Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do
something you want done
because he wants to do it.
Dwight Eisenhower
From such crooked wood as man is made of,
nothing perfectly straight can be built. - Immanuel Kant
For some reason, my Saturday (12/15) post has become one of my most read posts. Not sure why: I suspect it has to do with my references to Newtown. If I didn't say it before, I love little kids. and it runs in the family. . My mom had 7 kids, and if I had found a woman willing to put up with me, she would have more than 21 grandkids.(as of this past week, she now has 4 great-grandsons and 7 great-granddaughters.. On my last trip home I went to the commissary with my Dad, and we passed by this little guy seated in his cart. I saw my Dad play peek-a-boo as we passed them. I've babysat nephews and nieces and taught a sixth grade CCD (religion) class one of my sisters was in
My first little sister is an RN; at one time she was dealing with kids. At some time she put in to work elsewhere; she had had to nurse one too many abused children, and it was breaking her heart. I'll never forget while I was at UWM, I had just gotten a letter from her saying they were expecting their second child,; I decided to call and congratulate her. My sister was incoherent and handed the phone to my brother-in-law--whom mentioned they had just lost the baby. I can still remember her pushing her doll carriage..
The fact that this young man killed 20 innocent young kids breaks my heart. The young man killed himself; he cheated surviving family members of their day in court.
But as a problem solver, I've had to face difficult situations, but as the Serenity Prayer goes, we have to realize there are things beyond our locus of control. I am aware accidents happen. I know former VP Cheney shot someone by accident on a hunting trip (and it wasn't Pat Leahy). I'm not a member of the NRA, I don't own a Second Amendment garment. or a gun collection.
But I'm a contrarian and problem solver by nature, and when a family member today finally put the typical knee-jerk gun control petition link on a social networking site, I had enough. The young man stole the guns, so registrations would never have worked, for instance. Thomas Sowell has a relevant column. Here are some inconvenient facts:
- Places and times with the strongest gun-control laws have often been places and times with high murder rates.
- The rate of gun ownership is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas.
- The rate of gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, but the murder rate is higher among blacks.
- For the country as a whole, hand-gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down.
Rep Tim Scott (R-SC) Appointed to Replace
Departing Sen. DeMint: Thumbs UP!
Quoting from my Dec. 6 post:
Congressman Tim Scott, a Jim DeMint protege, is the odds-on favorite to be named by Governor Haley. His humble upbringing, representing a district with Ft. Sumter(where the Civil War started--I remember the family visiting there in my junior-high years when my dad was stationed in SC), the very symbolic nature of an articulate, principled personable Senator of color from the Deep South would do more than anything to demonstrate this isn't your grandfather's GOP.I still recall one of my OLL classes when I gave an oral presentation on a controversial issue), my professor remarked how much more reasonable I sounded in person versus in my writing, Actually I was saying the same thing but the printed page can come across as more strident and impersonal. The writer can't perceive or adjust to nonverbal cues or subjective perceptions of tone.from his readers Goldwater and Reagan had similar political views but were on opposite sides of political landslides; although Goldwater was otherwise a successful politician on his own, Reagan's humor, optimism, and personable nature provided an appealing context for conservatism beyond its base.
Tim Scott is an unlikely Tea Party conservative, brought up in a no-nonsense single-parent home of modest means and he is able to articulate the conservative message from that perspective.. Gov. Haley's appointment lasts until the fall 2014 special election, and then he'll run for the full 6-year term in 2016.
Black conservatives (remember the treatment of SCOTUS justice Clarence Thomas) are treated harshly by the mainstream and in particular certain African American communities that have voted over 90% for Obama in each election, e.g., as an "Uncle Tom". The Breitbart website re-published a relevant tweet from an Indiana radio host, Amos Brown: "Gee, courtesy of S Carolina GOP, the nation gets Tim Scott an ultra-rightwing, Tea Party devotee US Senator who's Black only in skin color." How disgraceful!
As opposed as I was and am to the election of Obama, I did not rain on his parade on his inauguration. Tim Scott is the first black Senator from the South since Reconstruction, and he was elected to the district containing Ft. Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. It is just as significant in its own right as the election of the first African-American President. One would hope that blacks would be more tolerant of alternative political perspectives.
Entertainment Potpourri
Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective
Perry Como Special, Richard Carpenter,"Carol of the Bells"
The Carpenters, "Little Altar Boy" (as a former altar boy, thumbs UP!)
