The Land of Ozz

The truth about our military action around the world is available. Unfortunately you have to sift through the garbage to get to it or you can just pull up some blogs from the front lines. There are good stories about actual events on the ground in places like Iraq. These are not stories of soldiers targeting journalists. These are stories that tell the truth about what these men and women face daily. I was glad to hear that Black Five was invited to appear on MSNBC. He took the opportunity to highlight some blogs that provide the real stories from military members around the world. A good example is Howdy’s BLOG: Drunk Guy where he tells of his view of the MSM from the front lines. He believes that our country is not as divided as the MSM wants you to think. My favorites are stories like “The Power of a Piece of Candy” from A Day In Iraq.

MediaSlander is taking the fight to News Guild’s member papers to see if they support her unsubstantiated claims that US troops are targeting journalists. Go get’em gang!

It is a good day when you can wake up and read about someone who has changed their way of thinking due to the observation of good deeds. There are plenty of good things going on around the world and people are noticing. There are also people who insist on tearing others down for their own gain no matter what the cost. The best philosophy in my opinion is to tell what you are going to do rather than to tell how badly others have done it.

I ran across some comments posted yesterday by Mark Tapscott. Mark comments on the Keith Thompson’s story that posted on yesterday’s San Francisco Times web site where Keith announces his departure form the liberal left.

On the other hand, yesterday was not without news from the left. The Washington Times ran a story on Howard Dean that ended with a quote that summarizes the view from the left. If the left can’t come up with a better idea then they will just have to make fun of the moral values of the Republicans in order to win the next election.

“The Schiavo case will probably be the turning point about our ability to make our case to Americans about the incredible invasiveness of Republicans when it comes to making personal, private decisions,” Mr. Dean said.

Mr. Dean….Excuse me Mr. Dean! The whole point of the Republican’s involvement in this case was to put the private decision in the hands of the family of this woman. This woman’s life was in the hands of a man who had deserted her for another woman. Terri Schiavo’s husband had a conflict of interest. He had no business making decisions for Terri after he left her for another woman. The personal decision belonged to her parents and not in the hands of her unfaithful husband. This seems to be a recurring theme for the Democratic Party. Let’s see, you are actually saying that you support those guys who can’t keep a marriage promise to the ones they are suppose to care for the most. I am glad I am not a Democrat.

The Quran is to the Muslims as the Bible is to Christians. Well, almost. The major difference is that most Christians would not run out in the street and start killing people if they heard from a magazine article that some foreign military officials were flushing pages from the Bible down the toilet. True or not the story was published. I have not read the story from Newsweek and I probably will not. Newsweek is something I read for comical entertainment while waiting to see a doctor. Others that I find amusing are parenting magazines that run the “let’s keep our children happy at any cost” stories. These magazines are great examples of I believe is a big problem in our country today. Too many people are worried too much about pleasing other people by telling them what they want to hear and they have stopped worrying about doing the right thing.

I listen to talk radio quite a bit. One of my favorite shows is the Glenn Beck Program. Glenn has folks respond to Newsweek’s recent incorrect story on the treatment of the Quran by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Well, it may have been incorrect, or maybe not. There is a CNN story saying that the Red Cross Warned U.S. over Quran with no specific references to Quran mistreatment.

The bottom line is that the Quran probably is mistreated at times. There are people in the US military and other government agencies that break the rules. You can make all the policies you want on how the Quran should be handled, but that does not guarantee that all people will follow these rules and polices. That should not be news to anyone.

There are wackos wearing uniforms in our military. Why do you think they have two man control on nuclear weapons? I worked on nukes for over five years in the Air Force. No single person was ever allowed access to missile silos. That is because the military knows that there are wackos that might take advantage of the opportunity if given unmonitored access to a nuclear missile silo.

I agree with the former Marine who called into the Glenn Beck Program on Monday. He said that he went through interrogation training in the military. He was kept from urinating for a long period of time before his trainers took him and other trainees to a pit. The bottom of that pit was covered by an American flag. The trainees urinated on the flag. They were able to do so because they viewed the flag in that pit as a piece of cloth. The flag has a meaning, but it is just a colored piece of cloth. They were not disgracing their country by what they did. I do not like to see the flag burned or even touch the ground, but I am not going to spill my guts to the enemy because the flag was defaced or destroyed.

I feel similar about the Bible. It is a book. It is ink and paper. Pressing a bunch of trees into paper and plastering ink on the pages does not make that paper sacred. Heck, the Bible in on the Internet. Does that make the Internet sacred? NO! What it represents is sacred, but the book itself is not. I know people that would argue with me on this one. I was raised to respect the Bible. I was taught not to put other things on top of the Bible. I still practice these beliefs as much as possible. I would not spill secrets as a result of the enemy flushing it down the toilet. The Muslims might spill their secrets as a result of the Quran being flushed. They don’t think like us.

The problem is that Muslims do not view things the way Christians do. We have a pastor at our church that has immediate family members who are Muslims. He says that Muslims take care of you if they like you and the will kill you if they hate you.

I am sure that Newsweek would not have run this story if they thought it would cause riots that would kill people. I am not sure that the riots were solely in response to the Newsweek report. For all I know this may be a case of my unconfirmed story is bigger than yours. The kansascity.com story did not cause riots. These riots would have happened for some other reason if it were not for this Newsweek story.

Weather the Quran was flushed, burned, or chewed by a wacko military member or a legitimate interrogator does not matter. I believe that it is entirely possible that it did happen at some point. I would even support flushing a book if it were effective at extracting information from the terrorist captives that can save American lives no matter what is written on the pages of the book. Muslims Riot Over Spelling of ‘Quran’ in U.S. Media indicates that the reason for the riots may not be because of the flushing of the Quran, but because of the spelling of the word Quran.

Other interesting views from:

Patrick Ruffini - A Test for Liberals
Conservative Outpost - Newsweek lied…people died
Right Wing News - The Newsweek “Qu�ran In The Toilet” Fiasco? It’s Just Another Karl Rove Conspiracy!
Black Five - Haven’t Read Newsweek Since May 26th, 2003

Traditions are a big deal in my family. My wife is pretty big on creating traditions in our family. There are special times that she remembers from her childhood and she wants to leave those kind of memories with our children when the are grown. The primary tradition we want to share with our children is that of having a relationship with Jesus Christ. We both agreed early in our relationship that we would raise our children in church. We believe that it is our duty as parents to expose our children to God’s love and promise for eternal life. I think that our child will have a much greater chance of choosing Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior if we do our best as parents to set an example as believers and followers of Christ.

There are many other less important things that we want to share with our children. For instance, we took our children to pick fresh strawberries yesterday. We got a lot of fun out of the four dollar basket of strawberries. These simple exercises give us a time to share and learn.

Today I took a step closer to building a tradition with my oldest son. We took a ride out to the local airport. We walked around the flight line and looked at all of the airplanes. He even got to sit in one airplane. It has been a little over a year since he rode on an airplane. That was a commercial airplane ride to Colorado. He took his first ride in September of 2003. He was eleven months old and we were leaving for Washington D.C. the next day on a commercial flight. My wife knew that I wanted my son to get his first airplane ride with me as the pilot. She suggested that we go out to the local airport the day before our D.C. trip so that I could take him for a ride. We did go out to the airport that day and we all went for a short twenty minute ride in a Cessna. That week marked nine years since I earned my private pilot’s license. That day was a very happy day when my wife encouraged me to begin a tradition that I had dreamed of for years. My son is now 2 1/2 and loves airplanes. He wanted to go flying today, but I am not current. I plan to get my license current over the next couple of weeks so we can go flying. This will hopefully be something we can enjoy together for years to come.

Create a tradition in your family. It’s FUN and lasts forever.

I am once again amazed at how much press is given to the concept of fixing public schools with money. I happen to listen to The Casey Bartholomew Show on the way home from work every day. Yesterday Casey was taking calls to get comments on whether the listening audience thinks South Carolina should raise cigarette taxes. One of Casey’s main arguments in favor of the increase was to help public schools. “Do it for the children,” Casey said. I have a reality check for you Casey. You can pile money from the floor to the ceiling in most of these classrooms and it will not fix their problems. There are several big problems in schools that money will not correct.

I agree that adding money into the public school system could help. It could allow for teachers’ salaries to be increased to help keep the ones we have and to possibly attract more talent into such an important career field. The money could help buy more materials to prevent the truly dedicated teachers from digging into their own pockets to buy supplies for their classrooms. Many teachers spend one third of her net income or more for the first year to buy supplies for their classrooms. Money could help those situations, but unless the real problems are fixed, you can not expect the teachers to stick around for long.

One problem goes back to the home. Children are not being sent to school prepared or disciplined. By disciplined, I mean there are too many kids that have not been taught to respect authority at a young age. Many of these kids become massive disruptions to the classrooms. The parents then get called and many times the parents want to blame the teacher for the child’s behavior problems. Therefore the teacher gets fed up and moves on to a career that pays more with less stress. Many kids have parents who are not involved in their kid’s daily work and do not ensure that homework and projects get done on time. This is not completely the parents’ fault because they may have to work two jobs to make ends meet. The kids may be left alone or with someone who has less of a vested interest in making sure the kids are on track. Many kids end up raising themselves for the most part due to the circumstances of their home.

Another big problem is mainstreaming. When it comes to academics, we were not all created equal. Advanced children do not need to be in mainstream classrooms. Special needs children do not need to be in mainstream classrooms. Money will not fix this problem. There is little to benefit from creating a third grade classroom out of kids where they range in academic ability from pre-school through seventh grade. They ones who may already be struggling with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities are going to have even more stress introduced from having to try to keep up with kids who work at a faster pace. The advanced kids will get bored waiting on the teacher to challenge them.

You can argue that with funding we could have smaller classrooms and more advanced and special education programs. That is true. You could also start dividing kids among existing teachers based on abilities and test scores. This could be done at the beginning of the next school year with no additional funding required.

Oh, I can hear the arguments already. It will hurt their little feelings. Well you know what, that is life and they need to learn it sooner or later. Not everyone has been blessed with the ability to perform at the same academic level at the same age in their lives. Some will never perform at the same level as others. Some will perform at a level that the rest of the population can not even comprehend.

The bottom line is that money could help the public education system, but it is NOT the cure all for the public education system. I wish people like Casey who have a voice to the masses would stop leading people into thinking that money is going to solve this country’s education problems.

Today my youngest son Caden turns 6 months old. My oldest son Riley turned 2 1/2 years a couple of weeks ago. They are the coolest kids a man could ever hope for.

I have not posted as much to this blog as I would like to. I keep myself pretty busy with my family. I use my free time to research and read. I have also been spending a considerable amount of my free time working on my first book. I have contacted a publisher and I expect the book to be in print by mid summer. The title of the book is “Catch 22″. I have not decided on the subtitle yet, but I will definitely have one. The title was chosen simply to capture attention. The term “Catch 22″ is an unfavorable slang name for the syndrome that my youngest child has been diagnosed with. I expect to get some flack from patients, parents, and professionals who deal with issues related to the 22nd chromosome. The books is not focused on my son’s problems, but rather how we have dealt with the situations faced by a family with a seriously ill child. I hope the book becomes a must read for anyone who has been through or is going through a tough time due to a serious illness or premature delivery of a child.

You will be able to purchase the book right here on this web site as soon as it is available.

God bless,
Hank O