You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2008.
The truly amazing folks at American Right To Life Action sponsored a protest at the DNC that will likely make the Guinness Book of World Records for largest protest sign.
Seriously. It’s official. Guinness even assigned it an attempt number: 228132
Here’s the sign, overlooking the Democratic National Convention from the nearby mountaintops:
Here’s the news report:
“DENVER, Aug. 26 An official Guinness Book of World Records attempt to display the largest ever protest sign has succeeded. The 530-foot tall and 666-foot wide message is being shouted from the mountaintops overlooking the Democratic National Convention with the leading 2008 protest message.
Depending on their location, thousands of DNC delegates and journalists can look out their hotel windows to the west to see the sign. Sponsored by American RTL Action, the message initially appeared with three enormous 160-foot tall, bright yellow letters, D-N-C, stacked on top of each other.
After those letters suddenly appeared on a mountain just west of Denver, the actual full message of the sign began to unfurl. Three lines of white text, built on the vertical yellow letters read, D-N-C:
Destroys
uNborn
Children
“The tiniest boys and girls should be loved and protected,” said American RTL Action president Steve Curtis, “but as nominating Barack Obama emphasizes, the DNC even supports killing kids in the womb old enough to know their mother’s voice, sleep and dream, suck their thumbs, and play with their toes.”
Columbine dad Brian Rohrbough, whose son Daniel was murdered at that high school massacre, is the group’s vice president. “When we tell kids that unborn children can be killed if their parents don’t want them,” said Rohrbough, “we rob them of the knowledge of the God-given right to life and we destroy their moral foundation. Abortion is wrong because it’s a baby; it’s always wrong to intentionally kill an innocent baby.”
Guinness assigned American Right To Life an official world record attempt number: 228132. The protest sign weighs more than 2,700 pounds and was sewed together with more than four miles of seams connecting 2,400 sheets and backpacked onto location and unfurled by 44 letter carriers with spotters a mile away to ensure proper letter placement. ARTL commits to removing the DNC Sheets Of Shame and leaving the area cleaner than it had been.
ARTL is also a lead sponsor of the DNC Power in the Park protest event by national black leaders at Denver’s Martin Luther King Jr. Park and of the Clinton Watch project at Denver area strip joints.”
From the Rocky Mountain News:
“The sign measured 530 feet tall by 666 feet wide, according to a press release. It had the letters D-N-C in huge yellow capitals arranged vertically.
Former Colorado Republican Party chairman and ARTL Action president Steve Curtis said the group began to hike up the mountain at 1 a.m. and finished erecting the sign at 8:30 a.m.
“The protest sign weighs more than 2,700 pounds and was sewed together with more than four miles of seams connecting 2,400 sheets and backpacked onto location and is being unfurled by 44 letter carriers with spotters a mile away to ensure proper letter placement,” said Curtis”
A lot of the folks responsible for erecting that humongous sign are the very same I rub elbows with everyday over on TOL (TheologyOnline.com). If you want to meet them, thank them or argue with them they’ll welcome all three. Come on over anytime!
So there’s a street called “Bucket of Blood” in Holbrook, Arizona.
Don’t believe me?
Now, this makes me want to move to Holbrook, Arizona. Not because they have a “Bucket Of Blood” street so much. More because they can get away with having a street name such as that.
I kinda like the idea of living on “Because I Said So” street.
I figure if some folks there can live at 413 Bucket of Blood St., well I can darned well live at 113 Because I Said So.
“Hey, don’t you argue with me. You know where I live? Yeah, that’s right.”
LARNACA, Cyprus (Reuters) – International activists departed from Cyprus by boat on Friday in an attempt to run an Israeli sea blockade on 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza.
The 44 activists sailed from the port of Larnaca in two wooden boats at 9:50 a.m. (2:50 a.m. EDT). Hailing from 14 countries, they said they expected to reach the shores of Gaza, patrolled by the Israeli navy, on Saturday.
“It has been 41 years since any boat has traveled in those waters, and we plan to be the first,” said U.S. citizen Paul Larudee, one of the organizers of the “Free Gaza” campaign.
A previous attempt by the Palestinian Liberation Organization to sail to Haifa from Cyprus with Palestinian deportees failed in 1988, when a limpet bomb blew a hole in the hull of a ferry boat they had chartered.
An Israeli army spokesman declined to say whether the navy had plans to intercept the ship before it reached Gaza.
(source)
So these guys are supposed reach the shore tomorrow. I’m waiting to see what happens.
The thing is, I’m pretty sure what should happen isn’t what will happen. What should happen is that this boat is sunk on sight by the Israeli navy.
I ask myself, what if it was my country that had imposed this blockade? Say we were faced with a similar situation involving…oh, I don’t know…Cuba? And let’s say some knucklehead activists decided to break that blockade to make some kind of political point. What would I want this nation’s leaders to do in response?
Right. Exactly. Sink those idiots. This is a military blockade. If you get sunk or even shot stone dead, I don’t want to hear the whining.
That these folks expect nothing life threatening will happen to them (and I truly get the sense they don’t expect any such thing nor do they have any reason to)…well, this offends me. It makes me pretty dubious about the worth of Israel as an ally if their military is so concerned with international public opinion. So I honestly do hope the navy shoots the boat out from under them. It’ll send the right message to the other knuckleheads activists out there (find some other way to make your political point other than challenging the navy) and I’ll personally find if very encouraging that we’re allied with such a strong nation.
We’ll see.
Okay. Please tell me I’m misunderstanding something. Because if I’m not, I’m going to laugh myself into a seizure.
Saudi Arabia is to build five modern prisons in the kingdom to replace US Guantanamo detention facility, a new report has revealed.
Jordanian daily quoted unnamed sources as saying that US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Saudi officials are cooperating to construct the prisons which are to replace Guantanamo and US secret prisons in Europe.
Riyadh is to spent about two billion Saudi Rials for the project which can accommodate up to 18000 inmates, they added.
Bin laden firm and with the help of German engineers will build the prisons in the Saudi cities of Mecca, Haer, Demmam, and Qasim.
The US has been under pressure due to violating individual rights in its detention camps in Europe and Guantanamo Bay.
UN human rights investigators have urged the White House to shut down the Guantanamo camp.
(source)
So, have I got this right? Not only are the liberals knuckleheads who’ve been whining about prisoner abuse in Gitmo going to see their favorite complaint being whisked off to…of all places…Saudi Arabia (I mean, come on! That’s hilarious enough right there!) but the Bin Laden construction company is being contracted to build them?!
That’s insanely hilarious!
I haven’t talked about guns in a while…in fact, I don’t think I’ve discussed the issue at all on this particular blog. I supposed I should toss something out there about it and since I have a particular personal story that popped into my mind today, let’s just go with that. This isn’t a pro-gun rant, exactly, just an interesting story.
Interesting to me anyway. Entirely up to you whether you find it interesting. 
My stance on guns has changed pretty dramatically in the past few years. I used to be fairly anti-gun. Can’t say I’ve had especially positive experiences with them up until recently. Plus I lived in California with the liberal loons for a good long time. The thinking out there (and among liberal knuckleheads pretty much everywhere) is that guns are the root of all evil.
That and moral absolutes.
When I got back home to Louisiana though…I had to actually reexamine that position. Down here guns are any everyday part of the culture. It may sound hokey and cheesy but half the folks with a truck really do have gun racks in back of the cab. You can walk into Wal-Mart and buy a shotgun, no problem. There are concealed carry laws and such but if you want a gun you can pretty much just buy one. Easy peasy.
On the other hand we also have, I think, the highest rate of gun violence in the country. So there’s that.
Nevertheless, any doubts I had over the issue of gun ownership were settled when Hurricane Katrina blew through here. Everything pretty much went straight to heck. We didn’t have water or power for weeks. We were literally filtering and boiling water to drink from ditches and ponds. We were, as I recall, eying the wild dogs in the area right up until some National Guard boys managed to break through and get some MRE’s to us.
Native Americans regularly enjoyed boiled dog, as I understand.
And during all those weeks of chaos, with no police patrols or any form of government in attendance beyond the padlocked doors of the local mayor’s office, we had a few days of serious concern there. Up until that point we’d managed to do pretty well (relatively). We’d gathered together everyone in the neighborhood and quite a few people from beyond. Since we had a huge open yard across the street (a local school’s playground) we ended up with a small camp of very slightly displaced refugees (some from just a few blocks over) pitching tent (literally in most cases) right across the street from us.
We organized. We had laundry crews and cooking crews and hunting crews (yep, some of the boys went hunting quite a few times there to supplement dwindling MRE supplies). We even had a full-time crew devoted to nothing else all day but producing potable drinking water. And word got out. And our numbers swelled to nearly two hundred by the time the lights came back on and we saw police cars on patrol again.
But some folks don’t want to pitch in and help each other. Some would rather just take what you’ve got instead. And word got around about a few people getting shot over food and water. Even a jug of gasoline in one case. Quite a few people died. There were even a couple of bandit gangs we’d heard of. I know one in particular was of real concern.
And word was, they were branching out and hitting houses more in our direction. Over the course of a week we heard about this and that bit of violence and theft, each inching closer and closer to our “territory”.
So we armed the boys. Passed out shotguns and rifles (and hunting bows in a couple of cases). We starting patrolling a six block perimeter. Even tossed up a couple of barricades. We had armed groups of three or four trustworthy, level-headed folks patrolling a six-block area, even at night. I took up a rifle and went on a few of those patrols myself (there weren’t really that many people we trusted not to be impulsive and shoot someone). We even sent out messengers to bring word to those between here and there that we had a safe place to camp, if they wanted to relocate.
In the end we managed to avoid any violence. Word got out in return that our area was protected and I think that’s why none of the knuckleheads came our way. We did have a couple of incidents where an armed group made a pass, spotted our boys packing heat and high-tailed it. And that was good. It was exactly what we were aiming for.
So at the end of the day I was very, very glad we all had those guns, that so many of us knew how to use them and had a healthy respect for what they’re capable of. From what I heard only the knuckleheads had guns down in New Orleans. And true to knucklehead form, they were shooting at the folks trying to bring them help.
Yes, forget what Spike Lee says. That sort of thing did happen. A lot. I remember hearing one radio personality talking with a rescue worker over a cell phone, who was describing being shot at…at that moment. You could hear the “pops” in the background, even over the phone. The guy was hunkered down behind a jeep, casually joking about the whole thing. He’d gotten used to it.
But that’s why I’m all for gun ownership. The old saying goes something like this: A gun is like a condom. It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. And it’s true. It’s really that simple.
Now onto the main story I want to tell here. I’ve covered why I’m all for gun ownership but I also mentioned how glad I was that the folks we had on patrol knew how to use those guns and had a healthy respect for them. So let’s get to how that is done.
I resisted my husband’s efforts (just a friend at the time) to convince me to go to the gun range with him. I didn’t really want to learn how to shoot a gun well. As I’ve said, I hadn’t had very good experiences with them up to that point. He’d largely managed to convince me that they’re a useful tool and that it’s good for people to know how to use them. I just wasn’t quite convinced I should in particular. The thing that convinced me was his peculiar view on guns. He thinks they’re terrible. Awful, terrible tools designed for only one purpose: killing things.
But since killing things is sometimes useful, it’s best to learn how to do it properly should the need ever arise.
I was largely convinced and just about to agree to go along for a few gun lessons…until I heard the story of how he’d introduced his son to guns. I’d noticed and commented on the fact that he keeps guns in the house and that those guns aren’t exactly locked up tight behind steel vault doors. We have a gun cabinet even today and while there’s a lock on it…it’s not exactly Fort Knox. Wasn’t he concerned, I pointed out, that his son would play around and blow someone’s head off? Or his own?
He pointed out that way back in the old west days guns weren’t typically locked up at all. Kids that age had guns of their own. And kept them. They were theirs. Was it considered a huge problem then? Why now? So I threw the question right back at him. Yeah, why is it such a problem now?
Now let me jump track a bit and share something with you before we go further. I remember a t.v. show way back when I was a kid. Can’t remember what show exactly. Sixty Minutes I think. In that show they conducted a little experiment to show that kids and guns don’t mix well. They put a bunch of kids in a room with chairs, table, bookshelf, etc. And on that bookshelf they put a handgun.
I’m fairly sure they just stuck the gun behind some books but made it easy to find for a bunch of bored kids who would, inevitably, start rooting around for something interesting to do. So of course the kids found the gun.
And they freaked out. They got very excited very quickly. It was less than two minutes before they were pointing it at each other, playing around and pretending to shoot one another. Bang, bang, you’re dead.
The obvious point being: what if the gun was loaded? What if it was your kid in that room? Odds are good someone will get shot. People who are shot tend to die.
That made a huge impression on me. Enough that I brought this up early in our conversation regarding the guns in his house. Matthew laughed. He assured me, quite confidently, that his son would never be that foolish. So, naturally, I pointed out how completely foolish that assumption was.
So he told me the story of how he introduced his son to guns. He even invited him into the conversation to back up the story. It goes something like this:
The first time he ever put a gun in the boy’s hands he took him to the firing range. Took a mid-sized can of tomato sauce as well. Then he put the can on a little table right in front of a big white Styrofoam board. And he pasted a big picture of one of his son’s friend’s face on the tomato can.
He tells his son something like, “So, you and your friend are playing around one day in the house. You decide you’re going to show off and tell him all about dad taking you to the gun range to shoot. You even dig up dad’s old handgun from the bedroom to show him. You check to be sure it isn’t loaded but maybe you mess up. Maybe there’s one in the chamber. In the excitement of showing your friend what a big guy you are with your handgun training, the gun’s pointed right at his head when it goes off.”
BANG! Tomato splatter.
“Your friend’s dead now. You killed him.”
Jeremiah decided not to learn about guns that day after all. He just hung around until dad was done and then they went back home. It was about year later that he asked to go back and take a crack at it. He’s pretty good with a pistol or rifle these days. Better than me, by a long shot (no pun intended).
But he won’t go near the guns in the house. He perks up and gets anxious when anyone touches one, even us. As he should. As any rational person should. The few times I’ve been hunting with he and his dad I was startled to notice how careful he was with his rifle. He’s always acutely aware of where it’s pointed, how he’s holding it, if it’s loaded…he even pointed out to his dad that he should be a bit more careful a couple of times.
And don’t get me wrong here, it’s not as if guns are left laying about on the kitchen table. We have a gun cabinet in the living room, in full view. We keep a couple of handguns in the bedroom. And we’re aware of them at all times. I think the boy would have as much luck sneaking around getting hold of one without us being aware as he would setting fire to his hair without anyone noticing. It’s not as if we simply shrug and trust he won’t be stupid. Smart people do stupid things everyday.
No one touches a gun unsupervised, even the adults in the house. They are never left unsecured when we aren’t right there with them. That cabinet stays locked at all times and he’s not allowed in our bedroom without us with him to begin with.
At the end of the day there’s more danger of this boy running over someone with a car than shooting someone accidentally. And that’s only because we haven’t gotten around the teaching him to drive yet.
So. I remember asking him what he’d do if he’d been in that room with those kids when they found that gun on the bookshelf. He said he’d keep them from touching it. Tackle and fight them if he had to. And if he couldn’t stop them, he’d have left the room in a panic to report what was going on. Even the hypothetical situation made him anxious and he was quite passionate about.
He didn’t have a lot good to say about the knuckleheads kids in that program. He was rather harshly judgmental of them. So when I pointed out to him that it wasn’t really those kid’s fault but rather the parent’s for not teaching them respect for guns…well, that’s when it hit me.
And that’s when I decided not only to go with Matthew to the gun range but that we’d best go that very weekend. Because I was being a knucklehead. And I don’t like being a knucklehead.
Take the hand I offer you
pull me close and hold me too
Nothing else matters after all
let the colors escape and fall
fall apart
-
A storm came and blew me away
I am strange and oh so far from home
Like a ragged breath it took away
Everything I cared to say to you
And now I find I’m carried home
and now I’m almost at your door
And I fear I’ll never
love another better
yours the eyes that dare to
light upon my love
light upon the love
I left alone
long ago
-
Years and miles and many turns away
I sing my heart out over fleeting thoughts
But still I find I wander back to this
Wanting nothing more than to confess
confess to you
-
For a while there I lost myself
Chained and bound to rabid flesh
Gave myself to lovers without hearts
Sold myself to secrets of the arts
Out on the sunrise I see you there
nothings changed that I can tell from here
Oh, will I never
love another better
yours are eyes that dare to
light upon my love
light upon the love
I left alone
long ago
-
Never would I dare to dream of it
never would I care to say the words
And when my eager hands fly out to you
Imagining they’ll have a way to land
in your arms
Now I know I’ll never
love another better
yours are eyes that dare to
light upon my love
light upon the love
I left alone
long ago
…………………..
So my muse just comes out of nowhere the second I sit down this morning. BAM! Twenty seconds flat and out pops this. First I’ve heard from her in over a month.
My muse is a crackhead. I keep tellin’ yah.
…………………..
Mary, Mary, quite contrary
Contrary, not ordinary
Ordinary isn’t scary
Scary is her game
Mary, Mary, now she’s married
Married is a burden carried
Carried out of town and buried
Buried is her shame
Mary, Mary, lost her cherry
Cherry color where she’s hairy
Hairy where she’s very merry
Merry is her flame
Mary, Mary, tales my vary
Vary if a fool should tarry
Tarry then and ask of Mary
Mary is her name
Mary, Mary, very wary
Wary should you try to parry
Parry her and you she’ll bury
Bury with the blame
Recent Comments