Found the item below on Gerry Ryan's site (too lazy and rushed to type URL). It's credited to George Carlin but I don't believe he wrote it. Too soft for his style. Some of it sounds like him but not sure. Anyway, it's food for thought.
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've ...
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Fisking John LeCarre...URL as soon as I can dredge it up..
"and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War."
...maybe for Islamofascism
"The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams."
Completely wrong. He was counting on weakness and fecklessness that he saw with Clinton. His "dreams" were crushed along with his body under hundreds of tons of rubble in Tora Bora.
"ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press. "
Oh yes we all know how silent the voices of dissent have fallen under the jackbooted heel of John Ashcroft.
"The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible."
This is just stupid.
"Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to b...
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The Anti-hero as the archtype
I've always enjoyed reading. Many of the stories I read as a kid had a protaganist who was a hero. He embodied all the qualities of a hero. He was noble, good, right, moral etc. In contrast, films have embraced the anti-hero as the archtype. He is flawed, often to the point of being indistinguishable from the bad guy (aside from a wife and/or child who must be kidnapped in movie cliche fashion, a badge, not-so-witty one liners and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of bullets and perfect marksmanship to boot.). I can understand Hollywood trying to make the characters "more human" or accessable or whatever but one example that has vexed me considerably is the in LOTR: The Two Towers
POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT
POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT
POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT
enough space? Good. Anyway, the changes to Theoden and Faramir dimish them as heroes and make them quite ordinary. In the book, Theoden, King of the Mark of Rohan is...
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Drinking and Driving Deaths Plummet
Is it tougher laws or raised consciousness?
By Eric Peters
Getting liquored-up and getting behind the wheel hasn't been cool for 20 years at least — and the general public opprobrium has had demonstrably positive effects. According to data just released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the number of "alcohol-related" traffic deaths has dropped by more than 50 percent since the early 1980s — 0.63 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2001 vs. 1.64 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 1982.
The question is, are tighter penalties for drunk driving — and more vigorous enforcement — deserving of the credit for this reduction in carnage? Or is it more a consequence of mass enlightenment that drinking to excess and driving don't mix? Groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which actively pushed for ever-stricter laws and penalties in state legislatures around the country, argue ...
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Misc for the day.....
How the Palestinians Stole Christmas http://www.townhall.com/columnists/emmetttyrrell/et20021212.shtml
Columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell reports from Jerusalem on Palestinian Muslims' war against Christianity:
*** QUOTE ***
Whereas the Israelis respect sacred places, the Palestinian Authority does not. Their police have taken over the Temple Mount with the sufferance of the Israeli government that controls it. Against the will of Jews and Christians, who judge it sacred, and of archaeologists, who consider it worthy of careful study, these religious bigots are carting away tons of ancient earth to build a huge mosque for political purposes. They are defiling a sacred and archaeologically invaluable location on a 3,000-year-old site to establish a political claim to the site, and no one is stopping them.
The desecration is not unprecedented. Think back four years ago, to when the Taliban conspired in the destruction of the ancient Buddhist st...