Whoa!!! Guess who's calling for the Impeachment of President George W. Bush? The qoute:
Twice, George Bush has taken an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States ." Article IV, Section 4 of that Constitution reads, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion."
Well, we are being invaded, and the president of the United States is not doing his duty to protect the states against that invasion. Some courageous Republican, to get the attention of this White House, should drop into the hopper a bill of impeachment, charging George W. Bush with a conscious refusal to uphold his oath and defend the states of the Union against "invasion."
...Pat Buchanan
americancause
Peace,
Steve
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
D word
I have so many friends that are teachers on some level or another. I know Kindergarten teachers, College Presidents, AP math teachers, Principals, Cafeteria Coordinators, School Nurses, and a P.E. Teacher lives in the house here in Whites Creek Gorge. All of them are dealing with the start of school and wondering how society will survive, given the problems the kids are bringing to class.
We get the National Education Association magazine here at the house, and I read it wwith the same attention I give to Business Week, Sierra, or Science News. NEA Today never fails to make me think. Discipline is a main topic this month.
One thing I've noticed is that Conservatives seem to think discipline is about crushing human spirit and free thinking. Remember "Zero Tolerance"? Conservatives rammed that particularly idiotic concept through lots of School Boards, thereby forever demonstrating to the world how morbidly incapable the right wing is of making the connection between concept and result.
In East Tennessee, the School Board expelled an elementary school child for showing a table knife to her teacher and asking if it was OK for her to take it to the cafeteria. The school lunch had chicken so tough that she couldn't eat it. All she wanted was food and she was asking permission. They expelled her.
Morons!
There are two main concepts of discipline, IMHO, and there should be three. The first is to Teach the correct behavior, considered Liberal in most quarters. The other is Punish them when they don't do what you want, Conservative...obviously.
Giving school kids a School agenda and then getting ready to SmackDown any offenders is the way of the FundXtians. It is also cowardly, downright mean in some cases, and lazy.I am amazed a the folks that still call for corporal punishment. Any adult that hits a kid is a creep.
Hit my kid and you should expect to experience me, in your face, in a seriously unhappy mood.
I decided to go the hard way on discipline with my kids. I call it, "Teach, correct, Expect."
Teach...Telling a kid something is not teaching. Teaching involves understanding, on the part of the teacher and the student. If you can't rationally explain why a behavior is positive, maybe it doesn't have value in the first place. This is the part where you draw the line in the sand dividing behavior into "All giggles on this side" and "Deal with me" on the other.
Correct...This is the hard one. Takes effort and energy...sometimes when you just don't have much. This is the part where you make sure your kid understand that this line in the dirt is not very fuzzy.
Expect...Expect graduated consequences, up to and including the Nuclear Option...No Cell phone. Also, and this is important, Expect rewards for good behavior.
A smile will often work just fine.
See how simple it is?
Peace,
Steve
Here are the 25 tips for classroom discipline. My favorite is "Don't argue with them!"
nea today
We get the National Education Association magazine here at the house, and I read it wwith the same attention I give to Business Week, Sierra, or Science News. NEA Today never fails to make me think. Discipline is a main topic this month.
One thing I've noticed is that Conservatives seem to think discipline is about crushing human spirit and free thinking. Remember "Zero Tolerance"? Conservatives rammed that particularly idiotic concept through lots of School Boards, thereby forever demonstrating to the world how morbidly incapable the right wing is of making the connection between concept and result.
In East Tennessee, the School Board expelled an elementary school child for showing a table knife to her teacher and asking if it was OK for her to take it to the cafeteria. The school lunch had chicken so tough that she couldn't eat it. All she wanted was food and she was asking permission. They expelled her.
Morons!
There are two main concepts of discipline, IMHO, and there should be three. The first is to Teach the correct behavior, considered Liberal in most quarters. The other is Punish them when they don't do what you want, Conservative...obviously.
Giving school kids a School agenda and then getting ready to SmackDown any offenders is the way of the FundXtians. It is also cowardly, downright mean in some cases, and lazy.I am amazed a the folks that still call for corporal punishment. Any adult that hits a kid is a creep.
Hit my kid and you should expect to experience me, in your face, in a seriously unhappy mood.
I decided to go the hard way on discipline with my kids. I call it, "Teach, correct, Expect."
Teach...Telling a kid something is not teaching. Teaching involves understanding, on the part of the teacher and the student. If you can't rationally explain why a behavior is positive, maybe it doesn't have value in the first place. This is the part where you draw the line in the sand dividing behavior into "All giggles on this side" and "Deal with me" on the other.
Correct...This is the hard one. Takes effort and energy...sometimes when you just don't have much. This is the part where you make sure your kid understand that this line in the dirt is not very fuzzy.
Expect...Expect graduated consequences, up to and including the Nuclear Option...No Cell phone. Also, and this is important, Expect rewards for good behavior.
A smile will often work just fine.
See how simple it is?
Peace,
Steve
Here are the 25 tips for classroom discipline. My favorite is "Don't argue with them!"
nea today
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Ho, Ho, glurb...
I realize the Bush administration hates science. Science is based entirely on "facts" and everyone knows facts have a Liberal bias and should be ignored.
Facts supporting global warming, being totally biased against the Bush Administration, have been regularly edited out of reports from the EPA linking man-made greenhouse gases to climate change.
If I were an enemy of the United States, one thing I would try to do is destroy the US science education. This would cripple American business competiveness in a few years. Attack Science and favor rightwing religions...Yep! That would do it alright...That would cause the slow death of American technology.
But Science is a wonderful thing, not only providing fodder for an endless number of B Science Fiction movies, but entertaining us in fascinating ways.
Put aside those mental pictures of rubber aligators chomping down on nearly naked large breasted women on the Sci-Fi channel and consider this:
The fossils of crocodilians found in Brazil turn out to be related to fossil crocodilians found in Pakistan, for instance. Either they were danged good swimmers, or the concept of South America, Africa and the Middle East being part of the same land mass at one time has another unexpected bit of proof. Plate Techtonics explains volcanoes and crocodiles, ...Plate Techtonics also explains a jillion other things. like geology, and fits in nicely with Darwinian theory...But since it contradicts a few sentences in the Old Testament...Gotta go!
Here's something I noticed from my subversive science magazines: The magnetic North Pole has crawled away from Canada and has made it out into international waters north of Alaska. Canada must be reeling from the loss! I mean the U.S. has lost a few thousand troops in a stupid war, but that's nothing...
Canada lost the whole danged North Pole!
Santa Claus done left the building!
Holy Bleep! Santa!
The North Pole has gone under water. Anybody heard from Santa lately?
Damned Liberals and their science! They got Santa!
Peace,
Steve
Facts supporting global warming, being totally biased against the Bush Administration, have been regularly edited out of reports from the EPA linking man-made greenhouse gases to climate change.
If I were an enemy of the United States, one thing I would try to do is destroy the US science education. This would cripple American business competiveness in a few years. Attack Science and favor rightwing religions...Yep! That would do it alright...That would cause the slow death of American technology.
But Science is a wonderful thing, not only providing fodder for an endless number of B Science Fiction movies, but entertaining us in fascinating ways.
Put aside those mental pictures of rubber aligators chomping down on nearly naked large breasted women on the Sci-Fi channel and consider this:
The fossils of crocodilians found in Brazil turn out to be related to fossil crocodilians found in Pakistan, for instance. Either they were danged good swimmers, or the concept of South America, Africa and the Middle East being part of the same land mass at one time has another unexpected bit of proof. Plate Techtonics explains volcanoes and crocodiles, ...Plate Techtonics also explains a jillion other things. like geology, and fits in nicely with Darwinian theory...But since it contradicts a few sentences in the Old Testament...Gotta go!
Here's something I noticed from my subversive science magazines: The magnetic North Pole has crawled away from Canada and has made it out into international waters north of Alaska. Canada must be reeling from the loss! I mean the U.S. has lost a few thousand troops in a stupid war, but that's nothing...
Canada lost the whole danged North Pole!
Santa Claus done left the building!
Holy Bleep! Santa!
The North Pole has gone under water. Anybody heard from Santa lately?
Damned Liberals and their science! They got Santa!
Peace,
Steve
Monday, August 29, 2005
Hodge Podge
1. Congrats to Green Day for "American Idiot", the best antiwar album in 35 years!
A snippet:
Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's going out to Idiot America™.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alienation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.
2. Now we know why we are in Iraq:
Big money Republicans bussed in pro Bush demonstrators to counter Cindy Sheehan. The tv shows a screenfull with signs, giving the impression that there are roughly the same number of pro's as anti's...What you don't see is that the Pro Bush crowd is less than two busses worth, while the Camp Casey people consists of thousands!
And we now see why we are getting kids killed in Iraq:
The truth is really really ugly!
truthout
3. Rush Limbaugh was on a roll this week. He got caught in so many lies that Karl Rove must be jealous. Limbaugh made a big deal about Bill Clinton, claiming he only met with CIA head George Tenet "Twice" in his term as President. Clinton had two meetings a week with Tenet and had the PDB created as a means of communicating intelligence. Remember PDB's? Presidential Daily Briefings? Remember one that George Bush refused to read? You know...the one titled, "Bin Laden determined to attack Within the United States"?
Here's the long list of Limbaugh lies for this week:
Limbaugh
4. Does any one else note the irony in the call for prayers to save New Orleans? Isn't a hurricane an act of god?
The monumental stupidity of building a city 15 feet below sea level, on the coast, in an area with a history of category 5 hurricanes, does not stop me from hoping everyone gets out of town safely. With the last projection of the storm surge at 25 feet, that means that some places could potentially be under 40 feet of water. To stay dry, you have to be on the 5th floor.
5. The Iraq constitution as written, essentially guarantees civil war, and an ultimate Muslim theocracy similar to Iran. There will be a blood bath that will make what we have already seen look like a football game.
6. Congrats to the Little League baseball team from Hawaii for winning the LL world championship...First time in history the game has been won, first by a ninth inning comback from three runs behind, and then a solo home run to end the game. The major leagues should deliver this kind of action...then I might watch a game sometime.
7. Here's a statistic for you:
The average number of concussions per football game is: Three.
8. One of our local highschools has an exchange student from Europe, a soccer player. Offering to kick field goals for the football team, he was hitting them from 60 yards in practice. A school board member was contacted by a parent about "foreigners" taking my son's starting position. The Principal was contacted and the exchange student left the team.
The school lost the big game with a cross county rival by two points, when the complaining parent's son missed an easy field goal.
Ah, sweet Irony of life!
Peace,
Steve
A snippet:
Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's going out to Idiot America™.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alienation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.
2. Now we know why we are in Iraq:
Big money Republicans bussed in pro Bush demonstrators to counter Cindy Sheehan. The tv shows a screenfull with signs, giving the impression that there are roughly the same number of pro's as anti's...What you don't see is that the Pro Bush crowd is less than two busses worth, while the Camp Casey people consists of thousands!
And we now see why we are getting kids killed in Iraq:
The truth is really really ugly!
truthout
3. Rush Limbaugh was on a roll this week. He got caught in so many lies that Karl Rove must be jealous. Limbaugh made a big deal about Bill Clinton, claiming he only met with CIA head George Tenet "Twice" in his term as President. Clinton had two meetings a week with Tenet and had the PDB created as a means of communicating intelligence. Remember PDB's? Presidential Daily Briefings? Remember one that George Bush refused to read? You know...the one titled, "Bin Laden determined to attack Within the United States"?
Here's the long list of Limbaugh lies for this week:
Limbaugh
4. Does any one else note the irony in the call for prayers to save New Orleans? Isn't a hurricane an act of god?
The monumental stupidity of building a city 15 feet below sea level, on the coast, in an area with a history of category 5 hurricanes, does not stop me from hoping everyone gets out of town safely. With the last projection of the storm surge at 25 feet, that means that some places could potentially be under 40 feet of water. To stay dry, you have to be on the 5th floor.
5. The Iraq constitution as written, essentially guarantees civil war, and an ultimate Muslim theocracy similar to Iran. There will be a blood bath that will make what we have already seen look like a football game.
6. Congrats to the Little League baseball team from Hawaii for winning the LL world championship...First time in history the game has been won, first by a ninth inning comback from three runs behind, and then a solo home run to end the game. The major leagues should deliver this kind of action...then I might watch a game sometime.
7. Here's a statistic for you:
The average number of concussions per football game is: Three.
8. One of our local highschools has an exchange student from Europe, a soccer player. Offering to kick field goals for the football team, he was hitting them from 60 yards in practice. A school board member was contacted by a parent about "foreigners" taking my son's starting position. The Principal was contacted and the exchange student left the team.
The school lost the big game with a cross county rival by two points, when the complaining parent's son missed an easy field goal.
Ah, sweet Irony of life!
Peace,
Steve
Friday, August 26, 2005
I don't get it...
Big time blogger, Instapundit, shows us how to mislead people by quoting dubious sources. The technique is quite simple really, much like those who fall for it.
Actually, those folks who fall for tactics like this may be more intellectually lazy than simple...much like our president.
So you quote someone who may be saying something that isn't true and then you just agree with them.
Like this, for instance:
Instapoo
So we have a quote that says Pat Robertson is batshit crazy, which we all agree with; and then the quote continues and says Hugo Chavez is a dictator and actually it is probably OK to assassinate dictators!
And then Instapundit says, Yeah!
Only this is not true! Hugo Chavez is not a Dictator!
Hugo Chavez, love him or hate him, was elected by landslide margins and has the support of a huge percentage of the people of Venezuela. He was elected President by the largest margin of victory in 40 years and has the support of over 70% among Venezuelans.
So if 70% of the people love Hugo Chavez...Who hates him?
George Bush, Don Rumsfeld, International corporations, Rich people...The Catholic Cardinal.
Chavez called George W. Bush, President of the United States, a Pendejo, a vulgar term of abuse.
To call a person a "pendejo" is essentially to call him stupid, although it also carries implications of willful stubbornness and rank ineptitude.
George Bush? Stupid, willfully stubborn, and rankly inept?
Where would anyone get that idea?
So Chavez was elected by a landslide and has a 70% approval rating and Instapundit calls him a dictator.
George Bush was elected by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme court, actually lost the vote in Florida, and he's a what?
Bottom line has nothing to do with George, though. Here's the headline:
"Right wing blogger, Instapundit, supports assassination of lawfully elected Leaders of Foreign Countries"
He also doesn't allow comments on his website...
Here is the whole unbiased story, warts, freckles, and all, on Hugo Chavez. Make your own mind up, people!
Hugo
Peace,
Steve
Actually, those folks who fall for tactics like this may be more intellectually lazy than simple...much like our president.
So you quote someone who may be saying something that isn't true and then you just agree with them.
Like this, for instance:
Instapoo
So we have a quote that says Pat Robertson is batshit crazy, which we all agree with; and then the quote continues and says Hugo Chavez is a dictator and actually it is probably OK to assassinate dictators!
And then Instapundit says, Yeah!
Only this is not true! Hugo Chavez is not a Dictator!
Hugo Chavez, love him or hate him, was elected by landslide margins and has the support of a huge percentage of the people of Venezuela. He was elected President by the largest margin of victory in 40 years and has the support of over 70% among Venezuelans.
So if 70% of the people love Hugo Chavez...Who hates him?
George Bush, Don Rumsfeld, International corporations, Rich people...The Catholic Cardinal.
Chavez called George W. Bush, President of the United States, a Pendejo, a vulgar term of abuse.
To call a person a "pendejo" is essentially to call him stupid, although it also carries implications of willful stubbornness and rank ineptitude.
George Bush? Stupid, willfully stubborn, and rankly inept?
Where would anyone get that idea?
So Chavez was elected by a landslide and has a 70% approval rating and Instapundit calls him a dictator.
George Bush was elected by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme court, actually lost the vote in Florida, and he's a what?
Bottom line has nothing to do with George, though. Here's the headline:
"Right wing blogger, Instapundit, supports assassination of lawfully elected Leaders of Foreign Countries"
He also doesn't allow comments on his website...
Here is the whole unbiased story, warts, freckles, and all, on Hugo Chavez. Make your own mind up, people!
Hugo
Peace,
Steve
Inadequate to the task
"The growing chorus of voices demanding a pullout should seriously alarm the Bush administration, because President Bush and his team are repeating the failure of Vietnam: failing to craft a realistic and effective policy and instead simply demanding that the American people show resolve.
Resolve isn't enough to mend a flawed approach -- or to save the lives of our troops.
If the administration won't adopt a winning strategy, then the American people will be justified in demanding that it bring our troops home."
General Wesley Clark
For President,
Resolve isn't enough to mend a flawed approach -- or to save the lives of our troops.
If the administration won't adopt a winning strategy, then the American people will be justified in demanding that it bring our troops home."
General Wesley Clark
For President,
A Little Reminder
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.
With all the hoopla going 'round about the Iraq constitution, I just thought we ought to take moment and think about our own.
So these were the goals:
Form a more perfect union.
Establish Justice
Insure Domestic Tranquility
Provide for the common defense
Promote the general welfare
Secure the Blessings of Liberty
For ourselves and our children.
I don't get it...I don't see Corporations or illegal invaders mentioned anywhere in this sacred document!
Peace,
Steve
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.
With all the hoopla going 'round about the Iraq constitution, I just thought we ought to take moment and think about our own.
So these were the goals:
Form a more perfect union.
Establish Justice
Insure Domestic Tranquility
Provide for the common defense
Promote the general welfare
Secure the Blessings of Liberty
For ourselves and our children.
I don't get it...I don't see Corporations or illegal invaders mentioned anywhere in this sacred document!
Peace,
Steve
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Checkers
I have to say this...There's something that has been bugging me. From the very start of the Al Qaeda mess, I have had this uneasy feeling that somehow we are doing almost everything exactly wrong.
After 9-11 we did attack Afghanistan and the Taliban, but we gave Bin Laden a month to get ready. That gave him time to set his contingency plans and decentralize his operations.
Then we had Osama surrounded at Tora Bora...and let him go. We didn't get Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, either....and now we have a full blown war happening in Afghanistan again. You knew that didn't you? Have you noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan?
I can't begin to list the stupid mistakes we made in Iraq, but not bothering to secure Saddam's known weapons depots has got to be one of the stupidest mistakes in the history of war! It was more than likely a rocket propelled gredade from one of these depots that blew Casey Sheehan's head off.
It is almost like President Bush is programmed to do exactly what Osama wants. You did notice that even after grandstanding about never giving in to terrorrists demands...Bush gave in to the number one reason Osama says they attacked us. We are closing the U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia.
And the Israelis are out of Gaza.
And the Palestinians are on their way to a separate state.
And we took Saddam out for Osama. This was exactly what Osama wanted. Bin Laden could not operate in Iraq with Saddam in power. Al Zarqawi was only able to stay alive in Iraq because he was in the American protected Kurdish zone...Protected by President Bush.
"We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan. The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw, they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death."
That was what Zarqawi said.
"All that we have to do [to provoke the United States] is to send two mujahideen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note than some benefits for their private companies."
That was what Bin Laden said.
There are the choices we now face.... Admit we lost and leave...or stay and die.
Way to go George! While you've been screwing up a checkers game...The bad guys have been playing Chess!
I know where I stand!
Peace,
Steve
For further reading:
pinr.com report
Here is the frightening conclusion of that report (but you should read the whole thing):
...By failing to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq, and if it is unable to alter the perception of itself favorably, the Islamic revolutionary movement will grow and become a greater threat to the U.S. homeland and its interests abroad. Unfortunately, Washington's ability to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq may prove impossible, bringing the instability of these two peripheral countries to the core of the United States.
After 9-11 we did attack Afghanistan and the Taliban, but we gave Bin Laden a month to get ready. That gave him time to set his contingency plans and decentralize his operations.
Then we had Osama surrounded at Tora Bora...and let him go. We didn't get Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, either....and now we have a full blown war happening in Afghanistan again. You knew that didn't you? Have you noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan?
I can't begin to list the stupid mistakes we made in Iraq, but not bothering to secure Saddam's known weapons depots has got to be one of the stupidest mistakes in the history of war! It was more than likely a rocket propelled gredade from one of these depots that blew Casey Sheehan's head off.
It is almost like President Bush is programmed to do exactly what Osama wants. You did notice that even after grandstanding about never giving in to terrorrists demands...Bush gave in to the number one reason Osama says they attacked us. We are closing the U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia.
And the Israelis are out of Gaza.
And the Palestinians are on their way to a separate state.
And we took Saddam out for Osama. This was exactly what Osama wanted. Bin Laden could not operate in Iraq with Saddam in power. Al Zarqawi was only able to stay alive in Iraq because he was in the American protected Kurdish zone...Protected by President Bush.
"We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan. The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw, they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death."
That was what Zarqawi said.
"All that we have to do [to provoke the United States] is to send two mujahideen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note than some benefits for their private companies."
That was what Bin Laden said.
There are the choices we now face.... Admit we lost and leave...or stay and die.
Way to go George! While you've been screwing up a checkers game...The bad guys have been playing Chess!
I know where I stand!
Peace,
Steve
For further reading:
pinr.com report
Here is the frightening conclusion of that report (but you should read the whole thing):
...By failing to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq, and if it is unable to alter the perception of itself favorably, the Islamic revolutionary movement will grow and become a greater threat to the U.S. homeland and its interests abroad. Unfortunately, Washington's ability to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq may prove impossible, bringing the instability of these two peripheral countries to the core of the United States.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Finally!
A Commandment I can go along with:
...Took that yesterday...says exactly the same thing on the other side of the sign, btw. So there you have it! Thy shalt not behave like an adult.
...Took that yesterday...says exactly the same thing on the other side of the sign, btw. So there you have it! Thy shalt not behave like an adult.
The Big Lie
Cindy Sheehan is not advocating immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. By saying she is, George Bush is lying...again!
Bush is on a speaking tour where he is dealing with the Cindy Sheehan problem by, well, lying about her. The lie is fairly obvious to anyone who knows the situation. For those who give the President the slightest credibility, it may be harder to see because, frankly, George Bush is very good at lying. He tells what is know in critical thinking circles as the "Big Lie".
Bush and his horde told big lie after big lie to get us into the Iraq war.
Just to refresh your memory:
There were no WMD's in Iraq... and they knew it.
Those aluminum tubes could not be used for uranium processing, and they knew it.
Those mobile biological laboratories were a complete fabrication, and they knew it.
The documents concerning "Yellow cake" uranium were forgeries, and they knew it.
There was no possibility of that boogieman "Mushroom Cloud", and they knew it.
There were no Al Queda terrorists in Iraq associated with Saddam Hussein, and they knew it.
Osama Bin Laden had contacted Saddam Hussein and Saddam had told him to go away!
Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 or terrorism...Nothing...
And they knew it!
Cindy Sheehan is causing Bush problems because she is asking him THE question that will blow his big lie out of the water if he answers it. Her son, Casey, is dead. His head was blown off. She has the right to know why. All of the reasons President Bush has given her so far, turned out to be...
Big Lies!
"[I]n the big lie, there is always a certain force of credibility," he wrote. The masses "more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods."
"Even though the facts ... may be brought clearly to their minds, they [the public] will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."
Those quotes are from a book called Mein Kampf. It was written by....
Adolph Hitler.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it."...Karl Rove
(actually it was Joseph Goebbels, but you would believe Rove said it, wouldn't you?)
"On Sheehan, the grieving mother who has camped near his ranch since Aug. 6, the president said he strongly supports her right to protest. 'She expressed her opinion. I disagree with it,' Bush said. 'I think immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake,' he said. 'I think those who advocate immediate withdrawal from not only Iraq but the Middle East are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States.'"
"This is the biggest smokescreen from him yet. I didn't ask him to withdraw the troops, I asked him what Noble Cause did Casey die for. I am still waiting for one of the press corps to ask him that. I am still waiting for that answer"...Cindy
"History tells us that, over the short term, the Big Lie usually works. Over the long term, though, the damage it does -- both to those who use it, and to the society on which it is inflicted -- is incalculable."...Thom Hartman
But if you really want to know why Casey Sheehan died...exactly why he was killed by a rocket propelled grenade...you can go to the next link. The short version is that L Paul Bremer had the followers of Muslim Cleric, Muqta Al-Sadr attacked and an unknown number of them killed. Their crime was providing food aid to the poor, organizing traffic patrols, and getting the garbage picked up in an area where the Americans had destroyed the basic infrastucture. They were attacked for getting things done, something Paul Bremer couldn't achieve. Until that attack, Sadr's followers had been peaceful.
After that attack, they killed some Americans in retribution. One of those Americans was Casey.
atimes.com
Peace,
Steve
*****
Prairie Weather put me on to the article that had this little tidbit:
"By this time, American participation in the war in Vietnam had lost any remnant of popular support. A Gallup poll in January 1971 showed that 60% of Americans with a college education favoured withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, 75% of those with a high-school education favoured withdrawal, and 80% of those with only a grade-school education favoured withdrawal."
bbc.co.uk
Bush is on a speaking tour where he is dealing with the Cindy Sheehan problem by, well, lying about her. The lie is fairly obvious to anyone who knows the situation. For those who give the President the slightest credibility, it may be harder to see because, frankly, George Bush is very good at lying. He tells what is know in critical thinking circles as the "Big Lie".
Bush and his horde told big lie after big lie to get us into the Iraq war.
Just to refresh your memory:
There were no WMD's in Iraq... and they knew it.
Those aluminum tubes could not be used for uranium processing, and they knew it.
Those mobile biological laboratories were a complete fabrication, and they knew it.
The documents concerning "Yellow cake" uranium were forgeries, and they knew it.
There was no possibility of that boogieman "Mushroom Cloud", and they knew it.
There were no Al Queda terrorists in Iraq associated with Saddam Hussein, and they knew it.
Osama Bin Laden had contacted Saddam Hussein and Saddam had told him to go away!
Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 or terrorism...Nothing...
And they knew it!
Cindy Sheehan is causing Bush problems because she is asking him THE question that will blow his big lie out of the water if he answers it. Her son, Casey, is dead. His head was blown off. She has the right to know why. All of the reasons President Bush has given her so far, turned out to be...
Big Lies!
"[I]n the big lie, there is always a certain force of credibility," he wrote. The masses "more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods."
"Even though the facts ... may be brought clearly to their minds, they [the public] will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."
Those quotes are from a book called Mein Kampf. It was written by....
Adolph Hitler.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it."...Karl Rove
(actually it was Joseph Goebbels, but you would believe Rove said it, wouldn't you?)
"On Sheehan, the grieving mother who has camped near his ranch since Aug. 6, the president said he strongly supports her right to protest. 'She expressed her opinion. I disagree with it,' Bush said. 'I think immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake,' he said. 'I think those who advocate immediate withdrawal from not only Iraq but the Middle East are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States.'"
"This is the biggest smokescreen from him yet. I didn't ask him to withdraw the troops, I asked him what Noble Cause did Casey die for. I am still waiting for one of the press corps to ask him that. I am still waiting for that answer"...Cindy
"History tells us that, over the short term, the Big Lie usually works. Over the long term, though, the damage it does -- both to those who use it, and to the society on which it is inflicted -- is incalculable."...Thom Hartman
But if you really want to know why Casey Sheehan died...exactly why he was killed by a rocket propelled grenade...you can go to the next link. The short version is that L Paul Bremer had the followers of Muslim Cleric, Muqta Al-Sadr attacked and an unknown number of them killed. Their crime was providing food aid to the poor, organizing traffic patrols, and getting the garbage picked up in an area where the Americans had destroyed the basic infrastucture. They were attacked for getting things done, something Paul Bremer couldn't achieve. Until that attack, Sadr's followers had been peaceful.
After that attack, they killed some Americans in retribution. One of those Americans was Casey.
atimes.com
Peace,
Steve
*****
Prairie Weather put me on to the article that had this little tidbit:
"By this time, American participation in the war in Vietnam had lost any remnant of popular support. A Gallup poll in January 1971 showed that 60% of Americans with a college education favoured withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, 75% of those with a high-school education favoured withdrawal, and 80% of those with only a grade-school education favoured withdrawal."
bbc.co.uk
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Intelligent answer to Intelligent Design
Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution
A letter to the editor of the NY Times:
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: August 23, 2005
Last month a team of paleontologists announced that it had found several fossilized dinosaur embryos that were 190 million years old - some 90 million years older than any dinosaur embryos found so far. Those kinds of numbers are always a little daunting. Ever since I was a boy in a public elementary school in Iowa, I've been learning to face the eons and eons that are embedded in the universe around us.
I know the numbers as they stand at present, and I know what they mean, in a roughly comparative way. The universe is perhaps 14 billion years old. Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. The oldest hominid fossils are between 6 million and 7 million years old. The oldest distinctly modern human fossils are about 160,000 years old.
The truth of these numbers has the same effect on me as watching the night sky in the high desert. It fills me with a sense of nonspecific immensity. I don't think I'm alone in this.
One of the most powerful limits to the human imagination is our inability to grasp, in a truly intuitive way, the depths of terrestrial and cosmological time. That inability is hardly surprising because our own lives are so very short in comparison. It's hard enough to come to terms with the brief scale of human history. But the difficulty of comprehending what time is on an evolutionary scale, I think, is a major impediment to understanding evolution.
It's been approximately 3.5 billion years since primeval life first originated on this planet. That is not an unimaginable number in itself, if you're thinking of simple, discrete units like dollars or grains of sand. But 3.5 billion years of biological history is different. All those years have really passed, moment by moment, one by one. They encompass an actual, already lived reality, encompassing all the lives of all the organisms that have come and gone in that time. That expanse of time defines the realm of biological possibility in which life in its extraordinary diversity has evolved. It is time that has allowed the making of us.
The idea of such quantities of time is extremely new. Humans began to understand the true scale of geological time in the early 19th century. The probable depth of cosmological time and the extent of the history of the human species have come to light only within our own lifetimes.
That is a lot to absorb and, not surprisingly, many people refuse to absorb it. Nearly every attack on evolution - whether it is called intelligent design or plain creationism, synonyms for the same faith-based rejection of evolution - ultimately requires a foreshortening of cosmological, geological and biological time.
Humans feel much more content imagining a world of more human proportions, with a shorter time scale and a simple narrative sense of cause and effect. But what we prefer to believe makes no difference. The fact that life on Earth has arrived at a point where it is possible for humans to have beliefs is due to the steady ticking away of eons and the trial and error of natural selection.
Evolution is a robust theory, in the scientific sense, that has been tested and confirmed again and again. Intelligent design is not a theory at all, as scientists understand the word, but a well-financed political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition - the intervention of a designer, a k a God - cannot be tested. It has no evidence to offer, and its assumptions that humans were divinely created are the same as its conclusions. Its objections to evolution are based on syllogistic reasoning and a highly selective treatment of the physical evidence.
Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth - and humans with it - was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn't a triumph of faith. It's a failure of education.
The purpose of the campaign for intelligent design is to deepen that failure. To present the arguments of intelligent design as part of a debate over evolution is nonsense. From the scientific perspective, there is no debate. But even the illusion of a debate is a sorry victory for antievolutionists, a public relations victory based, as so many have been in recent years, on ignorance and obfuscation.
The essential, but often well-disguised, purpose of intelligent design, is to preserve the myth of a separate, divine creation for humans in the belief that only that can explain who we are. But there is a destructive hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth. It sets us apart from nature, except to dominate it. It misses both the grace and the moral depth of knowing that humans have only the same stake, the same right, in the Earth as every other creature that has ever lived here. There is a righteousness - a responsibility - in the deep, ancestral origins we share with all of life.
(I couldn't have said it better, myself...or even as well!
Peace,
Steve)
A letter to the editor of the NY Times:
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: August 23, 2005
Last month a team of paleontologists announced that it had found several fossilized dinosaur embryos that were 190 million years old - some 90 million years older than any dinosaur embryos found so far. Those kinds of numbers are always a little daunting. Ever since I was a boy in a public elementary school in Iowa, I've been learning to face the eons and eons that are embedded in the universe around us.
I know the numbers as they stand at present, and I know what they mean, in a roughly comparative way. The universe is perhaps 14 billion years old. Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. The oldest hominid fossils are between 6 million and 7 million years old. The oldest distinctly modern human fossils are about 160,000 years old.
The truth of these numbers has the same effect on me as watching the night sky in the high desert. It fills me with a sense of nonspecific immensity. I don't think I'm alone in this.
One of the most powerful limits to the human imagination is our inability to grasp, in a truly intuitive way, the depths of terrestrial and cosmological time. That inability is hardly surprising because our own lives are so very short in comparison. It's hard enough to come to terms with the brief scale of human history. But the difficulty of comprehending what time is on an evolutionary scale, I think, is a major impediment to understanding evolution.
It's been approximately 3.5 billion years since primeval life first originated on this planet. That is not an unimaginable number in itself, if you're thinking of simple, discrete units like dollars or grains of sand. But 3.5 billion years of biological history is different. All those years have really passed, moment by moment, one by one. They encompass an actual, already lived reality, encompassing all the lives of all the organisms that have come and gone in that time. That expanse of time defines the realm of biological possibility in which life in its extraordinary diversity has evolved. It is time that has allowed the making of us.
The idea of such quantities of time is extremely new. Humans began to understand the true scale of geological time in the early 19th century. The probable depth of cosmological time and the extent of the history of the human species have come to light only within our own lifetimes.
That is a lot to absorb and, not surprisingly, many people refuse to absorb it. Nearly every attack on evolution - whether it is called intelligent design or plain creationism, synonyms for the same faith-based rejection of evolution - ultimately requires a foreshortening of cosmological, geological and biological time.
Humans feel much more content imagining a world of more human proportions, with a shorter time scale and a simple narrative sense of cause and effect. But what we prefer to believe makes no difference. The fact that life on Earth has arrived at a point where it is possible for humans to have beliefs is due to the steady ticking away of eons and the trial and error of natural selection.
Evolution is a robust theory, in the scientific sense, that has been tested and confirmed again and again. Intelligent design is not a theory at all, as scientists understand the word, but a well-financed political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition - the intervention of a designer, a k a God - cannot be tested. It has no evidence to offer, and its assumptions that humans were divinely created are the same as its conclusions. Its objections to evolution are based on syllogistic reasoning and a highly selective treatment of the physical evidence.
Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth - and humans with it - was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn't a triumph of faith. It's a failure of education.
The purpose of the campaign for intelligent design is to deepen that failure. To present the arguments of intelligent design as part of a debate over evolution is nonsense. From the scientific perspective, there is no debate. But even the illusion of a debate is a sorry victory for antievolutionists, a public relations victory based, as so many have been in recent years, on ignorance and obfuscation.
The essential, but often well-disguised, purpose of intelligent design, is to preserve the myth of a separate, divine creation for humans in the belief that only that can explain who we are. But there is a destructive hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth. It sets us apart from nature, except to dominate it. It misses both the grace and the moral depth of knowing that humans have only the same stake, the same right, in the Earth as every other creature that has ever lived here. There is a righteousness - a responsibility - in the deep, ancestral origins we share with all of life.
(I couldn't have said it better, myself...or even as well!
Peace,
Steve)
Scribble
Charlie Fincher is on a roll with the Scribble. I haven't seen cartoons this good since the Nixon administration and the Vietnam war....Hmmmmm?
www.theillustrateddailyscribble.com
www.theillustrateddailyscribble.com
Awakening?
A book I read long ago had a large impact on me. It was called "The way of the Sufi". The Sufi are a mystic sect which holds Jesus and Mohamed as great religious teachers...They worship "The One God", and they are teachers and pacifists. Here is a Sufi parable I remember:
A group of disciples were awed by Jesus's ability to restore life to the dead. They wished the great prophet would teach them this secret. After all, was not death the greatest enemy of mankind?
Jesus told them that this was a very dangerous power to have, "Death is not always your enemy", he told them.
These disciples did not hear these words and continued to beseech Jesus to tell them the secrets of reversing death.
Jesus looked at them and, with a sad expression, told them that he would teach them, but that they did not yet have the wisdom to use this power properly and to refrain from exercizing their new power until such time as they had the wisdom and knowlege to use it only for the purposes of good.
Jesus taught them well, and then the disciples set off on a journey upon which they planned to gain the wisdom they still required. Traveling in a great woods, they came upon a pile of bones, picked clean by scavengers.
"Look at this poor being!" they said. "Death has taken him...But now, we have the power to defeat Death."
Looking at each other they agreed that this was the perfect time to try their new power and they set about "Raising the dead". AS they completed their task, suddenly the pile of bones was transformed, not into a person as they had expected, but into a large and ravenous tiger, as it had been before in life.
Awakening from death, starving and seeing the disciples, the tiger immediately killed them everyone and devoured them. Its hunger satisfied, the tiger napped and then set off through the great woods.
No one ever knew what happened to the disciples until now, since I have just informed you of their fate.
*****
There are thought to be many levels of meaning to a Sufi parable.
The Sufi in Iraq are being killed. Since the U.S. invasion, up to one third of these gentle people have been murdered. Why? They play music, they dance, they meditate, they go about their daily lives wishing no one harm.
Here is the story:
sufis
A group of disciples were awed by Jesus's ability to restore life to the dead. They wished the great prophet would teach them this secret. After all, was not death the greatest enemy of mankind?
Jesus told them that this was a very dangerous power to have, "Death is not always your enemy", he told them.
These disciples did not hear these words and continued to beseech Jesus to tell them the secrets of reversing death.
Jesus looked at them and, with a sad expression, told them that he would teach them, but that they did not yet have the wisdom to use this power properly and to refrain from exercizing their new power until such time as they had the wisdom and knowlege to use it only for the purposes of good.
Jesus taught them well, and then the disciples set off on a journey upon which they planned to gain the wisdom they still required. Traveling in a great woods, they came upon a pile of bones, picked clean by scavengers.
"Look at this poor being!" they said. "Death has taken him...But now, we have the power to defeat Death."
Looking at each other they agreed that this was the perfect time to try their new power and they set about "Raising the dead". AS they completed their task, suddenly the pile of bones was transformed, not into a person as they had expected, but into a large and ravenous tiger, as it had been before in life.
Awakening from death, starving and seeing the disciples, the tiger immediately killed them everyone and devoured them. Its hunger satisfied, the tiger napped and then set off through the great woods.
No one ever knew what happened to the disciples until now, since I have just informed you of their fate.
*****
There are thought to be many levels of meaning to a Sufi parable.
The Sufi in Iraq are being killed. Since the U.S. invasion, up to one third of these gentle people have been murdered. Why? They play music, they dance, they meditate, they go about their daily lives wishing no one harm.
Here is the story:
sufis
Monday, August 22, 2005
For what Noble Cause?
I sometimes am awed by the mindless drivel that the right wing seems to incessantly spout. It seems like they have these drivel factories that toss obvious inaccuracies up in the air so they can be seized by the drooling dogs, to be regurgitated over and over again until the next piece of vileness comes along and takes its place.
Cindy Sheehan and her fallen warrior son are the big blip on their radar right now. Failing to have a single solitary actual thought, the Cons are incessantly repeating variations on the theme that this Mother has no right to question her son's death because he was an adult and made his own decision to enlist.
Uhh...I don't get it.
No not that the Cons would say that, they'll say anything...and facts certainly don't get in their way. I mean the Facts have a Liberal bias, after all, and can't be trusted.
No...I mean I don't get why anyone would even listen to a conservative, much less believe one!
The littany of outright fabrications spewing from the Neo-Con lie factories is amazing. One would think they have a huge supply of energy and industirousness until one examines what they say...Using my immense powers of analysis, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one, possibly two, conservative fantasy writers who actually come up with this stuff. The rest of them simply regurgitate it after only partially swallowing.( I mean, no one could actually swallow, right?)
If you read some of them you will notice that all conservatives use each other as sources and never seem to do any original thinking. Like frogs in a swamp, each trying to outcroak the one next to him and it all comes out sounding like endless swamp gas being set afire and stinking up the place.
All of this is simply noise upon noise...lie upon lie...to try to distract us from the question that Cindy Sheehan wants George Bush to answer.
"For what noble cause did my son die?"
Bush personally kissed Cindy on the cheek and told her to be proud of her son...that he:
"Died for a noble cause!"... Bush said that.
"What was this "Noble Cause" Mr. President?... Cindy said that.
Everything you hear from the right wing is an attempt to distract you from that question. I will rephrase it for you:
"What the hell are we doing in Iraq?"
George...You're killing us!
Peace,
Steve
Cindy Sheehan and her fallen warrior son are the big blip on their radar right now. Failing to have a single solitary actual thought, the Cons are incessantly repeating variations on the theme that this Mother has no right to question her son's death because he was an adult and made his own decision to enlist.
Uhh...I don't get it.
No not that the Cons would say that, they'll say anything...and facts certainly don't get in their way. I mean the Facts have a Liberal bias, after all, and can't be trusted.
No...I mean I don't get why anyone would even listen to a conservative, much less believe one!
The littany of outright fabrications spewing from the Neo-Con lie factories is amazing. One would think they have a huge supply of energy and industirousness until one examines what they say...Using my immense powers of analysis, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one, possibly two, conservative fantasy writers who actually come up with this stuff. The rest of them simply regurgitate it after only partially swallowing.( I mean, no one could actually swallow, right?)
If you read some of them you will notice that all conservatives use each other as sources and never seem to do any original thinking. Like frogs in a swamp, each trying to outcroak the one next to him and it all comes out sounding like endless swamp gas being set afire and stinking up the place.
All of this is simply noise upon noise...lie upon lie...to try to distract us from the question that Cindy Sheehan wants George Bush to answer.
"For what noble cause did my son die?"
Bush personally kissed Cindy on the cheek and told her to be proud of her son...that he:
"Died for a noble cause!"... Bush said that.
"What was this "Noble Cause" Mr. President?... Cindy said that.
Everything you hear from the right wing is an attempt to distract you from that question. I will rephrase it for you:
"What the hell are we doing in Iraq?"
George...You're killing us!
Peace,
Steve
Friday, August 19, 2005
Do you approve
There are 100 Senators in the USA. The most highly approved is Olympia Snow from Washington, a woman and a Republican.
Oh Well...
So what about our two, here in the fine red state of Tennessee?
Bill Frist...Number Uh, 87? That would be 13 from the bottom.
America got you pegged Bill!
Lamar Alexander...Still can't break the top half at 56.
Hey guys, don't worry, OK? Everybody beat Rick Santorum. The piece of scum at the bottom at the list. (I say piece of "scum" as a polite version of what Santorum's name has become the slang term for, by the way)
To show you how badly our two boys are ranked, check this out. Widely disparaged by the right wing nut jobs, America thinks he does a pretty good job:
Ted Kennedy...number 36
Peace,
Steve
surveyusa
This is from TPM Cafe. I encourage you to read the entire post and consider what it means:
...And when I returned, with the antiwar movement fast approaching full swing, I did experience some of the criticism and scorn you are talking about, but it wasn't really that bad. Except for employment - employers weren't critical of returning vets because of any particular disenchantment with the war, but rather that there was a widespread believe that us vets were unstable and likely to blow a fuse at any given moment. They feared us.
tpmcafe
The Medium Lobster comes up with a more rational plan for Iraq than the one the President proposes.
"What, exactly" is the President's plan?" you ask.
"Damned if I know", everyone in America answers.
But the Medium Lobster has one, anyway:
fafblog
Oh Well...
So what about our two, here in the fine red state of Tennessee?
Bill Frist...Number Uh, 87? That would be 13 from the bottom.
America got you pegged Bill!
Lamar Alexander...Still can't break the top half at 56.
Hey guys, don't worry, OK? Everybody beat Rick Santorum. The piece of scum at the bottom at the list. (I say piece of "scum" as a polite version of what Santorum's name has become the slang term for, by the way)
To show you how badly our two boys are ranked, check this out. Widely disparaged by the right wing nut jobs, America thinks he does a pretty good job:
Ted Kennedy...number 36
Peace,
Steve
surveyusa
This is from TPM Cafe. I encourage you to read the entire post and consider what it means:
...And when I returned, with the antiwar movement fast approaching full swing, I did experience some of the criticism and scorn you are talking about, but it wasn't really that bad. Except for employment - employers weren't critical of returning vets because of any particular disenchantment with the war, but rather that there was a widespread believe that us vets were unstable and likely to blow a fuse at any given moment. They feared us.
tpmcafe
The Medium Lobster comes up with a more rational plan for Iraq than the one the President proposes.
"What, exactly" is the President's plan?" you ask.
"Damned if I know", everyone in America answers.
But the Medium Lobster has one, anyway:
fafblog
Vigil
At last count, there have been over 1600 registered vigils supporting Cindy Sheehan's attempt to get George W. Bush to tell us why our kids are dying in Iraq.
This does not include the one in Whites Creek Gorge that consisted of me standing on the deck in the night holding my candle up high above my head until my arms hurt. It was raining but the candle burned brightly and never went out while I stood there.
Only after I had come back into my house and set the candle in its usual place, did I blow it out. In the darkness, I wondered what Cindy was feeling. What has she placed in that hole inside her being, left by the senseless death of her son, Casey? Thinking of my own two beautiful children, I tried to imagine how I would feel if they somehow had died under the circuumstance of a false war. It was a combination of blackness and rage that no one on this earth could escape.
The vigils were attended by well over 100,000 people , but that was nothing but a small protest. It is worth noting that the pro-war pro-President Bush counter protests organized at the same time did not even make a small blip on the radar screen.
Got that? The Pro War numbers were small to nonexistant. America does not support this war!
For the record, would you like to know what the largest protest in history was? According to the Guinness Book of World Records...
In 2003. Tens of Millions cheered on the largest mass movement in world history...the Protest against:
The war in Iraq!
We tried to tell you Bush was lying. What we did not know at the time was how great was his deception and how monumental was his incompetence.
Are you listening yet?
Peace,
Steve
*****
Sharon Cobb is a journalist turned blogger in Nashville. Here is a post I made on her site concerning Cindy Sheehan:
Cindy has street cred like nobody else. Perfect? Well, no, but I understand her grief and pain and motivation to make something rational of her son's death.
President Bush dies the death of a thousand cuts, with this as a large one. All he had to do is answer her one question, which he didn't do in their first meeting, which is "For what did my son die?"
It was the disingenuosness of Bush in the first meeting that propelled her to Crawford. This is not the crazy pot fueled antiwar protest march I first participated in 37 years ago, but the slow realization that the President of the United States has lied to all America and now cannot face us with the simple and honest answer as to why our children are dead.
Even in the red state of Tennessee, Bush retains the support of only a minority of citizens at this point in time. Only 26% or so "strongly approve".
Comgratulations, George! Your Presidency may go down in history as the greatest screw up of all time.
Steve
Check Sharon Cobb out:
http://sharoncobb.blogspot.com/
This does not include the one in Whites Creek Gorge that consisted of me standing on the deck in the night holding my candle up high above my head until my arms hurt. It was raining but the candle burned brightly and never went out while I stood there.
Only after I had come back into my house and set the candle in its usual place, did I blow it out. In the darkness, I wondered what Cindy was feeling. What has she placed in that hole inside her being, left by the senseless death of her son, Casey? Thinking of my own two beautiful children, I tried to imagine how I would feel if they somehow had died under the circuumstance of a false war. It was a combination of blackness and rage that no one on this earth could escape.
The vigils were attended by well over 100,000 people , but that was nothing but a small protest. It is worth noting that the pro-war pro-President Bush counter protests organized at the same time did not even make a small blip on the radar screen.
Got that? The Pro War numbers were small to nonexistant. America does not support this war!
For the record, would you like to know what the largest protest in history was? According to the Guinness Book of World Records...
In 2003. Tens of Millions cheered on the largest mass movement in world history...the Protest against:
The war in Iraq!
We tried to tell you Bush was lying. What we did not know at the time was how great was his deception and how monumental was his incompetence.
Are you listening yet?
Peace,
Steve
*****
Sharon Cobb is a journalist turned blogger in Nashville. Here is a post I made on her site concerning Cindy Sheehan:
Cindy has street cred like nobody else. Perfect? Well, no, but I understand her grief and pain and motivation to make something rational of her son's death.
President Bush dies the death of a thousand cuts, with this as a large one. All he had to do is answer her one question, which he didn't do in their first meeting, which is "For what did my son die?"
It was the disingenuosness of Bush in the first meeting that propelled her to Crawford. This is not the crazy pot fueled antiwar protest march I first participated in 37 years ago, but the slow realization that the President of the United States has lied to all America and now cannot face us with the simple and honest answer as to why our children are dead.
Even in the red state of Tennessee, Bush retains the support of only a minority of citizens at this point in time. Only 26% or so "strongly approve".
Comgratulations, George! Your Presidency may go down in history as the greatest screw up of all time.
Steve
Check Sharon Cobb out:
http://sharoncobb.blogspot.com/
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Quotes from the Traitors own mouths
Via Kos:
"You can support the troops but not the president."
"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."
"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."
"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
"I had doubts ... from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
All quotes from Republicans during the Clinton Administration.
The Speakers?
Senator Rick Santorum
Karen Hughes, spokesman for George W. Bush
Senator Trent Lott
Tom Delay
Sean Hannity
Joe Scarborough (R-Fl at the time)
With Republican spittle and drool oozing out at everyone who opposes the Iraq war and dares to go public, It is worth noting that these quotes are from Republican "traitors", as the Republicans themselves term it. From a different wear, though, with Clinton as President. The next to last quote is from Tom Delay. The last one is straight from George W. Bush"s mouth.
As Kos points out, Clinton won this war without a single American casualty!
dailykos
"You can support the troops but not the president."
"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."
"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."
"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
"I had doubts ... from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
All quotes from Republicans during the Clinton Administration.
The Speakers?
Senator Rick Santorum
Karen Hughes, spokesman for George W. Bush
Senator Trent Lott
Tom Delay
Sean Hannity
Joe Scarborough (R-Fl at the time)
With Republican spittle and drool oozing out at everyone who opposes the Iraq war and dares to go public, It is worth noting that these quotes are from Republican "traitors", as the Republicans themselves term it. From a different wear, though, with Clinton as President. The next to last quote is from Tom Delay. The last one is straight from George W. Bush"s mouth.
As Kos points out, Clinton won this war without a single American casualty!
dailykos
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Vigil
Tonight at 8:00 eastern time, over 1400 candlelight vigils will support the families of our lost American Troops in Iraq. A friend will hold a private vigil as will I, so the number wiil be at least 1402.
Join us will you?
Peace!
Steve
From Cindy Sheehan's blog...Look who is supporting her now!
....We are moving to a place that doesn’t have much shade and I put out an appeal for tarps and a soldier from Ft. Hood brought some to us that he “borrowed” from Ft. Hood for us to use. I have had a lot of soldiers from Ft. Hood come out and tell me to keep it up and that I am doing a good thing. We are doing this to honor Casey and the other fallen heroes in their memories. But we are doing it FOR the people of Iraq and the other soldiers who are in harm’s way right now. Right after we heard about the crosses last night, a Camp Casey volunteer found out that a pen pal she had in Iraq was KIA on August 12th. This has to stop, now. We will stop it.
Join us will you?
Peace!
Steve
From Cindy Sheehan's blog...Look who is supporting her now!
....We are moving to a place that doesn’t have much shade and I put out an appeal for tarps and a soldier from Ft. Hood brought some to us that he “borrowed” from Ft. Hood for us to use. I have had a lot of soldiers from Ft. Hood come out and tell me to keep it up and that I am doing a good thing. We are doing this to honor Casey and the other fallen heroes in their memories. But we are doing it FOR the people of Iraq and the other soldiers who are in harm’s way right now. Right after we heard about the crosses last night, a Camp Casey volunteer found out that a pen pal she had in Iraq was KIA on August 12th. This has to stop, now. We will stop it.
Intelligent What?
A discussion is happening over at Prairie Weather I thought I'd share with you on Intelligent Design. You can read PW's post over there, link on the side bar.
I view it as people trying to hang on to the myths of their childhood. There is a similar tragedy playing out in Gaza, with Jews holding up their holy book claiming god gave them that there land... Arabs can't find that particular tract in their own particular holy book and beg to differ. Neither of those holy books contains the New Testament, in which Jesus quite often contradicts both of those books, by the way, even though the FundXtians claim infallibility of the "Word" thereby justifying their stand as creationists.
While waving these various holy books containing the words of gods at each other, Jews, Arabs, Christians, Budhists, and the rest of us are standing on the one storehouse of information we all, everyone of us, agree was produced by "god", though that word means different things to each of us.
That storehouse of information, that book which I personally consider holy, is...
The Earth.
The theory of evolution arises out of trying to make sense of the infallible words, written by the forces of time and geology, for us to see on the very planet we must save in order to survive. It is the geological record that cannot lie. If the other "books" are contradicted by our very planet itself...Then we must find ourselves with the same choice facing Galileo.
Are we to be honest people, or will we lie to support the myths of fallible men from long ago that still hang oppressively over our very ability to make rational decisions?
This comment is posted at Prairie Weather:
I find all this interesting...I live about 25 miles from the Courthouse where the Scopes trial was held, and have come across myth after myth concerning that event. The bottom line is this:
Creationists believe the bible says god "created" all things roughly 6000 years ago. If evolution is factual, there is a contradiction of some magnitude.
Now we have this Intelligent design thing which frankly contradicts creationism but somehow seems acceptable to the FundXtians.
OK, that wasn't the bottom line...this is:
Fundamentalist religion in America has a vested interest in destroying critical thinking, and one of the many byproducts of that is science education.
The question to be answered is this:
"Will America throw its future to those who have raised the study of functional ignorance to the level of art?"
Steve
I view it as people trying to hang on to the myths of their childhood. There is a similar tragedy playing out in Gaza, with Jews holding up their holy book claiming god gave them that there land... Arabs can't find that particular tract in their own particular holy book and beg to differ. Neither of those holy books contains the New Testament, in which Jesus quite often contradicts both of those books, by the way, even though the FundXtians claim infallibility of the "Word" thereby justifying their stand as creationists.
While waving these various holy books containing the words of gods at each other, Jews, Arabs, Christians, Budhists, and the rest of us are standing on the one storehouse of information we all, everyone of us, agree was produced by "god", though that word means different things to each of us.
That storehouse of information, that book which I personally consider holy, is...
The Earth.
The theory of evolution arises out of trying to make sense of the infallible words, written by the forces of time and geology, for us to see on the very planet we must save in order to survive. It is the geological record that cannot lie. If the other "books" are contradicted by our very planet itself...Then we must find ourselves with the same choice facing Galileo.
Are we to be honest people, or will we lie to support the myths of fallible men from long ago that still hang oppressively over our very ability to make rational decisions?
This comment is posted at Prairie Weather:
I find all this interesting...I live about 25 miles from the Courthouse where the Scopes trial was held, and have come across myth after myth concerning that event. The bottom line is this:
Creationists believe the bible says god "created" all things roughly 6000 years ago. If evolution is factual, there is a contradiction of some magnitude.
Now we have this Intelligent design thing which frankly contradicts creationism but somehow seems acceptable to the FundXtians.
OK, that wasn't the bottom line...this is:
Fundamentalist religion in America has a vested interest in destroying critical thinking, and one of the many byproducts of that is science education.
The question to be answered is this:
"Will America throw its future to those who have raised the study of functional ignorance to the level of art?"
Steve
Vultures at play
A partisan man well known for his ruthlessness on behalf of his personal special interests falls from grace. Well actually, "pushed" would be a better description. You can feel the love oozing out of his memoir:
"I considered Frist’s power grab a personal betrayal." ...Trent Lott
Lott had said nice things about Senatorial dinosaur, Strom Thurmond, whose vileness is still being discovered as people come forward with stories of his horrible behavior. Bill Frist cheerfully watched, as the scavengers ripped Lott apart, for what is ultimitely the smallest of his transgressions. Lott lost his Senate leadership position as a result, thereby furthering Bill Frist's ascencion.
Why is Lott surprised when the game he plays for his entire career yields its fruit? How else does he expect his corrupt cohorts to behave? They have no honor!...And Frist is their leader, now. Too bad, Trent. In a society of wolves, the fallen alpha dog is usually killed and eaten.
Consider yourself lucky, loser!
Peace,
Steve
*****
I was going to write about the Matlin Cousins in Texas. One, Larry, sees Cindy Sheehan and her group holding a religious service and thinks the Second Amendment gives him the right to fire his shotgun over their heads, scaring the crap out of everybody. "I'm tired of them", he said.
Then some fine young Texas Conservative sees the rows of crosses, 500 of them, dedicated to our American troops who died in iraq, and ties a chain to his pickup truck and runs over the crosses. No word on if there was a yellow ribbon on his tailgate.
Just when you are convinced Texans are exactly what they appear to be, the cousin of Larry the Shooter comes along and does something nice. Fred Matlin is a veteran. he lives closer to the Bush ranch and offers Camp Casey a new home...on his land.
If I keep meeting nice Texans, I may have top quit bashing them as a group. There may be more out there than just the ones I know of. Perhaps we should start a "Free Texas" movement.
Billmon does it better:
"When I heard about the lunatic in the pickup who mowed down the memorial crosses at Camp Casey, I have to admit, my first thought was: It's Texas, what the hell do you expect? We should just be happy he didn't tie one of the protesters to his bumper and drag him/her down the highway until body parts started to fall off...."
billmon
"I considered Frist’s power grab a personal betrayal." ...Trent Lott
Lott had said nice things about Senatorial dinosaur, Strom Thurmond, whose vileness is still being discovered as people come forward with stories of his horrible behavior. Bill Frist cheerfully watched, as the scavengers ripped Lott apart, for what is ultimitely the smallest of his transgressions. Lott lost his Senate leadership position as a result, thereby furthering Bill Frist's ascencion.
Why is Lott surprised when the game he plays for his entire career yields its fruit? How else does he expect his corrupt cohorts to behave? They have no honor!...And Frist is their leader, now. Too bad, Trent. In a society of wolves, the fallen alpha dog is usually killed and eaten.
Consider yourself lucky, loser!
Peace,
Steve
*****
I was going to write about the Matlin Cousins in Texas. One, Larry, sees Cindy Sheehan and her group holding a religious service and thinks the Second Amendment gives him the right to fire his shotgun over their heads, scaring the crap out of everybody. "I'm tired of them", he said.
Then some fine young Texas Conservative sees the rows of crosses, 500 of them, dedicated to our American troops who died in iraq, and ties a chain to his pickup truck and runs over the crosses. No word on if there was a yellow ribbon on his tailgate.
Just when you are convinced Texans are exactly what they appear to be, the cousin of Larry the Shooter comes along and does something nice. Fred Matlin is a veteran. he lives closer to the Bush ranch and offers Camp Casey a new home...on his land.
If I keep meeting nice Texans, I may have top quit bashing them as a group. There may be more out there than just the ones I know of. Perhaps we should start a "Free Texas" movement.
Billmon does it better:
"When I heard about the lunatic in the pickup who mowed down the memorial crosses at Camp Casey, I have to admit, my first thought was: It's Texas, what the hell do you expect? We should just be happy he didn't tie one of the protesters to his bumper and drag him/her down the highway until body parts started to fall off...."
billmon
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
There...Feel better now?
ALBANY, Ga., Aug. 15 (AP) - The only woman ever executed in Georgia's electric chair, Lena Baker, is being granted a posthumous pardon, 60 years after she was put to death for killing a man she said had held her in slavery and threatened her life
Pardon Me
Pardon Me
Rudeness
My Gosh! The Rude Pundit lived in Knoxville, taught at the University of Tennessee, may have worn something orange...
Say it ain't so, RP!
The orange part...
rudepunditshow
NY Times reviews the show...and has picture!
theater
Say it ain't so, RP!
The orange part...
rudepunditshow
NY Times reviews the show...and has picture!
theater
WHY?
President Bush is having a fine time on vacation. He has to go on with his life, you know, staying fit in case he has a crisp decision to make. He can't take a half hour to talk with Cindy Sheehan because he has his two hour bike rides, which are much more important.
Cindy's son Casey died in Iraq. All she wants to know is "Why?"
Frankly, the rest of America wants to hear the answer to that same question from the President's lips, and the reason he hasn't met with Cindy...and the reason Cindy has received such an outpouring of support...is that the President cannot answer that question truthfully.
The Iraq war will define Bush for all history. It is a failure.
There are other grieving parents who join Cindy in a club of the heartbroken:
He is number 1,828, 1,829 or 1,830. We don't know for sure, because so many died last week.
...For those of you who still trust the Bush administration -- and your percentage diminishes every day -- let me tell you that my nephew Chase Johnson Comley did not die to preserve your freedoms. He was not presented flowers by grateful Iraqis, welcoming him as their liberator.
He died fighting a senseless war for oil and contracts, ensuring the increased wealth of President Bush and his administration's friends...
Missy Conley Beattie
Read the rest of it, if you can:
Grief in kentucky
Peace,
Steve
President Bush is much better at vacations than you are! Prior to 9-11 he had spent 42% of his time in office...On vacation!
Mother Jones has a fun compendium of vacation factoids...
the_road_to_nowhere
Cindy's son Casey died in Iraq. All she wants to know is "Why?"
Frankly, the rest of America wants to hear the answer to that same question from the President's lips, and the reason he hasn't met with Cindy...and the reason Cindy has received such an outpouring of support...is that the President cannot answer that question truthfully.
The Iraq war will define Bush for all history. It is a failure.
There are other grieving parents who join Cindy in a club of the heartbroken:
He is number 1,828, 1,829 or 1,830. We don't know for sure, because so many died last week.
...For those of you who still trust the Bush administration -- and your percentage diminishes every day -- let me tell you that my nephew Chase Johnson Comley did not die to preserve your freedoms. He was not presented flowers by grateful Iraqis, welcoming him as their liberator.
He died fighting a senseless war for oil and contracts, ensuring the increased wealth of President Bush and his administration's friends...
Missy Conley Beattie
Read the rest of it, if you can:
Grief in kentucky
Peace,
Steve
President Bush is much better at vacations than you are! Prior to 9-11 he had spent 42% of his time in office...On vacation!
Mother Jones has a fun compendium of vacation factoids...
the_road_to_nowhere
Monday, August 15, 2005
Mother Jones
From MJ rag comes the Diddly Awards, honoring the first inept steps in the 2008 Presidential race.
And the winner is (drum roll)...
Bill Frist! (I knew it!) For trying to cement his credibiltiy with the evagelical nut jobs who espouse Intelligent Design, condemn the Pope for holding "a false and unbiblical office", and think stem cells have souls.
Frist was caught on tape telling his photographer to "Get some devastation in the back" on a trip to Sri Lanka after the Tsunami disaster.
Good old Bill, Flew in, felt bad for the people in front of the cameras...Flew out.
Peace,
Steve
And the winner is (drum roll)...
Bill Frist! (I knew it!) For trying to cement his credibiltiy with the evagelical nut jobs who espouse Intelligent Design, condemn the Pope for holding "a false and unbiblical office", and think stem cells have souls.
Frist was caught on tape telling his photographer to "Get some devastation in the back" on a trip to Sri Lanka after the Tsunami disaster.
Good old Bill, Flew in, felt bad for the people in front of the cameras...Flew out.
Peace,
Steve
Who's over whom?
The official blogger of the Knoxville News Sentinel is Michael Silence of No Silence Here. He's worth reading, for various reasons and he writes this in a piece called:
Give me a break!
"David Duke weighing in on Cindy Sheehan: Why Cindy Sheehan is Right!
I am now officially over this story.
Another reason I'm moving on: I’m appalled by the blog swarm surrounding Sheehan. The left is using her plight to espouse more anti-Bush rhetoric, and the right is demonizing a woman grieving over the loss of her child."
Posted by Michael Silence at August 15, 2005 11:12 AM
I felt the need to comment:
Cindy Sheehan has gotten done what the Mainstream Media has not, and that is to frame the Iraq war in terms so personal that every American must ask the same question:
"Tell us again...Why are we in Iraq? Now that my son is dead, it would help to understand how this is a good and moral thing."
See, the problem is: A good and moral thing, it ain't!
When we speak of the Mainstream Media (and that would be you, Mr. Silence)
in this instance, we still get to view their cowardice. Afraid to ask the question themselves, they can simply hold up a mike to someone else possessing the combination of deep loss and personal courage.
So Mr. Silence...Got any children of your own?
Ready to grow some courage?
Steve
Give me a break!
"David Duke weighing in on Cindy Sheehan: Why Cindy Sheehan is Right!
I am now officially over this story.
Another reason I'm moving on: I’m appalled by the blog swarm surrounding Sheehan. The left is using her plight to espouse more anti-Bush rhetoric, and the right is demonizing a woman grieving over the loss of her child."
Posted by Michael Silence at August 15, 2005 11:12 AM
I felt the need to comment:
Cindy Sheehan has gotten done what the Mainstream Media has not, and that is to frame the Iraq war in terms so personal that every American must ask the same question:
"Tell us again...Why are we in Iraq? Now that my son is dead, it would help to understand how this is a good and moral thing."
See, the problem is: A good and moral thing, it ain't!
When we speak of the Mainstream Media (and that would be you, Mr. Silence)
in this instance, we still get to view their cowardice. Afraid to ask the question themselves, they can simply hold up a mike to someone else possessing the combination of deep loss and personal courage.
So Mr. Silence...Got any children of your own?
Ready to grow some courage?
Steve
Traveling Man
It's the cow gonna be hamburger experience.
You wait in a pen with lots of noise all around and folks you don't know and will never see again bumping against you and there's no place comfortable to sit, and you can't hear that tv hanging from the ceiling except for every third word. Then they smile and take your ticket and march you through a door that looks all the world like the door to happiness but as soon as you smile back at the nice lady and step through, you see the long sloping hallway of no return you have to walk down and it's really hot, as you wait behind the morbidly obese woman that you are (please, please, please) hoping won't be sitting next to you...you also have pretty solid thoughts about the man with the wild child he's trying to hang on to who's standing behind you.
"This might not be much fun", you think.
But it works out. Your seat mate turns out to be a pretty girl, petite, and fits nicely into her seat with no parts hanging over into your space. Her Dad and brother are sitting behind her and you get to have a nice conversation about a planned road trip she and her college buddies are planning fron New Hampshire to Nashville. She has a to-do list that includes line dancing and buying a cowboy hat. You don't point out that Nashville is the fake cowboy capital of the world and that if you really want a cowboy hat, and you have a three hour layover at the next stop, which happens to be Dallas, you might...But she pounds two Bloody Marys as soon as the cart rolls by and the conversation deteriorates. Mental note: They didn't check her I.D. and she looks about fourteen to you. This has implications about your own age that you refuse to acknowlege.
On the next leg to Atlanta, as we walk down the cattle chute, the craziest child on the planet is being held onto by two parents. They look very strong. This turns out to be a good thing. The child cannot speak in normal volumes and likes to scream if he is denied the slightest gratuity.
By sheer force of will and parental determination, the man and woman manage to get the child into a seat next to the window, where they figure he will have to get past both of them in order to escape. I meditate on people's lack of foresight and planning as the child immediately ignores the two frantic parents and climbs over the seat in front and starts jumping around laughing happily in the lap of a very surprised woman who simply does not know what to do. Here she has resigned herself to an abbatoir and now she learns that someone left the orangatan cage door open, in order to make her last moments even more incredibly unbearable. She is mauled by the parents as they wrestle and retrieve the feral primate they have loosed upon the world. She will spend the longest hour and a half of her life on the flight to Atlanta, waiting for the next ear piecing screech from the seat behind her. I can see her head rock forward each time the child kicks the back of her seat. I wonder if she is thinking about the emergency door two seats ahead. She might jump if the flight isn't over soon.
Down the slaughterhouse chute once more...last one, to Nashville. They push us away from the gate and the pilot imediately comes on and points out the light show from the thunderstorm at one end of the runway.
We sit on the tarmac for two hours. They bring us a granola bar but won't give the guy next to me a beer. I can tell he is going home because he has an orange baseball cap and a U.T. tee shirt. We talk for a while and then he gets up and goes back to talk to the flight attendant. After a while he returns. "She won't give me one" he says. He looks tired. He may be the only person on the plane without a cell phone, and I loan him mine to call home. He has been away for a week.
"I was visiting family in Hartford", he said.
As we chat, it seems to me he is babbling a bit...making conversation to prevent himself from being alone in his head. People get to know each other sitting in a big metal can like sardines for two hours. He has been to a funeral. His brother...one year younger. Suicide.
"Bad", he said.
"I'm sure."
"All our family is in Hartford. It happened here. I was the first one at the scene...before the ambulance and the police...
"Bad!" he said again, looking at me.
"You gonna be ok? That kind of thing is really tough on the family. Takes a while to get over."
"I took him with me back to Hartford...Bad."
The flight attendant walked by and asked him if he could step to the back for just a minute. He was gone long enough to sit with the attendants and drink his beer.
How did she know?
He told me the flight attendant said she was a big Tennessee fan and saw his shirt. I didn't mention the code for funeral attendee that would be printed on his ticket.
When he came back, we talked about hunting and hydraulic excavators. He works at a factory that makes them in Chattanooga.
"Be careful driving" I tell him. "You get the least bit sleepy, pull over and catch a nap, Ok?"
We said bye at the shuttle bus to the parking lot.
A bunch of tired but mostly relieved people got on the bus. It filled up and some folks had to be turned back. The last seat left was next to me, and an attractive, but obviously unhappy, woman got on the bus and looked around before sitting down.
"This has not been a good day," she said. She was very nicely dressed up like she was headed out for an evening on the town, and was wearing too much perfume. Her husband's flight had just been cancelled. He was coming home on leave from the war.
"I haven't heard from him since he left Kuwait," she said. There was a cell phone clutched in her hands. She looked down at it over and over but it didn't ring.
"I have to drive three hours back home, now... I don't know what to do...two crying boys at home."
Several of us said the most comforting things we could think of to her, knowing that nothing would help except a call from her husband.
Her perfume was filling the air, blotting out all else. An American soldier was not getting an All American welcome home that had probably been months in anticipation. We all wondered why he hadn't called.
She was pretty. "This hasn't been a good day", she said again. We all felt bad for her. Everyone wanted to help but no one knew how.
I drove home, two hours, through a series of spectacular thunderstorms. Nasty weather to struggle through on the way back to my family. I thought of the grieving brother and hoped he would get home Ok, and I thought of the soldier's wife and her ruined plans...Hoping something would go right for her and her husband. Having been, long ago, the crying child lying in bed wanting his father to come home...I hoped things would somehow work out for the confused and bewildered woman driving back to Kentucky in this brutal August night.
I thought about two men in Texas. One spending the night in the airport in Dallas, after traveling halfway around the world to see his wife and two young children for a few days before they sent him back. The other man vacationing on his ranch while a mother sits vigil outside the gates holding a sign that asks,
"Why did my son die?"
Later...I pulled up to my house, opened the car door and gave a desicated french fry to each of the dogs. Setting my bags down in the kitchen and heading upstairs with my family sleeping, I thought,
"Now, finally...this is a good day."
Peace,
Steve
You wait in a pen with lots of noise all around and folks you don't know and will never see again bumping against you and there's no place comfortable to sit, and you can't hear that tv hanging from the ceiling except for every third word. Then they smile and take your ticket and march you through a door that looks all the world like the door to happiness but as soon as you smile back at the nice lady and step through, you see the long sloping hallway of no return you have to walk down and it's really hot, as you wait behind the morbidly obese woman that you are (please, please, please) hoping won't be sitting next to you...you also have pretty solid thoughts about the man with the wild child he's trying to hang on to who's standing behind you.
"This might not be much fun", you think.
But it works out. Your seat mate turns out to be a pretty girl, petite, and fits nicely into her seat with no parts hanging over into your space. Her Dad and brother are sitting behind her and you get to have a nice conversation about a planned road trip she and her college buddies are planning fron New Hampshire to Nashville. She has a to-do list that includes line dancing and buying a cowboy hat. You don't point out that Nashville is the fake cowboy capital of the world and that if you really want a cowboy hat, and you have a three hour layover at the next stop, which happens to be Dallas, you might...But she pounds two Bloody Marys as soon as the cart rolls by and the conversation deteriorates. Mental note: They didn't check her I.D. and she looks about fourteen to you. This has implications about your own age that you refuse to acknowlege.
On the next leg to Atlanta, as we walk down the cattle chute, the craziest child on the planet is being held onto by two parents. They look very strong. This turns out to be a good thing. The child cannot speak in normal volumes and likes to scream if he is denied the slightest gratuity.
By sheer force of will and parental determination, the man and woman manage to get the child into a seat next to the window, where they figure he will have to get past both of them in order to escape. I meditate on people's lack of foresight and planning as the child immediately ignores the two frantic parents and climbs over the seat in front and starts jumping around laughing happily in the lap of a very surprised woman who simply does not know what to do. Here she has resigned herself to an abbatoir and now she learns that someone left the orangatan cage door open, in order to make her last moments even more incredibly unbearable. She is mauled by the parents as they wrestle and retrieve the feral primate they have loosed upon the world. She will spend the longest hour and a half of her life on the flight to Atlanta, waiting for the next ear piecing screech from the seat behind her. I can see her head rock forward each time the child kicks the back of her seat. I wonder if she is thinking about the emergency door two seats ahead. She might jump if the flight isn't over soon.
Down the slaughterhouse chute once more...last one, to Nashville. They push us away from the gate and the pilot imediately comes on and points out the light show from the thunderstorm at one end of the runway.
We sit on the tarmac for two hours. They bring us a granola bar but won't give the guy next to me a beer. I can tell he is going home because he has an orange baseball cap and a U.T. tee shirt. We talk for a while and then he gets up and goes back to talk to the flight attendant. After a while he returns. "She won't give me one" he says. He looks tired. He may be the only person on the plane without a cell phone, and I loan him mine to call home. He has been away for a week.
"I was visiting family in Hartford", he said.
As we chat, it seems to me he is babbling a bit...making conversation to prevent himself from being alone in his head. People get to know each other sitting in a big metal can like sardines for two hours. He has been to a funeral. His brother...one year younger. Suicide.
"Bad", he said.
"I'm sure."
"All our family is in Hartford. It happened here. I was the first one at the scene...before the ambulance and the police...
"Bad!" he said again, looking at me.
"You gonna be ok? That kind of thing is really tough on the family. Takes a while to get over."
"I took him with me back to Hartford...Bad."
The flight attendant walked by and asked him if he could step to the back for just a minute. He was gone long enough to sit with the attendants and drink his beer.
How did she know?
He told me the flight attendant said she was a big Tennessee fan and saw his shirt. I didn't mention the code for funeral attendee that would be printed on his ticket.
When he came back, we talked about hunting and hydraulic excavators. He works at a factory that makes them in Chattanooga.
"Be careful driving" I tell him. "You get the least bit sleepy, pull over and catch a nap, Ok?"
We said bye at the shuttle bus to the parking lot.
A bunch of tired but mostly relieved people got on the bus. It filled up and some folks had to be turned back. The last seat left was next to me, and an attractive, but obviously unhappy, woman got on the bus and looked around before sitting down.
"This has not been a good day," she said. She was very nicely dressed up like she was headed out for an evening on the town, and was wearing too much perfume. Her husband's flight had just been cancelled. He was coming home on leave from the war.
"I haven't heard from him since he left Kuwait," she said. There was a cell phone clutched in her hands. She looked down at it over and over but it didn't ring.
"I have to drive three hours back home, now... I don't know what to do...two crying boys at home."
Several of us said the most comforting things we could think of to her, knowing that nothing would help except a call from her husband.
Her perfume was filling the air, blotting out all else. An American soldier was not getting an All American welcome home that had probably been months in anticipation. We all wondered why he hadn't called.
She was pretty. "This hasn't been a good day", she said again. We all felt bad for her. Everyone wanted to help but no one knew how.
I drove home, two hours, through a series of spectacular thunderstorms. Nasty weather to struggle through on the way back to my family. I thought of the grieving brother and hoped he would get home Ok, and I thought of the soldier's wife and her ruined plans...Hoping something would go right for her and her husband. Having been, long ago, the crying child lying in bed wanting his father to come home...I hoped things would somehow work out for the confused and bewildered woman driving back to Kentucky in this brutal August night.
I thought about two men in Texas. One spending the night in the airport in Dallas, after traveling halfway around the world to see his wife and two young children for a few days before they sent him back. The other man vacationing on his ranch while a mother sits vigil outside the gates holding a sign that asks,
"Why did my son die?"
Later...I pulled up to my house, opened the car door and gave a desicated french fry to each of the dogs. Setting my bags down in the kitchen and heading upstairs with my family sleeping, I thought,
"Now, finally...this is a good day."
Peace,
Steve
Friday, August 12, 2005
Salt Lake City
I'm currently attending the Outdoor Retailer show in SLC, global headquarters for Mormon Central. This might be the weirdest place on earth as far as societal rules go. You see billboards with pro-polygamy messages, though the mainstream church says they are against it. You can also buy a local beer called "Polygamy Porter" with the ad line, "One is not enough!"
This is absolutly true! Utah has the strangest alchohol laws around and any beer brewed in the state has to be of a very mild content. I wind up quite bloated well before any satisfactory buzz arrives. I was told not to come here, "Leave the state, if you don't like it" by a very nice mormon.
For a religion that doesn't allow alchohol or coffee, there sure do seem to be bars and starbucks on every corner...owned by mormons.
Anyway, sorry for the lack of daily outrage and snark. I've actually been working.
Work, work, work!
That's what these shows are all about, of course. The girls in lycra, the Mariachi band, the free beer, all the toys a man could ever hope to have in the way of outdoor gear...all work. Hard work! Not as hard as clearing brush, but really hard work.
Gotta go...breakfast meeting...cooked to order eggs and strawberry pancakes.
Work, work, work!
Peace,
Steve
This is absolutly true! Utah has the strangest alchohol laws around and any beer brewed in the state has to be of a very mild content. I wind up quite bloated well before any satisfactory buzz arrives. I was told not to come here, "Leave the state, if you don't like it" by a very nice mormon.
For a religion that doesn't allow alchohol or coffee, there sure do seem to be bars and starbucks on every corner...owned by mormons.
Anyway, sorry for the lack of daily outrage and snark. I've actually been working.
Work, work, work!
That's what these shows are all about, of course. The girls in lycra, the Mariachi band, the free beer, all the toys a man could ever hope to have in the way of outdoor gear...all work. Hard work! Not as hard as clearing brush, but really hard work.
Gotta go...breakfast meeting...cooked to order eggs and strawberry pancakes.
Work, work, work!
Peace,
Steve
Sunday, August 07, 2005
toldjaso!
Faithful readers, you learn things that other Americans don't know when you read this blog. Not that it is secret stuff, far from it...more like the "Purloined Letter", hidden in plain sight.
I have repeatedly stated that the Bush administration let Bin Laden go at Tora Bora. The little brother of Salem Bin Laden, President Bush's first business partner in Arbuto Oil, was given a get out of jail free card and let go. Bush, of course, denies this but now we learn from the CIA, Bush was lying.
I wonder, at what point will the CIA breaking point come? What will happen? There is the conspiracy theory that it was the CIA that took out John Kennedy, after all.
" ....But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora - intelligence operatives had tracked him - and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK."
truthout
Next thing you know, we'll find out something really outrageous, like there was a security breifing labelled, "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States."
Peace,
Steve
I have repeatedly stated that the Bush administration let Bin Laden go at Tora Bora. The little brother of Salem Bin Laden, President Bush's first business partner in Arbuto Oil, was given a get out of jail free card and let go. Bush, of course, denies this but now we learn from the CIA, Bush was lying.
I wonder, at what point will the CIA breaking point come? What will happen? There is the conspiracy theory that it was the CIA that took out John Kennedy, after all.
" ....But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora - intelligence operatives had tracked him - and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK."
truthout
Next thing you know, we'll find out something really outrageous, like there was a security breifing labelled, "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States."
Peace,
Steve
Sunday Funnies:
Liberals have more fun. Our jokes are certainly better and here's proof:
And be sure to notice the morbid displays of stupidity on Intelligent Design by the FundXtians this week. They are cleverly noted at several of these places.
The real reason Novak walked off the CNN set:
felbers
Medium Lobster loves freedom:
All of us love freedom, and all of us want to protect freedom, and surely to protect freedom it was necessary to tie Abed Hamed Mowhoush in a sleeping bag and an electrical cord, and surely to secure our basic liberties it was essential to beat him with a club and a length of rubber hose, and certainly it was vital to the preservation of our way of life to bludgeon him to death over a period of days in an interrogation room, just as it is critical to keep these and other methods of torture legal at all costs.
Irony served with seafood:
fafblog
41 American warriors dies this week. No Biggie! Since George Bush didn't mention it in his radio speech, Billmon seems to think that George must have read the wrong speech and serves up the real one:
THE PRESIDENT:
"Good morning. Like me, many across this great land are taking lengthy vacations this month, to escape the roasting hot weather made possible by my bold policy of global climate enhancement. However, it has been brought to my attention that a relatively small number of families are not enjoying the summer nearly as much as I am, because their fathers, mothers, brothers, sons and/or daughters have been wounded and/or killed in the
War of Heroic Action against Terrorism for the Future of a United Christian Kulture
-- or, as my NSC counterterrorism experts sometimes call it: W*** the ***K...."
It gets funnier...read on:
billmon.org
Peace,
Steve
And be sure to notice the morbid displays of stupidity on Intelligent Design by the FundXtians this week. They are cleverly noted at several of these places.
The real reason Novak walked off the CNN set:
felbers
Medium Lobster loves freedom:
All of us love freedom, and all of us want to protect freedom, and surely to protect freedom it was necessary to tie Abed Hamed Mowhoush in a sleeping bag and an electrical cord, and surely to secure our basic liberties it was essential to beat him with a club and a length of rubber hose, and certainly it was vital to the preservation of our way of life to bludgeon him to death over a period of days in an interrogation room, just as it is critical to keep these and other methods of torture legal at all costs.
Irony served with seafood:
fafblog
41 American warriors dies this week. No Biggie! Since George Bush didn't mention it in his radio speech, Billmon seems to think that George must have read the wrong speech and serves up the real one:
THE PRESIDENT:
"Good morning. Like me, many across this great land are taking lengthy vacations this month, to escape the roasting hot weather made possible by my bold policy of global climate enhancement. However, it has been brought to my attention that a relatively small number of families are not enjoying the summer nearly as much as I am, because their fathers, mothers, brothers, sons and/or daughters have been wounded and/or killed in the
War of Heroic Action against Terrorism for the Future of a United Christian Kulture
-- or, as my NSC counterterrorism experts sometimes call it: W*** the ***K...."
It gets funnier...read on:
billmon.org
Peace,
Steve
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Heroes
Fascism:
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
Fascists don't seem to read history books or they would all realize that damned few of them die peacefully in their old age as heroes. Eventually, there comes the "Bastille Day" in one form or another.
Can you feel it building up right now?
Rove is going down. Cheney will follow. Libby will go down. Rumsfeld will be humiliated. AShcroft has already been tossed and Lady Justice's breasts rein free, even if actual justice does not. DeLay will go down. McCain will rise up and be exposed as lacking the true fortitude to do what is right for America.
Eventually, some American hero will ask President Bush about why he protectedthe Al Queda terrorist, Al Zarqawi, from Saddam Hussein in Iraq, prior to the American invasion.
At present, Bush is building up Al Zarqawi as tantamount to Bin Laden, thereby proving that we should have invaded. What Bush didn't foresee, as if these people are capable of foreseeing anything real, is that Bush's own inner circle would prove to be so incompetent, that a small time operative like Al Zarqawi, would rise up to kick America's improperly equipped and led Army's rear end.
They are picking off our troops and there's nothing the phenominally incompetent Bushistas can do about it.
The Iraqi people have a new hero that the Americans have named, Juba. They don't know his real name, but they are afraid of him. He shoots Americans, and is very very good at it. Juba is a hero because all Juba shoots...is Americans. Juba shoots one time and an American dies. Juba does not kill innocent civilans. From as far away as 200 yards, Juba has made clean kill after clean kill of an American looking out the view slot of his armored personel carrier...steeping out of a Humvee...walking down the street in full body armor, unaware that there is a small spot next to the spine which is not protected, that Juba can hit. Americans are scared of Juba. If this keeps up, George Bush and his minions will have succeeded in creating the first International heroic figure who's one claim to heroism is that he kills Americans!
Do you remember the Freeway sniper? Remember how scared everyone was? This is what American troops face in Iraq except for one thing...the Freeway sniper was evil. Everyone was afraid because no one knew who he would kill next.
Juba has done exactly the opposite for Iraqis. They are not afraid of him. He is their hero because, unlike the other combatants in Iraq, Juba only kills Americans. Juba, a sniper...a killer, is the one figure in all of Iraq that makes Iraqis feel safer.
Think about that!
And then ask yourself this:
Who will OUR heros be?
Peace,
Steve
Juba
Peace,
Steve
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
Fascists don't seem to read history books or they would all realize that damned few of them die peacefully in their old age as heroes. Eventually, there comes the "Bastille Day" in one form or another.
Can you feel it building up right now?
Rove is going down. Cheney will follow. Libby will go down. Rumsfeld will be humiliated. AShcroft has already been tossed and Lady Justice's breasts rein free, even if actual justice does not. DeLay will go down. McCain will rise up and be exposed as lacking the true fortitude to do what is right for America.
Eventually, some American hero will ask President Bush about why he protectedthe Al Queda terrorist, Al Zarqawi, from Saddam Hussein in Iraq, prior to the American invasion.
At present, Bush is building up Al Zarqawi as tantamount to Bin Laden, thereby proving that we should have invaded. What Bush didn't foresee, as if these people are capable of foreseeing anything real, is that Bush's own inner circle would prove to be so incompetent, that a small time operative like Al Zarqawi, would rise up to kick America's improperly equipped and led Army's rear end.
They are picking off our troops and there's nothing the phenominally incompetent Bushistas can do about it.
The Iraqi people have a new hero that the Americans have named, Juba. They don't know his real name, but they are afraid of him. He shoots Americans, and is very very good at it. Juba is a hero because all Juba shoots...is Americans. Juba shoots one time and an American dies. Juba does not kill innocent civilans. From as far away as 200 yards, Juba has made clean kill after clean kill of an American looking out the view slot of his armored personel carrier...steeping out of a Humvee...walking down the street in full body armor, unaware that there is a small spot next to the spine which is not protected, that Juba can hit. Americans are scared of Juba. If this keeps up, George Bush and his minions will have succeeded in creating the first International heroic figure who's one claim to heroism is that he kills Americans!
Do you remember the Freeway sniper? Remember how scared everyone was? This is what American troops face in Iraq except for one thing...the Freeway sniper was evil. Everyone was afraid because no one knew who he would kill next.
Juba has done exactly the opposite for Iraqis. They are not afraid of him. He is their hero because, unlike the other combatants in Iraq, Juba only kills Americans. Juba, a sniper...a killer, is the one figure in all of Iraq that makes Iraqis feel safer.
Think about that!
And then ask yourself this:
Who will OUR heros be?
Peace,
Steve
Juba
Peace,
Steve
Friday, August 05, 2005
Fun with Poll numbers:
According to the latest CBS poll, 77% of Americans think the Bush administration is either Hiding something (55%) or just plain Lying (22%)
12% think they are telling the truth...
With 17% of the population falling into the "rightie wingnut" category, that means that nearly a third of Bush's strongest base think he's lying.
Of course yesterday's poll had 20% of folks that thought Bush was lying also thought he was honest.
Duh....
Kos
12% think they are telling the truth...
With 17% of the population falling into the "rightie wingnut" category, that means that nearly a third of Bush's strongest base think he's lying.
Of course yesterday's poll had 20% of folks that thought Bush was lying also thought he was honest.
Duh....
Kos
What's a yardarm for?
Novak is a piece of scum that I used to respect, once long ago. I beileved he had the interests of America in his heart, whether I agreed with him or not. AS we watch him disintegrate, let us hope he takes the evil entity that has infected the once patriotic Republican party down with him.
I knew Charlie would be on top of this even before I clicked on his link:
The Scribble
Novak walked, but not from anything Carville said. I think Novak cracked and ran off the show to escape the question he was about to be asked regarding his part in the destruction of an ongoing CIA operation that resulted in the death by execution of at least one American operative.
CNN has very conveniently given Novak a little "time off".
That's too bad. I want to see someone grill him in a venue in which he has to answer.
For too many years Novak has been able to sit behind his column and spout venom without having to answer for it. Stand up Bob! Have a little courage.
Go down with your ship!
Peace,
Steve
I knew Charlie would be on top of this even before I clicked on his link:
The Scribble
Novak walked, but not from anything Carville said. I think Novak cracked and ran off the show to escape the question he was about to be asked regarding his part in the destruction of an ongoing CIA operation that resulted in the death by execution of at least one American operative.
CNN has very conveniently given Novak a little "time off".
That's too bad. I want to see someone grill him in a venue in which he has to answer.
For too many years Novak has been able to sit behind his column and spout venom without having to answer for it. Stand up Bob! Have a little courage.
Go down with your ship!
Peace,
Steve
Night Wind
August is the serious time of year.
Physics is the Law of God and cannot be denied. Religions make mutable proclamations they call laws but these get broken all the time...mostly by religious people, and mostly the laws about lying and stealing. But that is editorializing, and while I think it's significant, this particular problem is not what I am thinking about this morning.
Laws.
The real laws never get broken...never!
I often speak of the language of god. The Law, Physics, is described by this language, and We humans have given this language a name
...Mathematics.
This is the most beautiful language ever devised,if that is how it came into existance, and it is not of human kind's creation.
Human's merely discover mathematics. And then, only after rigorous thought, and hard work, and critical argument, do humans manage to come to a semblance of agreement on this language. The beauty and purety of the language of god is that it never lies. Not only that, but it cannot be used to tell a lie, except temporarily. If I speak without mistake in the language to tell a story, it will be the exact story that someone else would tell even if we have never met and live in different parts of the world.
3 squared equals nine...everywhere in this whole freaking universe.
This, and many more things of even greater significance, is something that humans did not invent...but discovered!
The greatest human advances can be linked to mathematical discovery: newly uncovered words in the language of god. whereupon, humans then can use the new words to predict things in the physical world which cannot be false. Logarithyms, Integral Calculus, Differential equations, are but the first baby steps in speaking this language but even with these simple tools, available to every high school student, we can describe and predict the reality of our universe. We can begin to understand the cause and effect of physics, but there is a greater mystery we must solve in order to survive:
When there is a conflict between the word of god written in the physical universe for us to read and the word written in books and held up by the religious as holy...By what rule shall we resolve the conflict?
I lay awake in my bed last night, listening to the strong night wind. It is a simple and miraculous thing. Here at the very end of Whites Creek gorge, in the heat of August in Tennessee, we always have the night wind. It is a law...no...it is "THE" Law.
Six hundred feet above this house, in the back yard, is the Cumberland Plateau and it is relatively flat. During the day the sun heats it with unerring regularity and then the night comes. The slightly cooler air in the gorge, which has been in shadow at least part of the day, begins to flow in the same direction as the water... downhill. The cooler air quickly collects in the lowest places, flowing downhill, and the night wind builds and builds until the morning sun brings its heat energy to halt the process.
Physics...God speak.
I can enjoy god speak as the night wind, a gift, sending me scrambling to the foot of the bed for the down comforter that lives there, even in August..
A serious time of year.
Peace,
Steve
Physics is the Law of God and cannot be denied. Religions make mutable proclamations they call laws but these get broken all the time...mostly by religious people, and mostly the laws about lying and stealing. But that is editorializing, and while I think it's significant, this particular problem is not what I am thinking about this morning.
Laws.
The real laws never get broken...never!
I often speak of the language of god. The Law, Physics, is described by this language, and We humans have given this language a name
...Mathematics.
This is the most beautiful language ever devised,if that is how it came into existance, and it is not of human kind's creation.
Human's merely discover mathematics. And then, only after rigorous thought, and hard work, and critical argument, do humans manage to come to a semblance of agreement on this language. The beauty and purety of the language of god is that it never lies. Not only that, but it cannot be used to tell a lie, except temporarily. If I speak without mistake in the language to tell a story, it will be the exact story that someone else would tell even if we have never met and live in different parts of the world.
3 squared equals nine...everywhere in this whole freaking universe.
This, and many more things of even greater significance, is something that humans did not invent...but discovered!
The greatest human advances can be linked to mathematical discovery: newly uncovered words in the language of god. whereupon, humans then can use the new words to predict things in the physical world which cannot be false. Logarithyms, Integral Calculus, Differential equations, are but the first baby steps in speaking this language but even with these simple tools, available to every high school student, we can describe and predict the reality of our universe. We can begin to understand the cause and effect of physics, but there is a greater mystery we must solve in order to survive:
When there is a conflict between the word of god written in the physical universe for us to read and the word written in books and held up by the religious as holy...By what rule shall we resolve the conflict?
I lay awake in my bed last night, listening to the strong night wind. It is a simple and miraculous thing. Here at the very end of Whites Creek gorge, in the heat of August in Tennessee, we always have the night wind. It is a law...no...it is "THE" Law.
Six hundred feet above this house, in the back yard, is the Cumberland Plateau and it is relatively flat. During the day the sun heats it with unerring regularity and then the night comes. The slightly cooler air in the gorge, which has been in shadow at least part of the day, begins to flow in the same direction as the water... downhill. The cooler air quickly collects in the lowest places, flowing downhill, and the night wind builds and builds until the morning sun brings its heat energy to halt the process.
Physics...God speak.
I can enjoy god speak as the night wind, a gift, sending me scrambling to the foot of the bed for the down comforter that lives there, even in August..
A serious time of year.
Peace,
Steve
Thursday, August 04, 2005
American Intelligence
I don't know any other way to put it...Americans taken as a whole...are stupid! "Reality Challenged" is the only alternative label I could come up with.
The latest Gallup poll shows Americans feeling very strongly that we will never reach the goal of a stable democracy in Iraq, but a slight majority think we did not blunder by going to war.
Only 37% of Americans think we will achieve our goal in Iraq and 51% believe that President Bush "deliberately misled" the public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and yet 54% believe President Bush to be honest and trustworthy.
Of the people who believe Bush lied...20% find him to be "honest".
Morons!
These folks deserve George W. Bush and his fascist cronies as their President...but what about the rest of us? Democracy can't be built on lies.
via Allhatnocattle.com:
"President Bush is going on his annual vacation. The White House says he goes to his Texas Ranch to unwind. I'm thinking when does he wind?" -- David Letterman
Charlie nails it again:
The latest Gallup poll shows Americans feeling very strongly that we will never reach the goal of a stable democracy in Iraq, but a slight majority think we did not blunder by going to war.
Only 37% of Americans think we will achieve our goal in Iraq and 51% believe that President Bush "deliberately misled" the public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and yet 54% believe President Bush to be honest and trustworthy.
Of the people who believe Bush lied...20% find him to be "honest".
Morons!
These folks deserve George W. Bush and his fascist cronies as their President...but what about the rest of us? Democracy can't be built on lies.
via Allhatnocattle.com:
"President Bush is going on his annual vacation. The White House says he goes to his Texas Ranch to unwind. I'm thinking when does he wind?" -- David Letterman
Charlie nails it again:
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Scout Law
Howdy, Yall!
Just got back from Quantico, Virginia...Right next to CIA headquarters, the Marine University, and the spot where they had several thousand boyscouts gathered up in a field so the President could fly in for a photo op. They called it the National Jamboree and the President was a few days late getting there.
The Boy Scouts of America are a fine idea with bad execution. Let's see...How 'bout we dress a bounch of kids up in quasi military outfits, you know, like the Hitler Youth, and get them to chant things like "...a scout is obedient..."
Here is what the Scouting website says about being obedient:
"OBEDIENT
A Scout follows the rules of his family, school, and troop. He obeys the laws of his community and country. If he thinks these rules and laws are unfair, he tries to have them changed in an orderly manner rather than disobey them."
Think about that, for a second...
Scouts are also ordered to be:
"REVERENT
A Scout is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties. He respects the beliefs of others."
While respecting the beliefs of others, Scouts cannot be agnostic...They get publicly ostracized and kicked out if they are. They are also kicked out if they are not "...Morally straight!" There are court cases saying so.
So you see, Scouts are supposed to respect the beliefs of others as long as they aren't other scouts who don't believe the right things. Scouts have to swear an oath to be morally straight, while giving the scout salute.
Scouts are also supposed to be:
"BRAVE
A Scout can face danger even if he is afraid. He has the courage to stand for what he thinks is right even if others laugh at or threaten him."
The Sout organization has kicked out lots of brave scouts who had the courage to stand up for what they think is right...Here's something that just happened that I don't think was right...
Making 3000 boy children stand in a field in 94 degree weather, waiting on George W. Bush to show up.
The humidity was near 100%...Heat index over 100.
The Boy Scout motto is, "Be Prepared", and the boys tried to be prepared for the suffering they were about to endure on behalf of the President's photo op team by bringing water bottles...
Sorry, you can't do that...someone might throw a water bottle at the President.
15 year old boys dangerously armed with waterbottles are apparently a matter of National security...
The water bottles were taken from the boys and nearly one third of them had to be treated for heat related health problems. 300 of them had to be evacuated for medical treatment. I talked to a government official who was there.
George W. Bush decided this was a bad day for a photo op and didn't show up.
A Scout is also:
"TRUSTWORTHY
A Scout tells the truth. He keeps his promises. Honesty is part of his code of conduct. People can depend on him."
I like that one! These things are part of what is known as the "Scout Law" You can be kicked out of the Scouts if you disobey them. I think we should make that last one the "Presidential Law".... Let me rewrite it for you:
A President is Trustworthy!
A president tells the truth.
He keeps his promises.
Honesty is part of his code of conduct.
People can depend on him."
The Boy Scouts have their own salute..just like the armed forces, who get to use the entire hand brought to the temple as a measure of a respectful greeting. Boy SCouts only use three fingers in their salute...Cub Scouts only two fingers, and so on...
President Bush only used one finger to salute them back.
Peace,
Steve
PS: Bush did show up three days late...Apologized...must have had to attend a National Guard meeting.
Just got back from Quantico, Virginia...Right next to CIA headquarters, the Marine University, and the spot where they had several thousand boyscouts gathered up in a field so the President could fly in for a photo op. They called it the National Jamboree and the President was a few days late getting there.
The Boy Scouts of America are a fine idea with bad execution. Let's see...How 'bout we dress a bounch of kids up in quasi military outfits, you know, like the Hitler Youth, and get them to chant things like "...a scout is obedient..."
Here is what the Scouting website says about being obedient:
"OBEDIENT
A Scout follows the rules of his family, school, and troop. He obeys the laws of his community and country. If he thinks these rules and laws are unfair, he tries to have them changed in an orderly manner rather than disobey them."
Think about that, for a second...
Scouts are also ordered to be:
"REVERENT
A Scout is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties. He respects the beliefs of others."
While respecting the beliefs of others, Scouts cannot be agnostic...They get publicly ostracized and kicked out if they are. They are also kicked out if they are not "...Morally straight!" There are court cases saying so.
So you see, Scouts are supposed to respect the beliefs of others as long as they aren't other scouts who don't believe the right things. Scouts have to swear an oath to be morally straight, while giving the scout salute.
Scouts are also supposed to be:
"BRAVE
A Scout can face danger even if he is afraid. He has the courage to stand for what he thinks is right even if others laugh at or threaten him."
The Sout organization has kicked out lots of brave scouts who had the courage to stand up for what they think is right...Here's something that just happened that I don't think was right...
Making 3000 boy children stand in a field in 94 degree weather, waiting on George W. Bush to show up.
The humidity was near 100%...Heat index over 100.
The Boy Scout motto is, "Be Prepared", and the boys tried to be prepared for the suffering they were about to endure on behalf of the President's photo op team by bringing water bottles...
Sorry, you can't do that...someone might throw a water bottle at the President.
15 year old boys dangerously armed with waterbottles are apparently a matter of National security...
The water bottles were taken from the boys and nearly one third of them had to be treated for heat related health problems. 300 of them had to be evacuated for medical treatment. I talked to a government official who was there.
George W. Bush decided this was a bad day for a photo op and didn't show up.
A Scout is also:
"TRUSTWORTHY
A Scout tells the truth. He keeps his promises. Honesty is part of his code of conduct. People can depend on him."
I like that one! These things are part of what is known as the "Scout Law" You can be kicked out of the Scouts if you disobey them. I think we should make that last one the "Presidential Law".... Let me rewrite it for you:
A President is Trustworthy!
A president tells the truth.
He keeps his promises.
Honesty is part of his code of conduct.
People can depend on him."
The Boy Scouts have their own salute..just like the armed forces, who get to use the entire hand brought to the temple as a measure of a respectful greeting. Boy SCouts only use three fingers in their salute...Cub Scouts only two fingers, and so on...
President Bush only used one finger to salute them back.
Peace,
Steve
PS: Bush did show up three days late...Apologized...must have had to attend a National Guard meeting.
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