Paxety Pages

A new tale is here.

May 10

Members of the 1975 graduating class of Forrest High School held a sad reunion in Jacksonville this morning. They met at the Veterans Memorial Wall near Alltel Stadium to call on Washington, and all Americans, to help one of thier classmates.

Scott Speicher was a member of that class. He was also the pilot of a Navy FA-18 Hornet shot down on the first night of the Gulf War. He was the first American casualty. The Pentagon assumed he was killed in action and didn't look for him.

But 10 years later, in January, 2001, there was evidence Scott Speicher had lived and could still be a prisoner of Iraq. The Pentagon changed his status from KIA to MIA.

Today, Scott's friends announced a webpage. It gives the complete story and tells what you can do to help bring him home.

No blogging yesterday. I had to do some work.

There's new music in themusic section. I've put up a cue from a video production that began with stressful situations faced by everyone. The music is supposed to support it.

I watched Madeline All-dumb (thanks to Michael Savage for the name) on the CBS Morning News, or whatever they call it now, being interviewed by Bryant Gumbal. She just doesn't get it. She talked endlessly about the need to promote the peace-process, implying the peace-process is an end in itself. Wrong. Peace is the end sought by reasoned people. The peace-process, with its diplomatic wrangling, arcane language and tendency towards appeasement, is sometimes an inhibitor of peace.

Ms. All-dumb also claimed the present conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is the fault of "two bitter, old men." Presumably Sharon and Arafat. She wholly fails to consider that the conflict is a battle between two wholly incompatible cultures - Israel's westernism vs. Islamofascism.

Last night, I watched a bit of The News Slug with Jim Leher. The guest for Jim's important sit-down interview segment was Homeland Security Goober Tom Ridge. Jim blathered a few questions, Ridge used many words to avoid giving a meaningful answer to anything. I don't feel any safer.

I was going to blog a list of questions I would have asked if I had been the interviewer, but that would be wholly useless. I think I'll put those questions in a letter to Gov. Ridge and see what I get back.

A few weeks before President Nixon was run out of town, I wrote him a letter telling him not to resign - that I wanted to watch his impeachment on TV. In return, I received a letter beginning "Thank you for your support of the president."  Maybe a reply from Ridge will be as funny.

May 8

I'm very sorry to see that songwriter Otis Blackwell has passed away. His big break came in the mid-50s when Elvis Presley heard Blackwell's demos and recorded "Don't Be Cruel" and "I'm All Shook Up." He wrote nearly 1000 songs including "Fever," made famous by Little Willie John and Peggy Lee, "Hey Little Girl," recorded by Dee Clark, and "Great Balls of Fire," recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis. He was a great voice of American music.

Another murder of a person with a First Coast connection. The father of the leader of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida was killed yesterday in Pakistan. Ghulam Mustaza Malik was a moderate cleric - he was lured to a site and then shot by two men on motorcycles. Malik's driver and a Pakistani policeman also died. The murderers have not yet been caught.

May 7

The blogger investigation of the man accused of the midwestern pipe bombings begins here by Jonas Cord. I suspect this is more information than AP has. (Thanks to Instantman for the link.)

Index page to "The Arafat Files." (Thanks to Ben Sheriff via Charles Johnson) These are the documents, in English translation,  Mr. Sharon is showing Mr. Bush this week.

Not much blogging due to a redesign of the site.