When God is not Love

Court Jester Fred Phelps is really beginning to get on my nerves. Surely, the local folks who the man harrasses can find some legal ways to give it back to him. Claiming to be a Biblical preacher, surely he will understand that you "reap what you sow". It is time for this man to get a little of what is comin' to him. On the other hand, maybe he won't "get it". By his line of reasoning if you commit a sin, that soldier in Iraq will get the bullet instead. He believes in a God who punishes by proxy. What a novel theology! But beyond that, in America you do retain the right to be stupid.

Claiming the dead soldiers in Iraq are God's punishment for America harboring homosexuals, he and his band of two hundred congregants get off on showing up at military funerals to jeer and insult those that mourn their children, fathers and mothers. His congregation is pretty much subjugated to him by marriage and blood line. I have never supported mandatory sterilization of certain population groups. But Heck, I could make an exception for this crowd. They are definitely scraping the shallow end of the gene pool.

The man is just a first class loser. Accepted at West Point, he walked away from the opportunity. He drifted about to drop out of a couple of universities before finally getting a two year theology degree from John Muir Junior College. Naturally, we have all heard of that place! Right up there with Cornell and Georgetown, I am sure. The man is a classic profile in "Anger always seeks a target". His earlier target was women. Having had a previous swing at a boxing career, he is famous for telling congregants "A good left hook makes for a right fine wife." He has also targeted the families of miners killed in a recent accident with signs that stated "Miners in Hell". My bet is this group had to look up the word "Miners" in a dictionary because it is a two-syllable word. Back to the need for sterilization....

A group of bikers have formed up to become "The Patriotic Guard Riders" and provide a human shield between Mr. Phelps and his court of fools. God Bless them for their kindness, time and expense. These are good Americans! But surely, there are a few creative ways to send Mr. Phelps and his clan back into the cave to which they belong. Let's discuss some LEGAL ways to stop his activities aside from limiting free speech. Creativity is the key. smile Remember, he has the right to be stupid. But even donkeys, can be taught an occasional lesson!

(Editorial note: Mr. Phelps's mother died at age 28 of throat cancer. I would love to hear his theological take on that one.)

Tammy Swofford
tammyswofford@yahoo.com

A Point of Light in an Otherwise Dark Sky

An article in a recent issue of The New Yorker contained two shocking pieces of information. One, we are wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars because we don’t understand the homeless problem. Two, President George W. Bush put someone in charge of finding a solution to the homeless problem who knows what he is doing.

The situation is this, people think the homeless problem is too large, so all that can be done is to manage it. It can’t be solved. All that can be done is to provide meals through soup kitchens and flops in shelters. The assumption used to be, and still is in many communities, that homelessness follows what statisticians call as standard distribution, or bell-shaped curve with a few people homeless for a day, a few people who are in need of serious psychological help, and the majority people who are homeless for months at a time. If the world really looks like that, city administrators have no choice but to try to do the greatest good for the greatest number. Hence, soup kitchens and shelters.

But, about 15 years ago, a Boston College graduate student, Dennis Culhane, discovered that homelessness doesn’t have a normal distribution. It has something called a power-law distribution which looks like a hockey stick rather than a bell curve. What Culhane found was that 80% of the homeless were only homeless for a very short time, a matter of a day or so. Most stayed in shelters for two days and they don’t come back. Another 10% are homeless for several months at a time, usually in the winter. The final 10% are the hard core homeless. Most have psychological and/or drug abuse problems.

It is this 10% that accounts for 90% of the costs of looking after the homeless. They tend to have horrendous medical problems which are treated in hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units. If it is a medical admission, it is likely to involve a very complex pneumonia. When they are drunk, they can aspirate and get vomit in their lungs which produces abscesses. They also tend to have hypothermia from lying out in the rain. All this will put them in the intensive care unit with huge lab bills as the medical staff tries to combat complicated infections. On top of that, drunks tend to get hit by cars, trucks, buses and trains. Many don’t need outside agents to bang them up. They fall down and sometimes crack their skulls which can induce a subdural hematoma, which will have to be drained. Meanwhile, the patient is going through withdrawal and has a nicely developed liver disease. Medical costs in excess of $100,000 a visit are not out of the question. That could buy a lot of soup and quite a few cots.

A five year study of 119 hardcore homeless in Boston found that even though 33 of the subjects died and seven others went into nursing homes, the group still wracked up 18,834 emergency room visits. That is almost 32 emergency room visits per year per subject. The minimum tab is $1,000 per visit, or $32,000 per person per year, just for medical treatment, if each visit was for the minimum, which it wasn’t.

On the other hand, a significant number of the hardcore homeless respond favorably to having an apartment and a structured life. Many get sober and find jobs which allows them to pay at least part of the rent. In Denver, a small one bedroom efficiency costs $450 per month, which means that almost six apartments could be made available for what it cost to treat one hardcore homeless person.

That arithmetic appeals to Philip Mangano, the executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness since his appointment by President Bush in 2002. Mangano describes himself as “an abolitionist” whose mission is to abolish homelessness and not merely to treat the symptoms. He is a leading proponent of the power-law way of looking at the problem and finding homes for the hardcore homeless. Giving a homeless person an apartment and a structured life doesn’t work every time, but it works enough to make a difference.

Tom Gordon

Another Sign of the End of the Republic

Watching Mary Maitlan on the Sunday talk shows I was struck by the fact that nobody gets it. The fundamental principle of our Republic is equality before the law. That is why all judges wear the same black robe, to demonstrate that everyone gets the same justice. The late Chief Justice didn’t understand that simple precept, which is why he was a terrible judge. That, and his loopier opinions.

Ms. Maitlan had been brought in to create sympathy for the vice president, who had just shot his very good friend. Gee, by that standard, we should have proclaimed a week of mourning for the Menendez Brothers since they killed their parents. I thought the lily that adorned the Maitlan breast was particularly á propos since her argument was dead on arrival.

To those non-hunters among the readership, who would dismiss Mr Cheney's action as "an accident" and no way comparable with the Menendez brothers, I would say that hunters have an obligation to know at all times where their projectiles are going and what they are going to hit. That is why, although Texas issues more than 1 million hunting licenses a year, accidents only average 30, or three thousands of one percent. That number includes the drunk, the careless and the stupid. That someone who is not a lot more than a heartbeat from having his finger on the biggest trigger in the world should shoot someone is an act of unconscionable recklessness. Not a characteristic one should look for in a president, or a vice president.

The vice president of the United States acted like an arrogant jerk from beginning to end. He is sworn to “preserve, defend and protect” our Constitution. That means he should have made sure that he was available to law enforcement immediately. He should have gone to the sheriff’s office immediately to make his statement, if, for no other reason than out of respect for the realities of south Texas politics. Getting crossways with the Armstrongs just about guarantees that a sheriff would lose his job. Cheney should have gone in immediately because that is what would be expected of any other person in this country.

That the vice president not only waited 14 hours, but did not make sure the sheriff’s deputy wasn’t sent away when he came to the ranch in the execution of his lawful duty, demonstrates that there are two kinds of law in this country, and that is tantamount to no law at all.

And, yes, I made the same argument vis á vis William Jefferson Clinton. When people, even the President of the United States, are accorded special and extra-legal treatment, that is the beginning of the end of the Republic.

Tom Gordon

Tsg0008@sbcglobal.net

The Land of Oz

It is a children's movie with adult themes. Richly textured, much as the painting of a Grand Master, "The Wizard of Oz" remains a favorite film classic for many people. Our American culture would do well to revisit its' many themes. But one theme which stands out for me is the handling of the issue of regret. Lion lacks courage, Scarecrow seeks a brain and Tin Man needs a heart. Each of these three, are fully self-actualized in understanding that which they lack, and with a palpable sense of regret, they embark on their journey to change the course of their lives.

Our society has become one which expresses no regret. Just in the last week, in our own backyard we had an example in Texas. Tom Malin, a Dallas Democrat running for the first time for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives, was side-lined by an anonymous tip. This tip was given by a fellow Democrat, who felt that Mr. Malin's little secret might get out AFTER the primary and cause worse damage to the Democratic Party at a later date. After a local news organization got the "sniff" from the tattle-tale they surfed the net looking for archived material and sure 'nuff.... there was Tom Malin, advertising as a male prostitute for $200-600 dollars a whack. Of course there were also testimonials from satisfied clientele. Naturally, he proclaimed all of his illegal activities a thing of the past, and stated that he had no regrets. No regrets? None at all?

Unfortunately, our culture has become one which denies responsibility. I have tracked this trend for years now and it is best seen played out in the pages of Parade Magazine from week to week. Here is a composite sample:

"Hi. I am a famous person who has been made rich by you idol-worshipping masses out there who love my movies. I make more for one film than you earn in a lifetime, but hey, that is o.k. My drug use started in tenth grade and there are three years of my life that are a blur. I kicked that habit, but my liver is now honeycombed from alcohol abuse. My first three spouses were slapped around a bit but the kids all go to private schools. I am now forty-five years old and have a psychotherapist who strokes me every week and tells me that I am a good person. And by the way, I have no regrets. Nary a one."

In our modern world of self-esteem, not making others "feel bad" and lack of personal accountability we have created a world of no regrets. It is a world in which we only deceive ourselves, but not others. It is much better to be like Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow. They regretted that which they found deficient in themselves. By taking regret not as a negative but a positive, they journeyed together to find a better life. Take a moment today and do not be afraid to reflect. To admit to regret is not all bad. It can be the beginning of needed change!

Tammy Swofford
tammyswofford@yahoo.com

Preface to Monday Blog: 8:46 and 9:02

Just the facts:

Number of people murdered: At least 2,986

Bodies found intact: 289

Body parts retrieved: 19,858

Firefighters/paramedics murdered: 343

NYPD officers murdered: 23

Children losing a parent: 3,051

Dead citizens of various nations: 115

Cost of compensation: 38.1 billion dollars
(Insurance and federal gov.
paying 90 percent)

New Yorkers with PTSD after 9/11: 422,000

Individual who still remembers 9/11.

Every single day..... see below:


Tammy Swofford.....Yep, Tammy Swofford.

Valentine’s Day Redux

Now that the flowers are beginning to wilt and the chocolate is moving to the hips, now that you have gotten over being dragged from your chair before the downhill had been raced to go to a white table cloth beanery which features small portions and huge prices, let’s look at our annual day of passion, affection, whatever.

The origins of Valentine’s Day are shrouded in mysteries as deep as why milady doesn’t like lilies. Flowers are flowers, and I got rid of the RIP message, honest.

One legend says that Valentine was a priest in third century Rome who secretly married young lovers to keep the groom out of Claudius II’s army. A tradition many of our current leaders kept alive during Vietnam. The Roman emperor thought that single men made better soldiers, and so forbid young men to marry.

Another widely circulated legend claims that Valentine was in prison waiting to be executed when he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter who visited him daily. He clearly didn’t have anything to lose. The story goes that he sent the first Valentine, a letter which he signed “From your Valentine.” Interestingly, history does not say whether the lady in question bothered to try to get her daddy to keep the boy alive. Sound familiar, guys?

Given its cowardly or heartless tradition, it is no wonder that this Valentine’s day a young man’s thoughts did not lightly turn to thoughts of love. Google searches for flowers were down 20%. Apparently, the guys have more important things on their minds, or were too pooped to pop for flowers after shoveling nearly three feet of snow.

Or is it the fear that Wall Street’s former best girl will start selling search information. There may well be women out there who would love to know that their main man let his fingers do the walking to cut-rate tokens of his undying affection.

If that happens, you can expect a curious aftermath of Valentine’s Day to get even bigger. Divorce lawyers report that their business sky rockets after February 14. To all you clueless guys with the deer in the headlights looks in your eyes after the process server’s visit, the old song says it all: “It don’t mean a thing if you don’t bring the bling.”

It is not that I am really anti-Valentine’s Day, or that I resent having to do something for She Who Must be Obeyed just because the calendar says I do. I just want to know, when to we get our day? When does wifey stagger into the house with the Hi Def, 97,000 inch TV and the complete Bay Watch series? When does she take me out to the sports bar for a huge chunk of dead cow burned or raw as desired? Maybe Valentine’s Day had a reason when women were stuck at home, but now?

Tom Gordon

Your Profligate Government

It looks like our government and the oil industry are colluding to rip us off. We, the American people, own public land which includes the deep Gulf of Mexico. Our government is supposed to maximize revenue from the use of that land, including realizing royalties on production of oil and gas from that land. Royalties are usually between 12% and 18% of the value of the resource produced. The government also auctions off the right to look for oil and gas on public lands, another source of revenue for us the taxpayers.

In 1995, Congress decided to encourage exploration and production in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico by granting royalty relief on production from those waters more than 1,000 feet.

Congressman Richard W. Pombo (R-CA) explained the plan this way, “It was Congress’s intent that if oil was at $10 a barrel, there should be royalty relief so companies would have some sort of incentive to invest capital. But, at $70 a barrel, don’t expect royalty relief.”

It sounds eminently reasonable for people who believe in economic engineering and have no faith in the free market. The question is, if that were Congress’s intent, why didn’t it draft such a law instead of the one they did write which is threatening to come apart at a cost to the American taxpayers of $28 billion over five years?

Kerr-McGee Exploration and Development thinks it has discovered a flaw in the 2000 rewrite of the Outer Continental Shelf Deep Water Royalty Relief Act which will allow all Gulf of Mexico producers to escape 80% of royalty payments. The company filed suit against the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the arm of the Interior Department charged with collecting royalties, last week.

Even without the Kerr-McGee suit, the MMS is costing us $7 billion over the next five years, according to a story by Edmond L. Edwards in the New York Times on Tuesday. Taxpayers are getting ripped off in two ways, royalty relief, and because producers under report the price of the oil and gas they produce. As Edwards writes: “But an often byzantine set of federal regulations, largely shaped and fiercely defended by the energy industry itself, allowed companies producing natural gas to provide the Interior Department with much lower sale prices -- the crucial determinant for calculating government royalties -- than they reported to their shareholders.” As a result, even though gas prices nearly doubled between 2001 and 2005, the $5.15 billion in royalties collected for 2005, is less than the $5.35 billion collected in 2001.

From what Edwards has uncovered, it is apparent that MMS is aiding and abetting the petroleum industry’s efforts to avoid paying royalties. Under the law, companies can avoid paying royalties as long as prices remain below specified “threshold levels.” The trouble is, now that those prices have exceeded threshold for more than a year, the MMS has not yet gotten around to asking the companies to pay.

On top of that, starting four years ago, the Bush administration has ordered MMS’s auditors to look for anomalies in company posted prices rather than to make detailed inspections. MMS has also fired two of its most aggressive auditors, men who have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars of underpaid royalties.

When Edwards asked about the discrepancy between the prices reported to MMS and the prices reported to the companies’ shareholders, MMS professed itself surprised and then produced a new set of statistics which made the difference disappear by shifting 15% of gas production from 2004 when prices were high to 2001 when prices were low. Unfortunately for MMS, their new production figures did not agree with those kept by the Department of Energy’s, Energy Information Administration.

I wouldn’t care about all this Congressional and bureaucratic incompetence if it weren’t for the fact that those billions would have erased the need to reduce spending on student loans, civilian and veterans’ healthcare, the environment, etc.

Tom Gordon
tsg0008@sbcglobal.net

Drug Consumption for Goal Attainment

The Saturday Financial Times had a well-written article titled "Drugged Runners", by sports editor, David Owen. Well-written, does not mean I agree with his philosophical take on performance enhancing drugs and professional athletes.

Setting the stage with the well-known case of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, stripped of his gold medal in the 100m of the 1988 Seoul Olympics after testing positive for anabolic steroid use, Mr. Owen makes a rather impassioned plea for a loosening of the rules. He gives several reasons why he values a change in the existing rules. Let's take a look at some of them.

Stating that athletes who are "clever" and armed with a good chemist and lawyer are the ones who get away with it, he bemoans what we already know. Doping is a big problem in professional sports. He proposes a leveling of the playing field by applying deregulation of certain substances so that all can partake freely.

He also gives the rather weak argument that there is an onerous burden on athletes to watch what they eat and that they must keep the International Association of Athletes Federations aware of their whereabouts on a quarterly basis. They must notify them of any change should they be tapped for an out-of-competition drug screen. Cry me a river. I can look at my calendar right now and tell you what is on my plate for the next quarter and notifying someone of a change is not problematic either.

When writing of mandatory drug testing the editor states, "....procedures inflict some pretty striking indignities on those we are encouraged to see as national heroes....The athlete may be required to disrobe as far as is necessary to confirm that the urine has been produced by him....exposure from the middle of the back to below the knees." SURELY, no one is going to buy into this complaint to slacken drug consumption rules! Let's put it in perspective. Many corporations require drug screenings for employment and random testing. If they are done right, we all know the drill. I give urine to the Department of the Navy at least three times a year in random testing. I am made to keep the collection bottle in view as I hike my skirt, lower my underwear and squat precariously over a toilet trying to hit the bottle, which is always too small for the female anatomy. The observer then watches me finish up, wipe up and reverse the disrobing process. I then walk out the door and maintain chain of custody by walking by a hall of men waiting their turn to "give back to their nation". Tape my bottle up, initial two or three places and I am done. No sympathy from this Navy nurse.

Swatting in a weak way at the medically hazardous outcome for athletes using anabolic steroids, he omits any substantial listing of potential dangers. You may find a partial listing on the blog done on anabolic steroid abuse. (To Your Health, Dec. 8, 2004)

But of greatest concern should be the psychological impact on our children if we change the rules. Moving from a tradition of denying usage of performance enhancing drugs; from drug enforcement to drug allowance standards sends a dangerous message to our children. What does it teach, when they figure out that drug consumption for goal achievement is an acceptable part of our society? We need to combat the arrogancy of the individual professional athlete who has moved beyond the spirit of competition into the domain of seeking "the win" at any cost.

We have teenage girls consuming diet pills to lose weight in America. We have college students abusing amphetamines and stimulants to make it through final exams. We have male and female athletes in our high schools, and now even documented into our Junior High taking anabolic steroids to make the local school sports team.

Can we maintain a standard in professional athletics that will provide an example to our youth? Do we want to become a nation that allows anything and everything "for the win"? Do we want to allow drug consumption, performance enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids, stimulants and EPO to boost our athletes into the stratosphere of achievement? Or do we prefer our local hero win the gold for the home team the good old-fashioned way? Hard work and discipline, excellent teamwork and team spirit! What is needed for "the win" should never come from a pill or a needle and syringe.


Tammy Swofford
tammyswofford@yahoo

This is for Tom!

SMILE!


Let's see if Tom Gordon will crack a smile!





Tammy Swofford

SWOFFORD UNLEASHED

Democratic and free societies are founded upon certain principles and from the upholding of said principles, is visible fruit. The root of a free society is freedom of the press. And from the guardianship of the right of the press to speak freely, is extended the concurrent ability of the general populace to also express opinion.

The right to print opinion, whether in the form of political satire in cartoons or ed-op pieces written by editors has given rise to what we now see in free society. In America, there are eight million bloggers. Tom and I just try to gain our own market share little by little. And from the tap root of free speech we see many kinds of fruit, some which are good eating and yet others, indigestible. Some nourishing, others poisonous. But just as in the Garden of Eden, the story of original man, Adam, we all have a choice. Do we pick it and eat it or just walk away and leave it alone? It is there, hanging out in the open for all to look at and ponder. But do you partake? That, remains the individual choice in a free society!

Truth is a coin with two sides. The truth is that Jyllands-Posten had a right to publish the cartoons. The truth is that Muslims are offended. Those are the two sides to the coin when looking at the cartoon crisis. But the greater truth must be maintained and is the following: News organizations, bloggers, dot.commers and others have the right to say and print what they desire in a free society. Truth is only maintained when there is allowance for free discourse to rat out that which is deceit.

The deceit we are seeing now is that intimidation is being used as the weapon of choice by those who would demand the bend of the knee of Western Democracy to a totalitarian form of thought. If we are not free to speak without fear of threat, freedom of speech becomes the ghost of what it was meant to be.

The deliberate attempt to overthrow freedom of press is on the march. Do you hear the cadence? The cadence, has been steady and unrelenting in the last week. But this cadence, has been carefully planned. The scenes with the mobs show actors on a stage. The directors, remain in the shadows. There are two kinds of change in society: *that which is brought about by judicial and legal means and *that which is sought by populist revolt. Grassroots movements are good when they seek to merely "tweak" our democratic form of government. The populist revolt over the cartoons is a different animal. This animal, seeks not to tweak, but to scorch the landscape of democracy.

The issue is not about the offense to a religion in the final analysis. The issue is whether we want to remain free to print anything, say anything or choose our own course. This revolt must be rejected for the very reason it cannot be accepted. Free society must NEVER ACCEPT A MUZZLE ON SPEECH. We must stand firm in this matter. This intimidation must be pegged for what it is; it is an extra-judicial means of bringing pressure on our legal system to handcuff the right to speak freely.

Support freedom of the press. And when you read, merely bite into the good fruit. Savor the joys of our daily news, cartoons, favorite columnists. There is much good. And the few poison apples? Don't bite!

Jyllands-Posten didn't start this fight. You lack foresight if you think they bumbled along this path. They stepped into the ring as the next fighter lined up for the bully. They have given notice. It is time to finish it once and for all. It is time to let the lip be bloodied, the eye blackened.... but not the time, no not ever, to be pinned to the ground. Support the power of a free press over the power of those who agitate against it!

Tammy Swofford
tammyswofford@yahoo.com

Presidential Powers at War

Is Congresswoman Heather A. Wilson (R-NM) a hero, or merely a cagey political operative in a tight race to keep her First District seat? Who knows, but the facts are these. Rep. Wilson, who chairs the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, broke ranks with the White House and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program. It sounds like a gutsy move since Karl Rove has sworn election day revenge on anyone who bucks the administration’s position on domestic spying.

However, Mr. Rove’s threat seems empty. The Republicans have a comfortable majority in the House and Senate, but they don’t have enough seats to throw any away. More likely, any retribution will occur when committees are assigned.

Rep. Wilson’s bold call may be posturing. She knows that Rep. Peter Hoekstra, chair of the House Intelligence Committee will not hold such an inquiry. His position is that “the terrorist surveillance program is critical to the safety and protection of all Americans.” Mr. Hoekstra recently chastised the Congressional Research Service for daring to write reports questioning the legality of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.

It is too bad that a full inquiry is not likely because this is a bedrock constitutional crisis. At stake is the fundamental principle of separation of powers. Are there any circumstances under which the president can supercede Congress in the making of laws. Actually, presidents have been very close to doing that for years through the presidential finding procedure which, in one notable case, led to Iran-Contra.

The question really isn’t, “Did the president authorize extra-legal surveillance in time of war?” He admits that he did and offers the extenuating circumstance that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was inadequate to the needs of the times. That extenuation was seriously weakened when the President refused to request changes to FISA.

Proponents of unlimited presidential power, including the current incumbent, his vice president, the Attorney General and John Yoo, a former White House counsel, base their case on a number of points. The most germane is the belief that the presidency was badly weakened after Watergate. While undoubtedly true, the Cheney opinion overlooks the simple fact that Richard Nixon badly abused the powers he had, which is why they were taken away.

Others, depending on the intellectual sloth of their listeners, point out that president Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. They imply that this was an extra-legal act. It was not. The Constitution clearly says that habeas corpus may be suspended in times of invasion, rebellion or when the courts are not working. None of those conditions currently applies.

It would seem that, if one were looking for parallels on which to found a basis, one would look at President Roosevelt’s powers during the Second World War. Unfortunately, despite that fact that the Second World War was a far greater danger than the war on terror, President Roosevelt did not suspend the fourth amendment, as it applies to citizens. Before the war, he did order the Army Signal Corps to wiretap the German and Italian embassies, which was against the law. Only the FBI was empowered by Congress to do that. But they weren’t very good at it, so he had the Army try.

Although usually cited in defense of renditions, Guantanamo and other places where people are being held without charges or access to counsel, we might as well talk about ex parte Quirin, the 1942 miscarriage of justice. Eight German spies were landed on Long Island and Florida to wreak havoc in the land. What the four who landed in New York did was to shop at Macy’s. Two tried to turn themselves in to the FBI in New York. Although the FBI knew that suspicious people had landed on Long Island a week before, the special agent in charge refused to take them seriously. So, these threats to the national security took a train to Washington DC and turned themselves in at headquarters.

J. Edgar Hoover, who immediately took credit for the capture, realized that these people could not be tried publically because the truth would make the FBI a laughingstock. He went to Roosevelt with a carefully fictionalized report of how the capture was made and convinced him that the case ought to be tried in camera before the Supreme Court. The FBI controlled all aspects of the trial, prosecution as well as defense. Six of the eight were shot, including the two who turned themselves in, while the other two received jail sentences because they had helped capture the Florida spies. I suppose it was a small price to pay to preserve the mythical reputation of the FBI.

Tom Gordon
tsg0008@sbcglobal.net

Bushonomics

President Bush’s FY 2007 budget proceeds from reasonable assumptions to a document from which any pol would run. That may explain why none of the House Republicans called a customary press conference to welcome the document to the chamber, and why Senate Majority Leader Frist was at best tepid in his reaction, while the Senate cheering section of Cornyn, Sessions and McConnell pretended they were somewhere else when the document was delivered.

Joshua Bolton and the rest of budget wonks have assumed a gross domestic product of $13.8 trillion, economic growth of 3.3%, consumer price inflation of 2.4%, a 91-day t-bill interest rate of 4.25 and a 10-year Treasury note interest rate of 5.3%. All reasonable expectations.

It is when we come to the deficit that things begin to go wobbly. Mr Bush proposes to spend $2.77 trillion (plus at least $50 billion in the off budget costs of Iraq and Afghanistan) this fiscal year, while revenues are expected to reach only $2.42 trillion. That is about a $354 billion shortfall, or 2.6% of GDP, if Congress goes along with Mr. Bush’s plan. If not, the deficit is expected to jump by $423 billion, or 3.2% of GDP.

Why would a Republican-controlled Congress not leap at the chance to support their president? Primarily, because the budget is not what they were cheering about during the State of the Union.

Congressmen from both parties were absolutely delighted that the President wanted to recruit tens of thousands of new math and science teachers. That will be tough when the budget proposes to slash education spending by 28.5%. That means eliminating 42 programs totaling $3.5 billion. These programs include money for the arts, technology, parent-resource centers and drug-free schools. Technology. It is going to be hard to maintain a technological edge without labs and computers.

On the plus side, he wants to give $100 million to private schools in the form of vouchers. He also wants to bail out the No Child Left Behind law by requiring two additional years of testing in high schools, a $1.5 billion project. As far as is known, the NCLB law has succeeded in pushing a lot of students out of high school before they get their diplomas. If you cut off the bottom, the average rises, but you still have a rapidly growing population of undereducated people scarfing up entitlements because they don’t have the skills to make a living.

Another portion of the Bush education program would have done away with federal aid to vocational education, but Congress wasn’t having that last year, and probably won’t bite this year, either.

Over at the Department of Agriculture, the mandatory food and nutrition program for indigent school children will serve a record 30.9 million children this year, up 700,000 from last year, but the economy is doing fine.

While having to increase meals for school children, the administration wants to take food stamps away from 300,000 people because they get other noncash government help.

Then, there is the part of the budget that proposes to deny a monthly carton of cheese, cereal, peanut butter and other staples to 400,000 low-income elderly people. I wonder how Congressman Pete Sessions of Texas is going to run on that in parts of his district, especially when Mr. Bush wants to cut 26% from Section 202 housing, and to cut Section 811 in half. Both are programs aimed at low-income elderly.

With the financial problems hospitals are having, Mr. Bush’s plan to slam hospitals for $38 billion is nothing if not brave. Too bad, nobody is going to use that as the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

Another area that drew cheers from politicians looking with trepidation at November was American Competitive Initiative. The good news is that Mr. Bush is asking for $500 million for this project. The bad news is he is getting the money by killing the Advanced Technology Program which helps bring innovation to market. He also wants to kill the Public Telecommunications Facilities, Planning and Construction program meaning highspeed Internet will not be coming to rural America any time soon.

Mr. Bush is proposing $4.1 billion over 10 years for research into hydrogen fuels, supercomputers and energy efficient lighting, plus $298 million for research into ethanol, biodiesel and solar power, which ought to play well in Iowa and Arizona, but at the cost of other projects since Department of Energy spending would be reduced by 1.8%

Then, there is the $35.9 billion cut to Medicare over five years, just as more and more people become eligible. Now, it really isn’t a cut. People will just have to pay more while getting less. The $1.4 billion cut in job training, housing and health programs intended to reduce poverty is also in the budget. I wonder how Mr. Boehner of Ohio is going to run on those numbers.

Tom Gordon
tsg0008@sbcglobal.net

COURAGE and CHRISTINA

Yesterday a reader posted an article link about a woman who refused an abortion and chemotherapy during pregnancy. She delivered a healthy son, had him baptized in the Catholic faith and died a week later.

In Texas many of us followed the similar story of Lisa Landry Childress. During her pregnancy in the spring of 1991, Lisa, the youngest daughter of Coach Landry of the Dallas Cowboys, was diagnosed with liver cancer and advised to have an immediate abortion and begin aggressive chemotherapy. She refused, carried the pregnancy, and delivered her daughter Christina. Ten days later she received a liver transplant and subsequently lived on until 1995 when she succumbed to complications from the liver transplant.

Unfortunately, approximately 1:1000 women receive a cancer diagnosis during their pregnancy. Most commonly is breast cancer, follow by cervical cancer, then lymphoma and thyroid cancer, as the four most common carcinomas coinciding with pregnancy.

Traditionally the first treatment option offered to a pregnant woman with cancer is abortion. This is understandable. As is stands, very few physicians are willing to incur the liability of chemotherapy with concurrent intrauterine fetal development. Add to that the fact that the medical community does not have enough data and longitudinal studies in place yet on the offspring of women who have undergone chemotherapy "with Mommy", as indeed they have, and it is a hard throw of the dice.

Women are offered agonizing choices, none of which are good: *termination of pregnancy, *risk to the mother's life if the pregnancy is sustained and *risk to the life of the baby. Very few oncologists will take on a woman who wishes to maintain a pregnancy. Luckily, things are gradually beginning to change.

Since 1989 more than fifty pregnant women with breast cancer have sustained their individual pregnancy and gone through cancer treatment at M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas. Studies are slowly emerging that give a measure of hope to expectant mothers. A study of pregnant women with lymphoma has followed some of the children who were in the womb at the time of treatment for more than eighteen years now. One of the big concerns was the effect on the fertility of the offspring. Some of these, have already demonstrated fertility and continue to do well physically also.

Statistically, not many women are diagnosed with cervical cancer during pregnancy but the options depend on the cancer staging. If the cancer is an early stage, the woman may continue her pregnancy to term and seek to deliver vaginally and then have a hysterectomy. If the cancer is more advanced, it is recommended that when possible, and safe for the baby, that a C-section be done, and the woman may then pursue a hysterectomy and radiation treatment.

The John Hopkins Thyroid Tumor Center recommends the following for pregnant women with thyroid cancer: *surgery if the cancer is large, an aggressive variant or has spread to other sites in the neck or elsewhere (recommended at months 4-6 of gestational age of the fetus), *delayed surgery until after childbirth if the cancer is small and *treatment with thyroxine should be started on all these women to somewhat put the thyroid cancer tissue "to rest". Radioactive iodine is not given during pregnancy or if the mother is lactating.

A pregnant woman with a cancer diagnosis presents the medical community with the most desperate of emotional plights. But this plight is also not solely borne by the woman and her physician. It can be difficult for a husband torn emotionally trying to weigh the inconceivable choice. Which life is more valuable? This suffering can extend to children who may not possess the emotional maturity to understand either the abortion of an anticipated playmate and sibling, or the illness of their mother.

We need more oncologists willing to treat these women. In expanded treatment opportunities and research, more data can be gathered. We need physicians who will support the client who chooses not to terminate a pregnancy in spite of cancer.

When a woman faces her own mortality with a new life growing and kicking inside of her, what path will she choose? If she is brave enough to look toward a life yet unseen which may be the only visible remembrance and extension of her own life, doesn't she deserve that shot if she chooses the risk? Doesn't she deserve an incredible medical support team that matches her own incredible courage? Christina Childress will probably agree.

Tammy Swofford, R.N. BSN

*Administrative note: Blogspot domain will be down for maintenance at 0900 PST tonight.

END OF WATCH

Officer Jim Sell of the Gassville Police Department in Arkansas, lost his life in the line of duty on Saturday, Feb 4, 2006. He was shot once in the arm and twice in the head by Jacob Robida, age 18. This man was being sought in the hatchet-and-gun attack in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Officer Sell merely thought he was dealing with a routine traffic violation.

Wanting to check out the statistics of officer deaths in the line of duty I found a great site. It is very sobering to pull up the "recent deaths" and see the one submitted for Officer Sell. His death is so recent that it does not include his photo, but merely a cameo of an officer.

Since 1791 over 17,000 officers have been killed in the line of duty. Checking out the statistics by states and U.S. territories, only California has more deaths than Texas. The deaths range from such simple things as chasing suspects and having a heart attack from the exertion, to attacks by prison inmates or police officers riddled with bullets answering domestic violence calls.

One interesting memorial told of Marshall Hence H. Harmon from Kentucky. He died in 1896 pursuing a man out of town on horseback. Both men exchanged gunfire and died from their wounds.

Sadly, the date of death for our officers is titled "End of Watch". We need to stop and reflect that the end of life for some of them is indeed a violent one. The violence is perpetrated on men and women who carry the generic title of "peace officer". Officer Sells died after pulling a man aside for a traffic violation. He may have had dinner with the family in the back of his mind. Maybe he was thinking of church on Sunday and watching the Super Bowl. Instead, he came to the end of his watch.

I have written a note of condolence already and it will go in the mail tomorrow. You will find the address to his police station on the website. Please consider doing the same. Families need cards when a member dies. But notes of remembrance can be especially comforting to the family of a murder victim. Take the time. And the next time you get pulled over for speeding.... thank the officer for wearing the uniform.

Tammy Swofford
tammyswofford@yahoo.com

Mirror, Mirror

“O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notion:”
Robert Burns, “To a Louse”

For those of you not conversant with the Scots dialect: “If only some Power would give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us.” Unfortunately, Providence has not seen fit to answer Rabby’s prayer. Instead, anthropologists have coined the term “mirroring” to describe the more common practice of expecting everybody to act, think and believe as we do. And as the poet observed more than 200 years ago, that practice leads us into blunders and foolish notions.

Last September 30, the Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s largest daily newspaper with a circulation of 670,000 weekdays, published 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad to illustrate an article on the Face of Islam as part of an ongoing public debate on freedom of expression. While the Carsten Juste, the paper’s editor-in-chief, described the pictures, in an open letter to “Honorable Fellow Citizens of the Muslim World” dated February 3, as sober and not intended to give offense, they certainly were not intended to be representations of what the Prophet might have looked like. They were purely politic cartoons, and any suggestion to the contrary insults the intelligence of anyone who has seen them.

Juste further attempted to extricate himself from the firestorm by noting that after the paper published its cartoons, a more virulent set cartoons began circulating in the Middle East ascribed to the Jyllands-Posten. While that may be true, it in no way exonerates Juste.

Why would Denmark’s largest paper publish those cartoons? First, under mirroring, they didn’t realize what they were doing. For instance, if the paper had run a dozen political cartoons of Martin Luther (85% of the population is Lutheran which is also the state religion), it is doubtful that the Lutheran world would have stopped buying Danish bacon and butter, or cancelled subscriptions to the paper, or that the Danish government would have intervened.

There may also be a darker reason. Since the London bombings last summer, it has been widely suggested that Denmark may be al-Qaida’s next target. It is a country of 5.4 million people, of which between 150,000 and 190,000 are Muslim. There are 500 Danish troops serving in Iraq.

The formerly open and extremely free Danish society has undergone severe changes. Queen Margrethe, in an authorized biography said the Danish people had to take the challenge of Islam seriously. She said she disapproved of “these people for whom religion is their entire life.”

The Centrist-Right Danish government instituted some of Europe’s toughest restrictions on immigration which make it much more difficult for immigrants to bring their wives and families into the country. The Danish Supreme Court ruled that a supermarket chain had the right to fire a woman for wearing an Islamic head scarf.

After the July 7 London bombings, Kaj Wilhelmsen, a Danish radio host, said there were two ways of making sure no more bombings occur. One is to deport all the Muslims in Europe and the other would be to kill the fanatical Muslims, which would mean killing a substantial part of Muslim immigrants. His station was taken off the air for three months.

The slanging goes both ways. Fadi Abullatif, the spokesman for the Danish branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, was charged with calling for the killing of the Danish Government. Rikke Hvilshoj, Denmark’s Minister for Immigration, had her car fire-bombed. The flames spread to her house where she, her husband and her two children were sleeping. No one was hurt, but members of the government now have bodyguards.

Elsewhere in Europe, several publications have taken up the Jyllands-Posten cause, and republished some of the cartoons, as a press freedom issue. However, freedom is not license. Freedom has an obligation to act responsibly, which is why the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government may issue prior restraints to prevent the equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, and to prevent the publication of troop movements in time of war. Those cartoons, from the Muslim point of view, are yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater.

Tom Gordon
tsg0008@sbcglobal.net

WHAT WE MUST NOT ALLOW

12 Cartoons

2 Muslim Ambassadors Recalled from Copenhagen

1 Danish Ambassador kicked in the arse in Kuwait

Two civilians beaten

Boycott of cookies

Clerics standing on a flag

Calls for punishment

French editor fired today

Death threats

A fatwa against the Dutch

If you have not been following the story that ties all of the above together the only allowable excuse is that you have been in a state of suspended animation. I have followed this story since it broke in early October of last year.

But to bring you up to speed here is the deal. A Dutch news organization, Jyllands-Posten, printed a cartoon panel of twelve frames showing the Prophet Muhammad in a less than favorable light. Each panel, a different scene. The worst was one of Prophet Muhammad with a turban that looked like a bomb with a lit fuse hanging off it.

The pot that has simmered since that time is about to explode like a pressure cooker all over Europe. The steam on this thing, has built for months. But just this week journalists and news organizations in Europe took a stand when several newspapers reprinted the whole set of cartoons in support of their Danish brethren under siege.

They are under siege for something which we all respect in the West. We respect freedom of speech! Freedom of speech means exactly what it says. You have the freedom to agree with others, disagree with others or even insult them. The only thing you are not allowed is to threaten people. And an increasingly threatening posture is rising up among the Muslim community against the host countries in which many of them dwell as immigrants. They are threatening us for what we respect. In America and in Europe we respect freedom of speech.

Do I think the cartoons are in poor taste? Of course. But is this worth the stampede of the herd to gore and disembowel journalism from its rightful place in a free world? Do journalists have a right to print what they want? Do political cartoonists have a right to paint the canvas as they see it? We need to stand firmly against any who would strip us of such privilege.

What we must not allow is that any group of people be given the right to silence the voice of their opponent. For when we lose free speech, human liberty in its entirety is also lost. Support free speech even when it may surface in a distasteful ed-op piece or cartoon with which you do not agree. We support the process, not necessarily the product!


Tammy Swofford
tammyswofford@yahoo.com

Rah Rah Rah

The former yell leader went back to what he knows. Leading cheers. Those of us who listened to the State of the Union Message are no more informed about the state of the union than the miners in West Virginia who died because safety regulations were relaxed on his watch.

Unfortunately, Mr. Bush’s speechwriters got tied up in their own rhetoric and, in one
place said, “And we do not forget the other half—in places like Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran—because the demands of justice, and the peace of the world, require their freedom as well.” Then, the President said, “to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect you right to choose your own future and win your own freedom.” So, in one place he says Iran has made the wrong choice, and in the other he said Iran has the right to make wrong choices, but we are not going to let you have nuclear weapons.

He started out by alleging as fact, something that is not established when he said “the United States of America will continue to lead.” It is not clear to me that the United States is leading anyone anywhere. As a matter of fact, ever since President Bush decided to invade Iraq, even American newscasters have ceased to refer to the president as the leader of the free world.

He resurrected the ghost of 9/11 saying that if we had only been able to listen into some phone calls, all would have been fine. The fact that he had been briefed on exactly what al Qaida was up to a month before the attack was not mentioned. In any other country in the civilized world, the government of the day would have had to resign after a 9/1l attack. It would also have to resign if it had blundered as badly as the Bush administration had done with Katrina relief, but that is another matter. What is known is that NSA leads have been useless and the president does not get to decide what is legal and what is not. That is for the courts or the Congress to decide.

His recipe for Iraq: I know what I am doing. You do not. So shut up. It is inconceivable that anyone actually believes that things are going as well as Mr. Bush would have us believe. The news is out. Millions of dollars of rebuilding money was lost to gambling, fraud, and graft. Iraqis have less electricity than they did under Saddam. Oil production is far below what it was under Saddam. Kidnappings, bombings and freelance assassinations were all but unknown before we invaded. Yes, we held three elections and people voted, but the country is in a civil war. As one observer pointed out, “The war in Iraq is over and Iran won.”

Mr. Bush’s glasses were particularly rose-hued when he waxed rhapsodic about the state of the U. S. economy. He said we have created 4.9 million jobs in the last two and a half years, but that is half as many as any of the other recoveries since the Great Depression. He said that his tax cuts have put $880 billion in the hands of American workers, investors, small businesses and families. Yet industrial investment has not increased. People are not using those putative $880 billion for the designed purposes.

As a Texan, I know that tort reform, our version of Mr. Bush’s national medical liability reform, has not produced more doctors, or lowered insurance costs. All that it has done is to disallow the right of citizens to ask the courts to redress wrongs.

The President’s Advanced Energy Initiative is nothing he has not talked about in his previous State of the Union messages. Believe it when you see it.

The big push of this year will be Health Savings Accounts, which make just as much sense as last year’s push, Social Security reform. Basically, Health Savings Accounts are based on a couple of lies. It is not a savings account since if you don’t use it, you lose it. In other words, if you dutifully put money into your HSA and don’t use it in that year, the money goes to the U.S. Treasury. Some savings account! Secondly, even if you could afford it, you won’t be allowed to save enough to make a difference if you have a significant health problem. This program will do nothing for the 46 million Americans who currently do not have health insurance.


Tom Gordon
tsg0008@sbcglobal.net