May 27, 2004 - In the news today is a story that says military officials urged the use of dogs as a means to frighten Iraqi prisoners with the aim of obtaining information. This is front page news. Many police departments in the U.S. use dogs for a variety of reasons; crowd control is a common one. Americans seem to be more concerned when foreign nationals are subject to the same tactics we are.

Another story in the news recently was about a boy who received a "crybaby" award. The coach was immediately dismissed for this and now the school has named a "sportsmanship" award in the boy's honor. Way to go! Encourage crybabies. Seems to me if there were a stronger fear of crybaby awards we'd have less crybabies. "Whaaaaaa. I didn't get my way, so I'm going to sue." Crybaby kids grow up to be crybaby adults. Admit it. You know at least one.

Bill Cosby is also in the news. He made some comments that might seem mordant to the politically correct crowd. Like what he said or or not, he was right. Here's a link to some of the comments: What Bill Cosby Said. Much of what he said can be applied to many Caucasians, too.

Santa Fe, NM, has nixed a proposed dog seat-belt law. Maybe eugenics should be brought back to thin this herd of stupid people that seem to be breeding exponentially. Thomas Malthus believed that poverty and disease are unavoidable but he forgot to mention stupidity. Forget the fact we graduate kids who can't read, we need to make sure dogs are restrained in your car.

I recently read Night by Elie Wiesel. As a teenager, he was incarcerated in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and lost several family members in the camps. In Night, which itself is fiction, he writes about a boy whose experiences are similar to his. I ran across an interesting quote in reference to a leader of a block, a German Jew, who felt sympathy for the prisoners: "...he would organize a cauldron of soup for the young ones, the weak, all those who were dreaming more about an extra plateful than of liberty." Too many times in America we do the same. We concern ourselves with filling our stomachs or our wallets and so what if law enforcement can pull us over at random and check our seat belts or our blood alcohol level -- we are forced to prove our innocence. We allow legislature to pass laws that punish thoughts but not actions. But, nobody cares, as long as we have our Sony Playstations, our Plasma TV's, and Domino's pizza.

I've coined a new term to describe this: overconvenience. Within a five mile radius of my house there are: four McDonald's, four Burger Kings, three Taco Bells, three Wal-Marts, two K-Marts, three Home Depots, a Sears, a Sears Hardware store, three Staples, about 10 grocery stores, and more - like every gas station now has a little convenience store attached to it. Yet, I live in a suburban township. I don't need to be overconvenienced like this. Sure, it might keep the prices down, to some degree, but, please, this cannot be good. We live life knowing that something is always open and food and necessities can always be purchased. Just look at the panic some of these stores see when the weather forecast calls for snow? What if a real emergency occurs?

More proof that handicap placards are being abused: I saw a van yesterday with a license plate that indicated the vehicle was registered to a handicapped person. The van also had a Phillipsburg Fire Dept. sign; complete with one of those blue emergency lights.