Gentlemen, Restart Your Engines....

Yes, it has been too long to leave you hanging on my last post, but I am going to reactivate my blogroll again. Hurray! Life has been rather full this year but I really have missed penning my rambling rants. So, new day. New Commitment. Sorta. Maybe. Perhaps.

SPACE CADETS

You may have heard about the article in Space.com suggests NASA scientists may have found evidence of life on Mars that got all the space cadets so excited -

A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.

The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed.

The obvious fact is, it isn't the truth, and NASA's issued a press release -

News reports on February 16, 2005, that NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect.

NASA does not have any observational data from any current Mars missions that supports this claim. The work by the scientists mentioned in the reports cannot be used to directly infer anything about life on Mars, but may help formulate the strategy for how to search for martian life. Their research concerns extreme environments on Earth as analogs of possible environments on Mars. No research paper has been submitted by them to any scientific journal asserting martian life.

STRESS MANAGEMENT

Following is a good reminder that we were not designed to carry our burdens alone (Hattip to my Uncle Claud):

"Come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke on you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest to your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." (Mat 11:28-30)

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it."

"If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. "In each case, it's the same weight, but the
longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on." "As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden."

"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can." "Relax; pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short. Enjoy it!

And then he shared some ways of dealing with the burdens of life:

* Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.

* Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.

* If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

* Never buy a car you can't push.

* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.

* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

* When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

* You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

* A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

JUSTICE FLOWS LIKE A RIVER

A sensible judge makes a sensible judgment:

Now charges have been dropped against the four adults. On Thursday (February 17), Court of Commons Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe dismissed the charges, ruling that peaceful expressive activities like those of the Christian demonstrators are fully protected by the First Amendment. She also stated that prosecutors were unable to make even a minimal showing of any criminal conduct.

But this decision is just the end of the beginning:

"There has been a grave injustice visited upon them," the attorney adds, "and we intend to vindicate those rights in federal court."

Crampton says he is hopeful charges against 17-year-old Lauren Murch will be dropped during a hearing on Friday morning. The City of Philadelphia indicated it may appeal Judge Dembe's decision.

Seems that the officials of the "City of Brotherly Love" are taking that slogan a bit too seriously.

DUTCH DILEMMA

Here is a translation of a Dutch newspaper article in a comment on Little Green Footballs:

In the Netherlands the national flag is now banned on most schools. If a student wears the national flag of his own country he will be suspended or expelled from school. The reason for this is that this provokes the immigrants (the muslims) and therefore it is considered discrimination if you wear your country's flag in your own country. Even people who have an bumpersticker with the flag on their car are harassed and called a facist by the Muslims. Most schools also ban certain clothing like the Lonsdale brand and combat boots with white or red laces. This is also concidered a sign of racism. There are, of course, no restrictions for the immigrants on clothing.

One of the greatest tragedies of the post-WWII reconstruction of Europe was the wholesale abandonment of the historic Christian faith by the Dutch (and the majority of Old Europeans.)

The Dutch are dominated by an intolerant and immoral form of secular relativism that has earned them the dubious distinction of leading in the moral degeneration of Old Europe. Now the Dutch (read: French, British, Belgians, Germans, Swiss, Danes, Spanish, Italians, Swedes, Norwegians, etc.) are threatened by the distorted moral militancy of Islam

Like my ol’ Mammie used to say, “Son, if you don’t stand for something, then you will fall for anything.”

GOOD COP, BAD COP

It looks like Secretary of State Rice is giving Old Europe just enough rope on the Iranian Nuclear Disarmament issue to potentially hang themselves. Our strategy seems to be for the "bad cop" America to wait just outside the interrogation room door making threatening sounds while the Iranians are read the riot act by the "good cop" Europeans.

Unfortunately, it appears the Europeans are likely to go the way of the DooDoo Bird, just like the UN Security Council did with Iraq. President Bush seems to have adopted Teddy Roosevelt's recommendation to "walk softly and carry a big stick."

Let's pray the suicidal wing of Iran's ruling Mullahs don't make Saddam's mistake of misunderestimating President Bush's determination to spread liberty throughout the world, particularly in Syria, Iran and North Korea. Do these madmen really think Allah can protect them from the wrath of the Coalition of the Willing, which will include Israel the next go round?

Or, maybe we should take Senator Biden's recommendation (hattip: Jayson at Polipundit):

Even if Iran was a full democracy like India, it would want nuclear capability, like India. What the world needed to address was Iran’s emotional needs, with a nonaggression pact. – Senator Joe Biden, as paraphased by the Boston Globe, February 2005

The braying donkey is the perfect icon of the modern Democrat party as personified by Senators Biden, Kennedy, and Kerry. Biden demonstrated his command of the emotional needs of the Iranian Mullahs when he stood up their delegation for dinner in Davos last week. So much for practicing what he preaches.

FDR MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN BUSH

That's right. A recent revelation (Hattip: DJ) on Polipundit proves that FDR was politically more conservative on the issue of Social Security than President Bush is today! I'm not making this up. This quote is from Bill Bennett's website:

FDR's Message to Congress on Social Security on Jan. 17, 1935:

"In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, noncontributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions.

Second, compulsory contributory annuities that in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations.

Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

Not only was the third phase of Roosevelt's SS plan to include private annuity accounts, but, the old-age pension plan was to be ultimately supplanted by those private accounts. Now read it again carefully. Roosevelt in 1935 said the old-age benefits of Social Security were to be supplanted, not supplemented, by private annuity accounts. Dictionary.com defines supplant as "to replace, to displace, to substitute for (i.e., as the computer supplanted the typewritter.)"

So when the Democrats crowded around FDR's statue for a photo op, and boldly denounced President Bush for wanting to privatize Social Security, they were actually dissing the vision of their Democrat demi-god Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Well, la-te-da.

MIRROR, MIRROR

The Democrat's fascination with their image reflected in the MSM reminds me of the evil Queen and her magic mirror in Disney’s animated movie SNOW WHITE.

Each day the Queen would stand before the mirror and ask “Mirror, mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of all?” And the mirror would answer, “You are.” And the Queen would be happy the rest of the day.

But, one morning the Queen asked the mirror the same question and said, “Snow White is the fairest of all.” In a fit of rage the Queen broke the magic mirror and plotted a scheme to destroy Snow White.

The same could be said for the Democrats today. Since the 60's the Democrats have adored their image in the *magic mirror* of the MainStream Media. Together the liberal journalists and liberal Democrats benefited politically from the mutual admiration society they created by dominating the public dissemination of the news.

However, all that changed in the early 90's with the explosion of conservative talk radio and the rapid expansion into American homes of the information through the cable and the Internet. Suddenly the magic mirror of the MainStream Media wasn't the only source of information for the public.