Freedom isn't free

A buddy of mine posted this. I liked it. I hope you'll like it too.

Where do questions get us?

Father, what is the purpose of life?
Why do you want to know, my son?
I want to know my place.
Then you will.

What am I supposed to accomplish?
What do you want to accomplish?
I want God to show me the way.
Then He will.

What does God want from me?
What do you have to offer?
All I have is myself.
Then that is enough.

But how do I hear Him?
How do you hear me?
I hear you fine.
Do you?

How do I live a full life?
How did your father raise you?
He raised me with a full family.
Then you are wise.

What must I do to escape loneliness?
Why must you escape it?
I wish to find my better half.
Then you will.

Why is it so difficult to find wholeness?
Why do you ask me?
I have been empty during my life.
Then your bucket will be full.

Why do friends come and go?
Why do the geese migrate each year?
But why does trust not last?
Why do boys grow into men?

Father, why do you always answer a question with a question?
Son, why don’t you ask yourself?

FAFSA-tation

I just got off the Live Help function of the FAFSA website (federal student aid -- optimal word "federal"). In order to get the best loans rates and conditions for school, one must first register on this website.

Naturally, I figured I would go back to the website after registering to find out how much federal loan money I was authorized to take out. Much to my chagrin, I could not find a link that led me to that screen. I did, however, find a status check link. My application had been processed!

Still unable to locate the dollar figure, I discovered the Live Help function. I explained my situation. The agent asked me for all of my personal information that I had already entered into the website so that she could check my status. Instead of citing all that to her (a repetitous act indeed), I cut to the chase. I had already seen my status; now I need the result. No can do, she told me.

It turns out that the FAFSA website only exists for registration purposes. ANY other information must be gathered directly from your school's financial aid office.

Excuse me?! Parlez vous france? So what, pray tell, is the function of the employees at FAFSA's Live Help? To eat up our tax dollars by regurgitating useless state drivel, telling us to ask someone else?

I could only laugh to keep from crying...

Every Thursday evening, I exercise my privilege to participate in my Toastmasters Club. It's a place where one grows his or her capability and confidence in public speaking and leadership. (And it looks great on a resume!) But more than that, Big D Toastmasters Club has given me so many wonderful friendships and networking opporutnities in my career path and in my life's many endeavors.

I encourage all people to join a local Toastmaster's club for more than just the self-improvement, but also the comraderie that will not let you slip off into the dark without reaching out to help. The following is a column I wrote for the June 2009 edition of my club's newsletter, The Big "D" Amplifier:

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It’s a warm blanket on a cold evening. It’s a cool drink on a hot day. A home-cooked meal after a week on the road.

Big D brings the kind of dependable comfort you can only find among old friends. Many members here are, in fact, old friends. For a 60-year old club, there better be old friends!

Still, most of you, like me, are relatively new to Big D – or new to Toastmasters, period. Nonetheless, week-in and week-out, Big D offers all of its members and guests a warm greeting and a fun meeting. And after we’ve had to drag ourselves away, a great sense of ease and peace rushes over us with the knowledge that we’ve just been in the company of good friends.

Our club holds tremendous pride to contribute a massive volume of strength to the Toastmasters organization. We induct more new members than any other club in our district. The quality of individuals that progress through Big D is a P.R. campaign in and of itself.

However, of the eve of our Fall 2009 officer induction gala, let us not forget the social aspect of our club. Old friend, John Sessions, loves to promote this soiree by pointing out how this year’s event marks the 29th anniversary of fellow club veteran Cliff Hutchinson’s tryst with his wife.

Big D’s parties come naturally. You can sense their evolution at the end of each meeting. Even after two (plus) hours, we still have the energy and enthusiasm to fraternize for another half hour (plus). We genuinely like each other. And we can’t wait to get to know guests and hear ice-breaker speeches.

Diversity makes each Thursday evening unique. Everyone brings something different to the table that piques most attendees’ interest. Because of this, my favorite statistic of Big D is that, to date, not one new member has died while giving his/her ice-breaker.

This vitality allows us to continue to discover new facets to new members and offers the guarantee of not only survival, but also progression of every member into something he/she did not know was capable. But like a good friend, Big D knows the possibilities of every soul are limitless. And we encourage this in every evaluation, every hearty applause, and in the aftermath of each meeting.

The best advice I can give any new member is this: lose consciousness of yourself. You do not need to worry about what you are saying, how you are saying it, the way you posture or present yourself. You’ve already made it clear you are serious about bettering your life by attending, now let the flow of the club be your guide.

Everyone wants to see you succeed, I promise. When you enter the meeting room, everyone is your best friend. You can feel it in the positive and constructive evaluations. You can feel it in the enormous and genuine smiles on each member’s face. In the comfort of good conversation.

Let the comfort of friendship wash over you. And then you will be able to experience everything that this welcoming club has to offer. Like a good neighbor, Big D is there.

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For more information about Big D Toastmasters, please visit http://www.dallastoastmaters.com/
For more information about finding a Toastmasters club near you, please visit http://www.toastmasters.org/find/

Thanks for reading!

Watching MSNBC is Torture

By Ann Coulter

The media wail about "torture," but are noticeably short on facts.

Liberals try to disguise the utter wussification of our interrogation techniques by constantly prattling on about "the banality of evil."

Um, no. In this case, it's actually the banality of the banal.

Start with the fact that the average Gitmo detainee has gained 20 pounds in captivity. There's even a medical term for it now: "the Gitmo gut." Some prisoners have been heard whispering, "If you think Allah is great, you should try these dinner rolls."

In terms of "torture," there was "the attention grasp," which you have seen in every department store you have ever been where a mother was trying to get her misbehaving child's attention. If "the attention grasp" doesn't work, the interrogators issue a stern warning: "Don't make me pull this car over."

Farther up the parade of horribles was "walling," which I will not describe except to say Elliot Spitzer paid extra for it.

And for the most hardened terrorists, CIA interrogators had "the caterpillar." Evidently, the terrorists have gotten so fat on the food at Guantanamo, now they can't even outrun a caterpillar.

Contrary to MSNBC hosts who are afraid of bugs, water and their own shadows, waterboarding was most definitely not a "war crime" for which the Japanese were prosecuted after World War II -- no matter how many times Mrs. Jonathan Turley, professor of cooking at George Washington University, says so.

All MSNBC hosts and guests were apparently reading "Little Women" rather than military books as children and therefore can be easily fooled about Japanese war crimes. (MSNBC: The Official Drama Queen Network of the 2012 Olympics.)

Given what the Japanese did to prisoners, waterboarding would be a reward for good behavior.

It might be: waterboarding PLUS amputating the prisoner's healthy arm, or waterboarding PLUS killing the prisoner. But waterboarding on the order of what we did at Guantanamo would be a reward in a Japanese POW camp.

To claim that the Japanese -- architects of the Bataan Death March -- were prosecuted for "waterboarding" would be like saying Ted Bundy was executed for engaging in sexual harassment.

What the Japanese did to their POWs made even the Nazis blanch. The Japanese routinely beheaded and bayoneted prisoners; forced prisoners to dig their own graves and then buried them alive; amputated prisoners' healthy arms and legs, one by one, for sport; force-fed prisoners dry rice and then filled their stomachs with water until their bowels exploded; and injected them with chemical weapons in order to observe, time and record their death throes before dumping them in mass graves.

While only 4 percent of British and American troops captured by German or Italian forces died in captivity, 27 percent of British and American POWs captured by the Japanese died in captivity. Japanese war crimes were so atrocious that even rape was treated as only a secondary war crime in the Tokyo trial, similar to what happens during an R. Kelly trial.

The Japanese "water cure" was to "waterboarding" as practiced at Guantanamo what rape at knifepoint is to calling your secretary "honey."

The Japanese version of "waterboarding" was to fill the prisoner's stomach with water until his stomach was distended -- and then pound on his stomach, causing the prisoner to vomit.

Or they would jam a stick into the prisoner's nose so he could breathe only through his mouth and then pour water in his mouth so he would choke to death.

Or they would "waterboard" the prisoner with saltwater, which would kill him.

Meanwhile, the alleged "torture" under the Bush administration consists of things like:

"failing to respect a Serbian national holiday"; or

"forgetting to wear plastic gloves while handling a Quran."

Finding out who started the tall tale about "waterboarding" being treated as a war crime after World War II would take the talents of a forensic historian, someone like Christina Hoff Sommers.

After years of hearing the feminist "fact" that emergency room admissions for women beaten by their husbands soared by 40 percent on Super Bowl Sundays, Sommers traced it back to an unsubstantiated rumination erupting from a feminist rap session.

But the lunatic claim was passed around with increasing credibility until it ended up being cited as hard fact in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and on "Good Morning America."

One of the earliest entries in the "waterboarding as war crimes" myth must be this October 2006 article in The Washington Post, citing a case raised by Sen. Teddy Kennedy -- and heaven knows Kennedy understands the horrors of a near-drowning:

"Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk."

Even if that description of what Asano did were true -- and it isn't -- the only relevant word in the entire paragraph is "civilian."

Any mistreatment of a civilian is a war crime. So every other part of that paragraph is utterly irrelevant to the treatment of prisoners of war, much less non-uniformed enemy combatants at Guantanamo, who could have been shot on sight under the laws of war.

What Americans need to understand is that under liberals' own "laws of war," they will invent apocryphal incidents from history in order to give aid and comfort to America's enemies and to undermine those who kept us safe for the past eight years.