Darkness.

The History Channel is running a series on the rise of Hitler. They are showing footage that I have never seen before. I told myself to change the channel. I knew it would depress me, but I watched for awhile.

As they showed some footage of Hitler's officers. I moved close to the TV. I tried to peer into these stone faced men. I wanted to look into their eyes, but their eyes seemed dead to me. Empty and souless.

They showed actual filming of the soldiers shooting Jews lined up in ditches. A soldier stood off to the right side of the camera's line of sight with his back to the camera . Just before the shooting he turns to look at the camera as if to make sure it is getting the shot.

I peer closely to look at his face. My mind asks, "Who are you? What made you such a monster?" But he turns back as they shoot and the line of Jews fall silently and he is watching.

Chilling.

When I was 12 I read "The Diary Of Anne Frank" and cried myself to sleep. I drove my parents crazy with questions about it. Then I read Corrie Ten Boom's "The Hiding Place" about a family who hid Jews and was caught and sent to the camps. Only Corrie survived. And years later I read about the man who became my favorite Saint, Father Maximilian Kolbe who was a Priest who died in the camps. He took the place of a Jew who was asking for mercy from the guards. All true stories of incredible faith and strength.

It was a time of true horror, but these stories proved to me that goodness and love cannot be erased by the darkness of man's heart.

Oh Look!!!

Bush is canceling all of the debt in the poorest of nations of Africa as well as providing $674 million in additional resources to that continent.

Fox News says:

The United States has already provided $1.4 billion to Africa this year through the United Nations and separately pledged $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa over the next decade. Bush noted that U.S. aid for Africa has tripled during his presidency.

Guess we will be hearing all the cheering from the left about how generous Bush is.....NOT.

Poor President Bush. He will get NO credit from the left and my Southpark Republican friends are surely ticked at all the money he is giving away.

Only us compassionate conservatives are on his side.

Good thing he doesn't give a damn what those against him think. He just does what he thinks is right.

Bloody Toes.

When I was four my Daddy decided to build a pool in our backyard. Now when I say 'build' I don't mean he called up a pool company. He called a guy with one of those digger machines and he dug a great big whole and squared it off. Then he called a guy to come concrete and plaster it and he helped. The he called a guy to come lay concrete all around the pool. Then my Dad took real bricks and lined the pool. He stuck the hose in and in about a week, it was full.

No one had fences back then, much less wooden ones. Dad didn't want any child drowning in our pool, so he put a 8 foot chain link fence around the pool with barbed wire sticking out from the top. (yes, I said barbed wire) It was certainly safe now, but it had the ambiance of a federal prison.

So...my Dad bought some cream colored metal strips and wove them through the entire fence. He took some fast growing vine and wrapped it around the barbed and then he planted sugarcane in front of the fence.

So much better. Now it looked like a federal prison in Thailand.

Anyway, I guess I spent the better part of my summers of childhood in that pool. I love the water. I love to swim. But even with our rough summer barefeet bottoms, we couldn't escape the roughness and heat of the concrete and the brick. My toes especially would bleed like mad. I never noticed or cared until I was inside and Mom was putting bandaids on them.

Where am I going with this?

Five years ago we moved and I finally got the pool I had been waiting to get for years. We did call up a pool company and they built a lovely pool we designed ourselves. I put a nice patio around the pool called "cool deck" because it is soft and doesn't get hot. I built a nice "tanning bed" on the edge of the shallow end. We planted palm trees and all sorts of tropical flowers. It is my own little backyard paradise.....and I have to PUSH my kids out the door. With TV, computer, video games and such they find it hard to wander outside. So everyday I insist they go and push them out the door.

What a difference a generation makes. They sigh and roll their eyes when I tell them how lucky and blessed they are. I don't have stories of walking to school for 10 miles in the snow, but I have my bloody toes.

The southern equivalent , I suppose...;-)

Check It Out.

I have my first post up at The Unpaid Punditry Core. Ya'll please drop by and give me some support. *whispers* I'm thinking maybe I'm a token rightwinger, but I can't be sure....;-)

Well, well....Look at this. A pro-life popular actress blogging??? And on The Huffington Post no less.

And look here at another Huffington Post. A NY elitist tells the masses that we are too stupid to read Faulkner's best known books. Could he be anymore condescending? Oh, what do I expect anyway?

Dude.

No Pot for you.

Jeff at Protein Wisdom makes the point for state rights and has every link you could want except maybe where to score. But I am sure he could get that for you. When it comes to drug policy I depend on Jeff for all my information. He is a been there done that kinda guy..;-)

I thought I might expand on this post a bit. You might be surprised to learn that I am not against the legalization of marijuana. I am not for it either. I just haven't been convinced either way. I don't see the harm of patients experiencing nausea using it with doctor's care though and the Supreme Court ruling doesn't seem right to me.

I have never smoked pot. But when I was in theatre for many years I was around many who did of course. I would much rather be around someone high than someone drunk. I really don't see much of a difference in drinking and smoking even morally, except for the legal aspect of it. Many say it is a gateway drug, but I have found that if one wants to numb the pain they are going to go far to do that whether it be drugs or drinking. Those who just wish to relax, do just that. It is quite easy to distinguish between the two.

So I am ready to be convinced either way. What do ya'll think?

Update: Here is an excellent analysis of the Supreme Court case from GMU Law professor David Bernstein. His focus is on the rule of law and the federal government's role.

I realize I am mixing issues here but comment as you like.

The Therapist strikes again.

Sometimes making fun can make a good point. The Therapist does both with this.

"I was on my way to Owen's Pharmacy to pick up medication for my acid reflux, " she said. "When the man on the radio said that a Quran may have been subjected to deliberate and will binding overflex. I looked at my own self, and said life is so short."Campbell said she went home and hugged her own books, "not taking any of them for granted."24 year-old Josh Lupine noted similar reactions on his part."I remember studying about the German death camps in school by watching Schindler's List," he said. "It took days for me to get the implied images out of my mind. Then the other day, our coach pulls us aside in the middle of a varsity game and told us about Quran's having bookmarks removed from select 'kill the infidel' passages. I literally felt the cold winds of the Third Reich blowing through that game."

Heh.

*Snicker*

OpinionJournal has this:

"Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean further burnished his shoot-from-the-lip reputation Thursday" by suggesting that President Bush won re-election because Republicans are lazy, the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Asserting that some Florida voters stood in line for eight hours in November, Dean said that was a hardship for people who "work all day and then pick up their kids at child care."
But, he said, Republicans could stand in eight-hour lines "because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives."

Gee, I wonder how we are all so rich then? Did we all inherit our money??? All those redstaters.....who knew there was so much inherited wealth?

Check out the rest of the story. What is truly interesting is Dean's background. It was....well...wealthy. No one does hypocrisy like old Dean.

Dean is going to make the "08 elections so fun, won't he? Heh.

Another way of looking at it.

The WSJ.com gives us Arthur Chrenkoff's round up of Afghanistan: (emphasis mine)

Over the last few weeks, Afghanistan has been in the news again--unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. The media pack has made a brief reappearance in Afghanistan to report on carefully staged "spontaneous" riots, which briefly erupted around the country, ostensibly in protest over a report in Newsweek (later retracted) about desecration of Koran by the American military personnel at Guantanamo Bay.
Sadly, in the rush of commentary about Afghanistan's slide into anarchy and America's deteriorating position in Kabul, most of the international media again missed or downplayed many other stories, some of them arguably far more consequential than an antigovernment rampage whipped up by opponents of President Hamid Karzai. Take this story:
A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September.
Symbolically, the ulema shura, or council of clerics, was held at the Blue Mosque in the southern city of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban movement.
At the same venue in 1996 the Taliban leader held up a cloak said to belong to the Prophet Mohammed, which is kept in a shrine in the mosque. He was proclaimed Amir ul-Mumineen or Leader of Muslims by the same clerical body, one of the few occasions the title has been granted anywhere in the Islamic world in the modern era. This important gathering and its implications were reported by only a handful of news outlets around the world--in stark contrast to the news several days later about the assassination at the hands of the Taliban of the head of the council and the suicide bombing at the historic mosque during his funeral, which appeared through hundreds of media outlets around the world.
Faced with this sort of media coverage, President Karzai expressed his exasperation during his recent visit in the United States: "Sometimes--rather often--neither our press, nor your press, nor the press in the rest of the world will pick up the miseries of the Afghans three years ago and what has been achieved since then, until today."
Below, then, the past five weeks' worth of stories that were yet again completely overshadowed by terrorism and violence.

Read the stories. Be warned. The good news is long and pleasing.

Finally.

From MSNBC News:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Former dictator Saddam Hussein will stand trial for a range of charges - from gassing thousands of Kurds to executing political and religious leaders, according to a list of the cases against him obtained from the special tribunal Monday.

Let's get this show on the road. When the actual crimes of humanity are being reported on the nightly news, maybe some on the left will agree that this man/monster needed to go.

From the Amazing Minds of CBS News.

The La Times.com tells us that CBS evening news is "entering a period of experimentation" after Dan Rather's departure.

The article quotes CBS News President Andrew Heyward as saying, "We are showcasing a team of experienced, energetic journalists who present the world from multiple points of view,"

You mean instead of just a leftwing one?

Sweet.

Heyward went on to say:

"The anchor or anchors of tomorrow need to get off the pedestal and out from behind the big desk. People don't want to be told what to think. Just tell them what happened."

What an AMAZING concept!!! I think that is called......."reporting."

Gee, maybe we really are winning.

Wow, that was fast. Like he already had it written or something. Just waiting on the grim reaper, but now he didn't have to.

Gorbachev on Gorbachev.

Timesonline has a very interesting interview with Mikhail Gorbachev. Although his claim that Jesus was a socialist is laughable. But I always laugh when anyone tries to paint Christ with a political brush. Christ claimed to be one thing and one thing only. Our Savior.

I was touched by Gorbachev's description of missing his wife who passed away in 1999 until the last sentence:

"You can say I am lost. The first three years really threw me out of kilter. Raisa was always the foremost in my mind, and remains so in my memory. What Gorbachev is to the world, she is for me."

Think a lot of yourself there, don't cha Gorby? Geeze.

Gorbachev also speaks fondly of Pope John Paul. He says they wrote letters to one another up until his death. I would LOVE to take a look at those letters.

Anyway, good article.

We have a winner!
"Muscular, bearded, older man, seeks blue ox for adventure and folk tale creation."-Erik

A Question Of War.

Whew! I finally got home! I haven't been able to get to my hotmail account since this lightening thing so if you have e-mailed me I WILL get back to you. I will hopefully be getting it fixed this evening.

Ok, since I have so many leftie's attention I want to ask a question.

As many here will agree I am no intellectual. As I have said many times, I am a simple woman and I try to look at things in the simplest way possible.

Now, about this war. About 8 months ago or so I posted on the terrorists strapping a bomb to a down syndrome child. I was so angry I could hardly type. To do this to a child of such innocence just boggles the mind. I think we can all agree that that is the personification of evil. Can't we??? Can I get an Amen from the left and the right on that?????

Ok, so this is what we are dealing with over there. Pure evil. One commenter said once that those things were happening because we stirred up a hornet's nest over there. So let's go with that analogy.

If you discovered a hornets nest in your back yard and it stung your children badly, would you leave it alone? After all if you leave the hornet's nest alone, they are still hornets and they aren't leaving. They are breeding and making more nests and becoming more of a danger. Soon, they are in your house swarming and then you have a much bigger problem and have to deal with it in a much bigger way.

This fanatical Islamic belief isn't going away, it stung several times and will again if given the chance. One commenter here said that Pakistan was actually more of a danger than Iraq had been. Perhaps that is true. I don't know. But my question is this.

If you had been President after 9-11 what would you have done after Afghanistan?

My Tribe.

I just have to put up a positive post! I will be glad when I have some more time when I get home on Monday.

Remember when I forced ya'll to read my short story and in that story I wrote about the legend of the beginning of the world where there were but a few tribes of people? And now, if we are lucky, we find someone from our own tribe? Someone did actually tell me that once and I thought it was beautiful sentiment. I have found 3 people from my tribe on this earth and I feel SO blessed and lucky to have found them.

My best friends, who I have been visiting, are like my the sisters I never had. Through the many years we have known each other we have kept each other's babies and secrets, comforted each other, cried when I had to move, and loved each other and loved each other's children. We give and take advice. We vent our frustrations and we pray for each other.

I honestly don't know how I would have made it this far without them. They mean more to me than I can ever express. People say if you have one good friend in your life, you are lucky.

I have been three times blessed.

Deaths

I have been hearing quite a bit from the left about the number of civilian deaths since this war began. Here is something for my leftwing friends to think about.

Since abortion was legalized in 1973 in this country, more unborn children have been killed than human life taken in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq COMBINED.

And it wasn't from a war either. It was purposeful and legal.

So until the Democratic party can stand up against those deaths, they have no moral credibility with me on the issue of death.

Charles Krauthammer in Time Magazine rocks with this article regarding people "with deeply held views."

Here is an excerpt:

"The Op-Ed pages are filled with jeremiads about believers--principally evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics--bent on turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong--indeed, deeply un-American--about fearing people simply because they believe. It seems perfectly O.K. for secularists to impose their secular views on America, such as, say, legalized abortion or gay marriage. But when someone takes the contrary view, all of a sudden he is trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order."

Read the rest. Excellent.

What might have been.

Tech Central Station has an excellent article on "Operation Thunder."

"The much talked about "cordon and sweep" of Baghdad by an estimated 40,000 Iraqi police and military and "backed" by unknown thousands of U.S. troops has begun."

The article ends with what I think about all the time, but hardly anyone else seems to:

"The ongoing operations in Baghdad will be a deadly mix of tedium and danger. Innocents will be killed. Unintended but inevitable indignities will occur (and be duly reported). Desperate and deadly counterattacks will occur.

But, as bloody as these past weeks have been, and as bloody and uncertain as the coming days will be in Iraq, the real story -- hidden within little news and much noise -- is of the terrorist plans that will never be carried out, the attacks that will not occur. There is much, much more to all this than meets the media eye."

From all that we did after 9-11 with homeland security and invading Afhganistan and Iraq. Taking down Saddam, showing Syria, Iran, and Pakistan and the rest that we mean business...all these things...we will never know all that we prevented. We will never be shown a "how it would have been" ending of this drama.

With all the horror that occurs with war, we will never know the endless horror that didn't occur because of it. We can only imagine.

Thank God, we only have to imagine it.

It is what so many refuse to see or understand.

This Is Your War blog is shutting down. Too bad. It was one of the most well written exciting Milblogs. He truly had a way with the keyboard. If you haven't read him, go through some past posts. It's like reading a Tom Clancy novel. He really knows how to put you right there with him.

I just thank God we have the Milblogs. Because if it is between what the MSM is saying and the milblogs, I believe the warrior everytime.

Looks like California's Maxine Waters may be getting some opposition from one of our soldiers.

Very cool.

Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities gives us a hilarious look at everyone's 15 minutes of Hitler fame. (Only Jeff could make this funny) I just love you Jeff.

Welcome to all the newcomers!! It seems I have picked up some lefties which I am sure McSwain and Dirk are happy to have on board!! Here is the thing on my blog. No F-word, no S-word and no personal insults. I ban anyone who breaks these rules after being warned. Maybe many of you are used to hurling insults on other blogs, but I discourage that here. I want a reasoned civil debate. If you can't play that way, don't come here.

I think it would help to know some things about me, where I came from and what made me care about the things I care about. Here are some past posts that are personal and will help you to see who I am.

Thanksgiving

My Dream

Love Means Loving You Anyway.

This Life

http://rightwingsparkle.blogspot.com/2005/01/post-below-leads-us-to-this-post.html

Presidental History.

This whole thing about "deep throat" has gotten me to thinking about the eery similarities between President Nixon and President Clinton.

Both did something immoral and wrong.

Both lied to the American people.

Both of their respective parties said that despite their President's misdeeds they were still great Presidents.

Both had their respective parties say that past Presidents did the same thing, Nixon and Clinton just got caught.

Both had their respective parties understand how wrong it was to have leadership without moral clarity and discipline and allowed their leader to resign.

Oh wait. No.

Only the Republican party did.