Monday morning, October 2, 2006 a psychologically disturbed man killed himself after murdering five Amish girls at West Nickel Mines School in Bart Township, Pennsylvania.  The next morning I was listening to National Public Radio and they were interviewing some psychologist about the murders.  He expressed the opinion that the surviving students in the Nickel Mines Amish school would have a difficult time dealing with the deaths of their classmates because the Amish schools don’t have licensed, qualified “grief counselors”.

Sorry, pal.  I’m not buying that crock of intellectualized cow crap for a minute.  The Amish are well suited to dealing with death and loss by using a tool that licensed “shrinks” like you have obviously ignored and probably know nothing about, namely, faith in God and Jesus Christ.  Hundreds of years before the first “licensed grief counselor” arrived on the scene the Amish were taking care of each other, praying for each other and forgiving each other.   There’s a lot those Amish could teach a grief counselor; there isn’t much that the grief counselor knows that the Amish haven’t known for centuries.

The Minnesota Twins and their fans, overjoyed after winning the central division American League Championship on the last day of the regular season, are now in shock after being swept and eliminated by the Oakland Athletics, including two losses in the Metrodome.  There are two lessons to be learnt.  First, the playoffs by their very nature are “fluky”.  Any team is capable of anything during a short series.  After establishing themselves during a 162 game season any team, including the mighty Yankees, can be eliminated during the post season “crapshoot”, otherwise called the playoffs.  Second, you can’t make as many serious mistakes as the Twins made during those three games and expect to win.

Nevertheless, it was a magnificent professional baseball season in Minnesota.  A lot of good happened for the Twins and their fans.  There aren’t any teams in professional baseball with a Cy Young winner (Santana), a batting champion (Mauer), and Justin Morneau, a deserving candidate for MVP.  This was a young team with harmony in the clubhouse and plenty of hustle.  The twins are a team that fans in most cities would be proud to claim as their own.  They are a team that Cubs fans would kill for.  Minnesotans are fortunate to have such a good baseball club, characterized by an excellent farm system, an outstanding manager, good coaches, and a general manager who can squeeze more productivity out of a small payroll than almost anyone else in baseball.

The Democrats are having a heyday with the Mark Foley scandal.  Foley, who quit his job as a congressman from Florida after it was disclosed that he sent sexually inappropriate instant messenger communications to house pages, is a creep.  Unlike Bill Clinton, Foley never actually had sex with anyone, but whiny Nancy Pelosy and her sniveling crew in Washington have demanded that Dennis Hastert, the house majority leader resign.  Hastert had a press conference and explained that while it was unfortunate that Foley’s behavior was not caught earlier, he had no personal knowledge of the explicit nature of Foley’s communication and that he had no intention of resigning.  That will put an effective end to the matter.

The Democrats have tried to use the Foley incident to improve their chances in the upcoming midterm elections, where they need to gain of fifteen seats to take control of the House of Representatives.  However, I predict that the Republican message that the Democrats want to “cut and run” in Iraq and that they are weak on national security will prevail in November.  This will leave the Democrats short of their ambition to control the house.  When push comes to shove, the American voters don’t trust the Democrats on national security.

I should state here that Republicans are no less guilty of brazen political acts, like their attempt to have Bill Clinton impeached for staining Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress.  That was a terrible waste of taxpayer money.  Instead of spending an inordinate amount of time and money investigating the sex lives of Foley and Bubba, our elected representatives should allocate a bit of time toward perhaps other more important issues such as nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, the defeat of Muslim extremists, getting a line on excessive federal expenditures, over dependence on oil as an energy source, global warming, and on and on.