All your base are belong to us.

Today, being the first day of the new year, I have an unhealthy desire to resolve to post to this weblog every. single. day. of 2003 (but I won't--promise, that is).

Traditionally, we have black eyed peas, greens, and cornbread on New Year's Day. Since we didn't have any of those things, I went to the grocery store today to get them. Actually, I went twice, because the delicatessan didn't have the cornbread ready the first time I went. Mom brought out some of the sliced, smoked turkey from our Christmas feast. We spooned the liquid from the peas and turnip greens over the warm cornbread and had milk to drink. Since today is a holiday, I said what was always called, in our family, the "special" blessing, because my Dad only used it on special occasions.

Hey, there goes what we used to call the "air raid" siren, but which, now, is activated to alert to severe weather. It is also cranked up at noon on the first of every month, supposedly to test it.

Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, has announced that he will resign as Majority Leader of the United States Senate and will serve out the remaining four years of his six-year term.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations says that the inspections for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are proceeding well. The President of the United States says that they are not. Iraq is expected to provide their "declaration" of weapons systems on Saturday. We should be able to get a pretty good idea from it if the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, is serious about avoiding war.

Yesterday, Tom Daschle, the soon-to-be minority "leader" of the Senate of the United States of America, spoke out against talk show hosts that disagree with him and with the ideology of the Democrat party. Basically, he is setting the stage for his party's assault on the talk show hosts of America, the vast majority of whom are critical, and rightly so, of the objectives of the Democrat party.

They will do so with a so-called "campaign finance reform" measure and/or an attempt to revive the discredited, so-called "Fairness" in Broadcasting Act of 1993, which is, in truth, another way that they think that they can silence their critics.

Talk radio shows that espouse the principles of the "nanny state" generally fail. They fail because the argument for the nanny state cannot stand up to scrutiny. Implicit in this argument is a disdain for "the people," who, it is assumed, do not have enough sense to know what is in their best interests; therefore, the poor, misguided citizens need a "nanny state" to take care of them and prop them up. Since talk shows favorable to their ideas generally fail, it it only "fair" to the Democrats that talk shows critical of their ideas be censored!

The Democrats in the United States House of Representatives elected Nancy Pelosi to be their leader today. This is a good thing for the Republicans. Pelosi is such a radical liberal that she will further marginalize her party.

The Associated Press has a story by Sarah el Deeb. She writes, in part:

Egypt's foreign minister said Saturday that he expected Iraq to accept the U.N. resolution to disarm but that Baghdad had not yet made a formal decision.

"I think we can expect a positive position by the Iraqis," Ahmed Maher told reporters after Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri explained Iraq's position to the foreign ministers of the 22-member Arab League.

I think that we can be fairly sure that Saddam Hussein will say that he will accept the resolution to disarm, but that will only be a delaying tactic. That's my prediction. We'll have to wait and see what actually happens. However, we do know this for a fact: Saddam Hussein has defied the United Nations, in the past.

Also, it seems fairly certain that, if Saddam Hussein defies the United Nations this time, he will not defy it again.

Many Republicans are hoping that Representative Nancy Pelosi will replace Dick Gephardt as House Minority Leader. They feel that her election would signal that the Democrat party will position itself even farther to the left, a move which, Repuplicans feel, will marginalize it even more.

The Washington Times newspaper reports on the results of yesterday's election.

Jesse Ventura, the Governor of Minnesota, appointed an Independent to fill the vacancy in the United States Senate caused by the death of Senator Paul Wellstone. Ventura had stated that he was leaning toward appointing a Democrat, because Wellstone was a Democrat, until he was outraged by the Democrats shamelessly turning an event billed as a "memorial service" for Wellstone into an unabashedly political rally.

In 1991, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia allowed troops of the United States of American into their country to defend it against Iraq. Now, when the United States of America considers it essential that it defend itself against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's ability to distribute weapons of mass destruction to terrorists targeting their country, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the Kingdom will not allow bases on its soil to be used for an attack on Iraq even if the United Nations authorizes military action.

Time magazine has called Foreign Affairs "the most influential periodical in print." In the November/December 2002 issue of Foreign Affairs, Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and Editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs, writes:

Arab and Muslim hatred of the United States is not just, or even mainly, a response to actual U.S. policies -- policies that, if anything, have been remarkably pro-Arab and pro-Muslim over the years. Rather, such animus is largely the product of self-interested manipulation by various groups within Arab society, groups that use anti-Americanism as a foil to distract public attention from other, far more serious problems within those societies.

CNN.com reports some good news: there are a few programs throughout the country that are mobilizing physicians to make house calls, a practice which once was common.

This is just too awesome! I just updated w.bloggar to v3.0. It is an excellent tool to use to update one or more weblogs, and it has some great, new features.

Yesterday, I bought a copy of FranklinCovey Planning Software from CompUSA. I had previously downloaded a trial edition from the FranklinCovey web site and liked it so much that I decided to go ahead and make it legal. We'll see where this goes.

IMHO it is unconscionable that the major television networks chose not to air the President's speech about the danger of Saddam Hussein.

Update on the amazing, disappearing web site content: it is back!

It is not a good thing when you try to visit your web site and find out that it no longer exists. That is what happened to me this morning. I was maintaining three weblogs at 0catch. My sites appear to no longer exist. Judging from the comments in the user forum, quite a few other people have experienced the same problem. There is a possibility that the lost content may be restored, if the situation is due to some glitch that the host techies can fix. Here's hoping!

This being a typical Saturday, I took my Mom to (1) the grocery store, (2) the pharmacy, and (3) the library. In other news, it seems as if tropical storm Hanna may be bringing some rain our way. I don't mind--I mowed the lawn last weekend, and the grass is still fairly short; the only thing that I have to go out for tomorrow is to wash the clothes at the coin-operated laundry (it has been three weeks), so I can't complain.

What the Supreme Court of the United States has done with religion makes me angry. The founding fathers would be appalled that the government they created now forbids prayer in its schools. The idea was to establish freedom of religion, not a ban on religion. Banishing prayer, and any reference to religion, from the government schools amounts to a tacit repudiation of religion and, by extension, a repudiation of the morals that religions are, in part, designed to convey to the younger generation in their formative years. In my opinion, unless, and until, we, as a country, are able to come to grips with this reality, the much-commented-upon breakdown of morals in this country will continue, and even accelerate, which will necessitate the building of ever more prisons. However, to judge from past experience, and from the rate of recidivism of paroled and discharged prisoners, prisons, which are far from being "correctional institutions," are definitely not the answer.