposed and cast an educated vote. Then, may the best ideas win.

Good bye Ed

The passing of Ed McMahon reminds me of all the times my mom and I would sit up and watch the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and McMahon as his sidekick. They may have beat a few routines to death but, in my mind, they were the best of the late night talk shows and were representative of that other era many cherish and miss. Good bye, Ed and God bless.

Good for you Letterman

Monday night, after a week of playing around with the jokes he made about Sarah Palin and whichever daughter he thought he was joking about, David Letterman finally made the apology he owed to them. He did it right and that should be that.
Some others such as the National Organization for Women, who are normally critics of Palin and her politics, have criticized Letterman's jokes and they deserve credit for not being hypocrites, as they apparently recognized that the truth is the truth, whether the jokes were about a conservative and her family or a liberal and her family.
Others, such as a host of MSNBC commentators and thousands of bloggers and commenters on the Daily Kos or Media Matters or such, attacked Palin and defended Letterman's remarks and may have given us more evidence that they do not recognize truth, even when it is universal.

A game of feet

Providing a great contrast to my post on the National Hockey League Championship (below), the National Basketball Association championship final game saw the LA Lakers walk away with the championship, 99-86, over the Orlando Magic, and it was anything but exciting. There was none of the truly inspired play of the college March Madness, and the play seemed to be dominated by a lot of pushing, fouling and taking at least three steps on a drive to the basket without dribbling, so that I don't even recognize it as the game I used to play, rule-wise. I suppose they make a lot more money, than I did (Zero dollars), so they can be given the "benefit of the doubt". But they have stretched it too far for me to understand. The entertainment value is what I feel has fallen.

A game of not even an inch

I just watched the end of the game 7 deciding match for the Stanley Cup between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings. The Penguins led 2-0 late in the game, but Detroit started pounding the goal and scored with less than six minutes remaining to make it 2-1. Detroit then increased their offensive blitz and at 2:07 remaining in the game a shot went past the Pittsburgh goalie and bounced downward and back out off the top iron bar of the goal. This means if it had been less than an inch lower it would have most likely clicked off the bottom of that crossbar and into the goal.
The Red Wings continued to control the puck and fire shots at the goal right up until the game ended, with the Penguins holding on to win, 2-1. A truly exciting finish to a great seven game series. I noticed that the general manager of the Penguins is the son of Fred Shero, who coached the Philadelphia Flyers to two Stanley Cups in the 1970's. I still remember running up Broad Street during the victory parade, wearing a Flyers jersey and holding my hockey stick high. How many Pittsburgh fans will relive this excitement this week?

Time to look in the mirror?

As I believe I have mentioned on this blog, I listen to and watch wayyyy too many news and political shows from all sides of the political spectrum. I am constantly amazed at how it is those on the left who sincerely ask me how I can possibly listen to the shows which are on the conservative side, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, etc. They tell me these commentators just preach hate and they never listen to them or watch their shows. I usually waste my time telling them that I don't think you can really know what the person says if you never listen to them. The most recent person told me they know because Keith Olbermann plays clips from their shows.
However, this post is about how the same side which tells me what I should never watch or listen to is also the side which would tell you they are the most tolerant and want diversity. Unfathomable how they can call this logic. And this same side, the left, or liberals, have told me for years how they are for womens' rights, for women being able to do anything a man can do....unless they are a conservative, of course. I have seen at least a dozen long and short interviews with Sarah Palin and, though you might not agree with her political opinions, she is not a stupid woman. Yet she has been belittled and slandered for the past year by those who are so tolerant, so supportive of women.
The onslaught of reporters and comedians trying to find anything they can use to ridicule Palin before the election and since has been disgusting. The left has trashed her daughters, something which I've never heard conservatives do. I've even heard the crude remarks about her daughters defended, since Palin is "using them for political publicity". How would these same people react if conservatives had been so vulgar about Chelsea Clinton, or if they choose to speak so crassly about Obama's daughters.
What I have learned about the left in the past 10-20 years is that, if you disagree with them politically, it is worse for you if you are a woman or a minority, for you must be some kind of traitor or idiot and you are definitely a threat, since people might realize that not all women or minorities have to agree on everything; they can think for themselves. Now it seems it's also bad news to be a child of a woman or minority who dares to disagree with the correct political dogma.

An example

As an example of my point of view on terrorism and terrorists, I offer the following. If two people are neighbors and they have a great disagreement over something, anything, they may decide to fight over the issue. They may sue each other, or they may have a fist fight out in the street, perhaps even using weapons to "settle" their argument. One might not like to see the violence, but they are facing off, sometimes referred to as mano a mano.
On the other hand, if person one instead waits until person two has left their home to go to work, etc. and then sneaks over to the other house and murders the family of person two, person one is a terrorist, with no honor and no right to claim any of humanities defenses.
Some may view this as equivalent to the British marching in formation while the American revolutionaries hid behind trees. Is it just playing by Marquis de Queensbury rules, while your opponent wins at any cost? If this approach is embraced by the nations and societies of the world, they invite the beast into their own houses, for their is no limit to the depths this type of fighting can sink to. The American Revolutionaries did not sneak behind trees to blow up children at school or British familes while they attended church. They fought against an army to whom they were opposed.
International laws, such as the Geneva Conventions, have made this distinction for good reason. It is in no nation or societies' best interests to coddle those who care not for common decency, who intentionally injure the innocent. Those laws have allowed the summary execution of such terrorists. In the interest of protecting the innocent, I support this approach.

Another political act of terror

The killing of a security guard at the National Holocaust Museum today was one more example of a murder conducted by someone due to their political beliefs. It was another act of terror, just as the killing of the abortion doctor and the army recruiter were, and should be viewed as such. Though anyone may have sympathies to the left or right of the political spectrum, those who kill as terrorists do nothing to promote their supposed causes, and they are a scourge of society.
As I have discussed in this blog previously, someone who intentionally kills innocents is like a rabid beast, a threat to decent humans, and should be dealt with as such, to prevent them or others from doing further harm to innocent men, women and children. The terrorist's political leanings should not matter, left, right or in-between; they are devoid of any characteristics which have been protected by international laws. The society which allows rabid beasts to roam freely out of some misplaced sense of nobility and pride in its' tolerance, is a society which will die of its' own arrogant folly. It is a society which protects the beast and throws the innocents to the wolves.

Pure muscle

Though I've lived in Carlisle, PA (the home of Cars at Carlisle car shows) for five years, last Saturday was the first time I've gone to one of the car shows at the fairgrounds. I took my nephew Nathan, who will be fourteen soon, because he is in love with Mustangs, and this was Ford Car Show weekend. There were certainly well over 1,000 Mustangs on display, from every year and style, plus racing Cobras and GT's. There were also hundreds of Cougars, Gran Torinos and anything else Ford from over the years.
Not only did we both love walking around seeing it all, but it brought up the subject of how all of the car companies and their divisions had their own distinct models. Not only did the cars have real style, they had their own unique look, assets which are becoming harder and harder to find. I was also struck by the hundreds of vendors selling parts of all kinds. I gather all of the shows are like this and, as such, are certainly a great day out.

Troubling

I find it troubling that so many who are so upset and expressing their outrage at the murder of the late-term abortion doctor George Tiller, including President Obama, are silent on the murder of Army recruiter, Private William Long, in Arkansas. A number of news outlets are not even mentioning Private Long's alleged killer's name, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, or that he was a convert to Islam, though they find it important that Doctor Tiller's alleged killer, Scott Roeder, reportedly held extreme Christian views.

Both instances are murder, originating from the perpetrators' beliefs, and the biased reporting of news reporters or organizations serve only to lessen the esteem and trust which the public will have for such slanted sources of information. How smart do you really have to be to understand that fundamental reality? The President's double standard is difficult to explain, and I fear any explanation might be troubling.

More of the same

Though I can understand why some are happy that President Obama chose a Latina woman as his choice for supreme court justice, I fear the choice was not inspired and more of the same. Regarding Sonia Sotomayor's leanings, there is no surprise that she is a liberal, or that, as with most of the liberal justices, she seems more inclined to view her job as an opportunity to decide the direction the law should head, rather than simply apply the law as written by the legislature. In addition, Judge Sotomayor is a graduate of Yale Law School and, as such, would join a court made up of seven other judges from Harvard or Yale. Only one justice is from any other law school, Northwestern. None of this will stand in the way of her being confirmed, as the Democrats have enough votes to see to it that she is and the Republicans would not stand in her way without extreme reason, as they have repeatedly demonstrated with nominees of past Democrat presidents.

Judge Sotomayor has made other comments which have raised concerns as to her objectivity on the bench but, barring some terrible revelation, she will be confirmed. I only hope she will see the wisdom in interpreting the laws' application to each case, not trying to make law. The legislature should make law and judges should apply it or decide when a passed law is unconstitutional. I would also hope she will remember that justice is supposed to be blind, basing any decisions on the law, not who a judge favors, for any reason other than the application of the law in question. Lastly, I would like any Supreme Court Justice to remember that those who wrote our constitution favored the states and individuals having powers, unless the power in question was expressly granted to the Federal Government, not the other way around.

If Judge Sotomayor follows these approaches, Republicans will be correct to raise no objection to her confirmation.