Death by gunfire

"Since the killing of John Kennedy in 1963, more Americans have died by American gunfire than perished on foreign battlefields in the whole of the 20th century. In 2005 more than 400 children were murdered with guns."
If these two sentences from The Economist, April 21, 2007, (pg 11), don't surprise, shock, enlighten, and make you wonder if we will ever come to our senses about guns in America, then you must be brain dead or callous to the extreme.

Disappointed at dinner

Last night I took a party of seven to the Outback in North Charleston and came away disappointed with the food. This was my favorite restaurant in the North Area for years. For openers the bloomin' onion was overcooked or fried in grease long past its shelf life. It was dark brown and hard, almost brittle, more so than I ever recall.

I ordered my usual - the New York Strip Steak, which is usually rectangular and anywhere from 7/8s to and inch and a half thick (depending on the quality of the restaurant) with a thin strip of fat along one side. (See picture from www.lacensebeef.com/shop/steaks/new-york-strip).

The steak I received was flat like a small pancake and about one-half inch thick, more like a sirloin or rump steak. I sent it back and several minutes later a woman supervisor brought me another identical steak. When I complained this was not a NYSS she told me it was and it looked as it did because of the way I ordered it: "medium well, with just a slight touch of pink in the middle". In 50 or so years of eating New York Strip Steak, I never heard this idiotic comment before.

Food probably lousy, but bombing?

A bomb exploded in the Iraqi Parliament's cafeteria in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified, U.S.-protected Green Zone Thursday, killing eight people including three lawmakers.
The attack came hours after a suicide truck bomb blew up a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed.

The little engine who could

In France the railroad set a record of 357.2 mph for a train zipping through the countryside from Paris to Strasbourg as Frenchmen cheered along the route. In Hanahan, SC, where I live, the total speed for the three to six trains a day plodding through the countryside doesn't reach 357 mph, as drivers wait at the crossing and file their nails. (The Japanese hold the record for train speed having reached 361 mph some time ago.)

As if we did not.......

As if we did not have enough distractions in traffic, now there is news of a cell phone on which the almost brain dead can watch any one of hundreds of inane offerings on some two to three inch screen. DVD players are already in cars, though usually for viewing by children in the back seat. There is a serious effort underway to take phones to the next level: real-time TV shows. For several weeks now when I stop at traffic lights I look to the left and right of me to see if drivers of other cars are on the phone. The vast majority of them are. I can hardly wait until they can watch some TV show. And how thrilling will it be for all of us when the mentally challenged speed across the Ravenel Bridge at 95 miles an hour while watching some NASCAR event live from Florida.

The ? of a pardon

After Dick Cheney resigns the vice president's office then President Bush ought to pardon Scooter Libby. We need a quid pro quo.

SecArmy and Walter Reed Commander fired

(Photograph postcard, ca. 1930s.)

The Army briefly stiffed wounded servicemen late this week but on Friday Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and President George Bush struck back and kicked Army Secretary Francis J Harvery out of office and fired the one-day temporary commander at Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, who had been in charge there in the 2002-2004 period. Kiley recently put down the Washington Post revelations of horrific living conditions and complaints of veterans and parents and others about inadequate services to wounded servicemen returning from the battlefield as one-sided and inaccurate.
My earlier blogs on Walter Reed include: Feb. 24, March 1, and earlier today, March 2, on the shocking appointment of Kiley who veterans groups and others said had been told about some of the problems as far back as 2004.
All over America people are upset about the situation at Walter Reed. It's incredibly arrogant that Harvey and top Army generals allowed Kiley to be put back in charge of Walter Reed. Did these dummies believe Americans would sit still for such goings on?

Army to wounded - take this

The Washington Post reports in a front page story that the "appointment of Kiley, (Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Command), who had earlier been the facility's commander (2002-2004), surprised some Defense Department officials because soldiers, their families and veterans' advocates have complained that he had long been aware of problems at Walter Reed and did nothing to improve its outpatient care." The Washington Post criticizes Kiley in an editorial: "The evidence compiled so far suggests that Gen. Kiley has been more complicit in the scandalous neglect of Walter Reed's outpatient facilities for longer than Gen. Weightman has been. It also indicates that the Army's reshuffle is really about projecting the appearance of accountability, not punishing those most responsible."

He's gone

The Army brass today (March 1, 2007) fired Maj. Gen. George Weightman as head of Walter Reed hospital in Washington, DC, after troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were found to be living in shoddy conditions and struggling with a complex bureaucracy. Good. Now straighten the place out.

Heads ought to roll

It was absolutely mind-boggling ridiculous that The Washington Post had to turn its guns on Walter Reed hospital to get repairs underway on a building where recuperating GIs are housed. I cannot believe the senior military officers responsible for the terrible shape this building was in could not have seen it until the Post made an issue of it. This is another example of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Department of Defense having enough money to shoot up three-quarters of Iraq, but not enough for the Army to fix up a rat and bug infested housing unit. Secretary of Defense Gates (who took over from Rumsfeld in December) ought to fire the senior officers involved. It would be interesting to know if the Walter Reed annual budget request to the Department of the Army included a line item for repairs to this disgraceful building and in what years and, if so what happened to those requests. If there were no such requests for funds made, then the General in-charge ought to be publicly sacked.

David Rattray, 48, dead - murdered by Zulus

David Rattray, 48-years old, master-storyteller of the Zulu War, died January 26, 2007, murdered by a gang of six Zulus intent on robbing him at his home at Fugitive's Drift in South Africa. Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote in 2003 after my wife and I completed an independent, self-guided, two month, driving trip around South Africa:
“At Fugitive’s Drift camp, a small isolated camp in the Karoo (bush country) that uses generators for electricity, we stayed with a dozen tourists, mostly from England and Northern Ireland. One asked Mary at dinner, “When did you book?” Mary said we had not booked, just drove up and asked for a room. (It was the last one available.) Our new British friends commented about “impulsive Americans,” and said they had booked seven months earlier.
“David Rattray, owner of Fugitive’s Drift, is a native of the area. The Anglo-Zulu war is a major event in the long history of South Africa, and Rattray’s lifelong interest. He lectures at the British War College on this subject. On a late Sunday afternoon sitting under trees in folding chairs at nearby Rorke’s Drift, we listened to him for more than two and one-half hours on how 135 British soldiers, on January 24, 1879, successfully held the small camp at that site against more than 2,000 Zulu warriors, some with guns, most with spears and long killing knives. The assault lasted from four in the afternoon until four the next morning. Earlier in the same day the Zulus had savaged the British Army at Isandlwana. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded the defenders at Rorke’s Drift, more than in any other single battle in Britain’s long history.” (see African Adventure-2003 )
The Economist (Feb. 10, 2007) said, “As his stories unfolded, battle-hardened generals would find themselves in tears.” Rattray was a voice for reconciliation in South Africa. Natives in the KwaZulu-Natal called him friend and a “White Zulu.” All the more awful, then, that he was killed by Zulus, who went away empty handed.

No Senate Seat for Bill

The speculative idea floating in some political circles about appointing Bill Clinton to fill the vacancy in the Senate when Hillary is sworn in as president is a waste of the man's talents. The country would be better served if he was Secretary of State in the new (2009) administration. This would apply even if Hillary is not elected, (are you listening Al Gore?).

One man's (blank).....Redux

Viewers added these to the catalog of One man's (blank) is another man's (blank):
One man's junk is another man's treasure. (2 nominations).
One man's right is another man's wrong.
One man's beginning is another man's ending.
One man's charity is another man's love.
One man's solution is another man's dilemma.
Does anyone know what you call these phrases?

One man's (blank) is another man's (blank).

A blog had this recently: “One man’s blog is another man’s message,” and it got me to thinking about this phrase “One man’s (blank) is another man’s (blank)” and I wondered how many such phrase’s are out there. Here are some I have heard (quote marks ignored):

One man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
One man’s loss is another man’s gain.
One man’s addiction is another man’s profit.
One man’s woman is another man’s tryster.

If you have others please send them to me and we will add them to the list. If you don’t wish to comment here e-mail them to archinsc@knology.net and I will post them anonymously.

Letters from Iwo Jima

If Clint Eastwood's latest, "Letters from Iwo Jima" is such a hot film and collecting kudos all over the place, how come it is only playing on one screen in one theatre in the greater Charleston, SC, area? There are ten theatres with almost 100 screens in this area.

Pay attention

I guess it is my own fault, obviously paying too much attention to clipping my toenails or pulling lint out of my navel, to keep up with the Anna Nicole Smith story. My appreciation therefore to E Online for informing me this afternoon that: On Monday morning, the Tribune of Nassau published two front-page photos featuring Smith and Shane Gibson, the nation's chief immigration official, lying fully clothed in bed in romantic embraces. Gibson has been widely criticized for reportedly granting Smith special treatment in her application for residency and for allegedly speeding up the processing of her paperwork.

Drinking, judging and watching

Being a water conservationist and a dog owner can be a tricky balancing act. In a segment of the HBO series Six Feet Under a woman living in a cabin in the woods had a sign in her bathroom to wit: If it is yellow let it mellow, if it is brown flush it down. David Frei, in his 18th gig as the on-air commentator for the The Westminster Kennel Club's 131st Annual Dog Show, says that the dogs people see on the show drink out of the toilet.

Given the course of events in the Libby trial it is near impossible to believe the jury will exonerate. Of course that’s what most everyone believed in OJ's trial.

Was I ever wrong back in 1995. My wife and I were in a cinema in Paris (had to purchase reserved seats) and watched several commercials for various products before the movie played. It was a first time experience and I said we would never see this in American theatres. And yet ads in American movie theatres are showing surprising strength, according to The Wall Street Journal, and movie-goers are sitting through them; apparently preferring them to staring at a blank screen waiting for the flick.

Sex plays

A NEWSWEEK poll found 84 percent of adults said sex plays a bigger role in popular culture than it did 20 or 30 years ago and 70 percent thought this a bad influence on young people, especially girls. It is also an influence on older people, including, obviously, doctors. I have been in two different doctor's offices lately and observed seven drug reps making their rounds. They were each female, young, tall, thin, great hair, wide toothy smiles and dressed to attract the eye of even a blind man. I bet the caption over the employment office at their companies reads: Roseanne Barr types need not apply.

Who in their right mind...

A House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is pursuing investigations of fraud and abuse by the federal government and its contractors in Iraq. Chairman Henry A. Waxman, (D-Calif.) said he found it remarkable that the Bush administration had decided to send billions of dollars of American currency into Iraq so quickly after the United States occupied the country.
The committee calculated that the $12 billion in cash, most of it in the stacks of $100 bills, weighed 363 tons and had to been flown in on wooden pallets aboard giant C-130 military cargo planes. “Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?” Mr. Waxman said. “That’s exactly what our government did.” (By the way, no one knows what happened to the money, where it went or who got it in the first place.)

Microsoft's Vista and its critics

I do not have the latest Microsoft operating system, Vista, installed on my PC yet, but I am amazed at the griping by so-called PC experts (who enjoy the privilege of magazine and newspaper columns), most of which involves the continued use of older programs, printer drivers, and the like. Such people certainly ought to be smart enough to recognize the responsibility of each product manufacturer to provide updated drivers to assure continuity of use with any new operating system. When the first system was put in use manufacturers wrote their drivers, why shouldn't they do the update? Program and equipment manufacturers have had more than a year to update their drivers to work with Vista and some have failed to do so. I've used the Microsoft operating systems since day one and am generally satisfied, even though I had to work on some problems. Over the years, I have had more bad meals in restaurants and problems with other equipment than with Microsoft. Some of the complainers remind me of the man about to be executed by firing squad who complained because he wasn't being shot with new bullets.