Monday, July 02, 2007

Bombs, Bruce, and Boobs

The way we see the problem is the problem.
--Stephen Covey


Seven terror suspects from last week’s airport bombings in the UK are in custody—two more are on the run. German intelligence officials say the communiqués they’re picking up are just like before 9-11…but the US is not elevating the terror alert status… Why do I feel like I’m walking through the prelude to a Bruce Willis movie?


It's feared that the Air Force’s old F-14 Tom Cat fighter planes—like the one’s in "Top Gun"—could show up in the wrong hands—like Iran, which still flies the fighter—so the US Government is paying $900,000 apiece to have retired Tom Cats shredded. Better to have them in piles of shredded aluminum than for the spare parts to show up in a jet that's shooting at our boys. The sticker price on the jets when they were built was $38-million each.

Iran’s President has been playing host to the president of Venezuela all weekend. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez have been conspiring to “topple the pillars of imperialism”—that’s their code phrase for the United States and our allies. Seems Iran’s nuclear shennanigans are dampening enthusiasm for foreign investors who would develop the oil under Mahmoud’s house.

It’s all about the money.
What these two eggheads don’t realize is the economic powers they perceive as imperialism are the very entities with the octane to do the job that needs to be done in Iran.

What kind of day are you having?
A motorcycle taxi driver in the Philippines, who was behind on his rent, and whose wife was very ill, found a windfall when a fare forgot a bag containing $17,000 in his cab.

What would YOU do?
The cabbie returned the money.
His reward…$32…and the ability to sleep at night.
$32 bucks is about seven times what a motorcycle cabbie in the Philippines makes in a day.

And then there’s that horrible story about the skin heads who pounded a length of PVC pipe up the rectum of a school mate last year. Made all the headlines as a hate crime because the victim was Hispanic. The perps are now serving life sentences in Prison. The victim endured 30-surgeries, and even traveled to Washington to testify to Congress about hate crimes.

Apparently he was enduring more than that.

When you’re 18-years old, there are no surgeries for broken hearts and shattered psyches. So you look for escape. David Ritcheson took a Cruise Ship out of Galveston on Saturday. Yesterday morning, he jumped off the ship’s rail to his death.

And even though his convicted assailant was in jail, it was as if he was there in person, pushing Ritcheson overboard.

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