December 2005 Archives

Dateline: Home Study

It is good sport these days to bash Microsoft. Bill Gates has been successful, Microsoft Windows is running the vast majority of computers today, and it is apparently just fun for the media to pick on the company. But the facts don’t support it. The Washington Post reports that, according to US-CERT, there were 812 flaws found in Windows in 2005 but 2,328 flaws were found in non-Windows operating systems, specifically the varieties of Unix which include Macs. Given the comparison of users of Windows to users of Unix, I’d say the incidences of flaws in Windows are far, far, far less than for Unix.

Dateline: Home Study

Up until today, listening to the news you would think there were a record number of soldiers killed in Iraq in 2005. After, we are losing the war, the Iraqis hate, people are dropping left and right…at least that is what the liberals want us to believe. The truth is much different, something you can find by reading the many blogs of soldiers who are in theater.

And what about that record death toll? Well, the Associated Press put the death toll of American Soldiers this year at 841, five LESS than last year. Wait a minute. I thought things were going worse than last year! Okay, those are still 841 Patriots we lost this year doing their duty, and the death of any one of this is a tragedy, but the death toll seems to be headed in the right direction (down), and opposite the direction the media has led us to believe.

Today’s Washington Post states that the DC Medical Examiner’s Officer is a wee bit backlogged on autopsies, some 1,037 are incomplete, including 84 homicides. Granted, some of those cases go back a decade, and not all autopsies are the result of homicides, but they did report 1,163 were performed last year. That’s a lot of deaths that need an autopsy and it helps put the Iraq death toll in perspective. Over eight hundred American deaths in a country at war compared to over 1,000 deaths in an American city not at war. The web reports that there were 248 murders and homicides in Washington DC in 2003.

Dateline: Home Study

The title of this entry is a quote from today's Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal. There was an article about the Mississippi Legislature and what they had to look forward to this year. At the conclusion of the story the author was kind enough to provide information on how to contact state legislators, including what their email addresses were. The contact information paragraph ended with the statement “While many members use the Internet, some still do not.”

That, my friends, in a nutshell, is the problem with the Mississippi Legislature. We are about to enter the year 2006 and we still some elected officials who are either too stupid or too arrogant to use email (or, in some instances, both). What better way to keep in touch with those who elected you than use email? Ahh! There's the rub...keep in touch with those who elected you. Obviously we have some officials who do not want to keep in touch for fear their constituents might find out what they really do.

Dateline: Home Study

The leadership of the Presbyterian Church (USA) remains clueless and I believe is dangerous to the church and the United States. In a December 7, 2005 letter to "the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Church's Middle East Partners", Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase and Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick called for the immediate release of the Christian Peacemaker Team hostages which was admirable (albeit ineffective). They crossed the line when they said that "lives have been endangered because of the United States’ war against Iraq".

As usual, the PC(USA) leadership remains more interested in pushing their radical left-wing political agenda while putting their PC(USA) duties second. They obviously refuse anything other than that published by the liberal press or the Democratic talking points.. Fortunately, a Marine Colonel took issue with the letter and wrote a response. The letter from U.S. Marine Col. Carl R. Lammers points out that the PC(USA)letter probably has done more harm than good. LTC Lammers makes a good point and provides notes from a talk Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander, U.S. Central Command, gave at the US Naval War College. (Warning: PC(USA) leaders should not read this information. This gives a different point of view and may cause information overload.)

Once again, the Presbyterian Layman reported on this else the members of the church would not know anything of it. Interestingly the "biased" Layman actually published provided access to both the PC(USA) letter, LTC Lammers' letter, and General Abizaid's notes. The PC(USA) website only published the leaders letter.

Dateline: Courtyard Marriott, St. Louis

The December 2005 issue of Presbyterians Today carries yet another ranting of Vernon Broyles. His Church in Society column this month is another in which he blames everybody for everything while not looking inward.

At issue is the lack of response, or even adequate reporting, of tragedy and hunger in the world. Had we known a while back we could have feed people for $1 a day but now it is $80 a day. (I wonder where those numbers came from.). Of course the problem is the amount of money spent on the US Military.

Well, Mr. Broyles, where was the PC(USA)? Why did they, with their global connections, not report the hunger problems? Why did the PC(USA) not notify us of the need for money? Why did you not call for a reduction of the amount money spent on the PC(USA) staff and administration? Why is it always someone else's fault and never your own?

As for the amount of money spent on the military, I can only point once again to your lack of understanding of international relations and blindingly liberal bias. Without the US military, who would have stopped the ethnic cleansing in the various parts of the world the military has been lately? The UN? The PC(USA)?

Once again we get a Church in Society that is simply another outlet for the Democratic Party and the extreme left-wing liberalism becoming far too prevalent in the PC(USA). I do hope for better from my church but I don't expect to get anytime soon.

Dateline: Courtyard Marriott, St. Louis, MO

Before leaving today I had the "pleasure" of reading Presbyterians Today and found an interesting letter to the editor. The author refers to Broyles' Democrat Talking Points which he seems to recite monthly in his column. But this ready further and asked for verification numbers. In October 2005, Broyles wrote in his leftist column

Too many people have already died and more are dying every day—theirs and ours. And there are more highly motivated well-trained terrorists loose in the world than there were before this debacle began—an omen of many more deaths to come.

Broyles responded to his critic, and Presbyterians Today printed the response. Unfortunately they never questioned his response; otherwise they would have not published it and merely offered an apology and a retraction. The response from Broyles was:

I based my comments in part on Pentagon statistics that in November 2003 there were an estimated 5,000 insurgents in Iraq and by September 2004 that number had risen to an estimated 20,000. In a Sept. 2, 2004, article in Time magazine, deputy commander of coalition forces in Iraq, British Major General Andrew Graham, estimated that the number of insurgents was 40,000 to 50,000.

If Broyles could overcome his leftist leanings, open his eyes and his mind he could perhaps learn some things. But then he wouldn't have anything to write about. Mr. Broyles, if you knew anything at all about foreign policy or the military (things you are woefully lacking in) you would understand that there are more terrorist in Iraq because that is where the fight is. And while they are over there fighting, they are not over here flying planes into buildings. Using your shallow reasoning we should all question why all the fire trucks at a burning house. Fire trucks go to fires because that is where the action is. The same applies for terrorists.

We should thank Broyles though. His response merely helped the letter writer make the point, a point I have made on several occasions that Broyles is biased and is seemingly more interested in politics than in religion. I can only hope the Presbyterians Today will encourage him to find other pursuits in the near future.