Don Singleton tagged The Anchoress who tagged newton and Jeanette who tagged me.

This is for you Jeanette.

Ten years ago:
I moved back to Illinois from Vermont.
I sent my daughter (oldest) off on a bus by herself.
My son (middle) turned 1 and learned to walk.

Five years ago:
My second son was born the day before his sister’s tenth birthday.
My grandmother passed away a few weeks after her 94th birthday which was the day after my daughter’s birthday.
My daughter had surgery to have a vagus nerve implant implanted.

One year ago:
I transferred from the local community college to a four year university – doing it online. I should be done in another year.
I started this blog (anniversary date coming up next week)
I followed the “61^st Minute” closely.
I followed the election closely.
I celebrated the results.

One day ago:
I went to the library to pick up book 2 of Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series Bearing an Hourglass (second time around).
The littlest one checked some books out with “my berry own liberry card!”
I spoke with the insurance company about a little accident we had in a parking lot last Thursday. The other car was uninsured and backed into me while I was backing out. No injuries, just a little damage to the bumper.

One hour ago:
The insurance guy came by to take pictures and give me an estimate for the bumper replacement.

Five favorite snacks:
Mounds bars
Goldfish
fresh fruit
cheese
cottage cheese with a tomato (diced), olive oil, and raspberry vinegar.

Five songs I know the words to:
The theme song from Gilligan’s Island
The theme song from Green Acres
We will Rock You by Queen
O Holy Night
Amazing Grace

What would I do with $5 million dollars:
Buy a bigger house, invest, give to charity and the church.

Five places I would escape to for a while:
Back to Ireland
Get to Scotland and see more of England
The Atlantis Resort
Try a cruise
Find a place for some “mommy” time.

Five things I would not wear
a thong (I’m with newton on that one)
those really low jeans, so low that your hip bones (or even more) show.
a tattoo
a piece of pierced jewelry that goes anywhere but on my ears
high heels

Five favorite TV programs
Lost
The Closer
Arrested Development
Battlestar Galactica
Blue Collar TV

Five Greatest Joys
my faith
my husband
my children
my friends
my two dogs and three cats

Five Favorite Toys
Darth Potato (I still have to get me one of them)
my computer
power tools
dvd burner
a Blackberry sounds like it’d be cool.

Five people you’ll tag
I don’t have five people to tag so I’ll tag Lady Jane at A Lady’s Ruminations – she’s always worth checking out.

Here’s a bit of international human rights perspective: In the United States (and other Western democracies, such as Canada, Australia, Israel etc.) a murderer can go free if the police violate someone’s fundamental rights in the investigative process. I’m not talking about beating a guy with a hose either. Nope, the murderer can walk if the police, say, fail to include a material fact in a search warrant that led to an important piece of evidence. Bad paragraph in the warrant and the killer goes free. That’s how stringent the standards are regarding state interference on our liberties.

Conversely, there are many countries where it isn’t uncommon for someone to just disappear into the night after a knock on the door by government officials. No impartial trier of fact, no rights, just the state saying it’s time for you to go. And the “crimes” are often not what we in the West have become accustomed to watching on reruns of NYPD Blue. Printing or speaking one’s thoughts are often enough to send you to a prison camp or worse.

So which countries would you expect to be in the top five list for most UN human rights complaints? If you believe the UN is a legitimate, impartial institution focused on making the world a better place, you’d likely say North Korea or some other dictatorship. If you believe the UN is a corrupt, dysfunctional world body that gives a legitimate voice to the world’s worst regimes you’d probably pick the U.S. and Israel. If you believed the latter, you were right.

Hat tip to Powerline for pointing out Eye on the UN. Great site.

On one hand we have Bush going on national television, taking responsibility for what went wrong with Katrina relief efforts and launching an immense program for renewal, and on the other hand we have Senator Landrieu continuing her vow to punch out Bush, or anyone else for that matter, who dares criticize her state’s efforts. Somehow I don’t think we’ll be seeing this on ABC news.

What was that about irresponsible media contributing to a discourse of the absurd again?
(H/T Michelle Malkin)

Take a gander at this:

For all the media efforts to turn the natural disaster of New Orleans into either a racist nightmare, a death knell for one or the other political parties or an indictment of American culture at large, it was none of that at all. What we endured instead were slick but poorly educated journalists, worried not about truth but about pre-empting their rivals with an ever more hysterical story, all in a fuzzy context of political correctness about race, the environment and the war. Let ghoulish CNN file suit against the government to film all the bloated corpses it can find. Let a pontificating PBS “NewsHour” conduct more televised roundtables with grim-faced elites searching out purported national racism. But few any longer trust a frenzied media whose reporters and commentators continually prove as incompetent as they are disingenuous.
Was it too much to ask reporters to look to history to judge this recovery against other past disasters here and abroad? Could they have strived for accuracy instead of ratings — and at least ensured the images from their cameras did not refute their own predetermined scripts?

While I don’t really agree with the “one or the other political parties” part – as far as I could tell the script seemed to be that Bush was going to pay for the “poor response” to Katrina – it’s an awesome piece. I suggest you read the whole thing.

We’re not talkin an Escape, or Chevy Blazer. Nope, that’s your Big Boy right there. Do they make an SUV bigger than a Suburban?

I just read a letter to the editor of a local paper describing what the writer believes Bush will be remembered for. Good timing, considering my post below about what I believe will be Bush’s legacy. Included in the writer’s prediction was that Bush will be remembered for “destabilizing Afghanistan.” I wouldn’t normally comment on letters to the editor of a local paper except for the fact that opposition, or at least indifference to, U.S. involvement in Afghanistan appears to be held by a frighteningly large number of folks on the left.

My question is, “why?” In addition to the fact that the country played host to Osama’s terror camps, the Taliban regime was among the last century’s most brutal totalitarian regimes, ruling like it was back in the stone ages. While all were repressed, women faced constant terror at the hands of the morality police – women were routinely flogged for such benign conduct as showing their legs and they would face stoning or death for such indiscretions as making or falling in love without approval. Women were essentially “kept”, not being allowed to work or attend educational institutions. It was no wonder then that women came out in droves during their first elections, notwithstanding that they faced the threat of death in going to the polls.

Surely the belief that “destabilizing Afghanistan” is a negative thing is based on ignorance. And there’s no doubt that part of that ignorance stems from partisan bias – the desire to not believe that which conflicts with one’s own ideology. But there comes a point where such an ignorant belief should collapse under the weight of verifiable facts. Why isn’t this happening?

People lead busy lives. Most don’t have the time or inclination to go online or otherwise do research to inform themselves – they rely on snippets of articles, bold headlines, and thirty second sound bites to inform themselves of complex events happening thousands of miles away. The window of informational opportunity is small indeed. So when every sound bite, headline, or snippet of news (and I mean every one) looks like this, it’s no wonder people are ignorant.

I have no ill will towards the writer of that letter. He just doesn’t know any better. The media….well that’s another story.

Talk about legacy presidents. What will the world remember in fifty years from now – the partisan ankle biting and dishonest petty insults that “Bush lied about WMD’s”, or that the transformation of the Middle East into a democratic region was attributable to Bush’s bold doctrine of fighting terrorism by transforming terrorist breeding grounds?

Today Bush gave a bold speech in which he personally took ownership of the rebuilding of New Orleans. This is the first time in modern American history where a city has to be entirely rebuilt. Bush put his stamp on that undertaking tonight. In fifty years, or perhaps even fifteen years, if and when New Orleans has emerged as one of America’s greatest renaissance cities, do you think folks will still be parroting the “blame Bush” headlines, or reciting what Bush’s poll numbers were three days after the hurricane?

Me neither.

Lorie at PoliPundit continues with the subject of what we should have learned from Katrina. Here I posted about agenda journalism contributing to a decline of real meaningful discourse in our society. Lorie’s post provides a concrete example of this.

Agenda journalism isn’t just unfair, unethical or frustrating to those who want the whole story to be told. It has real consequences. Blinded by politics, the media reports what they want us to know, rather than what we need to know. We are left with an ignorant public, an inneffective representative democracy and ultimately bad policies.

Bill O’Reilly asked Condi Rice if she was hurt by Bush haters calling her a shill.

She said:
“Why would I worry about that? The fact of the matter is, Bill, I’ve been black all my life, nobody needs to tell me how to be black.”

Welcome Michelle Malkin readers! Please look around.
Welcome Anchoress readers! Please look around.
Welcome Polipundit readers! Please look around.
Ian Schwartz has the video

DirecTV has designated channel 100 for Hurricane Katrina.

This will be a channel for news, information and messages. To post a message, send an email to katrina@directv.com or send a text message from your text message capable cell phone to 48433.

Information available on the Hurricane Katrina Information channel includes:
• Transportation infrastructure – road closures throughout the Gulf Coast region
• Counties/parishes in the Gulf Coast region that are able to assist evacuees
• Special needs shelters – the location and phone numbers of special needs shelters in Louisiana
• Shelter openings throughout the Gulf Coast region
• Relief agency contact information, including phone numbers for the American Red Cross, The Salvation Army and Feed the Children
• Insurance company contact information

Good for you DirecTV!