Random Fate

Coda

Nature is proving that it can kill thousands for no reason, with no one to blame, no one to retaliate against. We are being forced to stare directly into the abyss of the nothingness that we all fear is at the end of life.

Some are overwhelmed.

Some are thoughtful.

Some are emotional.

Some are taking a break from writing.

Some are raising money and doing what they can to help.

Some are gaining perspective.

Some are losing perspective.

Some are playing politics.

Some are trying to score points.

There are as many reactions as there are weblogs, and as many reactions as there are people.

New Years is traditionally a time to review the year just past, to look ahead to the year to come, and to make resolutions. The year just past is ending in a tragedy that shows the insignificance of much that generated heated passions, emotions that now seem overwrought in the face of this visit by the Rider on a pale horse at the end of a year of repeated visits by his three companions, a terrible event that when combined with the three years preceding makes a sadly fitting coda to the twentieth century, a century of mass-production death only briefly interrupted by periods of hopes now broken and forgotten.

September 11, 2001, was felt all over America, with many knowing people in the areas affected by the attacks, learning the fear that goes with love when the loved ones cannot be reached. Now we have a tragedy 50 times larger, but with no Earthly agency that can be held responsible, no one to hate, only the anguish of lives ended before their time for no apparent reason, with no deeper meaning, nothing gained from such a terrible sacrifice, and the abyss yawns darkly at our feet returning not even an echo, much less any answers, to the aguished cries of "Why?" ripped from those who had those they love torn away.

Yet of these, there is still hope. Meaning may at last be found, unwilling and unknowing sacrifice may not ultimately be in vain, and the emptiness of the abyss rejected. In the closing minutes of this year when midnight comes, hold your loved ones close, and remember all those who can no longer perform this simple, human act, and remember also we all have loved ones that we eventually lose. In the end, the tragedy of losing the ones we love is the single thing we all have in common, and in that shared grief can be found understanding. Perhaps in the terrible coda this New Years presents we can all learn of our common humanity, our common pain, and what is truly, ultimately important.

Reactions

There is an interesting contrast of reactions to criticisms regarding the amount of aid provided by the United States for recovery from the tsunami disaster.

Tom Watson provides some context of how much money goes into other areas, such as the salaries of baseball players, and then points out a missed opportunity, "...Bush might've recognized the chance for a master counterstroke with the seething Muslim world - by pouring resources into Indonesia, where the region of Aceh and its hard-core militant Islamists were particularly hard hit."

Andrew at Verite reacts with anger, writing, "We're helping your citizens because you CANNOT. Be grateful for anything we give you. And don't you DARE say that the U.S. isn't paying its dues while turning around and no doubt criticising our policy of homeland security."

Please note that the two quotes above are used for illustrative purposes and do not provide the full discussion of either author. Read the entire posts to understand their respective vantage points. What I write here is not intended to establish or refute the details of what they argue but instead to comment on the style of reactions.

I understand the origins of these two reactions, and neither is irrational. They also show in microcosm some general trends I have observed. It seems that many cannot stand any criticism of the United States or whatever is their sacred cow (their political party, their candidate for President, their beliefs), and react with what strikes me as a defensive "victim mentality". This victim mentality appears on both extremes of the political spectrum and shuts down all discussion or possibility of change, resulting in people shouting at each other and issues festering rather than being resolved. Then there are others who react by thinking about what the criticism said, comparing what was said with things not necessarily directly related to the issue at hand in a search for context, and then seek opportunities.

Unfortunately, it seems that human nature is inclined more towards the "drama" of the victim rather than the drudgery of thinking in search of a way to achieve at least part of the ultimate goal.

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Links found through The Moderate Voice and Dean's World.

A thought for the new year

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
   -William Blake

Even though I have less time than I expected...

...I'm guest-posting over at sortapundit.

So, if you want more of my golden wisdom, go and read my first post.
(end ironic sarcasm here)

Meanwhile, on Mars...

...the two rovers named by schoolchildren Spirit and Opportunity are emerging from the Martian winter and getting power boosts.

It's been almost a year, and the rovers are still working, even though they had been designed to last only 90 days. Sometimes, NASA still gets things spectacularly right.

The path of the Opportunity rover:

Some thoughts from two bloggers on blogging

Here are two contrasting views on blogging, information dispersal, and the "new media" versus the "old media":

First, Joe Gandelman, The Moderate Voice, writes It's About "A Conversation" Versus "A Pronouncement"...

...and then Pennywit has a slightly different view which discusses News Filtration Systems.

Both are well worth reading in their entirety.

After my luggage "adventure" this trip...

...this quote seemed appropriate:

The saying "Getting there is half the fun" became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines.
   -Henry J. Tillman

A bit rushed

I'm busier than I expected now that I'm in Austin. I should have anticipated being busy, but for some reason, I didn't. Hence, the shortcuts in the posts below, such as the cartoon for Rumsfeld not accepting responsibility for his mistakes. See the comments to that post for what my intention was.

So... please be patient.

Expect short posts for the next few days. I hope to have several long ones that I'll write on the plane back to France, assuming I have a power outlet on my row. I only have two batteries for my Macintosh PowerBook, and they don't last for an entire flight back to France, especially when I have a lot to write about and am running several applications simultaneously to access my notes and the saved web pages to link!

Things have changed

It wasn't that long ago...

Have you noticed...

...that the loudest voices are always those against something, rather than for something? And it doesn't matter if those people doing the shouting and making the demands are from the left or the right-wing, it's still "against" something.

Even when something is being advocated "for" the arguments are often presented "against" something else. I'm sure there are some fundamental reasons that lie at the heart of human nature, but regardless, I'd like to see more "for" and less "against" in our political system.

From the "sad but true" file...

...yet another observation that blogworld has proven beyond a reasonable doubt:

It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
   -Caron de Beaumarchais

Perspective

The news from the areas hit by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami is more grim with every hour.

There is little to say or do other than to contribute to a relief organization, and to mourn for the lives lost...

...and to remember that no matter if the flight was cancelled and Christmas was "ruined" or if you spent the holiday arguing with your family, that is nothing compared to losing your family, your children, to a disaster like the one in southern Asia.

Joe Gandelman has a personal understanding of the helpless feelings that a natural disaster can cause that he has chosen to write about; it is well worth reading.

Something to remember

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
   -Oscar Wilde

Do you ever wonder...

...how we got to the technology you are using to read this right now?

Then read a brief history of microprocessors.

A simple question rarely has a simple answer

Blackfive asks:

So what would it take to get the Main Stream Media to change it's spots?

(And, ergo, what would it take to get the Main Stream Public to change their desire for car wrecks and disasters?)

I think he has the question inverted.

As I wrote a while back:

They wouldn't publish "biased" news if no one read it...

They wouldn't pay the high salaries of sports starts if no one paid to see the games...

They wouldn't make more "reality TV" or shows filled with gratuitous sexual innuendo if no one watched...

They wouldn't play schlocky, manufactured music on the radio if no one listened...

They wouldn't mud-sling if it didn't win votes...

"They" are after a buck, or votes, or power, and "they" use the most expedient way to gain the goal.

"They" pay attention to the collective choices that the public makes.

Ultimately, who is responsible?

Think about it...

I think this is just as valid now as it was last September when I wrote it. However, there is another aspect to this. From an email exchange I had last week discussing media bias, I wrote (note - edited for readability):

I work in the sciences, routinely reading technical papers and evaluating them for their accuracy and reliability. We have a mantra of "get your own data," which is another way of saying "trust, but verify." I deal with presentations of cherry-picked data every day, and I inherently mistrust all sources of information unless I have independently verified the data. That goes for what is reported in the news media, where I inherently mistrust them (not the least because I have seen them make egregious errors when reporting on science and technology). Therefore, regardless of any protestations by the media to the contrary, I have no expectation of lack of bias. I do take it on faith that they do try to be unbiased, just as I take it on faith that the administration is indeed doing what they feel is best for the country, even when I completely disagree with their actions (see my post on Rumsfeld's visit to Iraq for an example). As a consequence, I do not react when the media present themselves as trying to be balanced. Recall that Fox News uses as its slogan "Fair and balanced" although by any reasonable measure the editorial stance of that network is definitely leaning right, just as other networks can be said to lean left, or in my view more properly said lean anti-administration.

Therefore, to me, even if there is a bias in the media, I do not see an issue, because everything is biased. A savvy administration can get their message out despite any bias, and I do strongly feel it is entirely their responsibility to get their message out. The administration's message is ALSO biased. Since there is nothing in the Constitution that I can recall about the role of the free press other than "no restrictions on freedom of the press" it is difficult to justify a statement that the press/media is not fulfilling their proper role. The government is powerful, and the Constitution was written with that in mind, with the Bill of Rights explicitly listing limitations of the powers of the government. The opposition to the government, in this case the media (with the possible exception of Fox News, which while not in unquestioning support does not appear to be in opposition), while having an apparent power, does not have the moral authority that I believe the vast majority of people do still assign to the government in general and the bully pulpit of the Presidency in particular. Therefore to me, again, the proper role of the press/media is to present a view contrary to that of the administration/ Congress/ judicial system, each of which have real power in varying degrees to actually enforce their views, whereas the media only has the power to influence (not control) public opinion.

The "unbiased media" chimera is a relatively recent development, with most of the history of the United States filled with highly partisan newspapers that published material that makes even some of the most extreme bloggers of the recent election madness look tame by comparison. While I understand the reaction in anger at the contention by the mainstream media that they are unbiased when in the view of many they are not, in my view they do try to be unbiased, even if they don't recognize their bias. In me, that does not generate anger or contempt, but instead annoyance with a bit of sadness. As I said, I have railed against the media being intellectually lazy, and part of that intellectual laziness is that even when they do self-examine it is superficial and the biases are not truly recognized. Intentions do matter, though, even if they cannot be truly divined and must be taken on faith, otherwise I would be frothing at the mouth continually at some of the actions I see coming out of each and every administration.

On cultural issues, I would say there is far more of an unambiguous bias in the mainstream media than there is on political issues. Again, the issue will eventually become self-correcting, because if an alternative source arises along the lines of Fox News, then it will succeed in taking the ever-valuable eyeballs away from the mainstream media and eventually BECOME the mainstream. There is a reason for the continued existence of the religious oriented cable networks despite the scandals of the 80s, and revulsion against the left-leaning cultural bias in the mainstream media must almost certainly play a role.

Simply saying the media is biased with no deeper analysis any time bad news arises and is reported with emphasis over and above what is dedicated to good news brings to mind images of a little boy sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting "LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!!!!", and sadly this act is repeated constantly on both sides of the political spectrum. Bad news must be met head-on and explained in the larger context, not simply dismissed as something from a "biased media." Ignoring bad news by blaming the messenger for his bias does not make it go away, nor does it help in making the right decision.

Sometimes, Earth-shattering changes start with one unremarked event

This is a milestone passing by almost unnoticed, but eventually may be thought of as another day the universe changed:

How Much for the Clone?

Wired News Report
12:14 PM Dec. 23, 2004 PT

The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is named Little Nicky, a 9-week-old kitten delivered to a Texas woman saddened by the loss of a cat she had owned for 17 years.

The kitten cost its owner $50,000 and was created from DNA from her beloved cat, named Nicky, who died last year.

Yet while Little Nicky frolics in his new home, the kitten's creation and sale has reignited fierce ethical and scientific debate over cloning technology, which is rapidly advancing.

Commercial interests already are cloning prized cattle for about $20,000 each, and scientists have cloned mice, rabbits, goats, pigs, horses -- and even the endangered banteng, a wild bull that is found mostly in Indonesia.

Yet another manifestation of our pathological avoidance of accepting death as a part of life, just as much a part of life as birth.

What does it say about your weblog...

...when the "context-sensitive" Google ads come up with websites selling "stress-relief" products?

Fundamental beliefs

I originally wrote this as a reply to an email. I will not quote the original email here because the person who wrote it has his own weblog, and therefore his own venue to express himself, and I do not want to misrepresent his views. Instead, I will present only what I wrote, edited a bit for readability.

In my writings on torture, I am not questioning the motivations for why we invaded Iraq, nor am I disputing the need to continue the occupation until we can be reasonably sure that Iraq will not immediately decay into another failed state or turn into an Islamofascist Hell.

When I refer to torture, I am not referring to the panties on the head; I have heard credible stories of acts far beyond that. According to my moral foundation, torture is ALWAYS wrong. It does not matter WHO is being tortured, nor how much that person may DESERVE it.

Simply put, if we behave barbarically, then what separates us from those who do fly airplanes into buildings? If we say "These are our enemies, they are barbarians, therefore we can forget they are human," is that not exactly what they said to themselves before they committed their crimes? The Islamofascists say repeatedly that WE are the barbarians and therefore WE can be treated as non-human with no consideration. This also is the path the Nazis took to justify their behavior. I refuse to take that path, or even the first steps down it.

The most insidious evil is that perpetrated in the name of good, because once it is accepted in extreme circumstances, it becomes acceptable in less and less extreme circumstances until it becomes routine.

Look at how our culture has evolved with acceptance of things that were once completely rejected and you will see clear evidence of this facet of human behavior.

Civilization means restraint from barbaric behavior, and you cannot protect civilization by denying its basic tenets.

In 10 years, will we be able to look in the mirror and recognize ourselves? Will we like what we see?

It is up to us now to decide what will be in that future mirror.

Thoughts for the last week of the year

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
   -Herm Albright

The truth comes out when the spirits go in.
   -Irish Proverb

A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong.
   -Unknown

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
   -Goethe

Generosity of spirit

In a post for the recent Spirit of America fundraising campaign, I wrote about the generosity that Americans are known for around the world.

The world knows the people of the United States, not the government but the people, as remarkably generous. Even during the height of tensions between the US and Iran, every time there was an earthquake in the region, the people of the United States contributed to relief efforts. Any time there is any kind of natural disaster in the world, the people of the United States are in the forefront in contributing money and other forms of aid to the stricken region, regardless of past or present enmity.

This is the generosity of individuals, generosity of material means.

This generosity is nothing to sneeze at and will add to the good in a world that has more than enough evil.

Ultimately, though, it is easy to be generous with money.

True generosity is generosity of spirit, which is far, far harder to achieve.

The generosity of spirit I speak of is not the trite "love all mankind" that is the mantra mindlessly repeated during this time of the year.

The generosity of spirit I speak of is not giving of yourself until you have nothing left for yourself.

The generosity of spirit I speak of is not denying your nature or your humanity.

What is it, then?

Generosity of spirit is recognizing the humanity of everyone.

Generosity of spirit is avoiding the laziness of labeling and taking the time to look at the heart of matters.

Generosity of spirit is opening your mind to the thoughts of others, even when you do not agree with them.

We are all human. We all have to eat to live. We all have to sleep to stay sane. We all suffer from the same curse so eloquently allegorized in the story of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge and have the need for our lives to have some meaning, some external recognition that we are important.

Generosity of spirit recognizes this common need, this essential emptiness we all share that can only be filled by others. The very recognition of this need satisfies it and assuages the loneliness that is so central to being human, yet this recognition is often the most difficult to give and requires a true effort of will.

The single biggest way we can do good in this world is to take the time to try to understand those we regard as our worst enemy and recognize in them the same humanity that exists in ourselves. Evil arises out of the refusal to see enemies as human. Does the world really need more of this evil?

From a voice of moderation

Joe Gandelman, The Moderate Voice, reiterates a point I have made several times here at Random Fate but from a different perspective. Go read to see his take on the left versus the right-wings in blogworld and how civil discourse does still exist, if sometimes harder to find than we might want.

Timing is everything, but it is not the only thing

Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice writes in a post about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's current visit to Iraq in the wake of the recent "armor question" and "signature machine" imbroglios:

It is NOT unusual for an administration member in any wartime adminstration to visit troops during Thanksgiving or Christmas. And while Rumseld's trip is laudable, the timing is..ahem...a tad suspect.

While Joe is using some of his dry wit here, and while I have been no fan of Rumsfeld in his performance as Secretary of Defense, especially in light of the recent revelations that Colin Powell stated there have been too few troops in Iraq to properly control the country, I think it is rather unfair to "question the timing" of Rumsfeld's visit as solely a cynical ploy.

I disagree with many of the actions of the Bush administration, but I do not feel that they are entirely cynical and cold-hearted. While I am sure there was some discussion of the political benefits of a visit with the troops over Christmas, I do not think the sole or even the primary reason for this visit was for PR value in the US.

Blaming the messenger instead of analyzing the message

I left a comment to a post at Dean's World that is on a topic I have been meaning to write about here, so I'll repost it here while recommending you read Dean's post and the comments.

My comment (edited a bit for readability and correcting a grammatical error):

One of the key lessons of the Vietnam era is that public perception is one of the most important aspects of running a war in the modern (aka television) era. This lesson has apparently been forgotten. Blaming the public perception on some agenda of the mainstream media is laziness, because there is more to public perception than just the mainstream media news from Iraq, for the media also repeat almost unedited statements from the White House and the administration with little commentary or perspective added. You cannot say that the administration does not have the bully pulpit that Teddy Roosevelt spoke of.

However, if the picture painted by the administration is not consistent with the pictures coming out of the country (and the administration can make sure that "the good things" are shown) then the line taken by the administration painting the rosy picture is not believed. The recent acknowledgment by President Bush that the Iraqi police forces are not what we would like them to be adds credibility to what the administration says in the future, because he has actually admitted a problem. Nothing is ever as rosy as the situation in Iraq has been portrayed by the administration, just as it is not as bad as the reports directly from Iraq would indicate.

It is the responsibility of the White House to get its message out, and it is the responsibility of the media to find out the things that the government wants to hide. This is the nature of the adversarial system that has evolved in our country. Just as the court system is adversarial, with a prosecutor aimed at convicting the defendant, the media feels that its job is to ferret out the hidden secrets that people in power always hold and in holding the secrets ultimately degrade democracy.

Merely saying "the mainstream media doesn't want to show the good things and is unfair" does not hold the administration to account for not getting the message of the good happening in Iraq out, and is yet another variation of blaming the messenger instead of analyzing the message.

UPDATE: Dean has another post that shows how the messenger is being blamed. Also, via David Anderson at ISOU, apparently the question to Rumsfeld regarding the armor for vehicles that created such an uproar was not planted by an embedded journalist but may have been toned down from the question originally written by the soldier.

As I have said repeatedly, there is more to any story than what is on the surface, and facile statements made based upon surface impressions are not only unhelpful, but oftentimes create a furor that distracts from the true issues at hand.

Drive...

When I was married, I used to go out for a drive every Christmas Eve, alone. I started this when I was in graduate school in Arizona. Christmas in Arizona I suspect is much like Christmas in Australia, you’re running the air conditioner and hoping that the reindeer don’t drop out of the sky from heat exhaustion.

We lived in Phoenix, which is in the center of a huge plain called the Valley of the Sun, ringed by mountains. Over the eons that eroded into the giant basin and created a flat-bottomed valley that has occasional isolated, craggy, rocky mountain peaks rising from the almost perfect flatness like islands of rock in a sea of dust. This creates a huge hothouse effect from the inversion layers that form in the giant valley. Oddly, sometimes the air is crystal clear, usually immediately after the hot air in the valley finally breaks free from the imprisoning cooler air above. This happened one Christmas Eve, so as I drove through the night through one of the Indian Reservations I could see for miles. The Reservations had almost nothing built inside them, so even though they were on land that was at the same level as the rest of that flat-bottomed valley, some of the best views of the area could be found there.

Isolated houses were on the Reservation, and in the distance where the darkness seemed impenetrably dense I saw a small house, what we would call a shotgun-shack in Memphis, and it had red, green, blue, and yellow lights strung along the eaves. The house was isolated, nothing nearby, all alone in the night.

Years later, we lived near Portland, Oregon. One Christmas Eve, I played my “game” that I enjoyed along the narrow two-lane highway that crawled halfway up the cliff-edge on the north side of the Columbia River Gorge. I had a high performance all-wheel-drive sports car, and I enjoyed taking it out on that narrow, twisty road and take all the turns at a minimum of twice the recommended maximum speed. The 35mph turns started to be a bit touchy, but the real challenge was in the 40 and 45mph turns at 80 and 90mph.

The gorge is relatively narrow upriver of Portland, but widens out again after 40 miles or so, where a dam has been built, and a bridge across the river slightly further upstream. My route typically was to drive on the narrow winding highway on the north side (we lived north of the river), cross the bridge, and then take another narrower and even more serpentine highway on the south side. The highway on the south side had several places to stop that were at waterfalls fed by streams that arose from glaciers on Mount Hood and springs in the mountains near the base of Mount Hood. One of my favorite places in the world is Latourell Falls, where I would stop at midnight, park, and walk the quarter of a mile through the dark woods to the base of the waterfall.

Another Christmas Eve, I took a route that landed me on an interstate highway. I stopped at a truck stop to pick up a soda, and I saw the truckers eating their Christmas Eve Dinners in the truck stop cafe. There was an odd camaraderie in their isolation, each alone at their own table, or sitting on stool at the counter, with at least one stool between them, but none seeming to feel lost. They smiled at the waitress and bantered back and forth with her at midnight on Christmas Eve in a truck stop 50 miles from anywhere.

Even after my divorce, when I began to visit my parents for Christmas again, I still felt a need to go out alone for a drive on Christmas Eve. One year there had been an ice storm, the most common kind of “white Christmas” experienced in Memphis, and heedless of the danger I went for a drive. It was midnight on Christmas Eve, I had a bigger risk of getting run over by a reindeer than encountering another car. The ice storm had started early in the day, and with their customary intrepidness, drivers all over Memphis had abandoned their cars to walk, showing just how afraid of frozen water they are. When else can you get Americans to choose to walk when they could drive? As was typical in ice storms, the weaker branches of trees had broken under the extra weight of ice, creating a sad vista in tree-rich Memphis.

Even people who are not misers have ghosts of the past that haunt them.

Before you get too rigid in your thinking...

...here is something to keep you flexible.

Stolen from Jennifer:

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
   -Leo Rosten

NOT stolen from Jennifer, but in the same theme:

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
   -Robert Anton Wilson

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
   -Kurt Vonnegut

And a final word from our sponsor:

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
   -George Washington

To all the torture apologists

I have not been saying the war in Iraq itself has had only bad results.

What I AM saying is that you lose the moral high ground when you commit immoral acts such as torture, especially if the government that ordered the invasion searched for legal justification to avoid having the Geneva Conventions apply to prisoners, so that "pressure" could be applied to them.

Saying "Saddam did worse" or "all we did was humiliate them" does NOT justify what was done, especially in light of the new information coming out (note-emphasis added):

New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq.

In many of the newly disclosed cases, Army commanders chose noncriminal punishments for those involved in the abuse, or the investigations were so flawed that prosecutions could not go forward, the documents show. Human rights groups said yesterday that, as a result, the penalties imposed were too light to suit the offenses.

The complaints arose from several thousand new pages of internal reports, investigations and e-mails from different agencies, which, with other documents released in the past two weeks, paint a finer-grained picture of military abuse and criminal behavior at prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan than previously available.

The documents disclosed by a coalition of groups that had sued the government to obtain them make it clear that both regular and Special Forces soldiers took part in the abuse, and that the misconduct included shocking detainees with electric guns, shackling them without food and water, and wrapping a detainee in an Israeli flag.

The variety of the abuse and the fact that it occurred over a three-year period undermine the Pentagon's past insistence -- arising out of the summertime scandal surrounding the mistreatment at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison -- that the abuse occurred largely during a few months at that prison, and that it mostly involved detainee humiliation or intimidation rather than the deliberate infliction of pain.

After the latest revelations, including the disclosures that officials in other federal agencies had objected to these actions by soldiers -- to the point of urging, in some cases, war crimes prosecutions -- White House spokesman Scott McClellan responded yesterday with a promise that President Bush expects a full investigation and corrective actions "to make sure that abuse does not occur again."

---

The new documents include several incidents of threatened executions of teenage and adult Iraqi detainees. In one instance, a soldier in a unit that lacked any training in interrogation -- but was nonetheless assigned to process and question detainees -- acknowledged forcing two men to their knees, placing bullets in their mouths, ordering them to close their eyes, and telling them they would be shot unless they answered questions about a grenade incident. He then took the bullets, and a colleague pretended to load them in the chamber of his M-16 rifle.

The documents indicate that the perpetrator, who was investigated on charges of assault and a "law of war violation," was given a nonjudicial punishment by his commander. Threatening detainees with physical harm to compel their testimony is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In a second case, Army investigators concluded that a sergeant committed offenses including assault, dereliction of duty and cruelty when he conducted "a mock execution of an Iraqi teenager" in front of the boy's father and brother, who were suspected of looting an ammunition factory. Investigators also found that the actions were condoned by a lieutenant who conspired with the sergeant.

An investigative report also details an incident two days earlier, in which the lieutenant ordered a suspected looter to kneel, pointed a 9mm pistol at his head and then pulled the gun away just as he fired a shot. The outcome of both cases is unclear from the records released yesterday.

The documents also divulge a probe of the beatings of three mosque security guards in Baghdad in September 2003. After being arrested and cuffed during a search, the three Iraqis were kicked, stomped and dragged by a group of U.S. soldiers. Five soldiers were given reprimands and reductions in rank after being found guilty of maltreatment of prisoners, assault and other charges, the records show.

In another Baghdad case, a U.S. soldier was accused of trying to force an Iraqi civilian to hold a gun as a justification for killing him. The soldier punched the civilian in the face, held an M-16 rifle to his head and flicked the safety off to threaten him, according to the accounts of 19 witnesses. Another soldier eventually stepped in to protect the civilian, who had been hired by the U.S. Army to guard the Museum of Iraqi Military History, the records show.

Other documents describe the death in 2003 of detainee Abdul Kareem Abdureda Lafta, 44, in a U.S. Army jail in Mosul. He "appeared to be in good health" when taken into custody, and he quickly gained the attention of MPs by continually trying to remove the hood placed on his head and talking when guards told him to be silent, the documents say. One night, Lafta was put to bed with his hands tied behind him. Even so, one guard said he spent much of the night "constantly moving around on the ground" in his cell. In the morning, he was found dead.

A doctor who examined the body told investigators "he did not know what killed him." Another Army document says he was found to have a small laceration on his head. The investigators said "there is no documentation . . . explaining the lack of an autopsy."

In another case, Army investigators found probable cause to court-martial a soldier for shooting to death an Iraqi detainee, Obede Hethere Radad, without warning. But he was punished administratively and discharged.

To all you apologists out there who say "we only humiliated them" I say "Bullshit!!!"

To all you who are wearing blinders and say "the news media is exaggerating things for their own, left-wing agenda" I say "Bullshit!!!"

All the attempted justifications of "Saddam was far worse" excuse NOTHING that we do that is wrong. Because someone else cut off a man's hand, I'm OK because all I cut off was a man's finger, is this the kind of "logic" we need to sleep well at night?

Stop justifying and face facts. We have done wrong.

When I was younger and first learned about World War II, I could not conceive how the people of Germany allowed the atrocities that the Nazis committed against not only the Jews, but many other groups. Now, I see how many people see ONLY what they want to see and are WILLINGLY BLIND to whatever does not meet their preconceived notions, their agenda.

A comment to a previous post responded to one of the torture apologists in a way I felt was quite succinct:

...does it matter how they stack up side by side? Is this a frickin' competition? Or are you looking to see if we can somehow justify ourselves? "Oh, he was worse than we are, so we're OK." It's NEVER OK. It's always appalling.

I am beginning to question the fundamental humanity of those who are NOT appalled.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I have not and am not saying that no good has come out of the war, so stop justifying the war. I AM saying that these brutal, appalling acts of torture, perpetrated under an administration that deliberately sought legal means to avoid having the Geneva Conventions apply both undermine the moral justification for the war AND soil the United States almost beyond redemption.

I find a huge irony in the fact that we are about to celebrate the birth of a man who was tortured and nailed to a cross to die, acts recently depicted in all their brutality in a movie that helped many understand their faith better, and yet people are being apologists for acts that are of the same nature by saying "they are of a lower degree."

Wrong is wrong. Evil is evil. In this there is no "degree" that justifies NOT SPEAKING OUT AGAINST IT. In saying "Saddam did worse", you are merely pointing out that we are now in the same category, it is NO EXCUSE AND NO JUSTIFICATION FOR ACTS THAT ARE ALWAYS UNJUSTIFIABLE.

As I have written before: The acts which expose the feet of clay of the hero, of whom is expected better, cause far more damage than the acts of those who the world already knows are evil.

Some thoughts for a Thursday

No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
   -W. H. Auden

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
   -Alvin Toffler

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
   -Voltaire

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
   -Catherine Aird

No longer a "just war"?

Bat One has a post at Pennywit on the attack at Mosul where he makes the comment, "What has not been widely reported in the mainstream press, the one that so concerned itself with prisoner abuse and Geneva Conventions, and Marines shooting bad guys, is that the deliberate target in Mosul was the hospital, and that the purpose of the attack on the dining hall was to create chaos and casualties, so that the later attack on the hospital and the care givers would be that much more effective." Upon first read, this appears to be negating our bad acts because the acts of the enemy in Iraq are worse. That may not have been his intention, but it raises a serious question in my mind.

My question is this: Repeatedly I have seen Saddam's torture chambers used as a way to give a "just cause" to this war. However, as we decry Saddam's torture chambers, we construct and use our own. Does this not undermine our "just cause"?

Saddam was torturing his enemies. We are torturing people we have labeled "enemy combatants". Morally, we have reduced ourselves to those we deposed in Iraq. Sorry, before I hear any objections I will state definitively that moral relativism doesn't apply. If we torture people, it's not OK because we are torturing "the bad guys". Recall that Saddam was torturing people he said were "the bad guys". And yet, we are supposed to be outraged that those who are our enemies are trying to kill as many of us as possible.

They are our enemies, and we have now, through the use of torture, put ourselves on the same level as the regime we attacked and deposed (not the terrorists who saw off heads, but the former regime of Saddam Hussein). Don't agree? Look at the list: Weapons of Mass Destruction? The US made the first atomic bomb, and is still the only nation to use one on their enemy. Defying the UN? Check. Now, the use of torture on our enemies.

9/11 seems to have erased all moral lines that were thought to have been inviolable for the United States before that day.

And now our enemies want to kill as many of us as possible. Does this make them more evil than us? This is not al-Qaida we are fighting in Iraq, and it is likely not even Wahabism. From their point of view, they are Minutemen fighting a foreign invader.

Please do not dismiss this as a "liberal" or "left-wing" position or question. I am reading events as they will be read from the perspective of history. Think about the judgment of history upon the actions of the United States in the last three years, and consider if we are as blameless and as innocent now as we were on 9/11 and as we continue to proclaim ourselves to be.

The mirror goes black

Torture.

We've used it.

The US government (in the form of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) has authorized it.

Who are the "good guys" again?

Will America ever be able to look into the mirror again and say "we are the epitome of freedom and respect for human rights"?

What's in a phrase?

Doug Mc over at The Reality Stick helps give some perspective to the "saying 'Happy Holidays' denies the Christ in Christmas" caviling.

We have been told we are a nation at war...

...yet no one other than the military and their families have been asked to make any real sacrifices.

The Bull Moose suggests a sacrifice that is relatively painless and would pay off dividends for the President. I have no other comments than to suggest you read it and think...

Vignettes from walking around Grenoble last Saturday

Searching in the open-air markets that have sprung up in every square (called places) for gifts that are unique to France, but the only things easily found that are truly “French” (as opposed to stuff mass-produced in China or artisan work that resembles what I’ve seen in Portland and Seattle and Austin and everywhere I’ve gone to outdoor markets in the world) is food. Cheese and bread don’t travel well on a 14 hour plane ride, and the sausages might elicit exclamations of revulsion upon sight of them rather than gratitude for the gift.

Hearing unfamiliar music that must be for Christmas because of the word “Noel” (the French word for Christmas), with the ever present French-cliché accordion in the band, then hearing a tune that is oddly familiar but not recognized until the chorus, “Jingle Bells” in French, an odd, almost surreal experience.

Walking past vendors selling food, sausages, cheeses, breads, searching for a cheese that is not too runny or smelly. I live in a country with over 300 varieties of cheese, and NONE of them is cheddar... I like cheddar, damn it!

A life-sized Pere Noel (aka Santa Claus) hanging from a balcony on one of the buildings ringing the place, looking like he’d slipped off and was holding on for dear life.

Driving up the river valley after a hard rain the night before, and seeing the snow-line marked clearly on the steep slopes of the mountains, and not very high, with a puffy, broken layer of clouds at the same level.

The people at the markets don't look exhausted from hard shopping and rushing around making sure they do everything they have to do in their overscheduled lives, possibly because their lives are NOT overscheduled, and they not only live in the moment, but they recognize there IS a moment to live. There really is joy in the air.

A mother telling her children to thank Pere Noel for the “sleigh” ride on a wagon with cunningly hidden wheels to make up for the lack of snow around the centre-ville, and the children’s voices saying singsong, “Merci, Pere Noel!!!!”

They still believe in magic...

Some quotes apropos of ANY season

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
   -Douglas Adams

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
   -Henry Kissinger

Ask yourself if you are happy, and you cease to be.
   -J. S. Mill

I envy people who drink -- at least they know what to blame everything on.
   -Oscar Levant

If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
   -Professor Irwin Corey

More on Social Security "reform"

Another person whose thinking aligns with of my theory on Social Security "privatization" has written a column.

Privatizing Social Security should scare you

The idea assumes anyone can invest successfully -- and threatens to destroy the safety net for which Social Security was originally created. Yet privatization is being spuriously packaged as 'reform.'

By Bill Fleckenstein

If Mr. Market was easy to understand, we'd all become rich. But notwithstanding his inscrutable ways, there are pundits aplenty offering their opinions to anyone who will listen. It's a problem for folks sifting through all these opinions, as they try to discover the ones that will make them better investors.

There's more... I'd suggest reading and then thinking about it a while.

Iraqi elections and deja-vu?

I have just put up my first post at the new endeavor by the Commissar, the Iraq Elections Blog. My post is Targeted attacks could mean trouble, discussing how the execution-style attack on election officials this weekend could have larger implications than the media play on the story indicates.

On a related topic, the Bull Moose wonders if we are undergoing a deja-vu of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, but this time with a nominal ally, Saudi Arabia, being the ultimate source of support for our enemies the Wahabists. As he says:

Vietnam analogies are inexact and somewhat misleading. But, as in Vietnam, we are increasingly fighting in the midst of a civil war that is being fueled by outside forces.

I fear things will get worse in Iraq before they get better.

Bunny suits and spelling difficulties

Back in late July, I wrote about the widespread posting of the photo of John Kerry in the "bunny suit" at NASA. The Commissar had a very insightful comment to my question of "Is this what people really decide based upon?" In the comments to my post, he wrote:

Such images might, or might not, resonate with the people if they illustrate something that the people already feel.

Dukakis in the tank and Bush 41 at the grocery scanner* epitomized one's soft-on-defense-liberalism and the other's disconnect from ordinary realities of American's lives. Put the 'Dean scream' in there as well.

I don't know if bunny-suit-Kerry will come to symbolize his (alleged) waffling or something else about him. But, in an odd way, it will shake out.

*See Snopes on the falsity of the Bush scanner event.

A photo from the recent White House Economic Conference encapsulates perfectly what I perceive as the major problem with the Bush administration:

From Yahoo! News:

'Challenges' Prove Too Much for White House

Thu Dec 16, 4:17 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House went all out to showcase the advantages of President Bush (news - web sites)'s ambitious financial agenda this week, but in the end the "challenges" proved too much.

The word "challenges" -- a main theme of a two-day White House economic conference that ended on Thursday -- was misspelled on a large television monitor that stood in front of Bush during a panel discussion.

"Financial Challanges for Today and Tomorrow," the message proclaimed in dark blue capital letters against a bright yellow background.

The conference, which critics derided as a public relations event devoid of serious discussion, spotlighted a second-term Bush agenda that would reform Social Security (news - web sites) and the tax code while making tax cuts permanent and cutting the deficit in half.

The White House had no immediate comment on the misspelling.

Before you say "this is a trivial thing" let me remind you that the Kerry "bunny suit" photo was ALSO a trivial thing.

More importantly, though, is this: The saying "The Devil is in the details" is an old saw for a reason.

Any data that doesn't conform with the viewpoint of the President is minimized or ridiculed. This is not a Good Thing. Broad policy decisions are made based upon data, and pre-filtered data with a spin attached to it does not lead to good decisions. In addition, broad policy decision are one thing, but the implementations of those policies is another thing, and I think we have seen serious problems in the details because they are being neglected.

The details are significantly lacking in the current PR campaign waged by the White House on Social Security, and those missing details are another example that is of a singe piece with the run-up to the war in Iraq and the tax cuts that we now see have led to large deficits. The details neglected in the White House pronouncements on those issues have resulted in substantial costs, both human and monetary. There is also an irony that the President who is responsible for these deficits is raising the alarm over a Social Security "shortfall" projected in approximately 40 years, especially since with his promises to not cut benefits or raise taxes mean that the transition costs of a change in the Social Security system to a partially privatized system will mean even more deficit spending by the government.

This drive for "reform" does not appear to be driven by data, or at least by ALL the data, but instead by ideology, and I fear that similar to the Medicare Prescription Drug law benefited drug companies at the expense of the American taxpayer, Social Security "reform" will mainly benefit Wall Street investment firms, again at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Am I suggesting that President George W. Bush is pushing an agenda solely for the purpose of benefiting his buddies and make them richer? No, I am not saying that, even if that can be read into what I have written. I do believe that President Bush honestly thinks what he is doing is in the best interests of the nation. What concerns me is his method of decision making, and how contrary data seems to have no effect on his actions or decisions. Resolve is not a refusal to see reality, but unfortunately, that appears to be George W. Bush's interpretation of the meaning of that word. As was written by Willam S.Golding, "I don't think that word means what you think it means." Based upon what we have seen to date in this presidency, George W. Bush does not show the ability that his father did of being able to see unpleasant facts and change his direction accordingly, even if it costs politically (see the "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge of George H.W. Bush and how in accepting the reality that contradicted his resolve and acting correctly in response to the situation he ultimately lost his bid to be re-elected).

Faith is well and good in matters of religion, but in matters of public policy it should be a guide to help in deciding the moral course of action based upon the data, and only a guide, not the sole basis of policy decisions, no matter how unappealing the rational, logical conclusions arising from that data are. Ultimately I suspect the "faith-based decision making" that has on more than one occasion shown a complete disconnect with reality will be widely regarded as the key failure of this Presidency, especially when the squandering of goodwill after September 11, 2001 through a series of ill-advised decisions is considered.

A mixed bag

People tend to post link-fests to other weblogs. I've got a lot of links, not just to other weblogs, to post here that I'd love to write about, but either don't have the time, the energy, or think that there are enough people out there reading this during the count-down to Christmas, so I'll just link to the articles and hope that folks think about them without my prompting.

Speaking of Christmas, James Wolcott has some pointed commentary on the annual "put the Christ back in Christmas" meme circulating in conservative-leaning weblogs.

While some Nobel Laureates have said some pretty stupid things, a winner of the prize for Chemistry in 1996 is now calling for more focus on research and development of energy sources that don't depend on fossil fuels, something I agree with completely, and something almost impossible for me to emphasize enough how important this is for our long-term safety and success.

The Christian Science Monitor usually has very thoughtful reporting. Here are a few recent articles that are well worth reading:

Some reporting on cultural diplomacy: What US emissaries are hearing

A discussion on the monetary cost of war: The rising tab for US war effort

On a possible cultural chance in the Arab world: Democracy stirs in the Arab world

And on democracy closer to home: How far will Bush's domestic mandate go?

On domestic politics, there is quite a bit of writing about the prospect of revisions (aka reform) of the Social Security system in the United States.

The Economist asks "Should the American government borrow trillions to finance pension reform?" in Debt and Dotage

At MSNBC, they discuss if there is really a "crisis" in Social Security at all in answering a reader question and another columnist discusses the government accounting involved and how the numbers don't add up

Matthew Yglesias contends that there is no crisis in Social Security, and questions why the Bush administration is so bearish on America

Finally, the Bull Moose posts an indictment of Republicans and their words versus their actions on national defense.

As you can see, I've been thinking about a lot of different things lately. The topics and positions in these links are all worth pondering, not necessarily agreeing with, but they definitely contain many things to consider.

The best Christmas music of all time?

A Charlie Brown Christmas by The Vince Guaraldi Trio, the soundtrack to the TV special, especially the tune Christmas Time Is Here (the instrumental version).

To me, it has just enough wistful sadness evoking childhood past and rememberence of innocence lost and magic faded.

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Full disclosure: If you click on the link and choose to buy that CD, I get a referral bonus at no additional cost to you. Capitalism at it's best!!!

Who better to poke fun at than yourself?

This is why I like The Economist magazine. In an article discussing the patchwork of regulations on interstate alcohol sales and how they are affecting the small wineries in the United States, the last lines include this bit of humor:

Mr Lucas adds a broader historical perspective. “I blame this all on the English,” he tells The Economist. “You sent us a boatload of Pilgrims. Just think if the Mayflower had been full of Italians.”

The Economist is based in London.

I suspect the irony is lost on them

Via Dean's World:

A.C.L.U.'s Search for Data on Donors Stirs Privacy Fears
By STEPHANIE STROM

Published: December 18, 2004

The American Civil Liberties Union is using sophisticated technology to collect a wide variety of information about its members and donors in a fund-raising effort that has ignited a bitter debate over its leaders' commitment to privacy rights.

Some board members say the extensive data collection makes a mockery of the organization's frequent criticism of banks, corporations and government agencies for their practice of accumulating data on people for marketing and other purposes.

An object lesson on how easy it is for any organization to stage a creeping invasion of privacy.

In the midst of appreciating the irony in all its lugubrious glory, we should stop and think about the broader implications. They are neither pretty nor comforting.

A hot line to heaven

The Economist magazine has an interesting analysis of the role of religion in the Presidency of George W. Bush. An example of their balanced viewpoint is:

Mr Bush is in fact in the mainstream of recent presidents. As Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre points out, Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school while president. Bill Clinton talked about Jesus more often than Mr Bush and has spoken in more churches than Mr Bush has had rubber-chicken dinners.

They go on to point out some subtle points that I had not observed previously. As I have said repeatedly, even before I moved to France, it is important to get your news and analysis from multiple sources, including ones based outside the United States.

Meanwhile, near Saturn...

...the Cassini-Huygens mission continues it's exploration of strange new worlds.

Through the eyes of soldiers

Not reading, exactly, but recommended highly just the same:

Under Mars - An online archive of soldiers' photos

Take the warning regarding the graphic nature of the photos seriously. There are some very moving photos there, along with the mundane and everything in between.

This one is rather striking.

Just in time for the holidays...

...the latest Carnival of the Recipes (the 18th, believe it or not!) is up at Mountaineer Musings.

Hopefully I'll be able to participate again after New Years.

Some advice for the holidays

I'd follow this advice before going to bed instead of before leaving the house...

Reuters issues a correction

A correction has been issued for a Reuters News story:

Please read headline as "Michael Jackson to invite visitors to Neverland" ... instead of ... "Jackson to throw kids holiday party at Neverland" and in first paragraph "...open to a group of visitors on Friday."

Headlines, fascinating how much meaning is conveyed in such a few words. In a certain context a headline can be changed from having rather unpleasant implications to something banal.

I wonder if the "correction" was prompted by lawsuit concerns, or perhaps objections from the Jackson PR machine.

I don't know where she gets them

Jennifer posts another great quote.

We need to trade lists of quotes one of these days...

Motivations behind attempts at emotional manipulation

Pennywit raises some valid questions regarding cynicsm, intentions, and emotional manipulation. He covers it so well there is little left to add.

A former Republican Congressman looks at Social Security privatization

Joe Scarborough points out TANSTAAFL... Social Security privatization isn't going to come for free:

You see, they've got this really cool plan to privatize parts of Social Security that usually make free market conservatives like myself giddy. We start talking about the invisible hand and the power of market forces.

Only problem is that this plan to get government off our backs costs a cool $2 trillion in transition fees.

And— let me see if you are following me here— who pays for that?

That's right. YOU!

He then makes a similar prediction as I did regarding the ultimate outcome of Social Security privatization:

But that's not the biggest problem with this $2 trillion Social Security plan. What bothers me the most is the fact that everybody in Washington knows that allowing Americans to invest parts of their Social Security payments in the stock market will produce some winners. But capitalism also always produces losers, and we all know that there will be millions of Americans who will make stupid investments in the coming years. (See Enron, etoys, Pets.com, Worldcom)

So what will happen when they retire and start complaining to their local congressman and TV camera crews about how they're about to be thrown out in the streets because of the dumb investments they made with their Social Security payments years ago?

Congress will pass the "Save Our Stupid Seniors Investment Relief Act of 2025," thereby guaranteeing that all Americans will have all Social Security payments restored in full.

That will require that you take your third job in the Chinese high tech factory just so you can pay even more taxes to Washington.

It's a bright future, brought to you by a gang in Washington who really couldn't care less about what happens to the world they pass on to their children and grandchildren.

How do I know this? Because I was in Congress long enough to learn that you judge politicians by their actions, not their words.

And for more observations of a TANSTAAFL nature, Paul Krugman had this to say in The New York Times:

Privatization would begin by diverting payroll taxes, which pay for current Social Security benefits, into personal investment accounts. The government, already deep in deficit, would have to borrow to make up the shortfall.

This would sharply increase the government's debt. Never mind, privatization advocates say: in the long run, they claim, people would make so much on personal accounts that the government could save money by cutting retirees' benefits. Financial markets won't believe this claim, as I'll explain in a minute, but let's temporarily grant the point.

Even so, if personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all.

How, then, can privatizers claim that they could secure the future of Social Security without raising taxes or reducing the incomes of future retirees? By assuming that workers would invest most of their accounts in stocks, that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits.

We can argue at length about whether the high stock returns such schemes assume are realistic (they aren't), but let's cut to the chase: in essence, such schemes involve having the government borrow heavily and put the money in the stock market. That's because the government would, in effect, confiscate workers' gains in their personal accounts by cutting those workers' benefits.

Once you realize that privatization really means government borrowing to speculate on stocks, it doesn't sound too responsible, does it? But the details make it considerably worse.

First, financial markets would, correctly, treat the reality of huge deficits today as a much more important indicator of the government's fiscal health than the mere promise that government could save money by cutting benefits in the distant future.

After all, a government bond is a legally binding promise to pay, while a benefits formula that supposedly cuts costs 40 years from now is nothing more than a suggestion to future Congresses. Social Security rules aren't immutable: in the past, Congress has changed things like the retirement age and the tax treatment of benefits. If a privatization plan passed in 2005 called for steep benefit cuts in 2045, what are the odds that those cuts would really happen?

Second, a system of personal accounts, even though it would mainly be an indirect way for the government to speculate in the stock market, would pay huge brokerage fees. Of course, from Wall Street's point of view that's a benefit, not a cost.

There is, by the way, a precedent for Bush-style privatization. One major reason for Argentina's rapid debt buildup in the 1990's was a pension reform involving a switch to individual accounts - a switch that President Carlos Menem, like President Bush, decided to finance with borrowing rather than taxes. So Mr. Bush intends to emulate a plan that helped set the stage for Argentina's economic crisis.

If Mr. Bush were to say in plain English that his plan to solve our fiscal problems is to borrow trillions, put the money into stocks and hope for the best, everyone would denounce that plan as the height of irresponsibility. The fact that this plan has an elaborate disguise, one that would add considerably to its costs, makes it worse.

At the least, it is something to think about.

One of the things that makes us different than the rest of the world

John points out that while not being widely reported by a media that is interested in the sensational, not the important, the bad actors in some of the cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq are being tried and sentenced.

Iraq election lists

The Commissar has an interesting summary of the party lists for the upcoming elections in Iraq.

I still don't get it...

...perhaps it's a simple inadequacy on my part, but the widespread (at least from what I've seen) celebration that Rachel Lucas is blogging yet again (she's had more on-again off-again uncertainty than a hundred Hamlets) is beyond my comprehension. I read her first return, and her second, and now the latest incarnation, the so-called Blue-Eyed Infidel, and all I see is someone who likes to rant for the sake of ranting.

Fuck, I can do that...

I can do it better than she can, too...

I just choose not to, because it accomplishes absolutely nothing.

Is that what it takes to get readers?

If that is what the world wants, it confirms my occasional low opinion of people, an opinion that comes to the fore when it's late in the night and I've had more than a few glasses of Scotch.

On a slightly different note, there seems to be something odd about NZ Bear's TTLB ecosystem. It hasn't picked up posts here that I know have been linked to by many folks (my Spirit of America fundraising posts, for the biggest discrepancy, but others as well). Is there something that I'm doing wrong here, or a known bug, or what?

From The Onion...

Satire at its very best.

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Link from Dean's World.

If doing the right thing isn't sufficient enough reason...

...John of Argghhh! is offering some gifts for the first 10 people who contribute $100 or more to the Spirit of America campaign credited to the Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom!

The projects funded by the Spirit of America remind me of the movie The Mouse That Roared... think about it...

Ain't America great? I think so.

You can go to John's post to donate, or you can donate by clicking here:

Some thoughts for Wednesday

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
   -E. F. Schumacher

Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.
   -Joaquin Setanti

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.
   -Clare Booth Luce

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
   -Blaise Pascal

Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.
   -Jimmy Breslin

...or blogging?

An appeal to reason

Here is an Intellectual Intercourse on why it is important to donate to Spirit of America.

You can also click here to donate:

Into a mirror, darkly

Boudicca has her own very personal take on the misdeeds perpetrated at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay, actions taken in an atmosphere of an administration getting legal briefs written stating these prisoners are not covered by the Geneva Conventions, a contention repeated publicly by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Boudicca reminds us of the outrage arising from the public display of POWs by the Iraqis during the first Gulf war:

...I saw the faces of our soldiers and pilots, faces of beaten men, I remember thinking, “Those savages! We are Americans! We would NEVER do something like that to our prisoners! NEVER! What evil people reside over there.” Yes, I truly thought we were better than they. We are a civilized people of course and evidently, they.were.not.

But then the scandal at Abu Gharib occurred and I realized, there is evil everywhere, just because we are American, does not mean we are exempt. The beautiful thing about living in America is that those who committed the atrocities WILL be punished. Those who committed the crimes against my friend, will never be. I do take solace in the fact that those fueled by evil at Abu Gharib will get what is coming to them.

Rumsfeld "took responsibility" for the Abu Gharib scandal, Rumsfeld is responsible for the too few numbers of troops on the ground to occupy a conquered country that has resulted in more deaths after the proclamation of "mission accomplished" in a display of macho preening, more deaths than occurred during the invasion itself.

Rumsfeld still has his job.

Donald Rumsfeld will leave the post of Secretary of Defense at some point, moving on to be on some boards of directors for companies, possibly a heavy-hitter in a lobbyist firm, moving on to the comfortable life of wealth that the old-boys network provides you if you are fortunate enough to be a member of that elite club.

Those who actually perpetrated the evil deeds in Abu Gharib will be punished, as Boudicca says, but what about those who created the atmosphere in which that behavior flourished?

They will not...

I was once an idealist. I felt, no, I knew that the United States would never commit the evils that history is replete with. The United States was the ideal in my mind, the hero, the good guys. Then, as I grew older I had the same realization as Boudicca: evil is everywhere and ideals exist only in the mind.

Despite that loss of innocence, I still love my country. I still have high expectations of it.

A cynic is said to be a broken-hearted idealist. Last night, I wrote:

The acts which expose the feet of clay of the hero, of whom is expected better, cause far more damage than the acts of those who the world already knows are evil.

...and another piece of my heart is broken.

For those who like talk radio...

...there is a horrible secret revealed here.

And while you are there, be sure to donate to the Spirit of America fundraising campaign, or you can help the Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom by clicking here to donate:

An opportunity not to be squandered

Pennywit points out some news from Afghanistan that shows an opportunity that may have a narrow window, an opportunity that if acted upon would advance Afghanistan far along the path out of being a failed state.

Must-read blogging

Jennifer has a quote of the day that you MUST read. Not much else to say after, is there?

Go read it, otherwise, I'll have to steal it and post it here, and you don't want to turn me into a thief, do you????

I've been remiss...

... and I haven't done my duty as a Fusileer and linked to the post today telling you why you should donate to the Spirit of America, so go there, and please read and donate.

Or donate by clicking here:

Not such a wronged saint after all?

James Wolcott has an interesting first-hand brief "read" on Bernard Kerik...

Weeks ago, I found myself in the green room of a cable show with Ed Koch, Bernard Kerik, and Joe Trippi. I had been looking forward to meeting Trippi, but when I stepped into the room and saw these two other slabs of supreme self-assurance taking up real estate, I figured this wasn't the time for chitchat. Since the three were doing a segment together in a matter of minutes, I didn't want to be inconsiderate and "break their concentration," and besides, I couldn't think of anything approriately obnoxious to say in the presence of two stalwart Bush supporters. A hard spherical object, Kerik is physically formidable, not someone you'd want to skirmish with over the last sticky bun on the tray. Upcoming were the Olympics, and Koch asked Kerik if he thought there might be terrorist trouble. Kerik intoned that the security in Athens, in Greece generally, was very porous, and let the subject drop with a combination of ominous understatement and quiet authority that made me suspect I was in the presence of a champion b-s'er.

Kerik exuded too much quiet authority and dramatic effect, trying a shade too hard to convey that he knew things he couldn't speak of and was working from the deep inside, privy to secrets that he carried locked inside the bank vault of his barrel chest. I could see how this tough-guy shtick--which obviously wasn't entirely shtick, but a tough streak that had been refined into an urban lawman persona--would impress fake swaggarts like, well, George Bush, who likes to play dress-up as a range hand and fighter pilot to show what a Hungry man entree he is.

There's more, including some pleasantly acerbic general observations that are both highly entertaining and pointed in a way that even far right-wingers should consider, despite their likely outrage. In Wolcott's post there is a definite condemnation of this man...

...a man who despite his apparent promise on the surface had significant issues that arose when the deeper waters were plumbed, and sadly, they did not need to be plumbed too deeply (look here for a roundup of posts that look at the deeper, more turbid waters than those that appear on the surface).

Once upon a time...

...I wanted to be the ultimate Heinleinian hero, or perhaps a Master Keaton (those who know, know...), but now at 40 years old maybe more a Mito Komon...

...or ultimately, simply as a man who did more good than he did evil...

Somehow, somewhere along the line, I became someone who seems to be viewed as somewhere between a hyper-intelligent James Bond and the ultimate nerd...

Read on if you dare or care about the ramblings of a semi-drunk blogger writing his stream-of-consciousness...

...keeping in mind what Ghandi said, "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

Regardless, I'm alone by my choice except for my cat, despite having more than a few volunteers to "ease my loneliness" (sorry to those out there, it is not intended as a slam, but I can't find a better but still concise way to express it..)

Where do I go from here, since I live in France for the reasonably foreseeable future?

I could say "only The Shadow knows", but it seems I am The Shadow to most folks...

Those who haven't forgotten him, that is...

The loss of memory is the curse of civilization, and the ultimate death...

Which brings to mind something I have wanted to say to those who try to excuse the torture perpetrated by the United States in Guantanamo and Abu Ghirab (not to mention sending prisoners to nations where torture is used as a matter of everyday routine...):

The acts which expose the feet of clay of the hero, of whom is expected better, cause far more damage than the acts of those who the world already knows are evil.
   -John M. Grant (that is, me...)

Yes, by God, I'll quote myself since I think it's important enough!!!!

I watch the French music television (which unlike MTV still shows music videos), but all I see are pathetic attempts at saying something original in time to music on topics that were already old when Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. It is positively laughable seeing people barely out of their teens sing about love and loss from my 40 year old vantage point...

Then I see Eminem's video for Just Lose It and see that satire is not completely dead...

Then in browsing iTunes for Just Lose It I run across Lose My Breath by Destiny's Child, a tune that has an infectious, irresistible Brazilian rhythm (which reminds me curiously of the drum rhythms from when I was in high school marching bands...) that I wish I would cause in someone and then when I do, I fear it... Ain't the Internet grand?

Stream of consciousness becomes cognitive dissonance turns into cognitive dissidence which will hopefully collapse into oblivion before the night ends...

This ain't art, it ain't even blogging...

It's bullshit.

---

Forgive the tone of this post. I realized during my 3 hour long meeting with the CEO of my company today that I am now swimming in deeper waters than I have ever tread in before, and I need to either become one of the sharks or be consumed by them. I am soothing this realization with a liberal dose of the best single-malt Scotch currently in production because my supply of the best single-malt ever made is still in my house in the US...

Something to remember with discussing Social Security reform and "privatization"

Never forget:

TANSTAAFL

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Believe it... This is the MOST fundamental law of the universe, even moreso than gravity.

I can't emphasize this enough.

For those catching up after a weekend of holiday shopping

I wrote a heck of a lot of words this weekend, and I don't want them to go to waste. Here are two posts I particularly don't want to get lost in all the noise:

Wahabism Delenda Est

A comment on Social Security "privatization"

Please comment! The silence has been deafening...

My first blog award...

... a Windy, has come from Jennifer, who describes me as giving great ping.

I've been described as doing many things well, with more than a few not appropriate for public mention, but "giving great ping" is definitely a new one. Not that I'm complaining!!!!

Entertainment has no soul if no sweat is involved in its creation

Joe Gandelman, ordinarily The Moderate Voice but on weekends guest posting at Dean's World, has noticed there is a dearth of entertainment that appeals to multiple ages on more than one level. His evidence is compelling, and it goes to show that the contemptuous, set-piece linked together with tenuous threats of plot factory-made crap that passes for entertainment out of Hollywood is having the green kicked out of it by innovative creators like the folks at Pixar for a fundamental reason.

People have seen all the plots, there aren't that many. The ancient Greeks knew and listed them all, thousands of years ago. What people want to see is creativity and work put into the interactions, into the dialogue so that it's aimed not at a single target-market, but instead is clever and appeals sometimes to the young, sometimes to those not so young, and sometimes to everyone. Creativity that comes not from some abstract inspiration, but from serious skull-sweat. As Jack London said, "You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club."

Intelligence report from a Fusileer in a strange land

I've successfully infiltrated the heart of deepest, darkest France, and what do I find?

The depths of treachery, The Northern Alliance in league with the French!!! At last contact, they were trying to raise money by selling French Army surplus rifles - dropped once, never fired.

Help The Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom raising money for The Spirit of America instead of the allies of cheese eating surrender monkeys!!!

Click here to donate:

---

Thanks to Pamibe for the graphic!

Why donate?

It is doubtless that the few regular readers I have are perceptive enough to have noticed that I am participating with the Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom in the Spirit of America fundraising campaign. More than a few people who know me well have asked me, "Why are you participating in this thing?" since it is far outside my normal path.

It is as simple as this: The world knows the people of the United States, not the government but the people, as remarkably generous. Even during the height of tensions between the US and Iran, every time there was an earthquake in the region, the people of the United States contributed to relief efforts. Any time there is any kind of natural disaster in the world, the people of the United States are in the forefront in contributing money and other forms of aid to the stricken region, regardless of past or present enmity.

No matter of how you feel about the Iraq War or the Afghanistan War, you cannot deny that helping the people in these countries is the right thing to do. Regardless of how you feel about the larger War on Terrorism, you cannot deny that giving the people of Iraq and Afghanistan a helping hand in putting together their lives and their economies will help prevent the kind of hatred that breeds further attacks to create more death and destruction, especially when that help comes directly from the people of the United States and not through some government program. It is difficult to explain how large an effect it has when people know that the help they received came from voluntary donations from individual people, not from a government because governments are viewed as almost always having an agenda. The Spirit of America is dedicated to helping the people of Afghanistan and Iraq put their lives together.

We in the United States are fortunate beyond all measure, and this great good fortune is not due to our own efforts but instead due to the efforts of those who came before us. The least we can do is share our blessings with others who do not have this good fortune, sowing the seeds that those who follow us will reap in a harvest of good will. So, even when put in the most Machiavellian terms, the Spirit of America projects will help the United States in the long term, turning potential enemies into friends.

The competition between weblogs for the fundraising campaign is all well and good, but in the end, it is the results that are the important thing. Donate if you can, no matter who "gets the credit."

Click here to donate:

The Commissar is building a new collective...

...a "blogues gallery" he terms it. For those who are comic-book illiterate, it is a play on the term "rogues gallery", the list of arch-villains of a costumed superhero of which Batman has the most colorful, and not just because of the silly, fun '60s TV series.

I'm off to make my character!

UPDATE:

OK, I'm a geek... Here's what I came up with...

Yes, it's silly, but I needed a break after my blog-novella chapter!!

Blog-novella: Chapter 4

OK, here is the apparently eagerly anticipated next chapter in the infamous blog-novella. The prose is a bit more purple than is typical for me, but it seemed to fit the subject matter, and besides, I don't have any more time to polish it. There are also a few key details in there that I know are wrong, but I didn't have time to send it to the US for my friends who have served in the military to fact-check me.

I have cut a few hundred words from the end when I realized that I had left the author of the next chapter nowhere to go. I may post the entire chapter I wrote later, a "director's cut" version as it were.

Before reading the extended entry below, be sure to read the preceding chapters:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

---

James stared gloomily out of the window of the taxi as he returned from his trip to town. The meeting hadn’t lasted long after they finished eating lunch; Griffith was anxious to get his night started at one of the “gentlemen’s clubs” that supplied Costa Rica with a steady stream of male tourists looking for something a little extra than the normal vacation spots in the United States had to offer. Fortunately, his eagerness distracted him from asking questions after he had delivered his message, questions that James hadn’t been able to think of good answers to during the taxi ride into town.

That’s the real reason the son of a bitch came down here, anyway. I was a convenient excuse to get the publisher to pay for his trip to get laid.

Bastard...

The reason the meeting hadn’t lasted long after they finished eating was that Griffith had delivered an ultimatum. Show at least five completed chapters by the end of next month or they would terminate the contract and demand the advance be returned.

Fuck.

Most of the money from the advance was gone, some to that expensive lawyer in Belize, some to bribes in both Belize and now in Costa Rica, more to buy vodka. Life was inexpensive in Costa Rica, but not free, and he didn’t have enough money to return the advance, much less continue to live without some kind of work.

What kind of work can I get here, a fucking one-legged-wonder who knows how to shoot a rifle, how to patch up battle wounds, how to pass off something I didn’t write as my great novel, but doesn’t know anything else?

Fuck.

He paid the taxi driver and began the slow walk over the uneven path to his back door. The prosthetic leg worked fine on sidewalks and floors, but rocky paths required techniques he hadn’t practiced much yet. The artificial knee joint needed to be lined up just so, and the wine they had with lunch, the scotch they capped the meal with, all on top of his vodka breakfast didn’t make his movements any more sure. He slipped, and the prosthetic leg wrenched and twisted painfully against his stump; intense pain despite the calluses he had developed.

“FUCK!”

He reached the rear porch just as Maria opened the door, her eyes wide and questioning.

“Senior James! What is wrong?”

James took in a deep breath. “I slipped and twisted my fake leg, that’s all. Nothing to trouble your pretty head about. Give me a smile there... that’s a good girl.”

“I leave soon, almost finished,” Maria said.

James held the door for her to go back into the kitchen. The first time he held the door for her, he had to convince her to go through it before him. Now, after a month, she only showed the slightest hesitation before moving inside.

You can take the boy out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the boy. Where’s the damn vodka?

Maria turned and looked at him. Had he said that out loud? He couldn’t tell. He spotted the vodka up on the shelf where Maria had put it while cleaning house. He got a glass, grabbed the bottle, and went into the living room to take off the artificial leg and begin his afternoon ritual of breathing in the cool breezes and slaking his thirst until he couldn’t see straight.

He was just pouring his second glass when Maria came in. She seemed to be steeling herself for a moment before she said, “Finished for today, Senior James. This,” she waved the money he had put on the table before he left for town. “This, it too much. I not take more than I supposed to take.”

James sighed, “Girl, I know we agreed to $20 a month, but if I want to pay you more, don’t complain! Think of the extra as a tip... and would you please drop the ‘senior’ bit and call me ‘James’ or even better, ‘Jim’?”

“Oh, no!” The pitch in her voice rose, “I not call you that, I show you respect. You in army, you fight for good, you pay price!” She gestured to his missing leg. “It not right, you alone all the time. My sister, she say she come visit you, she comfort you, no charge.”

He stopped short, his alcohol-fueled frustrated reply choked on the way to his mouth. Instead, after a breath and a brief moment, he said gently, “Maria, you and your sisters are good people. Thank you very much, but you really shouldn’t be concerned with fucked-up wrecks like me. Take the extra money, I want you to use it to help you and your family get a better life, OK? For me, please. If you want to respect me, this is how you can do it.”

Her eyes glistening, Maria nodded slowly and then said quietly, “It not right, you alone all the time. It not good, you drink all the time. I stay?” She gestured to his missing leg again, “It not bother me it gone, I sleep with you?”

“Look, girl, what I’m missing can’t be filled by fucking, and it has nothing to do with my God-damned leg!” His mouth hung open for a moment, knocked off his well-worn path of thought for the second time in a minute. Maria stood there trembling bravely. Resuming his gentle tone, he said, “Maria, I am truly sorry I yelled just now. I’ve had a bad day. You are a beautiful girl, and if you were older I would have a very difficult time turning down your offer. Please, take your money and go buy something nice for yourself. Don’t worry about this old train-wreck...” her eyes grew confused. “Don’t worry about me,” he corrected himself, “everything will be OK.”

She nodded slowly and turned to leave. “I back tomorrow, OK? I change bed and plant garden.” She had insisted on starting a small garden, and he agreed on the condition that she take some of the fruits of her labor back to her family. Tiredly he replied, “Yeah...” and as he stared out the front window he heard her quick steps through the kitchen and the back door open and close.

Fuck...

Only in Costa Rica would a 16 year-old girl worry about showing respect to a broken down Marine.

...fuck...

He lit a cigarette, took a long, slow drag, and then cooled his tongue with more vodka. The breeze had died down before its daily change in direction; his house was close enough to the coast where the effects of the land and sea breezes were felt, and the windows were placed appropriately to take full advantage of the winds. He kept his arms resting on the arms of his wicker chair to dissipate the heat until the breeze returned. The smoke from his cigarette rose in two straight tendrils connected by a thin veil until they slowly writhed more and more chaotically until joining the random cloud near his head. He stared at the stream of smoke rising from the end of his cigarette and thought back to the first time he had seen smoke do that, long ago, when he was still in high school.

***

It was his senior year, and he had gone to visit his best friend, who had graduated the year before. His friend had gone in on an apartment with a roommate he had met through his job. James had met the roommate but hadn’t spoken much with him. He was Vietnamese, and James didn’t quite know what to make of him. In his part of the South, you were white, or you were black. He didn’t know where Vietnamese fit in that simple social structure. Oh, there were subdivisions of white and black, but once that major distinction was made you knew what the rules were. Thach didn’t fit, so James didn’t know how to talk to him. His best friend Edward had remarked after the introduction when James had been so awkward, “Jim, you’re brilliant about many things, but you are a complete social idiot.” The words were true and they both knew it; there was no sting that accompanied the simple statement of fact between friends.

On this occasion, Edward wasn’t home, but Thach was, and he invited James inside. “I’m celebrating, today is the anniversary!”

Puzzled, James asked, “What anniversary?”

“It was 25 years ago that I arrived in the United States. I was a boat-person, you know, not always the great success you see now. Come on in, have a drink and help me celebrate!”

Thach had obviously been celebrating for quite a while, James saw that the gallon-sized bottle of cheap wine was half-empty as Thach poured the wine into a cup for him and then refilled his own Big Gulp cup with the remainder of the bottle.

Thach walked into the common living room he and Edward shared. Their apartment was an add-on in the attic of an old ranch-style house. The two rooms they used as bedrooms were at either end of the former attic, with a living room, small bathroom, and kitchen stuffed in the space between. As James followed Thach into the room, he saw the haze of smoke that was typical in the room when either Thach or Edward held court and spent the evening in their cups. Thach had been celebrating for a while.

“Sit down, sit down, here,” Thach being the good host. They made small talk for a brief while, James becoming more comfortable as they spoke. Although he had an accent that halted some words before a Southerner would, Thach spoke English very well, not what James had expected. Finally, James grew comfortable enough with the situation to ask, “Do you know when Edward will be back?”

“Nope, don’t know. He comes, he goes, it’s all random. I can’t keep track. He should be back soon, though.”

“OK, I can wait a while. You said you were celebrating coming to the US. What happened, how did you end up here in the deep South of all places?”

“Ah, yes. That was a long time ago. I went to high school in Magnolia, Arkansas, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Ah, right. I haven’t told you yet. I was placed there with a family after I was processed out of the refugee camp the government had set up for boat-people. It was nothing like the family I lost in Vietnam. I haven’t seen my brother since we made it to Saigon...”

Thach was leaning forward as he spoke, his forearms resting on his knees. The twin tendrils of smoke from his cigarette carried the veil between them up to the twisted chaos of smoke near Thach’s head. As he spoke, Thach’s voice had grown softer, his head slowly tilting forward and down until his eyes could no longer be seen.

“The North was coming. My brother and me, we were going down the main highway to Saigon. Our family was known to have supported the government, the South, and our parents told us to run. My father refused to run away, and my mother wouldn’t leave my father. My mother did make me and my brother leave. We were lucky, we were on a moped, my brother was driving it, he was older, I was on the back. The others on the highway, they were running at first, then walking, and finally stopping by the side. I had to push people away, they were grabbing me, trying to pull us off and steal the moped. The tanks were behind us... We got into Saigon and saw the helicopters. They were flying to and from the US Embassy. We tried to go there, but too many people, crowding, shouting... I couldn’t find my brother. I’ve never seen him again... The helicopters make a noise, you know, a noise like a frightened heart beating. I don’t like them. My first apartment here was near the hospital, but the first night a helicopter landed, I couldn’t sleep, I had to leave...”

Thach took a drag from his cigarette, breaking the tendrils and tearing the veil between them, simultaneously breaking the spell of silence that hung over them like the cloud of smoke darkening the light from the naked bulb in the ceiling.

“Here, I want to show you something.” Thach got up and moved unsteadily towards his bedroom. James followed as Thach walked to his desk and pulled out a couple of old notebooks. “I used to practice my English by writing what happened every day. I started when I was 10 years old, and I didn’t stop until I got to college. I want you to read it.”

“Why? Has Edward read it?”

“No, no one else has ever read it.”

“Why me? Isn’t Edward your closest friend?” Edward had mentioned something about being one of Thach’s few friends.

“Yes, he is, but you are the only person who hasn’t said, ‘Sorry’ or some other fucking platitude when hearing about my brother and my real family. Go ahead, read it. You can give it back to me later.”

***

James poured another glass of vodka and lit another cigarette. The notebooks were never returned. About a month after Thach loaned them to him, he was killed in a car accident. Drunk driving from more “celebrating.” In the press of time with the funeral, helping Edward pack Thach’s few possessions, graduating high school, and dealing with getting a girl pregnant, he forgot all about the notebooks. Getting that girl pregnant had changed his life. The statutory rape laws in the South took little consideration of the age of the boy involved, so he was offered either probation with a criminal record or join the military. He joined the Marines.

He thought back to the second time he noticed the twin tendrils and veil of cigarette smoke. It was in a bar, shortly after completing basic, when he had decided to become a medic and was on leave with two of his buddies before going into the additional training he needed before he received his active duty assignment. It was near the end of the evening, but the bar was still crowded with other newly minted Marines celebrating. Someone bumped into someone else, words were spoken, tempers heated quickly in the testosterone charged atmosphere, and the brawling began. James didn’t duck quickly enough and was knocked to the floor, his head spinning from the alcohol and the blow. A cigarette was lying on the floor nearby, twin tendrils of smoke rising from the end with the tenuous veil between, something to focus on. One of his buddies pulled him up and said, “We’ve gotta get outta here, come on!” They rushed to the door and squeezed out to the sound of screeching tires heralding the arrival of the shore patrol. When he tried to thank his buddy, it was brushed aside as if it were nothing special, it was just what was done.

The Marines... what a lot of good memories that simple name brought up, and one terrible finale.

As had become inevitable, his memory called up the last Marines he treated before that denouement where his leg spun away carrying with it his life among his buddies, men for whom the word “brother” didn’t even begin to describe the relationship between them. The Marine was down from a mortar explosion, which had ripped apart his hip and leg. He was in a lot of pain, and James quickly got morphine into him. Just before the drug took hold, the Marine, Griffin, said to him, “Hum something, anything, please God...”

James said, “Hum something? What are you talking about?”

“I’ve got this tune stuck in my head, ‘Rock-it’, and I’ll be damned if I die with a fuckin’ Herbie Hancock song stuck in my brain,” Griffin gasped out.

“Hell, Marine, you aren’t going to die, so I’m not going to make a fool out of myself and hum for your ass!” James saw the morphine had eased the pain and pulled Griffin away from the here-and-now, then after checking the field dressing and making sure Griffin was stable he turned to help with the other Marine down, Jackson, who was beyond any mortal aid, but he still needed to check to make sure the body was cared for properly and with due respect, because that was just what was done.

As far as he knew, Griffin didn’t die. He wasn't sure because the next day was when a part of James did.

It must have been an RPG combined with a remote controlled IED as a follow up. The tactics of the enemy were growing more sophisticated; they were learning the patience needed for good time-on-target effects. First the RPG to knock out the APC out of commission, then the IED as the Marines scrambled to carry the wounded out into another vehicle that could carry them out of the fire zone. James couldn’t hear well after the RPG hit, but he didn’t need to hear to see from the upthrown hands of the driver that the APC wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I have to get my man out of here, we’re sitting ducks...

He could hear the spanging sound of bullets on the side of the immobile APC. Hand signals and training told everyone what they needed to do. They opened the door and James made sure they did as little further injury to the wounded Marine as possible, with the wounded Marine’s buddy helping him carry him. The dust and smoke that was a part of every combat hung in the air, drying out his mouth and adding a sharp bite to the metallic tang of the blood, obscuring vision as they raced towards the next APC. He heard the thudding of a heavy machine gun.

Not an AK, so the good guys...

He motioned with his head the direction to go. Then the IED went off...

The clarity of his memory of watching his leg fly away, the crystal realization that it was his leg, not someone else’s, returned to haunt him every night. His first thought after that realization was that it wasn’t the leg of his man, his wounded Marine.

OK, then, he’ll pull out all right...

The world that was grey-yellow from smoke and dust suddenly went red, then black.

The morphine his fellow Corpsmen had pumped into him didn’t dull the memory, nor make distant the low thudding of the chopper coming to evacuate the wounded to Dogwood, a sound more felt than heard, the low thudding like the beating of a panicked heart. A heart beating quickly because he was unable to speak, unable to find out what happened to his wounded Marine, his man.

When he was released from the hospital after he lost his leg, he lived with his parents. Since he had joined the Marines straight out of high school, he had never had an apartment or house of his own, and until he finished his physical therapy and learned to walk with his new prosthetic leg, he was told either to live with someone who could help him care for himself or in a “halfway house” for those with “new lives to adjust to.”

Halfway, hah, more like half-assed...

He moved into the room he had lived in until he graduated high school and joined the Marines. He got some emails from his buddies, still over in the Sandbox, but rather than the comfort intended they brought pain in the knowledge that he was not there to stand by them, to take care of his Marines when the fecal matter hit the rotary air-impeller. He was not a part of the brotherhood anymore. The social idiot was now cast out of the only society that he understood, and the sympathetic looks of the neighbors, the overly-solicitous care of his mother, the proud distance of his father who lacked the words to say what he felt, they all added to the bitter taste that only vodka would wash away for merciful moments that were all too brief.

He found the old notebooks Thach had given him all those years ago when he was rummaging around searching for something to pawn. His liquor bill was starting to add up, and he needed money, money to get away from this house that was out of a past that belonged to someone else, a past that was no longer his. He paused in his search when the notebooks slid out, and he opened up one and began to read. He didn’t stop reading until hours later. There was an eloquence in the broken English that the young Thach had written that matured into something that James could relate to, all too well in the description of the flight to Saigon, with the blood and fire and death pursuing the young brothers along the highway. Thach was dead now, and James was exiled from the only people among whom he had ever truly been alive. Perhaps the eloquence of a dead refugee could help one walking but just as dead.

His blood ran cold when he got the call from the publisher until he realized the name he had just heard was Griffith, not Griffin. They were going to publish the novel, he said, but they needed to change a few things. Since Magnolia was a real town, they wanted to use a different name to avoid liability. The name “Dogwood” popped out of his mouth before he realized it, and the novel that was not fiction gained the name The Road to Dogwood, no one knowing that Dogwood was a place far from Arkansas, a place of dust and blood where life was snatched from the jaws of death. Life was preserved there, but what of the lives that trailed out of that place of mere physical salvation? Men who might be physically whole, but even within the brotherhood of warriors had lost something precious that left in its place a hole that seemed impossible for even God to fill.

After the publication of The Road to Dogwood, he had the money he needed to get away from the cloying “support the troops” atmosphere that hung around his parents’ house, but he did not know the answer to “get away to where?” until his eyes landed on the book he had re-read while in the hospital, A Man Out of Time.

Belize, that’s it. I may not be 40 quite yet, but I need to get away, and my time seems to be over.

Then he had made Belize too hot to hold him, and the bribes and lawyer drained the proceeds from The Road to Dogwood. It was desperation that made him promise Griffith a sequel, but only on the condition of a large advance that could pay to save his ass. Now it was put-up or shut-up time, and since he hadn’t put-up originally, he didn’t know what his next move was.

It had grown dark during his reverie in the past, and the glow of his cigarette was the only light within the room other than the dim starlight shining through the open windows. He leaned over to pour more vodka, but the bottle was empty.

Fuck...

He struggled to get up, but he missed his crutches and fell onto the floor with them.

Fuck, fuck, fuck...

...it feels good here, cool on the cheek...

...I’ll stay here a while, I’ll get more vodka in a minute...

...

Another day...

...another show trial from the Commissar.

More good eatin'...

The latest Carnival of the Recipes has been posted.

I've been neglectful lately and haven't posted any recipes, but you should still go check it out.

A comment on Social Security "privatization"

I work with people who are fairly intelligent and who plan for the future. Ironically, many of these people say "I don't understand how to invest the money in my 401k."

Here's a dirty secret: The planning-horizon for most people is rarely longer than 6 months.

One of my fundamental philosophies concerning the role of government is that few things are "collective responsibilities" in which government should get involved. The environment (pollution does affect us all), defense, enforcing property rights, preventing abuses of local government, these are some of the areas where the national government should get involved, but from a purely abstract point of view, government should not be involved in retirement planning beyond making sure that con-jobs and other forms of theft are minimized as much as possible.

However appealing from a theoretical viewpoint I find Social Security "privatization", from a practical standpoint I find myself horrified by my vision of the future.

People in general don't plan.

Intelligent people have difficulty figuring out how to invest money in their 401k plans.

On average, professionally managed stock funds perform worse than the market as a whole. Note, these funds are managed by people who are supposed to be experts in the investment field. From The Economist magazine:

The choice between active and passive funds is like steering between Scylla and Charybdis, the more so since disillusionment with equities in general set in. Anger is growing—if the newspapers' financial pages are anything to go by—with those who manage mortals' money. Particular scorn has been poured on those poorly performing active managers who claimed that it was precisely during tough times that they would come into their own against indexed funds. In Britain two-thirds of active fund managers underperformed the index last year, even before the fees that they charged are subtracted. These people are handsomely rewarded for losing money. Each year they pocket 1-2% of the assets they manage, on top of initial charges of as much as 5%. Indexers, by contrast, charge only 0.5% a year, with no upfront fees.

An average fund manager will beat the market some of the time. Over the long run, though, the great majority of fund managers will do no better than the market average, particularly once their charges are taken into account. The chances are slim of finding one of the blessed few who can show real, sustained skill in stock-picking. Even if you find one, you may discover that what made him good in one economic period will serve him less well in the next.

Also from The Economist:

To retire at a reasonable age with roughly 80% of your average lifetime income in equivalent spending power, saving at a rate of around 10% of your income, you need to have at least a 5% annual return on your investments just to compensate for inflation and have the amount of money saved grow sufficiently to achieve that relatively modest retirement goal. Note that the graph above shows that the average fund investor has a return of something less than 3%.

And now, we want to turn some fraction of Social Security funds loose so people can invest that money themselves?

Sorry folks, I see a disaster coming, one that I will have to pay for, because I've been planning since I was 25 for Social Security to NOT be there when I retire. I've been planning to be self-sufficient at as early an age as possible. I will have enough money to retire well before mandatory retirement age, and then all those people who did NOT plan will vote to take it away from me.

This is why I oppose "privatization" of Social Security. I am against most of the philosophy behind what is regarded as socialism, but in this case, I am for Social Security remaining close to what it is today from a purely selfish, self-defense standpoint. I'll end up paying LESS in the long run if we keep the system close to what it is now, whereas I expect to be robbed if we allow the population as a whole to squander their future through a refusal to plan and a willful ignorance that leads to poor decisions, and then vote for themselves a "quick-fix" in 20 years, when the disaster is apparent; a "fix" that I fully expect will penalize those who did plan ahead.

Wahabism Delenda Est

John of Argghhh! reminds us of what Wahabism Delenda Est means, and he includes the conclusion to a recent monograph from the Army War College on the topic of militant Islam. Both what John wrote and the monograph are well worth reading in their entirety.

What is often forgotten is that Islam arose in an area where the dominant culture of the time was tribal, ruled by high passions, wars of revenge, rife with divisions, betrayals, and brutality. Islam was partially in reaction to that culture, but it also drew upon that culture for strength and energy, which is why the Islamic Empire was able to expand so quickly. Despite being an empire, however, it still retained many aspects of that tribal culture.

Christianity gained structure that Islam still lacks because Christianity became incorporated into the Roman Empire, and kept the structure it inherited through the chaotic changes that followed the fall of that empire. Despite the unstructured nature of many of the churches that were born during the Protestant Reformation, the fundamental structure of the Catholic Church helped to form the governmental structures that existed during the Reformation and still exist in radically modified form in Europe today. A tidbit that some are unaware of, the word "catholic" means "universal", and it was this universal nature of the Church and its structure that set up the mode of thought to seek the underlying structure in everything. This helped in many areas, not the least in science. A similar mode of thought towards structure does not exist in Islam, nor does a common governmental structure that is truly accepted by those governed exist in the nations that were created in the area where Islam arose and gained its earliest adherents. One of our key misconceptions in the wider war currently underway is that we think we are fighting an organization such as al-Qa'ida, when even that "organization" is not truly organized in anything more than a loose fashion. This is why analogies to World War II are false.

The key to victory lies in understanding. You must understand the nature of the conflict. In order to defeat your enemy, first you must understand him. Ultimately, the victory that lasts is the one where you learn how to make your enemy into your friend. We have been told there is a lot of "hard work" ahead. More often than not, the right thing to do is the one that is the most difficult actually do, not in terms of work but in terms of acceptance.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
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To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
   -Sun Tzu, the Art of War

Biased media?

Conservatives say the news media has a liberal bias. Liberals say the news media has a conservative bias.

I say they're simply incompetent.

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Sorry, I lost the trail through which I got the link.

For all you Star Wars geeks out there...

...Caltechgirl at Not Exactly Rocket Science has something for you to convince you to donate to the Spirit of America. Scroll down to the bottom of the post to see the movie. It's safe, Jar-Jar Binks does NOT appear. (Underpants warning: Music may start right away, and it's a bit on the loud side, so be prepared so you don't need to change your shorts)

For those who are more into Star Trek or Babylon 5, you can donate by clicking here:

And if you're not a science fiction geek, what are you doing on the web????

The first step to solving any problem...

...is to admit you have a problem. The second step is to actually identify the nature of the problem. Thomas Friedman may have identified a key component of the insurgency problem in Iraq. From his opinion column in The New York Times:

The U.N. sanctions pulverized Iraqi society - a society already beaten down by an eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the war over Kuwait and some 30 years of Saddam's tyranny. As Saddamism and sanctions chewed up the Iraqi people during the 1990's, many people of talent left. Before the war, the Bush team told anyone who would listen that Iraq had the most talented secular elite in the Arab world. And it was right. The only problem was that during the 1990's many in that elite moved to Amman, Damascus, Beirut, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Cairo, where they worked as professors, music teachers and engineers.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, those who had no access to Baath Party privileges got steadily ground down. Many Iraqi youth, unable to connect with the outside world and unable to find jobs at home, turned to religion. Saddam encouraged this with a mosque-building program. By wrapping himself in an aura of Islam, Saddam also hoped to buttress his own waning legitimacy. So Wahhabi religious influence flowed into the Sunni areas from Saudi Arabia, as Iranian religious influence flowed into Shiite regions.

You know all those masked Iraqi youth you see in the Al Jazeera videos, brandishing weapons and standing over some foreigner whose head they are about saw off? They are the product of the last decade of Saddamism and sanctions. Those youth were 10 years old when the U.N. sanctions began. They are the mushrooms that Saddam and the sanctions were growing in the dark. The Bush team had no clue they were there.

These deracinated, unemployed, humiliated Sunni Iraqi youth are our biggest problem today. Some clearly have become suicide bombers. We can't say what percentage, because, unlike the Palestinians, the Iraqi suicide bombers don't even bother to tell us their names or do a farewell video for mom. They not only are ready to commit suicide on demand, but they are ready to do it anonymously. That bespeaks a very high level of commitment or psychosis, or both.

His conclusion is both sad and frightening, which makes the whole column even more important to read and think about.

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Link found through Stephen Green, the VodkaPundit.

Some perspective from a point of view we should consider

Juliette, also known as Baldilocks, has a very personal story relating to why she supports the Spirit of America. You should go read what she has to say and then donate.

You can also donate by clicking here:

I can't recall who said it...

...but this quote is always a good one:

It is always later than you think.
   -Unknown (until I find the source)

More on the armor shortage in Iraq and the question still not answered

...to hear the words "taking an issue seriously and addressing it aggressively" 19 months after the end of major combat operations in Iraq says something either about the public relations center or the Pentagon's command structure itself.

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Secretary Rumsfeld's response, that we go to the Army that we have, does not explain why nearly two years later our military leaders have tolerated a continuing shortage of armor-plated Humvees in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
   -Lou Dobbs

The buck has to stop somewhere... and it should be with the man who insisted we did not need so many troops to occupy a country as large as Iraq. Technology can be of great assistance in defeating an organized opponent with a defined command and control structure, and in that case reduced numbers are justified. In the aftermath, however, technology does not allow you to cover the ground effectively to establish and maintain order over a larger area. That has been proven in Iraq.

The buck has to stop somewhere... and it should be with the man who said he took responsibility for the abuse of prisoners in both Abu Ghirab and Guantanamo Bay. How would we be responding if captured American soldiers were treated as we treat the prisoners we have? One of the foundations of our culture arises from the simple statement made almost 2000 years ago, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Yet, many claim that since these prisoners are "the enemy" even though many are imprisoned without trial, they "deserve everything they get." That is the attitude of the Islamic fascist extremists, it should not be coming from us.

The buck has to stop somewhere... if it does not stop with Rumsfeld, then his boss and ultimately those who chose him, the citizens of the United States, are responsible.

And yet another bit of innocence dies

The Moderate Voice reflects on the fallout that will result from the recent shooting incident at a rock concert:

When a gunman jumped on a stage at a rockshow in Columbus, Ohio and blasted away, killing four people, the brutal bullets may have also fired into a basic liberty: the freedom to go to a rock show or club without undergoing massive security inspections...and the right to feel safe there.

Chalk this event up as perhaps one as pivotal as the first hijacking, the first suicide bomber, the first school shooting...and other events that have chipped away at citizens rights to move largely unfettered through society and feel safe in everyday venues.

Go read the entire post.

An interesting view of Lenin...

The Commissar (indirectly) helps the Spirit of America fund raising campaign, and includes an incentive to visit the Politburo and click (that may not be safe for some workplaces...).

Adding a taint to the message

From Keith Olbermann's Bloggermann column today on MSNBC.com:

An embedded reporter from the Chattanooga Times Free Press is claiming credit for the blunt questioning yesterday of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by American soldiers in Kuwait.

In an e-mail to an unidentified colleague at the newspaper, Edward Lee Pitts — traveling with a Tennessee National Guard Unit — said that when a scheduling delay permitted him to attend Rumsfeld’s visit with 2,300 troops, he learned that only soldiers could quiz the Secretary. “So,” Pitts writes, “I brought two of them along with me as my escorts. Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have.”

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His e-mail goes on to claim that he even helped ensure that two of the members of the 278th Regimental Combat team got to ask what can only be described as their and his questions. “While waiting for the VIP (Rumsfeld),” Pitts writes, “I went and found the Sgt. In charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd.

“One of my guys,” Pitts writes, “was the second person called on.” That would’ve been Army Specialist Thomas Wilson, whose question provoked first several seconds of silence, and then thunderous applause and cheering from the troops. Wilson asked: “We've had troops in Iraq for coming up on for three years and we've all been staged here out of Kuwait. Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local land fills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles, and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?"

Wilson appeared to be reading his question from a small piece of paper in his hand.

I saw this exchange between Specialist Wilson and Secretary Rumsfeld live (one of the advantages of being in this time zone), and although I'm still not impressed with Rumsfeld's lack of an answer (he had a response, but he most definitely did NOT answer the question asked, a valid question that despite the assertions of some has still not been answered), I am equally angered by a reporter injecting himself into this exchange. Yes, the Bush administration in general and Rumsfeld in particular are hostile to the press, but it is not the role of a reporter to get involved in this way despite the difficulties of getting access and asking questions that are not met with arrogant derision.

More from Olbermann:

In the e-mail Pitts insisted this wasn’t merely a clever journalistic strategy. “I have been trying to get this story out for weeks — as soon as I found out I would be on an unarmored truck — and my paper published two stories on it. But it felt good to hand it off to the national press. I believe lives are at stake with so many soldiers going across the border (to Iraq) riding with scrap metal as protection. It may be to (sic) late for the unit I am with, but hopefully not for those who come after.”

If Pitts’ account is correct, he certainly got the attention for the story that he sought. Yesterday, the Pentagon had to applaud the soldiers who questioned Rumsfeld. This morning, the President echoed that endorsement. And the Defense Department had scheduled an early afternoon briefing on the subject of armoring U.S. troop vehicles in Iraq.

Pitts had opened his e-mail to his colleague with a cogent observation: “I just had one of my best days as a journalist today.”

I disagree with that observation. If the motives of Edward Pitts were indeed what he claims, then I do not fault them. However, I took those questions to be ones that arose from the troops asking them, not written with outside help or possible instigation. I know that the soldiers asking the questions did not have to ask them, they are far from automatons who will do what anyone (especially a journalist) asks; however, it still added a "stage-managed" quality to what was an opportunity for those putting their lives at risk to confront those asking them for that sacrifice. Outside interference is not only morally wrong, but now it has added a taint to the message that Pitts and the soldiers who cooperated with him were trying to convey.

A quick question

Since I didn't support either candidate for President (I voted, but I voted against, not for), I tend to try to understand political positions rather than search for how to best support the one that matches my position or best attack one opposed. I occasionally run into something that puzzles me enough that I need help figuring it out. This is one of those occasions, so I have a question for the unabashed Bush supporters out there. Would you please explain to me:

Why is Donald Rumsfeld still Secretary of Defense? Especially since he "took responsibility" for abuses that now appear to have been more widespread and systemic than first thought.

This is a serious question, so please try not to be snarky in replying. Thanks.

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Links from David at ISOU.

Ain't technology grand?

The Patriette has applied her skills (during finals week, no less) to create a movie as part of the Spirit of America fundraising campaign. Go check it out and please donate.

You can also donate by clicking here:

More on the global economy

From the Financial Times:

Oil exporters have sharply reduced their exposure to the US dollar over the past three years, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements.

Members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries have cut the proportion of deposits held in dollars from 75 per cent in the third quarter of 2001 to 61.5 per cent.

Middle Eastern central banks have reportedly switched reserves from dollars to euros and sterling to avoid incurring losses as the dollar has fallen and prepare for a shift away from pricing oil exports in dollars alone.

Private Middle East investors are believed to be worried about the prospect of US-held assets being frozen as part of the war on terror, leading to accelerated dollar-selling after the re-election of President George W. Bush.

It is very rational to minimize risk of currency fluctuations by diversifying the currencies in which one holds assets. I personally have benefited from the decline of the dollar (in addition to being hurt by it) because I have a significant percentage of my 401k investments in international stock market funds.

However...

What if oil begins to be priced in euros instead of dollars?

This is an unpleasant thought. The United States economy is insulated somewhat from currency fluctuations because oil is priced in dollars. It does not bode well for economic stability if oil prices become even more volatile (in dollar terms, if oil is priced in euros) than they are now. It is not widely known outside of the financial community that the United States has benefited from a huge level of foreign investment, money from outside the country which has helped create jobs inside the country. If the dollar is no longer a "safe-haven" currency, then the United States will be a far less attractive place for foreign companies to put assets because if the currency is too volatile there is a risk that both the capital and the yield may end up being worth less than the initial investment, even for good, low-risk investments.

I'm not trying to say the sky is falling, because the unpleasant thought above is one of the worst case scenarios. Even if it is not highly likely, this is still a possibility that needs to be considered. The problems avoided can mean more for the success of a culture and a nation than the problems encountered and solved.

The satire is biting, but I like it

From BlameBush! via Jennifer:

9/11 Widows to Helm New National Intelligence Agency

If the attacks of September 11 taught us anything, it's that we can no longer rely on Cold War methods to fight a 21st century war. We must bring all our military and civilian intelligence agencies under one roof in order to meet the challenges we face in today's world. So isn't about time we cut the crap and appoint the beloved 9/11 Widows to direct a new national intelligence agency?

There shouldn't be any doubts concerning their qualifications, as having loved ones who died in the World Trade Center automatically makes them experts in counterterrorism. All the widows have been photographed extensively holding copies of the 9/11 Commission Report, so I'm sure they're more than qualified to make major policy decisions concerning national security. They'll also bring accountability to the new department, demanding teary-eyed apologies and group hugs from anyone who doesn't tow the line. To insure better communication between all the intelligence entities, the widows will establish a new counterterrorism center on the set of Good Morning America, where they will appear regularly clutching 8x10 photos of their dead husbands. Most importantly, the nation's borders will be secured with the hiring of 10,000 new immigration agents, each partnered with a life-sized cardboard cutout of a 9/11 widow's' dead husband.

There is more. Go read it, especially if you appreciate satire, but read it and think about it even if you don't. I've long wondered about the tendency of American culture of assigning some kind of special importance or special insight to survivors or victims. In lionizing victims, what does that say about us?

In the spirit of the upcoming season...

...Bloodspite presents a story and a poem to persuade you to donate to Spirit of America. He was very creative, so the least you can do is to go there and read it!

You can also donate by clicking here:

Some observations from the far left and a bit closer to the center

Although the majority of his post is much more hyperbolic than I prefer (other than in satire), James Wolcott makes an observation that I have also noticed:

So this is where we are in 2004. Conservatives not only dictate the terms of debate from their side, but dictate how the other side should conduct itself (i.e., like eunuchs). Liberals would never bother pestering Rush or Ann Coulter to acknowledge one positive achievement of liberalism or feminism a day, because they know they'd only get a dismissive get-lost in return. But conservative have no hesitation in lecturing liberals on how to discuss the war in Iraq, even though all of the power in Washington is now concentrated in Republican hands and liberal Democrats haven't the slightest input into the decision-making process.

The symmetry I've seen is that extreme liberals demand everyone should think as the liberals want, while extreme conservatives demand that everyone behave as the conservatives want.

On a related note, there is something odd going on within the Republican Party. In the context of the Intelligence Bill farce in Congress, The Bull Moose points out:

After the November debacle, the smart money predicted that the donkeys would be at each other's throat. Instead, the Republicans are the ones engaged in a civil war. Only days after the returns were in, Arlen Specter felt the wrath of the fundamentalists and was forced to place his conscience in a blind trust in order to retain his chairmanship.

This probably is indicative of what the future holds for the G.O.P. as long suppressed tensions in the party come to the surface and their leader is increasingly viewed as a lame duck. Social moderates vs. the religious right, neo-cons vs. the foreign policy traditionalists and fiscal hawks vs. supply siders all may be feuding in the coming months and years.

If it stays unified, the Republican Party has control of more of government than either party has had for several decades. If what we have observed in the past few weeks holds true for the next two years, then the election of 2006 may look radically different than those of 2000, 2002, and 2004 because this time the Democratic Party may look like the party of unity. Of course, one should not forget what Will Rogers said three quarters of a century ago, "I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat."

The Commissar continues his campaign...

...of show trials while sneaking in a plug to vote for him in weblog awards. Subtle, just like a true Kommunist...

More on the anniversary today

John of Argghhh! has a list of weblogs that have posts on the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces today.

Yes, I'm on that list (after harassing John via email). I'm now a link-whore... being so low on the weblog ecosystem is starting to affect my ego...

I grew up too soon...

...and yes, there is a whole story behind this that you will likely never hear...

I miss playing with train sets.

A man to keep an eye on

They are showing an interview of King Abdullah of Jordan (he's lost the really bad looking mustache) on the CNN International cable network right now discussing the future elections in Iraq and the possibility of Iraq fragmenting into different sections (Kurdish, Sunni, and Shi'ite). He is a very articulate and apparently intelligent man who speaks English better than many people I know for whom English is their first language.

While I'm not a big fan of monarchial-based systems (including that of the United Kingdom, despite their long history of democracy and alliance with the United States), this man who became king I believe can do a world of good (or evil) in the Arab community. It is important to keep an eye on him and his policies.

A (not so) quick thought...

I'm working on a grand post, but I had a idea that I wanted to toss out there to see what other people thought about it.

In my language lessons, I'm learning how to use pronouns for both direct objects and indirect objects in French. For those who don't recall their English classes (and believe me, I'm having to look stuff up all the time to make sure I understand the differences between English and French), a direct object is a noun or pronoun that receives the action of a verb or shows the result of the action. An indirect object precedes the direct object (in English) and tells to whom or for whom the action of the verb is done and who is receiving the direct object.

Now that the definitions are out of the way, I can talk about the normal word order and what struck me in learning French. In English, the normal order of words, even when using pronouns instead of nouns, is subject-verb-object-object, with the order of the objects depending on the context. In French, when using pronouns for the objects, the order is subject-object-object-verb (with the order of the direct and indirect object determined by which pronoun is being used, the order is dependent upon the pronoun itself). So, in French, there can be a sentence that literally translates (keeping the word order for the formal pronouns), "You him it gave." In English we would say "You gave him it," or more usually adding a preposition, "You gave it to him."

I am getting to a point here, finally. In English, the verb, or the action, precedes the objects of the action. In French, the objects of the action precede the action itself. It seems obvious to me that language affects thought, and thought affects language. Not meaning to drive the point home too much, one could say that English speaking cultures tend to think of the action first, while French speaking cultures tend to think of what is being acted on or to whom the action is occurring first.

Now, put this in the context of the foreign policies of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and think about it for a while. I'm interested in what you have to say about this.

(NOTE: I took Russian for a while, too, but I can't remember enough of it to recall where the objects landed in sentences. I also don't recall my Spanish well enough, either, but I think the grammar was similar enough to English that the objects, even when pronouns, followed the verbs)

A request

If you have added me to your blogroll, and you are not on my blogroll, please let me know by sending me an email to jack -at - randomfate -dot- net. While reviewing my referral logs, I've seen more than a few people who have added me to their blogrolls without my knowing, and I would really like to reciprocate.

Thanks!

Recommended reading - The disappearing dollar

From an opinion in The Economist:

The dollar has been the leading international currency for as long as most people can remember. But its dominant role can no longer be taken for granted. If America keeps on spending and borrowing at its present pace, the dollar will eventually lose its mighty status in international finance. And that would hurt: the privilege of being able to print the world's reserve currency, a privilege which is now at risk, allows America to borrow cheaply, and thus to spend much more than it earns, on far better terms than are available to others. Imagine you could write cheques that were accepted as payment but never cashed. That is what it amounts to. If you had been granted that ability, you might take care to hang on to it. America is taking no such care, and may come to regret it.

As I write repeatedly, the United States is part of a larger world, a world that has been financing our deficit spending, a world that manufactures those inexpensive Christmas presents being bought in Wal-Mart. A world that is both gaining confidence in itself and losing confidence in the United States.

The clues are there for those willing to look at the world around them. Look, examine, think, and draw your own conclusions.

We're bona-fide!

CoolBlue establishes bona-fides for the Fighting Fusileers for Freedom and lists some of the projects that the Spirit of America needs money to fund. Go read what he has to say and please donate.

You can also donate by clicking here:

Thoughts for a Tuesday

I distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink.
   -Joe E. Lewis

Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut.
   -Robert Newton Peck

The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.
   -Eric Hoffer

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
   -Hubert H. Humphrey

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
   -Eric Hoffer

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
   -Voltaire

An infamous day

It almost slipped past me, with the normal distractions of work and life, but today is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. This day, 63 years later, finds us in another worldwide war with lives cut short well before their time.

As you go through your normal weekday routine, spend a brief moment in consideration of those lives lost 63 years ago and since then down to today. Possibly, your blood pressure won't go up when that idiot cuts you off when you're turning into the Starbuck's parking lot to get your coffee.

After developing the foundations of Physics and calculus, Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." We should never forget that the very basis of our lives rests on the shoulders of those who sacrificed and died, and those who are still sacrificing and dying. Suddenly, that Starbuck's coffee seems far less important.

From a truly Southern perspective...

...Eric, the Straight White Guy, explains in his own unique, eloquent fashion why the work funded by the Spirit of America is important. Go read what he has to say, and when you are finished, please donate.

You can also click here to donate:

Like wheels within wheels, the web has links within links

While doing some research at Wikipedia.org for some links to amplify on some possibly unfamiliar terms in a post below, I ran across the term moral panic. It is defined as "semi-spontaneous or media-generated mass movement based on the perception that some individual or group, frequently a minority group or a subculture, is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society."

What a fascinating phrase...

...and quite useful. It plays right into a post I'm still working on, the one that links together so many different and disparate themes. I hope I can get the damn thing finished soon, I have a novella chapter to write!

Only the French would be THIS blasé...

Indeed, it's possible that someone will have a surprise when he opens his bag.

More eBay weirdness

The best humor arises from pathos? I'm not exactly sure what I'm feeling after reading this:

Woman Auctions Father's Ghost on EBay

HOBART, Ind. (AP) - A woman's effort to assuage her 6-year-old son's fears of his grandfather's ghost by selling it on eBay has drawn more than 34 bids with a top offer of $78.

Mary Anderson said she placed her father's "ghost" on the online auction site after her son, Collin, said he was afraid the ghost would return someday. Anderson said Collin has avoided going anywhere in the house alone since his grandfather died last year.

What do you charge for shipping and handling for a ghost?

An Irish sleeping aid

Geoffrey has discovered that half-price Black and Tans help you sleep. He also discovered some nefarious activities by the Northern Alliance of Blogs team who along with The Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom are raising money for The Spirit of America.

Don't make Geoffrey's valiant sacrifice to the hangover gods in vain. Donate now!

You can take the link from Geoffrey's post, or you can click here to donate:

Both sad and hopeful

Even if you don't like his politics, Gary Trudeau wrote an excellent insight today (the link will probably stop working in a week) in Doonesbury:

Old dreams chase away new ones.

To keep 'em, you've got to grab 'em and not let go

There is an observation from a talk-radio host posted at Centerfield discussing how the medium shapes the terms in which the message is stated. This remark describes blogworld (at least the political side of it) equally well.

I really dislike certain parts of human nature...

A heads-up for the future

On the international news stations here, several countries, regions, and cities have been blitz-advertising for how good it is to do business in their part of the world. Most of these areas are in the Middle East, India, or Asia. They are focusing on their infrastructure, and ALSO on their educated workforces. For example, in India, there is a highly educated and motivated workforce available, hence the outsourcing fad among American businesses.

In the decades since World War II, the United States has been the pre-eminent place to do business, with outstanding infrastructure, an educated workforce, and a pro-business governmental climate (despite the whining of big-business, the regulatory climate is still pro-business... for small businesses, however, it is a completely different matter, with the past 30 years seeing a series of regulations and laws that are very burdensome for businesses that don't have the resources to address the work required for compliance). Now, however, the United States is no longer enjoying that sole pre-eminence. While Europe is not a real competitor because it still has the sclerotic regulatory regime that makes hiring and firing extremely difficult, the rest of the world, notably the regions advertising aggressively, is far more dynamic and within the next decade will likely take a significant amount of business from the United States, and not solely for business-related reasons. The first signs of this are showing now, with the numbers of foreign students attending college and graduate school in the United States declining. The decline has been attributed to three main causes, the difficulties with getting a visa since 9/11, increased international competition, and the widening perception that the United States is no longer a "welcoming country."

The last item listed is the most troubling, because the United States has gained much of its strength from our welcoming of people from other nations. Ranging from Albert Einstein to the Irish in Boston to the New York cab driver from India, the United States has benefited from the influx of the most ambitious and adventurous people who were not content with their lot and had the energy to do something about it instead of merely sit and complain. This added a dynamism to the United States that is not found in Europe, our main competitor up until now. If the United States is no longer attractive to those people, they will give the benefits of their talents and energy elsewhere.

Aside from the cultural implications, there are simple technological competitive advantage concerns as well. From an article in the Washington Post by Fareed Zakaria:

The U.S. economy has powered ahead in large part because of the amazing productivity of America's science and technology. Yet that research is now done largely by foreign students. The National Science Board (NSB) documented this reality last year, finding that 38 percent of doctorate holders in America's science and engineering workforce are foreign-born. Foreigners make up more than half of the students enrolled in science and engineering programs. The dirty little secret about America's scientific edge is that it's largely produced by foreigners and immigrants.

Americans don't do science anymore. The NSB put out another report this year that showed the United States now ranks 17th (among developed nations) in the proportion of college students majoring in science and engineering. In 1975 the United States ranked third. The recent decline in foreign applications is having a direct effect on science programs. Three years ago there were 385 computer science majors at MIT. Today there are 240. The trend is similar at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and the University of California at Berkeley.

I noticed this trend back when I was in graduate school in the late 1980s. Half of the students in the Physics department were Chinese, and another 10% were from India. The actual percentage of graduate students who had been born in the United States was less than a quarter of the total.

What is truly a matter of concern, however, is not the loss of business or technology development despite the undeniable fact that the military supremacy of the United States rests on the twin pillars of a strong economy and the best research and development capability in the world. The larger issue is that the United States has been unknowingly projecting a tremendous soft power throughout the world, with the direct consequence of the 9/11 attacks. The Islamofascists are attacking the United States because the recognize that soft power and are threatened by it because they realize that the power of positive ideas based on human freedom and ingenuity are far more compelling than those of submission to clerical authority and conformity. What happens to that soft power when the United States no longer educates the elite of the world, whether in MIT or the Harvard Business School or the University of Chicago? The consequences of a decline in soft power will likely include a decline in hard power as well, because the economy and technology development that our hard power depends upon are themselves dependent upon the factors that give the United States soft power.

The United States had the sympathy of the world after 9/11, and we had worldwide support during the Afghanistan War, despite the brusque dismissal of offers of assistance. Unfortunately, that reservoir of good will is drained, and we are now depleting the positive image the United States has enjoyed for the last 50 years. At least part of the perception that the United States is no longer a "welcoming country" comes from the statements and perceived attitudes of the Bush administration. Regardless of the "right" or "wrong" of the Iraq War, the approach taken towards the international community has been one that discounts anything that is not in perfect alignment with United States policy, similar to the behavior within the Bush administration where anything that is not in perfect alignment with the President is dismissed. Bull-headed stubborness should not be confused with firm resolve, and disagreement should not be viewed as treason. Solutions are found through discussion of different ideas, not through groupthink.

Recall that the final nail in the pre-eminence of the United Kingdom, the last nation that was a true worldwide power, was when they fought the Second World War alone for two years after the fall of France. This serves as a warning that no matter how many resources a nation has, no matter how powerful it seems, "going it alone" has a price, one that is far higher than small compromises made to accommodate allies.

Friends can disagree, but when the friend is treated as if he does not matter, he soon is no longer a friend. There is a way to conduct policy without changing the policy while simultaneously acknowledging that not all nations will have identical views, and that the views of other nations are important and not to be dismissed out of hand. We have shown unequivocally that we have a big stick, now we need to show that we can speak softly as well, not solely to "be popular" with the rest of the world, but to guarantee our future. The people of the United States feel that the United States is a great country, and justifiably so, but often they do not see what happens in the rest of the world. The neighborhood bully rarely thinks of himself as a bad person, but his neighbors live in fear of him and secretly laugh when he falls. We need to make sure that we are not perceived as that bully.

The clues are there for those who are willing to look outside of their comfort zone. It is a long tradition to ignore voices that bring forth uncomfortable thoughts; the story of Cassandra, the Trojan Horse, and the fall of Troy is an ancient one. Here is a question I hope will not be ignored: In 50 years will the decline in foreign graduate student enrollment be viewed as one of the early warning signs pointing to the decline of the United States?

It is up to us to make sure it is not a warning sign, but instead a footnote in history.

I was expecting this...

Rob has just handed me a grenade with the pin pulled.

I'm supposed to write the next chapter in the blog-novella that Christina started and Eric followed up with the second chapter. Now, after complaining about the state that Eric left it in, about a hero rather than a flawed man, Rob goes and leaves me with a final line in his chapter that I now have to figure out how to run with.

And I'll bet real money Rob did it that way on purpose, curmudgeonly SOB that he is. If I ever meet him in person, I don't know if I'll slug him or buy him a beer. Probably both, I just need to decide in which order...

Do it for the cats???

She Who Will Be Obeyed expects you to donate to Spirit of America... and she has some feline help to persuade you.

You can click here to donate as well:

Are you sure you want to know?

I've had more than one person ask me "What exactly is it that you do for a living, anyway?"

An article at CNET News describes the technology I work on. It is in the context of what Intel is planning, but the entire semiconductor industry is working on similar technology as Intel so it applies to my work as well. It's getting more and more difficult to make the devices that go into IC chips faster and more efficient, but it's my job all the same.

Some random quotes to ponder

If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I've found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they'll divulge it.
   -Joyce Carol Oates

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.
   -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It is not every question that deserves an answer.
   -Publilius Syrus

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
   -Cyril Connolly

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
   -Cicero

New recipes are online now!

I've been remiss in linking to the last few because of my schedule, so please go to Fresh as a Daisy for the sixteenth Carnival of the Recipes.

The politburo is in the running

The Commissar, another weblog award nominee, has another show trial (the thirtieth, believe it or not!).

I seem to have a lot of nominees on my blogroll, I guess I hang out in good company.

I missed a nominee

I neglected to mention another weblog award nominee, Pennywit, for best liberal blog (click the link to vote). Here is a recent post that shows why he made the cut.

Someone get these boys a haircut

If you want to see really bad hair, go here...

(I still can't believe we really thought that hair was cool... gads!!! Sometimes a poor memory is a blessing.)

If you're not into flashbacks, go there anyway and donate to the Spirit of America.

Or, you can click here to donate:

And click here to see the folks who are helping us out!

I hate Blogspot...

I just spent half an hour trying to post something on a Blogspot blog. Christina asked Eric and me to watch over her blog Feisty Repartee while she is out of town, and I was trying to do my part by putting up a brief anecdote from my life here in France (I don't have children to write about like Christina, but I do have a weird cat...). Blogspot refused to accept my post several times, from two different browsers. I'm now wondering if it is because I'm on a Macintosh right now.

Argh!!!

I need to leave for work, so I'll try a post from a PC later. Sorry, Christina, but I did try!!!!

2004 Weblog Awards

Despite the kindness of Indigo in nominating me (always a bridesmaid, never a bride... sigh...), I didn't make the cut for any of the "best blog" nominations, but The Moderate Voice (Best of the Top 2500 - 3500 Blogs), Boudicca's Voice (Best of the Top 1000 - 1750 Blogs), and In Search of Utopia (Best Latino, Caribbean, or South American Blog) did make the nominations. Vote early and often for all three!!!

Some curmudgeonly quotes that are worth pondering

Shamelessly stolen from iddybud:

Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you angry.
   -Aldous Huxley

...and a few others from the same curmudgeon Huxley, since I liked the one above so much:

Experience teaches only the teachable.
   -Aldous Huxley

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
   -Aldous Huxley

Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored.
   -Aldous Huxley

Another request to help do some good

Another request for donations to Spirit of America can be found at Dean's World. Please visit, read what he has to say, and if possible, donate.

Click here to donate:

And click here to see the folks who are helping us out!

Thoughts to keep you until I have time to write

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.
   -Carl Sagan

If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong.
   -Mo Udall

When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision.
   -Lord Falkland

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
   -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Success and failure are equally disastrous.
   -Tennessee Williams

Money to do good in two ways...

I'm behind the curve because I've just arrived home after being at work for 15 hours, but I cannot go to bed without supporting my fellows in the Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom in the Spirit of America fund drive. John of Argghhh! has kicked us off in the bleg-a-thon, and anything you give will both help people live better lives and show the world what the United States is really all about.

So click here to donate:

And click here to see the folks who are helping us out!

The dark side of blogging?

Pennywit thinks he may have a problem...

Time for an intervention, perhaps?

Spirit of America fundraising drive

John of Argghhh! is recruiting folks to help his team in the Spirit of America fundraising drive. After perusing the Spirit of America website and reading about their projects, I've decided to join the Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom to help raise money for this work, which ultimately will help us fight terrorism more than any other actions we might take.

Click here to donate:

And click here to join the Castle Argghhh! Fighting Fusileers for Freedom: