Consider This
December 9, 2006
It seems as though winter is finally settling in Hawaii – Finally. I was getting really sick of all of those days where the temperatures were in the mid to upper 80′s with 75% humidity. Things have cooled considerably for us and now the highs are in the lower 80′s and the lows are in the lower 70′s, sometimes upper 60′s. Ooooh FREEZING! 
I kid. I know, these temperatures are positively balmy for most of the continental US. Today was a bit odd weather wise though. It was windy – very windy all day. The wind started around 4am Friday morning and was constant all day with gusts around 20mph. There were a couple of telephone poles that were blown down and I read a news report where a couple of people almost lost their roofs because of the wind. The wind started to die down a couple of hours ago, but seems to be picking up again. Oh well, at least our trash can is secure.
I still really miss Portland and I like to keep up with the news there – to try to keep me connected to some extent. A couple of tidbits caught my eyes, as well as most of the country apparently.
First, Senator Gordon Smith spoke out against the Iraq war on Thursday.
GOP senator says war may be ‘criminal’
MATTHEW DALY
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, a Republican who voted in favor of the Iraq war in 2002 and has supported it ever since, now says the current U.S. war effort is “absurd” and “may even be criminal.”
In an emotional speech on the Senate floor Thursday night, Smith called for changes in U.S. policy that could include rapid pullouts of U.S. troops from Iraq. He said he never would have voted for the conflict if he had known the intelligence that President Bush gave the American people was inaccurate.
“I for one am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day,” Smith said. “That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore. … So either we clear and hold and build, or let’s go home.”
A spokesman said Friday that Smith did not mean to call the war criminal in a legal sense.
Smith is up for re-election in 2008. His comments come a month after Republicans lost control of Congress – in large part because of voter unhappiness with the Iraq war – and shortly after the Iraq Study Group issued a blistering criticism of the administration’s handling of the war.
Smith said he is “tired of paying the price of 10 or more of our troops dying a day. So let’s cut and run or cut and walk, but let us fight the war on terror more intelligently than we have because we have fought this war in a very lamentable way.”
Hurray! Good for him to finally recognize that this war is just a damn quagmire and that we really shouldn’t be there in the first place.
The other bit of national news from Oregon is regarding the Kim Family. James Kim died while trying to find help for his family and is now being called a hero for doing so.
I know this is going to sound incredibly insensitive and probably in poor taste to some people, but this is my blog, so too bad. I just don’t understand why people are calling him a hero. From my understanding, they were traveling from Portland and missed the exit for highway 42. So they decided to take a “shortcut” or a back road to try to get to their destination while it was snowing. They got snowed in on a back road and got stranded. Unfortunately Mr. Kim died because he left the vehicle and tried to get help.
But, I just don’t understand where the whole hero thing is coming from. I am not saying that he deserved his fate, but what kind of moron would decide to take a back road, in unfamiliar territory, in a sedan, in a snowstorm? According to a couple of reports I read, it was snowing so badly that he had to stick his head out his window to even see where he was driving – that is after they left the interstate.
Well A’lisha, what would you have done? I would have probably done the most sensible thing if I was driving along and missed my cutoff. I would have gotten off at the next exit and gotten back on the highway to get to the correct exit. It just seems like common sense to me.
Filed under: Whatever
