Origin of Domestic Cats

So along comes these smarty-pants scientists to tell us using DNA that the ancestors of our felines that entertain or supervise our homes came from the Middle Eastern wildcat "lybica" 10,000 years or more ago. As humans began to cultivate grain and establish grain bins in the Fertile Crescent, so the theory goes, wildcats ingratiated themselves into human communities to keep down the pest problem.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-cats29jun29,1,2077971.story?track=rss

I toured Longwood Gardens outside of Philadelphia last week, a beautiful botanical garden established by the DuPont fortune. I was charmed to see that they have on their payroll a number of cat employees, who are there to keep pests in check. They seemed unusually content, friendly, and well-fed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwood_Gardens

Of course Kipling nailed the real reason why cats decided to make humans their pets in "The Cat Who Walked By Himself".

http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/cat.htm

"But the Cat keeps his side of the bargain too. He will kill mice and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone."

Mitt Romney for Secretary of Transportation

Shame on all those bleeding-heart neighsayers and nattering nabobs who criticized Mitt Romney for lashing his dog to the top of his station wagon for a 12 hour family trip and then hosing down the beast when through its howls it expressed his displeasure by unleashing a waterfall of diarrhea over the car's windshield.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/06/romneys-dog-sto.html

This is a great example of out-of-the-box presidential thinking, just the kind of thinking we need to address the problems of transportation in our country. Instead of raising taxes to build new expressways, we just need to cable our seniors or youngsters to the roof or hood. Perhaps a bit of velcro on our Airbusses and Amtracks is all that we need to alieviate trafiic congestion. And who would not appreciate a good hosing after a long, dusty trip, especially when one's bodily fluids are awry.

For Secretary of Transportation in the next administration, Mr. Romney gets my vote.

God's Omnipotence and Man's Sin

Christianity’s Terminal Paradox

This paradox springs from merely two premises that, in my view, nearly all Christians (and other monotheists) consider valid.

Premise One: God is omnipotent (all-powerful, or a being than which none more powerful can be conceived).

Premise Two: Sin is definable as “acts which violate God’s will.” In short, God hates sin, and sinful acts, by definition, represent violation of God’s will.

This question unleashes the paradox: Can God’s will be violated by man?

You make a few assumptions about about what you regard is Christian orthodoxy, which I don't believe are accurate.

"This paradox springs from merely two premises that, in my view, nearly all Christians (and other monotheists) consider valid."

Most Christians are not monotheists but triniterians-- a definition of God that posits three people within something called the godhead.

"Premise One: God is omnipotent (all-powerful, or a being than which none more powerful can be conceived)."

If one's Christian belief is based on the Bible, no where do I find this claim of omnipotence in the Bible. To the contrary, the general narrative of the Bible shows God arguing, negotiating, appeasing, destroying, and getting surprised or disappointed by man. The two central stories in the Bible-- the temptation of Adam in Eden and the temptation fo Christ in the Garden-- do not imply the unfolding of a cosmic play. Rather, they strike me as events with unknown outcomes that hung on choices and actions.

"Premise Two: Sin is definable as “acts which violate God’s will.” In short, God hates sin, and sinful acts, by definition, represent violation of God’s will."

Your ideosyncratic definition of an act that violates God's will is news to me. In Article Nine of the Church of England Book of Common Prayer, sin is defined as "the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that is naturally engendered of the offspring of Adam." In other words, sin isn't an act at all, but inherent in our humanity.

The big picture, as I understand it, is that God is sovereign only in the sense that he is the creator and sustainer of all, not that he is the puppet-master of all. Thus God, the argument goes, curtailed his omnipotence to give man the gift of morality. If men were automata, morality would cease to exist as chocies would be preprogrammed. A stone, an ant, a baby, a mentally defective person are incapable of acting morally as they lack the capacity to distinguish right from wrong. Now, there is a strain within Christianity such as the Calvanists that argues that nothing happens on earth-- from the holocaust to hiccups-- without God's permissive will. But such a definition in my view doesn't address the issues of theodicy (at least as I think they should be addressed) as the implication is that God is the author of all evil, making God and Satan in effect brothers under the skin.

Back From Vacation

...from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I enjoyed visiting Longwood Gardens, Peddler's Village, and my alma mater Council Rock High School.

They Lift Them Up

ROCK --->(Teachers)<--- HARD PLACE


Teachers have to try and keep the Parents happy, in order to try and keep their Administrators happy, in order to try and keep the school boards happy, in order to try and keep politicians from mandating any more requirements that will be underfunded, and virtually impossible to measure.

I taught public high school for two years and sought life elsewhere.

I can think of only a handful of teachers who really took me to another level, so much so that I've written to them sometimes decades letters expressing my gratitude. But, for the reasons you mention, I think that the best ones do indeed burn out. Under the circumstances, I'm sometimes amazed that anyone teaches.

I have two children. One is just finished fifth grade, and the other just finished seventh grade. Both of them got perfect report cards-- with quarter and year GPAs of 4.0 in both cases. My kids are both gifted and would do well most likely irregardless of who their teachers are. But there is no doubt that their teachers have made the difference as well. Some are kind and sensitive. Others are sticklers for detail and inflict a torrent of homework, projects, reports, and class participation. It would be overly self-depreciating to say that I had no role in their academic achievements. But my participation has been minimal, as their desire to achieve seems to be genuine and inner-driven. As a parent, I have few rules, but what few rules I do have I expect no deviation. These include: to tell the truth always; to do homework without fail and with excellence; to always aim high and do their best; and, above all, to treat their teachers with respect, demonstrating not just brilliance but graciousness as well. I want them always to feel that their teachers do indeed lift them up to more than they can be, in the words of the Josh Groban song:

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up... To more than I can be.

You raise me up... To more than I can be.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/227140/you_raise_me_up/

Aunt Halley: 1910-2007

It was with sadness that we heard of the death of my Aunt Halley on Sunday.

Here is a letter of love, gratitude, and remembrance that my mother and sister e-mailed to her days before she died.

Dear Halley,

Halley was the eldest member of our family of eight children. My father adored her and my mother dearly loved her. More than one person has saidthat she looks like our mother and this was more apparent as she grew older.Be that as it may, our Grandma Fielding took special delight in her first grandchild. In the lineup of the family, I was number seven.

Memories of my big sister came into focus when I was very young. I admired my big sister.She set a good example of an industrious worker and saw to it that we helped with the household chores. Her place was at the end of the table nearest thekitchen so she could help with the serving of the meals. No wonder mother called her "the little red hen."

Sunday was a very special day for us as a family. Father and mother loved the Lord and saw to it that we were brought up according to the Word of God.

As the years went by, changes took place. At one time Halley was my Sunday school teacher and even now I remember her teaching from the book of Hebrews, which is the book that I've enjoyed studying and have been helped by the teaching.

For many years my sister worked as secretary for the manager at the Commercial Bank of Australia. The building was impressive and quite intimidating for a young country girl. From time to time I would visit my sister with a message from home. This made me feel so small going into sucha grand building to meet my sister for a short while as we stood behind the glass window. She held that job for many years but the day came when she retired and that was February 9th in preparation for her marriage to Harold Nicholls- a Baptist minister on April 18th.

Years later on that day in 1952 was our wedding day in Singapore. In 1994 on the same day our son Philip andNancy his wife announced the birthday of their oldest son Zachary. From the earliest of days as far back as I can remember, we learned to pray. It is nowonder that our sister Halley was a good Christian example.

She loved flowers and took pleasure in her own garden. She did beautiful needlework and had appreciation for the arts. I thank the Lord that Halley was such a loving, helpful caring sister and a mentor in so many ways. If I had a problem I would ask for her advice which she thoughtfully gave to me.

She was a warrior in prayer and a student of the Word. Praise God we will meet again one day in the heavenly mansion where we will be with our Lord adoring and worshiping Him. He deserves all the praise we can give, and to my sister I say thank you for being such a kind and loving sister.

I'd like Anne towrite a tribute from herself as well to Auntie Halley.

From Anne:

September 2001 has always remained a very special memory for me as I think back on the kind and loving hospitality shown to me by my AuntHalley, Uncle Harold, Ruth, Roslyn and Michael, and will never be forgotten.

Thank you for those memories.

Love, your sister Cinda and Anne

Honor Thy Father

Exodus 20:12 commands us to "Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee." But should I still honor them when they have been dishonorable? The answer is: yes, because by so honoring them, I firstly do so because it is in itself the right thing to do and secondly because it sets a life-long pattern for my children.

At today's service, a preacher said that if you want to be a good father, you must be a godly father, as you fathering qualities will come from your character. I think this is exactly backwards. We are not good fathers because we have good character. We are not good fathers because we believe certain things or are certains things but because we do certain things-- we love, we instruct, we guide, we spend time, we engage, we are not AWOL with our wife and kids, we put the family first, we teach life's lessons with a laugh, a hug, and heart to heart talks.

It is hard to beat the actor James Woods' dad when it comes to a model of good fathering. The following excerpt is from a book that my family got me in 2000: Great Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood, by Jonathan P. Decker. The Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning film and television actor writes the following:

"I was an army brat, which meant that I grew up all over the place. I lived in Guam, Wisconsin, Illinois, Virginia, Utah, and Colorado-- until we finally settled in Rhode Island.

"Despite my father's military background, he was the opposite of strict. To those he loved, he was very kind and tender. He was also extremely modest about his achievements. He won two Purple Hearts and a presidential citation for braery. He was a great war hero, yet he never talked about what he had experienced.

"Dad was a child of the depression, as was my mom. Consequently, they were very concerned that their children have the things that the never had. What was amazing abut my father was that he rpovided for us and protected us, even though he didnt make that much money in the service. He always put our needs first.

"When I was about 11 years old, I desperately wanted a record player for Christmas. I loved
rock 'n' roll, and all my favorite songs were ocoming out on forty-fives. But I also realized that on his salary, Dad couldn't afford to buy me one. So in his spare time, he got a job in the PX in the Armory. That Christmas he worked one hour a day during lunch for 25 days at $1 an hour. He swallowed his pride and waited on guys that were his subordinates just to buy me that record player.

"A year later, my father needed heart surgery and had a section of his aorta replaced. It was one of the first operations of its kind. He was on the operating table for 17 hours and had to undergo 21 blood transfusions. One of the transfusions didn't match properly and as a result, he had a transfusion reaction. Gradually, one by one, his organs broke down. For five days he knew he was dying.

"On his last day he phone my three-year-old brother to tell him that he had died and gone to heaven. He said, "God let me make a phone call to say good-bye to you. So don't be afraid and don't worry because I am fine. I just wanted you to know that I am thinking of you."

"To me, he wrote a letter. In it, he told me how proud he was of me and my accomplishments in school. He expressed his hope that I would go to M.I.T. someday-- which I eventually did. And he told me that he was certain that I would succeeed in whatever I strived for. Mom handed me this letter on the day I was being honored with some other kids at a honors dinner for seventh and eighth graders. It was a big day for me. What I didn't realize was that as he wrote this letter, he knew he had little time left. When he died in my mother's arms, the last thing he said to her was, "Make sure that Jimmy gets to that dinner and don't tell him about this until after it's over." He wanted to make sure that I enjoyed the ceremony and didn't want to ruin a very special moment for me. He was truely a brave and decent man. He was a hero to me in his everyday life.

"There's a myth that if you lose a parent, it's okay and you can get beyond it. It isn't. It is the most devastating things that can happen to a child. But that said, he gave me values that have never once failed me. He taught me to always give respect to others and to demand it in return. And he taught me to believe in myself and always try to be my very best.

"My mom and dad had only one serious argument-- and it involved money. He wanted to get mortgage insurance on the house.

"He told her, "It's the one investment we have and if anything ever happens to me, you and the kids can keep the house."

"We can't afford it," she said. "It's $14.75 a month."

"Six months after this argument, Dad passed away and my mom thought we'd had to leave the house. But about three weeks later, a man came by and knocked on our door. It was a guy from the insurance company with a check for the entire payment on the house. My father had somehow scraped the money together for mortgage insurance and paid for it himself. Even beyond the grave, he was helping. He was without a doubt the most remarkable man I have ever known. I was absolutely blessed to have had such a wonderful dad."

I believe that love for your family-- not love for abstractions such as "the family of man" or "the corporate family" but for your spouse and children-- is the highest morality and proceeds and enables our personal morality and all morality. To paraphrase I Corinthians 13, everything else fades in the iridescent heiligenschein of love for your family.

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love for my family, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love for my family, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love for my family, it profiteth me nothing. Love for my family suffereth long, and is kind; love for my family envieth not; love for my family vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love for my family never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love for my family.

Reward-Based Morality

Why does it even matter? What pleasure does it give people to continuously argue about religion? The human population's beleifs will forever differ, therefore, what is arguing about it going to solve?

It gets to me when a person is judged because of a certain belief system, or lack of, they have.
I have been in numerous discussions when after I tell the opposer that I do not believe in a god, she or he will then say something along the lines of, "So then what's the point of being moral? Why don't you just go out and have all the fun you like, drink, have sex with multiple partners, do drugs, lie, cheat, etc.?" I will then answer with something like "The point is I don't need a reward at the end of the road. I do good for myself, for the people around me, not for some god that will reject me if I simply have a different set of beliefs."

Why can't we all just get along?

Because different thoughts can lead to different behaviors.

"The point is I don't need a reward at the end of the road."

OK. But I think you are implying that people that believe in God do so out of fear or for profit in some future life. This may very well be true with many and even most God-believers, but I don't think it needs to be true. Some people may simply believe that God exists but it has no relevancy on their morals and may even have a negative effect on their morals. For example, I think Satanists generally believe in God and also in their own unorthodox morality. (Apologies to Satanists if I've gotten this wrong.) Others may believe in God but root their morality in other principles that have nothing to do with theism, such as the categorical imperative.

"Satan worshippers presumably believe this, but there is at least a goodly portion of Satanists, AFAIK, who do not in fact believe in God or Satan as actual entities."

Sounds like Uniterian Satanists. Orthodox satanists would surely believe that there is a God since Satan was a fallen angel of God. I suppose the more liberal Satanists would view Satan as a kind of a symbol representing values in distinction to another symbol-- the battle of the symbols.

Guantanamo Bay

It's not always easy to figure out what is the skimmed milk and what is the cream if the big questions of politics. A good example is the question of whether on not the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base at the southeastern end of Cuba should be closed.

Since 2002, the naval base has contained a the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, for, for persons alleged to be militant combatants captured in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. The Bush Administration maintained that these detainees are not protected under the Geneva Convention. The Supreme Court ruled against this interpretation and the Department of Defense subsequently has stated that prisoners in the future will be entitled to protectiuon under the Geneva Conventions. Most of the detainees still at Guantanamo are not scheduled for trial. As of November 2006, according to MSNBC.com, out of 775 detainees who have been brought to Guantanamo, approximately 340 have been released, leaving 435 detainees. Of those 435, 110 have been labeled as ready for release. Of the other 325, only "more than 70" will face trial, the Pentagon says. That leaves about 250 who may be held indefinitely.

On one hand, former secretary of State Colin Powell insists that the US should scrap Guantanamo Bay and integrate its prisoners into the US prison system as it is an embarassment to America, a perversion to our constitution, and a recruiting tool to the juhadists. On the other hand, there is a legitimate distinction between a drug dealer in Newark and someone planning to deploy a weapon of mass destruction against the United States as well as prisoners of war generally. Nevertheless, that the US judicial system is too fragile to handle even the worst terrorists seems to me to be a unrealistically pessimistic view. Our legal system is far from perfect, and sometimes the innocent are found guilty and the guilty are freed. However, it is still a process that places the burden of guilt on the accuser rather than the defendent and it is a reasonably transparent process. In World War II, a time when Western civilization hung in the balance, prisoners were detained in the United States and were open to Red Cross inspection. The problem with ascribing uniqueness to the so-called war on terror is that it will create nasty precedents that could someday come back to haunt us, as other countries disepnse with such niceties as freedom from torture and trial by jury.

Colin Powell in this case got it right.

Woman Gives Birth to Cat

I don't make the news. I just report it.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2371905.html?menu=news.quirkies

Also: Woman gives birth to cat.

http://living.scotsman.com/people.cfm?id=1819192006

My hunch is that the reporters in both cases were confused or fibbing. There's also a story on the internet about a woman giving birth to a tortise, which is quite a trick shot, I suppose.

N is for Nebuchadnezzer

who ate grasses
it's also a wine bottle
holding 100 glasses

numinous
nimrod
niggardly
nabob
nexus
neurasthenia - chronic fatigue
napthas
nominalism
noumenon - Kantian thing-in-tself
naid
nonoverlapped processing
necrology
nouveau riche
nugatory

Willow Creek Community Church

Willow Creek in a suburb in Illinois is one of the largest church in America with 20,000 attending each week. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that more than a decade ago, I was a member and youth leader in the church.)

From Wikpedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Creek_Community_Church

An analysis of its organizational dynamic:

http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/superch.html

Go Directly to Jail

Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.
This was the message given today to "Scooter" Libby by the federal judge who presided over his perjury and obstruction of justice trial. It is interesting that the Judge is a Bush appointee. In addition, it is interesting that he has been the subject of foul harassment since announcing the sentencing of this felon. What will Bush do now? Will "Scooter" really have to serve time?

I don't think the White House is so much in a bubble to not notice the feeding frenzy when Princess Hilton almost avoided jail. I also remember the shift in public opinion against President Ford when Ford pardoned Nixon for his Watergate sins.

At one time, I thought it was going to be a slam dunk that the Bush would pardon Libby, but now I'm not so sure. Certainly, Bush would prefer that he pardon the man while Libby was still free and on his last day as president. But, with the erosion of Bush's political capital to extent that such an action would create for the Democrats a potent campaign issue for the 2008 election, I'm thinking now that a pardon is growing more unlikely.

You will note, for example, that missing from all the character references was the one that might have had some meaning-- from Libby's former boss, vice president Cheney. Also, there is no hiding the central fact of this case. Had it not been for the lies that Libby told, justice may have been served by identifying and punishing those who committed this act of treason-- the illegal disclosure of an intelligence operative in a time of war. Of course, if the US was really at war, Libby's punishment would not be 30 months is a camp for white-color criminals. He would be in the gas chamber. The fact that he is not proves to me that the so-called Iraq war has less to do with our national security than it has to do with politics.

Our Wild-eyed, Chest-thumping President

"Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny." "

Georgie Annie Geyer

Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot

$7.5 Million Dollars for a Gay Bomb.

Jay Leno: The Pentagon has admitted they once tried to develop a gay bomb-- a bomb that would turn enemy soldiers gay. They said their goal was to turn the Iraq war into a musical.

The Case For Bombing Iran

Here are excerpts from Norman Podhoretz's article in the June, 2007 Commentary.

Although many persist in denying it, I continue to believe that what September 11, 2001 did was to plunge us headlong into nothing less than another world war. I call this new war World War IV, because I also believe that what is generally known as the cold war was actually World War III, and that this one bears a closer resemblance to that great conflict than it does to World War II.

As the currently main center of Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11 . . . Iran too is a front in World War IV. Moreover, its efforts to build a nuclear arsenal makes it the potentially most dangerous one of all. The Iranians . . . wish to dominate the greater Middle East, and thereby control the oilfields of the region and the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf . . . extending the power and influence of Islam throughout Europe . . . (through Islamo)Findlandization.

In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force-- any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938. Since a ground invasion of Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done at all, by a campaign of air strikes.

Iran (could) retaliate by increasing the trouble it is already making for us in Iraq. It would attack Israel . . . There would be a vast increase in the price of oil, with catastrophic consequences for every economy in the world . . .

Nevertheless, there is a good response (to the scenarios) . . . The only thing worse than bombing Iran, McCain has declared, is allowing Iran to get the bomb.

Yet for all (the Europeans) retrospective remorse over the wholesale slaughter of Jews back then, the Europeans seem no readier to lift a fingfer to rpevent a second Holocaust than they were the first time around. Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willigness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It remains to be seen whether this President, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraw in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both towards us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will.

My response to Podhoretz's "case" is in the following essays, written on September 23 and September 30, 2006:

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/index070.html

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/index077.html

Why Senators Didn't Read the NIE

Why 94 senators did not read the National Intelligence Estimate

By Jerome Grossman.

On October 11, 2002, the United States Senate voted 77 to 23, to give President George W. Bush open ended authority to wage war against Iraq with unrestricted power to use any means, including military force and nuclear weapons, when he alone deemed appropriate. The House of Representatives approved 296 to 35. There was virtually no debate.The primary justification for the legislation was the possession of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq. To prove this claim, the Bush administration delivered to Congress on October 1, a secret classified report, The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMD. This document was considered so sensitive that it was placed in two securely guarded locations in the Capitol for only senators to examine, not even their staffs.Of the 100 senators, only six took the trouble to read the report. One who did was Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, who then voted against the war resolution. Graham was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. On the Senate floor, he told his colleagues that he had access to all available intelligence, that he did not believe that Iraq possessed WMD. Of course he was correct that there was not sufficient threat to U.S. national security.

How could the 94 senators, Democrats and Republicans, fail to examine the evidence before voting to send the sons and daughters of the nation off to war? The primary answer is in the historical context of the invasion of Iraq. The balance of power changed dramatically with the collapse and breakup of the Soviet Union. The world system of two superpowers, armed to the teeth, checking each other on every continent, was finished. Now there was only one superpower, the United States, still armed to the teeth, but with no opposing military force to check it.Without that countervailing force to impose restraint, the U.S, has engaged in nine wars in the last 17 years. No other nation even comes close to the American record, under Democratic as well as Republicans presidents. Most of the wars were justified as “humanitarian interventions “:

Panama 1989, Somalia 1992, Haiti 1994, Bosnia 1995-96, Kosovo 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 1991, Iraq 1998, Iraq 2003-2007 and beyond.

The wars were easy, “slam dunks” or “pieces of cake”, light in casualties, short in duration. And if the American troops remained in the occupied nations, they were merely following the pattern established in Germany , Japan, South Korea and the 35 other nations where the U. S. has 737 military bases.

To the senators, the invasion and occupation of Iraq was merely another military step in the subjugation of another country that our leaders believed needed “humanitarian intervention” or the installation of “democracy.” September 11, 2001 increased the public’s sense of danger, but the pattern of intervention had already been set and accepted.

The Bush administration is criticized for not having an exit strategy from Iraq. Of course they didn’t - because they had no intention to exit any more than they had strategies to exit Germany, Japan, South Korea or the other 35 nations. The problem for the U.S. is that the unexpected resistance in Iraq may trigger similar insurgencies around the world in countries where the U.S. has military bases.To maintain world hegemony, the U.S. cannot afford to lose, to withdraw from Iraq. The legislation offered by the Democratic leadership in Congress recognizes this, calling for withdrawal, but with three significant exceptions: U.S. troops to remain in Iraq to protect US embassies and bases, to train the Iraqi army to fight Al Qaeda and the terrorists. This is a recipe for a long occupation.

Among those who did not read the National Intelligence Estimate were the leading lights of the Democratic Party, including Reid, Clinton, and Edwards. On one hand, the intelligence agency suffered from an erosion of credability in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and perhaps some thought little could be gained by reading the document. But I think most people-- Democrats and Republicans-- wanted to climb the bandwagon of war, propelled by the illusion of public support. Like most Americans, they were lazy and credulous. I was struck by McCain and Clinton's similar answers to the same question. Yes, they didn't read the NIE, but they had multiple briefings. The question is: briefings from whom based on what? It looks to me that the senators were less interested in doing their homework and in ascertaining the truth than in positioning themselves to do the most political expedient thing. We continue to pay the price for that today in American blood and treasure.

The General Pops Joe's Trial Balloon

By General Wesley Clark

After wrongly supporting George W. Bush's strategic blunder of attacking Iraq, and continuing to support Bush's failed policies after the invasion, Senator Joe Lieberman made irresponsible comments this weekend regarding military action against Iran.

On CBS's Face the Nation, Lieberman said, "If [the Iranians] don't play by the rules, we've got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they're doing."

This type of "tough-talk" by the Bush Administration and folks like Senator Joe Lieberman is why VoteVets.org and I collaborated to create StopIranWar.com, calling for heavy diplomatic, economic, and political action to discourage the acquisition of nuclear capabilities by the Iranian government.

Senator Lieberman's saber rattling does nothing to help dissuade Iran from aiding Shia militias in Iraq, or trying to obtain nuclear capabilities. In fact, it's highly irresponsible and counter-productive, and I urge him to stop.

This kind of rhetoric is irresponsible and only plays into the hands of President Ahmadinejad, and those who seek an excuse for military action. What we need now is full-fledged engagement with Iran. We should be striving to bridge the gulf of almost 30 years of hostility and only when all else fails should there be any consideration of other options. The Iranians are very much aware of US military capabilities. They don't need Joe Lieberman to remind them that we are the militarily dominant power in the world today.

Only someone who never wore the uniform or thought seriously about national security would make threats at this point. What our soldiers need is responsible strategy, not a further escalation of tensions in the region. Senator Lieberman must act more responsibly and tone down his threat machine.

Streaming Video

A nice tutorial on internet video streaming.

Pinging Your Class

On C-Span last week, I saw Supreme Court justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr.deliver these wise words at a commencement address at St. Mary's College.

Decades from now, you may be different than you are today in a lot of significant ways. You may have a lot more money and more status and more power and more accomplishments. You may also have more responsibilities, more worries, more regrets and more bruises. But underneath all of that, you still will be the same person who is here today graduating from college, and it will be good for you to stay connected with the people who know the real you.

It's Not Hard to Amaze Me

These factoids, discovered while reseaching something else, amaze me:

1. A black hole, five billion times as big as the sun, is in the core of the galaxy Messier 87 (M-87).

2. A 3.1 mile wide comet will collide with the Earth in 2116, and could kill off most forms of life.

3. The King James version of the Bible was completed on William Shakespeare's putative 46th birthday. In Psalm 46, the 46th word is "shake" and the 46th word from the end is "spear".

4. Solitary bees make circular cells, which become hexagonal under pressure.

5. Gout strikes the male population nineteen times for every one time it attacks females.

6. Etruscans invented false teeth around 700 BC.

7. Neutrinos are ghostlike particles that have no mass or electrical charge and can hurtle with ease through the entire earth.

8. There are no houseflies in the state of Alaska.

9. According to Lewis Thomas' The Lives of a Cell, "there are 25 million assorted insects hanging in the air over every temperate square mile, in a column extending upwards for thousands of feet, drifting through the layers of the atmosphere like plankton."

10. There are more than 1,000 rings around Saturn.

Letter to a Christian Nation

The only thing that guarantees a truly open-ended collaboration among human beings is their willingness to have their views (and resulting behavior) modified by conversation--by new evidence and new arguments. Otherwise, when the stakes are high, there is nothing to appeal to but force. If I believe that I can get to Paradise by flying a plane into a building, and I am content to believe this without evidence, then there will be nothing another person can say to dissuade me, because my leap of faith has made me immune to the powers of conversation.

--Sam Harris

My take is that Sam's statement has they same kind of value as chanting "All we are saying, is give peace a chance." To trust in the good will of others much less ourselves is beyond naive. It is fatuous and dangerous. Dialogue and skepticism is not enough either. Such attitudes underestimate the resliance of people to change their core values and beliefs and to defend those values and beliefs with every tool as their disposal. Flying jets into buildings is merely the logical extension of deeply seated beliefs that we scarcely can comprehend, rational-- not irrational-- actions to advance those beliefs. If there is hope, it lies with taking as a given the depravity of humanity, and to accordingly create institutions that promote transparancy and accountability, divide and diffuse centers of power, and protect and promote secularism, pretty much using the formula that our founding fathers conceived. I no more trust power in the hands of scientists and scholars than I do in the hands of politicians and priests, and religionists (or areligionists for that matter) have no monopoloy on fanaticism, as Hoffer suggests in my link below:

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/truebeliever.htm

The paradox of Sam's statement lies in the disconnect between his assumption of and appeal for rationality and in his irrational and unfactual appraisal of human nature. If people are willing to love one another, there would be no hate and no wars. But that statement is no less meaningless than Sam's claim-- that if everyone relied on evidence, goodwill,and collaboration, iirational beliefs and behaviors wouldn't take hold. Surely, there is much more historical evidence to support my point of view than there is to support his woolly-headed utopianism. Would he be willing to change his viewpoint on that that basis?

I finally put down Sam's book after reading the first chapter. I got annoyed by what I saw was an attack on a straw man-- a shallow characture of of an extreme variant of Christianity that I'm not even sure really exists. The critique that writers such as Richard Dawson, Harris, and Christopher Hitchens make are not without validity. But I get the impression that they do in their own critique precisely what they object in the beliefss of religionists-- the embrace of straw men, lack of balance, dogmatism, sweeping generalizations, and demonization when it best serves their argumentative purpose. Hitchens writes that “the only thing that counts is free inquiry, science, research, the testing of evidence, the uses of reason, irony, humor and literature, things of this kind. Just because we hold these convictions rather strongly does not mean this attitude can be classified as fundamentalist.” I think Hitchens is correct. I don't view convictions of any kind per se as fundamantalist. However, stridency of argument even when that argument is founded empericaly and rationally can become dogmatic, which closes down the open-ended collaboration that Harris seeks.

The World is Flat

I spent a hour at Barnes & Noble browsing through New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's excellent The World is Flat. In it, he tries to makes sense of the increasing competition between what was once the Third World and the West because of advances in telecommunicationms, outsourcing, the internet revolution, and the explosion of wealth in India and China.

I was especially interested in what I and my kids can do to adapt to this Brave New World. The old advice parents would give their kids "Eat up, because children in Asia are starving" has now been replaced by "Work harder, because children in Asia are starving for your job." In this world where ererything that goes down the wire is up for grabs take a new attitude. For three years, I managed a software team 13 hours away in Bangalore, and can testify that they are equal in competence and motivation to what the United States has. Friedman reduces a long discussion in national, corporate, and individual strategies for survivial to this formula:

CQ + PQ > IQ

Creativity and passion is employable intelligence. So that will also be my advice for my kids. We are competing with the world, which we means we must develop not just digitizable technical skills. We must also develop those soft skills that our mothers taught you and that we perhaps picked up in English, art, and music class-- play nicely and see and think differently.

Fallen Soldier

Mr. President, do not leave this man behind.

BY FOUAD AJAMI

Mr. President, some weeks ago, I wrote a letter of appeal, a character reference, to Judge Reggie B. Walton, urging leniency for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Scooter, I said, has seen the undoing of his world, but he comes before a "just court in a just and decent country." I was joined by men and women of greater acclaim in our public life, but the petitions were in vain. Now the legal process has played out, Judge Walton has issued a harsh prison term of 30 months, and what will rescue this honorable man is the power of pardon that is exclusively yours.

This case has been, from the start, about the war and its legitimacy. Judge Walton came to it late; before him were laid bare the technical and narrowly legalistic matters of it. But you possess a greater knowledge of this case, a keen sense of the man caught up in this storm, and of the great contest and tensions that swirl around the war. To Scooter's detractors, and yours, it was the "sin" of that devoted public servant that he believed in the nobility of this war, that he did not trim his sails, and that he didn't duck when the war lost its luster.

In "The Soldier's Creed," there is a particularly compelling principle: "I will never leave a fallen comrade." This is a cherished belief, and it has been so since soldiers and chroniclers and philosophers thought about wars and great, common endeavors. Across time and space, cultures, each in its own way, have given voice to this most basic of beliefs. They have done it, we know, to give heart to those who embark on a common mission, to give them confidence that they will not be given up under duress. A process that yields up Scooter Libby to a zealous prosecutor is justice gone awry.

Libby's sin was not that he"believed in the nobility of this war", but that he presided in a conspiracy to reveal in time of war the identity of an intelligence agent, an action that, if this were a real war, would have earned Libby a frog walk to a firing squad.

Paris Hilton

For All Your Paris Hiton Whiners

She doesn't belong in prison. The Judge who sent her there had discretion and could have sentenced her to home detention. In plain English, he was being a dick, making a name for himself.

You ALL are pissed that she's both rich and beautiful 'cause you keep ranting about it like it's a MAJOR problem. Her family EARNED thier fortune and worked for it. Why does that irk you so?

I'm sick of hearing about the harmless white blonde KID.

Sorry Lisa.

Miss "Hiton"-- an appropriate name, by the way-- is where she deserves to be-- in jail.

Never have I seen such a uniformity of contempt from both commentators of both the right and the left when it appeared that Hilton was going to be released to her Hollywood Hills estate with a garage opened stuck to her ankle. And for good reason. Americans, I think, have had it with such blatent legal unfairness. OJ is on a golf course, the president will pardon Scooter for outing a CIA operative in a time of war, the president's wife Laura killed her boyfriend without suffering any legal consequences whatever, to say nothing about the Gitmo prisoners. That's American justice where they will never hang you if you have gold in your pockets.

The judge is not trying to make a name for himself. To the contrary, either Hilton's money got to the the sheriff or Hilton's mouth got to the sheriff. There's more to this story than a act of compassion towards a silly young woman who got hysterical because she broke her fingernail while in the big house. Hilton's swoon may be based on her new found exposure to the real world, for which I tender some compassion. It's not the roaches, the lesbian gangs, the bad food, or the group showers. It's an eternity without the fix of media exposure. Paris is someone who is famous for nothing except that she is famous. Tonight she is in hell.

You say that she is but a "harmless white blonde kid." The one word that isn't a fact is harmless. Hilton models bad behavior for countless kids-- teenagers and young adults. And that bad behavior can be deadly when mixed with drugs and alcohol, which lubricates the club scene that Hilton so much enjoys. The carnage from both drugs and alcohol in this country is massive and beyond belief. A few streets from where I live just last week, a "harmless white blonde kid" lost her life an alcohol-induced car crash.

I would only fault the judge by not being more creative in his sentence. Instead of 40 days in prison, how about 40 days in the county morgue or 40 days weeding around those little white crosses on the side of the road?

Hilton needs to grow up, and if she doesn't, she will be under yet one more little white cross for the Hollywood death tour.

Magazine Cover Stories

1. Karla's Baby: She raped. tortured, and killed innocent girls. Is she fit to be a mother?
MACLEANS, June 4th, 2007 "37 year-old Karla Homolka served her 12 year sentence. Canada's most notorious female serial killer is starting over with her new baby boy. But is this woman fit to be a mother?"

2. Sick Justice: How Ashcroft's Hospital Room Became a Constitutional Battleground
The Nation, June 11 2007 "The frantic race to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's bedside on March 10, 2004, sounds more Hollywood than history; AG James Comey's foot-to-the-floor drive to head off then -White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card; FBI Director Robert Mueller's startling imperative to his agents to defy any attempts by Gonzo and Card to throw Comey out; the sedated and badly ailing Ashcroft rousing himself to defend the Constitution; the resignation trheats by Comey and Mueller."

3. Gracias, Senate GOP. John O' Sullivan on the Bush-Kenendy Immigration Deal.
National Review, June 11, 2007 "Comprehensively awful: The immigration-reform bill is a large, costly, and damaging assault on the American taxpayers and the U.S. political system. It grants illegal alients the right to live and work in America without any penalty for past transgressions, making it an amnesty. But the whole package amounts to Amnesty Plus-- an immigration and tax amnesty in one, with citizenship thrown in."

4. The Inside Story of a Great Idea Gone Wrong. The rise and fall of Friendster: A case study in the perils of having too much money. Inc, June, 2007. "Jonathan Abrams created the first online social network and enlisted Silicon Valley's best and brightest to run it. Yet Friendster flamed out spectacularly."

5. Plus the June 4th The New Yorker's quirky cartoons, starting and ending with animals:

Grasshoppers: "After we have sex but before I kill you, I'm going to need your help with some shelves."

"Those aren't three-star-restaurant pants."

"Anyhoo, it's mailignant."

"Let's make a low-budget movie till help arrives."

"Need a hand with that Chekhov, pretty lady?"

"Make a note, Ellen--one Speedo, size 54."

"Tommy, you sang along very nicely, but you didn't knock it out of the park."

"They're marinated in hot water for six hours."

Monkeys: "And in the event of an actual leopard attack the schoolgirl fetish would do exactly what?"

Are We Safer?

Clinton: "We are safer than we were."

Obama: "No, we are not safer."

To: Interested Parties
Fr: Obama Communications

Re: America is not safer since 9/11
Da: June 4, 2007

During the Democratic debate in New Hampshire last night, there was disagreement over whether or not America is safer since the 9/11 attacks on our nation. Senator Obama believes and asserted in the debate that America is less safe since 9/11 largely because the war in Iraq has fueled terrorism around the world. He opposed the war from the beginning and has a plan to end it, bringing all combat troops out of Iraq by March 31, 2008.Recent studies by the U.S. State Department and the Council on Global Terrorism confirm that the war in Iraq has accelerated the spread of terrorism and increased the threat of attacks.

In a September 2006 report State of the Struggle: Report on the Battle Against Global Terrorism, the Council on Global Terrorism issued a report with the number 1 finding -- "Five Year Assessment: As of Now, West is in a Worsening Position in Struggle Against Radical Islam." The report issued a D+ for "Combating Islamic Extremist Terrorism," saying, "there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking."

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In a speech in San Antonio in April 2006, Gen. Michael Hayden (currently the CIA director) said: "New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge… If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide."

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According to the State Department's "Country Reports on Terrorism" released on April 30, 2007 - there was a 29% increase in terrorism worldwide from 2005 to 2006(much of that gain took place in Iraq and Afghanistan). The new statistics record a rise in terrorist attacks on nonmilitary targets globally to 14,338 in 2006 from 11,153 in 2005, with an increase in deaths to 20,498 from 14,618.

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According to a January 2007 CSIS report (cited in May/June Foreign Affairs), al Qaeda has trained up to 60,000 jihadists in Afghanistan.

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