trying to grok

POTPOURRI

-- I always find stuff like this, Shiver Me Timbers: 'Tree Man' Revealed, so sad. This man's life has been ruined, he's been mocked and has resorted to working in a freak show, all over something Americans doctors could fix with doses of Vitamin A. My heart always breaks when someone in another country suffers a horrible, debilitating illness that can be cured with simple medicine.

-- I have a really low tolerance for Mormon bashing. And this article, Enough Cliches About Faith: Mitt's Mormonism Matters, got under my skin today.

Those contradictory statements won't cut it. And they don't sidestep the plain fact that Mormonism, like the other faiths I mentioned, is not a Christian religion.
...
Mormons, it turns out, believe human souls have existed for all eternity, temporarily inhabit physical bodies and can eventually evolve into gods. They also believe the Garden of Eden was in Missouri and that tribes from Israel traveled to what is now America, built ancient cities and fought epic battles.

Needless to say, there's no physical evidence of the cities or the thousands killed in the ancient wars of the Mormon holy books, and DNA evidence rules out American Indians as descendants of ancient Israel.

DNA evidence also rules out Noah's Ark, and there's no archaeological evidence of the Exodus. So let's throw out the Old Testament while we're belittling religions. There go Judaism and Christianity. Oh well. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

-- And my #1 pet peeve of all: our military installations in Germany. Mark Steyn opines on the Defense Welfare Queens:

But hundreds of thousands of U.S. personnel should not be living permanently in Europe, for reasons I go into in America Alone. The problem is nicely encapsulated in a remark by Karl Peter Bruch, the then Interior Minister for Rhineland-Palatinate. When Rummy first mooted reducing the American presence and the Germans started lobbying Washington to change their minds, Herr Bruch said:

We realised that our installations are in grave danger. And then came the question, what can we do to make us more attractive?

"Our" installations? Who's this "our," kemosabe? These bases are built, maintained and staffed by the United States - and paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Yet Herr Bruch regards them as a permanent feature of the German landscape, like the Black Forest.

Amen, brother. I once asked a German co-worker what happens to the buildings and land when we close down an American installation, do we sell the buildings to the Germans or just leave? She indignantly replied that, of course the Germans don't buy anything; we Americans "stole" the land in the first place. And what was perhaps the only time in Sarah's life that she managed a zinger, I fired back with, "Um, you really don't want to get in a measuring contest of who stole more land in the 30s and 40s, do you?"

The Continentals are so insulated from reality they don't even value the U.S. presence in strategic terms. German politicians speak of U.S. military bases mainly as an economic issue — all those German supermarkets and German restaurants that depend on American custom.

And that sums it up. All you ever hear about is how all the poor restaurant owners will go out of business when American soldiers stop eating out every night of the damn week. Cry me a river. Bring all those soldiers back to the US to patronize American restaurant owners.

US out of Germany now! No more blood for schnitzel.

(All links via Conservative Grapevine)

Posted by Sarah at November 27, 2007 10:47 AM | TrackBack