Now here's some destructive puppy behavior that we fully support!

(Saddam chew toy via Political Pet Toys. We get a real thrill out of seeing the dog attack that scumbag.)

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ItÂ’s All About 9/11

I'm not getting much computer time these days because Charlie can't climb stairs, and when I do bring him upstairs he 1) chews on the computer cords or 2) thinks "upstairs" is "outside" and piddles. I'm trying to read stuff as fast as I can while he takes his little naps, but I'm finding it hard to concentrate.

And I miss Bunker a lot these days; I keep coming up with things I want to discuss with him.

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Heh. Kelo is about to bite one of the Supreme Court justices in the butt. How deliciously crafty this proposal is:

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."

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Dog rearing is moving along nicely. Over the weekend Charlie met his "cousin" (my husband's brother's dog) and managed to hold his own despite being a fourth of his size.

Last night we hit a milestone: Charlie slept his first full night! But both my boys were exhausted after PT...

And we just can't stop taking pictures of him.

It's funny that we wanted the Tibetan breed because we wanted a couch potato dog, but Charlie takes it to extremes! He's the only dog I've ever heard of who hates going on walks. When he sees the leash, he hides. When I try to get him out the door, he plants his feet and resists. What a hoot he is.

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Via Amritas I found a fascinating old article about a challenge I'd never even considered: how do you write a message for 10,000 years in the future? This is the problem the Department of Energy is working on for warning about nuclear waste.

Designing a "Keep Out" sign that lasts for 10,000 years and still holds meaning is not an easy task.

After all, about 10,000 years ago, the Sahara was a fertile savanna, and humans were just beginning to put down their spears and figure out how to grow food. Ten thousand years from now, Earth could conceivably be populated by extraterrestrials.

There's another website chronicling the magnitude of difficulty in writing this message. It's a mind-boggling task.

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There are things in this world that I hate to see. I absolutely hate seeing ignorant stuff like this...

I feel disgusted when I see blatantly racist stuff like this...

And Ted Rall consistently has the ability to make me want to puke...

But the beauty of our country is that people have the right and ability to say whatever they want, no matter how vile it may be. I may be filled with rage at the sight of these drawings, but I'm proud that my country is a place where anyone can speak his mind. When we're free to speak, we're free to seek the truth. Mark Steyn expresses this same pride in his recent article on flag burning:

For my own part, I believe that, if someone wishes to burn a flag, he should be free to do so. In the same way, if Democrat senators want to make speeches comparing the U.S. military to Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, they should be free to do so. It's always useful to know what people really believe.

Do I enjoy seeing this on the streets of Detroit?

Of course not, but I certainly don't want to ban it. I believe that when people are allowed freedom of expression, their uppance will come if others don't like it.

Again Mark Steyn:

Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong.
[...]
That's the point: A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business.

Our flag gets burned because our country is important in this world. Go look at the montage of burning American flags around the world and feel proud that our country has had such an impact. A burning American flag is a sign of our strength.

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My husband and I haven't made it to Berlin yet, but it looks like we might not get to see this Checkpoint Charlie memorial site. Apparently it's being bulldozed this 4th of July. I certainly don't understand why memorials to the Cold War are supposedly turning Berlin into "Disneyland". It's funny to me that it seems many Germans want to forget the past...while Americans are busy trying to build a why-they-hate-us at Ground Zero.

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I just noticed that Red 6 is featured in the Stars and Stripes tribute to heroes.

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I've been trying to get some reading done in the morning, and there are so many things I'd like to point out but don't have the time. Check out Conservative Grapevine and Varifrank as usual. I did have a chuckle at this article about Iraqi soldiers learning to complain:

The soldiers also are mad about what they call a $70 cut in their monthly pay. Soldiers, on average, earn $300 to $400 a month, they say. The reason, it turns out, is something nearly every American begrudges, whether a soldier or not. For the first time, the Iraqi government began taking taxes out of the platoonÂ’s paychecks.

I can't wait until Iraq is back on her feet.

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A Charlie update: He's now lived with us for a week and is doing much better. Most of the crying has stopped, and he sleeps through the night (except for when we take him outside). He went on his first walk yesterday and after he finally stopped imprinting on me, he had a blast! We started working on "sit", which he enjoys because he gets a treat when he does it. I don't guess I'll throw him out the window after all...

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Our dog is driving us a little batty. We're trying to crate train him, which means we're getting very little sleep. Charlie, on the other hand, apparently doesn't need any sleep at night and instead prefers to pass the time howling and yelping. He keeps pooping in the neighbors' yard instead of ours, he has destroyed the boxes we put in to make his crate smaller, and he thinks that moss and weeds are the best food around.

It's a good thing he's cute, 'cause he's about to get thrown out the window!

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We got our puppy yesterday! So far he's doing really well: he's learning his name and has already gotten the hang of "come". And even though we only got about three non-consecutive hours of sleep last night from all the whining, we still love him to death.

Now Charlie and I are off to practice crate training...

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1 Congrats on the new addition Sarah! You can put a ticking alarm clock (the wind up one) in his cage under the blanket or pillow so he thinks its his Mom's heartbeat...or even a towel that you heated in the microwave (make sure it's not too hot). Having a puppy is great fun - only problem - they grow up . What's his name?

Posted by: Kathleen A at June 16, 2005 08:06 AM (vnAYT)

2 OOOOO - puppy so cute. I'm so very tempted. RESIST RESIST. lol Congrats on the new addition to your family.

Posted by: toni at June 16, 2005 02:24 PM (SHqVu)

3 What a cutie!!

Posted by: Beth at June 16, 2005 03:36 PM (Wc+zF)

4 Adorable!

Posted by: Ted at June 16, 2005 09:20 PM (+OVgL)

5 Gee, cutie, cute and adorable have already been used. Oh well, I second all of those and hope you enjoy him tremendously.

Posted by: Cerberus at June 17, 2005 02:57 AM (nzIoS)

6 Congratulations! What a darlin'! Oh, and the alarm clock solves the whining. In fact, even after 5 months Cody get really upset if I try to take it out of his crate. But then again, he's a bit obsessive 'bout things! Good luck!

Posted by: Tammi at June 17, 2005 08:27 AM (F4oo1)

7 Absolutely adorable (wife and I agree on that) had to hide it from Buddy though. Don't want him feeling jealous. Kalroy

Posted by: Kalroy at June 17, 2005 09:37 PM (9RG5y)

8 OMG - what an adorable puppy! May you have many happy years together. *grin*

Posted by: Teresa at June 18, 2005 08:52 PM (nAfYo)

9 What an adorable puppy! I know you are going to have lots of fun with Charlie. Jane

Posted by: Jane at June 18, 2005 10:47 PM (XEtUj)

10 Ooooh, my new "grandbaby" is sooo cute! He'll do much better after a few days and realizes that you're his new mommy. It's not a whole lot different than bringing a baby home from the hospital! There's an adjustment period. Keep us posted on how he's doing. Did Daddy Russ pass out bubble gum cigars?!?! Love, Mama

Posted by: Nancy at June 22, 2005 12:55 AM (DljPa)

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We were careless once, and thousands of people died. Let us not make the same mistake again.

Thus ends Varifrank's post. (Erin, you're gonna like this one.)

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Two years ago we had just moved to Germany. We had no house and no car, and since we'd gotten "lost in the system", we had no income for two and a half months. Last year we were thousands of miles apart. Here's hoping that our third anniversary works out a little better than the previous two!

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1 Happy Anniversary! bryan

Posted by: Bryan Strawser at June 15, 2005 02:27 AM (xabUq)

2 Happy Anniversary! I hope you two have a great day! Household6

Posted by: Household6 at June 15, 2005 06:12 AM (T+Tkq)

3 Happy Anniversary! My bride and I celebrated our first two in Germany back in the Cold War period. On our first, we took the duty train to Berlin and stayed at the Templehof Hotel. At our second anniversary we were enjoying our first son. Back then as you know, any conflict other than potential for the Big One was no where on the screen. I am happy for both of you to have made it thru your hubby's tour to Iraq. All the best and many many happy returns for you both. The wife and I celebrated our 26th this past week and you can too. God bless. -A greyheaded Cold Warrior.

Posted by: GreyEagleO6 at June 15, 2005 09:59 AM (WiKxR)

4 Happy anniversary!!

Posted by: ArmyWifeToddlerMom at June 15, 2005 12:37 PM (fIHOt)

5 Happy Anniversary!

Posted by: Mary at June 15, 2005 04:01 PM (YwdKL)

6 Hope you two have an excellent anniversary!

Posted by: Barb at June 15, 2005 06:02 PM (4QSOR)

7 Congratulations, guys! :-) And everyone knows that puppies are the perfect 3rd anniversary present.

Posted by: Princess Jami at June 16, 2005 07:10 PM (0gPLe)

8 I'm a bit late... but a belated Happy Anniversary to you both. I hope you had a lovely day together!

Posted by: Teresa at June 18, 2005 08:54 PM (nAfYo)

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What was this guy thinking, giving an anti-US graduation speech to soldiers and their family members? If you're taking classes in Europe, you must be a military ID card holder, so every single UMUC student is connected to the miltary in some way or another. The faculty, however, is a different story altogether, which explains why he got supportive emails from faculty and boos from students in attendance.

Why do these commencement speakers keep using graduation as an open soapbox for talk on the war? All grads want to hear is attaboys and words of wisdom as they leave college. They want Chicken Soup for the Soul, not MoveOn.org at their ceremony.

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I don't even know what to say about this story: Grieving 9/11 Widow Spends Almost $5 Million. Glad to know that all the money we donated to 9-11 funds went to a good cause, right? Perhaps I'm a part-owner of one of this woman's $5000 purses.

At least I had this story to read afterwards and restore my faith in humanity: A long shot in more ways than one brings a town to tears

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My in-laws are visiting, so I haven't been sitting at the computer much. This weekend we went to Nuremburg and spent some time at the Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelande, which is a heck of a name for the Nazi Party Rally Grounds. To be honest, besides a few details, we didn't learn much at the museum, but I did get to see footage of Nazi rallies and photos of Hitler's adoring crowds. And walking through the museum, I couldn't help but think of the travesty that is modern comparison. Googling "Bush Hitler" brings 2,140,000 hits, including a website that tracks Bush=Hitler comments. ("Saddam Hitler" only brings a third as many hits, despite the fact that if we have to compare someone to Hitler, as all are wont to do these days, Saddam fits much nicer in my eyes.) And seeing things like this t-shirt and this German website about how much Bush is like Hitler make me absolutely sick. Even worse are the websites where people claim that Hitler was better than Bush.

As I walked through that museum, I grew angry at both the past and at the present. But time revealed the true horrors of 1930s Germany, just as I believe time will vindicate the early 2000s someday. I just wish we didn't have to wait that long.

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My mom sent me an excellent email forward today:

Why English Teachers Retire Young

Actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m.instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina raised gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

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I've been avoiding the computer because it makes me too sad, but I know Bunker would've been one of the first people to tell me to get back in the saddle. It's just depressing when I scan my list of links and momentarily think "oh, I wonder if Bunker's written anything new?" and then the lump in my throat returns. But something caught my eye that I wanted to write about, so I'm gonna cowboy up and keep blogging.

John Kerry is stupid.

Well, I mean, if everyone is going to say that President Bush is stupid, then they should say the same about Kerry because they had the same grades in college. Actually, it appears that Kerry's are maybe even a shade worse, so it's no wonder he didn't release these records until after the campaign.

If Bush is a moron, what does that make Kerry?

MORE TO GROK:

Kerry is also a dog.

Posted by: Sarah at 12:48 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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1 If GWB was into alcohol (and supposedly, maybe drugs) in college, and got the same grades - what does that say about Kerry, too?! Glad to see you overcoming your sadness - in a way, think of it as a tribute to Bunker when you write :-)

Posted by: Barb at June 07, 2005 06:02 PM (hF0Vm)

2 Making these sorts of arguments really makes you look bad. Bush was never blamed for his stupidity due to his grades, he was blamed for his stupidity for his poor diction, his appearance (he makes a lot of facial gestures that really do look dumb), is blamed for being stupid for of making many decisions that some disagreee with (as it is with others they don't agree with), is blamed for being stupid since he wears his religion on his sleeve, and is blamed for being stupid because his responses to questions often are nearly incoherent. It would be easy to argue with a number of those reasons listed - appearances can be deceptive, most of the great minds of history were religious men, etc. I don't agree with most of those points above (though he really is bad at answering questions without a script), I an just listing them as the actual reasons Bush is accused of being dumb. Talking about grades is a red herring. At best you inadvertently used a debater's trick, at worst you were deliberately abusing cheap debater's tricks to score a political point. Whatever the case, the argument is disengenuous, and if you want to address people's criticism's of Bush, you should work on addressing the actual reasons, not making straw-man arguments. It doesn't matter what side of a debate you are on, abusing reason brings the discourse down, and it the opposite of trying to 'grok'.

Posted by: VOT at June 07, 2005 07:03 PM (BUIek)

3 At least Bush was smart enough to not embrace avowed enemies of his country.

Posted by: Walter E. Wallis at June 07, 2005 09:44 PM (zJ4Tq)

4 My analysis of the "Kerry is smarter" assertion here: http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_photoncourier_archive.html#109422760433909117

Posted by: David Foster at June 08, 2005 01:33 AM (7TmYw)

5 Sheesh! You got some rather defensive reactions, didn't you, Sarah? I just wanted to say that I'm glad you're back! And I think you're right about Bunker wanting it this way.

Posted by: Dave at June 08, 2005 10:21 AM (c6xQA)

6 Kerry isn't a dog. He's a Munster. As to Bush, I do recall his grades being quoted as proof that he was stupid, and not simply his bucolic speech. Tell you what, though, quoting his speech as proof of his lack of intelligence pissed me off to no end and showed that the left was populated by elitist bigots who look down their noses at average joes, such as myself. Kalroy

Posted by: Kalroy at June 08, 2005 11:30 PM (9RG5y)

7 I note that VOT has not correctly punctuated his sentences - note "people's criticism's." There's one extra possessive there, VOT. Also, you left out a verb in your last sentence. Regardless of your grades, your poor grammar skills lead me to believe that you are an idiot. I can only guess what your facial expressions reveal. Kerry is an idiot. You can base that on grades, facial tics and licks, or run-on sentences. He's not Lurch from the Munsters, more Mr. Howell on Gilligan's Island - a lockjaw, 'sophisticated' loser.

Posted by: Oda Mae at June 09, 2005 11:37 AM (iZBrs)

8 Oda, I never said a thing about what grades I got in school, nor is it relevant. It looks like you didn't understand my actual point. Instead you went nitpicking about typos, and then dropped ad hominem attacks. My point was that Sarah wasn't addressing the reasons why the Leftists call Bush dumb, and that we should be addressing their actual points instead of setting up a straw man. Finally, I was saying that Bush *wasn't* dumb. When you came along and posited that facial expressions really do indicate intelligence, you just added credence to the Bush bashers point.

Posted by: VOT at June 09, 2005 05:56 PM (axdvp)

9 Well if Oda Mae can not remember that "Lurch" was a character on "The Addams Family" , and not "The Munsters", we must call her intellect in to question. ;-)

Posted by: Bubba Bo Bob Brain at June 09, 2005 09:20 PM (aHbua)

10 VOT -- I think it's revisionist to say that "Bush was never blamed for his stupidity due to his grades", because that argument has come up numerous times. One can't just say that grades aren't important now that it's been shown Kerry and Gore have the same grades. I did some googling and quickly found some instances of Bush's grades being cited in articles about how stupid he is. (I'm sure if I dug harder, I could find even more.) See here, here, Molly Ivins' book Shrub, and here, where I hope this writer is eating major crow, since last year he said, "Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure their SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead." It was always assumed that Kerry was smarter than Bush, and, yes, Bush's mediocre grades were used to justify that statement. I'm aware the fact that he "looks like a chimp" is also used, but don't pretend that Bush haters didn't eat up his college transcript.

Posted by: Sarah at June 10, 2005 02:43 AM (gemCS)

11 Hey Sarah, I followed those links. You are correct. I was incorrect. Now that I think about it, I recall that it came up more around 2000, and when Gore's grades came out the question of grades suddenly was dropped.

Posted by: VOT at June 10, 2005 12:57 PM (axdvp)

12 I know it's just one excuse of many, but it is used as one

Posted by: Sarah at June 11, 2005 02:01 AM (T0QKb)

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