Bonnie's Game

Geese and Blind Dolphins

2007-01-23T07:27:00.000-08:00

The Chinese baiji, “goddess of the river,” the blind white dolphin who swims in the Yangtze River, has been declared extinct . Not a single dolphin was sighted during a Swiss-funded expedition last month. I was reading this item in our local newspaper (and trying not to cry) when something frightened the Canadian geese in the fields behind our home.

Within a few seconds the skies were black with thousands of birds. The honking was so loud it sounded like a Broncos game after a touchdown and, less attractively, a sound like squishy hail hit my back deck and windows as the geese unloaded their, er, tanks.

The contrast couldn’t be greater. Here in the richest country in the world we have the ultimate luxury: Wildlife. If I were a poor starving peasant I wouldn’t be watching the geese fly overhead. I’d be shooting at them so I could have something to eat. Our kids delighted in Mother Goose stories when they were toddlers. I made sure to explain that “Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie” isn’t just a silly rhyme. When people are poor and starving, they kill and eat whatever they can to survive.

People on the edge of survival kill predators, too. Cougars, otters, beaver, wolves and bears were once eradicated from our plains and mountains because they competed with people for food. We don’t kill these beautiful creatures any more because we don’t have to. We have so much food we worry about losing weight to be healthy.

Because of our wealth, populations of wildlife have exploded. White tailed deer, numbering about 300,000 in 1930, are estimated at 30 million today. Cougars, once hunted to near extinction, have rebounded to the point where there are sightings of the big cats as far east as the Appalachian Mountains. Drive across Wyoming and you’ll see many of the 500,000 pretty antelope that were hunted to less than 18,000 in 1920.

In China, one of the poorest countries in the world, people still live on the edge of starvation. If blind river dolphin doesn’t make a tasty steak, it eats fish that do. The newspaper article blamed “China’s turn towards capitalism” as the reason for the extinction of this beautiful and rare creature. Of course in our much more capitalized country of America, our forests and rivers are teeming with healthy wildlife. Why is that? The authors of the article don’t bother to explain; they have their liberal agenda, and they don’t particularly care about the truth.

The truth? Consider this. Vail, Colorado is considering digging a highway tunnel under Vail valley so the roar of traffic will disappear and the elk and trout will return. These people are so filthy rich they can spend their cash making a tunnel so they don’t have to listen to the sound of traffic. They want elk and deer and songbirds instead of the sound of jake brakes and the smell of truck exhaust. That’s how they want to spend their money, and because they’re in our capitalist country of America, they can.

Greenie environmentalists who file lawsuits don’t do much to help the environment. Their radical cousins who vandalize SUV dealerships and burn down ski lodges don’t help our wildlife and our forests. What helps our wildlife is the wealth of capitalism. We conservatives are the reason for the black clouds of geese honking in the skies, for the bear and buffalo and antelope that roam our plains. The conservative concept of privately owned property has created the wealth that allows us the luxury of wildlife. In countries that are collectivist, commonly owned lands are poisoned and bare and creatures like the blind baiji dolphin disappear forever.

That’s one of the reasons I’m a conservative. Listen to the geese, and join me.

Actually, could you join me first in hosing off my deck?

Gay men in positions of authority over young boys

2006-10-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

One important thing that's going to come out of this Foley case (besides showing the hypocrisy of the Democrats once again) is that people are going to start thinking twice about gay men in positions of authority.

Gay men in the priesthood? The Catholic church is not allowing them any more after the scandals involving gay priests and young men.

Gay men in the Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts went to the Supreme Court to defend their boys against gay scoutmasters. Smart Boy Scouts.

Gay men in the military? Don't ask, don't tell, and if you want to be overt, you're gone. A smart move by our armed forces.

Gay men shouldn't be in positions of authority over young men. Maybe if anything, Foley is going to allow us to say that in public, and loudly, once again.

The overpopulation myth

2006-08-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

Arthur Brooks has a new article about the fertility gap. Here's an excerpt:

"Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today."

The whole article is worth a read.

One of the reasons I think liberals have fewer children is the overpopulation myth. The idea that our world is overpopulated and dying because of too many people has been pounded into our brains for so many years that many people take it as an undisputed fact.

Overpopulation is a myth. No one debunks this better than P.J. O'Rourke in his book:
All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty

Although P.J. doesn't go quite so far with his analysis, I will:

The overpopulation myth is a beautifully designed intelligence test. If you buy into overpopulation without checking the facts, you are stupid. If you are stupid, you shouldn't have babies.

Instead of forced eugenics and sterilization, stupid people sterilize themselves! Isn't it beautiful?

Well, actually, I think it's horrible. I'm Catholic. I don't believe that only smart people should have kids. The whole concept of eugenics is repulsive. One of the most radiant girls I know is in my son's class. She has a deformed hand and is missing a leg. The prosthetic is uncomfortable so she leaves her leg in the class, where I always fall over it.

This girl is lovely. Her face could launch a thousand ships, and she is smart, quarrelsome, funny, and eager. Deny her life? The world would be a poorer place without her in it. That goes for Down's Syndrome children, the elderly, the handicapped, and Alzheimer's victims. All are God's Children and all are precious.

And believe me, if you've ever driven across this great nation, you know how very empty our world is. Empty, gorgeous, vast stretches of fertile lands are everywhere you look. There's lots of room. Have another baby.

Whateverism versus Capitalism

2006-04-06T08:42:00.001-07:00

Is there any debate any longer, between capitalism and communism? Of course there is, even though communism has been completely discredited. Professors and teachers are still enamored of the idea of redistribution of wealth and books are still written arguing about "progressive" politics. Since "communism" failed, the leftists turned to "socialism." When "socialism" took the big dive into the tank, "liberalism" became the catchword of the left. Now that "liberalism" has earned a well-deserved slimy reputation, "progressive" is the new word.

When I was a child I watched "The Wiz," a black version of The Wizard of Oz. Since I didn't know it was a terrible movie, I was actually enchanted by the film. I loved Diana Ross as a shy spinster Dorothy, a gorgeous young Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, and Richard Pryor as the Wizard. The best scene for me was the Wizard screaming down from his tower: "The color is now green!" and then a few minutes later shouting "Now I love red!" The crowd would instantly change their tune and compliment green, or red, or whatever the Wizard commanded. Lemmings I learned about later in school, and to me they will always remind me of that scene from The Wiz.

Liberals, ditto. Whatever comes down the pipe from the establishment they immediately champion. When Clinton is in office, War is Good! Saddam is Bad! When Bush is in office they change tunes without breaking stride: War is Bad! Saddam is Good!

The energy to resist these types is almost overwhelming, particularly when you have kids to raise. There is a desire to simply turn and go with the lemming-like flow, to gain the approval of the vast establishment of media and teachers and so-called intellectuals. This, of course, is the wrong thing to do.

Ultimately, as Dumbledore said to Harry Potter, we all have to make a choice between what is easy and what is right.

The artery is cut but the bathwater is warm...

2006-03-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

One of the indelible scenes from one of my favorite childhood novels, Quo Vadis, is the death of the cynical Roman Petronius. He commits suicide by bathing in warm water and cutting open his arteries. He sips wine and tastes his last meal while his life blood drains away. It is both a horrible and very heartbreaking scene, because Petronius has such nobility and possibility. You want to save him! (Or, at least, I did.)

I am reminded of this scene when I read tales from Mexico such as this one from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

But the export of human labor has been devastating here. It has left the land dotted with near-ghost towns inhabited by the very old and the very young, their lives dependent on whatever money their relatives send home.

In fact the artery has been opened in Mexico and the lifeblood of this country is steadily running out to our own. The beautiful Mexican countryside is being emptied and the corrupt politicians of this land sip their wine and toast each other, uncaring of the increasingly red bathwater that soaks them.

The demonstrations in Los Angeles and elsewhere this weekend don't concern me as much as what happens in the great dying beast that is Mexico. Anyone and everyone who comes to this country sooner or later absorbs into our culture. Mexicans and their Christian, hard-working, family oriented ethos will benefit our country.

Yes, we are drinking from a firehose right now, but the water is clean and pure. These are good people (with the exception of the criminal microbes that inhabit any large number of people.) The influx of illegal immigrants should be slowed for our health and theirs, but our country seems to lack the political will to stop them. At least, I comfort myself, we are being overwhelmed by working folks who will work hard for a better life. But what is left behind...

In Mexico, the gates bang back and forth on the deserted corrals. The old men sit in the sun and the old women sweep the dust from the floors and the sound of children is no where heard. There is only silence. And silence. And silence.

Give War a Chance

2006-03-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

That's the title of a very good P.J. O'Rourke book. It should also be the headline of the day, since American troops today freed some lefist, terrorist-loving, America-hating victims from the clutches of their captors.

This happened in Iraq; the "peacemakers" were over there to prove how horrible America is and found out, one of them fatally, that the terrorists didn't like them just because they hate America. Tom Fox's body was recently found dumped in Baghdad. He'd been tortured before he was murdered.

The website of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (which I won't link to) declares that their workers were "released." They weren't released. They were rescued by American soldiers who put their lives on the line to rescue these sad sacks from the clutches of evil.

I suppose we have to keep taking care of these people, the same way that doctors have to patch up gangsters who keep coming back to the emergency room with gunshot wounds. Our soldiers did a brave and heroic thing today, and won't be thanked by the people they saved. But I thank them with all my heart.

A Horse and His Boy

2006-03-20T09:53:00.000-08:00

We're reading the Chronicles of Narnia as a family and we're on "The Horse and His Boy." (We sit down for an hour before bed and read out loud instead of watching tv.)

The Horse and His Boy is all about Islam, and what a great education this is for my kids. The "Calormene" people are deceitful, cruel, and corrupt. (What a glorious movie this would make, and so politically incorrect!)

Yet Aravis is a Muslim girl (er, a Calormene girl) and she is brave, resourceful and smart.

My kids are learning a valuable lesson with this novel, and without becoming bigots in the process. I despise the Islamic religion, but I do not despise the Islamic people. I have great hopes for them.

When I read the story about the brave Afghan man who is a Christian and might suffer death for his beliefs, (hat tip to Michelle Malkin) I know there is reason to hope. I hope that he can be saved by our government and can come to our country to live peacefully, but in the most important way he is already saved, isn't he?

Just like Hook: Old. Used Up. Done For.

2006-03-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

William F. Buckley, the scion of the Conservative movement and founder of National Review, recently wrote an article titled: It Didn't Work. He contends in this short essay that we have failed in Iraq.

The conservative movement, thankfully, is based on principles and logic and is not a cult of personality.

Buckley, old boy east coast elitist to the bone, subscribes to the theory that the little brown people should be left alone to slaughter each other at will as long as we get our oil. This was the “benign neglect” aspect of foreign policy that held through every administration up to 9-11 and President Bush.

If you read President Bush’s speeches you’ll understand that he completely busted that paradigm and has been turning the enormous ship of state ever since. No longer shall we, the U.S., operate on the benign neglect policy.

Buckley doesn’t like that. He is like Hook on Peter Pan: Old. Used Up. Done For. Let the croc of irrelevancy swallow him up, because conservatives today understand that in order to conserve our very nation we are going to have to kick some ass and change some countries around.

The process is well on its way. The Iraqi people have rejected a civil war after the Askariya shrine in Samarra was bombed. There was a great deal of unrest, but the enemy wanted an all out collapse. They didn't get it.

William F. Buckley is not a leftist; far from it. He is simply old, used up, and done for. The world has passed him by and he is not willing to change to meet it. My father, who is older than Mr. Buckley and speaks without that hideous effete accent, is still vibrant, growing, changing and young. He recently gave up his decades-long subscription to National Review Magazine. "It just seems tired and bitter," he said to me.

I've met leftists who are in their twenties who are exhausted, bitter, angry and depressed. They also see the world is passing them by and they are unwilling to change. They cling to a philosophy which is stale and dead.

How sad that Mr. Buckley is one of those. But "Tomorrow is another day," as Scarlett O'Hara would say, and we can always hope that Mr. Buckley wakes up tomorrow and gets out of bed like my Dad; creaky, sometimes grumpy, but with a sense of purpose, optimism, and cheer.

Never, never Old. Used Up. Or Done For.

A monarchy no more

2006-03-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

Freedom marches on; the latest heartening news is from Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado, where the out-of-control rant of leftie Geography teacher Jay Bennish was taped by a fed-up sixteen year old student. The rant, replayed, has turned the story into a national one and the teacher (one hopes) will soon be selling fries and shakes at Burger King.

The rants and rages of bad teachers are nothing new. We all resonate to this story, whatever our political beliefs, because we have all been held captive by a teacher who abused their authority. Who hasn't sat through a lecture wishing to challenge the teacher but knowing that your grade depended upon your submissive (and inwardly seething) silence?

Teachers have long known this, and the bad ones abuse it. The really bad ones use their authority and position to sexually abuse their students. Other bad ones use their position to indoctrinate their students into a political belief -- the mind-numbed, incoherent students of Overland High are a perfect example of children fed so much propaganda that they have no idea what an argument is, much less how to make one.

Public school and university teachers are the last bastion of monarchy; they reign in their kingdoms with the serfs of their classrooms helpless to challenge them. Upset the teacher, and your grade dives to a "D". Toady up, and you get an "A." (This is not true in the hard sciences, of course; your teacher can loathe you and if you know how to calculate the quadratic equation, they have to give you an "A." But then again, teachers in the hard sciences don't spend any time in indoctrination; they're too busy actually teaching.)

Now the monarchy is trembling on the throne. Any student with an IPOD or a cell phone or a cheap digital recorder can make public the king's madness, and prove to the disbelieving that yes, this is abuse.

The student at Overland High told his Dad about the teacher's ravings, and just like Roald Dahl wrote in Matilda, his parent did not believe him. But technology gave the boy the tool to prove to his father that the abuse was real. The teacher cowers in his home and the student stands astride the broken throne. Miss Trunchbull was driven from her school in a shower of leftover lunch food; one could only hope Jay Bennish meets the same fate.

Long live freedom. And may every teacher think twice before they spit their hatred and bias into the classroom. The students are serfs no more.

Teaching to the test

2006-02-21T07:08:00.000-08:00

I have a love-hate relationship with teachers. My family is full of teachers and they're hard-working, passionate, intelligent educators who make me proud to say I'm related to them. I had teachers in school who inspired me and touched my life in ways that I will remember forever.

Then there are the other teachers. The ones who enter the education profession to enjoy the experience of crushing young people. The ones who are bitter, burned out, and stupid. I've had the experience of those teachers, too.

Now I have kids in school and I feel like I'm playing Russian Roulette every fall. Is this teacher an evil Orc who'll destroy my children or a priceless Galadriel who will give them the everlasting light and joy of learning. How do I know?

I know if we've got a bad teacher by the desperate and dying light in my child's eyes when they come home from school. Getting your child out of a bad teacher's class is as easy as overturning a decree by the Soviet Politburo, but I've done it four times now. I'm not popular at my children's school, as you might imagine. One poor teacher, young and cute and hopelessly incompetent, burst into tears in the conference where I demanded my son be removed from her class. If I had a shred of compassion, I would have helped her self esteem and left my son in her inept care. Compassion, I've got. But I reserve it for my kids. Her tears made me feel bad, but not that bad. Seeya, lady.

There's another way now for teachers to be assessed before I have to watch my kids suffer: No Child Left Behind, and the Colorado Student Assessment Program. (CSAP). The CSAPs are just commencing in my school and I enjoy them greatly. The teachers start sending home notes: Make sure your kids get lots of rest! Make sure they have a good breakfast! We need volunteers to pass out oranges and other snacks mid-test!

The teachers know who is being tested: They are.

Two years ago my son was furious because he failed a huge chunk of the CSAP, along with his whole geography class. All the students were angry and upset because they all wanted to get a good grade. I told my son, with a grin: "You didn't fail. The teacher failed. The CSAPS don't test you; they test what the teacher is teaching you."

This is called "Teaching to the Test" and teachers hate it. Oh, how most of them hate it. They want to teach what they want, and whether or not that prepares the students for the rest of their lives, well, that's not really their problem, is it?

My son went to school and shared this information with his classmates, who then turned en masse on their geography teacher and accused him of teaching them the wrong information. He was astonished, upset, enraged -- and started teaching the information he was supposed to teach, instead of what he wanted to teach.

The next time you hear a teacher tell you that they don't want to waste time "teaching to the test", remember who is being tested by these standards. Remember who has your children in their control, in their power, for an entire school year. And remember that if you have a teacher who doesn't teach the right information, your child will not have the foundation to build on for the next year of school. That's why the tests are important. That's what they're testing.

Keep your sword sharp for the Orcs, and don't be afraid. And if you get a Galadriel (as I have been blessed both with my children and myself) then give that teacher praise, and help, and write letters to the principal about him/her, and give them as big a gift as you can afford at Christmas and at the end of the school year.

The bad ones get paid too much, and the good ones can never get paid what they deserve. No Child Left Behind and the CSAPS will help you figure out which are which.

Barbarians at the Gates

2006-02-09T08:13:00.000-08:00

There are some things that are so unbelievable that you have to read them a few times just to absorb the insane barbarity of it all:

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.

The state-run daily Etemaad reported on Saturday that 18-year-old Nazanin confessed to stabbing one of three men who had attacked the pair along with their boyfriends while they were spending some time in a park west of the Iranian capital in March 2005.

Nazanin, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, said that after the three men started to throw stones at them, the two girls’ boyfriends quickly escaped on their motorbikes leaving the pair helpless.

She described how the three men pushed her and her 16-year-old niece Somayeh onto the ground and tried to rape them, and said that she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand.

As the girls tried to escape, the men once again attacked them, and at this point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the men in the chest. The teenage girl, however, broke down in tears in court as she explained that she had no intention of killing the man but was merely defending herself and her younger niece from rape, the report said.

The court, however, issued on Tuesday a sentence for Nazanin to be hanged to death.

Defending yourself against rape is punishable by death? Let us examine this more closely, after we finish gagging and retching. If women and girls are property, dogs or cattle without rights, then to attack a human being is punishable by death no matter what the reason.

We have pit bull attacks in our country and the owners of the pit bulls are fined and sometimes face jail. However, the pit bulls are always put to sleep, no matter what. If you attack a human being, you face the death penalty if you're a dog, and no provocation is acceptable.

Well, that makes me feel a bit better. I have now put myself in the Islamist's shoes, minds, and hearts, and understand their motivation and their logic and their culture.

Now, let's go kill all their men.

.... Oh, all right, that might be a little harsh. Forgive me, because I can't get the image of brave little Nazanin out of my head. This story, awful as it is, illuminates the real key to bringing the Islamic nations into the civilized world.

When women are given equal rights, when women are honored as human beings with the same rights and responsibilities as men, then and only then can a nation be considered anything but barbaric. Iran is run by barbarians. Saudi Arabia is run by barbarians. Vile, degraded barbarians. We must defeat these creatures or face them in our country, in our schools, and within touching distance of our precious daughters.

I blow my nose in your general direction

2006-02-03T13:11:00.000-08:00

...Which is a joke from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Jokes will not be allowed if radical Islam takes over the world, and neither will cartoons:

Because of these cartoons, we get to see the following delightful images from Europe:

Is this like a South Park episode? Are these people joking?

Alas, they are not. The tipping point may be coming with radical Islam -- with Islam itself. The right to be insulted -- to have your most sacred institutions mocked, your most beloved public figures satirized, your culture scrutinized under the scalpel of wit -- is our most fundamental right of free speech.

So I display these offensive Muslim cartoons and I say to any who want to deny me the right: "Your Mohammed smells of elderberries!"

Han Solo shot first

2006-02-02T06:52:00.000-08:00

The U.S. military has developed a laser-beam weapon that can obliterate a target with no collateral damage. Currently the laser is mounted in a C-130 Air Transport plane.

However, we all know what comes next:

I have no idea why some people are afraid of technological advances, particularly in the area of weapons. Weapons are tools, and good tools are better than bad ones. Guns, in particular, should be the symbol of female emancipation. Before the gun, the weapon of choice was a sword or a bow. Both of them require upper body strength and size, which men have in greater abundance than women.

Then came Winchester, and if I might paraphrase: God saw that this was good.

The repeating rifle that Winchester created in 1860 gave women, for the first time, a weapon that negated men's greater size and strength. Within nine years, Wyoming had given women the right to vote and in 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women sufferage across the United States. Did guns give women the right to vote? You bet they did. They allowed women for the first time to show that their brains were the equal of men's, once you removed the inequality of size and strength.

The United States, one might argue, is founded on the principle that all men are created equal. This was not the case when brawn ruled the earth. Only after the advent of the gun did the philosophy follow the fact. In places on the earth where guns are taken out of the hands of ordinary citizens, people are soon reduced to helpless wretches. (Sorry, Britain, but facts are facts.)

So bring on the blaster! I want one with rosewood handles and Frank Frazetta girls engraved on the stock.

"Hokey Religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side."

That's right, Han. Now how do you aim this thing?

If it were a million little pieces, who would read it?

2006-01-31T12:32:00.000-08:00

There once was a man named James Frey who wrote a book called "A Million Little Pieces." In this autobiography he described a fascinating life of torment and recovery. This book caught the eye of Oprah and she had him on her show. Mr. Frey sold millions of his books and everyone lived happily every after.

Except not quite. The Smoking Gun tried to get a mugshot of the dangerous Mr. Frey when he was arrested in one of the most exciting parts of the book, only to find out that Mr. Frey was a quiet little mouse of a man, not the roaring tiger his book described. Oprah gets upset and admonishes Mr. Frey. He is disgraced. The end.

But what does this story mean for all of us? As a fiction author I suppose I should be outraged -- when we write stories that are made up we call them "fiction." Real-life stories are "non-fiction."

The line has always been blurred, and in my opinion autobiography is the grayest of the gray areas. If you're writing a non-fiction book about the making of the Apache Helicopter, you'd better get your dates and facts right. If you're writing a book about Igor Sikorsky, the inventor of the helicopter, you'd better give me some dish. Tell me some good stories!

If Mr. Frey had written a meticulous autobiography, who would read it? Embellishing your life story is not only necessary for writers, but for all the rest of us too. When Grandpa gathers the kids around to tell them about the sharks following the submarine during World War II, he doesn't tell them about the long, boring days when they did nothing but post watch and play cribbage. He cuts out the boring parts and tells an exciting story -- or the kids will lose interest.

My opinion of Mr. Frey is that he took this intellectual liberty a bit too far, and created a life that he didn't actually live. He got what he deserved, public humilation.

As for me, when I tell stories I'm going to keep cutting out the dull parts. Even if the tale is a true one.

Stephen King's "Cell" -- fast, bloody, and fun

2006-01-30T07:03:00.000-08:00

I won't spoil your enjoyment of "Cell" by revealing any plot twists. There aren't any. The premise is set up by page three and the rest is a safety-bar off, roller-coaster ride to Hell.

In short, anyone who is on or calls on their cell phone on October 1st is turned into something like a zombie, a creature with no memory or ability to reason. Civilization comes crashing down within, oh, about twenty minutes.

Then the survivors have to survive, a theme that King returns to again and again in his novels. The world ends abruptly. Now what?

When I first read "The Stand," as a teenager, I had no idea what I was getting into. I thought the book was going to be about an epidemic and the brave people who fight it. Instead, by the end of the first hundred pages, the world was done and ended. It was breathtaking, like being punched without warning. My teenage friends and I discussed endlessly "What We Would Do" as survivors. The new series "Lost" engages the same sense of wonder and contemplation; how would I survive the Island? What would I do?

I read "Cell" while awaiting an airline flight, and then while I was on the long, boring flight. If Islamic terrorists had tried to take over the plane I think I would have screamed like an enraged ape, scrambled over the seats and ripped out their throats with my teeth, I was so involved in this world where nothing but survival mattered. (And the taste would have been salty and hot as a spilled cup of coffee.... Don't interrupt me while I'm reading a new King book. Someone should make me a sign.)

Then I realized (point of essay coming up) that Stephen King had to create a zombie-like mystical cell phone "Pulse" to destroy our brains because we now know what happens to Americans when unimaginable disaster strikes.

We help each other. We sometimes die for each other. We act with bravery and courage and steadfastness, and like Todd Beamer we say our prayers before we go to fight evil and die to keep it from killing countless others.

What about Katrina? You might ask. Wasn't there rioting, looting, stabbing, raping, and murdering? Didn't the survivors of Katrina act like King's cell phone zombies? Actually, we've learned that the stories coming out of Katrina were mostly that -- stories. There were no gang rapes at the Superdome. No bodies piled like cordword in the Convention Center. There were lots of thirsty and unhappy people at the Superdome and there was looting, but most people were helpful, rescued others, took care of each other and tried their best to endure their suffering with dignity.

Katrina, one might say, was where the news media tried to write their own Stephen King thriller. The World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Flight 93, the Shoe Bomber (who was captured and tied to his seat so thoroughly by passenger's belts that he had to be cut free), the North American Blackout of '03, showed us Americans who were brave, courageous, and kind, and who helped each other.

Stephen King's "Cell" is also a story of bravery and courage, and the Americans who survive the Pulse are endearing characters. It's a fast and bloody read and there is a death in there that makes me want to punch Mr. King right in the mouth (so what else is new, asks the loyal readers of the Dark Tower series?) but I liked it very much. I think you will, too.

I thought I was going to be a minivan

2006-01-25T13:51:00.000-08:00

But I'm a Chevrolet Corvette!

You're a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You're all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz. (Hat tip to Dr. Helen via Instapundit.)

Canada should join the Union

2006-01-24T07:41:00.000-08:00

Canada is a beautiful and sparsely inhabited country between Alaska and the rest of the United States, a vassal of the United Kingdom and with a socialized medicine system that drives Canadians who can afford it into America for health care.

Today, Canada has a conservative Prime Minister instead of the incompetent leftists that ran the place into the ground over the past eight years. A snifter clink to you, Mr. Harper!

Here's my thought about lovely, poorly run Canada. No matter how effective Mr. Harper is, Canada is still in deep trouble. Socialized medicine, welfare, extremely high taxes and a growing Muslim population that is trying to bully sharia law into Canadian provinces, all are problems that cannot be solved easily or quickly.

Now for my argument, with a bit of personal history thrown in. My teachers in public school were almost entirely liberal when I was growing up. Not liberal in the classic sense, but leftist: Anti-American, anti-military, anti-capitalist, and anti-religion.

Since I was born with an authority problem, this indoctrination did not take with me. On the contrary, the more I was pushed, the more I set my ears back and refused to be pushed.

Therefore I have no problems with America as Empire. Canada sh0uld be absorbed into the United States. We took California from the Mexicans, we took Alaska from the Russians, we bought the entire middle of the country from France, and we seized Florida from Spain.

We also cajoled Texas into joining the Union which they did reluctantly, but we promised not to mess with them too much. Things have worked out well for them:

I have a flag that my dad gave me that once flew over my Grandfather's saloon in Denver. It only has 48 stars because Hawaii and Alaska hadn't joined the Union yet. Time to re-write the map again. Canada should join the Union and each province should be a new state. Two senators, more representatives, and lots of new flags, globes, and geography books for our schools.

Then we can re-do everything all over again when we annex Mexico. Heh.

The NSA is listening? To you? Okay, here's a clue...

2006-01-23T09:02:00.000-08:00

They don't care about you. Honestly. There's a lot of media-generated, Democrat-encouraged furor over the NSA "wiretapping" people's phone conversations. American phone conversations, between private citizens. The NSA might be listening to you. They might know about you. All about you.

Well, if they cared. And that's what makes me laugh about this whole furor. It has a high-school feel to it. Oh, the whole world is watching me! I'm so very important that the NSA is listening to me, watching me, getting ready to send dark-suited agents to bust down my door and haul me off to the Bush-Halliburton concentration camp!

The NSA (National Security Agency) has always listened to whatever they please. Your cell phone conversations. Your phone calls within the U.S. They can check on your computer Internet account and find out the websites you've visited. They can discover your video rental information, and flip their fingers through your bank accounts. Honestly, you have no idea how powerful the NSA is in their ability to gather information and all of it is perfectly legal and they've had the authority to do this for years.

A long, rather dry but quite informative read is The Puzzle Palace, by James Bamford. Imagine hundreds of workers hunched over desks and sorting through stacks, rooms, buildings, entire cities of information, and trying to find in all that avalanche the one snowflake of a terrorist attack.

What isn't legal is hauling innocents away and torturing them in government facilities, which the left delights in imagining but cannot find any examples of. (Except for Saddam's well-documented torture chambers, which the left ignores.)

Whenever I hear another rant about the horrible violation of privacy of the Bush administration attempting to track down terrorist suspects, I just shake my head as I suck down some Slurpee at the 7-11 and wave at the camera, get some money out of the ATM and nod at that camera, log onto the Internet and marvel at all the delicious cookies that allow me to do banking transactions, order books, and shop, and I shake my head and laugh when I talk to my sister on the phone about any little thing that pops into my head.

I'm very important to my family, but I'm not important to the NSA. And even if you march in parades wearing a "Bush is Hitler" t-shirt and belong to moveon.org or even the communist party, the NSA is just not going to care that much about you. If you are currently working on making a bomb and you're going to set it off, then you should worry.

The NSA is going after terrorists, and I'm cheering for them all the way. Good on ya, as the Aussies would say. Go get 'em.

It's not Godzilla! But we should scream and run as though it is Godzilla!

2006-01-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

I love the movie Goldmember. Every time I see the scene where Austin Powers runs his mini into the back of a fake Godzilla and drives down a Tokyo street, I laugh until I cry. I don't know who won the Oscar in 2002 but it should have been Mike Meyers. Watch the movie and tell me you think once about how many parts he plays and how different each one of them is. You simply watch Austin and Dr. Evil battle it out. And, if you've got a laugh-o-meter that runs to sight gags and puns like me, you laugh like crazy.

Today, Bin Laden was reported to threaten to attack America again.

Run, Run, it is Bin Laden! No, wait, it's another "purported" video tape from an "undisclosed" location that contains no images of Bin Laden that look fresher than, say, Tora Bora in 2001. Oh, sure there is a Bin Ladenish voice on audio tape, but anyone who has mistaken a mom for a daughter on the phone knows that Bin Laden on the audio tape might not be Osama Bin Laden.

I think of this clown as "Scotty Bin Laden," in homage to Dr. Evil. I've been saying both privately and publically that we nailed Osama at Tora Bora in 2001 and the United States is well aware of this. Cynics say the U.S. would go back to sleep if our bogeyman was killed; patriots say that sleeper cells in the U.S. would go into doomsday mode if their beloved leader was proved dead.

I simply say: If he's alive, Al-Queda, show us. Show us a video tape of your filthy leader with a picture of the director of Brokeback Mountain accepting the Golden Globe. Show him holding a newspaper with the date clearly visible -- one that is later than, say, 2001.

Al-Queda may pull off an attack, but Bin Laden is long dead. These "attack" audiotapes have all the desperate flavor of the G.I. Joe figurine that terrorists tried to pass off as a real hostage.

Today's story doesn't strike me with fear. We've got the Al-Queda terrorists against the wall and we're thrashing them and this pitiable audio tape is the best they can do. Perhaps they can borrow that G.I. Joe doll and make up some video to go with that audio.

But what if they don't love their children, Sting?

2006-01-18T07:03:00.000-08:00

I recall the 80's song Russians by Sting. The main lyric was this: "I hope the Russians love their children too." This was supposed to be a sly dig at President Reagan calling the Soviet Union an Evil Empire -- of course the Russians love their children, silly man. There will never be a nuclear war with Russia because all life on earth will end.

But what if an apocalypse is what you want? What if you want the world to be destroyed, to be a place of ashes and death, so that a new paradise will be begin as the 12th Imam rises from the well? For someone like Iran's so-called "President" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this is not just a belief but an actual campaign promise.

Ahmadinejad has also declared that the Mahdi, or 12th Imam, will return to earth within three or four years -- coincidentally, about the time Iran will have nuclear-tipped missiles that can obliterate Israel. What a nice gift for the new Mahdi.

I heard a political commentator say something so profound that I've never forgotten it. He said this in such an offhand way, too, as though it were no big deal. I wish I remembered his name. He said this: "Jews are the canary in the coal mine. When they are threatened, that means you're next."

Canaries in the coal mine. When Israel is destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, what will we say? Sorry? Will that be the end, when Israel no longer exists? Lots of Jewish people in this country (and sad to say lots of Christians too) believe that. The whole Middle East turmoil is all about the Jews -- er, Israelis -- they say comfortingly. If Israel goes away, all our problems will end. That canary with its little feet turned up means nothing, nothing at all. It was just a canary. Ignore the Coptic Christians in Egypt. Ignore the Hindus in India. Ignore the Africans being bought and sold as slaves by Muslims in Africa. The Jews are God's Chosen People but when it comes to Muslim hatred, they're one in the crowd.

Iran is working to get the bomb. (Hat tip: The Belmont Club.) Some argue that Iran will become another member of the nuclear club, using the bomb to parley for prestige, loans from the International Monetary Bank, and maybe extra coupons at Walgreens.

I believe that Iran will use their nuclear weapons to bring about the return of the 12th Imam and the foundation of an Islamic paradise, first by bombing Israel. We can fight them now or fight them later, but fight them we will.

Sting, they don't love their children. If we love our children, we'd better do something, and do it fast.

My hero for Martin Luther King Day: Bill Cosby

2006-01-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

Bill Cosby was my childhood hero, the man whose voice could make me laugh, the man who taught me all about Buck Buck, and the 49th Street Bridge, and The Belt. His stories are still available on CD and in December we listened to "Ice Cream" with our son. (He just had his tonsils out.) He laughed and laughed the same way my husband and I did when we were kids.

I credit Bill Cosby with my first spark of interest in the man I was to marry. We were working together and someone tossed a wad of paper at him. He looked up in surprise and said "Did some one just throw a piece of paper on me?" I laughed and said "Buck Buck!" We talked about Bill Cosby for an hour after that, recalling our favorite bits. EHarmony should include that as one of their compatability tests, because we've been married for ten years and I love him more every day.

So why do I think of Bill Cosby on Martin Luther King Day? Because my introduction to African American culture was through Bill Cosby. Not through hideous rap music, not through gangster films and clothing, not through reports about the latest mugging, rape, killing. None of those terrible traits of inner-city black culture can dislodge my original foundation of love and respect for the moms, dads, and kids of Bill Cosby's world. They are black, and they are different than me, but they are wonderful human beings.

On Martin Luther King day, I think of Dr. King's speech about how a person should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

And I remember my very first introduction to Bill Cosby. I was very small, about five years old, and my mom was a very unhappy person. She had a bunch of kids to raise, not a lot of money, a husband who was always working and she'd lost her last baby, James, at term. He'd lived for a few minutes and my mom had almost died. They gave her a hysterectomy, so no more kids for her, and none of this I understood at five years old. I just understood that my mom seldom laughed and when she did it was a tinkling, false thing that made you think of forks scraping down a crystal glass.

So I heard a man's voice downstairs and I crept out of bed and came down the staircase. The man had a beautiful voice, deep and rich, and he wasn't my father. He was talking to my mom and she was laughing. Not tinkling false laughing, but happy belly laughs. I'd never heard my mom laugh like that. Who was this man?

I finally peered around the corner of the staircase and my mom was sitting by a record player and there was no man there. The voice came from the record player, and the man was Bill Cosby.

You made my mom laugh again, Bill. You are forever the man who made my mother laugh.

Happy Martin Luther King Day.

Burn those little orange UNICEF boxes. Burn them!

2006-01-12T08:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, perhaps I go a little over the top when the orange UNICEF boxes come home in my kid's backpacks. They are sent home every year right before Halloween. My children have to sit through a propaganda session about the glories of UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) and then they're sent forth, little faces glowing, to collect money for the children.

Instead, we roast the boxes on marshmallow sticks over our chimea, a nifty Mexican clay grill. I love our chimea and never more than when I can give my children a valuable lesson in propaganda versus truth, a lesson in what "feels good" as opposed to "what is right."

The UNICEF organization is such a great idea. Helping the world's children, who could be against that? Yet the UN, the organization that runs UNICEF, killed a lot of Iraqi kids while they were taking kickbacks from Saddam Hussein in the UN's Oil for Food program. Then there is the horrible child-rapes that UN workers have regularly engaged in. The story is here, but don't go read it if you want to feel good. It makes you feel horrible.

I don't describe the UN scandals to my kids. We cheerfully roast those orange boxes into ash while I explain that the UN people take their money and spend most of it on parties and limos and balloons and cakes, and then only give a tiny little bit to the poor kids who need the money so badly. So we give our charity money to Christian organizations like Covenant House in New York, who take in homeless kids and give them warmth, shelter, food and hope. If you want to donate some small amount the website is here. (This place and these stories will make you feel good.)

I write this today because the UN Oil for Food scandals seem to be breaking into the mainstream. No matter what, my long-suffering kids will have to sit through another UNICEF propaganda piece next year. But in our family they'll come home, smiles on their faces, knowing that they get to light a fire!

Where can our kids go to college?

2006-01-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

There are children in our large family that are heading for high school graduation and I don't know what to tell them. Where should they go?

How about the University of Colorado, where Ethnic Studies professor Ward Churchill (ethnic background: vanilla) could teach them about that it's okay to killl innocent people if they belong to a group that you disapprove of?

How about Princeton, where Peter Singer could teach that killing babies up to the age of three years old is acceptable if those babies are "imperfect." And imperfect babies in the womb? Whack away! The number of Down's syndrome people in our society is decreasing rapidly, and it isn't because we've figured out a cure. We're just killing them.

This isn't what I want for the precious children in my family. I want them to go to college where they'll be safe, respected, and educated. Not indocrinated.

Today Sam Alito gave a gentle dig at the porcine, bloated Senators who leered down at him and prepared to lecture him on morals and values:

"It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. And I couldn’t help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community."

Now the irresponsible people are in charge of the campuses, Judge Alito. Now what do we do?

Another mysterious Iranian plane crash

2006-01-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

A military plane has crashed in Iran. On board was the commander of the ground forces of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, 10 other officers and two crew members.

Another plane crashed in December. It was loaded with "journalists." (Who needs journalists in a fascist dictatorship?) At any rate, no survivors.

Oh, and last August, another Iranian plane crashed near the Pakistan border. This one was loaded with military soldiers. All 302 died.

I predict more mysterious plane crashes involving military commanders and key Iranian political figures. The battle of Iraq is winding down, and the next battle is coming up.

Alito nomination hearings start today

2006-01-09T06:43:00.000-08:00

This is a Supreme Court position that may overturn Kelo vs. New London. The abortion issue is important, and I have strong feelings about that, but Kelo vs. New London strikes at the very heart of what it means to be an American; the right to own property. Too bad the hearings for Alito will address none of that; they will be about preening polititians of both parties trying to get camera time and get re-elected. How pathetic.

I recently purchased "The Goonies," one of my favorite kid movies, because our kids are old enough now to enjoy it and understand the concept: A group of kids trying to save their homes from a developer who wants to build a golf course.

Now all the pirate's treasure in the world couldn't save the Goonie's homes from the bulldozer, because 5 stupid people calling themselves "justices" decided they know better than the Constitution and the founding fathers. Private property is the foundation of our country.

It will be so again. Imagine living in the time of the Dred Scott decision, and the heartbreak of knowing that the Supreme Court upheld slavery. People must have thought that America couldn't survive.

Er, come to think of it, though, we had an entire Civil War not long after that decision.

This one -- Kelo vs. New London -- will turn out differently. We won't need a Civil War to correct the bad mistakes of some foolish old men and women. I don't need to watch the Alito hearings because I know he'll be confirmed, and we'll see Kelo reversed.

Goonies, if you recall, never give up.

Everybody likes looking at Cameron Diaz

2006-01-06T08:02:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking over the troubles in Australia, where Muslim men are harassing and sometimes assaulting women who don't cover themselves as the Muslim men believe they should. (This notion of saying "assault" instead of "rape" is sadly amusing. Orwellian in nature, the perversion of this word is beyond parody: The woman was thrown down, kicked in the ribs, punched in the face, and then assaulted. Okay then.)

This brings me to Cameron Diaz, who was so upset at President Bush's re-election that in an appearance on Oprah's show before the 2004 election, she said:

"Women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. . . . If you think that rape should be legal, then don't vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body," she advised Oprah's viewers, "then you should vote."

I read this quote in Mark Steyn's new essay on demographics, a long read but well worth it.

Cameron Diaz, like many other Hollywood actresses, has a great deal of empathy. She's a brilliant actress and that's perhaps the problem -- emotion is her talent and emotion can be manipulated. Her worries should be about whether or not she can safely walk an Australian beach in her tiny bikini. Strangely enough the person she has been manipulated to feel hatred towards is the one leader who's doing the most about Islamic fascism.

But not enough. I support President Bush in his war on terrorism but he isn't establishing women's rights in the countries where we've shed American blood. In Afghanistan, Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, an editor of a women's rights journal, was jailed for speaking out for, well, women's rights. He was freed January 3rd after women's rights groups worked for his release. He had to apologize, however, for speaking out against the death penalty for adultery and other sharia laws. The death penalty is only for women, you understand. Adultery in this sense includes forcible adultery, as in, rape. Or assault. Whatever you want to call it. In Afghanistan if you're a girl and you're raped, you get the death penalty.

This, this, in a country where our soldiers bled and died to free it from the Taliban! What does it profit us if we defeat the Taliban only to see the same form of government take place, this time under the watchful guns of our troops? How long until the enforced burkha, the denial of education and health care, the subjucation of women to a state worse than cows? (Cows, at least, can stand in their pasture and feel the sun on their faces. This is denied to a woman under sharia law. She has to wear a burkha at all times when outside.)

I want Cameron Diaz to walk freely on Australia's beaches. She's a young woman, an American movie star, and she is like a perfect sleeping puppy or a gorgeous sunset or a field of purple flowers: a gift from God. She displays her beauty in a bikini too tiny for words and I laugh in joy at that. You go, girl! May every girl have the right to splash in the ocean in whatever suits her, in freedom and safety.

She and every single woman in America, all of us, should be telling President Bush that he's not doing enough to establish freedom for women in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is a quote, possibly legend, from a British Officer who explained to an Indian Raj that the British would not allow suttee in India. Suttee is the practice where a man who has died is burned on a pyre and his wife is burned alive next to him. The Raj said to the British Officer:

"But this is our sacred culture. This is what we do."

"Our culture hangs those who burn women alive. And that is what we do," The British Officer replied.

That is what we women should do. That is what we have failed to do. It is time for all American women to stand up for our sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan, to make sure our country guarantees them the freedom and safety that they deserve. Because that is what we do.