Speak Your Mind Friday!

Howdy peoples!  You may get slightly tired of my rhetoric but expressing my self is something that I feel I’m good at so here we go.  Can I have my own little Andy Rooney moment?

I’m tired of Terrell Owens.  I don’t care how good he once was or how good he thinks he is.  Truth is he’s a brat; he can’t get over himself and is now paying the price for his pride.  Good for Bill Parcells to stick to his guns and keep T.O. sorry can on the bench.  

I wish that there were a solution to the Middle East problem.  They’ve been fighting for centuries and it’s more than likely never going to change.  The descendants of Isaac and the descendants of Ishmael will hate each other for ever because “Isaac stole the birthright from Ishmael.”  We here in the West believe that we understand how the birthright tradition of the Middle East works.  We may have a good idea, but I doubt that we know exactly how it works.  Most people here will defend Israel in what they do and how they defend themselves.  I will say this: Israel is not a democracy.  They do not elect a President; they do not have a Constitution (this allows them to do whatever they want because they have no rules or boundaries to stop them); they have not defined their borders because they feel that they should have all of the land that they had in biblical times.  The problem is, when the Jews were forced out in AD 70 by the Romans, the land became property of the Muslim Arabs.  I’d like to thank the West for creating small nation-states and thus causing all of the problems that we have now.  It has happened, however, to fulfill Biblical Prophecy, as I believe it to be, of the Jews returning to their homeland and becoming once again a mighty nation in the earth.  

The price of gas has risen drastically in the last few years and what has the government done about it?  Not a thing.  Oil companies are seeing record profits, yet the government claims that there “price gouging” is not happening.  It’s time to get off of foreign oil and onto our own.  We have to have reserves.  Maybe it’s a ploy by the Feds; use up everyone else’s oil then we’ll have control of the market, even if it costs us our eye teeth for the moment being.  We like to complain in this country.  We complain but we don’t act.  I think that subconsciously we use the Socratic Method on a lot of problems: always questioning the possible answers but never offering another solution.  

We should all try to be better people.  Black; White; Hispanic; Asian; Bond; Free; Christian; Muslim; Buddhist; Atheist.  We can all stop being jerks to each other.  When I run into an Atheist or an Agnostic, I don’t hate them because they don’t believe as I do, I try to understand their view on the subject of God (except for the Agnostic, usually I tell him to get off the fence and pick a side!).  As long as they can respect my view then I can respect theirs, even if I don’t agree.  I remember seeing a movie called SLC Punk.  It was an independent film that depicted what life would be like for a punk in Salt Lake City.  In the movie there is a character named Jones (played by Russ Peacock who has to be the funniest improv comedy man in the western US) who tries to summon the devil.  The point of his experiment is to show that when he can’t summon the devil it means that he doesn’t exist, thus God doesn’t exist, proving that science is the ultimate power in the universe.  It doesn’t work, or at least it isn’t shown in the movie.  Does that mean that Jones is wrong or does it mean the he wasn’t summoning Satan in the proper manner?  I’ll let you decide.

Have a great weekend ya’ll!

Goosedyou

This poem was written by a Marine....Keep the fight away from home so Americans can be Americans!

Monsters and the Weak

Michael  Marks

The sun beat like a hammer, not a cloud was in the sky.
The mid-day air ran thick with dust, my throat was parched and dry.
With microphone clutched tight in hand and cameraman in tow,
I ducked beneath a fallen roof, surprised to hear "stay low."

My eyes blinked several times before in shadow I could see,
the figure stretched across the rubble, steps away from me.
He wore a cloak of burlap strips, all shades of grey and brown,
that hung in tatters till he seemed to melt into the ground.

He never turned his head or took his eye from off the scope
but pointed through the broken wall and down the rocky slope.
"About eight hundred yards," he said, his whispered words concise,
"beneath the baggy jacket he is wearing a device."

A chill ran up my spine despite the swelter of the heat,
"You think he's gonna set it off along the crowded street?"
The sniper gave a weary sigh and said "I wouldn't doubt it,"
"unless there's something this old gun and I can do about it."

A thunderclap, a tongue of flame, the still abruptly shattered;
while citizens that walked the street were just as quickly scattered.
Till only one remained, a body crumpled on the ground,
The threat to oh so many ended by a single round.

And yet the sniper had no cheer, no hint of any gloat,
instead he pulled a logbook out and quietly he wrote.
"Hey, I could put you on TV, that shot was quite a story!"
But he surprised me once again -- "I got no wish for glory."

"Are you for real?" I asked in awe, "You don't want fame or credit?"
He looked at me with saddened eyes and said "you just don't get it."
"You see that shot-up length of wall, the one without a door?
Before a mortar hit, it used to be a grocery store."

"But don't go thinking that to bomb a store is all that cruel,
the rubble just across the street -- it used to be a school.
The little kids played soccer in the field out by the road,"
His head hung low, "They never thought a car would just explode."

"As bad as all this is though, it could be a whole lot worse,"
He swallowed hard, the words came from his mouth just like a curse.
"Today the fight's on foreign land, on streets that aren't my own,
I'm here today 'cause if I fail, the next fight's back at home."

"And I won't let my Safeway burn, my neighbors dead inside,
don't wanna get a call from school that says my daughter died;
I pray that not a one of them will know the things I see,
nor have the work of terrorists etched in their memory."

"So you can keep your trophies and your fleeting bit of fame,
I don't care if I make the news, or if they speak my name."
He glanced toward the camera and his brow began to knot,
"If you're looking for a story, why not give this one a shot."

"Just tell the truth of what you see, without the slant or spin;
that most of us are OK and we're coming home again.
And why not tell our folks back home about the good we've done,
how when they see Americans, the kids come at a run."

You tell 'em what it means to folks here just to speak their mind,
without the fear that tyranny is just a step behind;
Describe the desert miles they walk in their first chance to vote,
or ask a soldier if he's proud, I'm sure you'll get a quote."

He turned and slid the rifle in a drag bag thickly padded,
then looked again with eyes of steel as quietly he added;
"And maybe just remind the few, if ill of us they speak,
that we are all that stands between the monsters and the weak."