BVDH The Blog

De-icing at Sarasota-Bradenton International

Most of the country has been socked by cold temperatures, ice, and snow and South Florida is no exception.  This has presented a problem for airlines as they have had to deice planes at airports where they are not used to deicing.  Well, at SRQ they have no deicing equipment so they came up with any interesting solution last Wednesday: they moved all the planes into the sun so the ice would melt.   It delayed flights for about two hours. 

I'm back. For good this time.

So I've now been away from Emory for exactly 8 months.   I really like my post-Emory life.  DC is great. But there are so many things I miss from Emory.  Most of it is rather predictable: friends, the campus, College Council, Fox Brothers BBQ, etc, but I'm surprised by one thing I seem to miss more than I ever thought I would:

I miss writing.

I guess I never realized how much I enjoyed writing my column for the Emory Wheel.   It gave me an outlet to discuss or vent about whatever issue I found important.  I wrote it weekly for three years and bi-weekly for the last few months.  Sure, I had more than one fight with my editors over the years who would muzzle me for various reasons (mostly because the Wheel never has had and never will have any backbone), but more often than not I got to write what I wanted. 

I've always loved writing.  I do writing at work now, but most of it is technical writing and I miss normal writing.  I miss sharing my opinion even more than writing.  So I'm back to BVDH The Blog.  I know the last few re-starts of the blog have been aborted on takeoff, but I'm in for the long-haul now. 

I hope you'll stop by every once in a while.

Benjamin

Why I like Mike Huckabee

NYT Magazine writer Zev Chafets about meeting Huckabee for lunch to do a story on him: “I met Huckabee for lunch at an Olive Garden restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. (I had offered to take him anywhere he wanted and then vetoed his first choice, T.G.I. Friday’s.)” 

This is why.  Because he is down to earth, real, normal and rather funny.  His politics, however, are something completely different: they scare me. 

I'm blogging once more

So after another prolonged absence from the blogging world, I'm starting BVDH The Blog up once again with the hope that I will keep it updated.  So please check back soon and I'll try to get some good posts up.   

Column 4/25/08: Clinton Doesn't Get It

Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Democratic primary gave us the same overall result as the ones that came before it: none whatsoever. Pennsylvania was built up to be the decisive primary, just as New Hampshire, all the Super Tuesday states, Ohio and Texas had been before, but the result was as inconclusive as all the others.

Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama in Pennsylvania by 10 points. It was a big enough win to give her the slimmest of hopes of actually getting the nomination, so she’ll stay in the race at least another two weeks until May 6, when North Carolina and Indiana vote. But she only picked up 12 delegates and still trails Obama by 130 overall delegates and by more than 150 pledged delegates.

The Obama campaign sent out an e-mail on Tuesday night saying Clinton “lost her last, best chance.” This is true. Pennsylvania was Clinton’s last real hope of changing the math of this primary race. Obama will end up winning more delegates — elected ones and total delegates — going into the Democratic Convention in Denver. Clinton’s only hope is that the superdelegates rush to her side and overrule the will of the people.

Column 4/17/08: Now Flying: Empty Airline Promises

Have you ever heard of Skybus? Aloha? ATA?

What do they have in common? They are all airlines that have declared bankruptcy and ceased operations in the last three weeks. A fourth airline, Champion Air, has announced it will cease operations and the end of May. And a fifth airline, Frontier Airlines out of Denver, recently declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will be reorganizing under court supervision while continuing to operate. That’s five airlines all in serious trouble in a short period of time, all of which are in need of some unanticipated savior.

Then on Tuesday, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines announced they were going to merge into a single entity. Even though both airlines achieved significant cost savings through bankruptcies last year, they decided that they needed to combine in order to become stronger, survive, and continue to do business another day.

Column 4/4/08: Keeping Our Heroes Waiting

Fighting for one’s country is the highest level of service someone can give to their nation. Fighting for another country because you believe in its values is even more remarkable. The United States has millions of brave men and women who serve our country in the armed forces. But there is a subset of these men and women who serve in the American military as citizens of other nations.

There are about 20,500 members of the American military that are not U.S. citizens. They are often called “green card warriors,” since they are permanent residents, but they do not have citizenship. Attempting to answer their needs, in October 2001 President Bush signed into law an act granting active-duty non-citizens who have served in war since Sept. 11, 2001, the right to apply for immediate citizenship, bypassing most of the hassles that go into the normal citizenship application process.

But as with many things in our government, immediate does not mean immediate, and we still have thousands of non-Americans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan under the American flag. This is a disservice to these brave men and women who believe in our country enough to fight for it even though they can’t yet partake in the benefits of citizenship.

I'm back and blogging!

It's been almost two months since I have posted anything and for that I apologize.   Things have been busy with school lately (two twenty page papers, a final exam, and a thesis proposal) and when the choice becomes sleeping or blogging, sleeping usually wins out.  But now that it is summer, I'm returning to my blog and I'll start by posting my columns for the rest of the semester since I last posted. 

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show in Tibet

The recent violent protests in Tibet could not have come at a worse time for President Hu Jintao and his Communist Chinese government. This was supposed to be a great year for China, a year when the world would watch a new China during the Beijing Olympic Games, the new China that has risen from the days of Mao and the Cultural Revolution to become one of the world’s largest economic, political and military powers. Extensive efforts have been made to improve China’s image leading up to these games.

This is very similar to what West Germany wanted to do with the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. West Germany wanted to show the world how much it had changed since the days of the Third Reich, while at the same time drawing a clear contrast between itself and its Communist neighbors. But despite extensive preparations, the Munich Olympics were permanently scarred when Palestinian terrorists took hostage and killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.

While different in some key ways, the Chinese crackdown on the protests in Tibet has the possibility to the do the same thing to the Beijing Olympics as the Munich Massacre did to the 1972 Olympics. This possibility is a great thing for the United States. The Tibet protests and the resulting Chinese crackdown are making China look terrible in the international spotlight leading up to the Olympics. It is strongly in the American interest for China to look as bad as possible this year.

Sean Hannity May Be Sleeping With His Sister

Catch your attention?  I thought it would.  I don't even know if Sean Hannity even has a sister.   This post is to make a point about the nonsense he is gabbing about Obama.

Hannity keeps saying "How do we know Obama does not have the same feelings as Reverend Wright?"  Because he has never said the things Rev. Wright has and has strongly rebuked him.  At some point when there is no evidence to the contrary, you have to take people at face value.

Or we could use his logic.  Using Sean Hannity's logic, how do we know Sean Hannity isn't a pedophile?  We don't.   

Hannity cheapens the discourse on an important issue like race through his bombastic and ridiculous comments.  Way to go you television blowhard.  How do we know he doesn't kick puppies after his show?