Comments Posted By LKM
Displaying 1 To 8 Of 8 Comments
KERRY STORY BUILDING TOWARD CRITICAL MASS
Count me as one who accepts the latest apology so we can move on, but doesn't accept that it was a "joke" gone bad. There is little about war that is joke material. As far as I am concerned Kerry calling it a botched joke is almost as bad as calling the troops morons.
Comment Posted By LKM On 1.11.2006 @ 19:33
IS BUSH TOO SURE OF HIMSELF ON DOMESTIC SPYING?
Enjoyed your thoughtful post, Rick.
After 9/11 all we heard from the press were things like "why didn't we connect the dots?.....if we had connected the dots maybe we could have prevented this...international and domestic intelligence agencies aren't working together to connect the dots...yada yada". Well, one needs dots in the first place if you're planning to connect them later. Where do they come from? No one seemed to be asking that question in the months after 9/11. And the "we" the press referred to was definitely not you and me, it was the government they were chastising.
DocMartyn makes excellent points with respect to technology. Our buying and financial habits and patterns are tracked through our credit cards, while private spyware can and does track our internet use. We, as citizens, are captured on survelience cameras thousands of times a day. All of this without our permission or court orders. We are "patted down" at sports stadiums and airports. I don't like any of the new invasiveness, in fact, I hate it, but I deal with it because it's how life is in the 21st century. I guess I view the NSA intercept program for potential terrorists as part of that continuum.
Comment Posted By LKM On 3.01.2006 @ 00:17
Rick, how dare you insult innocent marmosets?!
Comment Posted By LKM On 30.09.2005 @ 18:31
WHEN "THAT'S THE WAY IT IS" ISN'T
What I believe is lost in so many discussions still going around the internet a month after Katrina, is that the death toll and mayhem from Katrina has ended up to be nowhere near what was originally predicted or feared (or rumored). Katrina was absolutely beyond horrible and many families are suffering terribly. I do not mean to diminish the deaths and destruction in ANY way. However, by any realistic standard 1000 dead is just not the same level of catastrophe as 10,000 dead….especially in a wide-swath cat 4 hurricane that hit in heavily populated areas. It’s just not. So, in my mind the whole story, the whole premise, is now different than it was presented early on with respect to blame or accountability- whichever word you prefer. Yet, it seems so many of us are still stuck at and reacting to the “original†premise and still (perhaps unconsciously) framing the story around that original (incorrect) premise of 10,000 deaths.
There is not one single level of government from the Parish administrators to City and State officials to the Federal government (including Congresses past and present) that did not make mistakes, did not miscalculate, did not mis-communicate, and did not fail to do things that should have been done to protect the populace both before and during the hurricane. That is a fact. It is undeniable. No one deserves a “pass†on this one. As a society we absolutely must evaluate all those points of response and responsibility in a clear-headed way, learn from the mistakes and failures, replace officials where warranted, redraw disaster plans, and try to do a much, much better job next time. (All the while knowing that circumstances will be different “next time†and things WILL still go wrong next time.)
But, in all fairness, every one of those governmental entities mentioned above also planned things, and did things, and ordered things, and appropriated things and arranged things that certainly saved lives and helped prevent an even worse catastrophe from materializing. Add to that the work of the private disaster response organizations. Maybe what they all did in concert was a large part of the difference between 10,000 and 1000 deaths? Can we accept or even entertain that possibility? Maybe the whole disaster reponse to Katrina was actually quite a bit better than we have been able to admit. Wouldn't it be interesting totry to at least test that out as a frame for the story?
Comment Posted By LKM On 29.09.2005 @ 15:57
MY WHITE SOX AND THE MYTH OF THEIR "COLLAPSE"
I was at the Sox-Twins game in the rain this Sunday afternoon. The Sox were poised and effective. The pitching was great. Then, Kansas City helped out the situation big time with their win over the Indians. Not to worry, Rick, the White Sox are going to be fine this year.
Comment Posted By LKM On 25.09.2005 @ 22:19
To paraphrase one of my favorite essayists, Bill Whittle, in his current effort entitled "Tribes"...after 9/11 people were wearing NYPD and FDNY caps to honor their first responder heroes, not ones that say FEMA.
Comment Posted By LKM On 5.09.2005 @ 14:23
A LETTER TO CINDY SHEEHAN FROM DYMPHNA
Thanks for pointing your readers to this poignant and insightful piece about a mother's grief.
My maternal grandmother lost her 16 year old son in 1927. She never, ever came to terms with it. She railed against God and the doctors. She could not bear to be around her son's high school friends because they were alive and he wasn't. Twenty years after his death she was still saying, "why did it have to happen to MY boy??". Decades later she passed away at the age of 93, angry, hateful and embittered to the end. There is no question she loved my mother, but there is no question that she cherished her dead boy more.
The Cindy Sheehan saga has, sadly, brought all this back to me. I see all the signs. Cindy is, indeed, lost. While I feel for her in her anguish, I feel moreso for Cindy's family and hope she does not put them through the years of hell our family endured at the hands of a woman who could not cope.
For her to allow her personal meltdown to be recorded and "shared" with the world makes it all the more tragic for everybody.
Comment Posted By LKM On 22.08.2005 @ 00:27
BANNING INDIAN MASCOTS AND OTHER STUPID IDEAS
From what I've read elsewhere, it's not just school symbols, but traditional names too that the NCAA doesn't like....Florida Seminoles and Fighting Illini would be unnacceptable along with the Utes. What is next, will whole states named to honor Indian tribes such as Illinois and Utah be considered politically incorrect also? And what about Indiana, for goodness sakes, which means Land of the Indians?
I graduated from the University of Illinois and collect vintage university memorabilia. Among my treasures are a pair of 1920's era heavy iron bookends in an Indian Chief motif made and signed by the Mining and Metallurgy Dept. and a wonderful Indian in headdress dish constructed and signed in the Dept. of Ceramic Engineering in the 50's. These are not caricatures or "mascots" but beautiful, thoughtful representations of Native Indians such as Remington might have sculpted. Where is the harm?
And why is any of this the NCAA's business?
Comment Posted By LKM On 7.08.2005 @ 00:19
