We Will Build a Statue for Bush,He is the Symbol of Freedom.”

New York Post has a story posted you need to see. I was about to say “you wonder why more of the press hasn’t posted such stories”, but you know why. The Iraqis are happy, and the world-wide left… the press included, are ticked.

If I’m to trust Bloomberg’s reporting on the matter, George Soros seems right ticked. I guess I would be too, if I’d invested that kind of money for the kind of return he got. Says the Hungarian socialist:

“Kerry did not, actually, offer a credible and coherent alternative,” Soros, 74, said yesterday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “That had a lot to do with Bush being re-elected.”

Now this is just downright FUNNY. I mean, what does this say when in the whole of the Democrat party, John Kerry was the most credible and coherent?

THe fact is there IS no viable, coherent alternative to what Mr. Bush is doing… and the world… (except of course for Soros and the rest of the world’s socialists) …knows it.

John Kerry says we shouldn’t over-hype the vote in Iraq. John Kerry questions the legitimacy of the Iraqi elections, because not everyone turned out.

“”I’m afraid there were some areas where the turnout is extremely low, and that’s the Sunni Triangle areas or parts thereof,” he said. “And that’s the challenge that we now face.

Whatever….. Fine, John, let’s deal with it as you suggest. Let’s not over hype it. Let’s pass along the unvarnish truth.

The Iraqi voter turnout was reported today to be between 60 and 72%, if we look at the spread of the reports I’m getting here at Casa De Bit.  These voters were under terrorist threat of beheading, of kidnapping, and murder, if they took part in these elections. They showed up at a rate far exceeding that of our own elections here in the US, where one presumes no such threats are happening… outside Democrat voting districts. 

Example, the most recent election. a hotly contested one… the turnout averages nationwide were at about 52%… the biggest turnout in many years.

Despite this high turnout in this Iraqi election, John Kerry has problems with the legitimacy of it.

In the most recent election in which John Kerry was re-elected, the turnout in his state was at about 42%. Since that’s the case, will John Kerry now aver that the election which saw him being put into office, has problems of legitimacy? Will he go so far as to give up his Senate Seat, I wonder?

OK, clearly Kerry’s not going to do anything of the sort.  This is dancing around on the part of Kerry. Kerry’s not alone, however.
The Democrats tonight, and for much of the day… and for the forseeable future, one supposes, are trying everything they can think of to mute the overwhelming success that this election in Iraq represents. Because they now know the awkward position that their unreasoning objection to Mr. Bush has gotten them into. They are now in the position of working tooth and nail against the biggest victory for freedom in many generations. This is a bad situation they’re not going to be able to work their way out of in the minds of the American voting public anytime soon.

Personally, I’m enjoying seening the Democrats squirm uncomfortably nearly as much as I enjoy seeing the smiling Iraqi faces on this memorable day.

Ed over at the Captain’s Quarters says his wife is on the list for a pancreas transplant. My thoughts and prayers are with them both.

Last weekend, I paid a short visit to my old school. Just long enough to look in the window. It’s amazing how much one can draw from such a short visit to a place of one’s youth, and the feelings that kind of visit generates. My Old School goes on.

I happened by the place where I went to grade school, the other day.

I’d not stopped there in years. No real reason to, that school officials, or the police, for that matter would accept, though I’d driven by the place often enough. Purely on a whim I pulled in. Nobody was around, save the people living around the parimiter of the school grounds, and being mid-winter, I guess they had better things to do… like stay warm, for example. It was a Saturday, so the place was closed up drum tight. 

As I drove in to the place, I was transported back. I could see my sister and myself walking down the street approaching the school,many years ago, walking back from the local shopping plaza, only a block further way from my house… I’m not sure, when, since I was very young, but it must have been sometime around 1961 or 1962, and I remember cranes lowering the huge steel beams that today make up the roof, into place. I wanted to stay and watch, but she was in a bit of a hurry that day.

‘You’ll be going to school, there’, my sister said, as we walked along. It was a warm day, with some breezes. And I can’t remember how old I was at the time. And I don’t recall ever going back there until the day I started school.  I walked the eight blocks to school every day after the first day.  Rain, snow sleet, whatever. These days, they bus the kids that kind of distance. Supposedly the concern is they’ll be hit by a car.

Back in the present, I parked the truck to the relative left of the shot below, got out and wandered over to the window of one of the rooms I was in for a year, and immediately, the place was both changed and the same as it was.  I could have walked though the place blindfolded, going strictly by memory. Well, except for the few places that have changed a bit over the years… the bigger center entryway for one thing.

To the left in this shot, is the grades K-3 wing, and to the right is where the cafeteria used to be.  Apparently the kids eat in their rooms, these days, as opposed to being herded like cattle to the big, industrial grey room with the small wooden stage at one end, where I ate so many cheese sandwiches. I can still taste the cheese. That big room now houses the library. The library was always a little cramped anyway in the original configuration.

The big double door set in the middle used to be recessed some. They’ve added a foyer and some office space. But except for some temporary buildings out back, not much else has changed about the place. The baseball diamond, where I played so many games of kickball, softball, and soccer, is still in the same place. The swings, the old jungle gym is still there, too, though they’ve added a few new ones where the white birch trees used to be.

I got to the window of my old classroom… and as I looked into the room though the still-open blinds, I was bowled over by a load of memories… ones I’d not thought of in years. 

I remember forty-two years ago, amazing the first Teacher I ever had… a Mrs. Madison, by reading her name off the door on my way into class the very first day of Kindergarten.  First impressions, you know. I couldn’t figure out what was so special about the simple act of reading, until I noted that many of the kids I went to school with couldn’t. In retrospect, I’m sure I represented something of a threat. My first year of school bored the living pooh out of me as a result of that slight advantage. I’d been there already and wanted to move on, darn it. 

I don’t remember a whole bunch from that first year, except taking naps, which I considered to be a tremenous waste of my time. I don’t know, but I doubt I ever actually fell asleep. The year ended, and I moved on to the room next door… first grade. I saw Mrs. Madison fairly seldom that next year in my first grade classes and never after that. She took another job someplace else. Assuming she’s still with us, she’d be 70 or 80 years old today, I guess.

Now, I should say that school was decidedly NOT my favorite place to be, at any point in those thirteen years.  But it amazed me, that despite that dislike, memories, both the vague and the specific, came rushing back. The teachers I had…. Every single one. I had one for third grade that was a real character… a Jewish lady by the name of Ruben. She was strange in her manner and yet the caring came through. After comparing her to others I’ve met, she was the proverbial Jewish mother, in all the postive respects of the stereotype.

Mrs. Ruben used to fascinate us with stories of the squirrels in her back yard. Without knowing it, she gave us a view of the small wildlife around us. It’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten. In many ways her manner was of greater import than the academics we did that year.

For example…I remember the way she was a calming influence when those huge black-clouded thunderstorms would pop up. “See those beams up there? Those are strong, kids, they’re not coming down”.  I suppose I should say that my Dad had always made a point of going out to the front porch to watch the rain and lightning and listen to the thunder. It was all mother nature’s show, as he explained it… free entertainment. To this day, I’ve always liked a good thunderstorm. But calm as I was as a result there was a lot of fear in the eyes of the kids of my class when those storms would come up.  But she always managed to keep the class calm, and even used the opportunity for a basic science lesson. A real talent, being able to teach whatever happened to pop up weather wise, or on the calander, and so on. Mrs. Ruben if my memory isn’t too fuzzy would have been close to 50 or 55, and so would be 90 at least, today. Again, assuming she’s still with us.

As I stood there in the cold, looking in, I could still remember the kids I’d attended classes with in every year.  I remember an end of year party in fourth grade that involved a water balloon. Nobody seemed to know where it came from, but whoever tossed it managed to hit one of the staff with it.  In a world that is concerned about weapons and drugs in grade schools, this is perhaps quaint stuff… but the situationw as enough to make about anyone in the class tremble in fear of the repercussions.  I remember the support staff. I remember the Janitor who lived just up the street from the school… and drove his nice looking 1962 Chevy Apache pickup truck to work every day.  It was exactly like the one pictured in the foreground here except it was mint green. Pickups were pretty rare in those days, and this was a standout even inside that crowd. My Dad always liked a well-kept vehicle, and I learned that from him, and from that I figured anyone who could keep a truck looking that good would be able to make short work out of a mere school building. And in any event, at that age, in those days anyone who drove a truck was the top of ‘cool’.  Here was a person you could trust with such things. He knew every child’s name on sight, too. A rare gift.

I remember, of all things, the noise the HVAC system’s compressor made, including the funny little squeak it made is it stopped at the end of a pump cycle. It sounds a little different today, to my ear; they’ve apparently changed the system, somewhat.  Sound is a very important thing for me; I remember sounds very well indeed.

Like, for example, I remember the way your voice echoed in the gym that at the time seemed so large… and seemed even larger as I tried to climb the ropes string from the ceiling…. Something I eventually managed to do… exactly twice. Not being very athletically inclined, I had an intense dislike for the Gym teacher, who obviously felt I wasn’t putting enough effort into things. In retrospect, she was probably right.

My disdain for her methods was particularly pronounced when she pulled up the huge Califone record player… The one with the infinitely variable turntable speed, and the cork turntable. Very professional looking in it’s day… and stuck that $%^&# record called “Chicken Fat” onto it. “Go you Chicken fat… go away…” The singer was Robert Preston of all people…. Which today I find odd, since I rather liked Preston. (If you don’t know who he is, think, “Music man” and “The Last Starfighter”. If you can’t play net audio, suffice it to say it was written by one Meredith Wilson, who wrote “The Music Man’ and done in a style that only Preston cold manage).. In a Rock and Roll world, this was NOT cool. But, it was the only record she ever played on the thing.  She got the thing out at least twice a year for every class in the school. 

Making me sweat my buns off on a hot gym floor wasn’t cool either… particularly when I had to go back to my classroom smelling like a goat. To make matters even worse when she thought we weren’t working up enough sweat, she’d take that variable speed Califone up several notches, making Robert Preston sound like Mickey Mouse… with the tempo being faster of course.  By the time I left the school the record was pretty beat… I wonder if after I went on to Jr High she managed to find another copy of that thing to clobber younger students with.

Which is not to say that I didn’t have some serious victories in there in
that gym, and in all the rooms of this place, for that matter. Of course, those victories don’t look quite as large now, as they did then, given the accomlishments in my life since that time… but at the time they were as huge as I took the rooms in that school to be. I can’t help but think how much smaller it all looks today, as I look in through the frosted glass.

I remember singing in the school chorus, and making annual treks to the High school in to do what they still called the Christmas Concert. I remember the fear… the sheer terror, of being asked to sing up on this huge stage in front of this even larger room. I was doing all right, … it turned out that I couldn’t see anyone off the end of the stage anyway with all those lights in my eyes.  I found I didn’t mind being onstage… and it set me up for a career in radio and as a moble DJ.  That Christmas show went along just fine, thank you… until ‘Silver Bells”.. the third or forth song into the routine, when the light board… a 1964 vintage rheostat fader type number, with perhaps 48 channels, blew it’s master breaker… a 100amp job.

Well, let me tell you… the resulting clang and the all the stage and houselights suddenly dropping out all at once was enough to bring back the terror. I remember laughing about that incidentin my high-school years, since by that time, I became rather well versed in that particular light board’s operation, and could have solved the problem in a heartbeat. The sound I heard that monster make as a terrified 8 year old turned out to be perfectly normal for this thing, as I later found. Back then, though, the teacher had all she could do to hold herself and her students together through that. It took about five minutes. When you’re eight years old, and scared to death, five minutes is a significant portion of your life. Somehow the lights got turned back on, and we were none the worse for the wear.

The Music teacher there was a nice lady, and was a neighbor of a family friend, so she was one of the few teachers during those years that I actually knew outside the school environment.  And so the meaning of ‘a freind of a freind’ was taught me, first hand.

Well, the school secretary lived around the corner from me, and her Kid was someone I ran into frequently enough… but she wasn’t really a TEACHER, I guess, and so didn’t figure into that equation. She just died recently… my mom attended her funeral, I think. Funny; if it wasn’t for those two relationships, I guess I’d have not been as mindful that teachers have personal lives, too.  I guess you never really think of teachers that way at that age.. as if they’re somehow above all that ‘personal life’ nonsense.  Or maybe it was just the image they WANTED to covey to us at some level, I don’t know.

As I stood there, I remembered the sights the sounds the smells of the place, and the faces of other kids. Most I’ve not seen or heard from in 35 years. But I still remember every one of them. I wonder sometimes if they remember me, and if they do, if it’s a kind memory.

Eventually, the cold got to me, and I was forced back into the present day. I realized that I must have looked like a kid in a candy store, looking into the display case… just looking through that window for a good 10 minutes, not moving.  Thinking. Remembering. It’s amazing how a place will spur memories you’ve not brught to the waking workd in years.

I walked back to the truck and got in. Reminiscing in those private memories is refreshing reorienting and valid, but it must at some point be partially pushed aside. (One can never fully push aside one’s memories… they make us who we are, after all.)

But, I decided I’d better be moving. The neighbors likely wouldn’t be too well disposed to some 50 year old man looking into the school; I’m glad it was winter… because if it’d been summer, they’d have thought I was a dirty old man, looking for some kids to chase and abuse, or perhaps they’d think I was trying to break into the place, or short a few spark plugs. An encounter with the police was not on my agenda that day.

The Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward once wrote that “Memories can never take you back home sweet home…. you can never go home anymore.”  (sigh) I guess you really can’t go back, for very long. Reality always barges in.  Anyway, I was getting cold.

No, I never did get the chance to go into the building nor did I expect to. Oh, it would have been nice, but it wasn’t really needed, and given the number of other changes both in reality and in perception. (Good gosh were the rooms always this small? Oops, they changed that, huh?) … Going inside, perhaps, would have been destructive to those memories.  As it was, my memories have been refreshed, and yet mostly untouched. And I guess that’s a good thing.

I got in the truck, and started it, giving the layout one last look before driving off. As I drove away, I wondered about the kids now attending school in the classrooms where I used to be.  Kids like these…

When I got home I found the school had their own website, whereon, I found this picture… a picture of kids now attending the very same classrooms I did. No, past the idea that they go to that school and inhabit the physical places of all those memories, I don’t know who they are. And frankly, for this purpose, it doesn’t matter. What I do know, what matters here, is what I can see. I see an awful lot of myself and my classmates in these kids’ faces.  What will these kids be doing in 40 years or so? What kind of world will they know? I wonder if some of these kids, 30 or 40 years hence will come up to the building some Saturday, lost in their own memories, looking the place over.

The names change… and faces do as well. The personalities sometimes change too, and so does the physical plant, over the years. At a more basic level though, things are still pretty much the same at my old school, best I can tell.  The kids and the teachers each have challanges and thrils and make memories and freinds and learning to last a lifetime.  Hayward is right, of course; you really can’t go back… except in memory. But it’s nice to know someone else is living in a reality that so closely mirrors my memory.

And somehow, that continuity, in this changing world, is reassuring on levels I can’t begin to describe to you. I somehow doubt somehow I need to, however. If you’ve made it this far in this text, you know what I’m talking about.

Over at QandO , Jon Henke writes about Bloggers who write about Blogging.

Which, come to think of it, makes this a post about bloggers who write about bloggers who write about quoting bloggers who write about blogging other bloggers.

Or something.

Reynolds makes note of Lileks, who in turn says:

“However the election goes will be one thing; how it’s reported is another. The thing to watch is the position of the Damning But, the old DB. The DB will probably bob up in the first or second paragraphs of most dispatches. “The election went as planned in 95 percent of the country, but violence marred polling in the disputed Sunny D Triangle, where insurgents opposed to Tropicana Juice fired automatic weapons into an juice concentrate factory.” That’s one spin. “The election, long anticipated as a flashpoint for insurgent activity, went off with few delays. Despite sporadic gunfire marring the overall mood of success in several provinces, observers said that the process was `smooth as a Sade groove,’ adding that they were annoyed Sade had simply faded away instead of letting her career end with a tasteful layout in Playboy.” See? No DB there. We’ll see.”

….and as if by magic, just now, my mp3 player which is always playing and always in random mode, comes up with “Paradise”.  Weird.

Anyway, Lileks is quite correct; the attempt is being made to minimize this victory.
They said Afghanistan wouldn’t happen. They tried to take the massive victory there, and label it a defeat. And then blamed Bush for it. When the scope of the victory there become clear,

They’ve been doing the same thing with the economy.
The west bank.
Of course they’re doing the same in Iraq.

In each case, the left has been spending all it’s time on negative spin.
You’d think, following the election, they’d have learned it doesn’t work.

I suppose and expect we’ll see the same thing here.

Peggy Noonan has written up a second op-ed, a follow on to her last one. I suppose she felt the need to respond to what must have been harsh chatter… harsher, I think than I was in last weekend’s BitsBIT.

“Why don’t I see the speech as so many others do, as a thematic and romantic statement of what we all hope for, world freedom? Don’t we all want that?

Yes. But words have meaning. To declare that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, that we are embarking on the greatest crusade in the history of freedom, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation–seemed to me, and seems to me, rhetorical and emotional overreach of the most embarrassing sort. ”

Does it? well, let me ask you, Peg… what you thought of JFK’s 1961 Inaugural Address?  I think perhaps you should re-read it. Here’s a few bits of it to get you started.

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty”

Does that sound “Over the Top” to you, Peg?  Does it sound like the policy of the US in 1961 was to, in your words, “eradicate tyranny in the world”? It sure does to me.  Gee, sounds rather like what the President said a week and a day
ago, huh?

Peg says:

“What’s wrong with a little overweening ambition? Shouldn’t man’s reach exceed his grasp?

True. But history is quite big enough right now. We’ve already been given a lot to grasp.”

Well then, Peg, the trick is something that both Mr Bush and Mr Kennedy have a better line on than do you, apparently: Survival calls for being bigger than the times you live in.

That said, I give Peg credit, however, on one thing; she confirms my thought expressed in last weekend’s BIT that she didn’t pick the headline for last week’s column. She isn’t that far gone yet. But in reading her column today I must admit wondering if that point was all that far away.

Or perhaps her complaints about the presidential speech are based in something a bit more petty; She’s no longer writing them.

I like the look of This

You will, by now have seen Hillary Clinton making noises like apro-lifer.
I labeled it a cynical attempt at getting up and marching in front of the parade that was about to mash her into the MacAdam.  The American Princess goes farther than that, saying, in part: You Know What, Hillary? Let’s Go.

“If you really mean what you say, Senator, we need to get cracking. I’m thinking that we need to introduce a bill that would provide federal funding for crisis pregnancy centers and private organizations that provide good alternatives to women in need. Ideally, the bill would also provide funding to public and private universities who create programs that assist single mothers to get an education by providing child care and tuition credits. The bill would promote faith-based abstinence education, or at least a faith-based option and response to modern sex ed. We could form a bi-partisan commission to end partial-birth abortion. We could change the world, Hillary.”

Personally, I might not even trust her when I see her calling for the nomination of… and voting to approve… pro-life judges to the USSC.

Slashdot | Worm Hits Windows Machines Running MySQL

You know who you are.

Dizzy Girl Gennie’s got a family emergency going. No actions required, but they could use your kind thoughts and prayers.

Michelle Malkin points out more Democrat fraud today.

Besides allegations that he used millions of dollars in federal Help America Vote Act funds to boost his political profile and reward Democratic allies, [Shelley] also faces two state investigations and a federal probe into accusations he accepted campaign contributions from a political ally that had been laundered through a state grant. He’s also been accused of accepting political donations in his state office.

I ask yet again, as I did the other day… at what point do we see some admission this is part and parcel of the Democrat party? For all the denials from the usual suspects, we still see this stuff going on as a matter of routine.

AP’s Tim Molloy writes from Glendale, California, the site of that train crash yesterday.

“Authorities said Juan Manuel Alvarez, 25, of Compton, parked his sport utility vehicle on the tracks and got out before a Metrolink train smashed into it. The train then derailed and collided with another train going in the opposite direction. That train also jumped the tracks.

Alvarez was arrested and will face homicide charges, Police Chief Randy Adams said. Alvarez had also slashed his wrists and stabbed himself, but the injuries were not believed to be life-threatening, authorities said. Adams said Alvarez had a criminal record that involved drugs.”

Did you catch that last part?

A history of drug use.

By many reports, a LONG hstory. I’m sure we’ll eventually learn more about this, including an accident day a tox report. But it’s not hard to figure where this is going.

They don’t make a whole bunch out of that point in the story I’ve linked, but you should. You need to remember… remember the ten dead people and the 180 some-odd injured… some seriously… the number of lives that won’t be scotch -taped back together again….

You need to remember them the next time you hear about someone trying to make the drugs that aimed this moron toward trains full of innocent people, legal, in the guise of ‘freedom’. Now it can be argued, of course that the system failed this guy.  But think….
Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that what happened as a result of this guy’s involvement with drugs was as effective as any terrorist could hope to be in taking lives and creating mayhem?

Does anyone really think that when such things are legal, this kind of tragedy won’t be happening more often?