She always asked me about my family, and how they were doing. My wife and I had our first child when I was at Marsh, and Nancy gave us a very nice outfit for her (which was not surprising, considering her background in the fashion industry).

She often talked about her husband Don, who also worked at Marsh. She’d tell me what they did over the weekend, where they went, what new restaurant they ate at that I’d HAVE to try. She loved their life together.

At the time of the attack, Don worked at the main office in Midtown. You could look straight down 6th Avenue and see the Twin Towers. As I watched the towers burning, I tried to imagine the horror he felt as he watched from Midtown, knowing that the love of his life, indeed, his LIFE, was in the building. I couldn’t do it. I still can’t.

Nancy was a great person, and I was blessed to have known her.

“…the hope that, however minor my voice might be, in combination with thousands of others it might engender pressure for slowing the rush into the high-tech medieval twilight that the culture has undertaken.

This by now is clearly quixotic. The civilizational changes we now see are both irremediable and beyond control. The peasantrification and empty glitter of society, pervasive hostility to careful thought, onrushing authoritarianism, and distaste for cultivation are now endemic. I do not know where these lead, but we are assuredly going to get there. Fuming buys nothing.

I have just turned 63. Judging by familial history I have ten to fifteen years left on the planet. I have no intention of spending them railing against the inevitable.”

While I didn’t agree with everything Fred put out there (see my rant here), he writes with a style I much admire, and he is spot on (IMHO) when he takes on the educrats and their failures, as well as the innate differences between men and women. Surfing the intertubes was usually rewarded when I spent an hour or so reading Fred’s columns.

So long Fred. I hope all goes well at Johns Hopkins, and that you return to writing ASAP!

• she is a single mom
• is unemployed
• lives with her parents
• is on welfare (she disputes this, though her explanation is along the lines of “it depends on what ‘is’ means”)
  
• has six other children
• who are cared for by her mother.

Suleman has come under harsh criticism for her decisions and for burdening the taxpayers of California.  Some have questioned if she is mentally unstable.  Many feel her actions is this are “disgusting”.

My question to Suleman’s critics is this:  what about Suleman’s “right to choose” and her “reproductive freedom”?  How do they come into play here?  It seems to me that a woman’s “right to choose” and “reproductive freedom” include the right to have as many children as she desires.  Her marital and employment status should have no bearing on this (or so we’ve been told).

As for the children being a burden on the taxpayers, I seem to recall that during the welfare reform debates in the mid 1990s the “welfare mother” with X number of kids by Y different fathers was a myth, and even if it wasn’t a myth these women need our help and if you don’t agree you’re a racist and misogynist.

So why is everyone bent out of shape about this?  Suleman is exercising her constitutional “right to choose” and “reproductive freedom”.  Leftist should be applauding her!

Unless, of course, a woman’s “right to choose” and “reproductive freedom”only refer to abortion.

Oh, that’s right…they do only refer to abortion.

Never mind, then.  Carry on.

(NOTE:  For the record, I think Suleman has made some incredibly irresponsible choices in her life.  I do no condone her decisions. )

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear! “

Aye, I guess and fear.

As usual, the Dems are saying the situation is dire; “we cannot delay this”, says Durban. Yet they’re unwilling to fix what caused the problem: the Community Reinvestment Act and the associated regulations of the Clinton Era. No rush to take care of that!

I hope the Senate GOP will stick to its guns. I fear that they will accept a few cuts in the bill, and then they’ll try to play it as “we stood up to Obama!” They need to get the squishes on board and threaten, then carry out, a filibuster.

From everything I read and heard, Wal-Mart treats its workers pretty well. Like any large corporation, it has had the occasional problem, but overall WM treat its employees a hell of a lot better than, say Michael Moore does his.

I’m a fan of Springsteen’s music. I think he is great singing about the working man (“Factory” is a great, haunting song that gets me every time). But it’s safe to say that Wal-Mart does more in one day to improve the lives of America’s poor and working class (through low priced quality goods and decent jobs) than Springsteen has done in his entire career.

Stick to your knitting, Bruce! Oh, and could you please play “Rosalita” tomorrow?

I know it’s partly advertising hyperbole, but really? The “most historic event of our lifetime” was the election of a black President? Referring to events in my own lifetime, it’s more historic than:

• The assassination of JFK?
• The Vietnam War?
• Nixon’s overture to Red China?
• The Six-Day War?
• The moon landings?
• Watergate?
• The Iran Hostage Crisis?
• The fall of the Berlin wall?
• The collapse of the Soviet empire and complete victory in the Cold War?

I’m just scratching the surface here. Feel free to contribute to the list

Uder the original Constituion, senators were selected by the legislature of each state.  This was to have the upper chamber of the Federal gummint be able to legislate without direct pressure from the electorate in his or her state.  Scandals (similar to what goes on in Illinois) and deadlocks in the state legislatures kept some states from appointing senators.  A growing populist movement in the late 19th century pushed for direct election of senators.  The 17th amendment was ratified in 1913.

Are we better off?  It’s hard to say.  We still have scandals (see Blagoevich) and inexperienced, politically connected folks angling for appointment (see Caroline Kennedy).  Would the legislatures do worse?  We would also be able to restore some of the federal aspects to our government.

Great! Sound like what I was searching for! Well. if you’ve clicked the above link, you already know that it’s a site for NC Sate Senator Eddie Goodall. Nothing wrong with that; just not what one would guess by the name of the site. (Gee, you mean you can’t trust what you see on the internet?).