This week, something like 110,000 people marched through London, protesting for “peace,” chanting “All we are saying is give Saddam a chance,” and other nonsense. To put that into perspective, there were 400,000 pro-hunting protestors last year in central London — the biggest demonstration in British history.
On the day of the demonstration, I happened to be in London on business, and the protestors marched near my hotel. They were an exceedingly polite crowd, as they were mainly rural folk who didn’t want the lucrative sport of fox hunting banned (Mad Cow Disease had already impoverished the countryside). There were no childish demonstrations that I could see, and everyone was mostly dressed in traditional hunting tweeds, except for the three ladies who were topless except for strategically placed pro-hunting stickers and their open jackets. (No, I will not give you a link to the pictures.)
So while there are plenty of Britons who are in favor of a Saddamite restoration, it’s worth remembering that fox hunting really gets their national blood moving.
Author: Eric Johnson
You’re either with us, or you’re with the donkeys
From the Associated Press:
“Two other donkeys – one pulling a rocket launcher and another rigged to a bomb – were found within hours, one 30 yards from the Italian Embassy. U.S. officials said the targets were the headquarters of a Kurdish political party and a law school.”
If Leno and Letterman don’t make fun of these people for using ass-delivered missiles, they should be thrown in jail.
Prescription-drug benefits: two ways of looking at it
Recently, we have received some comments about the tone of our articles. In response, I have prepared two versions of this post. Please tell me which one you prefer — or if they both suck, then say so.
Every morning, I am pestered by an old man driving his enormous car. Right after an old lady says in a hectoring voice, “Don’t come home without passing a prescription drug benefit!”, my tormentor comes on the television and says in a grating voice, “When ya gonna get it duuun?”
The commercial is from some group promoting the giveaway of free medication to undeserving old people. “That’s not fair!” I hear from the back. “We need those drugs to stay alive! You whippersnapers will be old someday! You’ll need this!” We’ll see about that.
Meanwhile, there’s something a little unseemly about providing $400 billion of medication to any senior citizen on demand, though retirees making more than $80,000 a year have to pay a little more. So if you’re a married couple in your late 60s, own your own home, have no kids in the house, and make $75k, you get drugs from the feds.
If you take nothing else away from this post, remember: the prescription-drug bill isn’t for the truly indigent. The Church teaches that we should place the needs of the poor, sick, and vulnerable ahead of everyone else’s. That’s not what this bill will do. Medicare — along with Social Security and student loans — is middle-class welfare. And it’s a lot worse than regular welfare: you at least have to prove you’re poor to get that. To get Medicare, you only need to prove that you’re over 65.
I’ll let my 4-year-old son Charlie have the last word on the subject. Paige and I were talking about this subject at the breakfast table a few days ago, and Charlie heard me say “they’re taking our money whether they need it or not.” He looked shocked, and asked, “Who is taking our money?”
“Well, there are some people who want to get the government to take our money so they can buy stuff for themselves.”
“But that’s stealing!” he said indignantly. Yep.
Every day, I wake up and think, “God, is there any way you could make the government take more money from my paycheck? Because I’d probably squander it on food or clothing for my three young kids, or save it for our retirement.” Luckily, there’s a government program in the works that will give lots of free medication to cute, deserving old people. Whom we should cherish and love.
Still, I have just the teensiest, weensiest issue with one small, probably insignificant aspect of the Medicare prescription-drug benefit bill. It seems that not everyone — and by “not everyone,” I mean “probably three or four people” — is unable to pay for his medication, and might — and by “might,” I mean “in all likelihood, I’m probably wrong” — be able to contribute a tiny bit more money for their medicines. And by “tiny,” I mean “five bucks or so.”
Yet I know that taking money from us younger people is the will of God and His Servant, Ted Kennedy. I love this day. I shall now go outside and roll in the grass and think of fuzzy bunnies.
Sicko of Wacko Jacko
On the third day of the “surprising” criminal proceedings against Michael Jackson, I am officially tired of hearing about it. On the television news, on the radio, in the newspaper…enough. The guy isn’t a head of state, and he isn’t even an important celebrity anymore (is “important celebrity” an oxymoronic phrase?) If he’s convicted for sex abuse, there will be no societal consequences.
Greedy retirees are poised to extort $40 billion a year from working American families, using the government as the muscle man. That’s a story. Radical Islamist terrorists are murdering innocent people in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iraq. That’s a story. Yet what do the watchdogs in the press think is the most important story right now? A freakish pop star is going to be arrested for being a pervert.
If Jackson is innocent, I hope he goes free. If he’s guilty, I hope he goes to jail and repents his sins. Either way, I don’t want to hear about it.
Music and ‘Master and Commander’
I saw the movie “Master and Commander” last Friday, and I give it my warm recommendation. The climax wasn’t disappointing, exactly, but it was less than one might hope; still, watching Russell Crowe is always enjoyable. Despite his penchant for rough behavior and womanizing, I’ll take his unapologetic masculinity over the Men Without Chests such as Keanu Reeves, Ethan Hawke, and the other vacant male leads who wander around movie sets in southern California.
One thing that stuck out was the music on the soundtrack. Of the recurring themes, two of them weren’t contemporary to the time in which the movie was set (1805). The first was “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” by Ralph Vaughn Williams. Normally, I require my composers to be dead prior to 1900 in order to give them a listen, but Vaughn Williams is one of the few moderns I can stomach. His “Fantasia” is a deeply profound interpretation of Tallis, and one of my favorite works ever — but it’s a 20th-century take on a turn-of-the-17th-century piece.
Likewise, the third movement of Corelli’s Christmas Concerto in G minor gets a lot of eartime, and with good reason: it’s got a sumptuous, rich emotional texture, but it is 1) a Christmas piece; and 2) composed well over a century before the fictional events in the movie. Which is like playing, say, ragtime in a modern-day movie: it’s not wrong, but it is incongruous.
Nevertheless, the music did mesh well with the movie itself, and I seriously doubt very many people had a problem with the music.
(You can download an excerpt from the third movement of Corelli’s concerto. I don’t think I’m violating the Fair Use Doctrine by excerpting this wonderful CD by I Musici, especially when I’m telling everyone to hunt down this CD for Christmas — it’s a refreshing break from saccharine secular songs and wonderful but overplayed hymns.)