Egads! Poll – Ice Cream, You Scream….

What’ll it be?

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The Weekly Free-For-All

• Flooding and wild fires and tornados, oh, my! Tony Snow responds to Kansas governor’s request for help: “You won’t get it if you don’t ask for it.” Point well taken, JF; no ‘compassionate conservatives’ here. Funny, I don’t remember Snow asking for the outpouring of sympathy he got for his cancer recurrence…
• Jihad at Fort Dix thwarted
• The Queen comes; the Queen goes.
• Iraq, Iraq, Iraq

What do you think about these and the other news of the week? Egads! wants to know.

The Meaning of Mother’s Day – 2007

Mother’s Day for Peace – Honor Mother with Rallies in the Streets
by Ruth Rosen.
.
The holiday began in activism; it needs rescuing from commercialism and platitudes.

Every year, people snipe at the shallow commercialism of Mother’s Day. But to ignore your mother on this holy holiday is unthinkable. And if you are a mother, you’ll be devastated if your ingrates fail to honor you at least one day of the year.

Mother’s Day wasn’t always like this…

The Meaning of Mother’s Day – 1870

Mothers’ Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

(Mother’s Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother’s Day Proclamation from 1870, followed by a bit of history or should I say “herstory”)

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience…

Terror in Kansas

Bush says that if U.S. troops leave Iraq, the terrorists will follow them back to America. However, with our troop force painfully depleted locally – including a huge percent of our National Guard – isn’t that hurting America and making us more vulnerable?

Homeland security risks aside, one of the latest results of taking our on-call National Guard away from home is playing out in Southwestern Kansas.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius stated that half of the state’s National Guard troops and emergency equipment are in Iraq. These emergency staff and equipment are vital to crisis help in situations lesser than the tornado that claimed the lives of nine people and, effectively, the entire town of Greensberg, Kans., on Friday.

In this case, Iraq has worked to weaken American forces at home and pour salt into the wound of Greensberg’s tragic situation.

The Kansas City Star reports that suburb Overland Park will contribute manpower to the tornado recovery effort by sending “10 police officers and two EMT/firefighters to Greensburg, Kan., this morning in response to a request for public safety workers to help the town begin to recover from the devastating tornado.

“They should arrive in Greensburg early this afternoon.”

Energy Plan with the Environment in Mind – An Egads! Guest Opinion

The following entry comes from Gregg Lombardi who suggests an energy-equitable plan for gas consumption in the United States:

There has been a lot of talk recently about the need to reduce U.S. energy consumption—and for good reason. If we use less gas and other energy, then we can slow down global warming and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Here is an idea of how to start the process now:
1) The government would set a monthly allowance for gas use for all individuals, say, 25 gallons per month.
2) Every person of driving age would be issued a gas-use card that would look just like a credit card that would track their consumption.
3) When you go to the filling station, you would just insert your card into the pump and it would show you how much gas you had used for the month.

How it would work:

• If you use more than 25 gallons per month, then a tax would be added to your bill of $1.00 per gallon.

• If you use 50 or more gallons, then a $2.00 charge would apply.

• If you use less than 25 gallons, then, at the start of the month, you would get a $1.50 credit for every gallon that you saved.

• If you only use five gallons, then you would get a $30 credit. You would not have to use the credit for gas, you could go into the store and the cashier would simply pay you the $30.

This would provide a strong incentive for people to reduce their gas use. People who want to drive gas guzzlers, like Hummers, could still drive them. They would just have to pay a small tax for the extra pollution they are causing, which only seems fair. People who save gas would be rewarded for helping the environment.

The same system could apply for businesses, although it would be more complicated. The business’s monthly allocation might be based on their payroll. Businesses that use a lot of energy, like UPS, might complain that the burden of a gas tax would unfairly be saddled on them, which would increase the cost of their products or services.

Like the Hummer drivers, however, if those businesses are going to contribute more heavily to pollution, global warming and U.S. dependence on foreign oil, then it is only fair that they and their customers bear a small part of the cost of the pollution they are producing.

A price that more accurately reflects the true cost of the product in terms of environmental impact would also encourage people to buy products that have less of an environmental impact – like buying apples that were grown 100 miles away, instead of apples that were grown in Venezuela.

What’s more, even with the added tax, gas in the United States would still cost a lot less than gas almost anywhere else in the free world.

The same system could be used for electricity, natural gas and pretty much any other form of energy. There would be no cost for this system, it would actually raise money. And the money could be used to fund mass transportation and other solutions to the energy problem. Parts of the country that reduce their energy use the most might receive additional funding for public transportation.

Solving the problems of global warming and U.S. dependence on foreign oil is going to take a lot of new ideas and a pretty fair amount of sacrifice. This would be at least a step in the right direction and we could take it immediately with little pain.

Editors Note: Click here to read the May 5, 2007, Washington Post article, “Panel Calculates Cost of Global Warming Fix – Nations Could Afford Solutions, Scientists Say”

Egads! Poll – Billed…

Egads! wants to know what you think.

An Iraq spending bill most likely will:

VOTE HERE

Two close to home

Random murder in a public forum moved to Missouri this week. About 15 blocks from my house at the neighborhood mall, a man in his 50s opened fire, first killing people in cars on either side of his car, then going into the mall with the intent to commit mass murder. Instead, the police killed him before any of his bullets fatally struck any bystanders. Here is the Kansas City Star’s account of the event.

Egads! does need to take issue with one line in particular from the Star report:
“On Sunday, the bleeding Logsdon limped through the mall, the rifle in his hands, dead and wounded in his wake. The Target store was ahead.” There were no fatalities in the mall. The only two fatally shot in the area were in their cars in the parking lot (as aforementioned).

And Egads! wants to know where the man, Logsdon, got the guns he was packing.

The second calamity – an historic tragedy, but luckily no one was injured – happened about 1,000 miles to the east in my old neighborhood. A fire destroyed much of the shop stalls inside Eastern Market, a landmark in the city and one of the longest running fresh produce markets in the country. In a Washington Post article, [Mayor Adrian] “Fenty called Eastern Market ‘a historic landmark that has been the lifeblood of the Capitol Hill neighborhood and a great source of pride for the entire city for more than a century.’ “

I lived in the Eastern Market area – about three blocks away – for almost six months last year. It was an awesome neighborhood. The Market had an old world aura that infused the hucksters with a special charm – instant nostalgia: walking up to the cheese stall and being handed taste after taste until you were almost too stuffed to order any; the fresh flowers that mixed their beauty and aroma with the sight and smell of the fish and shrimp and meat parts displayed across the aisle. And the Market Lunch that I was lucky enough to enjoy, but only once – a delicious crab cake breakfast the day before I left town in November.