I have always admired Ted’s frankness, and this is no exception.

Reposted from the WacoTrib:

I like sizzling meat on the grill. Wild, huh? Anybody? Now, we all know ol’ Nuge isn’t by any stretch of the imagination a weirdo when it comes to an omnivorous diet.

Especially here in the great Republic of Texas, a smiling, drooling preference for succulent, protein-rich, nutritious backstrap over aromatic mesquite coals is as American and natural and right as Mom, apple pie and the flag. It’s beautiful, really.

But a culture war rages against such universal, self-evident truths. It would be laughable if it were not so deranged. Some weirdos actually are on a crusade to outlaw the consumption of flesh.

I have musical touring associates who have been fired from their jobs with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney for sneaking a hamburger.

You heard that right. Fired for eating meat by an animal-rights maniac, hard-core vegan bass player.

The entire agenda of the gazillion-dollar-financed joke known as PETA literally is dedicated to outlawing meat.

Neither I, nor any hunter or meat eater on the planet, has any desire whatsoever to influence any vegetarian’s choice of diet or to force them to eat meat. We are the friendly, tolerant Americans.

This is but one of many issues that represent the line drawn in the sand between liberals and conservatives.

Our own intrepid opinion editor at the Trib, my friend John Young, doesn’t want to simply make the choice to be unarmed and helpless for himself. He has again recently insisted that you and I must also comply with his soulless condition of unarmed helplessness in “gun-free zones.”

Nobody from our side wants to force anybody to have a gun or defend themselves. It is us, the conservatives, who are for individual choice.

Taxation, confiscation

As for the American left: One hears the words of Mao Tse-Tung come broiling out of the mouths of its heroes, when Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton et al unflinchingly push for “redistribution of wealth.”

No sarcasm here at all.  All civilian deaths are tragic, and horrific. I reserve judgement on what happened until it is investigated.

Several militants also believed killed, officials say

I find that sadly not comforting.  It makes me wonder if the kids were in a war zone being used as human shields.  Our troops bear the burden, but if the kids were intentionally placed in harms way, well there is blame to go around.

At least seven children have been killed in a U.S.-led coalition air strike in a religious school in Afghanistan, the coalition said on Monday, amid rising anger over civilian deaths from foreign military operations.

Something here makes me pause….

Violence has surged in recent months in Afghanistan after the traditional winter lull, with foreign forces launching attacks against Taliban guerrilla strongholds in the south and east and the Taliban hitting back with a string of suicide bombings. On Sunday, a bomb at a bus depot in Kabul killed at least 35 people.

I didn’t see the story when it ran so I don’t know how much attention it got.  But the two stories make me compare the outrage and I am disturbed.

Is there as much outrage by the Afghani people to the Taliban who not only kill indiscriminately civilian and military, but they do so as a deliberate target.

Our civilian deaths are unintended and regretted not only by the people, but by the country.  Yet we bear more blame then the insurgent Taliban.

Living here in the relatively peaceful US we can imagine the horror of living in a war zone.

We weep for our fallen soldiers, but it never hurts to be reminded that there are fallen elsewhere being grieved and some of them innocent non-combatants.

The reality is that the core of this story is little accurate.  More on that in a second.

Climate change behind Darfur killing: UN’s Ban

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.

“The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change,” Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

“This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming,” the South Korean diplomat wrote.

Now take out all of the buzz words about climate change and man made global warming, and you find that the cause, according to the UN, is:  Drought.

I don’t doubt it.  For centuries all over the earth there have been droughts, and accompanying them is social upheaval.

The fact is that it is useless to make a case for global warming as the cause of Darfur because it again distracts from the solution in Darfur.

“But what to do about the essential dilemma: the fact that there’s no longer enough good land to go around?”

“Any real solution to Darfur’s troubles involves sustained economic development,” perhaps using new technologies, genetically modified grains or irrigation, while bettering health, education and sanitation, he said.

And there they get it right.  Social changes require sociological changes and economic solutions.  Not Carbon Credits.  not CO2 reductions and the Kyoto Protocol.

So let’s drop the grandstanding and all that, and deal with the real issues.  Let’s keep our eye on the ball.