These are times when just when you thought you had seen it all, you realize… you have! And again! I mean, are you really surprised when…

NEWS ITEM: Michelle Wie misses another cut at a PGA Tour men’s event:

“I think if I played a couple (PGA events) in a row, it would be a different story,” [Wie] said. “It’s just hard to play one and then one maybe a year later,” she said. “I think if I played eight in a row and I missed all eight, that would be a different story.”

Yeah, that’s right Michelle, your problem is not that you play crappy golf, it’s that you need more opportunities to play crappy golf, then maybe you’d make a cut. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

NEWS ITEM: “Democratic platform embraces Obama’s change theme“:

The committee charged with updating the platform agreed to include suggestions from Clinton, whose campaign emphasized universal health care. Obama also campaigned on improved access to health care, although the two candidates often sparred over how to make it happen and whether it should be mandated.

In a draft of the platform, the party described health care as “a shared responsibility between employers, workers, insurers, providers and government. All Americans should have coverage they can afford.”

Am I missing something here? Like, this is news? Now if the headline said something like “Democratic platform embraces McCain’s general themes”, that would be news. How the AP comes up with stories like this is amazing to me. I call it “Well, duh! journalism”. Which, actually, isn’t journalism at all…

NEWS ITEM: “Lax oversight risks millions of Medicare dollars”:

The government is putting millions of Medicare dollars at risk by authorizing fictitious sellers of wheelchairs, prosthetics and other medical supplies to submit reimbursement claims with only limited review, congressional investigators say.

The study by the Government Accountability Office obtained by The Associated Press sought to follow up on oversight gaps that have plagued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services since at least 2005. Roughly $1 billion of the $10 billion in annual Medicare payments the government makes for medical equipment are later deemed improper.

And these are the same people the Democrats want to put in charge of our health care system (see above). Yeah, right. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

NEWS ITEM: Al-Qaida mastermind of the U.S.S. Cole attack dies a violent death from a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan, and - surprise! - innocent victims may have been taken along with him (my boldings):

Al-Qaida confirmed Sunday the death of a top commander accused of training the suicide bombers who killed 17 American sailors on the USS Cole eight years ago.

Abu Khabab al-Masri, who had a $5 million bounty on his head from the United States, is believed to have been killed in an airstrike apparently launched by the U.S. in Pakistan last week.

An al-Qaida statement posted on the Internet said al-Masri and three other top figures were killed and warned of vengeance for their deaths. It did not say when, where or how they died but said some of their children were killed along with them.

Leave it to the AP to include the fact that children were killed in the airstrike. I don’t feel sorry for terrorists who meet violent deaths. The sad truth is that people like al-Masri choose their despicable ways, and bad things happen to people who surround themselves in violence. The fact that more innocent lives are taken as a result of those choices should come as a surprise to no one.

Don’t know exactly what that means regarding this post; I just like the sound of the phrase. It’s a song, BTW, on the excellent CD by The Surf Zombies, a retro-rocking surf band - out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, no less! Needless to say, my 5-CD surf mix has taken on a slightly altered look - and for the better, I might add! I’ll pop that back up for y’all in a day or two. It really makes for a boss sound…

Hard to believe The Weather Channel is the same channel I used to keep on as background noise all the time. Whether it’s their new graphics, or the way they now cover the weather, or their near-fanatical emphasis on the religion of global warming (it’s no science, that’s for sure), I don’t know - I just don’t find it interesting or appealing anymore. And now that NBC has bought the channel, expect more the-earth-is-dying-and-we-only-have-months-to-live-unless-we-raise-taxes-on-everyone-and-bring-the-bad-U.S.-into-line-with-the-rest-of-the-planet nonsense.

Which gets me to thinking: I honestly don’t know if there’s such a thing as global warming - and I don’t think anyone can say definitively one way or the other - but what I do know is that there are a lot of hypocrites both on the progressive left and around the world that could care less about climate change - they’re just using the issue to fuel their loathing of America and capitalism in general, and to try and impose their own socialist, anarchist, and globalist world views on the U.S. and the West. For the people who squeal the loudest about global warming, it’s really the politics that count.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust anyone in power or any authoritative position anymore. Whether it be the politicians or the people that run the companies you and I work for, the only thing that matters anymore is power and profit, and the hell with everything else. Perhaps it’s always been that way, but I think people are, at least when it comes to the politicians, finally starting to wake up. Not that it’ll change anything….

And it’s stories like this that confirm every suspicion I’ve ever had about politicians. Liberal, conservative, first world, third world, they’re all the same.

Reading Thomas Merton’s “The Seven Storey Mountain” again serves as a reminder of the importance of the spiritual journey. It’s way too easy to get caught up in the things of this world, be it politics, sports, culture, status, and the gathering of possessions - especially in the media and information-saturated culture we live in. I long for the kind of detachment from the world that Merton sought - even though that was something he struggled with internally all his life. Focus on the journey, and put your faith and trust in God’s grace and mercy.

Back to the world: that was a heckuva trade the Cubs made today, wasn’t it? No doubt about it, the Cubbies are going for it all this year. Wouldn’t a World Series championship on the 100th anniversary of their last one be amazing? I think they have a pretty good shot at it, too.

…courtesy of the Left:

Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. CIA secret prisons. “Rendition” of prisoners to foreign torture chambers.

It’s not enough that we had good reason to be scared.

The men huddled long ago in Philadelphia had better reason. A British fleet floated off the Jersey coast, full of hands eager to hang them from the nearest lampposts.

Yet they pledged their lives and sacred honor - no idle vow - to defend the “inalienable rights” of men. Inalienable - what does that signify? It means rights that belong to each person, simply by virtue of being human. Rights that can never be taken away, no matter what evil a person might do or might intend.

Surely one of those is the right not to be tortured. Surely that is a piece of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is the creed of July 4: No matter what it costs us, no matter how it scares us, no matter how foolish it seems to a cynical world, America should stand up for human rights.

…

The world sees this, even if we are too dim to grasp it. We’ve lost respect. We’ve shamed the memory of Jefferson, Adams and Franklin.

And all for a scam. The waterboarding, the snarling dogs, the theft of sleep - all the diabolical tricks haven’t made us safer. They may have averted this plot or that. But they’ve spawned new enemies by the thousands, made the jihadist rants ring true to so many ears.

So put out no flags.

Sing no patriotic hymns.

We deserve no Fourth this year.

Let us atone, in quiet and humility. Let us spend the day truly studying the example of our Founders. May we earn a new birth of courage before our nation’s birthday next rolls around.

There are times when you wonder if supposed “journalists” writing for a supposedly reputable newspaper people actually believe what they write, or whether they just decide to write things to get a rise out of people. I’m no journalist by any stretch of the matter, but there are times when I’ll twist my posts just a little bit to liven things up around here. Heck, otherwise why bother?

I’m guessing that this is the case with Mr. Satullo’s column, because, while one might argue a true human-rights activist might express this kind of warped, one-sided sentiment, I find it hard to believe a so-called journalist really believes what he has written here. Look, we all know there are few things you can say to your average liberal that will get their noses more out of joint than to whisper “Abu Ghraib”, or “Guantanamo”, or “wiretaps”, or “eavesdropping”, or “Haliburton”, or “secret CIA prisons”, or “waterboarding”, or “torture” - I mean, it’s just too easy. I know - I try them out on my friend Paul just to make him squirm.

But really, after reading Mr. Satullo’s column you’d think the entire country laid down while the Bush administration established some vile police state where habeus corpus has been suspended and the prisons are filled with people who dare criticize the President for trampling the rights of every U.S. citizen. Are there things this country has done in its past that should cause one to pause and reflect whether it ascribed to what the Founding Fathers had in mind when this Republic was first established? Of course. Could one feel so deeply about things like slavery, or segregation, or Reconstruction, or the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during WW II, or any other blemishes on our country’s history to make one feel ashamed of being an American? I’m sure there are those - obviously Mr. Satullo’s one of them.

But let’s get a grip on ourselves here.

Mr. Satullo is right to point out that the Founding Fathers were hardly purists when it came to establishing this country - if they were there wouldn’t have been institutionalized slavery, and blacks and women and non-landowners would also have been given the right to vote. But what he’s missing here is that for every Abu Ghraib, political assassination, or perceived case of human-rights abuse at Guantanamo or a secret CIA prison (and I would argue that, while certainly open to debate among disagreeing parties these hardly rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors), one can point to dozens of tragedies or situations that have affected the world in recent memory where this country has rushed in aid in overwhelming quantities to ease human suffering - for example, following the tsunami in Thailand, or earthquakes in Iran, or Turkey, or Chile - and far more than any other country. Heck, just the other day one our aircraft carriers loaded with humanitarian aid and helicopters was turned away by that vile junta of thugs who rule Myanmar. What about that, Mr. Satullo?

…Not to mention the number of Americans who have died trying to advance the cause of freedom on foreign shores.

…Or the fact that Americans are among, if not the, most generous in the world.

…Or the fact that on any day this time of year you can find people dead or near-so in the scrub deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, lured by the beacon of freedom and the opportunity to make a new life for themselves and their families.

Have the events Mr. Satullo brings up dimmed our reputation in the world? Perhaps. Must we as patriotic citizens always be vigilant against those things that threaten our individual freedoms or damage our standing in the world when it comes to freedom and human rights? Absolutely. But, assuming Mr. Satullo’s column is not parody or written to get a rise out of people, it’s hard to take him as anything but a bitter, whining, self-loathing American liberal for whom the glass is always half-empty, there is always something to fault, the Liberty Bell is always cracked, and no matter what a Republican administration might attempt to do well, it’s never enough. There’s always something to complain about.

I feel bad for people like Chris Satullo. They are incredibly privileged to live in the greatest country in the world, warts and all, and yet they can’t take one day - one day - to celebrate how fortunate and blessed we all are to live in this country, at this point in history. Millions upon millions in the world would love to take Mr. Satullo’s place. So have a burger and a dog this July 4th, Mr. Satullo, take a nice walk in the summer air. And when you do, breathe deeply of the freedoms you have, for there are many.

Life is too short to do otherwise.

Anyone under the impression that this country’s judicial system is completely out of whack needs only take a look at these first two items sent me by my good friend Pete, reporting live from the People’s Republic of Massachusetts:

1. Inmate wins case vs. state over diet. And not just any inmate, mind you - a baby killer. Believe it:

Fourteen years ago, Henry K. Boateng was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a Worcester jury convicted him of beating his 5-week-old son to death and viciously attacking the baby’s mother.

Now, Boateng, who has changed his name to Daniel Yeboah-Sefah and identifies himself as a Buddhist, has won a significant legal victory: A federal judge found that the state prison system violated his civil rights by denying him a vegan diet.

…

Although the prison system had offered Yeboah-Sefah a standard vegetarian diet, he has spent nearly a decade unsuccessfully seeking a vegan diet that excludes all animal products, including eggs and milk products.

Hmmm. Seems to me the court might have taken into consideration this vermin’s violation of that young child’s civil rights, wouldn’t you think? But remember, this is Massachusetts we’re talking about here.

2. Pete notes that the same judge in the Boateng - oh excuse me, the Yeboah-Sefah, case i