January 2003, week 4
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January 2003, week 4
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Monday January 20 , 2003 MLK B'day I like the idea of honoring Martin Luther King, of anyone in the last Century I think he comes closest to personifying what America is all about, he had his life taken from him for standing up for what was right, King was as much a patriot as anyone. The ideals he stood for and the image he projected are as heroic in scope as any I have ever seen. M. L. King stood up when few others had the courage, he made himself a target for bigotry knowing full well that he may not survive... he was quite a man. I took the kids to the movies, there wasn't much for me to see at the theater the kids wanted to go to, most saw saw The Tuxedo with Jackie Chan, "B" saw Adam Sandlers 8 Crazy Nights a cartoon, and I saw I Spy... really stupid but I laughed a lot so it wasn't a total loss. I've been busy all day, going to call it a day. Tuesday January 21 , 2003 Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves. Larry King
I have no idea why this cracked me up, but it did... I am curious if anyone else had the same reaction We got through today OK, but Christy's back is out again... we were going to attack our bedroom and toss a bunch of stuff, and we did but not as much as I had hoped... we need to spend another day in there. I forgot Autumns medicine again today... well, to be more precise, I remembered her medicine after I got home and Christy took it to her later in the morning... I forgot to take Mike to the Probation Office today... that's not good... even though it's Mike's responsibility, I feel guilty. Here is an interesting e-mail I go from Bill Mason... some smart preventative maintenance for protecting your credit.
Rumsfeld made his comments Jan. 7 in response to a reporter's question about an effort by some in Congress to reinstitute the draft. Rumsfeld said he saw no need for a draft because the all-volunteer system works better. "If you think back to when we had the draft, people were brought in, they were paid some fraction of what they could make in the civilian manpower market because they were without choices," Rumsfeld said. "Big categories were exempted - people that were in college, people that were teaching, people that were married. It varied from time to time, but there were all kinds of exemptions. And what was left was sucked into the intake, trained for a period of months, and then went out, adding no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time, because the churning that took place, it took enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone." The Democrats jumped on it (14 days later) with this: "We are shocked, frankly, that you were apparently willing to dismiss the value of the service of millions of Americans, tens of thousands of whom gave their lives for their country in World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam," they wrote. Then the Republican Spin Doctors wrote Rumsfeld a plausible response: In his written apology Tuesday, Rumsfeld described his remarks on draftees as "not eloquently stated." He said he had not meant to say draftees added no value while they were serving. "They added great value. I was commenting on the loss of that value when they left the service." Rumsfeld said he had no intention of disparaging the service of draftees. "I always have had the highest respect for their service, and I offer my full apology to any veteran who misinterpreted my remarks." It is rare for a defense secretary to issue a written apology on any topic. "It is painful for anyone, and certainly a public servant whose words are carried far and wide, to have a comment so unfortunately misinterpreted," Rumsfeld said, adding that it was "particularly troubling" to know there are service men and women - past and present - "who may believe that the secretary of defense would say or mean what some have written. I did not. I would not." First Lott, now Rumsfeld... tomorrow ? Wednesday January 22 , 2003 Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee. F. Lee Bailey
Beautiful Sunrise this morning... Christian took this picture for me. 7.8 Quake in Colima Mexico... 7.8 it's a wonder more people weren't killed... we are due up here... Did anyone watch the Abortion Protesters? Damn... what a pointless exercise. Why isn't there a Pro Adoption group... All that passion ands all that venom and no one's mind was changed, nothing at all was accomplished except to further alienate the participants. Bush is placating the Anti Abortion Mob by chipping away at the law to the point where Roe vs. Wade will be irrelevant, a fetus will have more rights than the mother carrying it
I listened to some "man on the street" interviews, it is boggling to me the level of ignorance of my fellow man. Some quoted unsubstantiated "facts" about what a degenerate Saddam is another said we shouldn't go to war because God stands for peace, one guy said we needed to wipe out Iraq because they were all terrorists and others were all over the map for and against. Only one said "No, he's no longer a threat, why go to war?" I got the probation meeting rescheduled to Monday at 10:00... the PO actually seemed pretty amused by the fact that Christy and I had called him about 10 times each... and left messages... I looked into DNA testing today for genealogy research... after listening to the news and reading all the forensic miracles they can perform with DNA Matching I figured I could give a drop of blood and find my way back to Adam. Well silly me, first you don't need blood you use a swab inside your cheek and for heredity the only viable tests are performed with the DNA of men using the Y chromosome. The way I read this DNA stuff is that Y chromosome DNA matching is done to prove or disprove one male’s genetic link to another male. The Y Chromosome is passed from father to son not from father to daughter, males (using the Y Chromosome) can trace their ancestry back through every direct paternal male ancestor indefinitely with gradually diminishing accuracy but Females (X chromosome using mtDNA) can only go back a few generations on their Maternal side with any reliability and after two or three generations it only gives you a sort of generalized probability of Ancestry. i.e. Mr. Poole can go back through his father, Grandfather Poole, G Grandfather Poole ad infinitum and prove a genetic link to the male descendants of the brothers of any of these men, but he can not trace any other related surname because you would have to go through a female to do it. This page spells it out pretty concisely: … and this chart is pretty specific about what you can and can’t accomplish with DNA Testing: http://www.familytreedna.com/ancestorchart.html The test’s cost from $175 to $300 depending on the lab you use and the type of test. I think it would be interesting and worthwhile to find a minimum of three direct male descendents from each of the four “original” Doggett - Daggett lines (Benjamin, John, Thomas and William) and prove once and for all if they are related. Once this is done any of the other “orphan” Daggett lines can have a test done and try to match with the existing DNA data… I am willing to pay for my test at any agreed upon lab if I can line up some folks from the other lines ahead of time, to my mind it’s too expensive to get involved in if I can’t get commitments from least two of the other lines. Here are some labs: http://www.duerinck.com/dnalabs.html Taken
verbatim from the Quick Takes column in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Thursday January 23 , 2003 FOX welcomes Joe Contagious by Marni Malarkey © Copyright 2003 Broken Newz
Cashing in on the "Joe Millionaire" craze, executives
at Fox have announced plans to make a sequel to the series called "Joe -- these
stupid women don't know he's got an infectious and fatal disease."
The scary part is that it would probably be a big hit, followed by Joe Cross-dresser, Joe Transvestite, Joe Rapist, Joe Homicidal Maniac and finally Joe Cannibal. In my humble opinion "Reality" shows bite. It is the lowest form of pandering to the the basest instincts of humankind. No one has yet to explain to me where the entertainment is in seeing someone demeaned and humiliated in public... If someone were to treat them the way the poor boobs are treated on those shows they would come back with an UZI... I would. There is nothing entertaining for me watching someone be sucked into a situation where the sole intent is to dehumanize, humiliate and crush someone into breaking down on National Television... In 2503 some historian in Cambodia is going to write a thesis on the Fall of the American Empire and rank Reality TV Shows as the predominant indicator of impending doom, as with the dispassionate glee exhibited by the populace of Rome at the excesses, mayhem and decadence in the Coliseum, the American Viewing Public has finally displayed the true soul of the modern moral majority. makes me want to... aw never mind... I am either preaching to the choir or pissing you off... suffice to say, it's not my cup-o-tea. I went to see About Schmidt, when it ended I sat in the theater for another five minutes, I needed something more from it I think... I am not sure if I completely understood it, I was moved by the ending and I am not sure why... Usually these movies go overboard explaining what the point was but this one didn't, or, if they did I am too dense to understand it. It was a sort of coming of age movie about Warren Schmidt a 66 year old retired Insurance AVP from Omaha. Petty, opinionated, full of himself, unfulfilled, angry bore. He is one of the a little grey man everyone has in their life, a neighbor, co-worker Uncle...he is just not a very nice guy. A few days after he retires his wife of 42 years dies and he is totally adrift, he can't even make a sandwich by himself... he has a hell of a time but he finally finds a sort of equilibrium at the end... I even, for some reason I haven't figured out yet, cried at the end right along with him... I may have to go back and watch it again... it was a good movie and Jack Nickleson was... well.... he was Warren Schmidt a 66 year old retired Insurance AVP from Omaha... completely.
"That's silly," replied the liberal. "Bill Gates raises the average, but that doesn't make you or me any richer." "Hah!" said the conservative, "I see you're still practicing the discredited politics of class warfare. About an hour after putting up this joke I saw the cartoon... mildly eerie
New e-rumor out, about Marines showing President Bush more respect than they showed to President Clinton in the way they salute him at the helicopter... total crap... damn I am tired of those sanctimonious religious tracts posing as fact... you can read about it HERE I think it's really sort of sad... to think that we can be bought so cheap is sobering. $300 tax rebate... kiss a baby, praise Jesus Christ, it's all about votes, GW ... I hope someone is keeping a tally on the number of killed, maimed and wounded so we know the true cost of this war of his... every soldier that is hurt from the moment the mobilization started is on his head, not Sadaam's. If this is just a big macho bluff I hope someone holds this administration to account...
Friday January 24 , 2003 Did you ever notice: When you put the 2 words "The" and "IRS" together it spells "THEIRS"? I am listening to some guys argue about Bush's Middle East Policy. One guy had backed himself into a hole and instead of said "It sounds to me as though you think that Bush is a greater threat than Saddam". Interesting, after being in a couple arguments myself and getting blindsided by someone when they are up against a wall can be pretty unnerving but the moderator stepped in and ended the discussion... both of them had a solid stance at the beginning but the guy that made the personal attack boxed himself in early in the exchange and instead of presenting a better argument he struck out. You can hear it here http://www.kcrw.org/show/lr Another friend wrote and mentioned that he had read an article that we should be alert for a “manufactured smoking gun” ala the Gulf of Tonkin incident (which... sort of didn’t happen like they told us but gave President Johnson the authority to make it hot for Ho) or “Remember the Maine” , not that Bush needs an trigger, he had been given the power to do any damn thing he wants to do by Congress.. That's all I need, damn I sure hope it doesn't come to that. Mike went to Marks yesterday after school, he will come home on Saturday, Christian is going over the Shon's house about 11 tomorrow, Christy is at a SDA religious retreat over by Lake Hughs... I have been a slug all day... went to AAA to file a report that the Cadillac is gone to the junk yard but I had the wrong papers, and besides, AAA can't do that sort of thing... I will have to do that on Monday at the DMV... I can't find the damn Pink-slip... exasperating. I got the tools I need to hook up Christy's SDA Satellite receiver... I looked at used Motorcycles saw some nice ones. I sure would like to get some trips under my belt this year, I didn't do much last year and I regret it... also regret I didn't ride up to Seattle.
Kids are asleep... did the dishes, caught up on my e-mails... Saturday January 25 , 2003 There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there. --Indira Gandhi Interesting observation by Ambassador Edward Peck (Ambassador to Iraq under R Reagan). some points:
You can listen to it here for a while, Saturday,
January 25, 2003 If it's not at this page look in the archive... it's
the first segment. Christy got home at about 1700, I had taken Christian is at Shon's and picked up Mike and Mark at about 1330, they took off immediately to Donnie's house. Got the Lee Marvin Bob - Keeshan War Hero hoax again last night... the sad thing is that Lee Marvin really was a Marine and he really fought in the Pacific in two battles and earned the Purple Heart, Bob was also a Marine but he didn't see battle, he joined up as soon as he was legally able but it was a week or so before Hiroshima. http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/keeshan.htm http://www.snopes.com/military/keeshan.htm Also http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/kangaroo.html I don't know what compels me to look into these things but it really is a compulsion. I have developed a bit of cynicism over the years, my level naivety has diminished as I learn of the deviousness of people the hard way. I have developed a finely tuned BS detector some where deep in the core of my brain. Some times things are just too pat, too slick... someone makes up a story to support an assumption and it develops into an internet hoax. Sometimes like this are just out and out lies, like the Mariah Carry Quote:
She never said that, it was a satirical Mariah Carey "interview" that appeared on the Internet in a web publication called Cupcake in early 1996, the damaging sentence cited above was lifted from it quoted in VOX magazine. John Denver and hundreds of others (yes, including Jane Fonda) have been victimized by this sort of thing. There are several good sites like SOPES that researches these things... they are fun to read... and a little unnerving too when you realize that anyone, including you and I can be victimized by lies being passed off as news. There are Lies like the ones propagated against Janet Reno accusing her of saying the most outrageous things...It's probably also not surprising that Reno has attracted the ravings of a subterranean lunatic fringe. The fringe includes Internet fulminators upset by her Miami campaign against deadbeat dads or by Waco or Elian Gonzales or simply by federal law enforcement in general. Among other things, the fulminators regularly fabricate bogus press releases (some of which have found their way into newspapers and provoked letters of inquiry from congressional offices) attempting to persuade the nation that Reno favors "parental licensing," or that she believes that "a cultist is one who has a strong belief in the Bible." it's all crap but the Conservatives Patriots all believe it because they are threatened by her liberal views and strict interpretation of the law. Does it worry me? Yes, it sure does, the fact the anyone can make up anything on their PC and post it as truth is bad news, that something obviously phony can so easily be passed off as the truth, and that people will believe it because it supports their prejudice or some contrary agenda scares the hell out of me. The our gullibility as a people is sobering. We will believe anything if it jibes with our preconceptions... I have been accused of making up my responses to these things or of being taken in because what I read is no different than what they posted because it came off the net, as though an unsubstantiated, anonymous, accusing a celebrity of making an outrageous remark like the one attributed to Mariah Carey carries as much weight as debunker sites like Sopes, Truth or Fiction, (About) Urban Legends, and Break the chain, it is boggling. Sunday January 26 , 2003 Superbowl Sunday Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. BUDDHA [Siddhartha Gotoma] (568 B.C.-488 B.C., Philosopher, religious leader) Christy went to breakfast with Bonnie at 0830, I can't reach her on her cell phone, it is now 1300... I am getting concerned.. she just called still has shopping and she has to go to Kaiser to get medicine for the kids. I just read a short biography on Bob Hope, quite a man... he will be 100 in May... I don't think he has made a public appearances in a long time... George Burns was pretty nimble up to the end but I don't think Bob is in very good shape. Bob Hope has been a icon of this country for over 70 years. He has no peer... The Game starts in about an hour... I sure hope it's a good'n Half time... so far so good Interesting game... so far... not nearly as competitive as I had hoped it would be The Raiders tried... but they never seemed to have their guts or hearts in the game... not to take anything away from the Buccaneers they beat up the Raiders so bad the Raiders may not come back next year.
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Bill
Mauldin is dead... complications from Alzheimer's... The first cartoon I
remember laughing out loud at was the Old Army Cavalryman covering his eyes
while he shot his disabled Jeep... Mr. Mauldin was 81...sad... 
