Praying for death.

I am always dismayed by the Democrats' inability to do good, and the GOP's uncanny ability to do ill. Here is an example of the latter.

CALLER: Yeah doctor. Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn’s instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn’t show up at the vote the other night.

How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough

HOST: Senator Barasso, he was referring to Senator Inhofe, who was not part of the round of voting this morning.

BARASSO: The votes today, they needed 60 votes in favor of the bill. Senator Inhofe is opposed to the bill, and whether he was there or not didn’t make any difference. There was no way that Jim Inhofe was going to vote for the bill, the senator from Oklahoma. So that’s why he wasn’t there this morning.

HOST: Do you know where he was, senator, why he wasn’t able to make the vote this morning?

BARASSO: No, I don’t know.

The problem with Optimism

Optimism can be a good thing in the right measure. In the same way, pessimism can be a good thing. The pessimistic eye can spot trouble, and the optimistic heart can supply possibilities for solving that trouble. But you need a bit of both. Taken to extremes, Optimism and pessimism will end up looking virtually identical. The pathological Pessimist will say there’s nothing we can do, the pathological Optimist will say that there’s nothing we need to do. In either case, the house burns down.

George W. Bush rightly calls himself an Optimist. Look where that got us.