Adama For President

Que Imperial March

2007-06-04T14:26:00.000-05:00

From Alter:

But what does that aim have to do with permanent bases? The only two reasons to station troops in the Middle East for half a century are protecting oil supplies (reflecting a pessimistic view of energy independence) outside the normal channels of trade and diplomacy, and projecting raw military power. These are the imperial aims of an empire.

This has got to stop.

Where We Are Now, or a Giant Wall of Text Crits You for 4373845 Damage!

2007-06-01T13:23:00.000-05:00

I'm planning a strategic redeployment from everything I've ever wanted for myself.

I've been on a path toward political office off and on since high school. If you asked me if I planned to run for office, my answer had been "yes" as late as this past Sunday. But at the beginning of this week, I found myself unable to keep forcing my convictions to stay inside the boundary lines of my personal ambitions.

I have felt a sense of expectation around me from my friends, family and community my whole life. The words "to whom much is given, much is expected" have rattled around my head in various forms since third grade. I cannot remember ever having been free of a sense of responsibility to live up to...something...tied to the gifts God gave me. Everyone looks up to the President when they are kids (how can they not...we drill that into kids pretty early, complete with a loyalty pledge led by the nice elementary school teacher lady at the tender age of five, when we have no idea what we're actually saying), and that image stuck. Achieving the heights of political office became the Holy Grail of Meeting Expectations, and I have fought and scraped to position, to learn, to ascend inside the ranks of professional staffdom during my short career so far with the idea that I was Getting Ready.

Getting ready for what, though?

Every week in this job, almost without fail, I send out at least one pitch email to reporters criticizing President Bush's Iraq policy and his pursuit of the War on Terror (TM). But the following line that flies from my fingers so easily is the one that has stuck in my mind like a knife, like an accusing finger. It always contains some variation of "a better, smarter strategy to fight terrorists."

As you might have guessed if you have read any of my posts (chances are not large that you have...I'm not Kos), I am an adherent of Christian nonviolence. I believe that violence has been proscribed in every instance by the teachings of Jesus Christ. But that conviction runs right into, every week, a calculus that I email out to reporters, to everyone that reads anything these reporters write based on my pitches, that in effect argues not for turning away from violence, but for different, "smarter," more effective violence.

This is being a little simplistic about the messages I send, but you get the basic idea.

I can't do it. I can't become this person. I look down the road of political campaigning and office, and I see looking back at me an absolute villain. I see a person who thinks he's doing what's best for the people, fighting for a mythical Greater Good with the lives of other people's kids, moving them around like Risk pieces. And make no mistake, no one who will stand up and tell people that serving in the military is immoral, that killing even for self-defense is against the teachings of Jesus, will ever muster the votes to win any federal, state, or possibly even local office in any arena I could hope to run in. The offices that are open are too small for my ambition, and the ones that would satisfy my drive are closed to me as long as I act out my beliefs.

So I have a choice. I can either make piece with losing my integrity, my convictions, and my soul, or I can walk away from my entire vision of myself and my future.

Goodbye future. Hello uncertainty.

I plan to finish out this job while L. finishes grad school, and then I'm out. I have no idea what's next. But it certainly doesn't involve being a happy cog in the machinery of murder.

Back Online

2007-06-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

Coming back online after a long hiatus. Stay tuned.

Right now I'm reading Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf. I highly recommend. I'll blog more about it later.

Nice One, Pat

2006-08-03T22:55:00.000-05:00

Wow. I'm used to lambasting Pat Robertson, but today he said something that restored a little bit of my faith in humanity: he declared himself a global warming convert and called for alternative energy. Watch this.

Nice one, Pat. Glad to have you with us. Now go tell all your friends.

O'Reilly: "Fight the Machines"

2006-08-03T13:23:00.000-05:00

Bill, we're glad to have you with us fighting the Cylon takeover:

Now if a president wants the folks to support him, he must be a teacher, a persuader. He must sell his policies to a public that's often confused. In other words, our leaders must fight the machines.

Yes! That's what we've been saying! These damn machines can even look like people now and--

That is a daunting task, but it is Leadership 101 in the Internet age.

Oh wait, you were referring to bloggers?

Damn. We're bloggers.

Wait....are you a Cylon?

Bill's latest screed on his "Talking Points" segment is hilarious. Gee, those darn bloggers are the reason we're losing in Iraq and the reason we're all turning against this charlie foxtrot (look it up people). If we would all just stop confusing people with this stupid reality-based text, they would just do whatever the GOP wants!

God! I HATE this stupid printing press. Now all these people are getting these BOOKS and I can't just TELL them what to THINK anymore.

Get Your Palpatine On

2006-08-02T09:26:00.000-05:00

WashPost reports today of a move by the Administration to drastically increase the use and scope of military courts in the wake of the Supreme Court's rejection of the military trial system as it exists today:

The plan...would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction.

Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.

Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.

The military lawyers nonetheless supported extending the jurisdiction of the commissions to cover those accused of joining or associating with terrorist groups engaged in anti-U.S. hostilities, and of committing or aiding hostile acts by such groups, whether or not they are part of al-Qaeda...

AMERICAblog points out that if you take the words used by this Administration about reporters who are critical of the war effort, they fit exactly with the words of the new proposal as people who would be eligible for trial under these expanded Commie-characature courts.

Congress has got to change hands in 2006. It has to. It is the only way to put the brakes on this Administration. The Republic is dying folks, unless we do something about it.

One more time for the slow ones: We are losing the Republic.

Stalling to Push a Wider War

2006-07-31T14:21:00.000-05:00

President Bush is stalling.

From MSNBC:

President Bush insisted anew Monday that any Mideast cease-fire be conditioned on a wider agreement and said he would look to the United Nations to act to establish “a long-lasting peace, one that is sustainable.”

There is an old saying: "the enemy of better is best." The President's immediate goal should be an immediate cease-fire, not the perfect cease-fire. As the bombing of the housing project in Qana and the subsequent civilian deaths show, modern wars are more deadly to civilians than to the militaries and governments that provoke and fight them. Every day that a war continues means more and more civilian casualties. The fighting must stop immediately, and then long-term deals hammered out.

But I don't think the President is totally blind to all of this. Rather, I think he's using this situation to leverage (or try to) support for a broader offensive against Syria and Iran:

As Israel cut short a halt in bombing and launched new strikes in southern Lebanon, Bush spelled out a series of what he called “clear objectives” to accompany a halt in the fighting.

“Iran must end its financial support and supply of weapons to terrorist groups like Hezbollah. Syria must end its support for terror and respect the sovereignty of Lebanon,” Bush said in a speech at the Port of Miami.

Either he's laying groundwork for an Israel-led attack on Iran and Syria, or he's trying to pull the United States into a war to "defend an ally."

Bush and Hadley: The War in Iraq is No Longer the War on Terror

2006-07-28T15:06:00.000-05:00

The President and his NatSec Advisor admit that the War in Iraq is about suppressing religious / sectarian violence, not fighting al-Qaeda or other terror groups. In other words, as I've said all along, the War in Iraq has nothing to do with the War on Terror.

A Quote for Today's Debate on the House Floor

2006-07-18T10:20:00.000-05:00

From the West Wing:

President Bartlet: "I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?

While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it okay to call the police?

Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?

Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side-by-side?

Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?

Think about those questions, would you?

Oh, one last thing.

While you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club, in this building, when the President stands, nobody sits."

Bush Forced to Be President for a Day Rather Than Emperor

2006-07-11T10:30:00.000-05:00

From the Financial Times:

The White House confirmed on Tuesday that the Pentagon had decided, in a major policy shift, that all detainees held in US military custody around the world are entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.

...Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions – which prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners and requires certain basic legal rights at trial – (will) apply to all detainees held in US military custody.

This reverses the policy outlined by President George W. Bush in 2002 when he decided members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban did not qualify for Geneva protections because the war on terrorism had ushered in a “new paradigm…[that] requires new thinking in the law of war”.

The past several years have seen a steady repudiation of almost every facet of George Bush's foreign policy, and I for one and very, very happy to see this move by the Pentagon. But let's all remember that they only made this move because the Supreme Court forced them to.

It is disgusting, however, that we should ever have had to make this reversal, because we never should have gone down the road President Bush took us with regard to the flagrant flaunting of international commitments like the Geneva Convention and nuclear proliferation agreements.

I love that those evil liberal courts forced the Republic back into balance, if only on this issue.

This is a democracy, Mr. President. Welcome to it.

A Precipice

2006-07-10T08:50:00.000-05:00

From the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two car bombs struck a Shiite district in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens, officials said, as sectarian tensions rose following a rampage by Shiite gunmen killed 41 people, most of them Sunnis....

Sunni leaders expressed outrage over the killings, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, appealed for calm, warning that the nation stood "in front of a dangerous precipice."

President Bush went into Iraq over the objections of a lot of Americans. During the lead-up to war, I was adamantly against it, and I was crushed once it became clear the decision was made. But once our people were in harm's way, I said to a roommate that I hoped Bush was right, and that he could actually improve things for the Iraqi people, even though I didn't think it was possible to do it with war.

The ends are inherent in the means. I don't know how many ways a person can say this to this administration before it sinks in. More than 2500 of our soldiers have died fighting this war, but that number is far, far below the number of civilians that have died in the fighting.

The hallmark of modern warfare in a shift in the proportion of military deaths to civilian deaths. Unfortunately, the fact that we don't feel the full effects of our military action to the extent that we used to, because of that proportion's shift, has led to a much more cavalier attitude about how and when we use our military as an early option.

It's like having a gun: you don't have such a fear of using violence because the consequences for you aren't as certain as they were in the era of clubs and swords.

All of this is to say: dammit. Civil war is already happening in Iraq as predicted by many of us who were against this invasion in the first place for precisely this reason, among others. It's time for Congress to force the President to either come up with a significantly different strategy, or else stop funding any military operation in Iraq that isn't ferrying our men and women home. If we're not going to intervene and stop the civil war, as Mr. Rumsfeld has said we won't do, then we are putting our soldiers in the crossfire for nothing.

Either the President is Being Manipulated by Evil People, Or...

2006-07-07T16:07:00.000-05:00

The President, in an interview w/ People Magazine:

PEOPLE: Do you think Gore is right on global warming?

BUSH: I think we have a problem on global warming. I think there is a debate about whether it's caused by mankind or whether it's caused naturally, but it's a worthy debate. It's a debate, actually, that I'm in the process of solving by advancing new technologies, burning coal cleanly in electric plants, or promoting hydrogen-powered automobiles, or advancing ethanol as an alternative to gasoline.

Either the President is a total idiot and is buying right-wing garbage peddled by evil, evil people who care more about profit than leaving something (anything!) behind for our children, or the President himself is peddling right-wing garbage because he cares more about his friends in the oil industry than leaving something behind for our children, in which case, he's an evil, evil man.

The idea that there's a debate on global warming is total crap. Saying there's a debate about global warming is analagous to saying there's a debate about whether the Holocaust happened. You have random nutcases all over the world denying the Holocaust because it's in their interest to do so, but that does not mean there's a real debate about the Holocaust. And one day, our descendants will look back and put Holocaust deniers and climate crisis deniers in the same category.

Spreading Democracy, Hitler Style

2006-07-07T11:55:00.000-05:00

Calm down, calm down, I'm not calling Bush a Hitler clone.

This particularly troubling tidbit is behind the rage you felt at this post's title: in order to meet recruitment requirements, the U.S. armed forces have gotten lax in their efforts to ban hate group members from joining and being trained as killers at taxpayer expense.

No joke people...there's Aryan Brotherhood grafitti showing up in Baghdad right now, and I don't think the Skinheads accept Shi'a or Sunnis. You dig?

The most frightening things about this are a)that these people are now in the chain of command somewhere and eligible for promotion to positions to command troops, and b) they are holding onto the most effective military weapons money can buy, and are trained to kill with various weapons systems from high-technology rifles right on down to their bare hands, and they're getting that expertise with your tax dollars.

That's right folks, the mismanagement of the war in Iraq, and its effects on recruitment, have led directly to your money and my money subsidizing the next generation of white supremacists.

How do you feel about that?

Illegal Gay Liberal Mexican Flag Burners

2006-06-22T14:13:00.000-05:00

From the NYT (registration required, sorry):

The Immigration Road Show

Given the topics that have preoccupied Congress lately, one wonders why the Republicans don't simply propose a catchall bill aimed at illegal gay liberal Mexican flag burners and be done with it. The immigration debate has been obscured for too long by a fog of distortion and fear, and the House Republicans are gambling that the public won't see through it. The American people deserve better. They deserve action on a good immigration bill, and if this do-nothing Congress won't give it to them, they should elect a Congress that will.

Finally, we are at a point where campaigning in place of policy doesn't work anymore. Everything the Republicans have done in the last six years has been a campaign stop, event, or slogan. The war in Iraq, the immigration debate, those evil gays threatening marriage (i know they are the chief source of difficulty in my marriage...heck, how can L. and I be expected to treat each other with respect and love with those...people...next door?) It's a con game, a trick, and finally, finally, the American people are tired of having their intelligence insulted by these wankers.

The U.S. Flag is Sacred, Unless I Can Gratify My Ego by Defacing One for a Fan...

2006-06-21T15:25:00.000-05:00

Apparently, it's not okay to burn a flag in a constitutionally-guaranteed act of protest speech, but it is okay to mark it up with a Sharpie pen to gratify your own ego.

UPDATED: Can They All Come Lay Down on Your Couch, Dick?

2006-06-20T09:13:00.000-05:00

"I don't think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered," Cheney said. He said much of the continuing violence has its roots in "the devastation" that 30 years of Saddam Hussein's iron- fisted rule "had wrought on the psychology of the Iraqi people."

So wait...it's NOT any of the following:
1) Weapons of mass destruction
2) al-Qaeda

No no, it's that the Iraqis all need mental health care.

No one anticipated the level of violence?! You mean, no one as in EVERYONE?! Jeebus H. Roosevelt Rice, you whining self-excusing cybertronic lardass! What planet are you from????

Update: Just so you know, we can prove that you are a liar.

Get Serious, America

2006-06-12T14:01:00.000-05:00

From Wired:

Here's a sodden thought: More people logged on to vote in the recent American Idol finale than voted in the last presidential election. But we're not sheep. No, sir.

How depressing.

Read the original article, too.

Molly Rocks

2006-06-07T10:25:00.000-05:00

From her latest column:

I believe what we have here is a difference over moral values.

The Republicans are worried about the flag, gay marriage and the terrible burden of the estate tax on the rich. The rest of us are obviously unnecessarily worried about war, peace, the economy, the environment and civilization. Another reason to vote Republican - they have a shorter list.

WW3 is Getting Closer

2006-06-01T14:57:00.000-05:00

Bolton is frothing at the mouth. Ironically, of all President Bush's people, this guy is probably the most accurate thermometer of the President's foreign policy intentions.

That's disturbing because he's racheting up his rhetoric in preparation for an attack on Iran.

My God, this is really going to happen.

Gore 2008: I'm so there.

2006-06-01T11:29:00.000-05:00

I'm telling you, people....
...this is going to happen.

Chicken, Anyone?

2006-05-31T08:39:00.000-05:00

Secretary Rumsfeld apparently likes the game of chicken, because he's inviting every nuclear power to play along.

Moral of the story: Rumsfeld's plan for ICBMs will get us all killed.

Not Only Will We Burn, But We'll Itch

2006-05-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

Oh lord...I don't envy my children. From National Geographic:

Rising levels of carbon dioxide—a so-called greenhouse gas that traps heat within Earth's atmosphere—can fuel booming poison ivy growth, a new study reports.

Even worse, the rash-inducing vines may become more potent.

Sorry kids. Blame Granny and Grandpa. Or at least, their friends.

Don't Believe Him

2006-05-30T08:22:00.000-05:00

Americans could learn a little from Machiavelli these days:

[There is]“such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn how to accomplish his ruin. . . .”

Machiavelli was pointing out that what people say and what they intend do not matter. Only the result matters.

Consider the following from the President's speech at West Point:

We're still in the early stages of this struggle for freedom and, like those first years of the Cold War, we've seen setbacks, and challenges, and days that have tested America's resolve. Yet we've also seen days of victory and hope. We've seen people in Afghanistan voting for the first democratic parliament in a generation. We have seen jubilant Iraqis dancing in the streets, holding up ink-stained fingers, celebrating their freedom. We've seen people in Lebanon waving cedar flags and securing the liberty and independence of their land. We've seen people in Kyrgyzstan drive a corrupt regime from power and vote for democratic change. In the past four years alone, more than 110 million human beings across the world have joined the ranks of the free -- and this is only the beginning. (Applause.) The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom -- and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people and every nation. (Applause.)

Contrast that with this:

BAGHDAD, May 29 - The U.S. military said Monday it was deploying the main reserve fighting force for Iraq, a full 3,500-member armored brigade, as emergency reinforcements for the embattled western province of Anbar, where a surge of violence linked to the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq has severely damaged efforts to turn Sunni Arab tribal leaders against the insurgency.

President Bush is living in a dream world, and his high-minded grasps to be the next Truman or Roosevelt or Reagan do not matter. His rhetorical acrobatics (and liberties) are just self-indulgent gas-bagging. The only thing that matters in the news about the Iraq War today is that we're now having to call in the reserves because the insurgents gained the initiative.

Dammit, Mr. President, wake the f*ck up. Fix this, or get out of the way and let someone else do it, and you can continue your impotent speaking circuit uninterrupted.

Power

2006-05-29T20:57:00.000-05:00

Times are tough at work. My supervisor left due to the abusive environment (see below). In her absence, a very ambitious senior staffer is looking to take duties out of my hands and use them to create an empire inside the Nonprofit. Ambiguities are in play all around; because they weren't dealt with before my supervisor left, Mr. Ambition is using them and my non-descriptive title to play games. He wants to be the savior of the organization, and to do it by manipulating my turf.

This is a learning ground for me. I am face-to-face with not only classic power games in which I must learn to manuever, but I'm face-to-face with my own shorcomings.

My self esteem has always been based on my intelligence and creativity. That's warped somewhat as I've aged into wanting to be the sole source of creativity and intelligence. These are my buttons. I have to learn not to let them be pushed.

I was told that I was to be responsible for the "day-to-day operations" of my Big Project, while Mr. Ambition would take control of "overall strategy." My strategy: to keep him blind to the fact that there are no "big decisions." They're all "little decisions." Since the Nonprofit has no overall strategy, let him run around and try to make one. In the meantime, I will make it work and claim credit for it.

Sure, Mr. Ambition, you win. I surrender. You take care of that big picture strategy. Just let me run it all.

The Tone is Torture; or, Post Mortem: One Rough Week

2006-05-06T00:54:00.000-05:00

The fact that I'm up at 2 a.m. on Friday writing about my rough work week should tell you what kind of week it was.

My org is pushing a Super Duper Event on Monday. Celebrities, dramatic locations, the whole bit. Thing is, it's not really a newsworthy event. It's more of a fundraising and footage/photo-gathering event. We want the celebs to give us money and to help us raise money. But there's no news story there...it's an old story, which, granted, we're trying to keep cameras on because it's the right thing to do, but our success should be measured in dollar signs, not headlines.

The event is huge, the local staff are screwing around. So my very capable supervisor issues an all-hands-on-deck call for staff to help with media pitches. Great! I want this experience on my resume anyway, so we grind a couple hundred calls out.

So while this is going on, another department wants us to drop what we're doing and send out releases on their non-news-making report. We say no. They complain. We still say no. They complain complain complain, and we say NO. The dispute is settled when the new chief of staff steps in and says NO, but we'll put something on the webpage. To salve egos, I place this story as the top story for the week, with the plan being to drop it today to get us on message for the Super Duper Event on Monday.

All this is setting me back severely on all my very urgent deadlines for the Huge Project. So I'm already stressed out and leaving work feeling like I've been beat with a stick from doing press calls that are a bit of a stretch for editors in Whereever, America.

But today, oh today, Friday, Payday....today surpassed all the rough days by a factor of ten.

Our legendary President, who doesn't even know how to turn on her computer (I'm not being funny....she really doesn't) somehow becomes "shocked" that today, three days before the event, we haven't posted the press release on the event to the website. Not that I'm quibbling, but the press release was clearly marked "Embargoed Until May 8th," meaning that we'd basically be jamming our thumbs into the eyes of every reporter who respected our embargo if we posted it on the web before then. Her email (which she had to dictate because she doesn't know how to use email) then degenerated into general gripes about the way our department does its job. It concludes with an expectation of a "full court press on Saturday and Sunday" to make up for "ground lost" and the most senile "it's about the mission, the misssiooooonnnnnnn" closer I've ever seen.

Mission, schmission. I've been in this job for two months, and I can tell you unequivocally that The Mission is dead, and the President is holding the still-bloody knife in her micromanaging, bully-fisted hands. Right now my org is a group of staffers floundering desperately to man their posts and make a difference in spite of, not under the leadership of, a-former-Jedi-hero-turned-Sith-Lord. Her brass-knuckled karate with the staff has resulted in no director of my department lasting more than a few months. She's axed whole departments and done nothing to abate an anemic fundraising trend that threatens the future of the organization. She sets the tone, and the tone is Torture.

All this exposes an important fact to keep in mind....somewhere there is a bad actor watching our site and reporting it to her. Good to know. Be warned! If I find out who you are, and you're not a board member, you and I will definately be passive-aggressive friends for years to come.

But my supervisor has finally had it. Not only did she fight back, she slammed the boss for copying irrelevant staff on the email and told her she was finding these public dressing-downs to be contributing to a hostile work environment. Then she turned in her two weeks notice. Good for her!

Unfortunately, now I'm very much exposed with no go-between between the Boss Lady and myself. And the autonomy of the web effort is now in jeopardy.

Stress. Stress stress stress.

So Sunday I'm off to the Super Duper Event. This will be a lot like watching a train wreck up close, I think.

Oh well. At least I still have L. waiting for me in bed when I come home. She's my rock.

And by the way, Madam President, if you're reading this, I'm already travelling on Sunday for your non-event event. Take your full court press and stick it in your locker room.

Now That is Punishment

2006-05-04T12:09:00.000-05:00

I am a funky mix when it comes to crime and punishment.

I don't believe the prison system should be seen as a rehabilitation system as its primary function. Prison is for punishment. The point of prison is doing time, not helping the inmate.

However, I am opposed to the death penalty. Killing anyone for any reason is wrong. And death is not punishment; it is escape. A dead man is beyond our capacity to punish.

Compare, for example, death by lethal injection, which ends the life of the inmate, to this, courtesy CNN:

Once in prison, Moussaoui will be in lockdown for 23 hours of every day, with one hour of recreation daily. He'll also spend that one hour alone.

The same four walls, every day, no conversation, for the rest of your life. Now that is punishment.

Inalienable Anthem

2006-04-28T08:50:00.000-05:00

There's lots of talk this morning about a Spanish version of the national anthem. This version was recorded for use at these immigration rallies that are taking place all over the country. Conservatives are calling it the "Illegal Alien Anthem."

But what, exactly, is the problem here?

First, I'll give the opponents' their moment in the spotlight (courtesy WP):

I'm really appalled. . . . We are not a bilingual nation," said George Taplin, director of the Virginia Chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, part of a national countermovement that emphasizes border control and tougher enforcement, and objects to public funding for day-laborer sites. "When people are talking about becoming a part of this country, they should assimilate to the norm that's already here," Taplin said. "What we're talking about here is a sovereign nation with our ideals and our national identity, and that [anthem] is one of the icons of our nation's identity. I believe it should be in English as it was penned."

First, let's get the obvious out of the way. We are a multilingual nation, regardless of what this guy thinks. Contrary to what a lot of people think, English is not the official language of the United States. In fact, there is no official language of the United States. Look it up. Or you could just go to Target and see for yourself.

But let's think about this for a minute. For those who still think we're in Iraq to spread the democratic ideal (which I don't), I have a hypothesis: If they were to see a group of Iraqis in the street singing, and discovered that it was an Iraqi translation of our national anthem, it would be hailed as a triumph. We'd be winning the hearts and minds.

Now say a group of Iraqi immigrants came to the United States and sang the same song. I have a feeling we'd be hailing it as a sign that our values have worth in all cultures. Same hypothesis.

But now, here we have an extreme reaction to a Spanish language version of the anthem, and I don't get it. I do get it in that I understand what xenophobia is, and the frustration with people violating our laws to come to the United States illegally. I also understand how the former ugly emotion and the latter justified indignation mix in some very bad ways in some people.

But I have a question for all you people freaking out about a Spanish language version of the anthem: what would be different if you woke up tomorrow and found that, for common use, the Constitution had been rewritten in Spanish, along with the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the English language versions were all just documents in a museum. What would be different?

If we adopted Spanish as our first ever official language, what changes?

If we really mean what we say in quoting "The New Colossus" on the Statue of Liberty, if we really believe that freedom is God's gift to mankind, if we really, really believe that all men are created equal and that the ideals of America are inalienable, then nothing changes. Nothing. We are all still Americans.

I don't have a problem with that, and I'm a gringo. What about you?

Energetic Hypocrisy

2006-04-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

I love it. More on Bush's hypocrisy on energy from our friends at the DNC:

Cheney in 2001: Conservation Merely A "Personal Virtue"; Rejected Use Of Renewable Energy Sources. "Vice-president Dick Cheney dismissed on Monday night the idea of 'conserving or rationing' as 1970s-era solutions to the US's energy shortages. In a speech in Toronto, Mr Cheney said that 'conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.'... He rejected energy conservation and renewable energy sources as major alternatives...'" [The Guardian, 5/2/01]

Bush in 2005: Bush Called On Americans To Be "Better Conservers." "President Bush called on the Americans today to conserve gasoline and avoid non-essential driving as the average national prices for retail gasoline climbed higher for the first time since they peaked over the Labor Day weekend. ... 'We can all pitch in by being better conservers,' Mr. Bush said .... In addition to urging consumers to cut back to ease the pain of the current supply shortages, he said federal employees should use carpool and public transport and not take non-essential trips." [New York Times, 9/25/05]

Bush in 2006: We Should Support Alternative Fuels. In a speech to the Renewable Fuels Association, President Bush noted that, "it makes sense for this government to spend money on research and development to find alternative sources of energy. I also support biodiesel fuel, which can -- which can substitute for regular diesel in cars, trucks, buses and farm equipment. ... And so we also have got to understand that we got to research not only to find -- to invest in ethanol and biodiesel, but part of a comprehensive strategy is to spend money on researching new battery technologies." [President Bush, 4/25/06]

GOP: Two Free Tanks of Gas Will Fix It

2006-04-27T11:24:00.000-05:00

The GOP are losing their damn minds. Now they want to give everyone $100 bucks to offset the price of gas.

These are the same psychos that gave the energy companies $12 billion in subsidies when they were making record profits in last year's energy bill.

Just for the record, at current prices, $100 bucks only gets me 2 full tanks of gas, and I drive a tiny little Honda Civic that gets amazing gas mileage. For larger vehicles, like the trucks the GOP encouraged small businesses to buy through tax breaks, $100 bucks won't fill the tank once.

Get serious, you jackasses. We are not stupid.

Estate Taxes and Paris Hilton

2006-04-26T08:15:00.000-05:00

Oh lord, I love the estate tax debate. Listening to Republicans call it the "DEATH TAX THAT WILL EAT YOUR BABIES" and such makes me laugh. Or it would if they hadn't convinced every single farmer in West Texas that he will, or he did, have to pay it. The GOP has turned it into an urban legend..."I knew this guy one time that got completely wiped out by the death tax."

Here's the funny thing, courtesy of Think Progress: You're four times more likely to be hit by lightning than you are to be hit by the estate tax.

And, the campaign to end the estate tax is bankrolled primarily by 18 super-rich families that will net $71.6 billion dollars from its repeal. For the record, they include Paris Hilton.

And it will cost the rest of us 3/4 of a trillion dollars. Again: they make $71.6 billion, while we pay $750 billion. Repealing the estate tax costs us more than ten times what it will make for these 18 uber-rich pansies, and the GOP Congress is going to do it anyway, because, well, Richie Rich is their cruel mistress.

Sign Here

2006-04-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

I just visited www.dontattackiran.org and signed this letter:

Dear President Bush and Vice President Cheney,

We write to you from all over the United States and all over the world to urge you to obey both international and U.S. law, which forbid aggressive attacks on other nations. We oppose your proposal to attack Iran. Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, just as Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons. If Iran had such weapons, that would not justify the use of force, any more than any other nation would be justified in launching a war against the world's greatest possesor of nuclear arms, the United States. The most effective way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons would be to closely monitor its nuclear energy program, and to improve diplomatic relations -- two tasks made much more difficult by threatening to bomb Iranian territory. We urge you to lead the way to peace, not war, and to begin by making clear that you will not commit the highest international crime by aggressively attacking Iran.

You should sign it too.

Bush is Failing Us, Part 7468: Diplomacy and Iran

2006-04-21T08:15:00.000-05:00

President Bush and his administration have not only failed to engage Iran for a diplomatic solution to the current crisis, they've rebuked the messengers of previous overtures from Iran for constructive diplomacy for years since the Iraq invasion.

Currently, the U.S. is sitting on the sideline, pressuring other people to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear program instead of engaging them ourselves. This is a thinly veiled strategy, a bone thrown to our allies who said "diplomacy, inspections" before Iraq. The plan is obvious: let them satisfy their urge for, you know, rational thought and boring diplomacy, while doing nothing to assist. When they fail to mediate a dispute that is primarily between us and Iran without our engagement, we can lean back, say "see I told you," and press The Button.

By the way, some West Point grads are being told to be ready for Iran deployment in 2007.

Bush Sounds French

2006-04-19T14:11:00.000-05:00

Specifically, like a frustrated Napoleon. From NYT:

"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best," Mr. Bush said in the Rose Garden. "And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."

It's like a four-year-old. With weak parents.

A notable and humorous note later in the article:

The group that has called for the resignation [of Secretary Rumsfeld] includes two retired major generals who commanded troops in Iraq and a retired three-star general who was director of operations on the Joint Staff. Their comments have been criticized by other retired generals, who have said the group risks politicizing the armed forces.

You mean politicizing the armed forces like this?

The War in Iran May Have Already Begun

2006-04-19T10:59:00.000-05:00

Great. Just great.

We have to stop this now.

Mary J. Blige Says God Wants Her Hot and Blingy

2006-04-18T10:24:00.000-05:00

From MSNBC.com:

“My God is a God who wants me to have things,” the singer tells May’s Blender magazine. “He wants me to bling. He wants me to be the hottest thing on the block. I don’t know what kind of God the rest of y’all are serving, but the God I serve says, ‘Mary, you need to be the hottest thing this year, and I’m gonna make sure you’re doing that’.”

Just so her rhetorical sort-of question doesn't go unanswered, here's the kind of God I serve:

Luke 18:22: Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.

Bling, hotness, not so much.

Iran and Syracuse

2006-04-17T10:26:00.000-05:00

There's a meme forming about Syracuse/Athens and why it shows the need to invade Iran. Response is thus, originally posted on Crooked Timber:

... from “The 48 Laws of Power”, by Robert Greene, page 305:

“If choosing to ignore enhances your power, it follows that the opposite approach—commitment and engagement—often weakens you. By paying undue attention to a puny enemy, you look puny, and the longer it takes you to crush such an enemy, the larger the enemy seems. When Athens set out to conquer the island of Sicily, in 45 B.C., a giant power was attacking a tiny one. yet, by entangling Athens in a long drawn out conflict, Syracuse…was able to grow in stature and confidence. Finally defeating Athens, it made itself famous for centuries to come.”

Feel free to substitute any superpowers above with current ones, and also feel free to substitute any smaller countries led by demagogues-looking-for-a-fight-with-a-giant-to-enhance-their-own-stature with any modern-day equivalents.

By engaging Iran in the manner in which we have, we have lost the initiative and shored-up a regime once threatened by reformers. Iran’s leadership knew this would happen, and they played us, and if we invade, we bring their plans, not ours, to fruition.

More on World War IV...

2006-04-17T09:53:00.000-05:00

Did you know that nukes should be on the table?

Also, apparently, Americans should back a war of choice in Iran because it will lower our gas prices.

The Machine's gears are already grinding...

For Those Who Still Don't Know, FEMA Suxx0rz and DHS is a Joke.

2006-04-14T08:57:00.000-05:00

From MSNBC.com/Washington Post:

...the trailer program consumes more than 60 percent of funds FEMA is spending on housing aid -- even though it benefits about 10 percent of the approximately 1 million households getting help, according to agency data and the Brookings Institution, which tracks recovery progress.

By contrast, a rental assistance program is serving 800,000 families, or 80 percent of households, at about one-third the total cost ... It was dramatically expanded ... after intense pressure from Congress and others who said the administration from the beginning should have taken advantage of such proven programs as low-income Section 8 rental vouchers.

...Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, reserved some of the toughest criticism for FEMA's mass trailer initiative. She said that it "foundered due to inadequate planning and poor coordination," and she recommended that the Department of Housing and Urban Development take over from Homeland Security in future disasters.

The Fourth World War Is Taking Shape

2006-04-13T13:58:00.000-05:00

For those who are keeping count, many contend that the Cold War was World War III.

From the New Yorker:

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

Further:

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

If President Bush is actually planning for an invasion of Iran as the only serious outcome of the current faceoff, it can be said with all seriousness that he has made a conscious decision to escalate the terror attacks on 9/11/01 to a full-blown World War. After Afghanistan, President Bush wrongly decided to attack Iraq, and now is aiming to attack Iran. If this comes to pass, President Bush will have succeeded not in "saving Iran," but in precipitating exactly the kind of conflict warned against in Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
From a MoveOn email:

By the way, there's a very eerie similarity between what President Bush and his allies are saying now and what they said in the run-up to war against Iraq three years ago:

THEN: George W. Bush, November 12, 2002: "We don't know how close he is today, but a Saddam Hussein with a nuclear weapon is a grave, grave threat to America and our friends and allies.

NOW: George W. Bush, January 16, 2006: "Iran armed with a nuclear weapon poses a grave threat to the security of the world."

THEN: Donald Rumsfeld, September 19, 2002: ". . . No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."

NOW: George W. Bush, March 16, 2006: "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran. (Thanks to this post at the Daily Kos for assembling these quotes.)

Get Scared, Citizens

2006-04-13T11:11:00.000-05:00

From MSNBC.com/Newsweek:

Defense analyst and Washington Post blogger Bill Arkin, who first brought allegations about CIFA’s domestic spying to light, says that in its efforts to trying eliminate waste and better coordinate intelligence activities, “we are creating an American military secret police that is clearly acquiring way too much information and way too much power.”

Ruh-Roh, Republicans, The Sequel

2006-04-07T10:54:00.000-05:00

From MSNBC.com:

Just 36 percent of the public approves of Bush's job performance, his lowest-ever rating in AP-Ipsos polling
As bad as Bush's numbers may be, Congress' are worse, just 30% of the public approves of the GOP-led Congress' job performance, and Republicans seem to be shouldering the blame.
The public favors Democrats over Republicans when asked who should run Congress 49-33. The 16-point lead is the largest Democrats have enjoyed in AP-Ipsos polling.
69 percent of Americans believes the nation is headed in the wrong direction - the largest percentage during the Bush presidency and up 13 points from a year ago.
Bush's approval rating is down 12 points among Republicans since a year ago. Six-in-10 Republicans said they disapproved of the GOP-led Congress.

Democrats Rule, and Fox News is Just Stupid

2006-04-07T08:27:00.000-05:00

From Amy Sullivan's article in the Washington Monthly:

So it is that Democrats can be "hopelessly divided" while voting together 88 percent of the time, according to Congressional Quarterly; just one percentage point lower than the vaunted lock-step Republican caucus. They can be "pathetically ineffective" while dealing a humiliating defeat to the president's biggest domestic policy effort. They can be deemed "weak" and "timid" while setting the terms of the debate for pulling troops out of Iraq.

Damn right.

Bush Gets Busted

2006-04-06T12:24:00.000-05:00

Just so we're clear before we get to the link, I want to recap (thanks to ThinkProgress):

“There’s just too many leaks, and if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.” [Bush, 9/30/03]

“I want to know the truth. … I have no idea whether we’ll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers.” [Fox News, 10/8/03]

“I’d like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information.” [Bush, 10/28/03]

Having said that, what the hell am I supposed to do with THIS?

I. Lewis Libby testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush.

Pun With Headlines: "Tom's Resignation is Too Delayed to Do Any Good"

2006-04-04T10:42:00.000-05:00

Too late, Tommy Boy. The cards are slowly dropping to the table, and too many of the chips are in the pot. Resigning now only shouts to the rafters that "Yes, the Republican Party leadership is corrupt!" at the beginning of the campaign season.

The purge in the GOP is hilarious. Their balloon is dropping to the ground and they're frantically throwing off ballast, only to find out everyone in the basket is wearing some kind of strange shirt that says "Sand, 50 lbs." and their policies are written on sheets of lead.

Is There Anyone Out There That Wants the President to Pick Up Steam?

2006-04-04T10:37:00.000-05:00

MSNBC reports that President Bush thinks Josh Bolton can help the White House be more effective.

Earth to Mr. President: It's not your White House's "effectiveness" that's the problem. It's the direction you're taking the country. If Josh Bolton is even more effective at taking us further into the wilderness you've brought us into, you're going to be even less popular than you are now.

Civil War in Iraq, Still

2006-04-03T12:01:00.000-05:00

From the boys over at ThinkProgress:

Civil war watch: “Nearly eight times as many Iraqis died last month in execution-style sectarian killings as in terrorist bombings carried out by insurgents, new US military statistics show.”

Meanwhile, “more Iraqis than ever have been buying, carrying and stockpiling weapons, adding an unnerving level of firepower to Baghdad’s streets.”

The Man Whom Texas Has Indicted in This Last Day

2006-03-30T13:21:00.000-05:00

From Salon.com:

March 29, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- Introducing Rep. Tom DeLay at the War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006 conference in Washington Tuesday, master of ceremonies Rick Scarborough described him as "the man God has appointed in this last day."

Oh wait, there's more:

"I believe the most damaging thing Tom DeLay has done in his life is take his faith seriously in the public office, which made him a target of all those who despise the goals of Christ," said Scarborough, a former college football player and longtime DeLay ally.

If he's convicted, he's obviously being martyred.

I'm so stunned I can't comment any further.

Oh wait, I can:

There are people being actually killed for their faith in the world. The word "Christian" really is a death sentence in some places, notably in the "new" Afghanistan.

Every time the GOP does this (or any political party, for that matter) it cheapens the faith, and takes us further in to the idolotrous theology of empire.

For the record, Tom DeLay is under indictment for violating campaign finance law. He's been admonished by Republican Ethics Committee chairmen for his misconduct. And I've personally seen him throw trash at people he doesn't like on the House floor (I'm serious). He is not under indictment for being a Christian.

Wait, Wait.....Wait....Okay...Wait....

2006-03-30T09:21:00.000-05:00

I'm confused. Considering that we're in Iraq to build a democracy....
From the Asia Times Online:

Call it desperation, but the United States has started to take measures in Iraq that would wreck its most cherished goal there: democracy.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is reportedly campaigning to either dump the United Iraqi Alliance's (UIA) candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, or force him to withdraw. Khalilzad has taken the drastic measure of appealing to the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to that effect.

Um...what...?

Could someone please explain to me why we're sending our young people to die in Iraq? Oh wait, we know that already.

Jill Carroll is Free

2006-03-30T09:15:00.000-05:00

Good news to start the day.

Folks, It's Time to Panic

2006-03-29T10:08:00.000-05:00

We cannot screw around on global warming any longer. You think Social Security is something we're gonna have to deal with in 20 years?

How about everything dying?

From Wired:

WN: You talk about David Rind's work -- predicting rampant drought conditions afflicting much of the continental United States within 50 years if greenhouse gas emissions continue at business-as-usual levels.

Kolbert: (In the book) he says that, "I wouldn't be surprised if by 2100 most things are destroyed." But he's certainly a very cool guy, not a hysterical person. He's a scientist, and he's just looking at the evidence.

...

Kolbert: People much more expert than I will tell you that we are in the middle of what is probably a mass extinction. People will say that the evolution of large vertebrates, of which we are one, that's just over.

And, just so we're clear where the Republicans are on this:

According to Oklahoma Sen. James M. Inhofe, the threat of global climate change is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Way to go, you jackasses.

Ruh-Roh, Republicans...

2006-03-28T10:50:00.000-05:00

From Time Magazine:

Iraq is driving nearly all the big indicators the wrong way for Republicans...when those surveyed were given the choice between a generic Republican and a generic Democrat for Congress, the nameless Democrat won, 50% to 41%. The signs suggest an anti-Republican wave is building, says nonpartisan electoral handicapper Stuart Rothenberg, whose Rothenberg Political Report is closely followed in Washington. "The only question is how high, how big, how much force it will have. I think it will be considerable."

In recent weeks, a startling realization has begun to take hold: if the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich...told TIME that his party has so bungled the job of governing that the best campaign slogan for Democrats today could be boiled down to just two words: "Had enough?"

Nothing To See Here, Folks

2006-03-27T11:26:00.000-05:00

Overheard walking in front of the Rayburn Building in Washington, D.C. on Friday:

Whiney kid: "Is there even anything to see in the Capitol?"
Whiney kid's mom: "Oh, so you're thinking about not going at all now?"
Whiney kid's sister: "Are we going to see the propaganda?"

I think she meant rotunda, but that's too good....

Calm Composure

2006-03-22T14:16:00.000-05:00

Please tell me this is taken out of context:

“One doesn’t want to be accused of inhuman callousness; but I am willing to confess, and believe I speak for a lot of [Americans] that the spectacle of Middle Eastern Muslims slaughtering each other is one that I find I can contemplate with calm composure.” — National Review’s John Derbyshire.

Or, my Lord, this one:

I think any war could be won by BTBTTSA(Bomb Them Back to the Stone Age). At this point in history, the American people would not tolerate a BTBTTSA strategy; but we tolerated it in the past, and might again in the future. Why does Rich scoff at THWTHs for the “instinctive favor” we display towards BTBTTSA? It is, as Japan and Germany showed, a most efficacious war-fighting strategy, surely deserving the favor of anyone who thinks seriously about war.

Words like "bomb them back to the Stone Age" are cute, action-figure code words for "slaughter."

These are people claiming to know what's best for foreign policy, I kid you not.

Thanks to Think Progress for pointing out John Derbyshire's monstrous foreign policy.

With All Due Respect, Mr. President...

2006-03-21T12:57:00.000-05:00

Some quotes from President Bush's press conference today:

“Nobody likes war. It creates a sense of uncertainty in the country.”

“War creates trauma.”

“No president wants war.”

“I didn’t want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong ... with all due respect,” he told a reporter.

But also, consider these quotes from today's press conference:

"We are doing the right thing. A democracy in Iraq is going to affect the neighborhood. A democracy in Iraq is going to (inspire) reformers in a part of the world that is desperate for reformation."

If I had been living on Mars for the last three years, I might assume the following timeline:

Bush Administration says Iraq is evading U.N. Democracy Inspectors and is hiding totalitarianism in undisclosed locations.
President Bush tells the world that Saddam Hussein has not lived up to his obligations to disclose his totalitarian-ship. He's given no evidence that he's destroyed it.
President Bush makes the case to the American people that we must build a democracy in Iraq.
We invade Iraq on the premise of building a democracy.

Wait, that's not what happened? We actually cherry-picked intelligence reports? We actually tried to reorganize the Pentagon when reality didn't support our rhetoric? We ignored information from Iraqis in positions to know the truth about weapons of mass destruction? We threw every excuse to go to war on the wall of public opinion just to see what would stick?

With all due respect, Mr. President, you lied then and you are lying now.

Allawi: "If this is not civil war, God knows what civil war is."

2006-03-20T09:07:00.000-05:00

From GQ UK:

Civil war has broken out in Iraq, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced yesterday. On the third anniversary of the allied invasion of Iraq, as Defence Secretary John Reid spent the day shuttling around southern Iraq talking up Iraq's brave resistance to sectarian conflict, Allawi told the BBC: "We are losing each day 50 to 60 people. If this is not civil war, God knows what civil war is."

The True Root

2006-03-17T10:08:00.000-05:00

Words of wisdom:

"Unbelief is the true root of the Christian championship of violence."--Jacques Ellul

Better Put on the SPF 5000

2006-03-17T09:06:00.000-05:00

...because we just passed the point of no return for global warming.

Dammit. I burn easily anyway.

Oh yeah, and our President may be the worst one ever:

In 2001, President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations' main plan to curb global warming. He denounced Kyoto as an economic straitjacket that would cost U.S. jobs and said it wrongly excluded developing nations.

...the nonprofit, nonpartisan Civil Society Institute released a survey that found 83 percent of Americans wanted more leadership from the federal government to reduce the pollution linked to global warming.

Thanks for ruining the planet, you jackasses.

I think there's still some oxygen floating over New Zealand that can still be ruined for profit...you guys better hurry and get over there.

More Info From curepoverty

2006-03-17T09:01:00.000-05:00

curepoverty has new info up on its blog. Check it out.

The False Dilemma: War or Withdrawal

2006-03-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

We had an interesting discussion about nonviolence last night at church. I was arguing for nonviolence, and a friend posed the "crazy hostage taker" scenario: is violence not justified if a man takes a group of children hostage and is going to kill them? Should we not kill the man to save them?

I argued inside the false dilemma for ten minutes: fight or not act. That's a false dilemma, and it's telling that even the people who advocate nonviolence have a hard time "waking up" from this false choice.

From http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6889:

There are three general responses to evil: (1) violent opposition, (2) passivity, and (3) the third way of militant nonviolence articulated by Jesus. Human evolution has conditioned us for only the first two of these responses: fight or flight.

Jesus' Third Way
Seize the moral initiative.

Find a creative alternative to violence.

Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person.

Meet force with ridicule or humor.

Break the cycle of humiliation.

Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position.

Expose the injustice of the system.

Take control of the power dynamic.

Shame the oppressor into repentance.

Stand your ground.

Force the Powers into decisions for which they are not prepared.

Recognize your own power.

Be willing to suffer rather than retaliate.

Force the oppressor to see you in a new light.

Deprive the oppressor of a situation where force is effective.

Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking unjust laws.

Disavowing violence, Jesus wades into the hostility of Jerusalem openhanded, setting simple truth against force. Terrified by the threat of this man and his following, the authorities resort to their ultimate deterrent, death, only to discover it impotent and themselves unmasked. The cross, hideous and macabre, becomes the symbol of liberation. The movement that should have died becomes a world religion.

Songs for My Wife

2006-03-16T09:21:00.000-05:00

Today's song that reminds me of L:
Everything (Lifehouse)

Find Me Here
Speak To Me
I want to feel you
I need to hear you
You are the light
That's leading me
To the place where I find peace again.

You are the strength, that keeps me walking.
You are the hope, that keeps me trusting.
You are the light to my soul.
You are my purpose...you're everything.

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

You calm the storms, and you give me rest.
You hold me in your hands, you won't let me fall.
You steal my heart, and you take my breath away.
Would you take me in? Take me deeper now?

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?
And how can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

Cause you're all I want, You're all I need
You're everything,everything
You're all I want your all I need
You're everything, everything.
You're all I want you're all I need.
You're everything, everything
You're all I want you're all I need, you're everything, everything.

And How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?
How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

Ambien = BunVac

2006-03-14T15:00:00.000-05:00

"Just a little added lunar power to enhance the mind-waves..."
-Wallace, from Wallace and Grommit: The Curse of the Wererabbit

From the NY Times:

The sleeping pill Ambien seems to unlock a primitive desire to eat in some patients, according to emerging medical case studies that describe how the drug's users sometimes sleepwalk into their kitchens, claw through their refrigerators like animals and consume calories ranging into the thousands.

The next morning, the night eaters remember nothing about their foraging. But they wake up to find telltale clues: mouthfuls of peanut butter, Tostitos in their beds, kitchen counters overflowing with flour, missing food, and even lighted ovens and stoves. Some are so embarrassed, they delay telling anyone, even as they gain weight.

Puffed Rice

2006-03-14T14:47:00.000-05:00

Don't lie, you have, just like me, always wondered how in the world Rice Crispies are made. Well, I'll tell you.

Puffed rice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Puffed rice is usually made by heating rice kernels under high pressure in the presence of steam. Puffed rice is used in various breakfast cereals, and is also a popular street food in various parts of the world. It is an ingredient of bhel puri, a popular Indian chaat item. Puffed rice is referred to as mur mure in some parts of India.

"You Will Be Like God"

2006-03-13T08:57:00.000-05:00

Our rector gave a fantastic sermon on Sunday. The gospel for the day was the scene where Christ says "Get behind me, Satan!" to Peter when he tries to stop Jesus from speaking of his coming death. The gist of her sermon was vulnerability, and that Jesus called Peter "Satan" because the ancient words of the tempter were on his lips: "You will be like God." Peter wanted his Jesus invulnerable.

The words of the tempter have beguiled my entire nation. Right now we're stomping about the planet, "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here." We're not so much trying to secure our liberties as our sense of invulnerability.

The lie we've been warmly wrapped in since the Soviet Union fell, that America had overcome its Great Enemy and was now untouchable, exalted, inviolable, has been cruelly, brutally, humiliatingly shattered. The "end of history," the Pax Americana, died with three thousand people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.

The stinging pain, the cruel loss and burning humiliation of that September morning showed us that a poor, weak nation, a nation without even a navy or a nuclear-weapon-tipped missle to its name, could hurt us. That revelation frightened us, and it angered us. We, it turned out, were not like God. Yet.

So here we are, three years in to a war justified not by facts, but by this burning, fearful, hateful fire in our bellies to bring back the lie of our invulnerability, flinging ourselves around the other side of the planet to crush the source of our fear, of our hurt, of our shame.

Fellow liberals, stop lying to everyone. George Bush didn't lead us into war with Iraq. The American people did that, the sixty-something percent of the nation that thought it was justified at the time. We the Hurt, the Shamed, the Fearful.

We listened to a voice our mothers and fathers have heard since the foundation of the world, a voice that Christ heard on Peter's lips and that Eve heard from the mouth of a Serpent in the hours before the Fall: "You will be like God."

And here we are, three years later, still trying, and still failing, to be like God. Here we are, in the Garden of Eden in 2006, trying to erase our humanity.

But unlike Adam and Eve, our eyes have not yet been opened.

Spin Doesn't Feed People

2006-03-03T09:30:00.000-05:00

I am so tired of hearing about how great the economy is doing from this Administration.

To illustrate why, this is from the 18to35 blog:

Where's all the wealth?...according to the Federal Reserve, not in Americans' pockets. Real wages fell 6.5% between 2001 and 2004, overall income including investments rose less than 2% and, most notably, net worth fell for the bottom 40% of Americans.

Mortgage debt, credit card debt and wages that don't keep up with inflation are the main culprits. Not even the 28% rise in the worth of homes could balance most Americans' check books.

Read the full report for the reality that too many younger Americans experience.

Let's not talk about "how good business is." Let's forget for a moment about Wall Street. Can we please, please start using better indicators for how well everyone is doing, like the hunger rate? How would that be? Good with you? Because it's going up.

The poor are getting poorer. Read that again. The poor are getting poorer.

Omelettes Are Not Possible

2006-03-01T22:00:00.000-05:00

The new job is going well. I get to help an older organization transition to an online strategy, which is right up my alley.

I've had some interesting challenges. I've gone from a very disorganized, micromanaged (yes, those two things happened at once) environment to a much more collaborative and trusting situation.

But I've had the urge to use old patterns of behavior. I find my first instinct is to play the power game. I don't handle it well when I'm not in charge, and I don't like it when others have good ideas; I want to be the only smart one, and I want to be in control.

Like I've said in previous posts, there's a strong urge in politics to make excuses for bad behavior in the context of the greater good. You think, if I just break a few eggs, I make a world where omelettes are possible. But all you're really doing is creating a world where people break eggs. The only world your making is one where people do those bad things.

L is helping me get through this. I don't want to be that person.

Different is Good

2006-02-15T13:17:00.000-05:00

Free at last! My exodus from the Hill and the sidelines seems to be complete! I have now joined a respected (and respectable) non-profit advocating for the poor. Thank goodness for moral clarity.

Currently listening to: In the Sun by Michael Stipe
Currently reading (frantically): The Ressurection of the Son of God by N.T. White.
Currently eating: an apple.
Currently writing: a blog entry.

Partisanship is a Drug

2006-01-24T17:44:00.000-05:00

It turns out partisans get a hit from ignoring facts about their candidates:

The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

Read the full story.

Congressman Seuss Speaks Out

2006-01-24T10:26:00.000-05:00

I wish I knew who to attribute this to. It's great. A full confession from Congressman Seuss:

That Abramoff!
That Abramoff!
I do not like that Abramoff!

"Would you like to play some golf?"

I do not want to play some golf.
I do not want to, Abramoff.

"We could fly you there for free.
Off to Scotland, by the sea."

I do not want to fly for free.
I don't like Scotland by the sea.
I do not want to play some golf.
I do not want to, Abramoff.

"Would you, could you, take this bribe?
Could you, would you, for the tribe?"

I would not, could not, take this bribe.
I could not, would not, for the tribe.

"If we strong armed corporations
Into giving you donations?
They'd be funnelled to your PAC.
Would you then cut us some slack?"

I would not, could not, cut you slack.
I do not care about my PAC.
I do not want to play some golf.
I do not want to, Abramoff.

"A plane! A plane! A plane! A plane!
Would you, could you, for a plane?"

I could not, would not, for a plane.
Not for a bribe, not for the tribe.
Not for donations from corporations.
Not for my PAC, not for some slack.
Not from any schmoe named Jack.

"Would you help us buy some ships
Perfect for quick gambling trips?
Talk to people in the know
For a little quid pro quo?
Oh come now, don't be a snob.
Let us give your wife a job."

I will not help you buy some ships.
I do not wish for gambling trips.
My wife does not need a job
Even if she is a snob.
We do not like bribes, can't you see?
Why won't you just let me be?

"You do not like bribes, so you say.
Try them, try them, and you may.
Try them and you may, I say."

Jack. If you will let me be
I will try them, then you'll see.

Say.... I do like playing golf!
I like it, I do, Abramoff!
I do like Scotland by the sea.
It's such a thrilling place to be!
And I will take this bribe.
And I will help the tribe.
And I will take donations
From big corporations.
And I will help you buy some ships.
And I will take quick gambling trips.
Say, I'll give anyone the shaft
As long as it involves some graft!

I do so like playing golf!
Thank you! Thank you,
Abramoff!

Christianity and War, Again.

2006-01-20T12:14:00.000-05:00

A nice comparison between competing versions of Christianity in America:

Some preachers tried to link Saddam Hussein with wicked King Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical fame, but these arguments depended on esoteric interpretations of the Old Testament book of II Kings and could not easily be reduced to the kinds of catchy phrases that are projected onto video screens in vast evangelical churches. The single common theme among the war sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God's will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply.

Such sentiments are a far cry from those expressed in the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. More than 2,300 evangelical leaders from 150 countries signed that statement, the most significant milestone in the movement's history. Convened by Billy Graham and led by John Stott, the revered Anglican evangelical priest and writer, the signatories affirmed the global character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that "the church is the community of God's people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology."

Read the full story at the New York Times website. (WARNING: Registration required...sorry.) The sermon that informs my faith on this can be found here.

What I Heard

2006-01-19T15:35:00.000-05:00

I heard that the President’s uncle, Bucky Bush, had made half a million dollars cashing in his stock options in Engineered Support Systems Inc, a defence contractor that had received $100 million for work in Iraq. Bucky Bush is on the board of directors. I heard Dan Kreher, vice-president of investor relations for ESSI, say: ‘The fact his nephew is in the White House has absolutely nothing to do with Mr Bush being on our board or with our stock having gone up 1000 per cent in the past five years.’

You can read the full thing here.

How Much Is It Worth?

2006-01-18T10:05:00.000-05:00

My decision to change jobs has brought up a serious question: how much is job satisfaction worth to me?

When my previous office closed, I took about a 6K paycut per year for my current job. Turns out, I took that pay cut to do menial tasks and be unhappy a good portion of the time. Now I have the chance to get into a great, and I mean great, place to work, but if I do I will lose perks that have serious monetary value. If they don't offer me enough to make up the difference, is it worth it to go anyway to be happier? Or will it change our life so much as to make us miserable? If they don't offer me quite a bit more, I will have gone backwards in real earnings two jobs in a row.

Sigh.

It's Pat!

2006-01-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

Oh, I can't resist:

Pat Robertson said Israeli PM Ariel Sharon "is being punished by God for dividing the Land of Israel"

Are you serious?! Strokes are a sign of God's anger? Seriously, when God wants you to know he's angry, he doesn't covertly strike your health, does He? One of the GOP's chairmen just went under the knife for lung cancer...don't you wonder what sin he's being punished for?

Pat Robertson is a thinly veiled GOP militaristic reactionist hack.

"It Couldn't Be Anymore Beautiful"

2006-01-04T09:22:00.000-05:00

Listening to: "Can't Take It In" by Imogen Heap
Number of protein shakes so far today: 2
Bowls of cereal: 1
Caffeinated products: 1

L and I are watching our Lost: Season One DVD set. Last night we watched the episode where Jin's (sp?) dad tells him "the world is good." I agree. We're still reading N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God for book group at church, and implicit in Wright's interpretation of the resurrection is that this life, not some life after death, is good and beautiful, and we will be restored to it in the life after the life after death.

The world is so beautiful. And it's as good as we make it.

Be It Therefore Resolved...

2006-01-03T12:13:00.000-05:00

...that I will NOT make a resolution this year. Resolutions are made to be broken. Instead, I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing: working out, eating right, loving my wife. Good times. Anyone else making resolutions to break?

My parents' treadmill is psycho! It knocked my mile time down to 00:06:15 on the same settings as the one at my complex's gym. It's nuts! That's like a 20 second difference. Ouch! Looks like I didn't gain/lose any weight over the holiday! Whoohoo!

I do have one goal for the first few months of the year: change my career. Let's see how it goes.

OMG, Bush Got Something Right!!!

2005-12-21T11:37:00.000-05:00

Holy shit! There is an "enemy that lurks!"

Micromanagista Strikes Back!

2005-12-14T19:38:00.000-05:00

I am still at work. Look at the damn timestamp on this blog posting. I got scre-zewed yet again by Micromanagista. This is ridiculous. Not only that, but I'm now having to harass a senior staffer for a senior politician to approve something last minute, because she didn't GET AROUND TO APPROVING MY STUFF UNTIL 5:45 TODAY AND NOW I HAVE TO HARASS EVERY STAFFER BETWEEN HERE AND SPOKANE.

Good Lord.

Don't Mess With Centaurs

2005-12-14T10:30:00.000-05:00

Loved The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Fantastic casting, great CGI, very faithful to the story. I think it was easy to stay true to the books because they were so short; very little had to be left out to fit in a good timeframe. Aslan, voiced by Liam Neeson (sp?) was awesome. One of the best moments in the movie is when the centaur general charges and draws his swords. Everyone in the theater: "Whooooaaaaaaaa crap!! You're in trouble now!"

Workout is fantastic lately. Having finally gotten the better of this cold (I hope) I've changed up the ab routine...added some different exercises. It's exhausting! But its good. I really, really want a great six (eight? please God?) pack. Getting there! The running time is down under 00:06:40. But for the life of me I can't remember when to speed up the treadmill to stay at 00:06:37. I'm exhausted and in a zen-like state today from the gym and I love it.

Oh, and by the way, apparently a married couple hugging each other in front of teenagers is a sin. I cannot understand Puritans.

Working on getting my MySpace all set up. They've made it stupidly weird to edit your CSS/HTML in your profile. Friendster's is much easier. Oh well. Check me out.

Speech that Informed My Faith

2005-12-09T12:38:00.000-05:00

The following is a text that pushed me very far into the land of pacifism. The site that hosted it previously is down, so I present it here to preserve it and share it with you:

Blessing the Bombs: The Hiroshima Bombers' Chaplain Faces Christ

Father George Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force, served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and gave them his blessing. Days later he counseled an airman who had flown a low-level reconnaissance flight over the city of Nagasaki shortly after the detonation of "Fat Man." The man described how thousands of scorched, twisted bodies writhed on the ground in the final throes of death, while those still on their feet wandered aimlessly in shock-flesh seared, melted, and falling off. The crewman's description raised a stifled cry from the depths of Zabelka's soul: "My God, what have we done?" Over the next twenty years, he gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zabelka who died in 1992, gave this speech on the 40th anniversary of the bombings:

The destruction of civilians in war was always forbidden by the church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child's head, I would have told him, absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful. But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes a minute could take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of children and civilians—and I said nothing.

I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to the men who were doing it. I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind to protest publicly the consequences of these massive air raids. I was told it was necessary—told openly by the military and told implicitly by my church's leadership. (To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters is a stamp of approval.)

I worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights struggle in Flint, Michigan. His example and his words of nonviolent action, choosing love instead of hate, truth instead of lies, and nonviolence instead of violence stirred me deeply. This brought me face to face with pacifism—active nonviolent resistance to evil. I recall his words after he was jailed in Montgomery, and this blew my mind. He said, "Blood may flow in the streets of Montgomery before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood that flows, and not that of the white man. We must not harm a single hair on the head of our white brothers."

I struggled. I argued. But yes, there it was in the Sermon on the Mount, very clear: "Love your enemies. Return good for evil." I went through a crisis of faith. Either accept what Christ said, as unpassable and silly as it may seem, or deny him completely.

For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie.

War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ's way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.

The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.

So the world is watching today. Ethical hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the followers of Christ. What the world needs is a grouping of Christians that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs is Christians who, in language that the simplest soul could understand, will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving ones enemies.

For the 300 years immediately following Jesus' resurrection, the church universally saw Christ and his teaching as nonviolent. Remember that the church taught this ethic in the face of at least three serious attempts by the state to liquidate her. It was subject to horrendous and ongoing torture and death. If ever there was an occasion for justified retaliation and defensive slaughter, whether in form of a just war or a just revolution, this was it. The economic and political elite of the Roman state and their military had turned the citizens of the state against Christians and were embarked on a murderous public policy of exterminating the Christian community.

Yet the church, in the face of the heinous crimes committed against her members, insisted without reservation that when Christ disarmed Peter he disarmed all Christians.

Christians continued to believe that Christ was, to use the words of an ancient liturgy, their fortress, their refuge, and their strength, and that if Christ was all they needed for security and defense, then Christ was all they should have. Indeed, this was a new security ethic. Christians understood that if they would only follow Christ and his teaching, they couldn't fail. When opportunities were given for Christians to appease the state by joining the fighting Roman army, these opportunities were rejected, because the early church saw a complete and an obvious incompatibility between loving as Christ loved and killing. It was Christ, not Mars, who gave security and peace.

Today the world is on the brink of ruin because the church refuses to be the church, because we Christians have been deceiving ourselves and the non-Christian world about the truth of Christ. There is no way to follow Christ, to love as Christ loved, and simultaneously to kill other people. It is a lie to say that the spirit that moves the trigger of a flamethrower is the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is a lie to say that learning to kill is learning to be Christ-like. It is a lie to say that learning to drive a bayonet into the heart of another is motivated from having put on the mind of Christ. Militarized Christianity is a lie. It is radically out of conformity with the teaching, life, and spirit of Jesus.

Now, brothers and sisters, on the anniversary of this terrible atrocity carried out by Christians, I must be the first to say that I made a terrible mistake. I was had by the father of lies. I participated in the big ecumenical lie of the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches. I wore the uniform. I was part of the system. When I said Mass over there I put on those beautiful vestments over my uniform. (When Father Dave Becker left the Trident submarine base in 1982 and resigned as Catholic chaplain there, he said, "Every time I went to Mass in my uniform and put the vestments on over my uniform, I couldn't help but think of the words of Christ applying to me: Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.")

As an Air Force chaplain I painted a machine gun in the loving hands of the nonviolent Jesus, and then handed this perverse picture to the world as truth. I sang "Praise the Lord" and passed the ammunition. As Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group, I was the final channel that communicated this fraudulent image of Christ to the crews of the Enola Gay and the Boxcar.

All I can say today is that I was wrong. Christ would not be the instrument to unleash such horror on his people. Therefore no follower of Christ can legitimately unleash the horror of war on God's people. Excuses and self-justifying explanations are without merit. All I can say is: I was wrong! But, if this is all I can say, this I must do, feeble as it is. For to do otherwise would be to bypass the first and absolutely essential step in the process of repentance and reconciliation: admission of error, admission of guilt.

I was there, and I was wrong. Yes, war is hell, and Christ did not come to justify the creation of hell on earth by his disciples. The justification of war may be compatible with some religions and philosophies, but it is not compatible with the nonviolent teaching of Jesus. I was wrong. And to those of whatever nationality or religion who have been hurt because I fell under the influence of the father of lies, I say with my whole heart and soul I am sorry. I beg forgiveness.

I asked forgiveness from the Hibakushas (the Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings) in Japan last year, in a pilgrimage that I made with a group from Tokyo to Hiroshima. I fell on my face there at the peace shrine after offering flowers, and I prayed for forgiveness—for myself, for my country, for my church. Both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This year in Toronto, I again asked forgiveness from the Hibakushas present. I asked forgiveness, and they asked forgiveness for Pearl Harbor and some of the horrible deeds of the Japanese military, and there were some, and I knew of them. We embraced. We cried. Tears flowed. That is the first step of reconciliation—admission of guilt and forgiveness. Pray to God that others will find this way to peace.

All religions have taught brotherhood. All people want peace. It is only the governments and war departments that promote war and slaughter. So today again I call upon people to make their voices heard. We can no longer just leave this to our leaders, both political and religious. They will move when we make them move. They represent us. Let us tell them that they must think and act for the safety and security of all the people in our world, not just for the safety and security of one country. All countries are inter-dependent. We all need one another. It is no longer possible for individual countries to think only of themselves. We can all live together as brothers and sisters or we are doomed to die together as fools in a world holocaust.

Each one of us becomes responsible for the crime of war by cooperating in its preparation and in its execution. This includes the military. This includes the making of weapons. And it includes paying for the weapons. There's no question about that. We've got to realize we all become responsible. Silence, doing nothing, can be one of the greatest sins.

The bombing of Nagasaki means even more to me than the bombing of Hiroshima. By August 9, 1945, we knew what that bomb would do, but we still dropped it. We knew that agonies and sufferings would ensue, and we also knew—at least our leaders knew—that it was not necessary. The Japanese were already defeated. They were already suing for peace. But we insisted on unconditional surrender, and this is even against the Just War theory. Once the enemy is defeated, once the enemy is not able to hurt you, you must make peace.

As a Catholic chaplain I watched as the Boxcar, piloted by a good Irish Catholic pilot, dropped the bomb on Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, the center of Catholicism in Japan. I knew that St. Francis Xavier, centuries before, had brought the Catholic faith to Japan. I knew that schools, churches, and religious orders were annihilated. And yet I said nothing.

Thank God that I'm able to stand here today and speak out against war, all war. The prophets of the Old Testament spoke out against all false gods of gold, silver, and metal. Today we are worshipping the gods of metal, the bomb. We are putting our trust in physical power, militarism, and nationalism. The bomb, not God, is our security and our strength. The prophets of the Old Testament said simply: Do not put your trust in chariots and weapons, but put your trust in God. Their message was simple, and so is mine.

We must all become prophets. I really mean that. We must all do something for peace. We must stop this insanity of worshipping the gods of metal. We must take a stand against evil and idolatry. This is our destiny at the most critical time of human history. But it's also the greatest opportunity ever offered to any group of people in the history of our world—to save our world from complete annihilation.

Thoughts On Iraq

2005-12-09T12:36:00.000-05:00

What we call the Iraq War is actually at least two wars laid on top of each other:

United States and allies vs. Islamic jihadists, not confined to Iraq.
Sunnis vs. Shiite, not confined to Iraq.

Yes I leave out the Kurdish people...they play a murkier role.

Bottom line: only the Iraqis can end these wars inside Iraq.

The United States cannot win the war with Islamic jihadists inside the nation of Iraq because they are a loose network that depends on safe haven from local populations. The Iraqis have to stop tolerating them, simple as that. And they won't, because of our role in the second war.
The removal of Saddam Hussein left a vacuum of power and identity that is being filled along old sectarian lines. The Sunni/Shiite split has been around for centuries. But in Iraq, where the Sunnis held power and have lost it in large chunks to the Shiites, we are seen by the Sunnis as backers of the Shiia. We are being absorbed into this second war. The agitation this causes among the Sunnis and the other rejectionists provides fertile ground for al'Qaeda and other trans-national terror groups.

The Iraqis have to form a new national identity. And they have to become tired of fighting each other. Otherwise, the second war will continue to burn, fueling the first.

Aslan is on the Move!

2005-12-08T11:46:00.000-05:00

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe comes out tomorrow. HUZZAH! I love the movies these days. I get to relive my whole childhood: Narnia, the Lord of the Rings...man, this is too good.

Quote for the Day

2005-12-08T11:43:00.000-05:00

Me: "You can tell it's [U.S. Representative] Bill Thomas talking by the ancient evil lurking in the vowel sounds."

Vicks 44 + Me = Love

2005-12-07T11:29:00.000-05:00

Ugh. Head and chest cold. Let me tell you, if you want a funky taste, take 4 teaspoons of Vick's 44 Cough Medicine and then take a bite of a ham and turkey sandwich.

00:06:37 mile today on the treadmill. Wootness. While sick, no less!

"No One Expects a Spanish Inquisition!"

2005-12-02T16:06:00.000-05:00

I love the '80s. Back when we were burning RPG players at the stake.

I love this so much. Check out the sinister look on Debbie's face. Like she just ate your youngest child. You HAVE to read the full comic. I wonder where I can learn that spell before Christmas...

Get Your Learn On

2005-12-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

Barnes and Noble will teach D&D! Check it out!

Also, you can now take a class for college credit in D&D! Good grief I need to get back in school!

A Few of My Favorite Things

2005-12-01T11:25:00.000-05:00

Psychic Reformation
Telepathy [Mind-Affecting]
Level: Psion/wilder 4
Display: Auditory, mental, and visual
Manifesting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Power Resistance: No
Power Points: 7, XP; see text

When this power is manifested, the subject can choose to spend its most recently gained skill points differently (picking new skills and abandoning old ones if it chooses) and to choose a different feat from the one it selected when advancing from its previous level to its current level.

The subject can also choose to forget powers it acquired when advancing to its current level, replacing them with new ones.

The subject can undo decisions of these sorts that were made at lower levels, if both the subject and the manifester agree to pay the necessary XP before this power is manifested (see below). The subject must abide by the standard rules for selecting skills and feats, and so it cannot take feats for which it doesn’t qualify or take crossclass skills as class skills.

XP Cost: This power costs 50 XP to manifest to reformat choices made when the character reached her current level. For each additional previous level into which the revision reaches, the power costs an additional 50 XP. The manifester and subject split all XP costs evenly.

Counting Down to the End of the World for Fun and Profit

2005-11-28T17:18:00.000-05:00

The bird flu hysteria is just the latest symptom here. We *love* our apocalyptic disasters in this country. We're a lot like Japan in that regard, but where they have giant mutated lizards wrecking cardboard Tokyo's, we have breathless news reports of a *possible* mutation of a bird disease that could kill everyone. It could happen at any minute. Stay tuned.

Top recent variations on the Apocalypse for public entertainment:

Avian flu coverage on CNN
NBC's "Revelations" (ignore the fact that the actual book in the New Testament is the book of Revelation, singular, not plural, but hey, marketing should not be bothered with tiny details like accuracy)
CBS's "Category 7: The End of the World"
Spielberg's remake of "War of the Worlds"

Things to Keep in Mind for My Inevitable Ascension to Evil Overlord

2005-11-28T17:13:00.000-05:00

This is great. From the list:

98. If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

Men's Health Agrees: Tell Jimmy Stewart to Take a Hike

2005-11-28T12:16:00.000-05:00

From their holiday survival article:

9. Never watch It's a Wonderful Life again

Sure, it's tradition . . . but you want it to stop. Don't just groan and say it's stupid. That will only upset whoever loves the tradition, probably The Mom. Propose a new one--a Scrabble tournament, a snowball fight, anything with a little more interaction and a little less suicide. Or you could just talk. If there's not much of a precedent for that, start with topics that can involve everyone. What was your first boss like? What was the first thing you wanted to be when you were a kid? What is your earliest memory? What was life like for the family back in the Old Country? How did Uncle Zach meet the Ziegfeld girl he married? You'll learn something about the older relatives' lives, and they'll fill in the gaps in yours, Dr. Manevitz says. A few planning rules: Keep it light and fun. No directives. No orders. No chores. And don't supervise the proceedings or have preconceptions of what's supposed to happen. If the goal is to talk and everyone's talking, mazel tov.

Now, let me tell you...I hate It's a Wonderful Life. Hate it. I used to get the flu every year around the holidays, and nothing says vomit like Jimmy Stewart assuring his daughter that yes, a ringing bell does mean an angel just got its wings. Good lord, gag me with a spoon.

It's Never Too Late to Trash Pat Robertson

2005-11-21T10:51:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, I'm late on this, but I just couldn't let this go without saying something on the blog about it:

Pat Robertson, after Pennsylvania voters replaced school board members who voted to put Intelligent Design on the science curriculum: "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover, if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God — you just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there."

Yeah, uh, Pat, because that's obviously how the Good Lord behaves, in oh, say, the parable of the prodigal son, or in the action of sending his Son to die for a world that repeatedly turns its back on Him. STOP WITH THE FEAR-MONGERING. You can't scare people into being your version of a Christian Taliban.

I'm shocked he didn't call for the assasination of the Mayor of Dover

Office Functions Suck. Or Don't.

2005-11-17T08:45:00.000-05:00

Yes, I forgot to pick up the food I was 'assigned' to bring for the special lunch today. For the love, I will get them before lunch. It is not necessary to announce it to everyone as they walk in, nor is it necessary to sit at the front and growl about the poor freaked out staffer who also forgot her 'assigned' food.

I hate official work social functions. I hate them.

UPDATE: HA you passive aggressive freaks. Staffer girl DID bring her stuff and you guys just didn't see it. Take that.

UPDATE: I went and got the stuff I needed. Take that.

UPDATE: Sigh...it was actually a very nice event. Everyone shared stories and food. I am just a thorny SOB today. I don't know why.

50 Cent, give me a break.

2005-11-17T08:38:00.000-05:00

From GQ UK:

50 Cent is to turn his hand to novellas, his delighted publishers at Pocket/MTV Books have announced. The American rapper, real name Curtis Jackson, insists he's not risking his street cred with a series of "gritty" tales, designed to "tell the truth about The Life; the sex, guns and cash; the brutal highs and short lives of the players on the streets", said a press release.

Right. Give me a break.

Fun With Corner Bakery, Round Two

2005-11-15T12:38:00.000-05:00

My email to Corner Bakery in response to their caloric stonewalling:

Thank you for your email. Your response is totally inadequate.

To quote: " We are very pleased to tell you the nutritional information is available on our website. Please visit us at http://www.cornerbakery.com/enews/ to obtain nutritional information for our menu items. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any nutritional information for our baked goods at this time."

This is the only informative paragraph sandwiched between two long paragraphs of legalese.

Now, everyone knows that your brownies are not something one should eat to lose weight. We eat them because we like them. But we also deserve to know just what kind of dent we're putting into our daily intake when we devour these things.

It's a fairly simple exercise: if you don't know how many calories are in each brownie, i'm sure the ingredients you use have the calorie information on them when YOU buy them. Just tally them up and divide by the number of brownies they make!

This isn't that big of a deal, but your strange obfuscation is making it a real customer service issue.

I ask again, how many calories are in your brownies?

Stay tuned...

That Aroma...

2005-11-15T12:17:00.000-05:00

"When you smell it, it's got that smoked salmon aroma," said Peter van Stolk, chief executive of Jones Soda.

A Great Blog

2005-11-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

This is written by a soldier serving in Iraq. Worth a look. Excellent writer.

DC in a Nutshell

2005-11-14T12:37:00.000-05:00

Here's a great post on Washington, D.C. This guy gets it:

I reach the top of Federal Triangle station and I’m surrounded by government buildings. Eagles carved out of stone mount each rooftop; patriotic gargoyles. In the distance the Washington Monument stands like a sentinel against the evening sky, gazing down at us all with beady eyes that glow orange. Our forefather is judging us.

A Thought for Your Monday...

2005-11-14T09:01:00.000-05:00

The folks over at Bruderhof sent this to me this morning:

“Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.” --Wendell Berry

Corner Bakery: "....."

2005-11-10T17:56:00.000-05:00

BREAKING NEWS: Corner Bakery replied to my request! Or did they?

Now, before I get to the excerpts of their response, I have to point out that the name of the establishment is Corner Bakery. The relevence of this will become apparent in a moment.

What started this all was this page: http://www.cornerbakery.com/enews/

Note it lists calorie information for everything but the guilty stuff. Sensing trouble, I emailed the aforementioned request.

I present to you now, for your consideration, the key paragraph from a very long-winded email (emphasis mine):

We are very pleased to tell you the nutritional information is available on our website. Please visit us at http://www.cornerbakery.com/enews/ to obtain nutritional information for our menu items. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any nutritional information for our baked goods at this time.

I love it! The bakery can provide you the calories for everything but their baked goods. This calorie information for the brownie must be some ungodly, unholy number. What is it, 666 calories or something?

For your reference, a Corner Bakery brownie is not just a brownie, its half a brownie, but has chocolate chips, caramel, and is covered in powered sugar.

Okay, now this is officially a crusade. The American people deserve the truth!

Don't Turn Around....Micromanagista is in Town...ohoh....

2005-11-10T14:33:00.000-05:00

Seriously, people, my boss, who I will refer to from here on as Micromanagista, is dragging her feet approving all the bazillion things she forces me to get approved through her. My long weekend is coming up. If she makes me late tonight I swear, there will be some serious cussing.

Viva la Resistance! Sic semper Micromanagista!

All Grown Up

2005-11-10T09:09:00.000-05:00

Today's mile time on treadmill: 00:6:55
Song on the brain: Fix You, by Coldplay

I think sometime in the last week I turned into a grownup. Something feels...different. I walk down the hall differently. I don't care what people think. I don't worry about being fired because I'm confident in my work. I just feel...good.

Some of it may have to do with working out daily and having that time to focus, and to not focus on all the rambling things that fly through your head every day. I read a great article in Men's Health Best Life (not on their website) a guy wrote about what goes through his head in the gym, and how it's his lab where he remakes himself. He nails it on the head. It was by Mark Leyner.

Having a great home life has a lot to do with it too. When you get it right with someone you love, it shifts the focus totally off work, off social settings, every small thing you think your life is about. It's wonderful. She's wonderful.

I have a great marriage. I save for retirement. I work out 6 days a week and may be in the best shape of my life. I have a job in the field I love.

I feel like a steely-eyed missile man.

The Revised Revised Revised Revised Version

2005-11-09T15:49:00.000-05:00

I write for a living. Today, I revise for a living.

There is nothing quite like having to rewrite something over and over and over and coming back to the place where you originally started. It's out of control today.

It's days like today that make me want to revise my resume.

That's not true. I think I may secretly like my job under the layers of frustration and complaint.

But you'd never know it.

Adama For President

Que Imperial March

Where We Are Now, or a Giant Wall of Text Crits You for 4373845 Damage!

Back Online

Nice One, Pat

O'Reilly: "Fight the Machines"

Get Your Palpatine On

Stalling to Push a Wider War

Bush and Hadley: The War in Iraq is No Longer the War on Terror

A Quote for Today's Debate on the House Floor

Bush Forced to Be President for a Day Rather Than Emperor

A Precipice

Either the President is Being Manipulated by Evil People, Or...

Spreading Democracy, Hitler Style

Illegal Gay Liberal Mexican Flag Burners

The U.S. Flag is Sacred, Unless I Can Gratify My Ego by Defacing One for a Fan...

UPDATED: Can They All Come Lay Down on Your Couch, Dick?

Get Serious, America

Molly Rocks

WW3 is Getting Closer

Gore 2008: I'm so there.

Chicken, Anyone?

Not Only Will We Burn, But We'll Itch

Don't Believe Him

Power

The Tone is Torture; or, Post Mortem: One Rough Week

Now That is Punishment

Inalienable Anthem

Energetic Hypocrisy

GOP: Two Free Tanks of Gas Will Fix It

Estate Taxes and Paris Hilton

Sign Here

Bush is Failing Us, Part 7468: Diplomacy and Iran

Bush Sounds French

The War in Iran May Have Already Begun

Mary J. Blige Says God Wants Her Hot and Blingy

Iran and Syracuse

More on World War IV...

For Those Who Still Don't Know, FEMA Suxx0rz and DHS is a Joke.

The Fourth World War Is Taking Shape

Get Scared, Citizens

Ruh-Roh, Republicans, The Sequel

Democrats Rule, and Fox News is Just Stupid

Bush Gets Busted

Pun With Headlines: "Tom's Resignation is Too Delayed to Do Any Good"

Is There Anyone Out There That *Wants* the President to Pick Up Steam?

Civil War in Iraq, Still

The Man Whom Texas Has Indicted in This Last Day

Wait, Wait.....Wait....Okay...Wait....

Jill Carroll is Free

Folks, It's Time to Panic

Ruh-Roh, Republicans...

Nothing To See Here, Folks

Calm Composure

With All Due Respect, Mr. President...

Allawi: "If this is not civil war, God knows what civil war is."

The True Root

Better Put on the SPF 5000

More Info From curepoverty

The False Dilemma: War or Withdrawal

Songs for My Wife

Ambien = BunVac

Puffed Rice

"You Will Be Like God"

Spin Doesn't Feed People

Omelettes Are Not Possible

Different is Good

Partisanship is a Drug

Congressman Seuss Speaks Out

Christianity and War, Again.

What I Heard

How Much Is It Worth?

It's Pat!

"It Couldn't Be Anymore Beautiful"

Be It Therefore Resolved...

OMG, Bush Got Something Right!!!

Micromanagista Strikes Back!

Don't Mess With Centaurs

Speech that Informed My Faith

Thoughts On Iraq

Is There Anyone Out There That Wants the President to Pick Up Steam?