Happy Reformation Day!

Movie quote of the day: “Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, that is, depending on the breaks.”

During the final descent into the Los Angeles airport last Thursday night, the pilot uttered, “The fires are on the right side of the plane.” It was strange to connect the news stories with the rows and rows of red embers scattered throughout the landscape before my eyes. At my hotel I met Paul, a fire-driven evacuee from San Diego. He was leaving the next day to return to a home spared by the fire. Paul was relieved that his home was still standing and so was I. If his house burned, what would I have said? “I’m sorry… God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life…We’re all praying for you?” What do you say to someone whose house burns down?

As I drove from Los Angeles to Riverside on Friday, the sun barely broke through the seamless smoke cloud. You could smell the smoke. After arriving in Riverside, just miles from the fires, flurries of ash fell from the sky.

On Monday morning at around 9:00, I met Maria at the Comfort Inn Hotel. This petite, silver-haired lady was on her cell phone, waiting to hear if her house had burned down. I didn’t know what to say so I listened.

Maria said that she only had fifteen minutes notice before she had to grab her two dogs and leave her house in one of the mountain communities near Los Angeles. She said that she has had to cry alone because her husband is on an international business trip and will not return until November 25. Maria’s 20-year-old son also has a home in the same neighborhood and its status was unknown. He’s in the Navy so his young wife has had to cry alone as well.

Maria said that they will never leave the mountain even though it may always be a fire hazard. “I love it up there.” When asked what she was going to do if she lost her house she proclaimed with a determined spirit, “buy another house up there.”

Should people live in areas where fire destruction is highly likely at some point? Why risk it?

Hey everybody, just a note to let you know that we will be adding a comment-preview feature, along with a lower righthand box that lists the last 20 to 30 posts. The latter should make it easier to drop back in on threads that interest you. Dr. N.O. and the Web Diva are currently tied up with other, more arcane technical issues that don’t interest a Luddite like me. That means I don’t have a timeline for you, but I can tell you that we are listening and that those features are on the way.

Check out this WorldNetDaily report on a group of Iraqi soldiers who collected $1,000 for victims of the California wildfires. (A person quoted in the article aptly compares their donation to the biblical story of the widow’s mite.)

HT: Joe B.

The world now knows what Gerald Ford really thought: Bill Clinton’s a sex addict, Carter was weak, and Bush invaded Iraq for the wrong reasons. The Washington Post speculates on whether Ford’s words will influence the 2008 election. He predicted Hillary would run for president but lose.

Barack Obama is having trouble making voters see the differences between him and Hillary Clinton. Analysts say it’s because he won’t attack her character. Bill Richardson is cultivating a soft, sweet demeanor: “I’m sure not the best looking, or the flashiest, but I know who I am. And I know how hard I’ll work for you.” Clinton counters him with her own ad: “These days it seems every candidate on earth is coming here for you. But which candidate has been there for you all along?”

Vice President Dick Cheney made another hunting blunder. This time he hunted at a private club that flies the Confederate flag.

President Bush blasts Congress for “not getting its work done” and wasting “valuable time on a constant stream of investigations, and … endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq.”

Democrats blast Bush, asking if waterboarding (simulating drowning) is a legitimate interrogation technique or a form of torture. CNN says “Bush has had to retreat to gray-area defenses, using tailored definitions and legalisms to dodge questioners.”

The Blackwater controversy continues. Did officials offer Blackwater guards immunity, and will that hinder the investigation of a shootout that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead? Bush has picked an ex-general to head the Department of Veteran Affairs.

Blogger Make It Man pointed out this essay – “A Requiem for Friendship” – from one of my favorite magazines, Touchstone.  The thesis, in brief, is that the sexual revolution and the cultural parade of homosexuality have sullied the possibility of friendships between men.

On three great bonds of love do all cultures depend: the love between man and woman in marriage; the love between a mother and her child; and the camaraderie among men, a bond that used to be strong enough to move mountains. The first two have suffered greatly; the third has almost ceased to exist.

The bottom rail is on top again.

Why does Rudy Giuliani, who seems to do so many very unconservative things, like, say, living with an openly gay couple after getting kicked out of Gracie Mansion, still poll so well across the country? 

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Josh Levin asks, “In the entire history of American sports hype, has there ever been any fraud more grossly fraudulent than Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis?”  After all, they are 1-7.

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Last week, we blogged about J.K. Rowling’s outing of the wizard Dumbledore as gay (the blog posting was turned into a short piece for WORLD).  This isn’t really news anymore, but I did want to point out the Times story that seemed to echo WORLD’s own idea:

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Religious exterminators have successfully eliminated organized prayer from public schools, but now they also want to stamp out silence. At least a dozen states impose a mandatory moment of silence and the Illinois legislature this month overrode a gubernatorial veto to do the same. But the atheists ain’t havin’ it: a Buffalo Grove High School student and her dad, radio-talk show host Rob Sherman, are suing the state, seeking an injunction to block the new mandatory moment of silence in Township High School District 214 — and the rest of Illinois.

Illinois’ law is called the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act. Sherman’s daughter and every other child can do what they like during Illinois’ moment of silence. Set aside the fact that the lawsuit will likely boost ratings for Sherman’s show and that he appears to be using his 14-year-old daughter as a legal shill; what is he teaching her? That we must not have silence because someone near her might pray? That the Sherman family must not only disavow all deity, but also scrub free exercise from the lives of others around them? So much for “tolerance.”

Stateline.org has a good summary of moment-of-silence laws including which ones have survived legal challenges and why. The Constitution does not prohibit the exercise of religion in public schools. In fact, here in San Diego, an elementary school has set aside both time and a classroom for Muslim students to perform their daily prayers. Americans United and the ACLU are deafeningly . . . um, silent.