As the old year rings out and the New Year rings in, the obvious result is a reflection of all the events in the past year, both a celebration of the good and a hand wringing of the bad.

Boring.  Been there done that.  The major events of 2006 are so numerous I could never pick out a list to do justice to it.  So many others have already, and done so well, I don’t feel remiss.

Suffice to say, the year contained a few very personal things, such as my launching this blog on its own domain name, and the launch of NW Bloggers.  It contained joyous moments with family and friends.  It also contained some grim reminders of the frailty of life as well, for this is the price we all share for living.

And looking forward 2007 looks to be a huge year on personal levels as my son enters service in the Navy, and in professional levels as I take my blogging to the next level.  And that barely tips the iceberg.

So rather then indulge in a list of events, or predictions, I will close the with a list of a few things I am thankful for.

1. Family.  I am nothing without my family.  Period.  My close family who support me daily, my cousins, aunts and uncles who are among the finest people in the world and even those shadowy figures from the past who were the architects of my family’s founding, they all inspire me in more ways then many of them will know.
2. Friendship.  I am blessed with the best friends a man could have.  My old friends from my high school days, both those who have been steadfast throughout the years and the others I have recently reconnected with, they have all been the tie between my youth and my present.  And not to forget my friends from more recent times who continue to support and inspire me as well.

I made the observation that those who support the death penalty should face the consequences of their support.  I would not exclude myself from that requirement.

Though I take no joy in viewing it there is a bootleg (looks like a cell phone video to me) video of Saddam’s actual hanging.

Warning!  To the best of my knowledge, the following video is not a joke or a hoax, and it contains actual live video of a man dying.  If you click the play button below, that is exactly what you will see.  Be Warned.

I am showing this here to affirm my belief that his death was both required and necessary, and I accept the results of my belief.

If you disagree, I will happily debate that, but not here, not in this post.

Also at:  The Jawa Report, Riehl World View, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, Right on right, and Assorted Babble 

Cross linked to Sister Toldjah, NW Bloggers

Yea, I suppose my flippant title is off base, but I have a hard time feeling any sorry for the death of the man.  After all, he looked at the person responsible every day when he shaved.

Himself.

One of the arguments I used to get into with some liberal friends was that of accountability.  While this is not a partisan issue, it does seem that a lot of liberals look to excuse behavior with mitigation.  Conservatives generally fall back on personal responsibility, do the crime do the time.

I am sure we will hear this asked many times in the near future:  Was Saddam a monster, or some kind of victim?  In fact, it has already started.

On the TV tonight I heard stories about how harsh his upraising and how that may have made him what he was.

Fah.  He made choices like the rest of us.  My choices didn’t make me wealthy at the expense of others, and didn’t cause the death of hundreds of thousands.  His did.

Consider this list of the choices he made.  A few excerpts:

• He launched a war against Iran that led to the deaths of about a million people.
• He invaded Kuwait, killed scores of its royal family and raped the country.
• He conducted the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, a brutal campaign against civilians that saw the use of chemical weapons against defenseless women and children.
• He worked with terrorists Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal, two of the most notorious terrorists of the 20th century, who had American blood on their hands.He worked with terrorists Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal, two of the most notorious terrorists of the 20th century, who had American blood on their hands.

Ramsey Clark called him "a victim of sectarian persecution" as if all the murders he committed or ordered committed were just a game of politics that went sour.  Sorry, but no.  They were not just political sectarian disagreements, they were narcisistic brutality.

My initial thought was if you have to devise a strategy to gain their support, that may say something about whether you have conflicting values.  But as I read more this became rather interesting.

Consultant Helps Democrats Embrace Faith, and Some in Party Are Not Pleased

As Democrats turn toward the 2008 presidential race, a novice evangelical political operative is emerging as a rising star in the party, drawing both applause and alarm for her courtship of theological conservatives in the midterm elections.

Party strategists and nonpartisan pollsters credit the operative, Mara Vanderslice, and her 2-year-old consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, with helping a handful of Democratic candidates make deep inroads among white evangelical and churchgoing Roman Catholic voters in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Exit polls show that Ms. Vanderslice’s candidates did 10 percentage points or so better than Democrats nationally among those voters, who make up about a third of the electorate. As a group, Democrats did little better among those voters than Senator John Kerry’s campaign did in 2004.

10 percent may not sound like much, but it is actually a huge advantage.

“Everybody is looking at the specific steps that had value in those states, and the compass points to her and the efforts she helped lead out there,” said Burns Strider, an evangelical Christian who directs religious outreach for House Democrats and was recently hired to play a similar role for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president.

Mr. Strider said he was speaking only in the context of his current House role and declined to comment on the work with Mrs. Clinton.

Democratic officials in several states said Ms. Vanderslice and her business partner, Eric Sapp, pushed sometimes reluctant Democrats to speak publicly, early and in detail about the religious underpinnings of their policy views. They persuaded candidates to speak at conservative religious schools and to buy early commercials on Christian radio. They organized meetings and conference calls for candidates to speak privately with moderate and conservative members of the clergy.

Hot Air first reported:  Breaking: Iraqi court upholds Saddam’s death sentence

Saddam loses death sentence appeal: govt official

An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling that Saddam Hussein should hang for crimes against humanity, Iraq’s national security adviser told Reuters.

Under the statute governing the Iraqi High Tribunal, the death sentence must be carried out within the next 30 days.

With all due respect to opponants of capital punishment, if there was a guy who deserved it, it would be him.

Sister Toldjah makes an good observation.

Leftist groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have weighed in that they don’t want Saddam put to death. HRW opposes it on the grounds that the death penalty is always wrong especially in cases like Saddam’s where his trial allegedly wasn’t conducted “fairly” and AI opposes the DP because they believe the trial was not free of “political influence.”

Will it be televised? Should it be?

I have to admit, I am not sure if televising it is something I support. 

But consdering it, I guess if I have the stomach to wish his death, I have to accept the public display of that death.  Maybe that is a defining line in my resolve though.  Would I watch it?

And maybe that should be the litmus test for the pro death penalty people, they should have to be a witness to it as well.

We see death constantly before and after, but seldom during.  Hollywood of course would make his death amazing and a technical masterpiece.

In reality it will be grim and gritty.

Hot Air, also on the point:

Iraqis to videotape Saddam execution

Then the news appeared that he would die within the next few days. 

Just a banner so far on Drudge, but Saddam is saying goodbye to his family.

I’ve heard rumors, too.

I had kind of hoped for a Times-Square-at-Midnight countdown on New Year’s Eve, but hey, let’s get on with it.

UPDATE: MSNBC has the story. Eid starts Sunday.

How far will the blue wave reach?

Pelosi to seat Democrat though Republican won?

‘Bottom line here is that nothing’s off the table,’ says spokesman for incoming speaker of House

It seems absurd on its face but it honestly has the potential to explode.

The certified winner of an office in the U.S. House of Representatives may not be seated with other members of Congress by incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi next week for one reason.

He’s a Republican.

In an extremely close race in Florida’s 13th District, Republican Vern Buchanan defeated Democrat Christine Jennings by 369 votes. But ongoing legal challenges by Democrats are putting Buchanan’s claim to the seat in jeopardy, now that the party in control of the majority has shifted away from the GOP.

I might agree, but on the other hand i have seen a few Democrats win very close elections and get certified and take their offices without interruption.

So why is this different?  I cannot answer.  The race was certified at the state level, so the matter "should" be done, but it is not.

"The bottom line here is that nothing’s off the table," Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

The paper reports Pelosi has refused to shut the door on Jennings, until all audits, lawsuits and a House investigation are completed.

Aides for Buchanan say the Republican will be in the nation’s capital next month despite the threat from Pelosi’s office.

"Historical precedent is that when there’s a contested race the certified winner be seated," said Buchanan spokeswoman Sally Tibbetts. "Therefore, we fully expect Vern Buchanan to be seated on Jan. 4."

Here is the quote of the day:

But Pelosi’s office says seating a certified victor is more of a Republican interpretation and not a concrete rule. For instance, in 1984, a Democrat-controlled House refused to seat Republican Richard McIntyre, the certified winner by 418 votes after a state-ordered recount.

Right!  That whole win and take office thing is just something Republicans made up.

Just breaking now, former President Gerald Ford has died at 93.

Former President Gerald Ford dies at 93

Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th president and the only one never elected to nationwide office, has died. He was 93.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," former first lady Betty Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.

Ford was a very special president in many ways.  Entering the vice presidency as a replacement to Spiro Agnew, and then ascending to the presidency when President Nixon resigned, he is the only sitting president who was never elected.

He also stood in a strange dichotomy:  Being the last link to the Nixon era, by proxy anyway, he was both the symbol of the failures of corruption and a kind of healing to move forward.

He lost reelection (election really) to Jimmy Carter, so his presidency was short and to many uninspiring.  But in fairness, he was left in an unadmireable position.  Being appointed to replaced a resigned VP and then a resigned President, both under the shroud of scandal, he had large shoes to fill, and a lot of public opinion against him both by association and for his pardon of Nixon.  I think in retrospect he was never really given a chance to show us what he could do.  He was one of the good ones who we let slip away.

He was often mocked, particularly on SNL  by Chevy Chase, but despite that, he always impressed me with his dignity and sense of humor.

He will not be remembered as the greatest, the worst, the most inspiring or the most uninspiring, but despite his relative ambiguity, and almost obscurity, he will always be remembered, and that is a greater legacy in its own right.

I’m heading up to the Olympic Penninsula for a family reunion. 

Be back in a few days.  Play nice.

As we sit with family, as I play with my new guitar (pictures tomorrow), and as we all watch the 24 hour Christmas Story Marathon (you knowyou are), here is just another reminder of the reason for the Season as only Linus Van Pelt can give it.

Happy Christmas to one and all.

First, Dilbert summarizes elections in America.

Next, two Christmas wishes from LSU, both frm Pat Benatar.  Enjoy.

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