Does anyone remember the web site from which you can view blog pages long gone? Someone once linked to it, but I can’t remember who. I thought that Daniel or Chris W. once linked to it, but a search of their archives didn’t produce the link. Maybe I imagined it….
Preachrblog posts on Issues, Etc’s recent program on Lutheran bloggers. I recently discovered this program. Coming from the ELS, it is amazing to me to think that a synod would have their own radio station, but the Missouri Synod is that big. I plan to go through the show’s archives and find shows of interest to me.
It was fun to hear the voice of Pastor Scott Steigemeyer, author of Burr in the Burgh blog. I suppose that is the first time I’ve heard the voice of a blogger (except for the voices of Northern Alliance Radio Network bloggers!). I don’t know Sandra Ostopowich, author of Madre’s Missives blog, but she had some good comments to make also. I was confused and disappointed to hear the show’s moderator, Todd Wilken, take a cynical tone toward bloggers. I suppose the bad bloggers among us has colored the view of some people, but I think that blogging is here to stay and that the responsible ones will continue. Whether you blog in a magazine format, a diary format or as an apprentice writer, I encourage you to continue! Be responsible, always accurately research your topic and remember that real people read your comments (maybe even the person you think you are secretly writing about). Read the post here: Preachrblog
England’s Confessing Evangelical blog posts a poignant piece on the Brazilian man shot last week.
The fallout from Friday’s shooting continues to dominate the news and opinion columns. Yesterday’s front-page story from the Independent was a powerful reminder of the human side to this tragedy:
Jean Charles de Menezes wanted to be an electrician from the age of 10. The blond-haired boy would tell his mother, Maria, that it was the way he would leave behind the poverty of rural Brazil for a better life abroad … By the time he was 18, Jean Charles had overcome the odds to complete his professional diploma. It was the piece of paper that would allow him swap a life of odd jobs in the crime-ridden ghettos of Sao Paulo for a home in London.
Such was his desire to make the most of the opportunity, the Brazilian had mastered English within four months of his arrival in Tulse Hill, south London, in March 2002 … He quickly adapted to British life. To relax, the 27-year-old would watch television - a favourite programme was EastEnders - or hang out with friends in a Brazilian bar close to Oxford Street.
In his thrice-weekly phone calls home, he told his mother he was safe and a happy in London - that the police did not even carry guns … Gesio Cesar D’Avila, 37, a friend and work colleague, told The Independent: “He was happy in London. He liked all the different cultures on his doorstep. He wanted to go home as a success.” Read on: Confessing Evangelical
My horrified sympathy for the Brazilian man was immediate and expected, upon learning that the police admitted a mistake, but for some reason I just keep wondering about the policemen involved. There must have been some kind of emotional strength in numbers as they hunted down and shot a man who they believed was about to kill many people.
I keep wondering about how those same officers are doing now, especially now that they are away from their “hunting” group and are facing the scorn of society. The other man is dead and his tragic end will not be forgotten. The police officers are going to have to continue living in their communities. Do they have families? What about kids who will be ridiculed? I hope you can understand that I am not forgetting about the Brazilian man’s unjust and terrifying death. We are living in a sinful, broken world and God still hates death.
These have been my thoughts the past few days. I’m glad John wrote about this very sad tale of war. It was right after this incident that it occurred to me (I’m slow) that the western world is, indeed, at war- that this is actually a kind of world war. I had never had that thought before.
Do Ya?
In this life I’ve seen everything I can see,
I’ve seen lovers flying through the air hand in hand
I’ve seen babies dancing in the midnight sun,
And I’ve seen dreams that came from the heavenly skies above
I’ve seen old men crying at their own grave sides
And I’ve seen pigs all sitting watching, picture slides
But I never seen nothing like you.
Do ya, do ya want my love?
Do ya, do ya want my face?
Do ya, do ya want my mind?
Do ya, do ya want my love?
Well I, heard the crowd singin’ out of tune,
As they, sat and sang Auld Lang Syne by the light of the moon
I heard the preachers bangin’ on the drums,
And I heard the police playin’ with their guns
But I never heard nothin’ like you.
Well I think you know what I’m trying to say,
That is I’d like to save you for a rainy day,
I’ve seen enough of the world to know,
That I’ve got to get it all to get it all to grow.
Happy 21st Anniversary!
Yesterday, I saw a video by Paul Wall. I was this close to betting my son that it was a joke video…that no one would really look or act like that. But I could tell by my son’s reaction that there really was such a person who would look and act like that.
Lately, there have been lots of stories on blogs. They always catch my attention because this wasn’t true just six months ago. There are stories on people blogging at work, people getting fired because they blast their employers on their blogs, teens bloggings their private lives for the world (but not their parents) to read. Any of those articles catches my eye.
The Nanny Blog has been the talk of several radio shows that I haven’t managed to listen to very closely to this week. I heard the basics: mom hires nanny and discovers that she keeps a racy blog. Today I got a Google search hit for the story and decided to read the story for myself. Helaine Olen, a journalist living in Brooklyn, writes for the Modern Love column in the New York Times.
“She hadn’t been with us long when we found out about her online diary. All she’d revealed previously about her private life were the bare-bones details of the occasional date or argument with her landlord and her hopes of attending graduate school in the fall.
Yet within two months of my starting to read her entries our entire relationship unraveled. Not only were there things I didn’t want to know about the person who was watching my children, it turned out her online revelations brought feelings of mine to the surface I’d just as soon not have to face as well.”
I read with alarm the writings of a mother living a life very different from mine. At first, the blog seemed part of the story. I found myself thinking, “Why do such racy, personal blogs steal the spotlight from those of us who attempt to write something substantial?” Of course, even well-known political bloggers have written too much about their personal lives. I found myself wishing for another term for the kind of blog this nanny kept. Anyway, as I read further I realized that the core of the story really had nothing to do with a nanny or a blog. Ms. Olen, or the NYTimes, rightly titled the piece: The New Nanny Diaries are Online. This story was not at all about a blog; this woman was reading her nanny’s diary, albeit a diary foolishly and purposely posted for the world to view. She didn’t like what she read.
I told my friends about the blog, and even my childless acquaintances were riveted. They called, begging for more details…
But I was not as comfortable with the situation as I pretended…
Yet I did not confront her. In part I felt empathy and sadness for this younger version of myself. But I also feared she would judge my life and find it wanting.
As I read her words I was transported back to my own youth and those feelings of awkwardness, fear, false bravado and self-importance. I could have told her that I understood her life more than she realized, that I had not always been the boring hausfrau she must see…
But there was another element of her posts that unnerved me. Most parents don’t like to think the person watching their children is there for a salary. We often build up a mythology of friendship with our nannies, pretending the nanny admires us and loves our children so much that she would continue to visit even without pay.
When our nanny referred to our house on her blog as work in a seemingly sarcastic fashion, she broke the covenant. The more she posted, the more life in our household deteriorated.
I can appreciate the candor with which Ms. Olen writes as she examines her life and finds herself wanting. We all have moments in our life like hers when we are confronted by the differences between what we believe about ourselves and what is actually true about us. What someone would write in a diary about us? What we do at those gifts of moments determines our ability to live in peace and in thankfulness for the hope of our salvation from our earthly condition.
In times of war, it is important to know who are your enemies and who are your allies.
Terrorism is the enemy of all free people. Terrorism is not just about individual circumstances and individual events. Terrorism is about the perverted use of an ideology for evil intent and for evil objectives. And those who think that terrorism is incident specific misunderstand the mind and the workings of the mind of the terrorists.
In summarizing his discussions with England’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, Australian Prime Minister, John Howard said:
“….with regards to Iraq and Afghanistan, we remain committed in both cases. Afghanistan is an important battleground against terrorism and so is Iraq. And nobody should imagine that the terrorists would be other than absolutely delighted if there were a faltering of will in Iraq. We (England and Australia) share common objectives and a common goal. Most importantly of all, 8 1/2 million people defied the most terrible intimidation to vote in Iraq on the 30th of January and that is a cause that’s worth supporting and a cause worth fighting for.”
Bush and Howard met on Tuesday, July 19, 2005 in Washington, DC
WASHINGTON (AP) — Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Tuesday defended his country’s continuing troop presence in Iraq and refused to put a timetable on bringing soldiers home from the U.S.-led campaign, echoing the position of his host, President Bush.
“We will stay the distance in Iraq,” Howard told reporters in a joint White House news conference with Bush, whom he praised as a friend. “We won’t go until the job has been finished.”
Bush and Howard said they understand that people in both their countries want to know when troops will leave Iraq, where insurgent violence has steadily escalated since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Shiite-dominated government in April.
“There’s a great temptation to get me or John to put a timetable on our actions there, but that doesn’t make any sense,” Bush said. “Why would you tell the enemy how long you’re going to stay somewhere? Why would you — we’re at war and during a war you do the best you can to win the war. And one way to embolden an enemy is to give him an artificial timetable.”
Australia has 1,400 troops in and around Iraq. Just last week, Howard said he would send 150 elite troops to Afghanistan by September to help quell insurgent violence there.
Despite the violence in Iraq, Howard said the cause of building democracy there is worth fighting for.
“I think we do face a situation where, because of the horror of suicide bombing, there is a constant high level of publicity, understandably, given to that, and to the detriment of the progress that is being made at a political level,” he said.
Bush and Howard gave an impassioned defense of their joint belief in the U.S.-led fight against terror and spoke in glowing terms about their admiration for each other. Howard said relations between Australia and the United States that are better than they ever have been and told Bush their personal friendship “means a great deal to me.”
Bush referred to Howard four times as his friend and said he admires him as a man of conviction. “He’s got backbone,” Bush said admiringly. Read on…
Washington DC must be a fascinating place to live, sometimes.
These two paragraphs made me laugh aloud as I ate my lunch today:
NARAL-Pro Choice America announced its opposition to Roberts even before Bush formally made his selection public in a prime time televised White House appearance on Tuesday. The group planned an “emergency demonstration” against the nomination across the street from the Capitol at midday.
On the on the other side of the political equation, Progress For America called a news conference to announce a television commercial to begin running soon. The group, which coordinates its efforts with presidential aides, pledged in advance to spend at least $18 million on advertising and grass roots activities to buttress the confirmation prospects of whomever Bush chose. Entire article…
Can you disagree with a law and still respect it?
I don’t understand why some Democrats don’t think that it is possible to disagree with a law and still respect it as the law of the land. I believe that Roberts is saying that it is wrong to use his power to change a law from the bench.
I hate abortion. It is wrong. It is murder to kill a developing child because you don’t want it. I pray that God will use talented law experts and the loving witness of all Christians to turn the hearts of people so that abortion will not be an accepted practice in our country; until then I can respect that it is the law of the land. The question would be that, if the majority of people in this nation rose up with a loud voice and had the law changed, would the dissenters show the ability to respect the new law of the land. The answer is, of course, no and that is why “they” don’t understand Robert’s respect for the law.
Democratic concern over Roberts’ abortion views stem from two seemingly contradictory positions that Roberts took on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
In a brief that he filed with the Supreme Court while serving as deputy solicitor general in the administration of the first President Bush, Roberts said that Roe v. Wade “was wrongly decided and should be overruled.”
Several years later, he told senators during his 2003 confirmation hearings for his current appellate court post that the decision was “the settled law of the land.” Read more…
Hugh Hewitt on Roberts
“Judge John Roberts may be the smartest lawyer I have known, and he combines that intellect with a graciousness and good humor that will make it hard for any except the most extreme ideologues to oppose him. Here’s his bio, but it cannot fully convey the great intellectual force which Justice Roberts will bring to the Supreme Court Of The United States.”
Be sure to check out Powerline blog for their thoughts on how the left will attack Roberts.
James Doohan played Star Trek’s James Montgomery Scott
This man will be missed.
From Fox News:
The Canadian-born Doohan was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a new space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of dialects from his early years in radio, he tried seven different accents.
“The producers asked me which one I preferred,” Doohan recalled 30 years later. “I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding. So I told them, ‘If this character is going to be an engineer, you’d better make him a Scotsman.”‘
When the series ended in 1969, Doohan found himself typecast as Montgomery Scott, the canny engineer with a burr in his voice. In 1973, he complained to his dentist, who advised him: “Jimmy, you’re going to be Scotty long after you’re dead. If I were you, I’d go with the flow.”
“I took his advice,” said Doohan, “and since then everything’s been just lovely.”
Madonna and Brittney - August 2003
This woman will not be missed
In a interview with the magazine, the singer said she sees England - and not the US - as “home”. The 46-year-old also said she is very different from her overtly sexual image of the 1990s.
She told the magazine: “The last thing I thought I would do is marry some laddish, shooting, pub going nature lover.
“And the last thing he thought he was going to do was marry some cheeky girl from the Midwest who doesn’t take no for an answer.
“But now I love England and want to be here and not in America. I see England as my home.”
Madonna added that she and Ritchie fell in love with their 1,000-acre estate, Ashcombe, on the Wiltshire/Dorset border.
She said she wears sensible shoes around the estate, goes hunting and fishing, rides horses and looks after her flock of chickens.
I would like to have some thoughts on Governor Pawlenty. It seems everyone has an opinion on him these days. He’s even mentioned as a presidential hopeful. I’m a voting Minnesotan mom and I should have an opinion, too. Unfortunately, I haven’t been keeping up with state news. So I turn to the resources of the MOB - Minnesota Organization of Bloggers. They allow me to be a member, even though I don’t show up at Keegan’s Pub for trivia (a supposed requirement) and I don’t have an insightful post on Pawlenty at the moment. David Strom, of the Taxpayers’ League, recently posted on the governor and provided links to other posts.
A Promise is a Promise…Except if you are Governor by David Strom and Michael Wigley
Michael Wigley is CEO of Great Plains Companies and Chairman of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota
David Strom is President of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota
Much has been made recently about Governor Pawlenty’s decision to abandon his no-new-taxes pledge and propose an increase in the tobacco tax. And with good reason. For 3 years, since Pawlenty started campaigning for the job, he has insisted that “Minnesota doesn’t have a tax problem, it has a spending problem.”In fact, the very first commercial that Tim Pawlenty ran in the campaign made the promise that he was “the only candidate running who won’t raise your taxes.” Sure, Governor Pawlenty still insists that the tobacco tax increase is really a “health impact fee,” not a tax. But outside the reality-challenged bubble of the Governor’s office, nobody seems to be fooled by these verbal gymnastics. In fact, many of Pawlenty’s Republican allies at the capitol have long ago dropped the “fee” language and openly admit that this is a tax increase to balance the budget, including Senate Minority Leader Dick Day, House Tax Committee Chairman Phil Krinkie, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jim Knoblach. Pawlenty himself says of the new tobacco tax that “Some people call it a tax, some call it a fee, I call it a solution.” It all depends upon what the meaning of “is” is, I guess. Read on…
David Strom’s blog also has links to what bloggers are saying about Governor Pawlenty’s leadership:
KvM: A long look at the brief Presidency of Tim Pawlenty
First Ring: Unfinished Obituary
Craig Westover has several great posts including this this and this.
Chad the Elder goes after Pawlenty and Hugh Hewitt in a must read…
King has a couple of good posts here and here.
Andy at Residual Forces says…
Club for Growth blog is not happy with Tim…
Scott Johnson of Powerline says…
Republican Minnesota disagrees and has a good point…
SD42 Republicans weigh in with their overall analysis of the session
Hopefully, I will soon have my own thoughts on Governor Pawlenty. I do know one thing: it’s hard to be mad at a governor who plays hockey and has a website for kids!
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