Bill's Comments

After a week of nothing but work, eat, and maybe sleep, I'm trying to catch up on the world. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France. I guess the Democrats officially nominated the two Johns (How many things can you name that the word John represents? I don't know any that are nice.). Iraq is still there and succeding after one month under their own guidance.

I am trying to catch up on the blogs, and am amazed at how much meaty stuff I have missed. So far Keith has covered hundreds of miles on his bicycle 20 years ago and in current time said some things about liberalism I wanted to say, both Peg and Ally have had some great posts and cross posts. Steve Headley had this great comment:

"If you take nothing else away from Kerry's speech tonight...

you MUST remember the following ...

(as eloquently stated by Charles over at Little Green Footballs) ...
Tonight, John F. Kerry will say said:
Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.
Consider the implications of this statement.

He’s going to wait for the attack."

Bill Vallicella has produced a wonderful mix of deep philosophy and commentary on political ideas. Lee at Verbum Ipsum has come close to scooping my intended post on the problem of moral absolutes. Steve Rugg has some great insights on the DemCon (There is an intended pun there). Fr Matthew has a post that would undercut part of the big post I made last Saturday. The Maximum Leader has a somewhat different take on the convention. Norm Weatherby has produced a wonderful mix of satire and serious commentary this week. Mike Gilleland continues to show why ignoring the classics is detrimental to one's outlook--so much has been said before and so well. Dick McDonald continues with his excellently pointed comments, and John Ray continues his one-man war on multiple fronts (here, here, and here) against leftist-liberal garbage.

It's great to read what you have all written, and it is great to be back!

I have not been able to blog this week because I have a very intense job going at a customer. I'll try to make up some of the missed posts next week. In the meantime I am sure the bloggers on the list to the right will provide plenty of good reading.

I am a sucker for self-knowledge tests. I have done the Dead German Composers test and the Theologin test and published the results on this blog. Now I have taking another test recommended by Ally. I am Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving. I won't argue with the results.

Here is what the site said about me:

As a weblogger, you might not be as concerned about popularity, but more with the ideas and theories that you strive to understand. Because routines aren't your strong point, you might be more likely to work on the concept of how to do a blog, but not be as excited to keep it up

.
It fits.

My friend the AnalPhilosopher and Ally at Who Moved my Truth? have both weighed in on cell phones (here and here).

I will weigh in also.

1) They can be turned off when you don't want to be reached. (That's one of the plusses to traveling by air, which will soon be taken away)

2) The bad manners of users are not the fault of the technology

3) If you ever receive bad news hours after its occurrence, you never want to be out of touch again.

My friend Peg Kaplan's blog What If? is always of interest. She finds things that I see nowhere else, and her comments are always an enhancement to what she presents. I was unable to get online for two and a half days, so had the full impact of several days of her blogging. Anyone who does not read Peg's blog daily misses something of importance.

Every once in a while, I either find or there is sent to me something that says sanity still has a chance. This item from Nat'l Center for Public Policy Research was one of those instances.

Black Group Condemns Cartoonist for Racist Strip About Condoleezza Rice

Project 21 Asks Civil Rights Community to Join in Call to Hold Cartoonist to the Same Standard to Which They Hold Rush Limbaugh

Because of the racially-insensitive content of a recent cartoon, members of the African-American leadership network Project 21 are asking Universal Press Syndicate to cease the distribution of comics drawn by Ted Rall. Project 21 also is challenging several other civil rights-oriented groups to join in the demand.

A July 1 comic by Rall suggests "appropriate punishments for deposed Bushists" that parodies alleged treatment of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. The panel featuring Bush Administration national security advisor Condoleezza Rice has her saying "I was Bush's beard! His house nigga. His..." She is interrupted by a character wearing a shirt reading "You're not white, stupid" who says, "Now hand over your hair straightener."

"Is it OK for Ted Rall to use such vile language because he's using it against a black conservative?" asks Project 21 member Michael King. "I'm beside myself with anger over this comic."

Project 21 is asking Universal Press Syndicate, the distributor of Rall's comics, to immediately terminate their relationship with him. Project 21 is also asking the NAACP, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition to make similar demands based on their past involvement in pressuring ESPN to fire radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh in 2003.

Last year, in his capacity as a football commentator for ESPN's "Sunday NFL Countdown," Limbaugh criticized the performance of Philadelphia Eagle's quarterback Donovan McNabb, saying, "The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well." Afterwards, NAACP president and CEO Kweisi Mfume called Limbaugh's comments "bigoted and arrogant" and called for his removal. The NABJ demanded ESPN "separate itself" from Limbaugh. Rainbow/PUSH Coalition president Jesse Jackson called the remarks "not accurate and... insulting." Limbaugh later resigned.

"From radical poet Amiri Baraka to singer Harry Belafonte and now cartoonist Ted Rall, too many people feel they have free rein to insult the dignity of Condoleezza Rice and have no problem injecting race into that abuse," adds King. "It's time for the civil rights establishment to stop allowing this assault on an accomplished black woman or they put their credibility at risk."

Project 21, a non-profit and non-partisan organization, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 371-1400 x106 or Project21@nationalcenter.org or visit Project 21's website at www.nationalcenter.org/P21Index.html.
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Washington, D.C. 20002
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E-Mail: info@nationalcenter.org
Web: www.nationalcenter.org

These three topics are tightly tied to marriage, family, and other sex related issues but those are topics in themselves.

All three are intimately (pun not intended) interrelated, but are continually discussed out of context with each other. Anti-abortion movements ignore the factors that lead to abortion, lack of birth control, lack of support for adoption, lack of knowledge of sex as a relationship. In addition, many anti-abortion groups consider any form of birth control other than abstinence as sinful. With their determination to suppress sex outside of marriage, they also do not discuss sex in any context, including that of permanent relationships.

Abortion proponents fail to consider that abortion occurs in a context of a father and a mother, even if the parents are immature teenagers. They also fail to consider the father as having any input to the decision. They also fail to consider that the fetus is not just a fetus prior to birth. They use a very simplistic discussion on fetal rights (The existence of which is a very emotionally charged question, and not adequately discussed.). Abortion proponents refuse to consider the larger implications of the act of abortion. They purposefully try to remove the moral, ethical, and religious questions in the issue. Abortion proponents generally support birth control, but they view abortion as just another form of birth control, not a serious moral issue. For that matter, infanticide through the ages has been "just another form of birth control" for many of the poorest people. This was pointed out in an article in Scientific American about twenty years ago.

Adoption used to be the outlet for unwanted children. If a girl became pregnant and was not old enough to marry and take care of the child, or could not keep the child for any reason, the child was "put up" for adoption. Adoptions were permanent. Also, abortion was less accepted than it is today. Girls were expected to deliver the child. Unless the girl was married or about to be married, she was discouraged from keeping the child. Today, much has changed. Abortion is looked at as a preferable option to carrying and adopting out a full term child. Children that are put up for adoption can be taken back by the biological parents years later. Every roadblock possible is placed in the way of adopting parents. There seems to be the revival of the myth that the biological mother is the most suited to raise the child[1]. In the cases where the mother bears the child, until recently, welfare paid her to keep it. It didn't guarantee that the money went to the child's benefit, and it frequently didn't. Many girls and young women made their living by having babies for the welfare money.

Birth control via the pill created a major furor when it was introduced. It is condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, and praised and/or used by most fertile couples and a lot of fertile singles. Because of its certainty compared to other forms of birth control, and because it gave women more control over conception, it created a major stir. It has been blamed for the so-called sexual revolution, though I don't see much of a revolution, just people less afraid of the consequences of doing what they were doing all along.

This is one of my longer posts. The remainder is in Bill's Big Stuff, here.

I was driving down I-75 in Ohio on Thursday, and saw one of these OVERSIZE LOAD lead trucks coming in the opposite direction at about 30-45 miles per hour. There was no other traffic within sight of it. I got over the hill and saw two state police cruisers, semi with flashing lights on the tractor and what might have been another cruiser. There were no cars between the lead truck and the first cruiser. I have seen once or twice oversize loads with a cruiser in front and one in back, but as this drew towards me I was amazed.

There were two state police cruisers, followed by the biggest truck-tractor I have seen, pulling a framework with three groups of three axles in front and three groups of three axles in back with a pusher motor on the back. In between, suspended like a bridge between the support wheels was a huge frame with two items covered in canvas that appeared to be 10 or 12 feet wide by the same height and about 30 feet long for the total length. Following this were two more state police cruisers, and finally well behind that was another oversize load warning car.

The reason so many police were required and that traffic was backed up, is that whenever the load crossed a bridge or overpass of any sort, it had to move to the middle of the road and be the only thing on the structure while crossing. It was heavy enough to be at the permissible limits of load. Since this was a three lane highway, there were two cruisers in front to block the three lanes in front by straddling the line, and two cruisers in back to do the same and keep cars from coming along side. The reason I saw no cars near the lead warning truck was that the load had just crossed an overpass and no one could pass during that time.

Instead of 18 wheels, it had 18+ axles, and each axle had six tires or more not four. There are probably only a handfull of such vehicles on the road. I consider myself lucky to have seen one.

I'm home for the weekend. Wasn't able to post anything yesterday. I did see the Cliff-notes version of the 9/11 commission recommendations in "USA Today". My take is despite the huge amount of political grandstanding and general BS, they actually came up with some pretty good ideas for improving things.

Who wants to start making book on any of them happening?

About a month or two ago I was reading an article in American Scientist on why some leaves have ruffled edges. The first half of the paper described the physics that occurs when the edge of a flat object grows faster than the rest of the object. In effect it is like making ruffles in a curtain, where the excess has to be gathered and wrinkled to fit in the width of the allowed space. The author then went on to explain the mathematics that can be used to describe this phenomenon and pointed out that it could be called a metric. So far, so good.

However, as he continued generalizing the occurrence of this phenomenon, he quit talking about the process, and about the metric as a description, and in a single sentence said that the process was controlled by the metric. This is the most clear-cut example of a problem I posted on way back in my early blogs -- the substitution of a method of measurement for a statement of fundamental reality, a confusion of epistomology with metaphysics.

I think the mistake is easy to make. When discussing these things it becomes very clumsy to continually say "the process described by the metric" even though that is the exact and correct statement. It rapidly becomes abbreviated to "the metric" and then the incorrect description acquires a life of its own.

Few scientists are any kind of philosopher and few philosophers are any kind of scientist. It is a shame. Both have much to offer the other.

I read an essay in TCS about an article in the New York Times magazine that casually describes the aborting of two of three fetuses. I was troubled and saddened by it, to think that the sanctity of life has fallen so far. Then I followed AnalPhilosopher's link to a blog by a person that considers herself an analytical philosopher. Her latest post describes her puzzlement at the outrage of the dual abortion, and goes on to rationalize the act in totally unemotional terms. It is too much. Now we have proof that liberals do not care about life. I never could quite believe the character of James Taggert in "Atlas Shrugged" and his wish for death. Now I do. It is almost like losing a childhood myth. Until now, I believed that only the most evil of people wanted death for a reality. This woman who had the abortion, and the woman who defends her, horrify me. To treat death with the same concern as having one's nails done or painting a room, leaves me with a monstrous disgust. What makes it worse is there is no mitigating circumstance of possible mental distress or unbalance.

It makes me wonder though, about New York City. A woman casually kills two fetuses, and the Asman report, as I mentioned earlier, quotes people as admiring Saddam Hussein. Apparently to liberalism there are only two things, death and power.

Tech Central Station has posted a "Commander in Chief" test. It shows the nature of some historically critical decisions from 1776 to the present then ends with a "bonus" question:

"Bonus Essay Question: President (Plug in Name of Your Choice) in February 2005. The CIA and South Korean and Japanese intelligence agree that radio traffic and satellite photos of North Korea, where no one has human spy assets, is facing a famine and that it has massed troops to invade South Korea in a few days, after smuggling a nuclear bomb into a major Japanese city to blackmail Japan and the US into giving them a free hand. What do you do?"

The following answer was in the comments section. It is concise and exactly correct.

"Message: John Kerry tells Pyongyang to cancel the invasion or else you'll introduce a stiff resolution of disapproval in the U.N. Security Council.

George Bush tells Pyongyang that unless it returns its troops to their barracks within 24 hours, North Korea will become a faintly glowing parking lot. "

Laudator Temporis Acti has added a link to this blog in his. I shall gladly reciprocate. He has obviously studied the classics. And has some thoughtful comments. Go visit.

Yesterday's USA Today published an article (July 19, 2004, p. 3A) on the reduction of service in the near future by Greyhound Bus. The article focused on the hardships that will be created. It seems to me that if there really is a market being dropped, it would be an opportunity for a startup business or a local service to expand. The parallel would be in railroading where the abandonment of branch lines by the Class I railroads led to the increase in regional and local railroads.

Of course, the hurdles to starting a bus company imposed by the government will probably make it not worthwhile. More likely there will either be a demand that Greyhound continue an unprofitable route, or there will be subsidies to political cronies to provide the service in an uneconomical manner.

Another USA Today article (June 10, 2004, p. 3A) reports on the use of GPS technology to track people and vehicles. The issue is whether GPS constitutes a search or is an augmentation of senses. If it constitutes a search, then warrants are required. If it is augmentation of senses, then it is treated like standard surveillance. There is also another issue, who is doing the tracking. When the government or the police do the tracking it is one thing, but when employers track employees, it is another, but again it depends on the circumstances, did the employee know he/she was being tracked?

With respect to police surveillance, The Washington State Supreme Court said it well.
"The intrusion into private affairs made possible with a GPS device is quite extensive...Vehicles are used to take people to a vast number of places that can reveal preferences, alignments, associations, personal ails and foibles." All nine justices joined in requiring a warrant.

GPS in no way is a mere augmentation of the senses. It enables tracking through any conditions. Humans can be blinded by dark, snow, fog, have tricks played on their eyes by reflections and other distortions. The whole purpose of GPS is to remove such incumberences from tracking and positioning.

If an employer places GPS tracking in a vehicle owned by the company, that is legitimate, the vehicle is private property. I think the obligation of the employer to inform of the device is similar to that concerning the tracking of emails and web traffic that has been found to be legitimate. However, the placement of a tracking device on a private vehicle must be related to criminal activity and require a warrant.

My concern as this wends its way through the courts is that government interests in surveillance will outway the freedom from unwarranted search. There are two 20 years old cases that say a tracking transmitter is OK on a vehicle without a warrant.

USA Today published an article (June 10, 2004, p. 1A) on purchasing wine over the internet. It is forbidden in many states. The states ostensibly are afraid of loosing tax revenue. It is more apparent that what is at stake is the wholesale distribution system which guarantees profit margins for wholesalers and retail dealers. Ohio is a good example. I could not have wines I tasted in California shipped home. No matter where I buy a bottle of wine, it costs the same for the same wine. This law works to the benefit of the large vineyards, the wholesalers, and retailers. To support their cozy arrangement, they create the fear that youth will purchase wine over the internet if internet sales are allowed. The smaller wineries that have the most to gain point out that though it may not be perfect, they do screen any suspicious purchases and check on the validity as much as possible. Once again the suppression of rights is done in the name of protecting children.

My question is, "How many underage purchases are there at retail outlets? And how does this compare to the supposed number from the internet?"

Dick McDonald (The Right Scale) has a very good post on what some religious belief leads to today.

Iraq the Model, in this case Omar, has posted a great piece of satire. Go read it.

After a vacation trip and other travels, the Maximum Leader is back and blogging again. He was missed.

Tech Central Station has published this essay that discusses very thoroughly the politics of global warming.

Many aspects of this heated discussion have been well-covered in Tech Central Station. However, I would like to make a few comments on this subject after all. Thanks to the Bill Vallicella for asking me about this a few weeks ago.

One of the problems that I saw early on in this discussion was the limited perspective the global-warming alarmists had. It became very obvious that they were not thinking in tens and hundreds of thousands of years, much less millions of years. There was a total ignoring of what the possible ranges of overall climate and temperature were for the planet as a whole over its history. As an example, in the last few years there has been put forward the hypothesis that the earth went through several ice-ball stages where the entire planet was covered in ice. Conversely, evidence has been found that the earth has had periods much warmer than now that occurred long before man appeared on the planet. It is a three-fold limitation, one on the possible ranges of temperature that might occur without any causation by man, two on the time spans of temperature cycles, and three an ignorance of the natural variation year to year, decade to decade, or noise. If one properly showed the standard deviations of temperature ranges, most changes would look to be well within normal limits.

The next thing that I realized was that the use of models is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying and at the same time open to being totally invalid. I have been a discrete event simulation (DES) modeler and have also worked some with analytical models. The difference between the two is that with DES a set of conditions is created, a change is introduced, and the model advances in steps determined by the timing of consequent events. In analytical modeling, equations are solved, most of which assume a so-called steady state. It is a very difficult and active field of research to find analytical solutions that are valid in non-steady state conditions. The modeling for climate more closely resembles DES in concept, since it evolves over time. In any model, the biggest problem is establishing the correct inputs in terms of things that change, and properly defining their relationships. In addition the initial conditions for starting the model are critical. Modeling carries a huge risk of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Another problem with climate modeling is that the relationships are frequently non-linear, a small change may make either a large or small change in outcome. What’s worse, a very slightly different input can make a huge change in the overall outcome of the model. The global-warming forecasters, base everything essentially on one input, carbon dioxide. Never mind that water which is far more abundant is a greenhouse gas, or methane which is recognized as a greenhouse gas is many times more potent in its heat-holding role than carbon dioxide. Further the role of the oceans and clouds is just now beginning to be investigated.

The input temperature curves to global-warming trends are also suspect. Temperature data from urban areas needs to be excluded from the data or certainly conditioned in some way. Urban areas form heat islands relative to the surrounding countryside, and there is far more countryside than urban area. I have seen discussions which indicate that the elimination of heat island data, or the use of data from more representative sources tends to diminish or even remove the global warming indications from the temperature trends.

The original question Maverick Philosopher asked, was if I thought this was mostly ideologically driven. What is being presented to the public is certainly ideologically driven. However, the upside is that it has motivated some excellent research that is finding much better answers. The clue to what we are normally being shown however, is the hysteria, the refusal to listen to other arguments, and the demand to do something regardless of whether warranted or not.

If we can survive the politics a bit longer, some better answers will come from good, substantive research. Common sense is beginning to take hold, at least with respect to Kyoto. The Russians have rejected it; the US has refused it, and now the truth is coming out that even if it were adopted, after causing the expenditure of billions of dollars and harming most economies, it would have little effect. Kyoto was definitely an ideological act.

I just discovered via Technorati, that I have been linked by Wicked Thoughts. This is a truly funny site. I have permanently linked it to the right.

Linda Ronstadt's show was fired at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas for Political activism. Here is the article. Thanks to Drudge for the link.

That makes the second entertainer that has suddenly found out they don't have a blank check on someone else's account. At least Ms. Ronstadt didn't spout a bunch of tripe about freedom of speech. It isn't free when someone else pays for it.

This essay in the WSJ Opinion Journal does an excellent job of capturing a lot of the differences in the US vs. European outlook. It unintentionally gives a good preview of what the US would look like after years of liberalism unchecked.

Today the WSJ Opinion Journal published a review of the good things that have occurred in Iraq in the last two weeks.  It is nice to see that not all is bad there, and in fact, it is going extremely well compared to past countries after war. 

The terms Pride and Humility as normally used are often taken as opposites. However, I believe that this is incorrect, and that they should be taken as complementary attributes. I think this misuse stems from a combination of envy of the accomplished and misinterpretation of the teachings of Jesus.

When we hear the term Pride we most often think in terms of arrogance, self-aggrandizement, hubris, hauteur, snobbishness, etc. Pride is constantly castigated—“Pride goeth before a fall”, “Brag always was a good dog”, “Don’t break your arm [patting yourself on the back]”, “Don’t blow your own horn”. Pride is listed as the first of the seven deadly sins, Pride, Envy, Anger, Covetousness, Gluttony, Lust, and Sloth.

Yet, the same people that disparage Pride will accept the concept of pride in one’s work, or pride in one’s family. It’s OK to be proud of someone or something else, but not of oneself. To deny someone the expression of well-earned self-satisfaction expressed as pride in an accomplishment is to deny reality. It is a way of destroying accomplishment and the desire to accomplish. When one accomplishes something difficult and worthy of note, the person doing the thing is the one to know most of what it took to do it. That person knows the false steps, the correction of errors of oneself and others, the blind alleys, the sudden insights, everything it took to reach the final goal. Knowing that struggle, they have the right to place it in perspective and take pride as a personal emotional payoff.

The problem with Pride is that it has become a rubber-band word and has been stretched to cover meanings that other words represent better. Most of these meanings are subsumed under some form of excessive Pride. Pride is an attitude and belief in oneself that says “I am a worthy person”. True Pride is based on past achievement and living. It does not grow from other people’s praise. The praise of other people is of value only when it corroborates what one already believes about oneself. Pride must be based in reality. One cannot be justifiably proud of an accomplishment unless it was a true challenge to achieve. In effect, Pride is a way of saying, “I am THIS good.”

Humility, the quality of being humble, is seen as a good or desirable quality. Yet it is used to describe situations of self-abnegation, self-denigration, victimhood, self-denial, withdrawal, refusal to contest any challenge. It is done with a certain implied arrogance, often—“he’s such a nice, simple person”, “He’s so humble, he won’t take credit for anything”, “that will give him a dose of humility”. Humility is considered a virtue. The largest part of the Sermon on the Mount is addressed to people that would be considered humble. However, I think that this passage is often construed to indicate that only the humble and victims are blessed and one should strive to be in that position. When Jesus was addressing those who were downtrodden and victims, he was trying to offer them consolation in an environment that kicked them when they were down.

But rather than being truly situations of humility, these are a putting down, and destruction of a person. It is almost as if humility is desired so that the humble person will not be a challenge or threat. The so-called humble person in this situation knows the self-hatred, the anger at others, the embarrassment, all the negative feelings that go with this label. Again we have a distortion of reality. The person is seen as less than they are.

True humility is an acceptance of limits. It is the ability to realize that one is not perfect or even close. It does not deny one’s value or worth however. It is the refusal to accept the undeserved, the unearned. It adds a phrase to the statement of Pride, “but ONLY this good.”

Self-confidence is the ability to feel comfortable tackling difficult and new tasks or problems. But to arrive at that feeling and self-appraisal, one has to have had accomplishments, hence Pride, but also had to have learned to deal with mistakes and limits, hence Humility. Thus the two are complementary not opposites. The confident person has both Pride and Humility, and they are in balance not conflict.

I broke down and read Tongue Tied (PC Police) at Fox News. Every time I do, I get angry; my blood pressure goes up, and I feel sick to my stomach from the disgust at what goes on these days. My boring, first grade primer would be stricken from the list of OK reading -- spot is a dog and references to dogs might offend muslims. Get a life.

This item at Fox News shows the real goal of the environmental movement. Total destruction of property rights. Here is the money quote:

"But supporters and environmentalists say personal property rights do not trump the rights of a larger community to save the eco-system "

Without personal property rights there are no rights.  Be afraid.

The SoDakMonk has posted an excellent commentary on polling.

Both the Maverick Philosopher and the SoDakMonk have posts on Catholic teachings and political positions concerning abortion.  The Maverick Philosopher links to an article about an interview with a Catholic Bishop who when he was accused of involving the church in the state pointed out that it was an issue of human life.  The SoDakMonk in his post mentioned the same article but also pointed out that bishops are  telling politicians that call themselves catholic and vote for abortion to cease calling themselves catholic. 
 
I am not a Roman Catholic, in fact I am a Lutheran, the founder of which is Martin Luther, the man that started the Reformation.  However, I have great respect for the Roman Catholic Church and in many ways see great benefits from its existence.  Despite all the attacks and scandals in the church, it survives and continues to grow. 
 
Part of the strength of Roman Catholicism is that it has certain core principles that are never changed and outside those it adapts readily.  It has a very rich, complex, and emotionally satisfying liturgy and belief structure, and does an excellent job of passing on the beliefs to its members and their children.  In fact the education of the children in the fundamentals of the church is one of the major keys to its strength.  Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation are made major milestones in a child's life and the family supports them. 
 
My experience of Roman Catholic clergy, nuns, and brothers, is that they have done an excellent job of integrating their beliefs and their lives.  They have little or no doubt of their beliefs as they go through life.  They also have a very consistent set of beliefs, and moral judgments can be made with certainty. 
 
Roman Catholic or parochial schools are overall excellent.  They generally produce outstanding academic results with less expenditure per student than the public school system.   The standards are very high.  Both my sons went to a Roman Catholic junior high school.  The younger one graduated from a parochial high school, and the older one from a military academy.  When my younger son went to a local state university, his comment was, "they are using the same books I did in high school!"  He was bored for the most part by college.
 
One of the requirements of attending a parochial school, is that every student must take religion classes, whether they are Roman Catholic or not.  There is no persecution of non-Roman Catholics (though my son found that the first questions girls asked was "are you Catholic?") and diversity seems to be genuinely accepted and encouraged.  Most of the material covered in high school religion classes actually is non-denominational for the most part.  The Freshman year they study the Bible and Biblical history.  The Sophmore year they spend time examining the moral requirements and examining themselves.  The Junior year they discuss the application of the moral teachings to the world at large, and Senior year they actually have to start applying these teachings in social service, retreats and other activities. 
 
From my own experience, unless you have a good Protestant school or private school available, you should do everything you can to put your children into a Catholic school system.  It was our alternative to the public schools, and without vouchers or tax rebates, and  without any assistance from a parish, we paid the tuition and have never been sorry.  We also found the faculty at my sons' schools to be far more interested in a parent-teacher partnership for the teaching of our sons than the public schools. 
 
Despite the really bad events in its history, the ongoing current scandals over the homosexuals in the priesthood, and the apparent attempts at cover-up, a great deal of value still comes from the Roman Catholic church as witnessed by its continual growth. 

Peg Kaplan (What If?)  has posted an number of excellent blogs in the last two days.  I had a lot of fun with the National Budget Simulation.  I dropped over $400 billion and had a surplus.  Like Peg says, "I don't have to be re-elected."

I just had the ignominious pleasure of reading a Maureen Dowd column for the first time in about ten years.  At one time I was able to read her.  This made me feel slimey reading it.  No reasoning, just pure inuendo, tearing down, and name-calling.  At least when the National Review would resort to name-calling the words were interesting and had some basis in fact.
 
Her material is evidence enough that the news is biased.  Even op-ed pages should be somewhat reasoned.  To allow her to write such stuff is to throw away all standards.
 
Thanks to Drudge for the link.

John Hawkins at Right Wing News published this joke.  I like it.

This article from Tech Central Station does an excellent job of pointing out that environmental issues and policy is not a scientific argument, and that scientists should have no more say than anyone else.  BTW it was written by a scientist. 
 
I agree that John and Jane Doe should have a say, but how do we educate them enough to understand what they are deciding?  Our public schools have done a great job of creating ignorant people that cannot think.

Having just read this piece in Fox News, I come to the conclusion that getting rid of Arafat offers the only hope for any kind of Palestinian-Israeli agreement and settlement.  It is amazing how things settled down when Hezbolah found out that being a leader was hard on one's health.  I don't have the patience to wait for Arafat to die of natural causes.  The reason(s) that Israel has kept him alive so far escapes me. 

I have just read that Iran is acquiring the necessary centrifuges to prepare enriched uranium.  It is obvious that they are intent on having an atomic weapon capability.  We are not going to stop them from doing it.  The enrichment sites are apparently being built well underground as a defense against the pre-emptive bombing such as Israel did several years ago.   North Korea has all along also been developing a nuclear capability. 
 
At this point here is the way I think we should handle it.   Make it very clear that the first country to use a nuclear weapon in testing will face a massive campaign to damage their military and nuclear capabilities as much as possible,  and if in aggression will be totally anihilated.  It doesn't make any difference if they are nominally our friends such as India and Pakistan, or our enemies such as Iran or North Korea.  By anihilation, I mean that we will unleash our nuclear weapons and essentially glassify them, or we will conduct a massive bombing campaign to the extent that we really do bomb them back to the stone age.  
 
Talking about limiting proliferation is just that, so much talk.  Only a credible threat will accomplish anything.  The sole purpose of acquiring nuclear weapons is to believe that one has an equal power or one greater than ones enemies.  Iran wants a warhead to shoot at either Iraq or Israel or both.  All we have to do is the first time they set off a test device, we wipe out everything we can relating to their military, delivery, and manufacture of weapons.  And I mean a quick, hard, and fast reaction with heavy bombing--daisy cutters, fuel-air, cluster bombs, and precision weapons directed at all known residences of the mullahs.  Israel has shown that it is important to strike at the leaders.  They must know fear for their own hides.  NO ground troops.  The goal is not to occupy but to make the use of nukes so expensive that the idea will be rethought. 
 
If the State Department is horrified, let them get off their asses and do the job they are supposed to do instead of trying to play nice with our enemies -- France, in particular.  If the liberals are horrified, let them be.  Point out the inconsistencies in their positions, publically and boldly, and then go on.  We are never going to be liked in the world.  State and the Liberals need to get over it.  As Michiavelli said, if we can't be liked and respected it is better to be feared or respected. 
 
 

All of a sudden the new blogspot editor is working correctly on my machine.   I don't know why, and am not going to find out.  I'm just glad it is. My only regret is that I have lost my Bookman typeface which I liked very much better than the Times I am using now.   
 
 

The new version of Blogspot's post editor use features that are interpreted as pop-ups. The main machine I use is set by my company to block pop-ups. As a consequence I will have to start adding features manually with cut and paste. Will slow me down until I get it organized. BTW for anyone else that is having the same problem (I know the Maverick Philosopher mentioned it on Thursday or Friday)if you can undo your pop-up blocking selectively for Blogspot.com you will be OK. I don't think I will have that option.

Considering I publish a religious post every Sunday, I thought this quiz was fun. Thanks to Verbum Ipsum for the link.

"We reject the false doctrine that the church could have permission to hand over the form of its message and of its order to whatever it itself might wish or to the vicissitudes of the prevailing ideological and political convictions of the day."

You are Karl Barth! You like your freedom, and are pretty stubborn against authority! You don't care much for other people's opinions either. You can come up with your own fun, and often enough you have too much fun. You are pretty popular because you let people have their way, even when you have things figured out better than them.

What theologian are you?

A creation of Henderson

Fox News reports [specific link not recovered] that five French nationals were kidnapped by Palestinians. I thought they liked Palestine. Will they still?

This story that appeared yesterday in Tech Central Station is very revealing about President Bush. If you haven't read it, do so.

AnalPhilosopher has just published a link to a new blog, verbum ipsum. I have checked it out and it is worthwhile.

Ally Eskin has a very good perspective on military service. I love her wry sentence that provides the link to the contrast.

The Maverick Philosopher has a most timely post from George Orwell's writings. Read it and see the parallels in today's environment.

Steve Headley, the Texas Conservative, has the Top Ten things Engineering School doesn't teach. I think its a riot. And I will swear to the truth of number 1 for the IT division of any company.

Last night I hit 3000 visits. Thank you to everyone that has come and read what I have to offer. I would especially like to thank all my referrers, in particular,

Keith Burgess-Jackson (AnalPhilosopher, Animal Ethics, Ethics of War) [one of the two that gets credit or blame for my starting blogging]
Ally Eskin (Who Moved My Truth?)
Peg Kaplan (What If?)
Steve Rugg (JusTalkin) [Steve was the 3000th hit! He wrote and told me.]
Bill Vallicella (Maverick Philosopher)
John Ray (Dissecting Leftism, Greenie Watch, PC Watch) [the other one that gets the credit or the blame for my starting blogging]
Steve Headley (Texas Conservative)
the Mike World Order (Naked Villainy)
Norm Weatherby (Quantum Thought)
Dr. Rusty Shackleford (MyPetJawa)
Matthew Kowalsk (SoDakMonk)

I consider myself fortunate to be part of such an outstanding community of bloggers.

The WSJ Opinion Journal had an excellent analysis of taxes and who really pays. Here is the money quote:

"Mr. Edwards is right that there really are two Americas. The people who work for their money and want to keep more of their own paychecks. And wealthy politicians who want to raise taxes on the middle class secure in the knowledge that they won't have to pay. "

This quote leaves little doubt about the meaning of the Second Amendment:

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them." --Zacharia Johnson

Scott Ott (Scrappleface) has written a brilliant parody that should be taken seriously. Definitely read it.

John Ray's PC Watch has a link on patriotism that should be read by everyone.

Animal Ethics posted a piece from the "Dallas Morning News".

Here is my take on it:

The government acts as if BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease) is a viral or bacterial disease. It is not; it is caused by an entity called a prion. A prion is a single protein molecule that is normally found in the brain but is folded in a "wrong" configuration. Because it is a single molecule and not complex organism, the normal methods of antisepsis do not effect it. The heating and chemicals used in raising and processing animals do not remove prions. Isolation of suspected animals and other preventative measures such as never using brain and spinal cord tissue from cattle for food or personal use products is the only effective preventative.

BSE is related to scrappie in sheep and to Creutzfeld-Jacobs Syndrome (CJS) in humans. All three diseases can arise spontaneously since the problem is a folding error in normal protein, but all three are also apparently transmissible and across species boundaries. There is apparently a very low but real occurrence of humans acquiring CJS from eating BSE-contaminated beef (Documented in England where there was a massive BSE outbreak due to government blundering).

I think, in agreement with the Consumer Federation of America (I rarely agree with activist groups), that the feed issue is the most important to be dealt with. To save money and put weight on cattle rapidly, cattle are fed processed carcass waste as well as chicken bedding. To put milk cows back into production immediately, calves are feed blood instead of milk. The meat packing industry is turning herbivores into carnivores, and in fact, into cannibals. This is inherently unhealthy. First of all it is a perfect way to transmit host-specific diseases. Second, it is a completely different set of nutritional elements than the species evolved on. I can't believe that a cow or calf fed animal products is as healthy as an animal fed its normal diet.

The USDA is a political organization, and the decisions being made are obviously political. This has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats, the bureaucrats are the same whoever is in power. Both parties court big business. Rather than exercise our own judgment or pay for independent evaluation of our food production, we have allowed Big Nanny to do it for us, and this is what we get.

If this is how our food supply is protected, with a relatively low risk of bad outcomes, why would we ever think that the government could provide health care?

(Though some may try)

The NY Times reports that the earth's magnetic field is weakening which may presage a field reversal. Of course their are other broad claims of bad effects from this as well. Considering the reversal occurs every few thousand years or so, I am not particularly worried.

Now we can sit back and watch the circus as all the junk scientists hop on this band wagon and try to ride it to prominence and dollars.

Thanks to Drudge for the link.

So the Phillipines are going to pull out at the threat of a beheading. They have forgotten everything they learned under Japanese occupation apparently. They are a sovereign nation and can do so, but the US needs to seriously rethink its foreign policy. All these countries, that now refuse to stand with us when it is to their long term benefit, (after we have bailed their sorry asses out of trouble at one time or another, especially WW II) need to see the real consequences of their choices.

Remove all preferred nation status, diminish our diplomatic presence to an embassy-period, require as extensive a visa check as possible on entry to the US, and generally treat them the way they deserve. Let them find out what cowardice really brings. Wait until they find out that all they did is set themselves up for another demand, then tell them tough, you did it to yourselves. We don't need to associate with cowards.

Fox News' The Asman Observer posted this note:

In Praise of Saddam
Monday, July 12, 2004
By David Asman

Most Americans believe that Saddam is better off in jail than in power. But in New York City, one can still strike up conversations with folks who miss Saddam’s days in power.

New York Observer writer George Gurley admits he was “startled by [New York] liberals who seemed to feel that Saddam would make a far peachier president than George W. Bush, and from New York women who admired him, without irony, for his ability to commit.”

Mr. Gurley quotes one starry-eyed magazine editor, “I think [Saddam] is very much open about what he believes and what he will do with his power, which is actually, unlike Bush, who is incredibly duplicitous and lies.”

Publicist Norah Lawlor admires Saddam’s determination, “He gave it his best shot, stuck it out to the end. Other people would have given in. He went right to the end.”

Actually, Saddam did not use his last shot, immediately surrendering his loaded pistol to arresting soldiers.

But that doesn’t turn off a screenwriter named Ryan, who imagines: “It takes nerve to be able to kill people, nerve to be able to feel like they’re playing God, and that is what he’s doing. Hey, you know what? You have to respect an individual for doing that.”


No, Ryan, you don't.

And that's The Observer.

I thought Michael Moore was bad enough. This is genuinely insane. What's worse, is I suspect that it is what is underneath most liberals that hate President Bush. These people are so self-absorbed that they will admit it without realizing how atrocious it is.

I'm sick to my stomach.

Texas Conservative has published a link to the USMC review of Michael Moore's movie. Forget the review and look at the two marines a while. Pay attention to the weapons, the posture, the general demeanor. As long as men like these defend us we have nothing to fear.

[If people like the Taliban, Al-Qaida, and other fighters could finally defeat the USSR in Afghanistan, and we defeated all of them in record time, what does it say about any theoretical confrontation between the US and the USSR?]

The Federalist (Federalist.com) publishes a once a week email report. This particular one is particularly good throughout. I am reproducing it here, and at the bottom is the information if you would wish to subscribe for yourself.

12 July 2004
Federalist Patriot No. 04-28
Monday Brief

_____----********O********----______

THE FOUNDATION

"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing." --Thomas Paine

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INSIGHT

"To expect bad people not to do wrong is madness, for he who expects this desires an impossibility. But to allow people to behave so to others, and to expect them not to do you any wrong, is irrational and tyrannical." --Marcus Aurelius

_____----********O********----______

IChThUS IMPRIMIS

"The fact that today's debate is about [homosexual] marriage and no longer about genetic predisposition of homosexual behavior shows that deviancy has already been defined down another notch. The Ten Commandments, which address honoring one's father and mother and not coveting thy neighbor's wife, have already been purged from display in the nation's public spaces. ...[Homosexual] marriage will complete the process and purge them from our national consciousness and from any unique relevance to our national life. At that moment, everything turns political. Where will things go next? A philosophy professor at Princeton today makes elegant arguments for infanticide. Why not kill a baby born with a terrible and incurable disease? Blacks know what evil is and what it means to live in a society with no moral compass, that lives by rationalization rather than reason. We are trying to rebuild our communities that have been ravaged by power and politics. Blacks are indeed outraged and legitimately so. Expect to read more about press conferences by black clergy around the nation and in Washington. Our lives and communities are at stake here. We won't sit this one out." --Star Parker

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FAMILY

"A secular world that ratifies homosexual marriage would provide a legal foundation that would open the floodgates to civil litigation against religious leaders, institutions and worshipers. In such an environment, churches might be sued for declining to provide their sanctuaries for gay marriages, for example. Ministers could be sued for hate speech for giving a sermon on moral behavior. Churches that protest homosexual unions could face revocation of their tax exemption status. The delicate balance between church and state...is teetering on a high ledge at this moment. It's ironic that those who oppose churches' involvement in state concerns nonetheless have no compunction when it comes to the state dictating what churches can do. Even nonreligious folk should be concerned. Either we believe in separation of church and state or we don't, but you can't have it both ways. The July 12 debate is really a discussion about 'cloture' -- the process by which the Senate puts a time limit on filibuster, thereby allowing a bill to be voted on. In this case, 60 senators have to vote in favor of cloture for the Federal Marriage Amendment, defining marriage as between one man and one woman, to go to the floor for a full vote. Many senators prefer to delay voting rather than make their position public before the November election. But advocates for the amendment predict that November may be too late, that if President George W. Bush loses re-election, the amendment will be dead and marriage as we know it will be history." --Kathleen Parker

_____----********O********----______

CULTURE

"A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass has footnotes explaining what words like 'arraigned,' 'curried' and 'exculpate' meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation." --Thomas Sowell

_____----********O********----______

LIBERTY

"Those who celebrate America's 228th Independence Day on lonely outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq are a magnificent reflection of who we are as a people. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines who have placed themselves between us and the terrorists who would kill us if they had the chance are the best proof of all that America remains 'the home of the brave and the land of the free'." --Oliver North

_____----********O********----______

THE GIPPER

"And let us all renew our commitment. Renew our pledge to day by day, person by person, make our country and the world a better place to live. Then when the nations of the world turn to us and say, 'America, you are the model of freedom and prosperity.' We can turn to them and say, 'you ain't seen nothing, yet!'" --Ronald Reagan

_____----********O********----______

OPINION IN BRIEF

"Show me the senselessness of their killings. Show me the evil behind their killings.... Show me all of it. And don't sanitize it. Don't blur it, mask it, color it or frame it. Don't gloss over it and try to make us not see it or be appalled by it. You see, I want us appalled. I want us angry. I want us outraged. I want us sickened.... I want all of us who survived hell to see hell, to see the tears and know the loss. I want us to relive those days, every day, and not forget for a moment the evil that perpetuated it, condoned it and sanctioned it. For some, it's heady stuff. But I say, these are heady, sickening days. The war on terror is that kind of war. It is ugly. It is gory. It is stomach-churning. We do ourselves a disservice as victims when we don't show our victims. We do ourselves an injustice when we don't look at the injustice of terrorists. That's why I say, with some caution, to relax our caution. Nothing rouses a nation's anger in a war more than when we see the victims of a war -- our victims, our friends and our countrymen. They did not have to die. But they did. Why should we gloss over the fact that they did? I think it cheapens their sacrifice when we try to sanitize their loss. There's no nice way to say someone was beheaded and butchered. There's only one way to talk about it, and that's to show it. I want us to get angry, outraged, furious and incensed because this is evil in its purest and simplest form. We must see it for what it is, not cover it up for what it is not." --Neil Cavuto

_____----********O********----______

GOVERNMENT

"Thanks to the Supreme Court's disastrous Rasul decision last week, The [New York] Times now has its wish: foreign alien combatants with no legitimate claim to rights under the U.S. Constitution have now been given access to American courts to contest their detention in the middle of a war. Judges, rather than professional soldiers, will be asked to manage the risk to our troops on the battlefield. Hasn't the deck already been stacked prodigiously enough? Does the Times, against the weight of evidence and rationality, always have to give the benefit of the doubt to America's enemies?" --Andrew C. McCarthy, lead prosecutor in the 1995 terrorism case against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others

_____----********O********----______

RE: THE LEFT

"Conservatives believe man was created in God's image, while liberals believe they are gods. All of the behavioral tics of the liberals proceed from their godless belief that they can murder the unborn because they, the liberals, are themselves gods. They try to forcibly create 'equality' through affirmative action and wealth redistribution because they are gods. They flat-out lie, with no higher power to constrain them, because they are gods. They adore pornography and the mechanization of sex because man is just an animal, and they are gods. They revere the UN and not the U.S. because they aren't Americans -- they are gods." --Ann Coulter

_____----********O********----______

POLITICAL FUTURES

"Watching the intimate moments of courtship of others embarrasses most of us, or at least some of us. But the public displays of affection that shocked our grandparents are regarded in our time as fit for Sunday school. Holding hands is no longer enough. The two Democrat candidates can't wait to get on stage for sessions of arm-gripping, face-fondling, knee-rubbing, neck-nuzzling, thigh-slapping and bear-hugging. This is not the political love that dare not speak its name from a closet, but the contrived warmth, born of the focus group, that shouts from the rooftop. And why not? We've become the therapeutic nation of huggers and fondlers. The two Johns lock eyes frequently in deep contact and stop barely short of demonstrating what great kissers they may be." --Wesley Pruden

_____----********O********----______

FOR THE RECORD

"The President must work with the Congress. Congress writes the budgets. Yes, we do have Republican majorities in both Houses, but we don't have conservative majorities. On any given day, just a handful of moderate or liberal Republicans can band together with the Democrats and reshape policies that aren't conservative policies. This forces the White House, and the House and Senate Republican leadership, to compromise with the moderate and liberal members. We may all call ourselves Republicans, but not everyone in Congress by that name supports cutting taxes, reducing the size and the scope of federal power, shifting more responsibility back to the states and communities, and other traditional conservative notions. Without governing conservative majorities, the leadership must play the hand they are dealt." --James Rogan, former California Congressman

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If you want to see the impact of our current liberal agendas, look at Canada and Great Britain. Considering how much we have in common and that GB can be considered a part of our legal heritage, it is time to refuse to inherit. See this item in John Ray's PC Watch.

Dick McDonald's The Right Scale has a good report on the 60 Minutes interview of the Kerry's and the Edward's. The money quote:

"All in all, it was a non-event. Edwards played the unabashed court jester smiling, poking and fondling Kerry (I wish they would stop it or get a room). Teresa came off as the foreigner with a heart as cold as Alaska. Elizabeth played the game and John Kerry just moped along. Bush 1, Kerry 0. Laura 10, Teresa and Elizabeth -2."

Dick definitely has a stronger stomach than I do. I wouldn't have been able to sit through it.

Today the Weekly Standard online edition published a very detailed analysis of the CIA and why it probably will not get better. Read it and be concerned.

Why is it that the Senate can adopt a rule by a simple majority vote that in the future requires a super-majority of 60% to reverse?

This is perverse, corrupting, and unconstitutional in spirit if not legally.

I take information where I can find it. This time I found a summary of progress in Iraq in Keith Burgess-Jackson's The Ethics of War blog, in the comments to a lengthy post by Len Carrier. It is the third comment down.

Ally Eskin (Who Moved My Truth?) posted an excellent rant on the Democrat Campaign of Shame. Well down was the following that caught my eye.

The second thing that is really getting to me is this Democrat Jesus-act. I don't know if organized religion has just gotten out of hand or what, but they act as if we should have just turned the other cheek after 9/11. We should accept terrorist threats as the flavor of the day like the rest of Europe. Why should we? Our men and women have fought and died over the last 2 and half centuries so that we could live safely.

What she is referring to is a common major misinterpretation of the scriptural passage.

My friend, Keith Burgess-Jackson, the AnalPhilosopher, in a post entitled "Despair" had this to say,

As I say, we’re on a spiral into hell. Someone has to stop the tit-for-tat and say, “You don’t deserve to be treated well, but I’m going to treat you well anyway.” Someone has to put the best interpretation on what others say instead of the worst. Someone has to be better than the others. Someone has to rise above the animosity. Who will it be? Will it be you?

What Keith is describing is exactly what the scriptural passage is about.

So let's look at it in more detail

From the King James Version (original)
Luke 6:
27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.

Matthew 5:
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on they right cheek, turn him the other also.

Job 16:10 …they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully;….

Isaiah 50: 6 I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

Comparison with other translations and editions yeilded essentially the same readings.

This is one of the most abused and misunderstood passages in the Bible. Even the four major commentaries on the Bible that I have are equivocal in discussing this passage. It is used to avoid justifiable action and to let the world walk all over one. The crux of the misunderstanding is that when Jesus referred to being smite on the cheek, he was referring to insult not to physical abuse. The commentaries also take it this way. Unless we are to take this part of his teachings as total nonsense compared with some later actions, it must be interpreted in that way. As a further corroboration, we have, Job 16:10 and Isaiah 50:6 above.

Consider that in the 18th and 19th centuries a slap on the cheek was a prelude to a duel, and that most likely it has always been considered a particularly degrading insult. But also consider in truth the insult is not a direct attack on us and our survival. Is an insult worth risking life and limb to avenge? How many fights in marriages or any other relationships start with a careless or deliberate insult? And does the escalation leave the persons involved better or worse off? Jesus was saying, when you are insulted, cool it.

What is more important to note, is what Jesus is not saying. He did not say, if a man threatens your life or tries to beat you up, take it. I have not seen that anywhere in any of his teachings. For that matter if there were no things worth fighting for, why did he go berserk and throw the money-changers and merchants out of the Temple? For that matter in the olive grove when Jesus was seized by the mob and Temple goons, he and his disciples were originally willing to fight until he saw that his surrender was what was required, even though he knew he would die as a result.

Nor does Jesus say that one should let someone kill ones family and ignore it. I see nothing contrary to the teachings of Jesus in our going to war against Al Qaida, the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein. I think what Ally is seeing is not the application of turn the other cheek, but the horribly naïve approach to life that thinks kind and good thoughts will automatically create corresponding goodness in others. Such thinking created the horror of the Children’s Crusade.

I think the Gospel writers had a difficult time translating Jesus’ teachings in many cases because they were Gentiles presenting the teachings of a Jew. That the teachings went far beyond the traditional Jewish doctrines does not negate the need to understand the background in order to understand the teachings. I have done some preliminary work in several specific areas of moral law as presented in the Bible, and very little is said in the New Testament—it depends on the Old Testament for the specifics. As a consequence it leads to some very bad application of Jesus’ teachings when they are taken literally from the Gospels. Teaching to ignore or let slide insults can have some good consequences when the one delivering the insult has a chance to reflect on what he/she has done. There is more chance for reflection when not fighting for survival. However, ignoring insults is not the equivalent to letting an attacker harm or slay one. To place that meaning on those scriptures is wrong.

The problem is the US not the immigrant

Dick McDonald’s Right Scale discussed over the last two days an issue that I have become directly aware of. – illegal immigration. I know of an illegal immigrant that is working two jobs, is intelligent, has a delightful son and significant other. This man deserves to be a citizen. He works harder than almost any US citizen his age that I have known. As Dick points out, there is a problem in US immigration law. It is based on the paranoid fantasies of the right and left, and has little relationship to reality. When I was a jr. high, and high school student, civics classes made a big deal of the US as a melting pot. From the perspective of today looking back, it was a melting pot for Europeans. Anyone with dark or yellow skin was discouraged. (Take that back, yellow skin was a passport to risk your life working for the Central Pacific putting in the transcontinental railroad). Anyone with dark or yellow skin is still discouraged. Are we afraid that this country will become predominately Hispanic? So where is that a problem? If all Hispanics speak English, and pay taxes, what makes them less desirable? Because they will work harder? Good, that’s what we need in this country. If they work harder they will amass more wealth? Yes, and it wasn’t yours to start with, so it is no loss to you. They don’t talk the same and they are dirty? Did you ever read a real version of how your ancestors looked and smelt?

From my experience with an illegal alien, I want him and others like him to be citizens immediately. They deserve it. They more than support their share of the economy, they should get a payback.

Steve Headley, the Texas Conservative, has the answer to tracking illegal immigrants!

Ally (Who Moved My Truth?) is fired up again, this time at John Kerry for dissing the US. Go read it!

In posting my resignation from the National Geographic Society, I spurred four links from bloggers I respect (AnalPhilosopher, Maverick Philosopher, John Ray’s Greenie Watch, and Naked Villainy) and several emails. Thank you to all of you.

The Maximum Leader had some musings on this situation, and one of them was that if one discontinued all contact with the left what would remain? This is a valid question if one’s goal is to disassociate all contact with the left. My goal in this case was to disassociate from the perversion and prostitution of science. I have no problem reading openly leftist material. I subscribed to the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” for several years. The opinion is definitely leftist, but the nuclear science and the reporting was accurate. The two were kept separate, or in cases where not, there was no mistaking opinion for science. I know the “Smithsonian” magazine also. And it is slowly drifting left. However, its reporting and writing is not to the supposed rigor of NGS. What also troubled me, was that when I was searching the NGS website for the address of the president of the society, I found an article on the history of the Declaration of Independence that was trying to reduce the significance of July 4. My first reaction was “liberal bastards” and the second was why was a geographical society posting on history as history? The corruption is greater than I suspected.

For me the issue is one of honesty. If the article in question had been called, “The Case for Global Warming from Carbon Dioxide” or some such thing, my reaction might have been less pronounced. I may not have agreed with the story, but it would not have been misrepresented.

Ideology hijacks respectable sources of information, NG Magazine, Smithsonian, etc., and assumes their mantle of respectability. Many people read these magazines trusting in the respective editorial staffs to provide honest, complete coverage. Ideologues count on this misperception. They know few people have the knowledge or energy to judge independently. Frequently those that do, excuse it on the grounds that so much else is good in the magazine or organization, that they will ignore the ideological stand. Or worse yet they assume philosophical positions are of little value. In “The Closing of the American Mind,” Alan Bloom showed that philosophy is critical. He traces the student rebellions of the sixties and seventies to the European philosophers such as Rousseau. (Now I understand why the left has tried to discredit him. There was a story going around a few weeks ago that he had made a pass at some girl when she was a student and it horrified her. The consensus of the reports I read was she should “get a grip.”)

The problem with supposedly ignoring the ideology, is that one doesn’t really.

One of the difficulties that I have is that I have more class than I can afford. :-))

The Maximum Leader is extolling the virtues of single malt and blended scotches, and I cannot help but agree with his enthusiasm. I have tried the 18 year-old MacAllan. As I posted a week or so ago, it is good, but then it should be at $25 Canadian for one drink. As a more financially responsible choice I like Glenlivet. I would be interested in what the Maximum Leader thinks of Oban.

BTW I was not impressed with the duty-free shops in the airport in Toronto. I think that they simply took back the taxes and duties in profits on the merchandise. I saw no great bargains. Of course, with the taxes in Canada being what they are compared to the US, it probably is no great bargain. Our taxes plus profit are probably what Canada would consider profit alone.

The link to this quiz I found at Naked Villainy. My thanks to the Maximum Leader for sharing it.


Wackiness: 20/100
Rationality: 66/100
Constructiveness: 54/100
Leadership: 54/100


You are an SRCL--Sober Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you an Ayn Rand ideal. Taggart? Roark? Galt? You are all of these. You were born to lead. You may not be particularly exciting, but you have a strange charisma--born of intellect and personal drive--that people begin to notice when they have been around you a while. You don't like to compromise, but you recognize when you have to.

You care absolutely nothing what other people think, and this somehow attracts people to you. Treat them well, use them wisely, and ascend to your rightful rank.

Gack! Spuck! (Ok how old do you have to be to remember those funny paper comments?)

"While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible." --Alexander Hamilton

Greta Van Susteren in her book mentions the death penalty. She uses it as a vehicle to make some broader comments on US justice in general. I thought these were well said.

… I will never change my position that the Constitution demands a fair justice system, and I do not think the death penalty can be taken lightly or prescribed as carelessly as it is in America today. The death penalty should be a deterrent, and if it is commonplace, if we can’t even remember the name of the last person executed in this country, we will forget just how serious it is.

Justice is expensive, but in the end it is what sets us apart form other nations. We don’t take shortcuts in this democracy, and we pride ourselves on fairness.

Of course, I have my private and personal thoughts and feelings about heinous killers—those who have committed cold-hearted, premeditated murders, terrorists who have tried to destroy our country. I am angry, and I want to get them! But I want to know that my nation did it the right way, upholding the standards and principals that make us the greatest country. We can convict people fair and square. And when we do, we refuse to stoop to the level of those who would threaten and hurt us. P 72

My Turn at the Bully Pulpit, Greta Van Susteren and Elaine Lafferty, Crown Publishers, New York, New York, 2003.

What is your concept of a vacation?

Kicking back, taking it easy, sleeping in, doing things just for fun?
Organized trip, a cruise, major sight-seeing adventure?
Change of pace, catching up on everything that needs doing?
Working harder at vacation than at work?

The latter is my reality for vacation. I had planned to catch up on blogging, to post some major articles or at least, to compose them for later posting, to do some woodworking, maybe even make major progress on the bed of the bedroom suite I am building. No such luck. I am barely finding time to keep the blog alive, I have had 8 hours of woodworking total so far, and that is about the extent of it. All the rest are the things that never were planned for. As it turns out, I am grateful for the fact that they came during vacation and not when I had to organize around my work and travel. However, there is a part of me that sort of shakes its head, and wonders how I could have been so naive as to think I would be able to plan a vacation.

Sometimes vacations make us appreciate our work a bit more. It is more structured.

Matthew is back with his sense of humor extremely sharp! How can a man that is a monk have such a wicked sense of humor? Matthew, do you have any favorite recipes?

Steve Rugg's JusTalkin has a new look. The content is still the same excellent commentary Steve always produces.

Steve Headley is back to blogging with some excellent humor, pointed of course, and other excellent commentary. Glad to see you posting again, Steve!

Ally Eskin has a most interesting link in her blog, Who Moved My Truth?.

BTW Ally, being a "good" corporate type (OK not so good but definitely in the culture) I understood your blog title straight away.

My friend, Keith Burgess-Jackson, the AnalPhilosopher, is a powerful advocate of becoming a vegetarian, mainly because of the inhuman way we process our meat. He has an especially strong example cited in this post.

I am of the belief that a human diet should include meat, all the vegetarian arguments not withstanding. I am also of the belief that providing meat inhumanely is wrong. I don't believe it can be changed overnight. Keith's solution is to remove the demand for inhumanely produced meat and thereby destroy the market incentive to produce it. My choice is to properly enforce the laws that were created to prevent such situations. The example that Keith has chosen illustrates the total failure of our laws and enforcement agencies to do the job. I blame the enforcement agencies first and the laws second. I think we need to publicize what goes on. It does upset the "soccer moms" to find out where their beef comes from. Smallholder, a contributor to Naked Villainy, and quoted in several emails by Keith in his Animal Ethics blog, describes the most humane method of raising beef that I know of.

There has to be a better way, and in this case political pressure seems to be the only effective means to accomplish the establishment of a better way. First, we need to demand the enforcement of the existing law, and then we can decide if new law is required. Let us not in our zeal to do good, create new law that will neither be enforced, nor applied equally.

I have been a member of the National Geographic Society for 53 years. I have been quite proud of this membership and maintained it when there were things the money could have as well gone for. So it is a very sad day that I am writing the following letter.

John M. Fahey, Jr., President
National Geographic Society
National Geographic Society
1145 17th Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036-4688

Dear Mr. Fahey,

It is with great regret that I am writing to inform you that after fifty-three years, I will no longer continue my membership in the National Geographic Society. During my membership, I have been proud to be part of the work that Jane Goodall and Jacques Cousteau did. I have enjoyed the many articles on the world around me. There have been numerous well-written articles in various areas of science. Your cartographic division is beyond any comparison. However, in February, 2004, the magazine published an article on “Missing Carbon.” It was prefaced with an editorial that apologized for printing an article that was scientifically oriented. The article, rather than discussing in a reasonable way the issues of unaccounted-for carbon in the carbon cycle, became a screed on global warming. In response, I wrote the following letter:

“In over fifty years of membership, this was the first time I was ashamed of an article. Your editorial lead should have apologized not for publishing a science article but one of such poor quality. Instead of simply educating us on the complexity of the carbon cycle, you published yet another advocacy piece saying that increasing carbon dioxide equals global warming. I have followed this issue for years, and much of the global warming theory is under strong, and reputable challenge. Within the last year there have been published challenges to the hockey stick curve and even to the idea that increasing carbon dioxide causes global warming--it may be the other way around. Methane is many times more potent a green-house gas than carbon dioxide, and it was only mentioned in passing and then ignored. Water vapor is also a green-house gas and it is in far greater concentration than carbon dioxide, and it was not even mentioned. To ignore these things is to oversimplify the global warming issue to an untruth. In addition, Mr. Appehnzeller can be validly accused of "cherry picking" his examples to support his cause. Global warming could fill an entire issue, if presented in its full political, scientific and geographic complexity. It should not have been presented under the guise of an article on the carbon cycle, and in such an unbalanced manner.”

The June, 2004, issue published a sample of the letters in response to the article. None of them expressed the issue of the quality, or lack thereof, of the science surrounding global warming. The conclusion I come to is that I am now supporting an organization that is more politically than scientifically or educationally motivated. You may continue programs in education and exploration, but the results of the research and the content of the educational programs will increasingly become ideological rather than impartial.

I will have no part in this.

Sincerely yours,


So once more ideology destroys a great institution.

Toleration is not the same as equivalence -- The Maximum Leader, Naked Villainy.

The Maverick Philosopher has just demonstrated his ability to write poetic prose. I was there with him in spirit in his description of his morning hike. Go read it. It could inspire one to take up hiking.

BTW in the second post later he mentions one of my favorite authors, and one I consider important in the history of ideas.

[This was also published last Friday by another blog. But I had planned to publish it when I read it so here it is. Thanks to The Federalist for the source.]

For one who was born and grew up in the small towns of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about the Fourth of July.

I remember it as a day almost as long-anticipated as Christmas. This was helped along by the appearance in store windows of all kinds of fireworks and colorful posters advertising them with vivid pictures.

No later than the third of July -- sometimes earlier -- Dad would bring home what he felt he could afford to see go up in smoke and flame. We'd count and recount the number of firecrackers, display pieces and other things and go to bed determined to be up with the sun so as to offer the first, thunderous notice of the Fourth of July.

I'm afraid we didn't give too much thought to the meaning of the day. And, yes, there were tragic accidents to mar it, resulting from careless handling of the fireworks. I'm sure we're better off today with fireworks largely handled by professionals. Yet there was a thrill never to be forgotten in seeing a tin can blown 30 feet in the air by a giant "cracker" -- giant meaning it was about 4 inches long. But enough of nostalgia.

Somewhere in our growing up we began to be aware of the meaning of days and with that awareness came the birth of patriotism. July Fourth is the birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest nation on earth.

There is a legend about the day of our nation's birth in the little hall in Philadelphia, a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words "treason, the gallows, the headsman's axe," and the issue remained in doubt.

The legend says that at that point a man rose and spoke. He is described as not a young man, but one who had to summon all his energy for an impassioned plea. He cited the grievances that had brought them to this moment and finally, his voice falling, he said, "They may turn every tree into a gallows, every hole into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die. To the mechanic in the workshop, they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines, freedom. Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the Bible of the rights of man forever."

He fell back exhausted. The 56 delegates, swept up by his eloquence, rushed forward and signed that document destined to be as immortal as a work of man can be. When they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he was not to be found, nor could any be found who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well, that is the legend. But we do know for certain that 56 men, a little band so unique we have never seen their like since, had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Some gave their lives in the war that followed, most gave their fortunes, and all preserved their sacred honor.

What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, eleven were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told nearly enough.

John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in caves before he returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.

Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston and Middleton. Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home and destroy it when it became the headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.

But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea. Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep, three million square miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines of all the world. In recent years, however, I've come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation.

It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history.

Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.

Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.

We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.

Happy Fourth of July.

--Ronald Reagan, President of the United States (1981)

Biblical Material

I have been working on a major study of the Gospels concerning the last days of Jesus. Today’s religious post is some extracts from the introductory material to that study. It concerns the Gospels and the scholarly commentaries that are based on them.

Surrounding all of this commentary and motivating it, is the desire to find my own answers to whether Jesus thought he was the Messiah, and what was Jesus trying to accomplish with the events of Passion Week. It is a first start in a larger campaign in trying to find Jesus, the man and person, under all that has been attached to his name. Trying to find Jesus under all the meanings that others lay on Him is probably not completely possible, but it is well worth the try.

The three major layers are first, the modern translators, second, the Greek manuscript that is the basis of all the generally accepted translations, and third the gospel writers themselves. Any translation requires decisions by the translators that are based on knowledge and belief outside the material. No language translates word-for-word into another, and both physical and abstract terms have to be approximated. It is in the terms with abstract meanings or complex theological and philosophical meanings that translators either deliberately or inadvertently make choices based on their own beliefs. To overcome this without attempting the nearly impossible task of learning Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, I am using eight different, and hopefully independent, translations and comparing them.

To sort out the added meanings and ideas of the Gospel writers is far more difficult. Arriving at the best translation of each gospel is a start. But it is like dealing with a courtroom of eyewitnesses telling their versions years after the event has occurred. None of them will necessarily agree on events, and some will have similar versions because they are quoting hearsay from the same source. Additionally, each version has been stated for reasons other than simply relating historical events. So I am, in effect, a jury reviewing testimony of conflicting witnesses, all of whom are relating things told to them by other persons, and having their own agendas underlying the telling. As I said to myself, “It is indeed muddy waters I have leapt into!”

One of the things I will attempt is to put together a chronology of the events that seems reasonable. This [the so-called Holy Week story, bk] is probably the most historically factual part of any of the gospels, because the events themselves are considered theologically important. This provides the best chance of creating such a chronology. The second task is to find meaning in what is said and done. Since none of the quotes were taken down verbatim when made, my own beliefs and background will become part of the answer. Where I guess at missing information, or interpret ambiguous statements, my prior conceptions will have a strong influence. That is the nature of this task, and it does not invalidate it. My goal, like many before me, is to arrive at my answers to my questions.

For me the answer will be one in which I can place myself in the period, look at the description of the events, consider that the persons involved are basically just like people today, and feel that the whole thing fits together. One of the things I am struck by, is that while things are occurring, they appear normal, and only after the fact is anything out of the ordinary noted. I have the feeling that many of the commentators are so involved in current belief and existing commentary, they are unable to take a fresh look and see other alternatives or explanations. The focus is on the account rather than the events behind the account.

In some ways what I am doing is equivalent to a major critical literature review or perhaps a peer review in science, where the experimental report is the Bible. Just as in a review, I am asking what is being said, what is being claimed or concluded, and does the presented data support the conclusions. Are there flaws in the methods or in the processes that reach conclusions? I do not argue against divine inspiration for the Bible, but being written by humans, from an oral tradition that goes back tens of centuries in the Old Testament, and 30-100 years before the first written version in the New Testament, with multiple copies before the earliest available manuscripts were made, leads to a lot of room for change from the actual events over time.

One of the great strengths and weaknesses of the Bible is that it is ambiguous, and can provide many conflicting answers that suit many different people. It is all things to all people. I will accord others the legitimacy of their interpretation for them. All I ask is that others allow me the same. None of us has THE ANSWER, despite our wish it were so.

Scholarly Commentary

The four commentaries I already have are very diverse and emphasize different aspects of each verse in the specific scriptural commentaries. As a consequence, I think it is important to acquire as many scholarly commentaries as possible. […However, f]rom the descriptive material on the others I have seen they tend to be more apologetical than scholarly commentary.

One of the things that does strike me about the scriptural commentaries is that they frequently appear to ignore the underlying questions, “How much variation is due to oral tradition”, “Who were the witnesses”, “Would ordinary people react this way”, “What is the exact nature of the civil-religious connections”, etc. These issues may be dealt with in the general commentary chapters. However, the general tenor of the commentaries is that they have assumed many of the questions as answered that I am examining. They seem to readily go into details of internal consistency rather than external validation. Though there is little to externally validate much of the material, I would like more discussion of unanswered questions. I get some sense of a general “establishment” or “standard” viewpoint much as I have seen in science. Rebellion and non-conformity is not encouraged. However, it could make it much more fun for me, when I choose to disagree.

One of the interesting things about a living document is that changes in understanding that come as it progresses. Some of my commentary earlier is somewhat in conflict with my current positions (1/25/2003 [now 7/4/2004! bk]), since they were written as this document was started, 7/28/2002. However, the differences are kept as a record of my advances. I have just read in the last week the material on the Gospels in the Oxford Commentary and realized that the purpose of those commentaries lies at a different direction than mine. The authors of those commentaries are looking to expound the ways in which the evangelists accomplished their purposes as opposed to investigating the roots of the material used. In that realization, I now understand my earlier observation that they (commentators) don’t address the questions of interest to me. To one degree or another, they all are in the same position, men of faith dealing with issues and information that might undermine that faith. What if, for instance, they were to discover that the oral tradition, by the time it was recorded, was, in effect, totally untrue? I don’t believe that is so, but it is the extreme of the issue. Of necessity they are going to focus on what reinforces the existing faith.

I am pursuing a different path. I am searching for a Jesus that was a common laborer that had the intelligence and wit to persuade common people in his approach to God—a strongly passionate man that hated hypocrisy and was willing to die for his beliefs. In the process, I think it important to question all information that pertains to Jesus, trying to understand what is true and what is appended to provide the evangelistic view. Other than the unsung heroes that tamed fire, invented the bow and arrow, discovered the lever, and adopted logs to wheels, Jesus is the most important individual in the history of man. No one has had a more profound impact on ethics, morals, and behavior. Without Jesus there would have been no Renaissance. Without his destruction of the Pharisaic ethic, there would be no advance in thinking—the emphasis would have been on what is literally vs. spiritually correct. Without his teaching we would have no concepts of legal mercy or tolerance. His admonition to separate the church and state (render unto Caesar…..) is the basis of the religious freedom we enjoy today. And yet, looking at this paragraph, I may be trying to create my own set of Jesus myths. Emotionally, we want heroes, and we create them when they don’t exist. Even if the reality were much baser than I suppose, I would probably find some rationale to keep my current belief system, because it is of importance to me. I may not require the tie-ins to OT (Old Testament) scripture to make the events have significance, but I am looking for significance. However, when I am done, the answer to WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) may not be anywhere near the same as that currently obtained or assumed.

Land of the Pharaohs explains the real importance of Saddam's hearing.

If you have avoided The Ethics of War because of its apparent central focus, or because you think you have no interest in the subject, or because you have already made up your mind on the Iraq war, let go of your presuppositions and try reading some of the posts. There is more there than just a discussion of ethics. This blog is one I consider truly amazing. It has Keith Burgess-Jackson, a tenured professor of Philosophy, and primary host of the blog, Len Carrier, a retired professor of philosophy, and Matthew Mullins, a graduate student in philosophy. Each has definite and well articulated views. Keith is a conservative, Len is liberal, and Matthew is primarily analytic. I think he tends to the conservative. Visit it and find out what you are missing.

The Maximum Leader is the father of a new Villain. Congratulations, and we look forward to your return to blogging.

Steve Rugg at JusTalkin has an excellent post on the FCC and what they are doing to freedom of speech. Another example of a bureaucarcy executing ex post facto law, which is specifically unconstitutional.

The Maverick Philosopher, one of my daily must-reads, has an interesting post on the difference between truth and belief. It it clear, well-written, not at all esoteric, and essential to our thinking. Go read it.

A group of lawmakers have asked the UN to observe the US elections on November 2. Amazing. They are concerned about a denial of the right to vote, so they ask a most corrupt body to monitor. And just what do they expect to come of this? A bit of notariety for their request, and an assured screed against the US after the elections. Why the increasing insistance of the liberals on the UN as it becomes more obvious that the UN is corrupt and worthless?
Thanks to Drudge for the link.

Chirac essentially told the US to mind its own business at the NATO summit this week, but "A senior State Department official told FOX News that however hard a line Chirac maintains in public, however, French officials approach their U.S. counterparts with a "positive attitude," suggesting that the French president's anti-U.S. rhetoric is intended chiefly for domestic consumption in France." (link here)

I guess that State Department forgot that it also is consumed domestically in the US, and that Chirac needs to lose his free-ride from our State Department. I suspect that the apologists at State are mostly liberals from what comes out of their mouths. I mentioned this before, members of the State Department staff have no accountability.

My friend, Keith, the AnalPhilosopher, blogged about not demonizing one's opponents. (Sorry I can't give the link. I can't remember the actual topic.) Here is an example of one of my common bete noirs doing something good.

Bill Cosby let loose another critical speech at a black activist meeting, and Jesse Jackson is reported as supporting the comments. I really don't care at this point what Jackson's motives are, they don't matter. What does matter is that a black leader and one that normally gets (and deserves) a lot of disrespect from the conservative side of the fence has come down on the side of building up the blacks instead of blaming whites. Read the Fox News article here.

What an irony, the Democrats are using the courts to try to win the election before it even takes place. Seems I remember something about them accusing the Republicans winning the election in court? According to Fox News (article here), the Democrats have used the courts to force Ralph Nader off the ballot in Arizona. On the surface of the report, the Democrats have used money to reduce the competition instead of giving the voters a choice. If true as given, it is one more instance of the Democrat's unprincipled approach to politics--win at any price.

Fox News published an item stating that the Poles had obtained sarin containing warheads. Go read the article. It shows the Poles as knowing how to really handle a security situation and do what it takes to get the job done. Yes, Virginia, there really are WMDs.