It made news when an Iraqi television station employee, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, threw his shoes at President Bush. It is the Iraqi way of telling someone you don’t like them, and al-Zeidi certainly let the president know his feelings.
I think the most surprising thing about the story is that Muntadhar al-Zeidi is still alive, and that not many people have noted that.
If al-Zeidi had thrown his shoes at Saddam Hussein or one of his sons, he would have been shot on the spot and his body would have been tossed away some place with the others that had been shot. That is how Saddam Hussein did things, how he hung onto power. Saddam liked to pretend he had been freely elected to office, and that he was loved by all the Iraqi people, but in fact he was a terrible human being who made war against his own people.
Muntadhar al-Zeidi probably also thinks President Bush is a terrible human being who makes war on his (al-Zeidi’s) people, and certainly from his point of view that may seem to be true.
But he was able to represent his television station freely in the company of journalists, he was able to take off his shoes and throw them, the act was freely broadcast — and he is still alive. He is probably shocked and awed.
Bush tried to calm the room in which the insult took place, and urged that no harm come to the shoe-thrower.
What would have brought death to al-Zeidi just a few years ago instead made him momentarily famous — a shoe-enough celebrity.
He may have to serve some time for endangering his own leaders, who were present, but eventually he probably will go free again, free to throw more shoes if he likes.
All comments are edited for length and content. Due to content or space limitations some comments may not be published Please limit your calls to two minutes or less. Repeat messages on the same subject adding to the length will not be published.
The Red Line saw numerous calls concerning the Board of Supervisors approving major developments east of State Route 41. Too many to publish, the main topic of most was, as one caller said, “a condemnation of the unanimous vote for the development.”
Another caller said, “I know that a supervisor owns land ripe for business near the approved development. He should have excused himself from voting.”
Yet another mentioned, “we put these people in office so they can rape our county and turn it into another Fresno. With the next election, I will not make that mistake again.”
Several callers sided “with farmers and the water issue. What will happen if this drought continues?”
A woman called “about the Red Line comments on graffiti.” She said, “ I had my fence tagged three times and each time I called the graffiti hotline and within a day they had painted over it. I would suggest to anyone who has graffiti to call the hotline. The number 661-5119.”
Another man had a solution for the graffiti. “Maybe we should put one big chalkboard up on Gateway and have all the gang bangers write on the chalkboard. After they’re done writing on their arms, writing on their necks, writing on their faces and writing on fences, just give them some chalk.”
A man wanted “to respond to the Internet Red Line message concerning the letter by John Sanchez.” This week’s caller mentioned several political names and continued with,” and all the other crooks that were Democrats that ruined Fannie May and Freddie May. We the taxpayers ended up paying for their big mistakes.”
A woman “wanted to comment on the article in Saturday’s paper about “dinner served at Washington Elementary and Martin Luther King middle schools. What angels these people are to take the time to make sure the needy have something to eat. Now, for the ungrateful person who was expecting a menu, shame on you: you should be embarrassed. If you want to change the food for next year, you be the one that is charitable. Remember charity is not a right. It is a gift from others. Merry Christmas.”
“If it wasn’t for the stores on Yosemite Avenue in downtown Madera having their Christmas decorations on,” said a man, “it wouldn’t even look like Christmas in Madera. The only place that has their clear-white lights around the store top is Vintage Cadillac. Nobody downtown, except the store windows themselves.” He thought, “those people should be complimented for trying to get the Christmas spirit generated in our town.”
A regular caller mentioned “an outstanding lady politician in Washington,” who said ‘the only way the auto industry will survive is to have a car czar.’ The caller thought it was humorous and continued, “I wonder if he needs a haircut? Czar, sounds Russian to me, Russian socialism. What do we need another department of the legislative branch for? There’s too many people back there drawing too much money now.”
A male caller said, “too much sports” about “Thursday’s (Dec. 11) paper.” He “enjoyed the all the local sports in the usual spot, but the national sports on the back page,” he questioned. “Couldn’t we have some more local or at least state news on the back page. We really enjoy the Tribune, the local stuff. the columnists, Emo, Coate and Nix, and editorials. We don’t get the Tribune to read national news.”
A lady referred to the “picture of the Madera Lady Canes softball team who took all the toys to Fresno for Toys For Tots.” She mentioned, “Madera has a Toys For Tots program and outlet. Now Fresno kids are going to get those toys and Madera kids are not going to get any. I don’t understand why somebody from Madera would do something that stupid.”
Another woman wanted “to say thank you to our paper carriers. They get out in the fog, the cold and bad weather to deliver our papers.” She also thanked, “the trash pickup people, the police, the firemen, and all those people who have to get out in the fog and cold regardless the circumstances. Thank you.”
A man commented, “Saturday, while going into town on Howard Road a Madera Transit bus, number 28, pulled out in front of me without even stopping at the stop sign.” He noted the time. “Just after 1 p.m.” and said “the bus appeared empty and with a female driver. Even empty,” he said, “I think they still have to stop at stop signs.”
Thank you for your calls. Remember, the Red Line is open for your messages 24 hours a day by calling 674-4478, or by logging on to maderatribuneredline.com.
Illinois voters should have known something was wrong with their governor from the get-go. His venality was evident six years ago. Nevertheless, they voted him a second term. I think they fell in love with his haircut.
American voters have been in love with certain kinds of haircuts ever since John F. Kennedy ran against Richard Nixon. Kennedy had a nice head of hair which he kept blow-dried back when that wasn’t something men did. Nixon, on the other hand, had wavy hair which he kept under control with something that gave it an oily look.
Only when he ran against Hubert Humphrey in 1968 did Nixon’s haircut finally win out. Humphrey was nearly bald.
Jimmy Carter’s blow-dry haircut won out over Gerald Ford’s nearly bald pate, but it couldn’t keep going against Ronald Reagan’s Hollywood-styled coif. Reagan’s haircut held up for a second term against Walter Mondale’s Brylcreem look.
When George Bush the first ran against Michael Dukakis, my money was on Dukakis for the simple reason that Dukakis had the best haircut. But it turned out he was a hopeless candidate, so Bush, even though he had a receding hairline, prevailed.
But only for one term. Along came Bill Clinton with lots of expensively styled hair and Bush was defeated, even though at one point he had a 90 percent approval rating. It shows what a haircut will do for you (or to you).
Even though Clinton’s venality was of historic proportions, his haircut held up nicely against Bob Dole’s receding hairline. The voters returned Clinton to office.
Al Gore’s and George Bush’s haircuts were evenly matched, but Bush won by a hair. Kerry’s awful haircut was quickly parodied by editorial cartoonists, and Bush won again.
Nearly bald John McCain didn’t stand a chance against fashionably stubbly Barack Obama. I rest my case.
Half of December is gone and Christmas is almost here. All the women folk are scurrying around getting things in order for the Big Day. Most of us men don’t quite see what all the fuss is about, still got plenty of time.
During this busy time we tend to forget or just not appreciate a lot of simple things.
One of those things is a simple soft whistle coming from the trees and bushes this time of year. Yesterday I heard that whistle coming from the big pecan tree in the back.
Also heard it in the trees in the Save Mart parking lot. This whistle belongs to the cedar waxwing, one of God’s most beautiful birds. The waxwing, with its comb and little mask, its feathers as soft as down, and the yellow green in its tail feathers make it a real delight.
So, When you are scurrying about keep an ear open for that soft whistle. than take a moment to watch these little creatures. They migrate through the valley this time of year. If you miss them, it will be next December before they are back.
Full moon is almost here. Might be a good night for a bonfire. Invite the kids out and enjoy an evening around a fire.
Merry Christmas!
Mrs. Doud, some friends and I went to the Swedish Vasa Lodge lutefisk dinner in Fresno Saturday, and it was a nice experience — except for the lutefisk. For you who don’t know, lutefisk is ruined codfish, which originated in Norway and Sweden and is eaten today mainly by Americans who don’t want to forget their Swedish or Norwegian roots. Apparently it is hardly eaten at all by actual Swedes and Norwegians in Sweden and Norway.
Scandinavians used to salt their cod to preserve it in the days before plug-in refrigerators. Salting worked, but it made the cod taste a lot like the insole of an athletic shoe. So they somehow came up with the idea of soaking it in a solution of lye and water to get rid of the salt. When they do this, the lutefisk has the consistency of Jello. Then they bake it or boil it.
At the Vasa Lodge dinner, they took the preparation a step further and chopped it up so it looked like boiled cabbage.
It is served plain, then if you want to you can put a butter sauce or mustard, or both on it. It smells and tastes like old fish.
It is served with mashed potatoes, and if you mix them together, and use lots of gravy, you can’t tell you’re eating lutefisk or mashed potatoes.
A lot of nationalities have awful dishes. Take menudo, for example — please. I had a bowl of it once in an otherwise great Mexican restaurant, and except for lutefisk I haven’t had anything I’m less likely to eat again.
My ancestors are British, who are known for their bad cooking, such as Yorkshire pudding. It is made by pouring a batter into tins filled with hot grease. It tastes like batter and grease. Oh, and let’s not even talk about haggis.
The Tribune Co. of Chicago has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and people who apparently did not read or hear the “of Chicago” part have been calling us and asking us whether we were bankrupt.
I am happy to say we are not. We aren’t cutting a fat hog, but we are doing okay for a small, local business in these challenging times.
Our parent company, Ma-dera Printing and Publishing Co., owns just four newspapers: The Madera Tribune (six days a week), Madera Direct (weekly), El Sol de Madera (Spanish, every two weeks) and The Coalinga Recorder (weekly). We also are the contract publisher of the Madera County Farm Bureau News, which comes out once a month. We do all of our printing here in town on our own presses. We do some commercial printing of other newspapers.
All board members of Madera Printing and Publishing Co. are newspaper people.
None of the board members of Tribune Co. of Chicago, on the other hand, appear to be in the newspaper business, and that may be part of their problem. The company owns several large newspapers, includ- ing The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, and the Tribune board seems unfamiliar with that business.
The Tribune Co. chairman is Sam Zell, a real estate wheeler-dealer who thought he could make a killing by paying a fortune for Tribune when it was for sale in early 2007. He borrowed billions, put in hundreds of millions of his own and hoped he would be able to pay the debt with big profits. It didn’t work.
But Zell is a pretty smart guy, and the company probably will be all right. The Times and the Tribune both are great newspapers. We wish them well.
There is no such thing as a “civilized war!” Our own Civil War was not civil. The war between the two warring factions, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, has cost the Iraqi people 2,667 reported lives lost in Baghdad in the month of September alone. Who knows how many in the rest of the country?
Shouldn’t they be running out of Iraqis soon? They are blowing up their own country. This conflict is based on clerics reading different things into their “good book,” as do ours. They must be getting low on Toyotas to blow up.
We are supposed to be there to prevent it. Well, guess what? “It’s not working.” How many virgins do you get for killing fellow sons and daughters of Islam? Apparently “thou shall not kill” is not in their good book.
Our young men and women have not died for their country since WWII. Current calculators do not have enough digits to calculate this cost to our tax payers. They don’t go, up to the trillion mark.
To me a “civil war” would be like throwing teddy bears that don’t go boom at 10 paces. China would like to be providing the ammo. Santa would soon run out of teddy bears. Of course there would have to be governing board to classify the teddy bear into three classes, light, middle, and heavy weight; determine the exact distance of 10 paces; and a point system. The loser would have to go home and not bother the other party(s), ever again.
Them’s the rules! Non-negotiable, to keep the UN out of it. This event could be broadcast on ESPN with Al and John doing the play by play, be sponsored by Bud Light, and take place in a non-Muslim country like Japan, they’d love it. Las Vegas would have a betting line on the outcome and nobody would have to die, just win of lose money. Everybody goes home alive. That’s my solution to a “civil war.”
Retired IBM chairman Louis V. Gerstner, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has suggested that one way to solve the problems with America’s schools would be to put the federal government in charge — in so many words. I disagree with that notion.
Public schools, by nature, are local operations. Local school boards, chosen by the voters whose children are being educated, are best suited to guide the schools. If the voters don’t like the way the schools are doing, they can vote the school boards out and vote new ones in. That has happened here in recent memory, and likely will happen again once the schools turn to voting by district.
The best schools are locally controlled, or controlled by tight-knit groups such as private boards or foundations. Schools sponsored by churches, for example, often are the most highly desired in a city, and turn out well-educated kids. Some excellent private schools started as church-run schools and became more secular as more diverse students were admitted. And these private schools seldom receive federal funds.
Outstanding public schools are often in neighborhoods where parents play a role — volunteering in classrooms, showing up at parent-teacher meetings and contributing financially where needed when tax dollars run short. That’s hyper-local.
Critics of the nation’s schools assume all schools should be equal — equal to the best, that is — but the reality is that isn’t going to happen if the Feds start meddling more than they are right now.
If local school boards are dedicated to making sure that each child in their jurisdiction has the best possible opportunities for education, that will improve schools — not federal direction. Good schools come from good teaching and good local oversight, not from federal direction.
In the last presidential election, pork-barrel projects — aka earmarks — were assailed by both candidates as being wasteful and fraudulent. Held up as an example was Alaska’s so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” which Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin famously turned down.
Yet, the closer we look at the elephant-size bailouts being handed out by Congress, the less problematic pork projects seem to appear.
Most pork projects are local or regional in nature. One project may be a road, another may be a new government office building, another may be a harbor improvement. Some pay for research, some pay for the arts, some provide improvements that businesses might need to expand, or to become established in the first place.
A pork project in Tennessee may seem wasteful to someone in California, where pork projects are relatively rare. But the fact is, when a pork project is completed, there is usually something left to show for the money that was spent. There would even have been a bridge to nowhere — which may have enabled nowhere to turn into somewhere.
The average person can drive over a bridge that was built with pork money, and be grateful the bridge was there. Many commuters in many states benefit from bridges that stared out as earmarks on a bill that had nothing to do with bridges.
Earmark projects almost always create local jobs, assist local businesses and help increase local property values.
Pouring all that money into New York financial institutions, however, may leave most of us with nothing. It will, however, keep a lot of New York and New Jersey residents employed, it will keep rents flowing to New York landlords, etc.
Bailouts: the new pork.
In fact, old-fashioned pork may be laughingly insignificant in comparison.
All comments are edited for length and content. Due to content or space limitations some comments may not be published. Please limit your calls to two minutes or less. Repeat messages on the same subject adding to the length will not be published.
A man who said, “first off I’m an elderly white gentleman with no racial motivation,” called in response to last week’s caller “complaining about (the choice for) the attorney general by (President-elect Barack) Obama.”
He wanted last week’s caller “to understand that Eric Holder left the Clinton administration in a huff because he was not happy. Secondly, it should be noted that he is probably the most brilliant attorney and legal mind in Washington. He is an exceedingly fine person with no political motivation. He is doing this job because he thinks it is necessary.”
“The selection of Hilary (Clinton) as Secretary of State,” began a lady, who continued. “Isn’t it reminiscent of (Gen. Douglas) MacArthur under President (Harry) Truman? I just hope President Obama remembers he can fire Hilary and Billy (Clinton) if they go rogue on us.”
A lady called “from Dr. Nassar’s office and I’m calling about (last week’s Red Line caller who said she received no help from a doctor’s office after getting in an accident). Everybody is thinking it is Dr. Nassar’s office, and we would never do anything like that. Please correct your mistake.”
A caller said he had “been listening to the American-made auto fiasco for weeks now. Nobody has ever mentioned that the American auto is too high priced for the average, so-called middle class worker. They didn’t talk (about) all the manufacturing of parts and assembly of automobiles overseas. They are just talking about bailing out the union, who will have to go broke because they can’t pay the promises they made to the average middle-class worker over the years.”
A woman called about “the big article about the Madera South band. Those kids really deserve recognition.” However, her “concern was about the Madera High School. They went to the same competition and those kids didn’t even try because they were told they couldn’t even spend the night. It wasn’t in their budget. The finals were Sunday, but they had to turn around and go home. I don’t know how this town can support one high school to go to Reno for the competition, but Madera High School has no money in their budget. I don’t understand what (name given) is doing with all the money from band boosters and all the other money that comes through. Somebody needs to check into this matter.”
A woman noted “that Mervyn’s will close in the end of December and we all know that Madera is limited for good shopping.” She went onto mention and recommend a store in Madera. She called back immediately with a further endorsement. (Note: The lengthy message was a form of advertising and so was not published in the Red Line.)
“Good morning,” began a lady who called yesterday. She gave her name and “wanted to share something unusual that I noticed in Madera. Within a 20-minute time period I saw acts of good deeds.” She mentioned occasions while on Pine Street where vehicles stopped to let pedestrians cross and vehicles turn. Even “a bus driver allowed cars to go by which I feel was very courteous.”
She thought they “should be recognized,” and so called the Red Line. “I appreciate it very much. I don’t know if it’s the season or something in the fog for people passing on the good deeds. But it makes a big difference and you must be commended.”
A visitor to the Red Line Web site writes, “Most graffiti gets cleaned up it seems daily. However, in the old downtown the stores have had graffiti above their signs and wall still in the same places for the last three months. The best building, the old professional building has it on one of the tall pillars.” She then noted that new buildings in the Country Club Drive area, new homes near Madera High School, and edifices on Howard Road are also troubled with graffiti.
Another online reader questioned the zeal of the city’s Graffiti Abatement team, and then writes, “We need the old (city leadership) blood in Madera out and some new blood in I say… Maybe things will be better managed…”
An Internet guest responded to a letter by John Sanchez on Democrats and the mortgage crisis. The person writes, “I’m not even a Democrat, but are you really blaming them for the mortgage crisis? That’s about as typical a move as any… It’s also worth noting that the same governments you note as mismanaged are and were mismanaged before this election ensured a Democratic majority, so I wonder if you’d even acknowledge an improvement if one is made there.” (Editor’s note: Actually the Democratic party and caucus already held a majority in the House of Representatives, the Senate, state governorships and state legislatures as of the 2006 midterm elections.)
A Web visitor, self-identified as “Gilbert Cisneros,” responded to a comment about the Punishers flag football team in the Red Line published on Dec. 2. He writes, “That team is made up of people that give to their state and city. There is a Marine that served in Iraq, a peace officer, a high school basketball coach, and a few fathers. There is nothing wrong with their shirts. ‘The Punisher’ is a comic book and they should not be criticized just because they have skulls on their shirts (in imitation of the comic).”
Thank you for your calls. Remember, the Red Line is open for your messages 24 hours a day by calling 674-4478, or by visiting www.maderatribuneredline.com.
