Daily archives: April 17th, 2008

George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson are morons

What a missed opportunity. What a stupid line of questioning for a Presidential Debate.

You two gentlemen were in the enviable position of asking questions of two of the most intriguing political minds in this country, and you played like children.

I defer to Will Bunch, journalist from Philadelphia, on this one. In An open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, he says everything I felt:

With your performance tonight — your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane “issue” questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters — you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it’s even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to “export democracy,” and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, “no thank you.” Because that was no way to promote democracy.

And there’s more. Read the entire post.


“Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech!”

 

Well, at least the President didn’t try to “High-Five” the Pope. We have to save some face.


Army Pfc. Shane D. Penley dies a hero

Army Pfc. Shane D. PenleyA hero stares back from Eternity.

Another young man has died in Iraq. Just out of high school, Sauk Village native Shane D. Penley died April 6 from wounds suffered while on duty at a guard post. He was 19.

This one hits close to home. Shane graduated from Bloom Trail High School in Steger, IL, and wanted to be a police officer. A senior at Bloom Trail who knew Shane shared the shock with me that students felt when they learned the news. Children meeting adulthood head on, victims of war in our back yard.

The Times in Munster, IN, shares thoughts from Shane’s father, David Penley:

“He always wanted to be a hero,” David Penley said from the family’s Sauk Village home. “He’s our little hero. I’m sure whatever the situation was, he stuck his neck out there. He was very brave, very brave.”

Mr. Penley shared times when he and his son would work out together or play baseball.

“He could run circles around me, even before his training,” he said.

Memories of Shane’s childhood and a former babysitter who called him “Tarzan”:

“I guess because he would run around with his bleached blonde hair, and in his diapers (he looked like Tarzan),” David Penley said.

When we count the total number of soldiers killed in Iraq, the number of Iraqi civilians, the billions spent, watch gas prices spiral out of control, or tally our national debt, we pause and reflect. The big numbers have a story to tell on their own.

But here, the only number that counts is “one”. One more life lost. One too many.

Thank you, Pfc. Penley. Thank you, sir.