Good Friday!

Friday the 8th! WSU day. No raptors this time. Graduation is Sunday and the campus was buzzing with students in caps and gowns taking one another's pictures in front of campus icons.

New 4th year students were just beginning their rotation in cardiology, our usual doctor was off studying for her boards and the vet med lobby was a beehive of activity.

Bacchus took at all in stride. He was patient while the students each took their turn in examining him. They aren't called Saints for nothing!

His reveal revealed he had a few "episodes" over the past month but that he had bounced quickly. He's going to have them. Hopefully not severe enough to do him in. They probably come when he's barking at a cyclist or walkers passing by on the road.

They sent us home with no changes in medication, an appointment two months down the road rather than the usual one and an appetite for a double Arby's to make the one o'clock pills more palatable!

Oh, yeah, he's gained two pounds!

As I said last week, these updates will no longer be a weekly exercise, but for this week the good doctors at WSU have given me the best "Mother's" day possible.

Joe The Social Arbiter

I'm tired of politics. I've found little to comment on without complaining. I've been browsing and finding nothing. The fact that Sarah Palin got to her daughter and the young lady is now espousing abstinence for teens is good if unlikely. Heck!

Wait! What's this? Joe/Sam is back in the news. This guy is like a bad penny and I love him for it! When I feel I just must post something, he never lets me down!

I loved the headline on Yahoo News: Joe the Plumber calls gays 'queer'.

This folk hero of conservatives explains to us what exactly 'queer' means since we obviously don't "understand the dictionary". I love this man! "Queer means strange and unusual. It's not a like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that."

Hmmm. I don't know what dictionary he reads but this is the definition given by the one on my computer:

1 strange; odd : she had a queer feeling that they were being watched.
• [ predic. ] dated slightly ill.
2 informal usually offensive (esp. of a man) homosexual.
noun informal usually offensive
a homosexual man.

Well, he was partially correct.

Continuing in an interview with Christianity Today he was lamenting that neither party is sufficiently Christian. "They use God as a punch line. They use God to invoke sympathy or invoke righteousness, but they don't stay the course."

As the conversation continued, he admitted that someday he might consider running for office. "Not right now. God hasn't said, 'Joe, I want you to run'."

Is there a punch line in there? Or is he just staying the course?

Pleading The 5th...er..the 10th!

I'm not kidding here folks. It's really time for the administration to stop and smell the flowers! The public is becoming frightened by the power grab the Feds are pulling for the sake of what? Hope? I hope they stop soon! Change? That wasn't supposed to mean Federal intervention in every aspect of our lives whether or not it's wanted or needed.

Don't try to tell me the bailouts and stimulus programs are working. Yes, the market has been going up and there are other indicators that the worst might be over. For that to be true, it means things were on the way to turning around before Obama was even in office. The bulk of the money he has allocated to his various schemes has yet to be dispersed and the requirements for receiving same are being made up as they go along.

Fortunately, someone has taken notice and are beginning to leave the grease off the wheel. Actually the rumblings the states were feeling things were amiss at the Federal level began with Alaska's Sarah Palin spot lighting her state. Before that how many of us knew there were rumblings about secession way up north?

Just a week or so ago, during the tea party period, Texas Governor Rick Perry made similar noises and now the Oklahoma legislature is putting the Federal Government on notice with an effort to claim their sovereignty!

What's with all this discontent? Too much too soon and too many toes being stepped on. While it's nice we have an energetic young President who is determined to get things done, there's a bit too much stumbling going on. I watched Hillary Clinton sit with Afghanistan's Karzai and Pakistan's Zardari and apologize, one more time, for civilian deaths. It's war. Civilian's get killed. If they can do better then do so!

We've accepted a share of the blame for the drug wars in Mexico. We still can't decide what torture consists of and what's permissible. We're still being asked to pour additional billions into the auto companies and the banks. We're forcing banks who don't want it to take it and now are not allowed to pay it back. Why? The Feds would lose control where it isn't even needed! The same with the states.

And therein lies the problem. The states and that pesky 10th amendment which reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

For a man who is supposedly well versed in Constitutional Law, I'd like to know what sort of grades our President got in applicable courses.

Of course none of the states are going to secede. We are the "United" States for good reason. Like the constant noises Quebec makes about leaving Canada, it's fodder for leverage and little else. They need Canada. All our states need what the Federal Government has to offer too. Should we have another Katrina or if Mt. Redoubt really blows, the Feds are needed.

The states are merely letting the Feds know they're pushing the envelope. So did the people with something as simple as a tea party. The question is, will the Feds hear or do we need to supply them with an ear trumpet?

Equal Opportunity Brutality

I never cease to be amazed at the depth of difference between the culture of Islamic nations and Western civilization.

I worry about the safety of our men and women in uniform who serve in these countries when, as in Iraq, the Iraqi government wants them to be subject to Iraqi law. Any one in our government who agrees to this should be hung and quartered. That's just about what Islamic law would demand should they be found guilty of a crime like rape or adultery! Well, actually, they'd be stoned.

I had thought that women bore the brunt of their 14th century mentality but it seems not. According to Radio Free Europe , an Iranian man has been stoned to death for adultery. In this case, the woman went unpunished because she repented. Wow. If that's all it takes!

I found a couple of things interesting while I was searching for information with which to flesh out this post. One being I could not find one single photo of a man being stoned, but as you can see, women could.

The expression on the woman's face says all that needs to be said. I guess if you're lucky, the first stone stuns you enough so you don't feel the pelting until it's ended with your death.

Here's how it goes. Women are buried up to their chests, men to their waists. The stones are not to be so large that they would kill you immediately. Next time a criminal in this country who has committed a heinous crime pleads that execution by lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment might be given the choice of an Islamic execution! For far less than the grisly, inhumane murders that bring about such penalties in this country!

Do you think Western influence will stop punishments such as this? I doubt it. Iran ordered a moratorium on stoning in 2002. This, of which I write, happened this year. This March. 2009. Two more happened in February. Some moratorium.

I guess the reason the we speak of Western civilization is because we are civilized. Culture is not a synonym!

What Do We Do In Afghanistan Now?

It is getting more and more difficult to find news to comment on with the all Obama all the time syndrome that the media seems determined to perpetuate. When I do, however, it's likely to be a doozie!

Such is the case today when I found that Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, running for re-election, has chosen a warlord to be the senior of his two running mates.

Do you see a pattern here? When Lebanon had free elections they chose Hezbollah. The Palestinians chose Hamas. After a few tries we settled with Iraq's choice of al-Maliki. Do you get the idea that maybe the people of those countries, such as they are, don't give a care as to who we think they should elect?

According to The National Post there are a lot of very upset people over this choice. One could hope Karzai's theory is to "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" but I fear it's more an indicator of who really runs Afghanistan.

I decided to see what I could find about Mohammed Qasim Fahim and came across a website tiltled Warlords of Afghanistan . It was not a comfortable read.

As a general reference it tells us of an Afghan saying, "What you do to your enemies today, you will do to your friends tomorrow." That's not a pleasant insight to their character!

It goes on to tell us Fahim is an "awkward looking and personally unlikeable man with a temper problem. At present he is a threat to the U.S. plan for Afghanistan."

Karzai is weak and holds sway over little more than Kabul yet often scolds us for the manner in which we are helping him in his fight against the Taliban. Though Fahim was Karzai's defense minister, there is little trust between the men. That the U.S. backed Karzai over Fahim for the presidency in 2002 doesn't help.

This is one of those "I don't envy Hillary" moments I have quite often. It's also a "does Obama have clue what he's doing here" moment!

We know Karzai wants to be re-elected. If he is, what plans might Fahim have for him? These two are strange, but expedient, bedfellows. The larger problem is that we're in bed with them. This is truly the stuff of nightmares!