Chickenhawk College Republicans

. . . with better things to do than to fight them over there so they won't have to fight them over here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFGit_tZDqs

The Murder of Pat Tillman

There are many reasons why I snort when an "Army Strong" commercial appears. But perhaps the greatest reason is our military's never-ending contempt for truth. A good example, and an example that is far from an aberration, is the military's handling of the death of Pat Tillman.

Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals defensive back, volunteered for the Army in the spring after 9/11, giving up a $3.6 million N.F.L. contract extension. On a second tour of duty in Afghanistan, on April 22, 2004, he was killed. On April 30, an official Army press release announcing his Silver Star citation, said that Tillman stormed a hill to take out the enemy, even as he "personally provided suppressive fire with an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon machine gun."

Five weeks after Tillman's death, the Army acknowledged, without providing details, that he had "probably" died from friendly fire. And now just recently, the AP has reported Tillman many have been murdered, shot three times closely spaced in the forehead.

According to the AP, "The documents show that a doctor who autopsied Tillman's body was suspicious of the three gunshot wounds to the forehead. The doctor said he took the unusual step of calling the Army's Human Resources Command and was rebuffed. He then asked an official at the Army's Criminal Investigation Division if the CID would consider opening a criminal case."

The problem for the army that the more facts that emerge, the less credable the army is. Already, the army has demoted Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr. and has issued stinging rebukes to the chain of command involved in this conspiracy. And there will be more investigations, especially looking at the relationship between the administration and the military. The question is no longer how and why did the Rangers shoot Tillman. The more relevant question is: who authorized Tilman to receive the silver star and why? The answer could lie in the heart of the Bush administration.

Watch for the other shoe to drop.

I Am Celebrity, Hear Me Roar

Susan Estrich on Lindsay Lohen:

"The prosecutor should throw the book at her. She had every advantage, and she blew it. Her life was most girls’ dream come true, and she took it for granted, abused her status, turned her fame into a license to ignore the rules and live above the law. She is entitled to the presumption of innocence, but she also deserves to be charged with every possible crime, and given the maximum penalty when she is found guilty.

"I have no compassion for Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton or Britney Spears or Kate Moss. I don’t care how many other people get away with driving under the influence or possessing cocaine or falling off the wagon. We may not be able to afford to imprison everyone who “just” drives drunk a few times and carries cocaine in her pocket, but we can afford to lock up Lindsay. Live by the sword and die by the sword.

"Compassion in this town is a business decision, not a personal one. Forgiveness is a calculation of future profits, not real remorse. If the powers that are, the agents, executives, producers and advertisers, were to decide that casting Lohan would spell doom for their projects, that putting Kate Moss on your cover means people won’t buy it, that Paris Hilton can no longer carry a show, then guess what would happen?

"Now that would be a message worth sending. It might even save some lives."

I really cannot argue with Estrich. I'm struck by the irresponsibility of the rich and the famous that puts other lives in peril and also by other people who are not so blessed by talent, fame, and wealth. But it is more than a lack of responsibility. It is the dogma that they cannot act responsibility, that their actions are the remorseless result of forces beynd their control-- "sickness". "genes", "early family dynamics", and more mystically and no less fallaciously the "stars" or the "permissive will of God." These are all lies that people use to absolve them of personal responsibility and even the capacity to make any moral choice. If they are drunk, they chose to be drunk, and our legal system correctly renders the judgement that they make that choice that led to that behavior.

As Estrich notes, however, there is also a broader context. Hollywood needs to understand that it is a force of tremendous influence, that it creates products that shapes thoughts and thus behavior. I recently read that Disney has finally agreed to not allow actors to smoke in its movies. That's about time, and I hope this kind of self-censorship will spread to other companies and media, especially the interent and music. But since these kind of decisions are driven by the bottom line, I somehow doubt that they will.

What is Truth?

What is truth?

"What is truth" jested Pontius Pilate, and would not stay for answer.

But you can answer your own question by answering whether or not the following statements are true or false.

Careful!

1. Three times three is nine
2. No two snowflakes are the same.
3. Paris is a city in France.
4. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life
5. "Ah! County Guy, the hour is neigh." (from Sir Walter Scott's "Serenande")
6. This pencil is seven inches long.
7. I like rhubard pie.
8. The train leaves for Boston at 8:05.
9. In 1492/Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
10. I drink, therefore I am.

Obama vs. Hillary

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070724/ap_on_el_pr/democrats_diplomacy

Barack Obama's offer to meet without precondition with leaders of renegade nations such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran touched off a war of words, with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton calling him naive and Obama linking her to President Bush's diplomacy.

Older politicians in both parties questioned the wisdom of such a course, while Obama's supporters characterized it as a repudiation of Bush policies of refusing to engage with certain adversaries.

Who's the scariest?

Osama
Obama
Chelsea's Momma

I consider Hillary's response to the question to be a minor intellectual victory but a major political defeat. Focus groups right after the debate seemed also to take the view the Obama nosed ahead of Hillary. It reminds of the Gerald Ford many years ago when he asserted that Poland wasn't under the domination of the USSR-- narrowly true but contrary to what Americans generally believed.

A concern I have with Hillary, apart from her tendency to trim the truth, is her effort as I see it to demonstrate that whatever a general can do, she can do better. I think it's that attitiude that can have her looking for a fight should she become president. I also see a tendency as well to carefully triangulate between the policies of the Bush administration and the Democratic base to prepare for the general election. In any case, as much as Hillary's response may have won plaudits from the Council of Foreign Relations and the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune, it scarcely reflects the kind of new leadership this country needs to to reject and repair the legacy of the Bush years.

Feline Angel of Death

Oscar, the feline angel of death.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=470906&in_page_id=1770

People who don't like cats - or are superstitious - might say the cat is sucking the breath out of the patients. I have heard that there are people who believe cats suck the breath out of infants (I guess as an explanation for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).

People who are stupid-- I use that word precisely-- says cats suck the breath out of patients or babies. Anyone who has watched a cat drink will know that cats don't suck, they lick.

Cats clearly have a range of ability that extends beyond what humans can perceive. There has nothing to do with the paranormal. This is simply a fact of animal biology, picking up sounds, sights, vibrations, and smells before humans do. I had a cat that woke me from a fire that took the life of someone in my apartment at two am. I also think they pick up emotions as well, proving comfort and joy to their human pets in times of despair and distress.

Oscar reminds me of the cliche-aphorism of William Shakespere, in "Hamlet", Act 1, scene 5: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

The Historical Jesus

Jesus never existed.

How do you know?

The same way I know that Superman never existed, and that Spiderman never existed, and that Frodo never existed, and that Gilligan never existed.

and Caesar, Plato, and George Washington as well, no doubt.

The way I see it is as follows.

The mere fact that you have a scholarly consensus on a given proposition, it of course doesn't follow that the proposition is true. On the other hand, it does follow that the burden of proof shifts to you if you wish to challenge that consensus.

I'm sure there are scattered peer-reviewed doctorate-level scholars that state that Jesus is akin to Thor, a myth just as there are scattered scholars with similar credentials who claim that the canonical scriptures are utterly factual. (Actually, I'm not aware of any professional historian who takes the position that Jesus never existed, but I'm trying to argue carefully. Feel free to provide me with a link to the monograph of such a person.) In both case, I suspect that these conclusions are generally dishonest projections of world view assumptions-- theism or atheism-- rather than a dispassionate, logical sifting of existing evidence, and that in itself is sufficient grounds to reject their conclusions.

The vast majority of scholars describe Jesus as a historical figure while discounting the more fanciful elements as described in the four Gospels and the Book of the Acts. Even apart from the New Testament and somewhat questionable fragments in other writing, there is of course the indisputable fact that a movement did arise that eventually brought the Roman Empire to its knees. Constantine, by the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, chose Christianity because of a vision of the Christian cross, but as a politician, I suspect he was counting noses as well. By this time, the emperor was aware of his Christian military officers and state officials as well of the popular appeal and moral force of Christianity in the face of persecution. Christianity, I believe, was a bottom-up movement. The political elite responded to the people rather than vice versa, and the mass of the people were responding to a real event. Myths have sometimes created mass movements. But the most parsimonious and most likely explanation for this mass movement is that it started with one man who stands at the hinge of history—Jesus Christ.

The primary source evidence are the writing in the Greek testmanet. These were of course written with a point of view, and they only account in totality for about two months of Jesus’ life. But I believe that they are credible, as they are inetgrated with many other historical events that can be independently cross collaborated. They were written from about 50 to 100 AD, a relatively short time in a culture that had a strong oral tradition. By contrast, Caesar’s Gallic Wars date from 100-44 BC, but our earliest copy is from 900 AD. It would be the equivalent of writing about the events of the Second World War—well within the memory of living people or their children. There are credible parallels between the gospels as well as confirmation of names of rulers and places that historians have unearthed in modern times. We also have the testimony of perhaps a half dozen writers that were roughly the contemporary to Jesus and His apostles. External sources include Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and others. Some extra-canonical writings also provide us with additional insights. While some of these writings may be fictional, in totality there is enough to support the claim that Jesus lived. It is remarkable that a man of Jesus’ rank—a common carpenter—would have so much documentation.

I'm not asking you to prove a negative-- the non-existence of someone. I am asking you to prove your positive claim that the evidence that modern historians point to to support their claim that Jesus was a real person-- most notably the writing of the Greek testament-- is fabricated or mythical.

Wikpedia has a review of the questions in play.

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

Yeah, like you've even bothered looking. Links just scratching the surface to such are in the wiki entry you provided.

I actually gave you a misleading link "Historical Jesus". Here is a better link "Historicity of Jesus" and the pertinent section of its commentary.

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

Contrary to your assertion, you are mistaken that "there are no credible extra-biblical source for the existence of Jesus." Clearly, there are many.

Anyway, here is the Jesus as myth counterargument and its refutation.

"A few scholars have questioned the existence of Jesus as an actual historical figure. Among the proponents of non-historicity have been Bruno Bauer in the 19th century. The non-historicity thesis was somewhat influential in biblical studies during the early 20th century, and has recently been put forward in popular literature by a number of authors. Arguments for non-historicity have been advanced by George Albert Wells in The Jesus Legend and The Jesus Myth. Popular proponents have included the writers Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy in their books The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess. Other proponents of non-historicity are Robert M. Price and Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle ).

"The views of scholars who entirely reject Jesus' historicity are summarized in the chapter on Jesus in Will Durant's Caesar and Christ; they are based on a suggested lack of eyewitness, a lack of direct archaeological evidence, the failure of certain ancient works to mention Jesus, and some similarities between early Christianity and contemporary mythology.[65]
Michael Grant stated that the view is derived from a lack of application of historical methods:

"…if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. ... To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.' In recent years, 'no serous scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.[66]

"Overall, the unhistoricity theory is regarded as effectively refuted by almost all Biblical scholars and historians[67],[68] & [69]."

What I admire about atheists generally is their ability to embrace what I call the "is ness" of life-- reality as it is and let the chips fall where they may. But this appears to be an exception among some atheists such as yourself, allowing, I believe, not evidence and logic to guide your conclusions, but your atheism, possibly because of the fallacious notion that somehow this will butress Christian theistic assumptions. This warping effect where convictions take precedence over evidence is needless to say irrational. And, of course, there are many people who reject the divinity of Jesus while accepting the scholarship that sustains the probability that the Jesus the man lived.

Yeah, wikipedia is full of unbiased articles re: religion. How was your first link "misleading", because it was less overtly cheerleading for the "he existed" side?

Wikpedia notes the distinction between history and historicity as follows: "Scholars draw a distinction between Jesus as reconstructed through historical methods and the Christ of faith as understood through theological tradition."

Wikpedia is open source, which means that you are free to contribute your two-cents to any article that you choose. But if it is intellectually flawed or dishonest, it won't be published. And that, in the market place of ideas, is the way it should be. I have a hunch that the folks that profess creationism went to the same school as those who profess the Jesus is Myth theory. They both join hands in rejecting the proponderance of evidence and logic that is contrary to their religious principles. Ironic isn't it?

Kitty's Leather Couch

Kitty has demolished our leather couch. We're thinking about buying another leather couch. We won't declaw and he won't wear mittens. Kitty, at five years of age, will probably always like scratching leather.

We used to have a scratching post, but he never took to it. We may keep the old couch for him to continue to scratch, but we want to be sure that he doesn't ruin the new couch.
I'm interested in hearing of cat-friendly ideas on how to protect our furniture. For example, are there any feline-repelling (but that don't repel human) sprays on the market?

Consistent training will teach him to leave the couch alone. The idea is to make the couch an unpleasant choice to scratch while making vertical or horizontal scratching posts desirable. Things that will make the couch unpleasant are tape, sticky side up, getting squirted with water if he starts to scratch, a loud noise to startle him.

It sounds like what basically is needed is behavorial conditioning. An example is what we inflict on Kitty each night when my wife makes my sandwich for work to our general delight. He gets a nice slice of ham but only if he walks on his two back feet. Kitty is turning into a regular Puss in Boots by the way he toddles around the kitchen. The principle is the same with the couch I suppose, but using rocks in a can or a water-bottle to reinforce a different kind of behavior.

We'll see if it works.

Harry Lives

At Cosco, while my wife was doing some back-to-school shopping, I cracked the latest Harry Potter tome and read the last page.

Looks like our hero continues to live on in over-hyped fiction-land.

It didn't look like the other shoppers there were much interested in this $18.19 book.

My boy's 11th birthday is coming up and we felt a more fun book for him to read was The Dangerous Book for Boys.

Is Islam True?

Is Islam the correct faith? Is there any proof of its correctness?

The proof of Islam's correctness lies merely in the fact that Moslems regard it as correct. But I think what you were really asking as: is there an emperical foundation for justifing a belief in Islam? I think if the proposition was phrased that way, most Moslems would dismiss that as irrelevant or state that its emperical foundation is both a given and proven by their conduct and culture.

May I suggest a paradigm shift as it were in the categories we use. Rather than focusing on or justifying our belief in "liberalism" or "conservatism", "theism" or "atheism", wouldn't it make more sense to grapple with more relevant categories such as right or wrong, truth or falsehood? I would think once we discern that, those other categories will take care of themselves or become superfluous.

For me, Muhammad was his own Constantine, so I don't compartmentalize political beliefs from religious beliefs.

You pack a lot into a few words. But I'm trying to figure out if those words make any sense.

Muhammed was his own Constantine? Christians have never regarded Constantine as a messanger or prophet of God. Muhammed saw himself as the restorer of the uncorrupted faith of Adam and Abraham, whereas Constantine saw himself as the promoter of the faith and the uniter of Christendom, the first Christian Roman Emperor. However, both Muhammed and Constantine were men of the sword and put to the sword countless in the name of their faith. The Christians of the third century and the Moslems of the sixth century were able to justify that in the name of mutually complementary goals of political cohesion and religous propagation, much like the Italian Mafia have also done. They, like you, saw life as undifferentiated totality, with politics, faith, science, and law as integrated and non-compartmentalized. From this in Europe came such notions as the divine right of kings, the inquisition, and the subordination of human rights to a theocracy. From this in the deserts of Araby came such notions as the Sharia, the jihad, and the subordination of human rights to a theocracy. What's not to like?

You admire Muhammed and in a backhanded way you admire Constantine, and their lives inspire you to not compartmentalize politics from religion. But does this make sense either or ethical or practical grounds? I think the answer is an emphatic no. On ethical grounds, it's untenable as it opens the door to the rule of religious dogma in areas of life where there should not be dogma if there is to be progress both in matters of science and in matters of the conscience. The compartmentalization of politics from faith came to be out of the memory of our founding fathers in the religious wars that plagued Europe for hundreds of years. The Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the protection of the rights of the minority, divided government, freedom of speach, assembly, and the press, and, indeed, the formation of the middle class in the west are integral to this compartmentalization of politics from religion.

The Islam that you define sounds incredibly ignorant and disgusting. I would not want to have anything to do with the Islam you define.

I don't define Islam or Christianity in that way and nor do I claim that you do. But enough do throughout the world to justify my statements.

How can religious politicians, when they go to Washington, check their religious beliefs at the door along with their coats and hats?

There is a difference between letting your ethical values which arise from your religious beliefs inform your political judgements in distinction to making political judgements that explictly reflect your creed. The Christian apocalyptics that are pushing for war between Islam and the West are doing just this, and are no less irrational and evil than the Jewish fanatics who butcher Palestineans in the name of Moses and the Moslem fanatics who blow themselves up while screaming "Allah is Great."

This is a popular myth among a lot of people, but the truth is that the Constitution does not prohibit states from having established religions. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire had colonial religious establishments and continued to retain those religious establishments after the First Amendment was added to the Constitution.

Be that as it may, the effect is to challenge pluralism if religionists seek to abridge the faith of others in the name of their own faith. The absolute convergance of politics and religion-- especially one brand of religion-- denies that which the constitution explicitly promotes-- minority rights. Another word for this is totaliterianism.

How Smart Are Cats?

Who is smarter and why-- cats, dogs, humans?

This somewhat frivolous question was prompted by an article that I read that compared dog and cat intelligences. Dogs, the article claimed, can understand more than 2,000 words, whereas cats can understand about 50. However, cats are more attuned to tones than dogs and more than hold their own when it comes to problem-solving and simple reasoning. My cat, for example, has no trouble unlatching my cupboards.

Humans? Generally pretty dense, IMO.

Two comments:

somewhat frivolous??
somewhat?

Freak, get a rope..

That rude comment was made by "Bad Cat." I've seldom encountered bad cats. Bad cat may need to spend time in purrgatory.

You will never see a team of cats pulling a sled through snow and ice. Plus, if an alien were to visit this planet and saw humans scooping litter boxes, who do you think *they* would assume was smarter?

Al Qaeda and the USSR

Here are two cautionary letters regarding the questionable analogy (of containment by mutually assured destruction) of Al Qaeda to the USSR, that appeared in today's The New York Times Magazine:

"Al Qaeda, while smaller in number and resources, poses an entirely different kind of threat in that its activity is not predominately localized to one country, and unlike what was generally true of the Soviets, members of Al Qaeda will readily give their lives to take American lives."

"It is not the number of people or weapons that counts; it is the willingness to use them."

Franks

Bush, in his press conference last week, said that General Tommy Franks assured him that they had the resources they needed to succeed on the Iraqi battlefield. Clearly, Bush is trying to shift responsibility from himself to Franks, and that is shameful. On the other hand, it does appear that the US military were captives to the neo-cons, filled with courage to face lead from enemy guns but bowls of jelly when it came time to speak truth to power. People like Colin Powell and Franks may have had physical courage but they were also moral cowards at this critical time in America's history.

Under pressure to go along, he studied CIA Tenet's "irrefutable" evidence that Saddam had WMD, was convinced of the threat, used it in his infamous UN speech, which after the Phase 3 victory, was proven wrong. How is his support for the war a lack of "moral courage"? If he had steadfastly continued to be against the war in the face of the CIAs supposed convincing evidence ("slam dunk"), he would have been considered intransigent for no good reason. IOW, he thought there were good reasons for going to war.

You make an excellent point. Perhaps "moral courage" isn't an appropriate phrase. I use that only to distinguish their proven physical courage against a clear failure in their belief system.

Note the words you use in the paragraph above: "Under pressure to go along" and "he thought there were good reasons." I suggest that a stronger person would have defied that pressure to go along, prevalant as it is in the dynamics of any organization. He would have also probed for the justifications to the prevailing orthodoxy. What we have here was not a bureaucratic failure. Powell and Tenet had had their disposal millions of dollars in contrary information and analysis that could have provided an alternative course of action. There was nothing inevitable about the march to war.

What we saw was a failure of epistimology on a massive and costly scale. In making the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003, President George Bush employed an epistemology that accepted the reality of weapons of mass destruction, a link between the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in 2001, manpower and budget assumptions, the inclination of the people of Iraqi to welcome our troops with, as one neo-con, wrote "kites and boom-boxes" (depends on how you define "boom-box"!), and the probability that our domination of Iraq would bring peace and security to the Middle East. Although history may someday endorse the decision that Bush made, there is little question that there was a gap between what was believed and what was real in making that decision.

When I was in my twenties, I wrote a book using data from the academic wing of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Foreign Assessment Center. The quality of data was in proportion to how close I got to the data. Raw data that I used was of high quality. Data that analysts had interpreted for decision-makers was less credible. I suspect that intelligence information that reaches the President, the National Security Council, and Powell and Franks is so filtered and distorted by political needs that those conclusions may have little semblance to reality.

It recently came to light that 94 senators didn't read the pivotal NIE, including, 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.

I think this national failure is interpreting reality also comes from what I call the myopia of the brilliant, a condition where intelligent people make stupid mistakes. These people are not just smart, but they are also forceful. They think it’s shameful to admit ignorance, and place great confidence in their brilliance—brilliantly constructing problem-solving systems and forcefully acting on their results. The problem is that these people are reluctant to re-examine their assumptions. They consider it a sign of weakness. We see this especially in politics—in building too many dams and highways and in starting ill-conceived wars. In describing the debacle of the 1960s, Russell Baker wrote that these people in government “had a lust to know everything. They had a vision of total information. Intelligence. One still senses a vocal genuflection when the word passes over their lips. God may be love, but knowledge is power. Theirs was a faith in Total Intelligence. In their dream of ultimate fulfillment, absolutely everything was knowable. The astounding thing, of course, was that the harder the White House labored to know absolutely everything, the less it knew about relatively few things that it was in the business to know about.”

In addition to this arrogance that gripped the inner core of the White House and the establishment was another phenomenon that Yale psychologist Irving L. Janus called “groupthink.” Groups such as project teams adhered to group norms – an assumed consensus-- and pressured each other to uniformity. An illusion of invulnerability and the rationalizing away of conflicting self-censorship gripped the group. This pressure combined with the fear of losing influence or even your job made it difficult for anyone to make principled stands. But reality is a hard teacher, and even the mightest herd must deal with the world as it is.

Military people generally are conditioned not to challenge but to obey. But those who do challenge are among the most outstanding military leaders of all time, including MacArthur to Truman, Grant to Lincoln, and Zhukov to Stalin. I see no such people in the military today. So when Bush says he will await for what the commanders on the ground advise him, what is is really waiting for is sounds within an echo chamber.

The press also is complicit in this failure in epistomology, perhaps more so than the generals as presumably they should have had the tough-minded independence to ask the right questions.
Let's face it. The White House press specifically and the press in general were compliant, credulous stooges. The orchestration of the mass media was both impressive and duplicitious. There are news reports that the former CIA Directory George Tenet said that his phrase "slam dunk" that many people took as a green light to invade Iraq was actually a reference to effectively propaganderizing the war. Frankly, I don't know which interpretation is worse.

I surmize that the process the administration used to sell the Iraq war and arouse public support was basically as follows:

1. Pass to reporters false "evidence" in leading liberal publications, such as Judith Miller at the New York Times and the Washington Post.

2. Cite that evidence in the Sunday talk shows.

3. Weave that evidence into a dog and pony show for Congressional leaders and the United Nations.

4. Use simple powerful images such as a mushroom cloud in all speeches.

5. Rhetorically associate at every opportunity in every speech Iraq with 9/11.

6. Co-opt the most influential reporters and columnists with private briefings, parties, and requests for advice.

7. Ruthlessly crush dissent in the intelligence services and the military.

8. Demonize or trivialize the skeptical.

9. Make it mainstream by enlisting actors and other famous people to spread the word.

10. Keep the message simple ("Iraq has WMDS") and repeat it continually, making the decision for war a foregone and popular conclusion. (The administration spin today is just as simplistic, but I don't think the public are now buying what the administration is selling: "If we don't stay, there will be genocide." )

In some hellish pit, Joseph Goebbels is smiling.

So what's the antidote for this?

1. Get away from the New York - Washinton, D.C. fishbowl, if not physically, at least mentally. David Halberstam, who recently died, wrote an influential book in 1972 The Best and the Brightest, an ironic reference to the intellectuals that led us into the Viet Nam quagmire. In it he refers to the incestuous relationship between press and power. I think the only way to look at the big questions clearly is to separate yourself from those people. The invitation to Georgetown parties, Lincoln Center concert, and White House briefings erodes the tough-mindedness needed to separate lies from truth.

2. Do your homework. The newsprint as well as the cable and web media are basically trascriptionists and there is nothing that flagship media outlets like more than to transcribe the words of the powerful. But it isn't from the Commander in Chief or the Secretary of Defense where you will get the truth. It's from the mid-level bureaucrats and majors. Propaganda is a bottom down process. The agonizing search for truth is a ground up process.

3. Grow a backbone. This is true for everyone-- the media, the legislature, and voters. In photographs of people the start of war-- it doesn't matter if it's WWI or WWII and it doesn't matter if it's Germany or America-- there is a commonality in expression in the crowds. It's the faces of ignorant glee. But war has a way of teaching us reality-- slowly and painfully. And it is for this reason that courageous, skeptical questioning is the highest-- dare I say it?-- morality.

Conservatism and the Iraq War

To my mind, a statement like "supporting the war is not a conservative position..." simply doesn't jibe with the history of American conservatism. To me, today's "traditional conservative" draws his genesis from the likes of Russell Kirk and Buckley, through Goldwater (aka, "Mr. Conservative"), to Reagan.

I disagree. William Buckley represents that part of the conservative wing going back to the days of Taft isolationism that has expressed strong skepticism of international unilateralism and interventionism generally and to the Iraq war in particular, in distinction to, say, Norman Podhoretz, who represents the neo-conservative wing and would have us bomb Iran tomorrow.

Literally, a conservative is one who wishes to conserve the resources, ideals, and respect of the nation. These seems to an inherent contradiction to public policies and actions that consumes resources, besmearches our ideals, and erodes the regard of the world towards the United States. Conservatives also understand that countries enter wars, not armies, and that an army without the support of its citizenry will fail. It is these axioms that suggest to me that there is nothing "conservative" about the Iraq war.

Given the assumptions of the time (2003), I can easily see "traditional conservatives" supporting this war. In fact, I think most of whom I would identify as true conservatives did. And I am confident that this war, at its outset, would have been applauded and supported by the "plankholders" of the modern conservative movement, were they alive.

I'm not so confident. I suppose you could go back to our founding fathers for a definitive opinion on this subject, who cautioned us in getting involved in foreign entanglements. The assumption that the expenditure of US blood and treasure to conserve our own freedoms may have had warrant, assuming that the "assumptions of the time" had merit. But the did not and do not, and nor were those assumptions the prevailing assumptions. Subsequent investigations have since demonstrated that these assumptions were not just based on the lack of evidence or bad evidence but out-right lies.

The fact that only a limited segment of our population has been asked to bear the burden of this war and that the adminsitration saw fit to disclose the identify of a CIA operative in time of war suggests to me that this was a war that was conducted for political reasons rather than in the defense of our national interests

The conservative metaphysic, as I understand it, is that truth is not releative-- it is rooted in what is real. The ethos of the Bush administration is one of dishonesty that extends not just to foreign affirs, but to science, tax, and other policies-- spin, selective or false evidence, manipulation of public sentiment, and propaganda-- an embrace of passion rather than reality. These are at least to me scarcely conservative ideals, and largely accounts for the erosion of Bush's support from conservatives.

What Democrats Can Do

I thought the democrats were ending the war once they took control. Were all those speeches pure rhetoric? Congress controls the purse; no money, no war. That simple.

I wish it were that simple. The fact is that Congress needs much more than a majority to ensure the severance of money for war funding. The Democrats have a paper thin majority, and time will clearly have to pass before a bloc consisting of Republicans and Democrats is in place that can withstand a veto.

Iraq in Chaos

The question is do we leave now with Iraq in chaos or do we leave later with Iraq in chaos. I hope the Congress chooses the former course to save more lives and treasure.

I agree. It is interesting to me how the neo-cons are imagining that all kinds of bad things will happen if Americans leave now. They certainly had no similar imagination as to consequences for entering in the first place. I think we should simpily leave and let the internal dynamics of the country work itself out. One of these days we will learn once and for all the folly trying to, in the words of Kipling, hustle the east.

Now it is not good for the Christian's health
to hustle the area in brown
for the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles
and it weareth the Christian down

And the end of the fight
is a tombstone white
with the name of the late deceased –
and the epitaph drear:
"A fool lies here
who tried to hustle the East!"

Sheehan and Peolsi

It's so bad for the left, I see where Cindy Sheehan is threatening to run against Speaker Pelosi unless she drafts impeachment articles against Bush.

The chances that Sheehan will beat Pelosi are zero.

Iraqi Parliament On August Vacation

From the White House transcript:

Q Is the Iraqi government and the Iraqi parliament taking the month of August off?

MR. SNOW: Probably, yes. Just not --

Q They're taking the entire month of August off, before the September deadline?

MR. SNOW: It looks like they may, yes. Just like the U.S. Congress is.

Q Have you tried to talk them out of that?

MR. SNOW: You know, it's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August, I'll pass on your recommendation.

Q Well, Tony, Tony, I'm sorry, that's -- you know -- I mean, there are a lot of things that happen by September and it's 130 degrees for the U.S. military also on the ground --

MR. SNOW: You know, that's a good point. And it's 130 degrees for the Iraqi military. The Iraqis, you know, I'll let them -- my understanding is that at this juncture they're going to take August off, but, you know, they may change their minds.

Q But have you tried to convince them not to?. Does the U.S. government pressure them not to, because then the September deadline --

MR. SNOW: Again, I'm not going to -- you know, I'm just not -- I'm not getting into the -- the Iraqis understand the importance. It's not a September deadline, it's a September report. I think it's very important, in an age where everybody wants to create a sense of, sort of, finishing up on a deadline -- it's a report, it is not a deadline. It is a report that will, in fact, measure progress --

Q It's a pretty important report --

MR. SNOW: Okay, so what you're saying -- yes --

Q -- 130 degrees for the Iraqi parliament, so they need a month off, even though it's 130 degrees for U.S. soldiers.

MR. SNOW: Well, you know, you're assuming that nothing is going on. As I said, there are any number of things going on in Iraq. Let's see what the parliament does during the course of this month. Let's also see what happens, because quite often when parliaments do not meet, there are also continuing meetings on the side. And there will be progress, I'm sure, on a number of fronts.

I'm just -- I'm not in a position at this point to try to gainsay what the Iraqis are doing.

Rainbow Bridge

This made me tear up.

Fighting for a Principle

I'm pondering what the president said at his press conference on Thursday: “I can look in the mirror and I know that I made a decision based on principle not on public opinion”.

I think what Bush means is that he is committed to upholding universal norms that transcend the clamor of the mob. What it really means is that he is infected with a virus that blinds him to such irrelevancies as facts, logic, the rule of law, and the will of the people.

My principle is to beware of principles.

Nothing is Absolute

Some people say that "nothing is absolute except the relative". Others say that "nothing is absolute including the relative". Do you believe either of these two are correct? If not, what would you say is correct?

Neither are correct and both are correct. To resolve this paradox, I think these statements can be approached in terms of fact, values, and morals.

There are absolutes in terms of universal constants and in terms of measurements of time and mass, for example. And of course there are objective, undeniable scientific truths, such as: the earth revolves around the sun. There are also absolute truths within the context of deductive mathematics, that, based on its axioms, may deliver different but valid results. In one such system of mathematics, for example, two plus two must absolutely equal four.

As to questions of values, we enter a twilight zone in which subjectivity and objectivity mesh. Money is useful to most but not all people. There is to most people an objective quantative difference between kindergarten drawings and the drawings of the Old Masters, and also the worst kindergarten and Old Master paintings and the best.

As to morals, we enter further yet into the morass of subjectivity. Personally, I link ethics to the search for and an understanding of truth, but this is by no means a consensus view. However, generally, I believe that morals is a relative expression of each person's conscious and unconscious presuppositions concerning life and his or her own existence.

Your example of money is subjective, meaning its worth is different to each person and its average value on an Exchange, which represents an average of lots of people's values, fluctuates.

But the fluctuation of money, stocks, and commodities is not merely subjective. The spread is like may flies around a dead rabbit, but the dead rabit, i.e. the intrinsic value, is objectively present albeit individually subjectively apprehended. Those that defy this become victims to bubbles and scams or lucky-- real life lessons in epistomology.

Ethics (morality) is the study of how people actually behave (social science) or, how they should behave (philosophy & theology). Here again, as with values, I know of no universal, objective ethics.

Except for our mutual physicality-- surely you would agree that our bodies are objectively real. "Do I not bleed" is the objective basis of most law.

Show me where the intrinsic value resides in money?

Money isn't at all arbitrary. It is absolute but in a fragment of time.

I heard on NPR radio that in Zimbabwe, which is experiencing 11,000% percent inflation, a loaf of bread now costs $22,000. Notwithstanding the social fiction of fiat currency, the bread is still something humans want. Because humans want it, its value still exists because it can be exchanged even for hyper-inflated money.

The same is true in the stock market. A company, let's call it Cat Herding, Inc., is capitalized at 1,000,000 shares. On FNN, you see that each share is worth $10. What is it's value? I would argue that the value is absolutely what the free market auction gives it in that instant of time, i.e. $10,000,000. That we think it is worth $20 dollars or $5 dollars is irrelevant. That $10 reflects or whims and hunches of the ignorant and the insane and also the considered judgment of professional short and long sellers and optioneers, and also databases, computer systems, and neural networks that talk to each other to say nothing of exogenous events such as politics and weather. It could be that Cat Herding is watered stock-- overinflated and hyped-- but even that reflects the prevailing knowledge of the marketplace at that moment in time.

This is true with the market as a whole. There is no shadowy "them" that controls market values, such as the price of gas, as the market is bigger than any billionare, oil oligarchy, or federal reserve system. It is the naked South Seas fisherman who trades two shells for a fish and it is the Deutche Bank wire-transferring a hundred million to the Bank of Hong Kong. The voice of the market is the voice of God, all knowing and all powerful-- the most powerful entityin existence. (I dare say more people pay homage to this God than any other.) The market is both rational-- in that it deals with the metaphysics of what is real-- real people creating real things-- and it is irrational and psychological-- akin to the irrational panic of the wilderbeast on the savannah of Africa reacting to cat growls or perhaps nothing at all.

Again, the values are in the head, not in the art works.

I think your arguments voids the definition of value. Thus, the imputed value of the Mona Lisa, for example, is not even the value of the wood and paints. It is merely the shared belief that the painting is priceless. The question is: is that shared belief enough to create a reality of value?

However, an "objective basis for ... law" does NOT exist.

My quote from "The Merchant of Venice" ("If you prick me, doo I not bleed") wasn't meant to demosntrate that humans are real, but that we share a common physicality, which provides an objective basis for law. There are other objective bases for law, such as humanity's instinct to form families and communities, respond to weather, accumulate possessions, and think about death. But I think our own biology is the key factor.

Ordinary man and woman embrace and recoil the same no matter where they live. That history is made up of cannibals and fascists doesn't negate this idea of the universality of biologically-derived moral values. Of course, there are layers of culture, but underneath, the same mix of nobility and criminaity emerges no matter where you look. Thus, when the facts came to light, humanity was appalled at the genocides inflicted on three separate continents—German Europe in the 1940s, Cambodian Asia in the 1970s, and Rwandan Africa in the 1990s.

Well, what of those who were not appalled? I think the answer lies in an example-- our response as to why we should not torture, present adminsitration policy notwithstanding. We do not torture for ethical reasons-- it violates the categorical imperative of inflicting needless pain-- and for utlitierian reasons-- that for some people it doesn't provide the results the torturer wants. That some people have constitutions impervious to pain or may welcome pain doesn't undermine the proposition that such conduct is unethical. Rather, it recognizes the diversity of humanity that allows people to be wired as they are. It is a recognition of their individuality as well as their humanity that requires that we consider torture unacceptable. In other words, and perhaps paradoxically, the ordinary man and women will reject torture because of their recognition that there are extraordinary men and women who do not reject torture.

Fred Thompson's Trophy Wife

Now let's see.

We have our hero from New York on his third marriage and estranged from his kids, the Morman who straps his dog to car roof for a 12 hour trip, Newt who divorced his wife who was in the hospital bedridden from cancer, Bush with his serial lies and the blood of tens of thousands on his hands, and now Fred Thompson with his trophy wife 25 years his junior. What a circus.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/fashion/08JERI.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=style&adxnnlx=1183813261-CulpeVBIBDF0pKqUm/hieQ&oref=slogin

Folks, wise up. Republicans are to morals as bicycles are to fish.

Love

Love does not consist in words or feelings, but in deeds. It is an act of the will; it is a gift; that is to say, a giving.

Saint Faustina

O is for Onions

mature like Italian
(also Spanish and shallot)
or youthful like scallion.

open shop
ontology -- existence/being
onomatopoeia
oxgang - bovate
itiose
on the shelf - has been
onus probandi - obligation of proof
Osages
Osier
Ossining
Osman
Og King of Bashan
obicular - leaf shaped
oriflamme
overlapping debt
oste
obi
oligopsony
overhead costs
outre
oneiromancy
occlusive

My Ship Has Come In! Or Not.

Got this e-mail today ...

On Wed Jul 4 7:57 , UK NATIONAL LOTTERY -->sent:-->

You have just won £552,000 pounds sterling.
For more information, contact our Lottery fiduciary Agent.
Name;Mr petterson walker
E-mail Address: claims_petterson2007@yahoo.com

Sir. Richard Lloyds
online co ordinator

This e-mail probably originated from Nigeria and was sent to 3.7 million of his closest friends. I wouldn't be surprised if you got it as well.

My view on the lottery is that it is fundamentally a regressive tax on stupidity. I think it is good social policy to tax stupid people, and the lottery will do just that. When you look at the odds of winning, say a super-powerball lottery at 1:10,700,000, the best and only way to interpret it is to view the odds correctly as 0:10,700,000. Even allowing yourself a remote possibility for success in my view puts you on a dangerous slope perhaps not to poverty but to the loss of your money that could be used for something that gives you more for your expenditures than a bunch of worthless paper slips.

I got innoculated against gambling when I was just out of college and unemployed where I encountered a game of three card monte. It seemed so simple, so obvious at the time, that the black card was the right card. With new found wisdom, I discerned that I couldn't beat the house--in this case-- a swarthy low set gentleman and his equally stocky partner with a tattoo of a snake on his arm. I was taken for ten bucks, but it was money well spent, as I've never had any interest in gambling since.

It is impossible for someone to beat the house in cases where pure luck is involved, over time, as in the lottery or the well-named one-armed bandit. In this case, you are competing against the house, and the house has calibrated the play so that over time they must win. In the case of some card games, where specialized ability is involved, it's possible in rare circumstances to come ahead-- but not so much as it's something that I want to spend my time on. But, as in the stock market and commodities, most people overestimate their ability and personality so that inevitably they lose decisively. It's one thing to beat a horse race, but quite another to beat the horse races.

I'm not sure what the angle of the person is who sent the e-mail, but I'm sure it's a scam. It most likely involves a process of ingratiation, followed by an appeal for a good will deposit, followed by a ten percent processing fee, followed by nothing.

The only way to beat the house in this case is to not even open its door in the first place.

Happy July 4th

Our clown-in-chief.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaY8wzwxWTc

Bush Gives Libby Amnesty

... and the Democrats a sword guaranteeing electoral victory in 2008 . The Republican era officially comes to an end today.

Why Sermons Don't Work

David Brooks in The New York Times wrote a thought-provoking column on why sermonizing, rehab centers, abstinance programs, 12 step programs, and imprisonment seldom change a person's core behavior.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/abstinence-and-the-perception-in-decisionmaking/2007/06/22/1182019369233.html

He writes that these programs are " based on a false model of human nature. It's based on the idea that human beings are primarily deciders. If you pour them full of moral maxims, they will be more likely to decide properly when temptation arises. If you pour them full of information about the consequences of risky behaviour, they will decide to exercise prudence and forswear unwise decisions.

"That's the way we'd like to think we are, but that's not the way we really are, and it's certainly not the way teenagers are.

"There is no central executive zone in the brain where all information is gathered and decisions are made. There is no little homunculus up there watching reality on a screen and then deciding how to proceed. In fact, the mind is a series of parallel processes and loops, bidding for urgency.

"We're not primarily deciders. We're perceivers. The body receives huge amounts of information from the world, and what we do is turn that data into a series of generalisations, stereotypes and theories that we can use to navigate our way through life. Once we've perceived a situation and construed it so that it fits one of the patterns we carry in our memory, we've pretty much rigged how we're going to react, even though we haven't consciously sat down to make a decision.

"Construing is deciding."

I think Brooks' model also applies to how people embrace world views. It is seldom a matter of deciding-- weighing the evidence, exercising the logic, exhibiting the implications-- no matter how rational that world view may seem. When rationality is used, it is used only in conformity to reinforce deep-seated subconscious prejudices. I think this is true whether you are a professing atheist, Hindu, or Lutheran. As Brooks suggests, it's not deliberating over datum that turns one one person into a heroin addict or a doctor of biochemistr