Mark's Views, Perhaps โ from behind my eyeballs
Flies — would you like them here?
| Ashley Marinaccio, 20, a college student from Long Branch, New Jersey, said the ferry was like a “floating refugee camp” with “tons of flies,” few places to sit or sleep, five toilets, a shortage of toilet paper and several ill passengers.
“It got really dirty,” Marinaccio said. |
Or would you like them there…in Lebanon…where you lie in a crumpled, bomb-tossed heap…crawling all over you.
It seems a matter of perspective.
Just call me a fellow-complainer. ๐
| President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he used his first veto to block legislation expanding embryonic stem cell research, putting him at odds with top scientists, most Americans and some in his own Republican Party. |
Most Americans, but not me.
Good for him.
Speaking of dug in heels….
| The United States dug in its heels on Wednesday against U.N. calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, saying such a measure made little sense between a state and a “terrorist group” like Hizbollah.
Speaking hours after France proposed that the “It is very hard to understand from the people calling for a ceasefire how you have a ceasefire with a terrorist organization like Hizbollah,” Bolton told reporters. |
Thanks to WizBangBlog, I learned about this article by Richard Cohen at the WaPo:
| The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself. |
What a strange premise for someone with a last name like his. Or does his apparent “Jewishness” give him some insight I don’t have? Possibly.
This fellow over at The American Thinker objects. I tend to agree with his objections.
Actually, I read this article first — Israel’s moment:
| All of us in the Free World owe Israel an enormous “thank you” for defending freedom, democracy and security against the Iranian cat’s-paw wholly-owned terrorist subsidiaries Hezbollah and Hamas. |
Well, then, I’ll be watching to see how many nations (and individuals) express that thanks.
Should I say, “Thanks!”?
As a nation-state, I believe Israel is doing the right thing in a general sense.
Does that mean I’m thankful for the destruction and loss of life?
What a silly question.
So Oregon would like to try something in place of the gas tax, eh?
| Lee Younglove is motoring about town in a way that could be the future of driving in America: A state-installed GPS unit in his Subaru Outback is counting every mile he’s logging, and a special transmitter in the car will tell the pump at one of two Portland gas stations how many miles he has traveled.
Soon, as part of a state experiment, he’ll be paying 1.2 cents for every mile but won’t be charged the state’s 24-cents-a-gallon gas tax. |
Look, I don’t even like the GPS feature on my cellphone. I know, I know. It makes lots of sense for 911 purposes.
Even so, I’m leery of anything of mine having GPS that others can (eventually) abuse to my detriment.
One of the tragedies of war:
Children. Impacted for life.
Palestinian caught with bomb in Jerusalem
| A suicide bombing in downtown Jerusalem was thwarted Monday, after a 25-year-old Palestinian was caught carrying a bomb in a bag on a main city thoroughfare, police said. |
He gets another chance to get life right.
And so do his intended victims.
In other good news (which probably has garnered more media coverage):
| U.S. Space shuttle Discovery landed smoothly in Florida on Monday at the end of a 13-day mission meant to show the fleet is fit to fly safely, three years after the fatal Columbia accident. |
And in the Good-News-for-Bad-Guys category:
| Yet, not a single shot was returned by the deputies or the Border Patrol officers last Wednesday night because they were outmanned and outgunned รขโฌโ a condition increasingly common along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, say law enforcement officials. |
Then there’s the We-Truly-Have-Cleaned-Up-Our-Act department:
| In the classroom and across Saudi society, Saudi officials insist their message has changed dramatically. The land that produced 15 of the 9/11 hijackers now officially preaches religious tolerance and moderation.
In numerous statements, senior Saudi officials have specifically claimed that the kingdom has cleaned up all school textbooks. “We eliminated what might be perceived as intolerance from old textbooks that were in our system,” says Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. |
Alas, the above story continues with a reality check:
Nina Shea’s group โ the Center for Religious Freedom โ examined textbooks used during the past school year, and found the following teachings, which were verified by NBC News:
“It’s taught that Christians and Jews are the enemy of the Muslim,” says Shea. “And that the Muslim must wage jihad in order to spread the faith in battle against the infidel.” What’s more, an eighth grade text equates Jews with “apes” and Christian infidels with “swine.” A tenth grade text teaches that the life of a Muslim is worth twice that of a non-Muslim. |
Oh. Bummer.
And finally, on a more savory note, we have The Redemption of Rhubarb:
| My wife got my Mom’s rhubarb pie recipe from her, and she’d been making it a lot!
She has worked and worked on it and gotten it down to perfection. It’s a wonderful pie, tastes great and looks great too. |
Does the State of Israel truly value its soldiers this much?
Report: Israel gives Syria ultimatum
| The London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Saturday that “Washington has information according to which Israel gave Damascus 72 hours to stop Hizbullah’s activity along the Lebanon-Israel border and bring about the release the two kidnapped IDF soldiers or it would launch an offensive with disastrous consequences.”
The report said “a senior Pentagon source warned that should the Arab world and international community fail in the efforts to convince Syria to pressure Hizbullah into releasing the soldiers and halt the current escalation Israel may attack targets in the country.” Al-Hayat quoted the source as saying that “the US cannot rule out the possibility of an Israeli strike in Syria,”ย this despite the fact that the Bush administration has asked Israel to “refrain from any military activity that may result in civilian casualties.”ย |