February 2012
Nashville, Tennessee
Rita Welty Bourke
 
 
 

Current Events

Hacker
Courage:
Hacker Republic: Fact or Fiction

When WikiLeak hackers took down MasterCharge, Visa, and PayPal after the arrest of Julian Assange, I thought of Stieg Larsson’s book, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”  It’s a crime thriller.  Fiction.  Made up stuff, some would say.  Yet the similarities between what happens in this…
 
 
Pill Bottle
FDA:
Avandia Still on the Market: Shame on You, FDA

Three years ago I was on a shuttle bus headed into downtown London from Heathrow airport.   I felt awful.  When you’ve spent the night in a cramped seat on an overnight flight from the U.S., you’d kill for a few hours sleep.  But you know you have…
 
 
DEA Helicopter
Civil Rights:
War on Drugs or War Against the Citizenry?

Dressed in camouflage and bristling with high-powered weapons, a police SWAT team, looking for illegal drugs,  broke into an apartment in Columbia, Missouri.  The family dog got up from his spot on the rug and began to bark.  They shot him dead.  While the man, his wife,…
 
 
Court Room
Nashville:
Jury Duty

No one wants to serve on a jury.  You especially do not want to serve if it’s a murder case.  But that’s where I found myself last week, sitting on a jury in a criminal case against a man charged with eight felonies, one of them felony…
 
 
Stained Glass
Religion:
Pedophile Priests

Why, I wonder, have there been no acts of violence against the pedophile priests who have molested children?   Why have the fathers of these children not gone looking for their abusers, and when they found them, proceeded to beat them to within an inch of their lives?…
 
 
Saturday Night Live
Language:
The “Cleansing” of Language: In Defense of Certain Words

Rahm Emanuel had his head handed to him a few weeks ago when he referred to one of his political enemies as “retarded.”  Sarah Palin wanted him fired.  Rahm apologized (http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clips/rahm-emanuel/1199682/) and managed to hold onto his job. There is currently a campaign afoot promoted by the…
 
 
Camry
opinion:
Runaway Camrys, Lexus, Corollas, Tundras

A cameraman lost control of his camera on the Dave Letterman Show the other night.  It suddenly accelerated and was heading straight for Letterman’s desk when it was tackled and brought down.  Letterman dead-panned that the camera was made by Toyota. I’m glad we can laugh at…
 
 
Going Rogue by Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin:
Sarah Palin, Going Rogue?

I haven’t read the book, but I’m intrigued by the title:  Sarah Palin, Going Rogue.  Intrigued, mystified, and a bit amused.     Does Palin know what it means to “go rogue?”  Did she bother to look up the word in a dictionary or a thesaurus?  Or was…
 
 
Kris Kristofferson
Music:
Kris Kristofferson, Honored at BMI Dinner

When Patty Griffin sang “Help Me Make It Through The Night” at the BMI dinner last night, Kris Kristofferson cried.  You could see tears running down his face. Dozens of songs, songwriters, and publishers were honored for their contributions to country music at the annual event.  But…
 
 
Lamar Alexander
Rich vs. Poor:
Debtors Prison: Here in America

Lamar Alexander, the republican senator who once walked across Tennessee wearing a red plaid shirt, belongs to a Presbyterian Church on West End Avenue in Nashville.  I used to see him there, but lately he’s been among the missing. So have I.  Been among the missing.  I yearn to hear a message…
 
 
Birds on Telephone Wires
Tweets:
Birds of Belle Meade

Millions of birds congregate on the telephone wires at the Belle Meade Shopping Center.  We see them in the evening when we go to Las Maracas for dinner.  They line up across three double spans of wire, birds so thick you can hardly see the wire.   It’s an amazing sight. I’ve tried…
 
 
Coyote
Cruelty in Nature:
Coyotes

Coyotes just made a kill in the lower part of my yard.  I was out by the mailbox, and I heard that awful yipping, wailing, voices rising like sirens.  Where is Sarah Palin when we need her?  Off shooting wolves, no doubt.  Riding in a low-flying plane, gun stuck out…
 
 
Pews
WWJD:
In Search of Christians

Sometimes I think the work Jesus did when he walked the earth was all for naught.  Are there any Christians out there?  Has anyone actually read the beatitudes?  Where in that  best-selling-book-of-all-time does it say we should ask the nationality of a person before we offer him…
 
 
Canadian Flag
www.Canadameds.com:
Drugs from Canada

If I tell you about a website where you can price medications, send prescriptions, and get your meds in the mail, have I committed a crime?  Will the police come looking for me? The website is www.canadameds.com Go there.  Compare their prices with what you’re paying in the…