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Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Post #1
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DIFFERENTIATING LIMBO AND PURGATORY |
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Captain Ed today notes an interesting Catholic theological decision
on a conceptual question that puzzles many Christians and may very well divide Protestants and Catholics. Apparently, limbo is to be emphasized
no more:
One of the reasons
that limbo has been in, well, limbo is because the concept
presents a stumbling block to Christian unity, especially for those who practice from a literal form of sola scriptura. After
the Church could catch its breath when it emerged from four centuries of [martyrdom] and oppression, theologians presented
many questions about the nature of the faith which challenged the thinking of Church elders. Among them: what happened to
unbaptized babies at death? Instead of just leaving such questions
up to God, distraught parents and theoretical thinkers wanted answers, and limbo came into being.
Limbo, it should
be pointed out, differs from purgatory, another difficult but more scriptural-based concept of Roman [Catholicism]. Purgatory refers to the process of purification that has to take
place between the death of a sinner and their entry into heaven. Misunderstood as a particular place in space and time, purgatory
would at first appear to be an unmentioned third possible destination for the dead, but the Church teaches that all souls
who enter heaven must necessarily experience purgatory to be cleansed of sinful impulses before final acceptance into the
presence of the Lord. When I taught confirmation classes, I used to explain it to the teenagers as an extra rinse cycle in
the washing machine ... which may explain why I don't teach confirmation classes any longer.
Purgatory as a concept
would have also explained what happens to the unbaptized, and done so with much more elegance than the notion of limbo. I
suspect that if limbo gets the heave-ho it deserves, the Church will probably emphasize purgatory as the merciful process
that it is and the path of the unbaptized to reach heaven when judged deserving by the Lord -- who, after all, makes the rules
and the choices without consulting any of us on our opinion anyway.
Very interesting.
30 nov 05 @ 8:16 pm est
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Post #1
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DOES UNFREEZING THE MIDDLE EAST COUNT FOR ANYTHING AMONG THE DEMOCRATS? |
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Michael Barone makes the point, and asks the question, by pointing
towards a Jim Hoagland column in the Washington Post. Barone maintains that:
[t]he key quote
is from the brave champion of democracy in Egypt, Saad Eddin Ibrahim.
“But it is a
Middle East in which those who believe in democracy and civil society are finally actors, even though we still face big obstacles,”
says Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt’s battle-scarred democratic activist. Ibrahim originally opposed the invasion of Iraq. But it “has unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon’s 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on
the agenda, even if only to fight against us. Look, neither Napoleon nor President Bush could impregnate the region with political
change. But they were able to be the midwives,” Ibrahim told me in Washington.
Egypt has allowed
nongovernmental organizations to monitor local elections this month, and it is permitting more freedom of expression in a
handful of independent newspapers recently established there. “The regime still cheats in elections but less than before,”
said Ibrahim, to explain his relative optimism.
An Arab battle-scarred democratic activist can give the President
more dap than the Democrats? Surely a majority of Americans can see through this foolishness.
29 nov 05 @ 9:13 am est
Monday, November 28, 2005
Post #4
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MY PROBLEM WITH THE DARWINISTS . . . |
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. . . is the same problem Robert Gordon of One Cosmos has with the extreme sides within both camps of the God-Science debate:
[O]ne topic I don’t
think I’ll be posting about again is Intelligent Design. It just doesn’t generate a fruitful dialogue, because the debate
seems to consist of “true believers” on both sides. If you take a moderate position, as I do, then the extremists on either
side see you as arguing against them, and you simply end up talking past one another, like one of those political TV programs.
There are radical secularists just as there are religious fundamentalists, and I certainly belong to neither group. People
in my camp (which it should go without saying does not include literal creationists) are perfectly willing to concede every
single point of scientific discovery, but those on the anti-ID side are unwilling to concede a single point of metaphysical
reasoning or acknowledge a single one of the genuine problems that plague a purely reductionist view of life and consciousness.
I do not believe there is any evidence that will convince a true creationist that evolution has occurred, any more than I believe there is any evidence that will persuade an anti-ID reductionist that
science is competent to explain only a very proscribed plane of existence.
Right on the money as far as I’m concerned.
28 nov 05 @ 4:41 pm est
Post #3
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A RIFF ON THE THERAPEUTIC
EQUIVALENT OF RELIGIOUS INDULGENCE |
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ShrinkWrapped has a post that has to be read to be believed. Please
do so. It involves a couple in New York, obviously financially successful, but she’s in therapy because she can’t get a home with a
sufficiently acceptable view of Central Park.
Seriously.
As I said, it has to be read to be believed but Robert Godwin was prompted to respond thusly:
Speechlessness is
the only appropriate response. File under the heading, “bad everything drives out good everything,” including therapy. In
this case, the patient has been granted the therapeutic equivalent of a religious indulgence, in that she has been given a
fraudulent pass on the deeper nature of the problems that brought her into therapy. This is not therapy, it is magic--a classic
case of an iatrogenically facilitated “manic defense.”
But it’s what makes
the world go ‘round. People can never get enough of what they really don’t need.
Ain’t that last sentence the truth? In fact, ain’t that the
essential truth in the world? And always has been?
This is because YOUR interpretation of what they really need
is irrelevant.
I’m beginning to think that although the Republican intelligentsia
may disrespect this fact, they have at least come to terms with it. Intellectual Democrats have not, neither have the elite
classes in Europe.
Regular American folks, of course, don’t give a damn about
it. Just don’t tread on them as they pursue things they really don’t need.
28 nov 05 @ 4:39 pm est
Post #2
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WRETCHARD, NETWORK-CENTRIC WARFARE,
AND A DEBATE ON MULTICULTURALISM |
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Wretchard the Cat has a great post up on Network-centric warfare and
what it means for America and those on our side versus our enemies and those on the jihadist side:
One of the coolest posts I’ve read in a long time is Chester’s Globalization and War. His reference links to Philip Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles and the really nifty eMachineShop alone are worth the read. The fundamental issue he discusses is whether nation-states are in some sense being replaced
by distributed networks of people. Many activities, from community building to earning a living have jumped over traditional
boundaries. Criminal and terrorist organizations have been among the first to exploit this fact. Viewed from one angle, modern
Islamic terrorist cells are not so much a return to the forms of the 8th century as new structures made possible by 21st century
technologies.
Attempts to develop “network-centric” methods of warfare in
the service of a nation state are ultimately limited by their subordination to a highly centralized command and control system.
Can we meet the Islamofascist challenge? Wretchard isn’t sure:
The key challenge is whether America,
in the sense of a shared idea, can be expansive enough to permit subordinate threads
which can truly “take on a life of their own”, and so become agile enough to engage the Jihadis at the lowest level. We are some of us familiar with the idea of multithreaded
applications which can leave the main program and be re-entrant at an indeterminate point. Max Boot had hoped in 2003 that
decentralized decision making would be part of the “new American way of war“, multithreading within a larger architecture.
Yet no sooner had those tendencies appeared when they were reined in by an American Left determined to impose all the blessings
of the bureaucratic state upon networked warfare: oversight, endless hearings, legalisms -- the clanking apparatus of the
unitary Sovereign -- to ‘aid’ in the pursuit of nimble bands of modern Mongols contemptuous of boundaries.
It’s a typically good post. The entire discussion in the comments
revolves, naturally, around individuals, groups, cultures and nation-states. Most interesting to me, however, was a response
to a comment in the thread that Wretchard made:
When directions
can be given in the broadest possible shared terms -- in terms of a culture -- then detailed instructions are unnecessary.
Individual initiative can be given full scope.
However, when the
first order of business is to destroy one’s own culture then it necessarily becomes impossible, or at least very difficult,
to exercise control through broad guidance. What multiculturalism
does is reduce membership in a society to a legal relationship. All expectations are delimited; all responsibility is parsed.
Nothing “goes without saying”; everything must be spelled out. The parts of the social organism which are not positively
commanded will remain inert, or perhaps, even attack the main organism as part of its “democratic” duty. Not that any of this
is objectionable, but it does characterize a mode of behavior and describe its limits.
Well, sir. That really caught my attention. His definition
of multiculturalism seemed to go well beyond mine. Is this a final hurdle I’m going to have to traverse on my journey toward
conservatism, or is that simply an unnecessarily extreme definition of multiculturalism? I responded in the thread:
This is all starting
to come together for me, and I suspect, many others.
When I first read
Den Beste talking about hive minds, etc., I thought it was interesting but I wasn’t sure of the real applicability.
Great post, Wretchard.
I’m still not sure that multiculturalism is necessarily what you say it is. “What multiculturalism does is reduce membership
in a society to a legal relationship.”
I don’t see mainstream
black people understanding multiculturalism that way and I suspect we’re in a situation where the same language is being spoken
(e.g., American English vs. Dutch English) but there are crucial misunderstanings occurring in both directions. This is similar
(it seems to me) to the whole anti-disco thing when it was very hard to determine if it was “disco” that was hated, or just
black music.
It has been a revelation
to me, this viewing of multiculturalism as some sort of proxy that leads back to Marx, etc. I don’t know how to express this
more succinctly so I’ll just state it: this viewpoint seems so “white,” if you know what I mean.
Does everything
loop back through Europe?
Maybe Europeans
have bastardized multiculturalism so much that within “their” concept, it is nothing but a proxy. However, does that settle
the matter?
I’m not so sure
about that.
Later on, another commenter (Kevin, known to be quite liberal)
posted an excerpt from Chester (not known to be quite liberal)
on globalization and contrasted it with the Wretchard language on multiculturalism I used above and asked:
Aren’t globalization
and multi-culturalism the exact same phenomenon; with “globalization” the label employed when seen as positive and “multi-culturalism”
when regarded as negative?
After all, is it really possible to have globalization without multi-culturalism?
That’s a good question because it gets at the heart of whether
the definition used by Wretchard was/is unnecessarily extreme.
As often happens on Wretchard’s website, another commenter
steps up to make a thought-provoking contribution. Here, cardozo bobo concurs that the reduction of human relationships to
legal responsibilities is the problem in adequately fighting Al Qaeda but disagrees (I think) that multiculturalism enhances
the problem:
If there is any
one thing that will strangle our ability to compete with Al Qaeda, you are correct in assuming it is the reduction of human
[relationships] to legal responsibilities. I think though that you misdiagnose the source of the disease. As I see it, it’s
not multi-culturalism that reduces all relationships to a legal relationship, but rather some combination of Civil Law and
litigants run amok. I was speaking with Lord Bhikhu Parekh a week or so ago (British House of Lords, [Royal] Society philosopher)
and while his politics were different from my own he correctly (IMO) diagnosed Britain’s current legal culture as moving from
one based on liberty to one based on rights, but not because of multiculturalism (a topic he knows quite a bit about). It’s
the EU’s body of law, the Civil Law, which is doing it. It is the antithesis of the Common Law.
The Civil Law (and
Civil Lawyers) are working their way deeper and deeper into many aspects of our Anglosphere culture. Our relationships are
being stifled by legalisms while at the same time our freedoms are being surrendered to ignorant stewards. It’s much more
than Justice Stevens looking to how ‘Europe’ is solving one legal problem or another. The
informal networks and relationships of many networks (banking networks, vocational networks, charitable networks) gets sucked
up and absorbed into the ever-growing body of law; frozen in time and burdened with ‘substantive rights’ while unchecked by
due process or other democratic safeguards. At one time arbitration between peers possessed liberty and gave justice; now
it does neither. Meanwhile our most cherished public freedoms, hard fought for, such as civil rights and commercial freedom
from monopolistic thuggery, are entrusted to ‘arbitrators’ in Paris, Tokyo, and further abroad, without a hint of judicial
review.
Meanwhile the effects our tort system [has] had on our society is the talk of newspaper columns, and well known
to all. Our plethora of networked individuals will be quite reluctant to extend their hands to Iraqis and Afghans in need
of aid if they fear they’ll just get sued for it later.
I thought that made a hell of a lot of sense.
But later, cardozo bobo took exception to the assertion that
globalization and multiculturalism are “good” and “bad” takes on the same thing. In doing so, cardozo bobo regurgitates a
notion as accepted fact that I believe is most definitely in dispute:
[Multiculturalism]
is a philosophy which posits that no culture is superior to any other culture.
Says who, pray tell? Even more curious, however, is this assertion
from cardozo bobo:
Globalization is
based on the idea that my Western way of life is superior to your tribal way of life, and if you want to escape the endless
cycles of famine and violence man was subject to for the first million years of its existence you must abandon the bad philosophies
which your ancestors handed down to you.
Is this generally accepted as fact vis-à-vis the conceptualization
of globalization or is , too, from an extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to defining globalization? Beats me, but check
out this concluding flourish from cardozo bobo:
[Multiculturalism]
and Globalization [are] as different as night and day. One is a philosophy, and the other is an observed process which proves
the philosophy wrong.
Well, damn. Kinda sorta ipso facto, huh? Which leads me directly
back to earlier statement I made:
I don’t know how
to express this more succinctly so I’ll just state it: this viewpoint seems so “white,” if you know what I mean.
Next, Kevin offers up a quote from Chester on just one myth related to globalization that seems to call into question the doctrinaire
assertions of cardozo bobo:
1. Globalization will inevitably lead to Westernization. It’s rather ironic that so many leftist academics espoused this theory,
since it manages to embrace a sort of assumed Western superiority while at the same time turning the rest of the world’s cultures
into victims. Or maybe, Westernization would result because we in the West are so aggressive? No matter. The assumption is
false. If there is any lesson to be learned these days from globalization’s effects on people and cultures, it is that it
transmits all of them, and transforms all of them. There is an process of give-and-take at play in nearly every place -- whether
physically or in cyberspace, or other media -- where two or more cultures and peoples collide. In this way, we find radicalized
Muslims as easily in Munich as we do in Mecca, and democrats
as easily in Kabul as in Kansas.
Moreover, the very cultures that were thought soon to be washed away by the onrush of global capitalism find themselves just
as easily transmitted by it as those of the West. Witness the border region of the US and Mexico, which is a teeming hybrid
of both Western and Latin cultures, or examine the growing influence of Chinese and Japanese pop culture upon the rest of
Asia and even the United States. Western -- and American -- culture have influenced each of these others in turn, but by no
means can be described as ascendant, and even less and less so, as dominant.
Sounds right on the money to me.
Here, then, is the dilemma for white folks in America: cardozo bobo disparages (one of) Chester’s
take on globalization posted above and (apparently) walks right into a trap of his own making:
Why is it that America is willing to adopt Mexican music, but that France fights against “cultural imperialism”? The same reason that French farmers
attack McDonalds: they fear change. [RattlerGator: so far, so good] They don’t
want their way of life to change. They know that Western culture, American culture, is more seductive than their own.
Come again, Kimosabe? Western=American, French≠Western?
Yeah, right. When confronted with such a trap, act as if you don’t see it, comprehend it or acknowledge it. Naturally, cardozo
bobo, does just that:
Both American entrepreneurs
and the French peasants ‘know’ that their culture is superior to the other; ergo, neither can be a multiculturalist.
Now, does that make sense to you? Sure as hell seems wrongheaded
to me – not because it is wrong, per se, but because it goes to an unnecessary definitional extreme. It may be a technically
incorrect formulation based on the English language . . . but that’s what I call a doctrinaire postulation, cardozo bobo.
Discussion in the thread then bounced around, including a focus
on the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia and its relationship to the present drive for an all-encompassing governing body by the EU
and a competing drive for a worldwide caliphate by Usama bin Laden. Ultimately, commenter Arthur Parry made this response:
Wretchard – I wasn’t
advocating Westphalia so much as trying to point out that it represents a point within the
spectrum of centralization rather than an extreme. Personally I think that the trends of globalization, decentralized networks,
and emergent order are mostly unalloyed goodness, though they are disruptive to formerly isolated cultures and economies.
And to would-be mandarins and caliphs.
With an eye firmly on the domestic front, and noting that the
difference between classical liberalism and what passes for liberalism today is a quite distinct difference, Bob Smith wrote:
If the Democrats
were to return to their classical liberal roots, they would present a more effective opposing ideology to the evolving strength
of conservatism.
As best as I can tell, the Democrats, as a
party, are being held hostage by the socialist liberals, in a case of political activism subsuming more moderate voices, many
of which are either converted moderate Republicans or looking for a relevant platform.
If those whose views
are more accurately described by classical liberal ideals, rather than utopian socialist ideals, then the challenge is balancing
the equation between rights and liberties in a way that allows the participation of non-legal influences, such as culture
and family structures. Removing such influences with the sweeping stroke of “all are equivalent” is not an effective rebuttal
position to the conservative goal of preserving historical institutions at the expense of the experimental.
A net-centric
organizational model would seem to favor experimentalism.
The issue will be moot if the party does not shed its socialist
skin.
Naturally, I agree with that sentiment.
On the multiculturalism discussion in this thread, it always
seems to me that white Americans have a supremely difficult time conceptualizing our Pacific future; the ascendance of our
Asian theater of operations rather than our previous focus on the North Atlantic. This difficulty
is most obvious in a discussion such as this.
I think cardozo bobo is basically right (that means Wretchard,
too) but goes well beyond what is necessary (in defining multiculturalism) because of an almost obsessive and unnecessary
focus on Europe.
28 nov 05 @ 4:35 pm est
Post #1
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FLORIDA 34, FLORIDA
STATE 7;
THE NATURAL ORDER HAS BEEN RESTORED |
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No matter how you slice it or try to spin it, Florida totally dominated FSU and left no doubt who was the better team, winning
34-7.
On GatorCountry.com, a great poster with the handle of GhettoGator came up with this piece below
honoring a Seminole showing his behind like little brother so often does. I’ve tweaked it just a bit, but only just a bit:
Lorenzo Booker, when asked about playing arch rival Florida: “We personally feel like, you know, they’ve got some great athletes on Miami
and things like that, but we just don’t like guys from Florida.
We feel like they don’t belong on the field as us . . . none of that, you know, so it’s, it’s more of like a, you know, you
guys think you can play with us? It’s almost disrespectful that we have to go down to Gainesville
and, and, and, and, and play these guys on Saturday. You know it’s a, it’s a, it’s a really, I mean, like a hatred
rivalry, like you gotta ugly stepsister that you just got to get out of your family portrait.”
Lorenzo’s performance in the aforementioned game: 6 carries, 4 yards.
Final score: Florida 34, FSU 7.
Brandon Siler on Lorenzo Booker and Ernie Sims: “They were on their high horse and talking a lot of trash. Ernie guaranteed a win. Booker
said he’s wasting his time coming to the Swamp. Well, we said come on down to the Swamp and we’ll show you how to control
yourself. They came to the Swamp, and we whipped them. We felt unstoppable the whole game. Booker got us alive and kicking,
and I thank him for that.”
Lorenzo Booker came out of California with nothing but hype, hype, hype and he goes out the same way. Unlike the Pony
Express of long ago or FedEx and UPS today, he just couldn’t deliver. But he has gone down in Florida-Florida State history; congratulations,
SloLo.
Also, if you’ve ever wondered why FSU loses to Miami so many times, wonder no more. The Canes have suckered these fools into believing they
don’t have a hatred rivalry – both of them HATE Florida.
Cool with me. But only Miami wins in a situation like that
and FSU can’t seem to figure that out. It shouldn’t have been TOO hard to figure out the secret: hate us equally, fool.
28 nov 05 @ 7:53 am est
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Post #1
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NOW THAT PAJAMAS MEDIA HAS . . . |
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. . . officially been born as Open Source Media and apparently
made a mad dash back to the Pajamas Media name, how is this baby going to crawl? Bill Quick at Daily Pundit has an interesting tale up on his site that may push Pajamas Media toward some better definition of what we are or aspire
to be. I missed the story completely because of my travel to Hong Kong and back but it involves an apparent “glitch” at CNN and the Vice President’s
image being blotted out with an X during some story they were doing. Bill and many others tried to find out what the deal
was, did so, and the glitch was confirmed but an offending customer service rep was fired for callous disregard of CNN customer
service protocols. The result was this comment from Bill:
I’m not certain
what Pajamas Media intends to be, but I do know this: If it intends to function at least in part as a news organization that
will “syndicate” reports from its member blogs, it played no roll in my story, which was, by any definition, genuine original
news reporting. Everything that happened, including the links from Instapundit, Little Green Footballs, Roger Simon, Polipundit,
Wizbang, Emperor Mischa, and all the rest, all the feedback and input from my own commenters, as well as other blogs and their
commenters, would have occurred without Pajamas Media existing at all. As far as I know, no mention of this story ever appeared
on the PJM portal, which was instead occupied with “news” that consisted of “liveblogging” of Thanksgiving Day parades, Turkey
Day recipes, and suchlike.
If PJM is ever to
be anything other than a loose band of blogs aggregated for the purpose of marketing advertising en bloc, it needs to address
what I think was a failure here - not because the story was mine, but because any such story would probably have been ignored.
That’s sclerotic thinking, the sort of thinking we get from the MSM. And even though we may eventually supplant much of the
MSM, it won’t be by duplicating the failures of the MSM.
UPDATE: I forgot
to mention the tail of the story. After the CNN spokesman had emailed me the official statement, she called me back to make
sure I’d gotten it. I told her I had, and that it was already posted on my website. She said, “Wow, that’s fast.”
No, that’s the Blogosphere.
True dat.
26 nov 05 @ 9:23 am est
Friday, November 25, 2005
Post #3
Since I strayed from a chronological posting of our visit,
this was Day 5 of our stay in Hong Kong. With two former students working as cast members in the Festival of the Lion King
show at Hong Kong Disneyland, we could not visit Hong
Kong without a trip to see the big, bad, beautiful
mouse. First up was a visit to their (the cast members) living quarters. One word: wow! The area is anchored by the Gold Coast Hotel, self-described this way:
Hong Kong Gold Coast
Hotel is Hong Kong’s only 5-star resort and conference centre. Set in ten
acres of beautifully landscaped gardens overlooking the South China Sea, the
hotel offers panoramic seaviews from every one of its 450 spacious guest rooms.
The hotel combines
unrivalled banqueting and conference facilities with four food and beverage outlets serving a wide range of first-class international
cuisines. In addition, there are extensive recreational facilities including free-form swimming pools, a gymnasium, a health
and beauty spa, golf driving nets, archery range, tennis courts and much more.
Disney doesn’t put their folks up, long-term, at the hotel.
They have leased residence spots that are like apartments but certainly nice enough.
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ENTRANCE TO GOLD COAST RESIDENCES |
THE RESIDENCES SIT AMONG UPSCALE FACILITIES |
Take my word for it, Golden Beach is a beautiful
setting:
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WALKWAY ALONG THE RESORT WATERFRONT |
SCENE ALONG THE RESORT’S GOLDEN BEACH |
One of the fascinating things about Hong Kong (to me) is their total use of bamboo scaffolding. I mean TOTAL. Look at this photo of high rises at Gold Coast being
refurbished:

Isn’t that incredible? Well, I can’t convey in these pictures
just how beautiful it was to kick back at Gold Coast, feel the beautiful air and sunshine, and sense the relative peace and
quiet compared to urban Hong Kong. We had good
conversation and, seemingly, the run of the place:
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VIEW OUTSIDE THE LIVING ROOM WINDOW |
DOLPHINS AT THE END OF THE BEACH |
In keeping with the Asian spirit of the place, James had those
four tablets (happiness, tranquility, love, harmony) you see in the above left photo in his bay window. Here’s a better shot:

Good stuff. Although those tablets, in all honesty, were purchased
in Florida and are Japanese.
After checking out the living quarters, cooling at the resort
and walking the grounds, etc., it was time to head to Disney:
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VIEW OF THE HARBOR ON THE WAY TO DISNEY |
REMARKABLE BUS SIGN THAT EVERYONE IGNORED |
Isn’t it amazing how big brother that above, right photo seems
– and isn’t it equally amazing that it seems to be routinely ignored?
Disney has its own subway line extension, and at the terminus
. . . DISNEYLAND!

From the moment you exit the subway line you can see and feel
that famous Disney attention to detail. The entrance reminded me of an area adjacent to Florida Gulf Coast University that I posted a picture of in this link. It’s an indication that Hong Kong is more tropical than Central Florida,
which was a bit of a surprise for me:
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SCULPTURE AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE PARK |
THE VIEW UPON ENTRANCE TO THE PARK |
Maybe it’s just me, but I think this a photo of visitors from
the People’s Republic of China:

You do find yourself wondering how the party members are dealing
with their kids desire to visit such a successful symbol of capitalism.
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WALKING ALONG MAIN STREET, WAITING FOR
THE PARADE |
WAITING FOR THE PARADE JUST OFF OF MAIN STREET |
As you can see, Festival of the Lion King is a popular show
at the park:
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|
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THE FOLKS WAITING TO GET INTO THE SHOW |
REAR VIEW OF THE FOLKS WAITING TO GET INTO THE SHOW |
I misunderstood the rules and thought I could not videotape
the show; and my digital camera doesn’t handle lighting situations like that well if the scene is constantly moving. So, there
were many missed opportunities here.
Jesse has a starring role as Simba. Here he is AFTER the show,
out of his costume, in front of their set:

And James has a starring role as Skar. Here he is DURING the
show in a blurry shot that for a variety of reasons seemed appropriate to me:

So, our Day 5 was devoted toDisney and it was a very good day.
We closed it out with the finest massage (a deep-tissue massage) either one of us has had the pleasure to experience. Simply
fantastic. And if I say so myself, this closing photo kinda sorta captures the magic of the day and the magic of Hong Kong
Disneyland:

Beautiful.
25 nov 05 @ 10:39 pm est
Post #2
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THE WAR IN IRAQ HAS ALREADY BEEN WON |
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Citing a Max Boot opinion piece in the L.A. Times, Cardinalpark at TigerHawk echoes my sentiment that we have already defied the critics in Iraq.
Our success is a question that is actually settled (no matter how much media mavens talk about “chaos” and “insurgents” and
other assorted nonsense):
I’ll repeat what
I’ve said many times. Iraq is already
“won.” The enemy leader and his heirs are in jail or dead. A new democratic government has been elected, a constitution voted
upon and ratified and new elections are upcoming. [Boot] also cites data which reveals dramatic economic and military progress
as well.
The American press
doesn’t create self fulfilling prophecies [in] Vietnam or Iraq. That is an immensely arrogant, even ridiculous, concept. [RattlerGator:
I’m not so sure about that, at all] Eason Jordon, Dan Rather, the CIA, the Russians and the French couldn’t ultimately
protect Saddam from his own fetid behavior meeting up with American strategic and moral interests. [RattlerGator:
That is only because of the fortitude of President Bush; another Republican or Democratic President would likely have blinked]
Iraq is well on its way to its post Saddam
existence. This new Iraq may, and may
not, align itself with US interests in the future. Its representative government alone will determine this. But it seems to
me that there is no significant opposing force which will derail majoritarian rule in Iraq. Could it devolve into a civil war, or Iraqi dissolution? Every day that passes,
this likelihood shrinks to vanishingly small, especially post constitution.
If the Murthas and
the Democrats were serious about caring for our troops, rather than their [obsession] with Bush, they would stop declaring
defeat as a way to bring the troops home; they would instead declare victory as a way to bring the troops home.
The truthfulness of the situation as stated above makes the
Democratic Party political maneuverings even more contemptible for me. The fact that the mainstream media is going along with
their charade is equally contemptible. American leadership, whether political, corporate or military, should have garnered
continued support on this effort but these punk ass surrender monkeys bitch and moan about two thousand American deaths.
Pathetic.
What the Democrats are obviously doing is disingenuous. They
KNOW that victory has been won. They also KNOW that the media is spinning a quagmire that is not coming. But, because nation-building
is a years-long process, you can certainly SPIN that process as a quagmire. So . . . , with a drawdown obviously having been
planned-for previously by the military and civilian command, the Democrats have cynically demanded essentially a cut-and-run
position and calling it something else, knowing good and well that it will never happen. Then, because victory has been won
and the drawdown obviously coming – when it in fact does naturally occur, they will try and spin it as the President bowing
to Democratic pressure to bring the troops home from the “chaos” that is Iraq.
And I know plenty of people silly enough to believe just that.
25 nov 05 @ 4:58 pm est
Post #1
Through sheer serendipity, I selected a travel package to Hong Kong that placed us
in a great location to check out the city. Tsim Sha Tsui, colloquially known as TST, was a perfect choice because it provides
a magnificent view across Victoria Harbor
to the primary Hong Kong skyline and is home to not only some fantastic museums but a dazzling
choice of shopping venues. This map, below, demonstrates the point. Our hotel sat atop the MTR Jordan Station shown at the
top of the map and a walk from there down to the waterfront was very manageable:

Hong Kong; I highly recommend it.
25 nov 05 @ 11:06 am est
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Post #1
|
WE HAVE ARRIVED BACK IN “THE WORLD” |
|
|
Absolutely no problems on the flights home. We were greeted
in Tallahassee
with a cloudless sky, 81 degrees, and all is right in the world.
Once I get over this surreal feeling arising from suddenly
being in Hong Kong and (just as suddenly) not being in Hong Kong, I’ll make some sense of
all that happened.
Until then, however, and in honor of my Hong Kong visit – check
out this story on a pre-eminent
Hong Kong blogger, Roland Soong, which was buried in The
Standard at the bottom of the online Metro page but originally published on November 14, 2005:
So who is this guy?
His name is Roland Soong. Born in Shanghai
in 1949, he and his family fled to Hong Kong four weeks after he was born. “I’m a little
bit older than the People’s Republic,” Soong said wryly.
He has a PhD in statistics, and when he isn’t blogging, Soong is
the chief technical officer for KMR, the world’s second-largest media research firm.
He has also freelanced as a translator and interpreter for the
US Drug Enforcement Agency’s investigations of Chinese triad operations in New York.
Soong’s blog, (EastSouthWestNorth), gave hints of where he’s been and reflects what Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org, a Beijing-based Web site on mainland media, calls Soong’s “catholic [which he spells
with a small `c’] and voracious reading habits.”
“East and west because I was maintaining two homes, one in New
York and one in Hong Kong,” said Soong. “South because my job involved a lot of work in Latin America
and I also lived in Australia. North for
North America because I spent 32 years in the United States before returning
to Hong Kong.”
Of course, it’s somehow fitting that I find out about this
guy just after I get back from Hong Kong. So it goes, but he does appear to be very interesting.
Maybe there will be a return trip to Hong Kong in the near future – with an opportunity to
dine with Mr. Soong.
Finally, how about another picture of three Rattlers in Hong Kong? We hit the promenade on the Kowloon side down by the museums
and watched the waterfront laser show just hours before flying out of Hong Kong. It was the
perfect ending to a great vacation and the slow walk back to the hotel was a good one.

I know one thing: Florida
A&M University should be
proud.
24 nov 05 @ 7:18 pm est
Monday, November 21, 2005
Post #2
|
THE PEAK, THE MARKET, AND THE MEAL |
|
|
I’m running out of time for posting so I’ll just post the material
from yesterday. Day three photos will be posted later. Day four was a bit of a photographic disaster; this was the day for
visiting Victoria’s Peak and great opportunities for some fantastic photos. I whipped
out my video camera and began to film, only to be notified that the battery was out of power. I was stunned. I had just charged
the thing the day before and it had more than 655 minutes of power. I still don’t know what happened. It gets worse. Just
as we were approaching the area where you load into the tram:

my digital camera notified me that it was out of juice. No!!!
So, no photos. Victoria's Peak was as beautiful as advertised
but I won’t be able to show you shots that would certainly have been of interest to me. To salvage some documentation, we
paid for the privilege of having one of the vendors snap our photo. This is the result, represented by my photo of the photo:

Then it was off to Mong Kok; I would certainly have been interested
in some shots there, as well as video, but that was not to be. So, I let my two compatriots go on about the business of shopping
without me. I’m not fond of that mess at all. Instead, I picked out a spot and began to people watch. Very interesting faces,
all quite different. The tight roadways, full of people and vehicles, were a sight to behold and I’m amazed no one got hit
or run over.
Soon, however, it was time to run back to the hotel and prepare
for our meal that night with a local woman who uses the Anglicized name of Doris. She works
at Disney with our friends James and Jesse and suggested a restaurant within walking distance of our hotel, the Wu Kong Shanghai
Restaurant:

Since we had a local pro with us, we heavily relied on her.
After some serious consultation, she did her thing:

However, in ordering, Doris had
to try and figure out what wifey and James might be able to eat. That wasn’t easy because they are finicky eaters and ain’t
shamed about it at all:

Doris and Jesse, however, were quite a pair because Jesse is
far more adventurous with his eating habits:

I can report that we had a great meal in a bit of dim sum fashion:
a fish dish that was very tasty, a chicken dish that was also good, some vegetarian dish that consisted of bean curd that
looked like noodles with beans and other veggies, we led off with some kind of dumpling that had pork within. We dipped that
dumpling in some kind of juice and, after prompting by Doris, jammed that baby in our mouth
and tore it up.
Very good. Also, I thought the beer was excellent. It was Chinese
but hell if I can remember the name right now. The conversation, of course, was fantastic. I had desperately wanted to hook
up with a local who could give us a little flavor of Hong Kong and Doris certainly did that. She is to be married in January. Best wishes for a happy and fruitful marriage, Doris.
Afterwards, we gathered to say goodbye:

Of course, they will be seeing us again today because we will
be visiting Hong Kong Disney. More on that later as our trip to Hong Kong winds down and we prepare
to head “back to the world” as we used to say in the Army.
21 nov 05 @ 6:29 pm est
Post #1
|
MICHAEL BARONE ON THE INTERNAL POLITICS
OF BUSH DERANGEMENT SYNDROME
AT TWO NEWSPAPERS OF RECORD |
|
|
Here is what Barone wrote on November 17:
Woodward’s reporting
on George W. Bush, as is evident in his books, is seen by many critics as pro-Bush. In my view, he has taken Bush at face
value, describing how the president makes decisions and taking Bush’s own words seriously. Which is, in my view, the way it should be. [RattlerGator: No, no, no. That
is COMPLETELY the way it should be in a serious world.] Pincus’s reporting, on the other hand, has relied heavily on critics
of the Bush policies, including, it appears, sources in the CIA. It is obvious that cadres in the CIA—the folks around Valerie Plame who sent Joseph Wilson on his mission to Niger, the folks who authorized the publication of Michael Scheuer’s “anonymous”
book—have been trying to discredit and undermine support for Bush’s policy of liberating Iraq. [RattlerGator: Included here should be the Brent Scowcroft crowd of
Republicans, including Colin Powell and Richard Armitage.] I suspect that Pincus takes the same view, though he could
argue that his reporting was justified regardless of his own views: He was just reporting what others, with some knowledge
of what they were talking about, were saying. I don’t want to say that Woodward is pro-Bush and Pincus anti-Bush. But I can
see how readers who don’t know these men as well as I do would so conclude.
One sees something
here that resembles the intra-newsroom internecine warfare at the New York Times between Judith Miller and those—the great
majority in that newsroom, it seems—who believe that her stories on reports that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
were illegitimate journalism. That seems to me quite wrong: She was reporting on what sources she had reason to believe were
legitimate said, and she was not obliged before she wrote those stories to seek information to discredit what in fact the
intelligence agencies of the United States and all serious countries believed. Miller’s reporting was trashed in a huge mea culpa story in the Times last year,
and she has now been forced to leave the paper. I am inclined to believe that she has been found guilty of writing stories
that furthered the goals of the Bush administration, which of course is something the Times cannot allow.
The Post’s position
is different. Downie did not order Woodward to write about his interviews with administration officials immediately after
Woodward informed him about them. But after Woodward provided sworn testimony to Fitzgerald, the paper promptly wrote up the
story, together with Woodward’s statement, and then allowed Kurtz to pursue the story further. It put the contradiction between
Woodward’s and Pincus’s recollections out there for all to see and interpret as they wish. Downie, who presumably made the
decisions about what the Post would print, has let the facts and the reporting speak for themselves and not imposed a politically
correct frame of reference. This is in line with what I expect from Downie, whom I have known for at least 20 years, and who
I believe seeks fairness and accuracy above all else. Mickey Kaus speculates that the official from whom Woodward heard that
Wilson’s wife worked in the CIA was Secretary of State Colin Powell. It’s obvious from more than one of Woodward’s books that
Powell is one of his best sources.
Although I certainly wasn’t the only one, I can document that
I suspected this led back to Colin Powell and Richard Armitage at least as far back as July 7, 2005:
Just curious (I
haven’t been following this at all) but would Colin Powell qualify as a senior White House official at the time of the supposed
leak? How about Richard Armitage?
It is that quote
of a supposed official “ratting” on other White House officials that makes me think of the State Department.
That’s good reporting by Michael Barone, breaking down how
the internal politics plays out in a newsroom while showing the Washington Post operating as a more honest player (relatively
speaking) than the New York Times.
That certainly squares with my take on things.
21 nov 05 @ 4:53 pm est
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Post #1
I survived the hike around Lamma Island in style; no real problems for me. Our biggest concern was wifey’s animal phobia – lots of dogs accompanying tourists
along the way. I don’t have time to post pictures – will try and get that tonight. The interesting (and stunning, really)
thing about Sunday in Hong Kong are the Filipino women out on the public areas . . . squatting, so to speak. They were everywhere; in the morning
and even late at night some of them were still around. Few men, lots of women. Another thing, we saw more Africans, Indonesians,
and Indians on Sunday (by far) than any other day.
Football: yes, I’ve noticed the college scores. What the hell
happened to the Canes? I knew I would meet a Gator fan over here and sure enough, we were walking through an area full of
bars and sitting outside this one joint are two white guys who see me in my FAMU Rattler jersey. So, one of them yells out,
“FAMU!” and after acknowledging him, he identified himself as a Gator and his friend as a Nole.
Gators and Noles getting along in Hong Kong
– ain’t life grand?
I thought, given the plentiful places that have vegetarian
food here, that my wife would do well with the food. Wrong. Her finicky ways simply won’t allow for that, so we aren’t having
as many “food” experiences as I would like.
And finally, politics: I’ve read with interest the whole Murtha
mess. For years I heard people claim that our politicians and media screwed the military in Viet Nam and I’m beginning to completely believe them.
Completely.
Believe.
Them.
20 nov 05 @ 10:17 pm est
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Post #2
|
DAY ONE IN HONG KONG: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL
DAY TWO IN HONG KONG: BIG BUDDHA |
|
|
The first great adventure for us on our stay was trying to
find a taxi to take us to the Cirque du Soleil show. Our local friend said he had never had such a severe problem getting
a taxi and reasoned that the problem was related to him living far away in the New
Territories – a good fare. We had many taxis turn us down.
But, we did finally get a guy to bring us over and we made
the venue and were seated at 8:00
p.m. sharp, just as the show was beginning.
The review? It was an enjoyable show but not spectacular. My wife said this was likely because it is performed under the big
top, and not within a permanent structure. Afterwards, we visited “SoHo” and a spot called the “Flying
Pan” where we were happy to be able to get an American-style breakfast at midnight.
The grits weren’t bad and the omelet was good. That set us up for the next adventure: Big Buddha.
First, we have to figure out the subway system which, luckily,
has a station directly beneath our hotel. After some initial confusion, we got it done and soon were down at the Central Pier
area.
It’s an interesting scene with construction EVERYWHERE, but
some places do seems a bit serene, like Statue Park:

But it’s impossible to forget that you are in skyscraper city:

Finding the pier we needed was no easy chore. Soon enough,
though, we were on board a big ferry on very choppy waters. Better vessels passed our view:

At Mui Wo, we docked and got into line for the bus up to our
destination:

The ride up was reputed to be “thrilling,” but that wasn’t
quite true. It was, however, very interesting. To a black man, at least this black man, seeing some of the places where the
Filipinos obviously live was curiously interesting. It was also exciting to near the top and see the back of Buddha while
still some distance away from the location. No other vista had provided any view of the symbol at all.
Once there, wifey (a terrific walker) was ready to go.

At this point yours truly, Fat Daddy, was oblivious to the
challenge awaiting him, still interested in getting some shots and properly framing them, etc. Here is a structure down at
the base prior to your walk up:

Then, and only then, did I begin to understand the upcoming
challenge. This was a magnificent view – and a sobering one:

At this point, there was nothing left to do but suck it up
and get on with things. Wifey probably was waiting to give me hell – or maybe, after getting halfway up and noticing the burn
in her own legs, she just wanted to finish the chore, just like me. Reportedly, there are 268 steps to the top and I gare-ron-tee
there are at least that many:

I’m happy to report that we both survived the walk up in flying
colors. And yes, I am vain enough to have a Florida Gator jersey with a RattlerGator script on the front and back . . . and
wear it to see Big Buddha:

It was a beautiful sight, with a very nice breeze and a commanding
view of the landscape beyond:

There was an equally commanding view of the landscape below,
around the monastery:

Finally, as we were preparing to descend, I got this imposing
side view of the Buddha:

For more information, this Big Buddha description
is from Wikipedia:
The Tian Tan Buddha (天壇大佛) is a large bronze statue of the Buddha, located at Ngong Ping, Lantau Island, in Hong Kong. Also known as the Giant Buddha, it is the world's tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha. The statue is located near the Po Lin Monastery. It symbolizes the harmonious relationship between man and nature, people and religion. It is a major center of Buddhism in Hong Kong, and
is also a popular sightseeing attraction.
It was a good day, we slept our behinds off when we got back
to the hotel, and around midnight ventured back out into the city around our hotel. The streets were
absolutely packed.
Count me impressed. I’ll have more pictures later if our hike
today doesn’t kill me.
19 nov 05 @ 8:43 pm est
Post #1
|
WAY TO GO, BASKETBALL GATORS!!! |
|
|
The victim this time? Syracuse, 75-70.
I very much wanted to watch this game yesterday but my wife
insisted that we keep to the itinerary – Big Buddha.
I have no idea if I could have even found the game but I’m
pretty sure I could have.
19 nov 05 @ 7:06 pm est
Friday, November 18, 2005
Post #2
|
SOME BASIC SHOTS FROM
OUR FLIGHTS AND OUR HOTEL |
|
|
Wow.
A 32-hour ordeal is over and now we’ve got to recover and go
make some memories. So, how about a few generic photos to memorialize our plane rides?
We made our flight arrangements through Travelocity, flying via Delta and Korean Air. Neither my wife nor I had flown through John F. Kennedy International before and were surprised by how drab it seemed.
We had to walk from our terminal to (what I suppose is) the International terminal. It was more modern and here are a series
of shots from there showing the artwork that dominates the terminal. First, from the lower level:

This next shot is basically the same piece viewed from above:

This final piece is the artwork from the second level, looking
at the upper reaches of the design:

Next is a shot taken from the plane as we fly over Korea; I don’t think of hills when I think of Korea but that was the dominant look of the terrain below:

This is a shot of wifey inside the Seoul Airport (Incheon International) wondering when the hell will these flights
be done:

Since we arrived at night, shots of Hong Kong will come later but here is a representative shot of the view outside our bhotel room window:

And this is a view (looking left) from the elevator stairwell
at the Prudential Hotel in the Tsim Sha Tsui section of Kowloon Province, just across the bridge from center city Hong Kong:

This view is from the same location, looking right:

As you can tell, VERY URBAN. Construction is everywhere. I
can hear it right now, as a matter of fact (not overbearing – just present, if you know what I mean). Finally, my big brother
just informed me via e-mail that the Gator basketball team has defeated Wake Forest, 77-72. Hell yeah, this trip is off to a very good start.
18 nov 05 @ 12:33 am est
Post #1
|
WE HAVE ARRIVED IN HONG KONG |
|
|
This is a test post just to make sure I can in fact post to
the site. We touched down somewhere around 10:30 p.m. local time after basically
being up for a solid 32 hours, got to bed somewhere around 12:30 a.m. I slept
for nine straight hours and I don’t think I’ve ever done that as an adult. I used to pride myself on being A.O.K. with only
four hours of sleep. Those days are long gone.
They are 13 hours ahead of east coast time but I don’t think
I’m going to have a jet lag problem. If all goes well, we will see a fantastic Cirque du Soleil show tonight.
If all goes well, I’ll have some basic pictures up soon. It’s
Thursday, November 17 at home but Friday, November 18 around 12:45 here
[having some problems; so, technically, is Friday at home now, too -- 12:05 a.m. if this goes through].
Later, gators.
18 nov 05 @ 12:06 am est
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Post #1
|
ANOTHER FACE OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER |
|
|
Michael Yon seemingly never fails to deliver; today, a great
post on a former Argentine who is now a new American and a proud Soldier in the biggest, baddest, boldest, finest fighting
force on the planet -- Walt Gaya:

Hooo-ahhhhh, Walt Gaya. Welcome to the family.
15 nov 05 @ 8:37 am est
Monday, November 14, 2005
Post #1
Kudos to Peter Schramm at No Left
Turns for tossing out this nugget while discussing Peter Drucker:
Matt Peterson reminded
me of this interview that me, [Larry] Arnn, and [Ken] Masugi
conducted with Drucker back in 1984. It’s pretty good.
That led me, of course, to the link. I immediately recognized
that it would be a good read. The clincher was when, early on, the discussion moved to Norman Angell and whether Drucker was
familiar with him. It turned out that he was quite
familiar with him:
He was an English Quaker, and he had more to
do with the coming of the Great War than any other single individual because he wrote the book called The Great Delusion
in which he proved beautifully that modern war had become impossible because three months after the outbreak of modern war,
with the cost of modern armament every government would be bankrupt and would stop fighting. And you have no idea how much
this undermined the resistance to war. There is in the German documents before 1914 the famous dispatch from the German Ambassador
in London who was a very strong dove in which he more or less said to his government, “If you keep on in this line of action,
this will increase the danger of war,” and the Emperor wrote in the margin: “Hasn’t the fool read Norman Angell?”
Norman
Angell was absolutely right; by Christmas 1914 every government was bankrupt, and not one stopped—partly because, to the great
surprise of those pre-1914 statesmen, the First World War was an incredibly popular war. You know, that’s the end of socialism basically. The great appeal of socialism in the pre-1914 world was that the proletarian masses would rise up
against war in a general strike—instead of which they could not enlist fast enough. And why? Because maybe after one hundred
years of a society split by class war into two nations, suddenly the war offered an integration, so they streamed to the colors,
and they couldn’t enlist fast enough. And those socialist leaders who tried to stay with the announced pre-war program, which
was a general strike and refusal to vote for war credits, were ostracized by their own people. No civilian government could
have stopped the war in 1914 because its own working class wouldn’t have let it. Now that is not economics.
And so, long ago, I saw economics as an extremely
important way of looking at things. But I don’t accept the idea that it is a science, that it is mathematical, that it is
rigorous, and that it is autonomous. In American economics today, there is no basic economic theory—no theory of price, no
theory of value, no theory of change, no theory of the correlation of technology and economics, no theory of work—all the
basic problems of economics are excluded because they are not capable of being quantified. That’s much earlier, that’s 1920.
Economics is the last discipline in which logical positivism [the doctrine that the only truths are those affirmed by the
methods of natural science] still holds sway, and that’s why you can predict with certainty that this is the last generation
of modern economics. Because in everything else, logical positivism is gone. And you know I was born into it. Logical positivism
is the result of the marriage of America and Vienna. Do I have
to explain that now?
Yes, of course he would. I didn’t (and don’t) have time to
read on but this was a great way to start the day. A fascinating introduction to someone I’ve never heard of who in turn is
discussing a figure from history I’ve never heard of.
I’ll have more on the subject of Drucker within the next few
weeks.
14 nov 05 @ 8:15 am est
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Post #1
|
DAMN YOU, STEVE SPURRIER! |
|
|
Congratulations to the Carolina Gamecocks, 30-22 victors in a game they earned playing a style folks tried to get Steve to adopt in the NFL at the outset but he wouldn’t.
So, that NFL experience did teach him something. Here is what I wrote immediately
after the game. The context for the discussion was could you, as a Gator, do what Steve did – agree to come back into the
division and coach against not only the school that put you on a platform to win a Heisman Trophy, but gave you a national
championship:
I was conflicted when he made his decision and
I still am.
I feel weird, weird, weird.
Many people can rationalize it all they want, but the bottom line is
this: it (taking the Carolina
job) simply does not speak well of him as a Gator.
It does speak well of him as a University
of Florida graduate.
Can you acknowledge the difference? I don't think it's just semantics. There are
many coaches (probably the overwhelming majority of them) who couldn't do it either, if the circumstances were similar.
However,
Steve is Steve. He's an absolutely unique mickey-fickey and got over on us today. I'm not sure he outcoached our new guy but
his team sure as hell executed magnificently and that is the greatest tribute to him. I think he gave a nod to his NFL experience
today and it served him well.
I'm happy for him and I'm happy for Carolina. I've kinda sorta
followed that school since the late '70s -- they deserve some success under Spurrier.
I'll give them this year (ain't
that nice of me, seeing as how they've already taken it) -- but it was a weird game, and it should have been a weird game.
No other kind of game would have been fitting. Right?
I also come out of this game feeling good about Urban Meyer.
I'm hoping he's taking notes and not overreacting. He ran into a perfect storm this year vis-à-vis our conference away games
with ascendant programs. He's definitely the right man. That was affirmed for me after watching Markus Manson on SunSports
after the game. In fact, all of the guys were impressive to me. A record of five wins and three losses is probably about right,
given the circumstances.
Beat Florida State and I will be satisfied in year one with wins over State, the Vols and the Dawgs.
Now I gotta go have some drinks.
Come morning I may be mad as hell all over again.
Well, morning has come. Auburn has indeed defeated Georgia, 31-30, and all Gators now know that we would have been in the championship game if not for the loss to Carolina.
But I’m not mad as hell. My thoughts this morning:
Urban Meyer ran into the perfect storm this
football season; that means we did, too. And it was a transition year for us. Nuff said, in my book.
He showed flexibility
one game [Georgia] too late [should have been the LSU game]. Our entire season is explained by the LSU game. I hope people realize that.
A road game, against a top
five team, that we should have won. Had those away games against top third teams in the conference been home games, we're
(likely) in the championship game. Instead, reality is what it is and we missed the SECCG yet again.
But our coach
has established his protocols. His offense now has greater diversity. He's had one hell of a learning year and I'm betting
that he's going to put it to good use.
I can live with that. Even with the absolutely brutal schedule we're going to
have next year. I do think, however, he's going to have to ease up a bit with his in-week practices and all the heavy hitting.
Time to move on and prepare for the Seminoles.
13 nov 05 @ 5:30 am est
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Post #1
|
KUDOS TO RICHARD SAMUELSON |
|
|
I’ve often wondered to myself about what is truly animating
the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party in their complete capitulation to Bush Derangement Syndrome and Instapundit reader Richard
Samuelson succinctly nails it:
The response to
your posts is interesting. One question that might be interesting to ask. To what degree to your critics believe that patriotism
is a good thing? To what degree do they believe it is proper to support one's own country ahead of others?
How to criticize
one's country responsibly is a very interesting question, particularly with regard to an ongoing war. On the one hand, it
is one's duty as a citizen to support one's country when it is engaged in a war. Even if one opposed the war at the start,
it is one's job in a democratic republic to show faith in one's fellow-citizens, and give them the benefit of the doubt on
the rightness of the decision. On the other hand, a good citizen has a responsibility to criticize the government when he
finds it to be misguided.
I wonder if the
passion behind the rhetoric here is existential. If this war is justified, it raises doubts about whether the world will ever
become war-free. For that reason, it raises fundamental questions about the possibility of true progress in any grand sense.
If this war is justified, it might mean that patriotism will always remain a virtue in some circumstances, because the world
will always, in some ways, be divided between us and others. It might be, in short, an attack upon the implicit universalism
of so much modern ideology. Giving that up might be too high a price to pay. Hence it's easier to dismiss the war as fundamentally
corrupt from the start.
Voila! The contemptible unseriousness is explained. From that
very same e-mail, these questions bear repeating, and asking:
[1] To what degree do you believe patriotism is a good thing?
[2] To what degree to do you believe it is proper to support
one’s country ahead of others?
Those two queries should be asked of every politician running
for the federal House, Senate, and Presidency.
12 nov 05 @ 7:55 am est
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Post #1
From the Mail & Guardian in South Africa:
Ensuring that justice
delayed is not justice denied David Gicheru is a former guerrilla who fought British colonial forces from
hideouts in the dense forests of central Kenya
ahead of independence in 1963. As much as the prospect of a poor harvest gnaws at him, so do memories of his struggle against
the British -- and Kenya’s subsequent
treatment of those who liberated the country from colonialism.
Still no prime minister
for Ivorians Côte d’Ivoire
has been left lingering in a constitutional twilight zone for a second successive week, waiting for continental leaders to
make the next vital move. Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo have to attend a special forum in Yamoussoukro to help
decide on a new prime minister to lead the country to elections.
Footballer vs granny On the potholed and bullet-scarred streets of Liberia, a former world footballer-of-the-year is trying to beat a 66-year-old
politician at her own game. Next Tuesday, ex-Chelsea and AC Milan player, high-school drop-out George Weah will go head-to-head
with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a grandmother with a Harvard degree, in the presidential run-off in this war-ravaged West African
country.
Nigeria: 10 years after
Ken Saro-Wiwa Ten years after the world watched in horror as Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other
Ogoni activists were executed by the Nigerian government on trumped-up charges the Ogoni people living in the oil-rich Niger
Delta are little closer to justice. Nigeria may be Africa’s
biggest producer of crude but in Ogoniland oil from rusting pipelines contaminates farmland and police continue to attack
residents.
Refugee tragedy unfolds
amid Cairo Eid celebrations As Muslims held a mass prayer at Cairo’s
Mustafa Mahmud mosque, the personal tragedies of Sudanese refugees continued to unfold a few metres away, screened off from
the Eid al-Fitr festival like an eyesore. For the rituals marking the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, the authorities
had temporarily erected coloured screens to hide the chaotic makeshift camp from the mosque.
Spies target Zanu-PF bigwig Zimbabwe’s intelligence agents have bugged the phones of Rural
Housing Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, and have been conducting surveillance on his two Harare
homes on the instruction of President Robert Mugabe. A senior Central Intelligence Organisation operative told the Mail
& Guardian that Mugabe feared his former protégé was planning to defect from Zanu-PF, taking with him disillusioned
sections of the ruling party.
Mbeki’s MDC migraine Infighting over the Senate elections in Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for
Democratic Change could scupper President Thabo Mbeki’s plans to broker multi-party talks with the ruling Zanu-PF. At a meeting
at the Union Buildings recently Mbeki impressed on the MDC top brass that a fragmented party would weaken his political leverage
over President Robert Mugabe.
Land for loyalty? Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has allocated thousands of title deeds for land
in a move his opponents say is an attempt to “bribe” voters to support a controversial draft constitution in a November 21
referendum. Environmentalists charge that the “illegal dishing out of land” spells “ecological disaster” for a country lauded
internationally for its stringent legislation to protect wildlife.
Reporting on Aids orphans
a balancing act The plight of Aids orphans in Swaziland,
currently labouring under the world’s highest HIV prevalence rate, is an issue that demands coverage. Journalists often find
themselves in a quandary concerning how best to tackle it, however. “A child could be scarred for life by something that is
written about him or her,” says Sara Page, assistant director of the Southern African Aids Information Dissemination Service.
Changing appearances in
Malawi -- at a price Malawians have found a solution to the problems posed by lack of cleavage,
or an insubstantial derriere. Inspired by television programmes on extreme makeovers, which beam across the continent via
satellite television, both men and women are taking action to change their appearance.
Play for the presidency Diplomats and civil society activists fear the second round of voting in Liberia’s first elections since the end of the civil war will
spark a flurry of behind-the-scenes deal-making that could compromise the new government. The National Electoral Commission
announced that former football star George Weah and ex-World Bank official Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf will face off for the presidency
on November 8.
Infighting puts party
at risk Academics, economists, lawyers and the Harare-based ambassadors of Britain and the United States
have been frantically shuttling between rival factions in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the past
week. Political scientist Brian Raftopolous, economics consultant Eric Bloch and lawyer Innocent Chagonda have attempted to
mediate tensions over the November 26 Senate elections.
Too many illegal abortions,
too little contraception Dubbed the “babies in bags” scandal, the discovery of 15 foetuses last year
near a river in Nairobi horrified Kenya
-- and drew government assurances that illegal abortions would be brought to a halt. A pregnancy can only be terminated in
the East African country if it puts a woman’s life in danger.
MDC’s unedifying war over
elections Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, is fighting
a civil war over whether to participate in elections for an upper house of Parliament next month. The battle is being fought
in full public view as newspapers carry daily reports of party leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s increasingly desperate attempts
to block candidates from filing nomination papers.
Escaping Africa’s longest
civil war The Nile has witnessed more centuries of human eccentricity than any of the
world’s great rivers, but what it is now experiencing must rank high in its annals of misery. Hundreds of people laden with
bags, bedding and bicycles wait disconsolately on wharves. Under the unremitting sun, anxious passengers crowd the flat decks
of rickety barges meant only for cargo.
Transport problems cripple
SADC development On paper, regional integration in Southern Africa
has made advances -- with countries being knit together by protocols and agreements of every stripe. It’s a pity there isn’t
a similarly comprehensive network of roads and railways, say transport analysts -- who point out that true regional integration
will remain a pipe dream if goods cannot move efficiently between Southern African states.
Malawi’s top dog under
fire The Malawi Council of Churches has threatened to enter the country’s National
Assembly draped in gowns to protest against opposition moves to impeach President Bingu wa Mutharika and to press politicians
to focus on “problems besetting the people”. It is estimated that up to 4,2-million Malawi citizens, of a population of 12-million, face serious food shortages.
‘Everything could be eaten
by the volcano again’ Nicolas Muhamiriza (47) was once the owner of a thriving bottling plant. Now
he’s among thousands in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern city of Goma
who struggle to pay rent for wooden shacks, their livelihoods destroyed nearly four years ago when lava submerged schools,
hospitals and houses.
Sudan starting to slip
again Darfur seems hell-bent on regaining its appellation
earned two years ago as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Three African Union peacekeepers and two contractors attached
to the force were killed, recently -- the first fatalities for the 6 600 strong continental force in the troubled west of
Sudan.
Government forces the
Basarwa out Members of the Basarwa, an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers, submitted an
urgent application in court on Wednesday to bar the Botswana
government from seizing their livestock and preventing their people from entering the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
The fascinating continent so often relegated to the status
of a single country never fails to amaze, for good and ill.
10 nov 05 @ 10:30 am est
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Post #1
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JUST ONE OF THE THINGS I
LOVE ABOUT THE INTERNET |
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|
This feeling of, “man, I love the internet” occurred to me
while reading a thread on Roger Simon’s site about the Decline of Hollywood:
Lately a number
of people, including Brian Anderson in City
Journal, have noticed that Hollywood is in decline. ‘Twas ever thus, I’m afraid. I can remember
many saying the same thing when I started writing movies in the early seventies. Indeed, if you look at what was produced
in 1939, for example, pretty much everything
after that pales in comparison.
Still, Mr. Anderson
has a point. Movies are in many ways worse than ever and have the box office numbers to prove it. As he writes:
Film attendance is down a wrenching 12 percent from last year, and a May USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll found that nearly
half of American adults go to movies less often than they did in 2000. Some pundits have blamed the rising price of tickets,
but in constant dollars a ticket costs less than it did 25 years ago. Others believe that it’s all those DVDs that people
are buying-except that DVD sales are slumping, too.
Anderson (quoting the often-moralistic Michael Medved) blames
the leftism of Hollywood stars and films for this. Well, maybe. But leftism is certainly
not new to Hollywood and its stars. In the glory days, Cagney
and Bogart were well known for their left-wing politics and it certainly didn’t stop audiences from seeing them. The likes
of Tim Robbins and Sean Penn, no matter what their views, are not even on the same planet when it comes to charisma and interest
and never could be, no matter what they produced.
No, the problems
for Hollywood are deeper than politics and the production of more movies like Spiderman II (a good programmer which Anderson
makes sound like the second-coming of Lawrence of Arabia) is not about to
solve them.
Three obvious reasons for this situation were given:
1. The desertion
of the core audience of teenage boys for computer games, which, I am told (I’m too stupid to play them myself), are often
more original than today’s movies.
2. The continued
corporate take-over of Hollywood. It has been going on now
for decades and has reached a tipping point. It used to be said that movies were the blending of art and commerce with commerce
finally taking precedence. Now, art isn’t even mentioned. Movie studios in the seventies were fun; now they’re like industrial
parks making industrial product.
3. The rise of the
internet and other alternative forms of entertainment. This is probably the most significant. There’s just plain too much
competition for business as usual in Hollywood. If I were
twenty and starting out in film today, I wouldn’t even think about Hollywood.
I’d go straight to the internet and start from there.
This post by Roger set the table for some very interesting
discussion and highlighted for me what I love about the internet – being able to sit in on a good conversation of your own
choosing, without having to be a participant
while the option to participate is available.
Reader Ed Driscoll (at least I think he’s one and the same as the linked-to party) responded to a comment in the thread and offered a contribution:
Dale Gribble wrote
above:
There are no male
stars who are men. It’s a bunch of 5’5” ,45 year old(non threatening) adolescents. William Holden wouldn’t go huntin’ or drinkin’
with any of them.
Frederica Mathewes-Green
wrote a tremendous essay on that very subject recently. It’s well worth a read.
Briefly, here’s an excerpt from her piece:
In a review in the
Village Voice of the film The Aviator, Michael Atkinson dubbed our current crop of childish male actors “toddler-men.”
“The conscious contrast between baby-faced, teen-voiced toddler-men movie actors and the golden age’s grownups is unavoidable,”
he wrote. “Though DiCaprio is the same age here as Hughes was in 1934, he may not be convincing as a thirty-year-old until
he’s fifty.” Nobody has that old-style confident authority any more. We’ve forgotten how to act like grownups.
Maybe “forgotten”
isn’t the right word, for the Baby Boomers fought adulthood every step of the way. About the time we should have been taking
on grownup responsibilities we made a fetish of resisting the Establishment. We turned blue jeans and t-shirts into the generational
uniform. We stopped remembering the names of world political leaders and started remembering the names of movie stars’ ex-boyfriends.
We stopped participating in fraternal service organizations and started playing video games. We Boomers identified so strongly
with being “the younger generation” that now, paunchy and gray, we’re bewildered. We have no idea how to be the older generation.
We’ll just have to go on being a cranky, creaky appendix to the younger one.
Good stuff. Later in the thread on Roger Simon’s site, someone
named Lindenen wrote:
Roger, [you wrote:] “Now,
art isn’t even mentioned. Movie studios in the seventies were fun; now they’re like industrial parks making industrial product.”
During Hollywood’s Golden Age, it was run exactly like an industrial factory,
and they turned out fantastic product. Sure, some of it was awful (some of it will always be awful) but some of it is the
greatest ever. Also, I read recently (but for the life of me cannot remember where) that the largest drop in attendance came
when Hollywood finally jettisoned the Hays Code in the late
60s/70s. Yeah, that much vilified thing, without it we wouldn’t have many great films, but it also caused a large number of
people to turn away and never return. They shouldn’t talk about art at all. They should just make the best film they can.
I’ve been reading
recently some books on John Ford and they discuss how Westerns were their meat and potatoes films back then. The westerns
cost very little to make, could be made in large numbers and quickly, and they made buckets of money at the box office. The
tentpole films Hollywood relies on nowadays cost too much,
are too few in number and fail all too easily. They need to figure out how to make something cheaply that grosses large amounts
of money.
I can’t even imagine
a director today having the ability of a John Ford to direct a film a year for 20+ years. It’s now treated like a ming vase
and they make one once every six years. While a great artist, Terrence Malick is probably the worst offender.
I’m absolutely convinced
that ticket costs are driving people away as well. There was an article about some study in the NYTimes a while ago that seemed
to blame video games and tv, but in the middle of the article it mentioned that large percentages of young men weren’t attending
because of ticket prices. No one seemed to want to talk about that.
“The decline
in Hollywood mirrors the decline in the quality of American
culture in general. The last golden era of Hollywood was the
seventies, which also reflect the fact that American life in that time so much cooler in almost every way.”
That’s the first
time I’ve heard anyone declare the 70s “cool” :)
To which, Driscoll added this:
[Lindenen wrote],
“I read recently
(but for the life of me cannot remember where) that the largest drop in attendance came when Hollywood finally jettisoned the Hays Code in the late 60s/70s.”
That was probably
from this piece by Michael Medved in the Wall Street
Journal last year:
Despite his unquestioned eloquence, elegance and charm, Mr. Valenti presided over history’s most disastrous
decline in the audience for feature films. In 1965, the year before he left the Johnson administration to assume his plush
position as chief mouthpiece for the entertainment industry, 44 million Americans went out to the movies every week. A mere
four years later, that number had collapsed to 17.5 million.
In other words,
some potent, puzzling force drove more than half of the nation’s film fans to break the habit of movie going. You ended your
post with, “That’s the first time I’ve heard anyone declare the 70s ‘cool’”.
Hearing it described
above that way reminded me of the New York radical chic art crowd, who recently pined for
the return of Manhattan’s 1970’s high crime Death Wish/Taxi Driver
era.
Yeah, I love that kind of stuff.
Three cheers for the internet – hip hip, hooray! Hip hip, hooray!
Hip hip, hooray!
9 nov 05 @ 9:38 am est
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Post #5
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INTERESTING HONG KONG BLOGGER |
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|
I’ve found an interesting, artsy, Hong
Kong blogger. Her site is called Glutter and her name is Yan Sham-Shackleton. Check out her bio page. She’s probably quite liberal but I do hope I get a chance to hook up with her during my week in Hong
Kong. Here, by the way, are some links specific to her hometown from her website:
Hong Kong
Quick Links
Yes, my week in Hong Kong
is going to very, very interesting.
8 nov 05 @ 8:31 am est
Post #4
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SPECIAL SESSION FOR THE FLORIDA LEGISLATURE |
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|
Here are the basics from
Tallahassee Democrat:
Gov. Jeb Bush ordered
a special legislative session Friday to tackle two festering concerns: implementing slots rules for casinos in Broward County and
reforms to cut Medicaid costs.
Bush's call for
the session the week of Dec. 5 also resolves a backroom dispute between House and Senate leaders in recent weeks over what
issues merited special attention. Senate leaders wanted to revisit lobbyist ethics reforms, while House Speaker Allan Bense
and his captains wanted to press for further tort-reform measures.
Senate President
Tom Lee said neither chamber had reached agreement and that the governor couldn't wait any longer.
"If the Legislature
were to come to some arrangement, (the call) would have to be somewhat broader than that," Lee said
Here is a link to the
proclamation from the Governor. Clearly, Jeb is still charging hard here:
At a time when previous
two-term Florida governors were easing into lame-duck status with modest legislative agendas, Bush is preparing one final,
sweeping package of tax, education and Medicaid spending proposals for coming months.
Bush last week called lawmakers
into special session Dec. 5-9 to implement his Medicaid plan and create rules for voter-approved slot-machine operations at
Broward County
pari-mutuel facilities.
The governor's renewed ambition comes despite wholesale office turnover, as members of his
team quietly angle into new jobs -- a sure sign of an administration in descent.
Former Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood's
resignation last week as secretary of state made her the sixth high-ranking official to exit in recent months.
Administration in descent? That’s a curious reportorial sentence.
It’s also a sure sign that an administration interested in continuing Republican governance in Florida is getting some new blood some valuable experience. Isn’t that obvious? So why write
administration in descent?
Very, very curious writing.
8 nov 05 @ 7:34 am est
Post #3
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THE SUNSHINE IS SLOWLY BUT SURELY COMING
TO THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY |
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|
Apologies, Dafydd, but I’m reproducing your fantastic post in full because the subject is just that fascinating to me:
I wonder if Deborah Orin reads Big Lizards? Somehow I doubt
it... though it’s a nice thought to contemplate. In any event, I must rise to correct one small point in her otherwise excellent
New York Post column on the Joseph Wilson scam, flagged by my favorite blog, Power Line. Actually, though it’s a small point in her column, easily corrected, it’s a monumental, colossal point in the history
of the Iraq war and aftermath.
The column lays out, with perfect clarity, the case that far
from wanting to keep the lid on Joe Wilson, the CIA actually encouraged his repeated lies about his trip and what he found
(and “didn’t find”), even though it knew this would jeopardize the career of his CIA employed wife, Valerie Plame
Wilson. In the course of the column, Ms. Orin found occasion to wonder why they would be so complicit in Wilson’s attacks on the president; she concluded, with admirable straigtforwardness rare in the MSM,
that the CIA was in full CYA mode by the time Wilson went
public in mid-2003:
But then, all this came at a time when
the CIA division where Wilson’s wife worked had an intense
need to cover its rear: Remember — they were the ones who (along with every other intel agency in the world) had insisted
that Saddam had WMDs — but no WMDs were being found.
The irony of this could choke a horse. The reason that “no WMDs were being found” is that the Iraq Survey Group, a creature of the
CIA as well as the Pentagon and the IAEA, was headed at that time by David Kay; and Kay had made a conscious decison not to
count as WMD any item that had a dual civilian use. Read how carefully Kay parsed his words when he resigned
in January 2004 (via Wikipedia):
I believe that the effort that has been
directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed,
militarized chemical weapons there.
Note that this would elegantly rule out any chemical weapon
that was not “deployed” -- that is, rockets made to accept chemical payloads but which were currently empty, even if they
were found twenty-five feet away from 55-gallon drums of cyclosarin-based “pesticides” in a camouflaged ammunition
bunker. This is akin to cops searching a convicted felon’s home and refusing to arrest because all the guns they found were
unloaded, thus not “deployed” and “militarized.”
So if the CIA was in the doghouse, as clearly it was, its embarassment
was entirely of its own making... both for predicting (one can only presume) that we would find warehouses of carefully labeled
WMD, all loaded up and ready to fire -- and then after the war, for allowing David Kay to construct a definition of WMD so
crabbed and narrow that virtually nothing would qualify except the cartoonish scenario above.
That in turn causes me to wonder whether there were some in
the CIA so anti-Iraq War, so anti-President-Bush, that they were willing to sacrifice even the good name of the Company itself,
so painstakingly rebuilt from the nadir of the Carter era, if only that would hurt President Bush’s reelection chances. If
so, all we would have shown (alas) is that the liberal rot was no less advanced within the CIA than within the State Department,
academe, and the mainstream media.
Simply amazing. You game the system, you feed the opposition
politicians, then you play victim – confident in the assurance that your media allies will keep you firmly in that role.
All while there’s a war going on and Americans are fighting
in the field.
8 nov 05 @ 7:33 am est
Post #2
Paul Mirengoff at Power Line, discussing the ongoing conflagration in France (just take a look at ¡No Pasaran! for a decent, and running, overview), noted the all-too-obvious left wing dilemma when it comes to addressing Muslims
and their “legitimate” aspirations:
In a certain kind of liberal universe, French
Muslim rioters are victims who want nothing more than to enjoy the bourgeoise pleasures of secular France. Iraqi Muslims, by contrast, have little yearning for freedom, self-government,
and prosperity, preferring civil war, a Saddam-style strong man, and/or a theocracy. They are victims of U.S. aggression, which denies them these things, at least
temporarily. To me, however, it seems plausible that Iraqis Muslims will find satisfaction in their own democratic state before
European Muslims will find satisfaction in a western-style democracy.
Strange, in a very sick and paternalistically racial kind of
way. Many of them HAVE to recognize this, they simply must already recognize it.
8 nov 05 @ 6:25 am est
Post #1
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ONE MORE NOTE ON STILL
CELEBRATING THE GEORGIA WIN |
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|
First, here’s Tony Barnhart in the Atlanta
paper, speaking (or writing, that is) the truth:
Steve Spurrier did
a lot of impressive things during his 12 years as the head coach at Florida.
He won 122 games,
an average of 10 per year. Not bad considering that when he took the job, Florida
had NEVER won 10 games in a season.
Until he got there,
Florida had never won an SEC championship. He won six.
He won a national
championship (1996) and became the single most dominant SEC coach of his era.
Still, all of that
pales in comparison to what Spurrier did to the psychology of the [Florida- Georgia] game.
Florida just beat Georgia
for the 14th time in 16 years. Think about that. Nobody should beat a top drawer SEC team 14 out of 16 years. But that is
what Florida has done. And they won last Saturday’s game,
I believe, because of the mindset created by Spurrier.
It was and is Spurrier’s greatest gift to his alma mater. Because
it keeps on giving, and giving, and giving! And not just on the football field. In response to Barnhart’s statement, GidgetJo
just couldn’t help herself and posted this beauty:
First of all I’d
like to say that I agree with everyone’s comments as a whole, however, I’m not so sure I do with Northwest
Dawg. Sure you ask some good questions but when it comes to saying that Richt is satisfied with (and even more
outrageous, considers it as good as a TD!) just a field goal(s) is preposterous. Richt has said himself that they need to
do more than just kick field goals and that it’s unsatisfactory. Yet, the fact that the Dawgs haven’t done so well in the
Red Zone is still well known. The playcalls definitely weren’t up to par for the FL/GA game either, which Richt did say he
was going to work on calling for plays that were better suited for JT3. I’m a diehard GA fan and it gets worse every year,
which also expands my interest in having knowledge about the team, the past, and the entire SEC in general. Yes, I haven’t
been a diehard fan my entire life, but I definitely am a true GA fan because I loved them even before we were a winning team.
Mark Richt is a Godsend! I told everyone, just give him a couple years to get really comfortable with the UGA program and
the Dawgs will be winning more games. Then what happened? It didn’t even take Richt that long!
As far as the column
itself, I couldn’t have said it better! Yet another thing I’ve always said is that “UGA is just intimidated by UF!” It’s not
that they are a better team per say, it’s just that UGA is so intimidated & want to win SO bad that their psychology of
the game and playing it just gets in the way. I even said it last year and they won, yet I didn’t this year and they lost.
These are all the things that just add to what makes the annual game SO good. I don’t know WHAT can be done to change the
mind set of the team and the GA fans, but something needs to be done. I don’t want to have to hold my breathe so much when
it comes to watching the annual game, or talkin’ smack. I don’t like the fact that I do either, but it’s the whole mind set
and intimidation thing. I HATE the Gators, and I hate them for rubbing the salt in our wounds EVERY year way more than they
should have, because their team in general doesn’t deserve it! So SCREW all you Gators out there! This game means a WHOLE
LESS than everyone makes it (in some respects). You won the game, GREAT, but take a look at your team all year long and then
a good look at ours. GA IS A BETTER TEAM! Oh, and JT3, don’t feel like crap. You played an AWESOME game & you should be
able to look back at the ENTIRE game and be proud of your game as a starting QB. I’m not sure that it’d be any different with
Shockley, so no worries. We would have been duped when it came to the Nationals anyway (I hate to say it), but we’re still
on top of the SEC East & on route to the SEC Championship. And if a team has to lose, you sure as heck don’t want it to
be a team that you were expected to whoop up on. Only a sorry team loses an easy game (even though, there are those few times…),
and at least we only lost in big games.
GOOOOOO DAWGS!!!!!
SCREW THE GATORS!
And in case anyone
wants to mention it: Bitter? Somewhat, YES! But UGA will get over it, UF however will not (when we win the SEC Championship,
or even just the SEC East)!
Did I mention, this
is why the SEC is SOOOO GREAT and why I LOVE it!
I’m a GA gal that
grew up a UNC fan (thanks a lot, dad! Just kidding – I’ll always have a place in my heart for them. And thanks Bro for introducing
me to UGA and why keeping up with & watching sports, ESPECIALLY college football [I’m a junkie] can be so interesting
and so much FUN!), but my interests have really only ever been with UGA.
Lastly (I swear!),
I apologize everyone that I talk to FRIGGIN’ MUCH!
Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is priceless. Thank you, GidgetJo.
8 nov 05 @ 6:24 am est
Monday, November 7, 2005
Post #3
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CHRISTMAS DID NOT COME EARLY FOR THE DEMOCRATIC WING OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY |
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|
Too bad, so sad. Jack Kelly says “Fitzmass” was hoped for but “Fitzween” was delivered instead:
The fever swamp Left had been looking forward
to a “Fitzmas,” indictments by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that would deprive President Bush of Karl Rove, his chief
political strategist, and would expose a White House plot to mislead America into the Iraq
war.
What they got instead was a “Fitzween” that
was more trick than treat.
The Libby indictment is Martha Stewart stuff.
Mr. Libby is charged with having lied about from whom he learned that the wife of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Valerie
Plame, was a CIA officer.
Mr. Fitzgerald indicted no one for the crime he supposedly was investigating for the last
two years, whether anyone had deliberately outed a covert CIA agent. There was no underlying crime, and there was no conspiracy
to cover up what wasn’t a crime in the first place.
Mr. Fitzgerald made it plain in his news
conference that his prosecution of Libby would not delve into the conspiracy theories treasured by the Left.
“This indictment is not about the war,” he
said. “This indictment will not seek to prove the war was justified or unjustified.”
I feel sorry for Libby, whose life is ruined
whether he beats the charges or not. But after him, the biggest losers are conspiracy-mongering liberals. They sent Fitzgerald
out to hunt for bear, but all he bagged was a squirrel.
Journalists were doing their best to paint
that squirrel as ferocious. One noted that Libby is the first serving White House official to be indicted since the Grant
administration. Journalists will flog it as hard as they can, but this story seems destined to fade from public consciousness
as rapidly as did the indictment of two Clinton administration
Cabinet secretaries.
Quick, who were they? (Agriculture Secretary
Mike Espy, who was acquitted at trial, and Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, who pled to a misdemeanor.)
The American people apparently agree the
Libby indictment is no big deal. Only 45 percent of respondents to a Gallup
poll think Libby did something illegal. And 56 percent think this was an isolated incident, not a sign of low ethical standards
in the Bush administration.
Still, Fitzgerald should have had the common sense to take
his stuff and just go home. No substantive crime arising from the alleged acts giving rise to his charge has been committed
by his own admission. Prosecutors and judges, as a class, can be overly anal, and need to be reminded (often) of the doctrine
of political question (this discussion is from Wikipedia):
In United States law, a ruling that a matter in controversy is a political question is a statement by a federal court, declining to rule in a case because: 1) the U.S. Constitution has committed decision-making on this subject to another branch of the federal government; 2) there are inadequate standards
for the court to apply; or 3) the court feels it is prudent not to interfere. Recently, courts have held that Congress's impeachment procedures and the President's authority over foreign affairs, particularly the President's powers to abrogate treaties
and commit troops, are political questions.
The doctrine has its roots in the federal judiciary's desire
to avoid inserting itself into conflicts between branches of the federal government. It is justified by the notion that there
exist some questions best resolved through the political process, voters approving or correcting the challenged action by
voting for or against those involved in the decision. Justice Felix Frankfurter was an active and eloquent exponent of maintaining and expanding the political question doctrine.
That’s all this thing has ever been and the very nanosecond
that Fitzgerald knew he was not going to be able to indict for the substantive crime at issue, the jig should have been up.
Go home, Patrick. Go home now.
7 nov 05 @ 10:50 am est
Post #2
I live on the Southside of Tallahassee and one of our major
East-West thoroughfares is Orange Avenue. The taxpayers of Leon County are funding a major renovation
of this two-lane roadway into a four-lane roadway and I thought it might be interesting to give a few photos of their current
progress.
This is a picture looking eastward toward Jim Lee Road (Rickards High School is up a hill, to the right). The Jim Lee intersection
is where the roundabout will be placed.


This is a view looking westward, showing the trench that represents
a major upgrade to the drainage network:

And this is also looking westward, toward Monroe Street (further up but not seen is the southern edge of the FAMU campus where
the new FAMU High will be built:


The interesting thing to me is that they are going to
put in a roundabout at the intersection of Jim Lee and Orange Avenue. I'm not real sure about that decision, not sure at all, but
it's a done deal.

I believe there's a 2007 completion date.
7 nov 05 @ 8:23 am est
Post #1
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HONG KONG AND THE WEIRD LAST TWO WEEKS |
|
|
The reservations have been made, flight and hotel paid for,
and my passport is in hand: come mid-November, Hong Kong here we come.
Can you believe it? I can’t.
I’m hoping this will be my best vacation ever and I also hope
to be able to do a good bit of blogging while I’m there.
Like many Gators, I’m still celebrating the Florida-Georgia
victory. I like this image as a representation of how we’re still celebrating:

That's the work of a fark superstar among the Gators, Mr2cents.
Unfortunately, there was a Florida
student beaten to death during that weekend and five Jacksonville
kids have been arrested for the crime:
Three of the killers caught on video tape had personal profiles
on some website called My Space and it (along with their circle of friends, and THEIR profiles) made for some very interesting reading.
I’m also still dealing with the bad taste left in my mouth
from the Harriet Miers niggerization. There is, for lack of a better phrase, an “open letter to the white people of the South”
swimming around in my head over this situation but, so far, my better judgment has said don’t write it, let alone post it.
But, there have been a couple of blog posts by some of the involved parties that immediately bring back the absurdity of the
situation. From the Power Line gang we get a real gem of right-wing spin, published in the Washington Post: “Why Alito’s the man for
the true conservative agenda.” Right. They might as well have said he looks like us, he talks like us, and he was “schooled” like us. And how could
you not help but get all warm and fuzzy when Captain
Ed, one of the blogosphere ringleaders of the niggerization,
dares to write something like this:
The New York Times editorial board should consider
putting its own essays behind the $50 sanity firewall, playing to its elitist core audience rather than the broader sphere
of readers that engage in the political process. Today's editorial on referenda exposes Pinch's crew as the worst kind of elitists -- those who believe that American voters cannot be trusted with a democracy at all, but should instead rely on their
betters to instruct them on how to behave[.]
Um . . . pot, meet kettle. You already know each other well
and you might as well not even try to sit there and act like you don’t.
The worst kind of elitists, Captain Ed? Right now that’s clearly
open for debate.
7 nov 05 @ 7:46 am est
Friday, November 4, 2005
Post #1
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INTERESTING COLLEGE FOOTBALL
STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE ANALYSIS |
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According to the NCAA, here are the numbers as of this week. Among the top 47 schools, I’ve highlighted the SEC schools in yellow, the ACC
schools in gray:
|
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|
|
CUMULATIVE |
OPPOSITION |
|
|
RANK |
TEAM |
WINS |
LOSSES |
TIES |
PCT |
|
1 |
Oklahoma |
51 |
23 |
0 |
0.68918919 |
|
2 |
Michigan |
52 |
25 |
0 |
0.67532468 |
|
3 |
Stanford |
44 |
23 |
0 |
0.65671642 |
|
4 |
Ohio St. |
52 |
29 |
0 |
0.64197531 |
|
5 |
Arkansas |
43 |
24 |
0 |
0.64179104 |
|
6 |
Florida |
46 |
26 |
0 |
0.63888889 |
|
7 |
North Carolina |
48 |
28 |
| |