Taxi Driver Diplomacy
You know who we should bomb? It would have no direct effect on terrorism and the Chomsky types would have a stroke about it but it would make us feel a lot better and make a certain shithole of a country be a whole lot more livable once its leaders weren't robbing it blind.

Come to think of it there are dozens of countries like that but right now Zimbabwe tops my list of godforsaken places whose ruling thugs need to be hurt.

At long last the U.S. and European Union are both talking sanctions. But, sanctions? For a government that smartassed? No, it's a lot simpler. Go to the people who currently hold power in a place like that, the ones who are taking all the money, and put it to them plainly: Either you stop effing your country over, or you die.

Objections? Well, yeah, it's an awfully small fish to fry, certainly nobody who's going to nuke us anytime soon. But there's the principle of the thing. We have the might and the right. No need to get in over our heads, I know full well that certain places in the world will just be FUBAR for the foreseeable future. But if we can't take this punk out, who the hell can we take?

Oh, and coming full circle for both Islamic extremism and Afro-whoopass, take a number if you're Nigeria.

I guess this is the kind of big-man crazy-talk I was supposed to keep to myself until I went and joined the army or whatever. But hell, if we started going after pissants like that and meant it (none of this pussyfooting around like we did in Somalia) then sign me up.

Are they crazy?
I have some set standards for vitriolic reactions to news and opinion. If you lived with me in the 1990s you may now and then have seen copies of the Globe with wet spots of massive expectoration over the picture of Mike Barnicle. It's been a long time since I saw a "spitting bad" columnist and even longer since I had a spontaneous, say-it-out-loud, "F*ck you!" moment.

Until now.


Families of September 11 victims said there should be no extensions.

"This is a standard that the airlines have to be held to," said Stephen Push of the advocacy group Families of September 11. Push's wife, Lisa Raines, was among the victims who died when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

"If they can't implement the procedures by the deadline, then the airline should be shut down until they can do it."


Yes sir. Right away sir. We'll just shut all the airlines down, quit traveling completely, stop visiting our loved ones, stop vacationing, stop conducting business face to face, cripple the tourism industry, and basically turn this recession into a depression. And it still won't get your wife back. Sorry. That's just how it is.

Not to be crass, but it bugs me to no end when people who have been on the wrong end of a tragedy completely forget, as a result of that tragedy, not only any sense of perspective but also any sence of cost-benefit analysis. It's the same kind of thinking that leads the Mothers Against Drunk Driving zealots to say not only that rising the drinking age to 21 was a good idea but that, hey wait, maybe raising it to 24 would be a better idea? (I'm too lazy and too frothing at the mouth to bother with the link but I swear up and down, Liddy Dole of all people actually said this. One reason to thank God for W. is that his existence prevented her from getting even a sniff of the GOP nomination.)

You know the thinking. If even one life can be saved, it's worth it. Well, sorry, no, it usually isn't.

I suppose there's also an element of bearing such shock and grief that you want to do something to make it right. That's what so much left-wing crusading is all about, isn't it? I'll give people credit for having their heart in the right place but no credit at all if the result of their good intentions takes away liberties at the same time it does more harm than good.

Sorry. Soapbox done. The world is full of people who just need to think. And when they speak without thinking it makes me angry.