The Winter Olympics: Inspiration

Kajillions of words are spewing forth about the Vancouver Winter Olympics, so OldSouth will be brief.

1. Curling is, well, mesmerizing to watch. Whoodathunkit?

2. It takes real courage to strap on skis and take on the downhill course. It appears to be an accomplishment to cross the finish line on one's skis, in one piece.

3. It takes something else entirely to compete at Skeleton: e.g. heading down the bobsled track face-first, six inches off the ice, at eighty-five miles an hour. Them folks gots stones!

4. But the best thing about this event are the huge smiles that come across the faces of the competitors as they cross the finish line. Even if they don't place in the top three. The common theme seems to be:
I did it! I got here, crossed the line, and can go home and get on with my life. And I've got some great stories to tell. I'm so grateful I got to do this.

Contrast this with, say, what one encounters in the NBA, or NFL, NHL...

Bulldozing The House, And Leaving It To The Bank

HT to Calculated Risk.

Well, this guy didn't fly a plane into the bank and murder employees.

Still, it did take some chutzpah to take a bulldozer to one's own house before the bank seized it.

If the land was worth, say 50K, then this guy just blew a 300K hole into the local bank's balance sheet.

No 'extend and pretend', if the house no longer exists!  And since it was bulldozed for the cameras, and the story is broadcast, no way to spin those facts away, either.

Undoubtedly, the bank may attempt to sue or prosecute over this, but do they really wish to be subject to discovery and have to try the cases in front of a small-town Ohio jury? What might come to light that would be of interest to the bank inspectors? Will they give twelve citizens the opportunity to draw their own knives on the bank, all completely legally? And endure the press coverage of the trial and subsequent jury nullification?  And watch customers take their business down the street?

News travels fast in small towns!

Cheaper to hire a cleanup crew, and quietly haul the remains away, upon reflection.

The anger is building out there. Murder is not an option. 

Creativity, however, can be highly effective.

The Demise of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

In the US, what with a professor murdering her colleagues, and a disaffected computer engineer deciding to wage a one-man war on the Internal Revenue Service with his private airplane, New Orleans taking the Super Bowl, and Tiger Woods delivering his tightly-scripted apology, the deliberately-engineered demise of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh by an expert team of assassins has not generated much attention.

But it does deserve some thought, as we in the US are engaged in a long-term brush war against some very bad people.  How do we protect ourselves against monsters without becoming monsters ourselves?

It's not just neurotic introspection. This guy was a monster, who happily participated in the murder of a lot of innocent people. But he was a human being, and no human life should be deliberately cut short nonchalantly.

The short version of the story is, that while on a business trip to Dubai, he was tracked down and killed by an expert assassination team, who were travelling on falsified European and UK passports. The hotel security cameras caught it all, except the act of killing itself. By the time his body was discovered, the team had left the country.

Very slick, very pro. Assumed to be Mossad, but about even odds that it was another Palestinian entity.

This guy made a lot of enemies in his day, as he himself was an equal-opportunity murderer.

OldSouth is always interested when people who live on opposite ends of the left/right spectrum arrive at essentially the same conclusion. Here we have one of those instances.

Alan Dershowitz at Huffington Post, in his lawyerly fashion, explores the legal and moral questions raised.

Mohammed Daraghmeh, also at Huff Post, explores the real possibility that Mahmoud was sent to his reward by the Palestinian Authority, who bear no love for Hamas.

In either case, he's no longer with us. He can't kidnap anyone, kill anyone, or supply weapons to help others do the same. This is cause for at least a sigh of relief.

Conservative Israeli blogger Israel Matzav offers more detailed perspective:

There are two reasons why Israel would want al-Mabhouh dead, and I'm going to take the second reason first because the main reason segues into the second question. Think Munich. Remember after the Munich Olympic Massacre how Israel sent agents all over the world to kill the murderers of Israel's Olympic team? Why did Israel do that? To show that actions have consequences. Al-Mabhouh kidnapped and murdered two Israeli soldiers. The kidnappings were among the very first terror attacks carried out by Hamas. If Israel killed al-Mabhouh, it has shown that it knows how to settle scores and that terrorists should not expect to ever be able to live in peace. Al-Mabhouh knew all that - that's why he lived in exile in Syria and it's why he had a security detail.

But the second reason for knocking off al-Mabhouh is far more important. Mabhouh helped found Hamas’s armed wing Izzadin Kassam in the 1980s, was behind the kidnapping in the first intifada of two Israeli soldiers and later established strong ties in Sudan, which he used to smuggle weaponry from Iran to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He was reportedly responsible for the weapons convoy that, according to foreign reports, Israel bombed during Operation Cast Lead as it was making its way to Gaza through the Sudanese desert.

In other words, if Israel took out Mabhouh, it also took out Hamas' weapons supplier, lessening the likelihood of any retaliation from Gaza.

In the midst of all the European hand-wringing over this assassination, and the outrage expressed at Israel for invading Gaza in early 2009, we need to remember:

Israel voluntarily handed over Gaza in 2005, exchanging tangible land and assets for intangible promises of peace with the Palestinians. What they got was Hamas taking Gaza over, using it to stage rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. Which led to the death and destruction of early 2009.

Mabouh was one of the prime actors in Hamas, and its weapons procurer. Sans his behavior, thousands of lives would have been spared.

So, the question remains: If we knock 'people like this' off, do we begin to become like 'people like this'?

And, knowing that a person like Mahmoud creates wholesale death and destruction, how can we fail to take advantage of the opportunity to send him to his reward?

Theze is complicated times, ya'll.

This Week's Bizarre Tragedy: Austin, Texas

 These pictures tell the end of the story.

Here's the account from today's Fox News account. 

Here's the long diatribe left by Joseph Stack, before he burned his home to the ground, left his wife a widow, and his young step-daughter undoubtedly traumatized.

OldSouth slogged through the long farewell, just to see if there was any nugget of wisdom to glean:

Well, he hated the government in general, and the IRS in particular.  And unions. And the Catholic Church. And big business. Accounting firms. CPA's. Politicians in general, members of Congress in particular.

He spent a lot of his energy over the years crusading against all of the above. Especially the IRS.

Along the way, he lost two businesses and a marriage in California.

He relocated to Austin, and it appears the cycle was underway again.

LongStoryShort, much like our intrepid professor in Alabama, he decided that all his heartbreaks were someone else's fault.  Therefore, he was justified in murdering his tormentors; and himself as well in this instance.

Not one word contemplated the horrific consequences for the people who loved him, who are left to sort life out in the wake of this crime.

OS ain't preaching, folks. He remembers a time when he felt much like this, and but for grace, did not act out in this destructive a manner. There but for grace...

We live in troubled times. And we're in for a rough sled over the next few years. So, let's hug the ones who love us extra-good, and think of them first as we make any decision, however seemingly insignificant. Let's choose our battles with a bit of humility and wisdom. Let's do something, however small, to make someone else's life better, to tidy up our tiny corner of the culture a little bit today. Let's remember who we are, who we aren't, and how we got here.

And how blessed we are.

The Mount Vernon Statement

Progress is being made. The drafters and signers understand that freedom and prosperity flow from adherence to the Constitution.

The Mount Vernon Statement

 

 

Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century

 

We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding.  Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.

These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.

 

Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The selfevident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant. 

Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?

The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.

The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.

A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives through the natural fusion provided by American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world.

 

A Constitutional conservatism based on first principles provides the framework for a consistent and meaningful policy agenda.

• It applies the principle of limited government based on the
  rule of law to every proposal.
• It honors the central place of individual liberty in American
  politics and life.
• It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and
  economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
• It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom
  and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that
  end.
• It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood,
  community, and faith.

If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose.
We must begin by retaking and resolutely defending the high ground of America’s founding principles.

[initial signers]
February 17, 2010

Edwin Meese, former U.S. Attorney General under President Reagan Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America
Edwin Feulner, Jr., president of the Heritage Foundation
Lee Edwards, Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at the Heritage Foundation, was present at the Sharon Statement signing.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council
Becky Norton Dunlop, president of the Council for National Policy
Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center
Alfred Regnery, publisher of the American Spectator
David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union
David McIntosh, co-founder of the Federalist Society
T. Kenneth Cribb, former domestic policy adviser to President Reagan
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform
William Wilson, President, Americans for Limited Government
Elaine Donnelly, Center for Military Readiness
Richard Viguerie, Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com
Kenneth Blackwell, Coalition for a Conservative Majority
Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring
Kathryn J. Lopez, National Review

Pardon Me, Mr. President, Weren't You In The Illinois Senate?

So, how did you, The Wan, fail to notice the fiscal freight train bearing down on your state?

If each household in Illinois owes $25,000 just to make the pension plans of the state employees whole, where will they find the money to fund their own pensions, or kids' educations, or house purchases,  car purchases, small business start-ups, etc.?

Just wondering...because today you assured us that it is now 'impossible' that the United States will fall into an economic depression.

A Tenure Brush War At (Fill-In-The-Blank) University

Here's the story.

This one is occurring at Ohio University.

Especially given the bizarre tragedy in Hunstville, administration at the school is, shall we say...on edge.

Not one hint that the faculty member in question has any capacity for violence, but campus police were called to one of the meetings anyway.  The faculty member wasn't even on campus that day.

In a way, the specifics of this story don't matter. My friends in academia report that tenure is a running brush war within institutions, pitting otherwise (ostensibly) civilized people constantly against one another.

In the meantime, back at Reality Ranch:

This brush war is brought to you by taxpayers, students, alumni, and donors; all of whom, in one way or another, pony up a lot of money to Ohio University.

Mom, Dad: Would you knowingly send your child into academic harm's way, knowing about these behaviors at a potential school? That the faculty and administration of the entire school spend their days wrangling over this stuff?

Student: Do you want to invest years of your life, and incur student debt, in order to study with these people?

Alumni: Does this make you want to bump up your donation from last year?

Taxpayer: Does this make you want to call your local legislator and raise Cain?

On a personal note, OldSouth had the pleasure of spending a week on that campus a few years back. It's tucked away in the hills of eastern Ohio, and the town and university sort of 'meld' into one another.

It was lovely.

OS would not have been upset to see one of his kids choose Ohio University.

Now, not a chance of the proverbial snowball in a hot location.

Hello out there, academia-people. You live in the same world we do.

OS will stop ranting now, and return to his non-tenured business, so he can pay his taxes to support the state universities that spend their energies....

A Truly Happy Piece Of News From The NY Times

This article from the New York Times does cheer the heart.

Leonard Bernstein was a genius in so many ways, and made huge contributions to the American culture.

Critics remember him for his excesses and flaws, which he indeed did have, aplenty.

But it's hard to imagine American music without West Side Story, or Chichester Psalms, or Candide, or his incredible work in making music accessible to millions upon millions of young television viewers.

...in the 1950s, when American television viewers had three major networks to choose from — CBS, NBC and ABC — classical music was a part of the standard programming mix. Bernstein’s conducting demonstration was one of seven appearances, now on DVD, that he made on “Omnibus,” a 90-minute program that offered segments on science and the arts, particularly music and theater. It ran from 1952 to 1961, and migrated across the networks, from CBS to ABC in 1956, and to NBC in 1957.

These programs have just been made available on DVD. Their scripts formed the basis for much of his wonderful book The Joy of Music.

Again, OldSouth's personal soapbox is that the culture shapes the economy. He hopes that this DVD collection finds its way into the video systems of families everywhere, and are played again and again.
It will enrich the lives of the kids and grandkids in wonderful ways. They deserve to know who Bernstein was, what he accomplished, and to see him in his youthful prime.

A Thunderous Silence, Because The Truth Has Turned Out To Be Profoundly Inconvenient

The BBC interview with Phil Jones, the disgraced head of the climate science scam at East Anglia University, detailed  here and here,  is quite damning of the entire 'global warming' enterprise. Remember, the 'data' generated by East Anglia was used as the basis for billions upon billions of spending around the world. When confronted by Freedom of Information requests, Jones stonewalled. He knows in his heart that his work will not survive scrutiny. He seems to plea for sympathy at one point. OS finds it hard to work up any.

Planet Gore notes the profound lack of coverage of this inconvenient bit of truth in the mainstream US media outlets.

It's now a matter of time. One of them will realize that the silence will be much more damaging to their reputations and bottom lines than can be tolerated.

At that point, the dam will break. The ice, indeed, will melt around AlGore's feet.

Of course, each outlet will claim that (a.) they were wise to the scam all along, and (b.) that they had broken the story of the fraud.

Yadda, yadda.

Yadda.

In the meantime, OS wishes to share the 'Summary for Policymakers' of an extensive report by Joseph D'Aleo (co-founder of The Weather Channel), and Anthony Watts, a 25-year meteorology broadcast veteran. The full report, published 29 January 2010,  may be downloaded here, at the end of the linked article.

1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.

2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term temperature trends.

3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.

4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.

5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.

6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.

7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island contamination alone.

8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.

9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.

10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.

11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-
century “global warming”.

12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.

13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.

14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC “chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations.”

15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also requires a full investigation and audit.

It's a 100+ page report, heavy on footnotes and charts.

No one had to force the information from them, and it is open to peer review, as it has been published.

Who you gonna believe?

A Bit Under The Radar, Ken Starr Is Named President Of Baylor University

The Rabid Left will foam at the mouth, without a doubt. Watch for it. The news hasn't come up on their radar.

Ken Starr, the prosecutor who exposed the Clintons, has been chosen as president of Baylor University, in Waco Texas.

Baylor University announces that Kenneth Winston Starr, J.D., current dean of the School of Law at Pepperdine University, has been named the 14th president of Baylor University. Judge Starr was the unanimous choice of both the 14-member Presidential Search Committee and the 10-member Presidential Search Advisory Committee, and was elected unanimously by the Baylor Board of Regents on February 12, 2010. 
 
Judge Starr will be introduced to the campus community by Regents Chair R. Dary Stone, J.D. '77, at a university-wide meeting in the Bill Daniel Student Center on the Baylor campus at 3 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 16. 

For those unfamiliar with Baylor, it is a cornerstone institution of Texas, founded by and funded by Texas Baptists.

It is a conservative institution, but any and all attempts to characterize it as a bunch of wing-nuts in the Texas prairie just don't stick.  They run a very good medical school, for openers. 

OS sees this announcement as a very good thing for the culture, a hopeful sign. Kudos to Baylor.

Here's the Baylor homepage.

Not One Mention Of The 'AstroTurf Word' From The New York Times

Today's New York Times features a long and thoughtful article by David Barstow, telling the stories of previously apolitical citizens who have become Tea-Party activists.

Well worth reading and considering, especially if you are visiting this blog from overseas. Barstow presents an even-handed account, and carefully avoids the temptation to create cartoon characters, as so many in the MSM have attempted.

A brief excerpt:

The Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent, a force in Republican politics for revival, as it was in the Massachusetts Senate election, or for division. But it is also about the profound private transformation of people like Mrs. Stout, people who not long ago were not especially interested in politics, yet now say they are bracing for tyranny.

Again, highly recommended, and worthy of sharing, especially for readers outside our shores. America can look very confusing from a distance, and this article helps provide some focus.

As OS has mentioned before, Cintons/Gore/Obama/Pelosi/Reid et al could always count on the uncritical support of the New York Times. Those days are drawing to a close. The Massachusetts 'attitude adjustment' is beginning to take hold in the editorial suite. The fact that they are going broke has also focused their attention a bit. One reader at a time, they alienated their readership, one half-truth and outright whopper at a time.

Chill winds are blowing, and Obama and Company have lost a great deal of their traditional shelter.

(Two loyalist Democrat senators, Bayh and Mikulski, announced their exit this week. They've had enough.)

Whew! That Was A Close Call!

This news from the Philadelphia Enquirer, relaying the news that TSA demanded a four-year-old boy with physical challenges take off his leg braces and walk through a security checkpoint.

He was being transported through the airport by wheelchair, on his first trip to Disney, by his mom and dad.

His dad is a police officer.

We can rest easy, knowing the TSA is on the job...no preschooler terrorist in a wheelchair will be able to slip through our foolproof airport security system.  Only the twenty-something one, flying from Africa, on a ticket paid with cash, whose own father had urged our government to be on the lookout for him.  He gets through, is subdued by a Dutchman, and given his own lawyer.

Yessiree, Bob!

Al Gore Speaks From Parnassus

His conclusion:  It's Worse Than We Thought

Silence about the bogus science.  Anyone who dares disagree is a 'denier'. Apocalyptic warnings that only massive government intervention can save us. The North Pole is melting away before our eyes, even though the ice cap is growing.  No word lately on the polar bears.

A browse through his blog is educational, to say the least.

Gotta get back to work.  Tennessee is snowed in.

Again.

Livin' The High Life: The Congressional Black Caucus

OS ran across bits of this, and thought--nyah, this is just some rant from some guy living in his mom's basement with his gun collection and Confederate flag.

In 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation spent more on the caterer for its signature legislative dinner and conference — nearly $700,000 for an event one organizer called “Hollywood on the Potomac” — than it gave out in scholarships, federal tax records show.

OS has a friend on the faculty at Fisk University, a flagship black university, founded and built by freed slaves. They struggle to keep the doors open.  Certainly, this story is overblown. What could Fisk do with 700 grand?

But, just to be certain, he kept searching, and the original story is sourced at the New York Times.

The quote was accurate. And the whole story is much uglier than just that paragraph.

Time was, the Times would never, ever print a story like this. They were the original LiberalGuiltAssCovering service. No matter how egregious, never a murmur about any black Democrat.  Back in the day, Adam Clayton Powell ran Harlem as a personal duchy, right under the nose of the Times.

Well, times has changed(unintentional pun...) Reality is setting in. Their people won. Statehouse, Congress, White House. Black governor, black president. The Dream is reality.

And the wheels are coming off.

The Times, to survive, must regain at least a semblance of credibility. They no longer control the conversation, and increasingly, the country doesn't care what their editorial page thinks.

Obama and company are losing their cover, and cold winds are beginning to blow.

Obama And Iran Explained

Maybe this is the reason our President seems so, shall we say, intimidated by the Iranian question.

Just sayin'...

(ooh, that was uncivil...)

P & G Scores Big With Their Olympic Ad

Proctor and Gamble will weather our present troubles. They make the everyday products the world consumes.  Pampers, Crest, Tide, Pepto-Bismol, the list stretches on.

They also have execs in place who have the intelligence and insight to commission ads like this for the Winter Olympics. It's brilliant stroke, as they build the brand value and barely mention any of the products they sell. There will be time for that later. For now, they spread good cheer and good will.

Global Warming, Or, The Weather Station Next To The Waste Incinerator

Bit by bit, person by person, week by week.

The global warming scam is being exposed.  The Sunday Times reports:

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution. In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”. 

No debate allowed. The UN, and Al Gore had spoken.  Any who dared disagree were simply ignorant, backward, Luddites, not worthy of consideration. Obama ran his campaign on the assumption of global warming, and the promise to set all right.  Billions upon billions of dollars of government spending has already occurred, seeking a solution to a problem that likely never existed. Then there are the private sector costs incurred, due to legislation and regulation. The list goes on and on...

But, with doubts arising, and evidence of fraud surfacing, the IPCC invited outside review of its last report. The evidence points away from their conclusion.


Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, was one scholar invited to review the findings.  The Times reports:

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.


“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.


Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.


His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment. Some are next to air- conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous shows a weather station next to a waste incinerator. 

...a weather station next to a waste incinerator.

...a weather station next to a waste incinerator.

...a weather station next to a waste incinerator.

And we are expected to change everything about our lives, predicated on conclusions created by this kind of junk science.  And we are expected to be civil whilst this happens.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

The principal scientist upon whose 'research' the whole hysteria has been based admits he has perhaps lost the data, and that there has been no global warming since 1995.

And that it is likely the earth was warmer for a long period during medieval times.

Still others are chiming in.  Reputable scientists, who understand that truth matters, that numbers and words have meaning. 

And Al Gore's office, back in Nashville, has no comment to offer.

This country came within a whisker of electing Al Gore to the Presidency in 2000. Luckily, his home state would have none of it.

So, as OldSouth awaits the next round of snow here tonight in Tennessee, he breathes a temporary sigh of relief. The scammers won't go away easily. They'll think of some other way to hustle the taxpayer and wage war on the economy.

But, November is coming.  There is a public record of who did and did not drink the AlGore Koolaid.

This will be an interesting year.

Avoidable Tragedy

This tragic and bizarre story emerges from the past of Amy Bishop, the apparent killer of three at University of Alabama Hunstville.

It appears Dr. Bishop held a shotgun that discharged and killed her younger brother in 1986.  She was nineteen at the time. An unspeakable tragedy, attributed as an accident at the time.

We'll probably never know 'why' the Huntsville tragedy took place. None of us are exempt from tragedy, or from the possibility that something this bizarre may indeed visit our lives; that we or someone we love may fall victim to an evil act.  Perhaps more tragically, someone we love and think we know may perpetrate some tragedy. Perhaps, even ourselves.  It can be scary to contemplate, and hopefully breeds humility in us all. Absent grace, we all are capable of anything.

We can't know the individual stories and family histories of every person in every room we enter.  As one old Presbyterian preacher once quipped: 'If you knew everything about me, you wouldn't want to be in those pews. If I knew everything about you, I wouldn't want to be in this pulpit!' And, since we all fail, we should not be obligated to live our lives defined only by our failures and tragedies. OS has seen this happen, and it almost happened to him along the way. Without grace, all lives grind to a halt.

That said, however...

Guns are designed to not discharge by accident. It requires several deliberate acts to load a shotgun of any design, chamber the shell, disengage the safety, and pull the trigger. They are designed for safety, to be operated by responsible people who are trained to them. OS is so grateful he grew up shooting, always supervised. He knew they weren't toys.

Yet, accidents can and do happen. They are chains of events, in reality. Leave a loaded firearm within reach of an untrained young person  who doesn't understand the dangers, and...you've taken at least two of the deliberate safety steps out of the process. OS's childhood next-door neighbor was a police detective, a grizzled veteran. When he came home from work, he stepped into the house. His first act was always to unload his service revolver in the sight of all. The revolver went to one side of the room, out of reach of any child, and the cartridges went to the other side of the room, out of reach of any child.

It was his ritual. He never failed to observe it.

A terrible tragedy later visited his home, but it was not the tragedy of one of his sons killing the other.

How did the tragedy of 1986 set the stage for the tragedy of 2010? We'll never know, really.
Was 1986 an accident, or an act of evil? We'll never know, twenty-four years removed. And to exhaustively re-examine the question only increases the agony for the innocent members of that family.

In the meantime, OS has an aging neighbor with macular degeneration, prone to depression. Who owns a pistol with a rather complicated safety. Which now sits, unloaded, clip out, in OS's closet. He checked it himself, twice. The shells are in the pickup truck.

OS is a proud NRA member, and plans to get his carry permit this year.

He doesn't want this particular, avoidable, tragedy to visit his house. Or subsequent tragedies to visit someone else's house in 2034.

Please, if you have weapons, think things through. Get proper training. If the 'bird on your shoulder' tells you that someone in your world has both weapons and a personal crisis underway, quietly intervene. If you are that person in crisis, park your weapon with a friend for a while, OK? The crisis will pass. OS did it about twenty years ago. Don't ask why.

N.B.--The biathlon coverage of Winter Olympics just began. A combination skiing/shooting event.
The competitors undergo a rifle safety check just before they are sent onto the course.

'Nuff said.