Posted 8:30 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

We can hope the next one is better...

I'm naturally an optimist... a believer that trying CAN make it so, and that not trying is almost never a good option. I have a libertarian's confidence in the basic goodness of humans... of "ordinary" humans who don't have visions of controlling others but are content to earn what they want.

I can find a lot to be pleased with in 2003, but it requires real determination to get past the constant evil coming out of our government.

continues to do relatively well, in spite of a normal holiday slowdown. Yesterday's and I didn't speak up had the #1 spot again in the RRND commentary section. Almost 44,000 readers to date, and working our way toward taking over 6th place on Babelogue.

There are now 30 articles with over 1,000 readers, and, delightfully, the NIMBY, but yours is fair game article about Crystal Heights has zoomed up into 7th place, with 1242 readers in 2 weeks.

Posted 11:10 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Crystal Heights
Crystal Heights is a small neighborhood within Crystal, but it is representative of a lot of neighborhoods across the nation which are fighting to keep their local government from destroying them in the name of "redevelopment" or "revitalization". Such actions are "money talking" at the expense of property owners who have built a HOME in their house. We MUST stop this nonsense, and Crystal Heights is a good place to draw a line in the sand. I encourage you to read, if you already haven't, my NIMBY but yours is fair game and help me take action.

has now surpassed the 40,000 readers mark, and recently moved into 7th place overall (it started in 27th) among Babelogue blogs.

Finally, the archives for this boBLOG are online, thanks to some support from the Blogger Pro people (the error was mine, naturally, not theirs).

Posted 7:54 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Saddam Captured
Sometime on Saturday afternoon, U.S. troops found Saddam Hussein hiding in a tunnel under a farmhouse north of Tikrit. No shots were fired, in a mission named Red Dawn.

President Bush was informed of the capture at 3:15 Saturday, Eastern time.

Good news? Certainly it is, but it's going to be pushed far above its real relevance by the talking heads, and by a Bush administration desperate for good news.

Let me remind everyone that Saddam was a "substitute" villain, used to justify invasion of Iraq after we could not, and still can not, find and punish Osama bin Laden, the "real" villain.

What will happen now? Who knows? Speculation is that capturing Saddam will give the U.S. an excuse to now pull out of Iraq. Personally, I would support that, because, bad as the situation is in Iraq, I don't believe our presence there will get better.

It's also important to realize that, right now, one reason we will see Iraqis jubilant about the capture is that it is an opportunity to "prove" that they are on the non-Saddam side of the conflict.

A tiny bit of irony that the mission to capture was named "Red Dawn". I know that the military uses up grandiose mission names quickly, but they did know the purpose of this mission.

"Red Dawn", as you may recall, was a movie about American young people fighting, terrorist-style, against an invading Russian occupation. Since we are the occupation forces in a foreign Iraq, and native Iraqis are fighting us, Red Dawn is a strange mission name.