Some days the weirdness of people just comes to the fore. This, apparently, is one of those days. Here's what today's news brought to my attention.
A fellow named Timothy Elliott won $1 million dollars on a scratch ticket; he's already received the first $50,000 annual installment of his prize. One problem: he's on five years probation for a January 2006 bank robbery in Cape Cod, and one of the conditions of his probation was no gambling -- including purchasing lottery tickets or being in establishments where lottery games are played. He goes before a judge December 7.
My wife heard Paul Harvey talk about someone burglarizing a shop named Everything Amish. He stole a big screen TV. Um, does this sound like a very un-Amish product to anyone else?
She also heard of a man in Aiken, South Carolina who went to the bank to open a new account. He handed the teller a $1 million bill. Hmmm. Seems the last place you want to go to pass off a bill in a non-existent denomination would be someplace where money is exchanged and transferred -- like, I don't know, a bank. He was arrested for disorderly conduct (he cussed the bank tellers when they refused his deposit) and two counts of forgery (he'd earlier bought cigarettes with a forged check).
Finally, I read of Richard Roberts speaking at a chapel at Oral Roberts University, where he told his student audience that he resigned as ORU president because God told him on Thanksgiving to do so the next day. "Every ounce of my flesh said 'no'" said Roberts, but he said he listened to the divine intervention after praying about it with his wife and his father Oral Roberts.
And so it goes.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
We Are Not At War
It's the pat answer, the four word phrase that is the other side of the coin from "9/11." It is the verbal mechanism meant to put critics of the president's war in Iraq on the defensive, George W.'s trump card whenever our liberties are eroded, our domestic priorities shoved aside, our basic decency closeted in favor of "enhanced interrogation" methodology.
He smiles into the crowd or the camera, and with the air of an explanation of the obvious to a small child he says "We are at war."
No, Mr. President, YOU are at war -- you and your cadre of Cheneys and Rumsfelds. If WE were at war, we would have been asked to sacrifice, to give of ourselves materially and emotionally as we have in wars past. Certainly we would have had more asked of us by you than to continue shopping. Shopping!
The devil is in the details, and a close look at your conduct of this "war" shows no real commitment of your soul, no summoning of the soul of America -- just a half-hearted deployment of military resources and a concentration of power in the executive branch to stifle debate and dissent. What motivated you to go to war in Iraq has still never been revealed. It certainly wasn't the noble-sounding fiction of WMDs under Saddam Hussein's control.
If this were really "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation," as you put it in your address to the nation on the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, there would not be a higher priority given to continued consumer spending to keep economic numbers up than to sacrifice for the greater good. Give up basics like "the greatest generation" did with nylons in the '40s? Heavens, that would be bad for business! Just wave a flag on your porch, watch Fox News, and be scared when we want you to go along with the next shenanegans - that's all we ask of you.
This country is better than you've asked it to be, Mr. Bush. The lip service you've paid to war betrays the shaky rationale behind the Iraq misadventure, which continues to bleed the real war front in Afghanistan dry, not to mention domestic issues like, say, the SCHIP program. You may have fooled the country into invading Iraq, but you can't lead it in a war on terror if, instead of asking for its help, you continuously try and scare it to death. Oh, and tell it to keep going to the malls.
He smiles into the crowd or the camera, and with the air of an explanation of the obvious to a small child he says "We are at war."
No, Mr. President, YOU are at war -- you and your cadre of Cheneys and Rumsfelds. If WE were at war, we would have been asked to sacrifice, to give of ourselves materially and emotionally as we have in wars past. Certainly we would have had more asked of us by you than to continue shopping. Shopping!
The devil is in the details, and a close look at your conduct of this "war" shows no real commitment of your soul, no summoning of the soul of America -- just a half-hearted deployment of military resources and a concentration of power in the executive branch to stifle debate and dissent. What motivated you to go to war in Iraq has still never been revealed. It certainly wasn't the noble-sounding fiction of WMDs under Saddam Hussein's control.
If this were really "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation," as you put it in your address to the nation on the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, there would not be a higher priority given to continued consumer spending to keep economic numbers up than to sacrifice for the greater good. Give up basics like "the greatest generation" did with nylons in the '40s? Heavens, that would be bad for business! Just wave a flag on your porch, watch Fox News, and be scared when we want you to go along with the next shenanegans - that's all we ask of you.
This country is better than you've asked it to be, Mr. Bush. The lip service you've paid to war betrays the shaky rationale behind the Iraq misadventure, which continues to bleed the real war front in Afghanistan dry, not to mention domestic issues like, say, the SCHIP program. You may have fooled the country into invading Iraq, but you can't lead it in a war on terror if, instead of asking for its help, you continuously try and scare it to death. Oh, and tell it to keep going to the malls.
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