2005 archive

Throughout the last two millenia, horrible things have been done in the name of Christianity. Horrible things have also been done in the name of Islam. And the Japanese in World War II cloaked their aggression in the name of Shintiism.

Now, I must say, I know a little about Buddhism, Confucianism, and the Tao, and absolutely nothing about Shintiism.

Frankly, off the top of my head, I can’t think of horrible things that have been done in the name of Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, or Judaism (at least not since the days of the stories of the Old Testament).

One of the shames of our country’s history is the use of Christianity to justify slavery; if I climbed upstairs to the attic and dug out my old text books, I could offer many citations, but I’m too lazy to do so. But it was there and it was real.

And those who would pervert Christianity to violence and destruction are still around us; one only needs to read the paper to learn of the destruction done in the name of the Jesus Christ.

There is an internet site–Landover Baptist Church–that satirizes this particular form of perverted Christianity. I visit it from time to time, but, even though I know it’s satirical, it gives me the willies.

My friend Opie posted a link the other day that makes the fictional Landover Baptist seem tame:

The Westboro Baptist Church

It just drips hate. Hate in the name of love.

Yeah.

Right.

Why is it that those who claim to be closest to the God of Love are so full of hate?

I fulminated on Bill O’Reilly’s made-up “War on Christmas” earlier.

Now Steven Colbert has his say, courtesy of the Brad Blog.

Q. What’s the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?

A. One’s a scum-sucking bottom-feeder. The other’s a fish.

It’s easy to joke about lawyers–that is, until you need one. My lawyer is a plain-talking and plain-writing straight shooter.

But not all of them all.

John Grogan, in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, discusses how lawyers succeed in making their profession and their colleagues the butt of such sarcastic humor in discussing these two cases:

Mr. Grogan’s column is well-worth a read; click the link to see it all.

If lawyers want to know why they are the butt of so many jokes, they might want to listen to the claptrap coming out of some of their mouths.

The raw material is just too good to pass up.

These presumably are smart people, so why is it they so often come off sounding so utterly dumb? Not just dumb, but ridiculously out of touch. In being zealous advocates for their clients, they can end up sounding like they just beamed in from Planet Goof.

When you look at the big picture, it’s really kind of scary:

The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered — maybe they were all crazed liberals — making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

(click the link to read the list of particulars)

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.

Courtesy Phillybits

For some reason, this story reminded me of an anecdote I read in one of Bennett Cerf’s books.

A radio station (the story dates from when radio was King) decided to conduct a poll one Saturday night. They called random numbers and asked the persons who answered the phone whether they knew where their kids were.

75% of the calls were answered by kids who didn’t know where their parents were . . . .

On a lighter note, would you surveil your kids with GPS?

It was all made up. It was being made up for years.

The Iraqi National Council? A creation of Americans. Ahmad Chalabi? A creation of Americans. The web of lies? A creation of Americans.

Listen to it here in MP3 format.

Read about it here.

As you may have heard, Bill “I Can Shout Louder than You” O’Reilly is making a big fuss about stores whose employees say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and is promoting a boycott of those stores.

What a made-up crock of lard. It’s amazing how some folks (right and left) can find hate where there is no hate.

And who worships in stores? Oh, wait, this is the USA. Most of us do worship in stores. We worship goods. But that’s another story.

Anyhoo, to honor this great American blowhard, I suggest we demand he boycott Fox News. Here’s their invitation to their Holiday party, courtesy of The Majority Report.

“A war — no matter how successful — will be 90 percent American and will be viewed as an American crusade by much of the Arab and Islamic world . . . .”

and

“When the war starts and the dying begins, the American people will have every right to ask, ‘Where are our allies?'”

Who said that?

Senator Sam Nunn in 1991.

Those comments did not come true about the first Gulf War, about which they were spoken. The first Gulf War ended up being pursued by a true, international coalition and accomplished its limited aims spectacularly (whether the aims should have been limited is another discussion). But they certainly seem to have become real today.

Follow the link to read more comments from back then that seem to have become relevant now.

How have the extreme right-wing Republicans, who are so out of the mainstream of American politics on so many issues, managed to consolidate and maintain power so effectively? And how have their tactics changed the landscape of American politics?

The guests on today’s Fresh Air attempt to answer that question. Here’s the description of the show from the website. Click the link to read more and listen to the show (which also includes an interview with Trent Lott):

Fresh Air from WHYY, December 1, 2005 · Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson are the authors of the new book Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy.

In the book, Hacker and Pierson examine the tactics of far-right Republicans — and how they’ve changed the system for years to come. They split their subject matter into two topics: “Abandoning the Middle” and “Broken Checks and Balances.”

Hacker is an associate professor of political science at Yale University. Pierson is a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley.

Well worth a listen.

He arrived in New Jersey today from Kuwait.

I look forward to talking with him about his experiences once he is in a secure undisclosed location.

Just up the road in Philadelphia, beleagured politicians are exploring a new way of dealing with their critics:

Vernon Anastasio does not dispute that he has said some harsh and unkind things about Councilman Frank DiCicco and his son, Christian.

When he labeled the councilman mentally ill last year, Anastasio insists, he was merely expressing an opinion and engaging in free speech. Same again when he accused DiCicco’s son of a conflict of interest in a business-development project.

The DiCiccos do not see those remarks as the exercise of free speech. They see them as defamation.

And they are suing Anastasio, a fellow Democrat and a political opponent of DiCicco in South Philadelphia, in two defamation lawsuits in Common Pleas Court.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If they win, perhaps it will be possible, when a member of the current Federal Administration accuses a poliltical opponent of treason for having the effrontery to question the policies of the current Administration, for said opponent to sue the SOB Spokesman of Bushies.

I worked for the railroad for 24 years. From time to time, an employee would pass away and two wives and families would turn up–one at each end of his run.

After the surprise died away, since neither family knew of the other, great battles would ensue over the death benefit and railroad retirement survivor benefits.

Seeing this story took me back to those days:

Two ‘wives’ fight over sergeant’s remains

November 23, 2005

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. –The final resting place for a retired sergeant may be determined by a judge as two women battle over which was his wife at the time of his death.

John E. “Sarge” Burrell died in July. His body has been stored at Wiseman Mortuary in Fayetteville since then, while the women fight over whether to bury him in a veterans cemetery in Spring Lake or in Atlanta.

Whenever this happened in my previous gig, I would always have the same reaction: “One spouse is enough trouble. Why would anyone want two?”

All gone, except for the turkey’s ghost that will haunt our next few meals. I forgot to set out the cranberry sauce (the traditional kind, with the rings), but no one noticed and it was still nice. The sweet potato pies turned out far better than I feared, good enough that I gave one away.

And the fire that started in the oven when the roasting sheet overflowed with turkey grease burned itself out nicely.

Logic indicates that the ignition point of turkey grease must be somewhere between 325 F (the turkey-cooking temperature) and 425 F (the sweet potato biscuit cooking temperature).

One unwelcome holiday tradition did rear its ugly head (oven fires are not a tradition around these parts).

In the two decades I’ve lived here, I’ve had to have the drains roto-rooted twice.

Both times, they backed up on a holiday–Christmas Day, as it happened.

This year, they picked today, Thanksgiving Day, to back up.

They have never chosen to back up on a Monday evening when I could call the boss and take Tuesday morning off to wait for the plumber. No, they only back up on double-overtime extra-charges-out-the-ying-yang days.

I’ll have them rooted Saturday, since I’ll be away tomorrow. And whatever extra a Saturday call costs, it can’t be as bad as a Thanksgiving Day call (plus I don’t ruin some poor long-suffering plumber’s Thanksgiving). (Frankly, since I’ve been a homeowner, I’ve learned a lot more about plumbing and electricity than I ever wanted to know, and enough not to begrudge competent plumbers a cent of what they charge–a competent plumber earns every penny.)

All in all, an okay day. I hope everyone reading this (all two or three of you) and everyone not reading this also had nice Thanksgivings and lots of things for which to be thankful.

Mr. Levin contrasts Mr. Cheneys recent statements with the truth:

“Because of the many serious issues surrounding the Administration’s use of pre-war intelligence, the Vice President should hold a press conference and address the legitimate concerns of the American people. The Vice President needs to answer questions, not just attack the questioners.

“In that press conference, the Vice President should explain why he said: ‘It’s been pretty well confirmed that [lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the [9/11] attack’ even though the CIA’s pre-war assessment was that ‘Reporting is contradictory on hijacker Mohammed Atta’s alleged trip to Prague and meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer, and we have not verified his travels.’ The CIA also concluded that ‘the most reliable reporting to date casts doubt’ on the possibility of such a meeting.

“The Vice President should also answer why he said: ‘Specifically aluminum tubes….We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon’ when the Department of Energy’s intelligence experts concluded before the war that the tubes were probably not intended for that purpose and the State Department’s intelligence bureau concluded that ‘the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq’s nuclear weapon program.’

“The Vice President said today that ‘any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false.’ In fact, the President needs to explain why he said ‘You can’t distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam’ and why he said, after Saddam was removed, ‘We’ve removed an ally of al-Qaeda’ when the Defense Intelligence Agency had said prior to the war that ‘Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements.’

And, in a similar mode, retired Senator Bob Graham puts the lie to the current Federal Administration’s claim (“talking point”? “lie du jour”?) that the Congress, before the resolution supporting war against Iraq, had access to the same intelligence information as did the Federal Administration:

In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. “[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power,” he said.

The president’s attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace — that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.

The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.

Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal today reported that

A majority of U.S. adults believe the Bush administration generally misleads the public on current issues, while fewer than a third of Americans believe the information provided by the administration is generally accurate, the latest Harris Interactive poll finds.

Gee.

I wonder why.

Could it be because the current Federal Administration wouldn’t recognize the truth if it arrived gift-wrapped at their front door accompanied by trumpeting heralds?

(For a detailed description of Mr. Cheney’s issues and concerns with veracity, go here.)

I would be curious to know.

Anne Applebaum raised the issue in her column today:

It’s a peculiarly suburban problem, autumn leaves. True urbanites never think about leaves, and in fact I have friends in New York who howl with derision at the mere mention of a rake. True country-dwellers don’t bother about leaves either. As the philosophers would ask, if leaves fall in a forest and no one is there to see them, do they need to be raked? Certainly they don’t have the same kind of social significance that they have in the suburbs, where an abundance of leaves is a sign of sloppiness, of inadequate concern for the community, or simply of a bad attitude.

I grew up in the country. As Ms. Applebaum accurately points out, country-dwellers do not rake leaves. They ignore them, knowing that the leaves will go away by springtime.

I googled “Why rake leaves.” I got a bunch of hits on how to rake leaves, but nothing on why. Though there was one voice of almost sanity here.

So, help me out here. What’s the point of raking leaves?

(By the way, I no longer rake leaves, at least not since I became single again. I mulch, with the help of Murray.)

Here.

Jersey prices seem to regaining their usual position as being several cents less than Delaware prices:

Observed November 21, 2005.

Woodbury, NJ, Coastal, $1.90.

Woodbury, NJ, Exxon, $2.32 (no, that’s not a typo).

Woodbury, NJ, Enrite, $1.89.

Observed November 22, 2005.

Gibbstown, NJ, Valero, $1.99.

Paulsboro, NJ, Lukoil, $1.97.

Paulsboro, NJ, Exxon, $1.99.

Paulsboro, NJ, BP, $2.01.

Claymont, Del., Exxon, $2.04.

Claymont, Del., Sunoco, $2.01.

Claymont, Del., BP, $2.03.

Claymont, Del., Gulf (Cumberland Farms), $2.01.

Claymont, Del., Gulf, $2.09.

Claymont, Del, Wawa, $1.99.

Holly Oak, Del, Mobil, $2.01.

It’s a very long post, reflecting on politics, religion, culture, war, and corruption.

I commend it to your attention. Whether you agree or disagree with his conclusions, his thoughts are worth considering. See it here.