Informal Morning Report. Since I'm away from home and sneaking a little dial-up time from my hotel room before re-convening with my fellow Marine vets, I'm just going to drop a few lines on current events.
Bush, Allawi speak out. Caught GWB and Iyad Allawi on TV yesterday morning, with their impressive news conference, shortly after Allawi's address to the US Congress. Allawi thanked the American people and Congress for liberating his country, and stated, "more troops we don't need" - rather, he said, Iraqis need to be empowered to take charge of their own affairs through continued training and support. Allawi and Bush both stressed that while tough challenges lie ahead, Iraq is moving in the right direction.
Senator Kerry wasted no time in declaring that the Prime Minister of Iraq didn't know what he was talking about, and today's issue of the Jayson Blair Journal began its editorial with the words "Iraq's appointed leader, Iyad Allawi, put on an impressive performance yesterday in Washington." Iraq's self-appointed leaders in New York explained that 'Until Iraq holds free elections, Mr. Allawi cannot claim to speak for more than the narrow coalition of exile parties that maneuvered his appointment as interim prime minister.' The JBJ editorial went on to link Allawi with a small cabal of CIA-backed exile groups, and concluded by accusing Iraq's Prime Minister of 'expressing doubts about the value of a free press and refusing to accept the importance of an honest and realistic discussion of what's happening in his country.'
Funny, just last night I was up talking with two young guys who just got back from a second tour in Iraq; they happened to be staying in the room next door. Nobody forced these Marines to re-up, they did so voluntarily. They recalled that in fifteen of Iraq's eighteen provinces, security and reconstruction are proceeding at an astonishing pace. Wonder what's wrong with them. Maybe they don't read the Jayson Blair Journal enough?
2004-09-24
2004-09-17
Soldier, Where's Your Hatred Now?
By an anonymous soldier of the 136th Field Artillery Battalion, 37th Infantry Division - Fiji Islands, March 1943.
SOLDIER, WHERE'S YOUR HATRED NOW? (F.I., March 1943)
Soldier,
Where's your hatred now?
You haven't any? But you ought to have.
Remember the advice we gave.
Where will you be anyhow
If you forget that you must fight,
That they are wrong, and we are right?
You must make their heads to bow.
"I will fight because I must.
My hatred falters. In the heat of war
The hatred that was once a sore
Festered with a bitter lust,
Becomes a heartache, throbbing deep,
So that I cannot help but weep
Seeing comrades fall to dust."
Soldier,
Why that tear-wet eye?
Your fallen comrades you won't see again?
Remember, this affair is plain:
You may be about to die
Like them; but while you live, be strong,
For right will conquer all that's wrong.
Fight till they for mercy cry.
"You are right, my hatred's gone,
But I remember they are human too -
Those boys who in a sick world grew,
Groping - while afar, the dawn
Awaits to shine on them again
As it has on Freedom's men.
Can I , hating, speed the dawn?"
Soldier,
Spare no love for those
Who try to tear down what we want to save.
They're bestial, and they're not so brave.
Bring conflict to a quicker close:
Destroy their tanks, destroy their planes;
It is this Justice ordains.
Give them death if death they chose!
"I will wreck their tanks and planes
And let their cities fall, for all I care,
And in the name of right, I'll tear
Their bowels out, and smash their brains,
(For you, my country, killed my soul)
And as we approach the goal,
Clamp them in Revenge's chains!"
Soldier,
Bear it for a while,
And if you find no hatred for the foe,
Hate, then, the evil that brought woe.
Hate the greed and hate the guile.
Hate, then, the motive, not the man.
Love the Truth, for if you can,
Soldier, you have won God's smile.
SOLDIER, WHERE'S YOUR HATRED NOW? (F.I., March 1943)
Soldier,
Where's your hatred now?
You haven't any? But you ought to have.
Remember the advice we gave.
Where will you be anyhow
If you forget that you must fight,
That they are wrong, and we are right?
You must make their heads to bow.
"I will fight because I must.
My hatred falters. In the heat of war
The hatred that was once a sore
Festered with a bitter lust,
Becomes a heartache, throbbing deep,
So that I cannot help but weep
Seeing comrades fall to dust."
Soldier,
Why that tear-wet eye?
Your fallen comrades you won't see again?
Remember, this affair is plain:
You may be about to die
Like them; but while you live, be strong,
For right will conquer all that's wrong.
Fight till they for mercy cry.
"You are right, my hatred's gone,
But I remember they are human too -
Those boys who in a sick world grew,
Groping - while afar, the dawn
Awaits to shine on them again
As it has on Freedom's men.
Can I , hating, speed the dawn?"
Soldier,
Spare no love for those
Who try to tear down what we want to save.
They're bestial, and they're not so brave.
Bring conflict to a quicker close:
Destroy their tanks, destroy their planes;
It is this Justice ordains.
Give them death if death they chose!
"I will wreck their tanks and planes
And let their cities fall, for all I care,
And in the name of right, I'll tear
Their bowels out, and smash their brains,
(For you, my country, killed my soul)
And as we approach the goal,
Clamp them in Revenge's chains!"
Soldier,
Bear it for a while,
And if you find no hatred for the foe,
Hate, then, the evil that brought woe.
Hate the greed and hate the guile.
Hate, then, the motive, not the man.
Love the Truth, for if you can,
Soldier, you have won God's smile.
2004-09-16
From my Father's World War II Memoirs
From a series of poems by fellow soldiers that my father collected. The works' authorship is unknown.
A FLOWER GROWS ON WAR-SCARRED GROUND
(Munda Point)
On this island Mars still plays his hand.
The beach is quiet now; he has moved inland.
Beneath the sun, men toil;
Digging, clearing, piling soil on soil.
Between them and the sea - a fringe of sand.
On this fringe of sand Mars left his seal.
Here, craters deep abound: imprints of his heel
In some the sea has crept;
Others remain empty - all except
For flowers, growing there with quiet zeal.
A flower grows on a war-scarred ground
Amid man's shattered tools of war strewn around.
Amid war's after-gloom
It flourishes, hanging bloom on bloom.
How strange a home this zinnia has found!
It is not alone here on the beach;
Yonder springs - oh, if it could only reach! -
Another common flower,
Dainty, fragile, holding yet some power
To draw its strength from the reluctant beach.
Zinnia and petunia, hand in hand
In Mother's garden casually appearing
Now in this almost flowerless land
Become at once exotic, rare, endearing.
A FLOWER GROWS ON WAR-SCARRED GROUND
(Munda Point)
On this island Mars still plays his hand.
The beach is quiet now; he has moved inland.
Beneath the sun, men toil;
Digging, clearing, piling soil on soil.
Between them and the sea - a fringe of sand.
On this fringe of sand Mars left his seal.
Here, craters deep abound: imprints of his heel
In some the sea has crept;
Others remain empty - all except
For flowers, growing there with quiet zeal.
A flower grows on a war-scarred ground
Amid man's shattered tools of war strewn around.
Amid war's after-gloom
It flourishes, hanging bloom on bloom.
How strange a home this zinnia has found!
It is not alone here on the beach;
Yonder springs - oh, if it could only reach! -
Another common flower,
Dainty, fragile, holding yet some power
To draw its strength from the reluctant beach.
Zinnia and petunia, hand in hand
In Mother's garden casually appearing
Now in this almost flowerless land
Become at once exotic, rare, endearing.
2004-09-15
Final thoughts for 5764.
May you be blessed with prosperity, health, safety, freedom, wisdom, and good friends.
May the people of Iraq enjoy democracy and well-being in their land.
May the coming year see the liberation of the people of Iran.
May we find the strength and courage to stop the slaughter in Sudan.
May Israel know peace and security. May Israel see dialog between Jew and Arab, religious and secular. May the Jewish homeland live out its dream in safety. May Jewish children know that they have a home in the world.
May America live up to its true greatness and its dream of freedom, within its own borders and around the world.
May all have enough to eat and protection from heat, cold, and illness.
May the seeds of freedom spring up everywhere.
May we all learn to listen and understand one another better.
May we have the clarity to know good from evil, and the courage to choose good, even when it is difficult and dangerous. May we risk being unpopular when life has granted us a chance to speak out for freedom and justice.
May all creation know its own true higher nature, when G-d allows us to cast away the kingdom of evil from the land.
L' shanah tovah.
May the people of Iraq enjoy democracy and well-being in their land.
May the coming year see the liberation of the people of Iran.
May we find the strength and courage to stop the slaughter in Sudan.
May Israel know peace and security. May Israel see dialog between Jew and Arab, religious and secular. May the Jewish homeland live out its dream in safety. May Jewish children know that they have a home in the world.
May America live up to its true greatness and its dream of freedom, within its own borders and around the world.
May all have enough to eat and protection from heat, cold, and illness.
May the seeds of freedom spring up everywhere.
May we all learn to listen and understand one another better.
May we have the clarity to know good from evil, and the courage to choose good, even when it is difficult and dangerous. May we risk being unpopular when life has granted us a chance to speak out for freedom and justice.
May all creation know its own true higher nature, when G-d allows us to cast away the kingdom of evil from the land.
L' shanah tovah.
2004-09-14
Morning Report: September 15, 2004
Forged memos dog CBS. For those of you who haven't been following the internet for the past week (and really, it IS worth following, even when Dreams Into Lightning isn't posting!), the blogosphere has scored a major coup against the MSM with the revelation that several derogatory memos about George W. Bush - ostensibly written by his Texas Air National Guard commanders in 1972 - were crude forgeries. The documents, produced by Dan Rather on 60 Minutes, appeared to have been produced on Microsoft Word, not an IBM Selectric, calling the 1972 dating into serious question. For the full story, see Rathergate at LGF.
Kerry coached horror stories, 'Nam vet says. ' A veteran who testified to John Kerry about atrocities he committed in the Vietnam War is now claiming that the Democratic presidential candidate coerced him to tell tales. Steven Pitkin, an Army combat veteran, told FOX News that Kerry coached him and others to say they had witnessed war crimes, even after Pitkin told Kerry that he had not. ...' Fox News story on Vietnam atrocity allegations
Syria testing chemical weapons on Sudanese? Sources are reporting that the German daily "Die Welt" claims Syria is testing its chemical weapons on Sudanese civilians. According to the AFP story, 'Syria tested chemical weapons on civilians in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region in June and killed dozens of people, the German daily Die Welt claimed in an advance release of its Wednesday edition. The newspaper, citing unnamed western security sources, said that injuries apparently caused by chemical arms were found on the bodies of the victims. It said that witnesses quoted by an Arabic news website called ILAF [www.elaph.com] in an article on August 2 had said that several frozen bodies arrived suddenly at the "Al-Fashr Hospital" in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in June. ...' Don't miss Andy McCarthy's comments.
The Emperor has no pajamas. "Eat your heart out, Cox & Forkum."
Kerry coached horror stories, 'Nam vet says. ' A veteran who testified to John Kerry about atrocities he committed in the Vietnam War is now claiming that the Democratic presidential candidate coerced him to tell tales. Steven Pitkin, an Army combat veteran, told FOX News that Kerry coached him and others to say they had witnessed war crimes, even after Pitkin told Kerry that he had not. ...' Fox News story on Vietnam atrocity allegations
Syria testing chemical weapons on Sudanese? Sources are reporting that the German daily "Die Welt" claims Syria is testing its chemical weapons on Sudanese civilians. According to the AFP story, 'Syria tested chemical weapons on civilians in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region in June and killed dozens of people, the German daily Die Welt claimed in an advance release of its Wednesday edition. The newspaper, citing unnamed western security sources, said that injuries apparently caused by chemical arms were found on the bodies of the victims. It said that witnesses quoted by an Arabic news website called ILAF [www.elaph.com] in an article on August 2 had said that several frozen bodies arrived suddenly at the "Al-Fashr Hospital" in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in June. ...' Don't miss Andy McCarthy's comments.
The Emperor has no pajamas. "Eat your heart out, Cox & Forkum."
2004-09-07
I Am A Jew and My Father Was A Jew
My father described his father as mildly anti-Semitic, "not an Archie Bunker type" but not without his prejudices either. Dad was born in 1920 and grew up in the New York area, spending some years in New York City. He would later write of his early curiosity about "the people my father spoke of with such contempt."
My father? Picture a cross between Albert Einstein and Captain Kangaroo, and you begin to get the idea. I remember him as a kindly man, soft-spoken and very precise in his speech. He recalled the Depression years vividly, and spoke bitterly of the humiliation of watching his father search desperately for work. During World War II he served in the Army, in Battery A, 136th Field Artillery, 37th Infantry Division. He spoke of the war occasionally, but only occasionally.
Like my mother, Dad grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home; like her, he started looking for answers on his own as a young adult. They met in a Unitarian Universalist church in Connecticut, and found they shared a fondness for the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson. They were married in 1959.
My father held a master's degree in literature from Wesleyan, and taught high school English for many years before moving on to a new career on the editorial staff of Choice Magazine - a position he held from my early childhood until very late in his life. He had an unappreciated gift for oratory, I think, and enjoyed reading aloud. When he spoke, he always chose his words carefully; losing this gift with the onset of Alzheimer's must have been a very cruel fate for him.
Both of my parents were liberals, but I think Dad was more of an idealist than my Mom, in the sense of being a perfectionist about the future. He didn't share my mother's driving rage (which could be directed against anyone, at any time), but he did have a deep-seated mistrust of anything that smacked of snobbery or elitism. He respected Senator Lieberman, but found him too conservative: "He votes like a Republican," Dad once grumbled.
Curious about traditional religion, I began studying Hebrew in my mid-teens. After a year or two, I started attending services at the synagogue, and so did my father. When I left home to join the Air Force in 1981, neither of us had officially converted but we were both leaning in that direction. I converted with a Reform congregation in Tucson in 1984, and eventually had an Orthodox conversion in San Francisco in 1988.
What we both saw in Judaism was a balance of opposites: nationalism and universalism, feeling and intellect, mysticism and rationalism, tradition and growth. For both of us, too, it was a gateway into a community, an older and richer one than we could have known otherwise. We liked the way social activism and Jewish values went hand-in-hand. My father was also interested in the theological debates: the encounter with modernity, the problem of evil. He devoured books on liberal Jewish thought by people like Jacob Neusner, with whom he corresponded. (Myself, I always found the scholarly stuff a bit dry. I loved Soloveitchik, but in general I skipped the philosophizers.) Dad's real passion, though, was Jewish music. He collected recordings of the great cantors (another taste I'm afraid I didn't inherit) and in the last few years of his life he became active in the choir at the Conservative synagogue. I'll always remember the joy it gave him to be involved in the community that way - and his sorrow at not having started earlier.
I'm hard pressed to say how much I'm like my father. I do not know whether I resemble him a lot or a little. Sometimes I think I take after my mother more. She was obsessed with the quest for truth. She wanted to peel back the layers of illusion and find the secret that lay at the core of reality. Not formally educated (but with an IQ most college professors would envy), she read books on science, history, Gnosticism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Born in 1929 on the eve of the stock market crash, she had little memory of the Depression, but I believe she was deeply changed by the newsreels that she must have seen as a young woman. I don't think she ever forgave G-d for the Holocaust.
Illness came upon my father quickly. He'd been healthy all his life, but things started going wrong all at once: heart trouble, cancer, Alzheimer's. He had to leave a holiday performance in the synagogue because he was too ill to continue. He died quietly in his sleep four years ago, on the second night of Rosh Hashanah.
Mom lived on a little longer. She rarely left the house, being in poor health herself, but she enjoyed the company of her caretaker and her next-door neighbor, who also had an interest in Judaism. I don't know whether she ever made her peace with G-d. She died last year, on the second night of Passover.
After her death, I learned that she'd had her hospital records changed to list her religion as "Jewish".
- Asher Abrams
This post is my contribution to Jonathan Edelstein's "Arrival Day Blogburst" in celebration of American Jewry's 350th year. I will be posting more Jewish-themed material over the next few days (including the 11th of September).
Administrative note: Today's post was delayed due to technical problems with Blogger. My apologies to Jonathan for missing the September 7 date; perhaps we can think of today as "yomtov sheini", especially in view of the day's diaspora theme.
Please visit Jonathan Edelstein, The Head Heeb.
My father? Picture a cross between Albert Einstein and Captain Kangaroo, and you begin to get the idea. I remember him as a kindly man, soft-spoken and very precise in his speech. He recalled the Depression years vividly, and spoke bitterly of the humiliation of watching his father search desperately for work. During World War II he served in the Army, in Battery A, 136th Field Artillery, 37th Infantry Division. He spoke of the war occasionally, but only occasionally.
Like my mother, Dad grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home; like her, he started looking for answers on his own as a young adult. They met in a Unitarian Universalist church in Connecticut, and found they shared a fondness for the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson. They were married in 1959.
My father held a master's degree in literature from Wesleyan, and taught high school English for many years before moving on to a new career on the editorial staff of Choice Magazine - a position he held from my early childhood until very late in his life. He had an unappreciated gift for oratory, I think, and enjoyed reading aloud. When he spoke, he always chose his words carefully; losing this gift with the onset of Alzheimer's must have been a very cruel fate for him.
Both of my parents were liberals, but I think Dad was more of an idealist than my Mom, in the sense of being a perfectionist about the future. He didn't share my mother's driving rage (which could be directed against anyone, at any time), but he did have a deep-seated mistrust of anything that smacked of snobbery or elitism. He respected Senator Lieberman, but found him too conservative: "He votes like a Republican," Dad once grumbled.
Curious about traditional religion, I began studying Hebrew in my mid-teens. After a year or two, I started attending services at the synagogue, and so did my father. When I left home to join the Air Force in 1981, neither of us had officially converted but we were both leaning in that direction. I converted with a Reform congregation in Tucson in 1984, and eventually had an Orthodox conversion in San Francisco in 1988.
What we both saw in Judaism was a balance of opposites: nationalism and universalism, feeling and intellect, mysticism and rationalism, tradition and growth. For both of us, too, it was a gateway into a community, an older and richer one than we could have known otherwise. We liked the way social activism and Jewish values went hand-in-hand. My father was also interested in the theological debates: the encounter with modernity, the problem of evil. He devoured books on liberal Jewish thought by people like Jacob Neusner, with whom he corresponded. (Myself, I always found the scholarly stuff a bit dry. I loved Soloveitchik, but in general I skipped the philosophizers.) Dad's real passion, though, was Jewish music. He collected recordings of the great cantors (another taste I'm afraid I didn't inherit) and in the last few years of his life he became active in the choir at the Conservative synagogue. I'll always remember the joy it gave him to be involved in the community that way - and his sorrow at not having started earlier.
I'm hard pressed to say how much I'm like my father. I do not know whether I resemble him a lot or a little. Sometimes I think I take after my mother more. She was obsessed with the quest for truth. She wanted to peel back the layers of illusion and find the secret that lay at the core of reality. Not formally educated (but with an IQ most college professors would envy), she read books on science, history, Gnosticism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Born in 1929 on the eve of the stock market crash, she had little memory of the Depression, but I believe she was deeply changed by the newsreels that she must have seen as a young woman. I don't think she ever forgave G-d for the Holocaust.
Illness came upon my father quickly. He'd been healthy all his life, but things started going wrong all at once: heart trouble, cancer, Alzheimer's. He had to leave a holiday performance in the synagogue because he was too ill to continue. He died quietly in his sleep four years ago, on the second night of Rosh Hashanah.
Mom lived on a little longer. She rarely left the house, being in poor health herself, but she enjoyed the company of her caretaker and her next-door neighbor, who also had an interest in Judaism. I don't know whether she ever made her peace with G-d. She died last year, on the second night of Passover.
After her death, I learned that she'd had her hospital records changed to list her religion as "Jewish".
- Asher Abrams
This post is my contribution to Jonathan Edelstein's "Arrival Day Blogburst" in celebration of American Jewry's 350th year. I will be posting more Jewish-themed material over the next few days (including the 11th of September).
Administrative note: Today's post was delayed due to technical problems with Blogger. My apologies to Jonathan for missing the September 7 date; perhaps we can think of today as "yomtov sheini", especially in view of the day's diaspora theme.
Please visit Jonathan Edelstein, The Head Heeb.
2004-08-30
Flight 587: News Roundup
When Al-Qaeda on a website in May 2004 claimed the plane’s fall as an attack, however, I paid it little attention, for just about anyone can claim just about anything on a website.
But now comes a wisp of evidence to suggest that AA 587’s demise was in fact not an accident but an operation carried out by Al-Qaeda. This information has a complex pedigree:
*It is recounted in a top secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service report written in May 2002 and made public on Aug. 27, 2004 by Stewart Bell in Canada’s National Post.
*Its source is Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a 22-year-old from St. Catharines, Ontario, said to be of “unknown reliability.”
*Jabarah in turn is reporting on what he heard from Abu Abdelrahman (a Saudi Al-Qaeda member who worked for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the organization’s highest ranking operatives). KSM’s information has usually turned out to be reliable.
So, the information that follows is not exactly rock-hard, but it is a real lead.
And this is it: Abu Abdelrahman told Jabarah who told CSIS ...
Daniel Pipes, FrontPage
"The operative told Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents during five days of questioning that ``Farouk,'' a Canadian citizen whose real name is Abderraouf Jdey, downed the plane in a suicide mission on Nov. 12, 2001, with explosives similar to those carried by convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid. ... "
Boston Herald
"The Airbus A-300 flight headed to the Dominican Republic crashed in the Rockaways shortly after takeoff from Kennedy Airport on Nov. 12, 2001, killing 265 people.
The source told agents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that the man had trained in Afghanistan along with the 9/11 hijackers, according to a report in Canada's National Post.
During five days of questioning, he revealed that a Montreal man named Abderraouf Jdey used a shoe bomb like the one Richard Reid wore, to bring down the plane.
NY Post
Consider. The war rages in Iraq, our military are being injured and killed; Muslim extremists continue their evil, including downing two Russian passenger jets killing some 90 people; an al-Qaida operative tells Canadian investigators that an Afghanistan-trained Canadian terrorist brought down American Airlines flight 587 in New York three years ago; terrorist warnings continue in our country – the latest for Veterans Administration hospitals. All this and more!
...
So what does John Kerry, the presidential challenger, focus on to present himself to the American voters and ask for their vote? Vietnam!
Barbara Simpson, WorldNet Daily
But now comes a wisp of evidence to suggest that AA 587’s demise was in fact not an accident but an operation carried out by Al-Qaeda. This information has a complex pedigree:
*It is recounted in a top secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service report written in May 2002 and made public on Aug. 27, 2004 by Stewart Bell in Canada’s National Post.
*Its source is Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a 22-year-old from St. Catharines, Ontario, said to be of “unknown reliability.”
*Jabarah in turn is reporting on what he heard from Abu Abdelrahman (a Saudi Al-Qaeda member who worked for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the organization’s highest ranking operatives). KSM’s information has usually turned out to be reliable.
So, the information that follows is not exactly rock-hard, but it is a real lead.
And this is it: Abu Abdelrahman told Jabarah who told CSIS ...
Daniel Pipes, FrontPage
"The operative told Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents during five days of questioning that ``Farouk,'' a Canadian citizen whose real name is Abderraouf Jdey, downed the plane in a suicide mission on Nov. 12, 2001, with explosives similar to those carried by convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid. ... "
Boston Herald
"The Airbus A-300 flight headed to the Dominican Republic crashed in the Rockaways shortly after takeoff from Kennedy Airport on Nov. 12, 2001, killing 265 people.
The source told agents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that the man had trained in Afghanistan along with the 9/11 hijackers, according to a report in Canada's National Post.
During five days of questioning, he revealed that a Montreal man named Abderraouf Jdey used a shoe bomb like the one Richard Reid wore, to bring down the plane.
NY Post
Consider. The war rages in Iraq, our military are being injured and killed; Muslim extremists continue their evil, including downing two Russian passenger jets killing some 90 people; an al-Qaida operative tells Canadian investigators that an Afghanistan-trained Canadian terrorist brought down American Airlines flight 587 in New York three years ago; terrorist warnings continue in our country – the latest for Veterans Administration hospitals. All this and more!
...
So what does John Kerry, the presidential challenger, focus on to present himself to the American voters and ask for their vote? Vietnam!
Barbara Simpson, WorldNet Daily
2004-08-26
Goooooold!
US Women Beat Brazil for Olympic Soccer Gold Medal. Is this great or what?
ATHENS, Greece — An hour after the game, Mia Hamm was still on the field, hugging, crying, and posing for pictures with an Olympic gold medal around her neck.
Then, finally, she left.
After 17 years, 153 goals and 266 games -- including a grueling overtime finale -- it was time for her to go.
"There are few times in your life where you get to write the final chapter the way you want to," Hamm said. "I think a lot of us did that tonight."
Hamm and the rest of the Fab Five had just enough left in their thirtysomething bodies for one more triumph in their final tournament together. Led by two goals from the next generation, the United States beat Brazil 2-1 Thursday to claim the Olympic title. ...
Read the rest of the Fox News story at the link.
ATHENS, Greece — An hour after the game, Mia Hamm was still on the field, hugging, crying, and posing for pictures with an Olympic gold medal around her neck.
Then, finally, she left.
After 17 years, 153 goals and 266 games -- including a grueling overtime finale -- it was time for her to go.
"There are few times in your life where you get to write the final chapter the way you want to," Hamm said. "I think a lot of us did that tonight."
Hamm and the rest of the Fab Five had just enough left in their thirtysomething bodies for one more triumph in their final tournament together. Led by two goals from the next generation, the United States beat Brazil 2-1 Thursday to claim the Olympic title. ...
Read the rest of the Fox News story at the link.
The Blogging Will Continue Until Morale Improves
Okay, so I took another mental health day. ("Asher, you need more than a mental health day." Thank you, that will be quite enough of that.)
No, really, I needed an extra mental health day, especially since I missed seeing Melissa in Portland last night. Honestly, I'll be fine, and the doctor says these scars on my wrists should heal very quickly.
And what happened while I was Away From Komputer? Well, the world went to hell in a handbasket, that's what. So Lenore The Little Dead Girl has returned to A Small Victory, but only as a harbinger of the blog's impending demise. Michele, I'll sorely miss you.
Oh, and al-Qaeda blew up two planes in Russia. Allawi is kissing Sadr's ass. Terrorists beheaded another Italian. The IRI thugs hanged a sixteen-year-old girl, and then dug up her body. I'm telling you, it's almost enough to make me want to give up blogging.
Hah! You should be so lucky.
Well, listen, here's something to cheer about: US women beat Brazil for soccer medal. I'll give this one its own post, too, but I just had to mention it here.
Finally, couldn't close this post without a tribute to Melissa. Now, I could go on about how gorgeous and sexy she is, but there's something in the Bible about "coveting thy neighbor's wife", and Tammy Lynn Michaels may not live in Portland but she's certainly my "neigbor" in principle. So I must keep it platonic.
From an interview with the local lefty rag, Melissa offers this:
Considering it's an election year, did you feel any pressure to put out a more politically motivated album?
The best thing I can do in this political climate is to be a good example. Be a strong person and live my life well.
No, really, I needed an extra mental health day, especially since I missed seeing Melissa in Portland last night. Honestly, I'll be fine, and the doctor says these scars on my wrists should heal very quickly.
And what happened while I was Away From Komputer? Well, the world went to hell in a handbasket, that's what. So Lenore The Little Dead Girl has returned to A Small Victory, but only as a harbinger of the blog's impending demise. Michele, I'll sorely miss you.
Oh, and al-Qaeda blew up two planes in Russia. Allawi is kissing Sadr's ass. Terrorists beheaded another Italian. The IRI thugs hanged a sixteen-year-old girl, and then dug up her body. I'm telling you, it's almost enough to make me want to give up blogging.
Hah! You should be so lucky.
Well, listen, here's something to cheer about: US women beat Brazil for soccer medal. I'll give this one its own post, too, but I just had to mention it here.
Finally, couldn't close this post without a tribute to Melissa. Now, I could go on about how gorgeous and sexy she is, but there's something in the Bible about "coveting thy neighbor's wife", and Tammy Lynn Michaels may not live in Portland but she's certainly my "neigbor" in principle. So I must keep it platonic.
From an interview with the local lefty rag, Melissa offers this:
Considering it's an election year, did you feel any pressure to put out a more politically motivated album?
The best thing I can do in this political climate is to be a good example. Be a strong person and live my life well.
2004-08-23
Headline of the Day
From the CNN front page, presented here without further comment:
Bible study class meets at Hooters to reach 'unchurched'
Bible study class meets at Hooters to reach 'unchurched'
2004-08-17
Yankee go home!
Enraged by President Bush's plans to withdraw US troops from South Korea, thousands of angry protesters demanded the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea.
Hat tip: Baldilocks, Rachel Lucas.
Hat tip: Baldilocks, Rachel Lucas.
2004-08-09
Why, yes, Wretchard, as a matter of fact ...
... I do believe the "war on terrorism" is about making the world safe for homosexuals, not to mention transsexuals, women, Jews, Africans, Christians, Muslims, and even straight white males.
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