June, 2004 Week 2
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June, 2004 Week 2
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Monday June 7 , 2004 If you came and you found a strange man... teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it. Jerome Singer, psychology professor The Sheriff's didn't come for "B"... that's good I guess. Christian is still in Las Vegas, I took Christy's car, for a rebuilt alternator, $258 Tuesday June 8 , 2004 Child bullies are the rectal acorns from which the assholes of society grow. - Umberto Eco Christy and I went to a "Transitional IEP" for Autumn today... it went well... I suppose. I still don't think we are getting what we need for Autumn but we don't know what we need. She is getting speech, adaptive PE, she has a full time Aide in the morning named Sue who is great with her and there are two young women who watch over her in the afternoon. We heard from the Principle at "B"'s school, the Police have been called by the parents of "B"'s victim. "B" is officially suspended, he will be promoted but he will not go to the graduation ceremony... Van in to T&J for brakes and rotors and oil change .. $558. Wednesday June 9 , 2004 As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints. Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832) Christy Teaching, My car into T&J, $158, Transmission service Thursday June 10 , 2004
I took the big kids to school and came back up to the house and took off on the bike at 0745 for Bill Mayer Saddles in Ojai, I had a 0900 appointment to get my seat fixed. I got to the bottom of Crown Valley Road and it felt like I had a flat tire, I pulled into the Shell Station and ... I had a flat tire... 50 miles on it!... Damn... I rode it over to T&J and pulled out the nail and plugged it, I bummed some air and took off to Ojai... I got there at 0920. They fixed the seat by 1230 and I went out to Ventura to get the turn-signal canceling relay... it's pretty cool, you program it by using the switches on the handlebars,,, very cool. I rode down Hwy 23 to Simi to see John... he helped me install the relay and we talked for a bit. I left John and went to the ROF... I left at 2000, I was tired and yawning uncontrollably I had been up till 0100 doing genealogy for a lady who needed help and I got up early... anyway, I said goodbye and went home. Friday June 11 , 2004 It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack. Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778) Errands. I took the tire with a plug in it to Rider's Choice, I told them to remove the gummy plug and use a real patch and to mount a new tire on the wheel. I will use the old tire when the new one wears out... Saturday June 12 , 2004
I took the kids to McDonalds... it was a strange experience. I take Autumn there every morning and the employees smile and talk to us, the customers are regulars and I see them all at least once a week, the all smile and wave at Autumn... today the place was a little crowded with weekend travelers... all strangers, they were unsmiling, pushy, rude, snapping at the kids at the counter... the customers were awful, the employees were courteous but they were not "happy campers' ... I don't blame them. Went to Cycle Gear to buy some riding pants... the tag I thought I read said $139... the kid rang up $199... ouch... he was right I was wrong... I bought them anyway... they are really comfortable. I talked to a nice fella who rode in on a 2004 Suzuki Hayabusa 1300 Ltd sport bike... what a pretty scooter... Sunday June 13 , 2004 We would like to apologize for the way in which politicians are represented in this program. It was never our intention to imply that politicians are weak-kneed political time-servers who are more concerned with their personal vendettas and private power struggles than with the problems of government. Nor to suggest at any point that they sacrifice their credibility by denying free debate on vital matters, in the mistaken impression that party unity comes before the well-being of the people they supposedly represent. Nor to imply at any stage that they are squabbling little toadies without an ounce of concern for the vital social problems of today. Nor indeed do we intend that the viewers should consider them as crabby, ulcerous, little self-seeking vermin with furry legs and an excessive addiction to alcohol and certain explicit sexual practices which some people might find offensive. We are sorry if this impression has come across. MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS Today was a waste of consciousness... really a 'Duh' day. I made it to Sport Chalet and bought some clothes for the trip... I decided to take the riding pants back and get a cheaper pare that fits with my jacket...
The audacious courage of Mr Blair Terry Jones Sunday September 22, 2002 The Observer You cannot help but admire the Prime Minister's steadfast refusal to be intimidated by facts and figures. I would like to pay a tribute to the courage of Tony Blair. During these dark days in the build-up to war against Iraq it is reassuring to find ourselves with a leader who demonstrates such fearlessness in the face of tremendous odds. Despite bitter opposition, Tony Blair has demonstrated that he will push ahead stalwartly with whatever the US intends to do. Even though the majority of his fellow countrymen are against the war (despite last week's propaganda campaign in the media), Mr Blair has shown not the slightest sign of wavering from his determination to do whatever Mr Bush wants. It is true that he has regrettably had to cave in over the question of debating the issue in Parliament, but he has fearlessly shown his contempt for the process by not allowing a vote. Mr Blair realises that he needs all the nerve he can command to resist demands for democratic discussion, if Mr Bush is to have any opportunity of dropping bombs on Iraq before the mid-term elections. I would like to say a special word about another side of Tony Blair's courage - his moral courage. Tony Blair has the guts to stand on platform after platform repeating the words of the President of the United States even though he must be well aware that in so doing he makes himself a laughing stock to the rest of the world. Tony Blair has the balls not to be influenced by the knowledge that people imagine he is the US President's parrot and that his knee jerks only when George W. pulls the strings. It must take a very special kind of stamina to withstand that sort of daily humiliation. It is time we gave Mr Blair credit for it. Tony Blair's dedication to carrying out the policies of the White House proves time and again that he has the courage of their convictions. He is prepared to back Mr Bush's arguments to the hilt even when they are palpably nonsensical. When Mr Bush cites Saddam Hussein's contempt for UN Security Council resolutions as the justification for his own determination to do the same, Tony Blair urges the President's case, for all the world as if he couldn't see the ridiculousness of it. When Mr Bush cites Iraq's failure to comply with UN Security Council resolutions as the reason for going to war, Mr Blair backs him up, boldly ignoring the fact that Turkey and Israel have got away with ignoring UN resolutions for years. It is this refusal to be intimidated by the illogicality of the US position that perhaps displays Mr Blair's courage at its best. He is Mr Bush's faithful echo when the President demands that Saddam Hussein immediately cleanse Iraq of all terrorist organisations, even though he knows the UK never found a way of eradicating the IRA, and that, in any case, the terrorist organisations that perpetrated 9/11 were operating out of the US and Germany. Mr Blair also refuses to be unnerved by the irony of Saddam's chemical weapons being anathematised by the nation that employed Agent Orange so liberally in Vietnam, where the ravages are still apparent. Mr Blair is unafraid to support a 'War on Terrorism' waged by the nation that has routinely used terrorism as a tool of foreign policy in Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua and Cuba, to name but a few. But my admiration for Mr Blair's courage reaches new depths when I consider what he has to wrestle with over the matter of the sanctions against Iraq. As a practising Christian, he must need tremendous fortitude to bear the knowledge that his policies are the certain cause of death to so many Iraqi children. In 1996, the World Health Organisation concluded that since the introduction of sanctions, the infant mortality rate for children under five had increased six times. In 1999, the Mortality Survey, supported by Unicef, reported that infant and child mortality in Iraq had doubled since the Gulf War. In May 2000, a mission to Iraq sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) found that in South and Central Iraq at least 800,000 children under five were suffering from chronic malnutrition. Despite the fact that George W. Bush's father claimed that the United States had no quarrel with the Iraqi people, it is the Iraqi people whom he and his successors have determined to punish, and Tony Blair, to do him justice, has not flinched from following their lead. The Gulf War witnessed one of history's heaviest bombing campaigns, a 43-day bomb-fest, largely by units of the US Air Force, left something in the region of $170 billion-worth of damage. The subsequent enforcement of sanctions has meant that much of that damage has never been repaired, and it is the lack of safe water, housing, food and medicine that is exacting the greatest toll among children and the elderly. It is therefore very much to Tony Blair's credit that he refuses to be intimidated by these statistics. He has had the grit to stick by those US policies which target the most vulnerable sections of Iraqi society, and he has courageously ignored the logic that sanctions aimed at a civilian population in order to oust a dictator who cares little for his people are pointless. It is a bold and audacious stance that our leader has taken up and it is clear that nothing will move Mr Blair from that posture - not democracy, common sense, compassion nor shame.
OK, George, make with the friendly bombs Terry Jones Sunday February 17, 2002 The Observer To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious idea that I can't think why no one has thought of it before. It's so simple. If only the UK had done something similar in Northern Ireland, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today. The moment the IRA blew up the Horseguards' bandstand, the Government should have declared its own War on Terrorism. It should have immediately demanded that the Irish government hand over Gerry Adams. If they refused to do so - or quibbled about needing proof of his guilt - we could have told them that this was no time for prevarication and that they must hand over not only Adams but all IRA terrorists in the Republic. If they tried to stall by claiming that it was hard to tell who were IRA terrorists and who weren't, because they don't go around wearing identity badges, we would have been free to send in the bombers. It is well known that the best way of picking out terrorists is to fly 30,000ft above the capital city of any state that harbours them and drop bombs - preferably cluster bombs. It is conceivable that the bombing of Dublin might have provoked some sort of protest, even if just from James Joyce fans, and there is at least some likelihood of increased anti-British sentiment in what remained of the city and thus a rise in the numbers of potential terrorists. But this, in itself, would have justified the tactic of bombing them in the first place. We would have nipped them in the bud, so to speak. I hope you follow the argument. Having bombed Dublin and, perhaps, a few IRA training bogs in Tipperary, we could not have afforded to be complacent. We would have had to turn our attention to those states which had supported and funded the IRA terrorists through all these years. The main provider of funds was, of course, the USA, and this would have posed us with a bit of a problem. Where to bomb in America? It's a big place and it's by no means certain that a small country like the UK could afford enough bombs to do the whole job. It's going to cost the US billions to bomb Iraq and a lot of that is empty countryside. America, on the other hand, provides a bewildering number of targets. Should we have bombed Washington, where the policies were formed? Or should we have concentrated on places where Irishmen are known to lurk, like New York, Boston and Philadelphia? We could have bombed any police station and fire station in most major urban centres, secure in the knowledge that we would be taking out significant numbers of IRA sympathisers. On St Patrick's Day, we could have bombed Fifth Avenue and scored a bull's-eye. In those American cities we couldn't afford to bomb, we could have rounded up American citizens with Irish names, put bags over their heads and flown them in chains to Guernsey or Rockall, where we could have given them food packets marked 'My Kind of Meal' and exposed them to the elements with a clear conscience. The same goes for Australia. There are thousands of people in Sydney and Melbourne alone who have actively supported Irish republicanism by sending money and good wishes back to people in the Republic, many of whom are known to be IRA members and sympathisers. A well-placed bomb or two Down Under could have taken out the ringleaders and left the world a safer place. Of course, it goes without saying that we would also have had to bomb various parts of London such as Camden Town, Lewisham and bits of Hammersmith and we should certainly have had to obliterate, if not the whole of Liverpool, at least the Scotland Road area. And that would be it really, as far as exterminating the IRA and its supporters. Easy. The War on Terrorism provides a solution so uncomplicated, so straightforward and so gloriously simple that it baffles me why it has taken a man with the brains of George W. Bush to think of it. So, sock it to Iraq, George. Let's make the world a safer place. I'm losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush Terry Jones Sunday January 26, 2003 The Observer |
