panda ponders

Every year for the last 5 years or so, my family and friends have gathered to watch the amazing fireworks show in Addison, Texas known as Kaboom Town. If you went this year, you would have seen some fabulous fireworks but left a tad disappointed as the much anticipated finale … didn’t happen.

From Addison on Kaboom Town:

When rain caused Addison’s award-winning Kaboom Town fireworks to sputter and fizzle Monday night, July 3, the irony of that famous line from the movie Apollo 13 couldn’t have been more appropriate! Not only was an Apollo 13 recovery team member honored as one of the evening’s armed services veterans, but the movie itself — which had been scheduled to follow the fireworks — was cancelled due to the weather.

But at the Tuesday, July 11 Addison City Council meeting, council members picked up yet another famous line from the movie, Gene Kranz’ legendary statement, “Failure is not an option!”

The council voted to repeat the famed fireworks show, which is annually recognized as one of the top 10 fireworks displays in the nation. The fireworks will be rescheduled to coincide with Pepsi Kid-Around, an event to be held in Addison Circle Park over the Labor Day weekend. The fireworks show will start at 8:30 p.m. Sunday, September 3. The movie will be aired following the fireworks’ grand finale.

The most important note being…

The fireworks show will start at 8:30 p.m. Sunday, September 3.

So tell all your friends and go have fun!!!

I want to wish all who visit here a safe and Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that all of you, your friends, and your families have a wonderful holiday weekend.

Thank you for visiting Panda Ponders

I confess I did not know the status of the Canadian Border Patrol. I never for a second thought about them being armed … with guns … or not. It never entered my head that any border patrol would be required to defend their borders …. without a means to accomplish that deed. Yet on the radio tonight … Gary McNamara mentioned that the CBP were once again petitioning to be able to arm themselves.

Hmm, I thought that the Canadians had a tad bit of sense. How is any border patrol person anywhere supposed to deter anyone by asking nicely? “Would you please, if ya could stay on the other side of the border, pretty please? Thanks so much!” Suddenly, this guy seems absolutely brilliant, mentioned previously here.

I do not look forward to the day when Canada’s pacificism enables terrorists to kill innocent people there or here in the U. S.

Unlike U.S. Border Patrol agents, CBSA officers are unarmed. They are instructed to call the federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police or local police departments if threatened, but officers testified that help is often slow in coming.

Or … ask people to wait nicely while the people with guns come.

“I know being at the border can be risky and there are certain dangers,” Zaccardelli testified in April before the Special Senate Committee on the Anti-Terrorism Act. “I am strongly against arming people simply to create the notion that we might feel more secure.”

Sounds like he considers arming the government employees the same thing as arming the neighborhood watch. And the “notion” that they “might feel more secure.” If someone is shooting at you, it is a fact that you feel more secure with A) a baton or B) a gun. I know it’s a toughie, but I think every law enforcement officer in the world would choose “B.” (On a side note … do you find it curious that the word pacificism comes from the French pacifisme?)

“They’ll give you these protective vests, which protects you against somebody shooting at you. But they don’t give you any tools to shoot back,” Moran said. “There’s a fundamental concept in law enforcement, which is: When you’re defending yourself, you always have to go one-up. You’ll never be able to go one-up if somebody pulls a gun on you.”

Has anyone seen the great movie The Untouchables with Sean Connery? In mentoring Elliott Ness, Connery’s character, a street smart cop who is never in anyone’s pocket, explains how to defeat Al Capone:

“You wanna know how you do it?
Here’s how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun.
He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”

This is one case where movie lingo applies to real life. This is the attitude that the good guys, law enforcement and military, must take to be able to survive encounters with the bad guys, criminals who wish you harm. Harsh, but true.

What are you prepared to do?

Canada Suggests Armed Agents at Border

Another great pick sent into Flickr, this one by user the_wilsons

The quote under the pic …

I saw this t-shirt on sale at a street vendor in Covent Gardent and I think it captures the mood of London accurately.

Indeed. I wonder when terrorists will understand that attacks like 9/11 or 7/7 will not divide strong nations, but strengthen their resolve. Only those prone to division (Spain or France), will crumble under the pressure. Britain has not backed down from a fight in their entire history, what makes these punks think they will now? Or the U. S. for that matter?

I did not read the paper or watch the news earlier today, but I did listen to a lot of radio today. I still missed the return of hockey! You remember hockey, right? That game on ice-skates with sticks and a small flat, round thing. Ok, in all seriousness … players and owners see to have resolved this round of disagreements, at least enough to allow hockey to return soon.

The NHL and the union representing its players reached a tentative agreement on Wednesday and are expected to ratify the deal next week, with a new season starting in early October. ►

A lot of fans will return, but not all.

Orca Bay Sports & Entertainment, owner of the Vancouver Canucks, already has 1,000 people on the waiting list for season tickets this year, spokesman Chris Brumwell said.

In Canada, even those frustrated about a lost season expect to migrate back to the arenas. ►

My family used to go to Ranger games several times a season until the 1994 strike and we went less and less and then not at all. Stars games were a tradition with my cousin and I, and though our lives are not as they once were, we might have still caught a game or two here and there. Seems hardly worth the 6 hour-drive for my cousin now. However, this is a great start in getting my business again …

The Stars have reduced prices on every season seat by an average of 16.0% per seat. Part of the overall reduction in prices includes making over 500 tickets available for only $10, both on a season ticket level and individual game price. ►

Millionaires vs. Millionaires, fighting for more money and/or benefits really turn me off to whatever they are selling. And that is what sports has become. Few players embrace playing because they enjoy the game, few players are sportsmen, few players if any still treat the fans with respect. Players and owners would be completely out of business if the fans quit attending games. However … if a fan is being blatantly disrespectful, rude, or threatening … they deserve no respect in return. I am anxious to see what happens to hockey now that their long strike appears to be over.

This article has a great run down of the proposed resolution agreement: The Puck drops … After 301 days, NHL and its players reach tentative deal; Bloody truce. Hockey expected back this fall after ratification next week

More:
NHL Cuts Deal With Players, But Sponsors Skate On Thin Ice
Jilted fans want NHL apology before they forgive and forget

I do not know how I could have missed this post by Adam Tinworth at One Man & His Blog but it is brilliant.

Terrorists always proclaim that people are cowering in fear after an attack such as 9/11 or 7/7. Reality is not a place frequented by terrorists or extremists. It would be funny if it was not so serious.

One soliders visit to Arlington

I decided to walk to the burial sites of some friends. It was a long walk for me. The last time I saw some of these guys they had either just died or died in my presence. My mind began to replay some of the memories and I took a seat under a tree. I sat there for a moment trying to not be overwhelmed.

The Conservative Man has a great page of Presidential quotes. I found his site because he trackbacked to Michelle Malkin’s RED, WHITE & BLUE BLOGGING with his post for today that has a great pic of President Bush and the troops.

Pardon My English has a great article That All Men Are Created Equal

The Fourth of July is more than just waving Old Glory in blind repetition. We need to wave the flag high in the air, but we need to know why. As Americans, we need to read the Declaration of Independence, and try to understand why we celebrate today.

IMAO has their Fourth of July podcast up and sadly it is the first I have listened to … it is wicked funny (not for kids) and entertaining if you have some time to listen (it is not short)!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful and safe holiday weekend!! And hopefully you saw some great fireworks!

A really good last column from Ben Stein for E! Online …

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?

As I begin to write this, I “slug” it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is “eonlineFINAL,” and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world’s change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton’s, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and, right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that “Splendor in the Grass” was a super movie. But Morton’s is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today’s world, if by a “star” we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV, but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament… the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin… or Martin Mull or Fred Willard — or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife, and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife, and well indeed with my parents (with my sister’s help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis, and then into a coma, and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.

~~By Ben Stein

Hat Tip: Sawa

Congratulations to the Champions — San Antonio Spurs!!!!!

And to Tim Duncan for winning his third NBA Finals MVP!!!

Finals — In Review

Game 1 - Thur. 6/9 @ Spurs — SAN 84-69
Game 2 - Sun. 6/12 @ Spurs — SAN 97-76
Game 3 - Tue. 6/14 @ Pistons — DET 96-79
Game 4 - Thu. 6/16 @ Pistons — DET 102-71
Game 5 - Sun. 6/19 @ Pistons — SAN 96-95
Game 6 - Tue. 6/21 @ Spurs — DET 95-86
Game 7 - Thur. 6/23 @ Spurs — SAN 81-74

(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

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