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Random Thoughts...

I've been syndicated and summarized!!!

I checked my stats the other day and found somewhere between 75-100 hits coming from livejournal.com. A little investigation shows that PJammer (shown left) read my Rules of Dating and put together an abbreviated version here (I have to imagine this wasn't an easy task). While he made some choices I probably would have done slightly differently, overall I'd call it excellent work. Though I haven't read through his site yet in detail, I did note that he won the www.diarist.net award for Best Romantic Entry - Q2 2001 for his work entitled Pjammer: King of Masochists. I encourage you to visit him. Interesting enough, though his post appears to have generated some 300 visits to my Rules, not one of the readers bothered signing my guestbook. Them's the breaks, huh?

Give Andrea Yates the chair!

Eight women and four men convicted her on two counts of capital murder after just 3� hours of deliberation. Her attorney claimed that she was legally insane and did not know right from wrong when she called her children into the bathroom one by one and drowned them in the tub. Soon, very soon we will know her fate. Her audiotaped confession to police in which she described how her 7-year-old tried to run but "I got him," and her 911 call the day of the drownings were enough for me. Prosecutors said Yates did not start referring to Satan until the day after her arrest. They argued she was so deliberate she covered the bodies as she went because the children still alive were old enough to escape from the house and get help. The defense argued that she suffered from postpartum depression so severe that she had lost her ability for rational thought. They also made a bogus claim that if she wasn't insane than no one was. Insane, no. Unredeemable, yes. After her 3rd and 4th her doctors advised her to stop having children due to her increasing risks of having a psychotic attack. If you take illegal drugs and subsequently kill someone, you have no right to claim insanity. If you made a conscious choice to put yourself and others at risk by your actions and inactions, you should be required to live with the consequences. I only wish her husband could be found equally culpible.

Blackhawk Down

As I read about the American pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Scott Speicher, that was shot down during the Gulf War back in 1991 and I find that we've know of his existence since 1993, I'm reminded of the book Blackhawk Down. On October 3rd 1993, during an operation involving Army Rangers and Delta Force designed to capture Mohammed Aidid, a US Blackhawk helicopter was shot down. US forces arriving at the scene of the crash were encircled by Somali gunmen while reinforcements that were sent encountered roablocks and machinegun fire as they attempted to reach the crash site. While this was taking place a second Blackhawk helicopter was shot down and the reinforcements were ordered to proceed to the second crash site. In the process, the reinforcements came under heavy fire eventually returning to base leaving the 90 Rangers still at the first crash site. After 17 hours of hell, Malaysian APC's arrived and the Rangers set out for a UN controlled Stadium. In the aftermath, 18 Americans and up to 1000 Somalis were killed while all US soldier's bodies and the one US "hostage" were recovered.

Makes me wonder...what is the fair market value of an American soldier's life? This Somalia incident was like a 58 to 1 ratio of bad guys to good guys dead but was that enough? What would be an acceptable cost for the loss of a son, husband, or father? Should we risk soldier's lives to bring back a dead body? Should we risk their lives to free a man such as Scott Speicher who for so long has been assumed dead? You are damn right. It is all apart of the deal we make with our brothers in battle. We will not leave you behind. If you are to die today, I will carry you home. I will mourn and bury you on the soil of your birth. Fight strong brother and fear not that your loved ones shall have "closure."

We have a pilot away from home and away from loved ones. Let's go get him.

Anyway, For Them What Care, there it is.

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