how to dismantle an atomic bear
26 September 2005
What you may not have known is that as speakers go, President Bush is a genius. Link
What? You mean you didn't know that Bill Gates made his own Napoleon Dynamite sequel?! Gosh!!
Single? Male? Looking to get married? Then get out of the country.
They're taking the hobbits to Isengard. Very disturbing.
Llama llama duck.
We're definitely going to blow ourselves up.
Nothing to write about.
22 September 2005
Rumor has it a hurricane the size of Texas is heading to Texas.
That's nice. Let's talk about Iraq now. My article is posted here. It's almost exactly the same as the one I posted below. My editor did make a few changes that actually made it worse. Go there to see feedback not published here.
Hello Paul,
First let me compliment you on a well-written article in the Tuesday edition of the NT Daily. You have a good grasp of the English language and apparently understand the intentions of the Bush administration. I also agree with your right as an American to have your own views and opinions.
However, I must question the reasoning behind them. The views presented in your article appear to be from someone who has gained knowledge of the world through books rather than experience. Please tell me my assertion is wrong.
Don't tell me you are a child of privilege. Don't let me believe that you've come from a suburban upper-middle-class American home. Tell me that you have been poor at one point in your life. I don't mean when you come to college with no understanding of finances and force your parents to bail you out. I mean tell me you have been poor. Tell me that you've had to work to support your family. Tell me you have had to work to pay for your divorced mother's cancer treatment when she continues to work to provide food.
Please tell me you have friends who have been killed in this "War on Terror". Tell me you have had face to face conversations with old friends while having to see the nub where their leg was before it got destroyed by a road-side bomb. Then please tell me what branch of the Armed forces you have served with or plan on joining.
Please tell me you have traveled this country from coast to coast and from Mexico to Canada (on your own dime). Tell me you have friends at all end of the social class spectrum.
Please tell me you have read, and more importantly understand Democracy in America by Tocqueville. Understand that democracy, even though it has flourished in our Puritan based American society, is not the one true answer for all cultures. Tell me you remember the track record that foreign governments have in installing governments in other lands. The British attempted it in American and it lead to revolution. Even America has done it before in Iran, and I don't believe I have to explain how that worked out. Perhaps the war in Iraq will lead to an Iraqi government. However, do not
believe that American democracy will take in the Muslim/Arab world. There will be problems, and Iraq will either become politically and economically crippled like the former Soviet Union (which would increase the number of terrorists), or there will be a revolt and the Iraqis will install their own government. Please tell me you understand the cause and effect process of history.
Please tell me these things and I can forgive you. I have no issue with you personally. In fact I believe you're probably a good guy. But where you get the gall to make a statement such as "the U.S. military can cope with 20,000 casualties every 30 months" is beyond me. It is truly offense. Do not forget that enlistment numbers are drastically low. The only way the U.S. military can "cope" with that number of casualties while maintaining a war on two fronts and maintaining the ability to respond to crisis here at home is to institute a draft. I believe you are about the prime age. Which branch will you join?
As you are a political science student, I assume you want to be a politician some day. Good politicians are few and far between. Good politicians are also good leaders. Good leaders are also fully capable and willing to do what they ask of their followers. The majority of politicians, on the other hand, are power hungry and cowardly. History will not hold them in favorable light. What kind of politician will you be?
Once again, your article is very well written. However, as you are a political science major, I find it hard to understand how you can make such an out rightly offensive remark. Next time take into account your audience, as all good public speakers do.
This one was more thoughtful. Most of his assumptions were correct and I told him so. I felt no need to defend myself from the charge of acquiring knowledge from books and from never having been poor. He was right to point out the absurdity of the 20,000 casualties figure. Chalk that one up to my editor. When I submitted the article, I had written "two thousand." Evidently, my editor wanted to change it to numerical form. And that's fine. But multiplying it by ten was just ridiculous. I've secured a promise from the editor that a correction will be issued.
Other than that, I just corrected his assumptions that I want to be a politician and don't want to join the military. I had little desire to engage in political debate with someone who speaks of a "cause and effect" process of history and speaks about what can or cannot happen in the Arab world in such gross absolutes.
Paul,
You make very strong arguments. I appreciate the reference to the Washington Post article; you rightly bring substance to your arguments.
Paul, I think the so-called neo-cons have it absolutely right. For too long we've been complicit in maintaining an unholy stability in the Middle East without demanding democratic change. Presidents from Roosevelt through Clinton did nothing to promote democratic values in that region because they were too busy playing the East/West geopolitical games to keep the Communist Bloc in check and assure our access to Middle East oil. Those policies bred the likes of Osama bin Laden and his bloody cohorts. At last we have a president with the political will to bring about change in that region. It would be great if American public opinion were as resolute.
Thanks for taking the time to address this difficult and divisive issue.
You're a good writer. We've had political science majors go on to pursue a master's degree in journalism. If interested, come see me about our many scholarships. Check out our web site.
Best wishes,
He's a prof in the graduate journalism department. I think I'll take him up on that offer. The army is still atop my short list though.
19 September 2005
I have just finished watching Monday Night Football. I don't usually watch NFL games. But I dig intense rivalries, and couldn't pass up the Cowboys and Redskins. As I'm writing this, my mood can best be illustrated as follows:
- Bill Parcells was 77-0 when leading by 13 points in the fourth quarter. He is now 77-1.
- Patrick Ramsey who should have had the starting QB job for Washington last year. He finally got his due this year. He had it for three quarters. Then Gibbs inexplicably demoted him. Why? No one really knows. He threw two interceptions, but didn't play badly at all. He was demoted after three quarters for this!! THREE QUARTERS!!!! Why? No one really knows. I've heard talk radio speculation that it's really just because Joe Gibbs doesn't like Ramsey. My speculation: Joe Gibbs is an ass.
- Joe Gibbs' favorite dinosaur Mark Brunell threw for one interception and was shut out by the Cowboys for three and a half quarters. I would have loved to have seen him produce a big goose egg for the game and then to read Gibbs' comments in the Washington Post the next morning.
- How is there still no tax on gasoline? I like President Bush, but what the hell is wrong with him?! Why would he spend so much of his political capital on some ridiculous social security project instead of things that the nation actually needs. Like a Manhattan-style energy project. Why is that nowhere on the Bush agenda?
- And why is Rumsfeld still at the Pentagon?! How is a doctrine that emphasizes nation-building at all consistent with a smaller army?! What gives?!!?
- Boston Legal. Boston Public. Those are shows that are on tv. I know so because I watched Monday Night Football recently and saw previews for them. Why is Boston cool all of a sudden? Personally, I'd like to see a show entitled "Boston Choke" about how the Red Sox manage to miss the playoffs in 2005. Their lead has dwindled to half a game. GO YANKS!!
- "She must suffer to the last." I watched "Kill Bill" and the fate of someone who was supposed to "suffer to the last" (and only escaped thanks to crazy mad ninja skills). I wish this fate on the editors of the NY Times who are now making me pay to read Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, and who undoubtedly have no ninja skills. The fools.
Yes, I wrote this for the school paper. It was carefully researched. My information is accurate. I believe everything I wrote.
That's not to say that a couple of statements weren't deliberately thrown in there just to piss people off ("resounding stroke of neo-con genius"). I used to read Ann Coulter. She taught me much about the art of mixing eloquent, scholarly arguments with outrageous conclusions.
Contrary to what defeatist news anchors and leftist politicians would have you believe, the unexpected resiliency of the insurgency in Iraq does not necessitate any massive reevaluation of U.S. political objectives in the Middle East. Quite the contrary, present insurgency operations are simply militarily insufficient to drive the U.S. out of Iraq or otherwise prevent the emergence of a democratic state able to stand on its own. The truth is that the U.S. military can easily cope with two thousand casualties every 30 months, and Iraqis are every bit as capable of building a flourishing society amidst the occasional terrorist attack as Israelis are. Indeed, to real U.S. strategists, the insurgency is at most an inconvenience. It can succeed only by sapping U.S. domestic resolve or by gaining the broader support of such Iraqi Sunnis as those they routinely blow up.
Let the Left continue to impotently decry the lack of an exit strategy and plead for regional cooperation with Iraq's neighbors. U.S. troops will not leave the Middle East anytime soon, nor should they. Sacrificing Iraq on the altar of stability and regional cooperation will benefit only the region's dictators. But this will not happen because John Kerry lost in November and because historical trends are on our side. Say what you will about Iraq's neighbors tearing it apart. It will ultimately be Iraq that changes the Middle East, not vice versa.
Indeed, the invasion of Iraq was never about bringing stability to the Middle East, but rather upheaval. A strong U.S. presence at the center of the region has left America well positioned to influence the political trajectory of events and to shape the region to accord with its interests and ideals. In this light, the Iraq invasion appears to be nothing less than a resounding stroke of neo-con genius. The presence of more than 100,000 U.S. troops at the heart of the Middle East has dramatically altered the political dynamics of the entire region, leaving the United States optimally situated to deal with the region’s political leaders from a position of strength.
Just ask the Baathists in Syria, who continue to feel the effects of U.S. pressure -- pressure that would not have been feasible before the invasion. Syria no longer enjoys the advantage of $1 billion in annual Iraqi oil shipments. It no longer has the luxury of exploiting Lebanese commerce for its own economic benefit. Instead, it feels the squeeze of economic sanctions, internal dissatisfaction, and international isolation. Not surprisingly, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad had to cancel his scheduled trip to the U.N. meeting over the weekend, his hold on the country evidently being too tenuous to permit his absence.
America's newfound influence in the Middle East has made it possible to steadily destabilize the regime in Syria. If it collapses, the United States will have the opportunity to dramatically alter the region for the better. Likely, U.S. troops, perhaps under a U.N. mandate, would have to occupy the country in order to prevent it from becoming a terrorist haven and to ensure a democratic transition. As Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, the fall of Assad's regime would ultimately sever the financial lifeline of multiple terrorist groups in Palestine, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and even Hezbollah in a more indirect way.
Under the weight of such momentous political developments -- the emergence of a democratic state in Syria and the financial choking of the more radical Palestinian elements -- the hope of a lasting Middle East peace would become something much greater than the faint pipe dream it is today.
The road has been long, but the end is in site. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps the media is right and our enemies do indeed smell blood in Iraq; but terrorism is ever a tactic of the weak: it is they who bleed far more than we.
14 September 2005
The attack on the hospital so terrorized members of the staff that they ran away, abandoning their patients, some of whom were left for five days without food or care. One mother, caught in the open with a daughter whose legs froze in shell-shock, 'literally had to drag her home' through the bombing. No driver would attempt the journey. With virtually all the fathers away at the front, or now mobilized, women were left to cope with the appalling aftermath. Viktor Goncharov's wife, helped by her eleven-year-old son, Nikolay, buried her father's corpse in the yard of their apartment block, which had received a direct hit. 'Before filling in the grave,' the son remembered, 'we searched for his head, but could not find it.'
--From Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, Antony Beevor
Thrill seekers leaning into the wind off the coast of North Carolina.
I want to do that.
12 September 2005
You can make it add up. Mace upon hearing Anakin's Palpatine=evil Sith Lord thesis, didn't even question Anakin thoroughly. Instead, he latched onto it, subjecting it to little or no scrutiny, and ran with it. He had no knowledge as to whether or not Palpatine had done anything illegal. As soon as Anakin speculated that Palpatine was a Sith lord, Mace's reaction was basically Aha!! Now's our chance!! Let's go arrest him!
This IS treason. What Sith Lord wouldn't defend himself? So the central question really involves whether or not Mace really intended to arrest the Chancellor or to provoke him, so as to make for an adequate excuse to kill him. It is quite interesting how initially, Mace intended to arrest Palpatine, or perhaps that was just a facade. What made him change his mind and instead decide to kill him? And why didn't Mace bring Anakin with him to arrest Palpatine instead of selecting that escort of weak dogs who lasted a combined thirty seconds when things became tense. Instead, Anakin arrived right as Mace Windu was pointing his lightsaber at an old man who was pathetically pleading for mercy. At that moment, Mace changed his mind and decided to go ahead and assassinate the Chancellor, on account of the fact that he "had control of the senate and the courts." These were not new revelations, and so it is very hard to believe that they are behind his change of heart regarding Palpatine's fate.
No, indeed. More likely, Mace wanted Anakin to stay behind because he knew Anakin wouldn't tolerate -- as events indeed proved -- any assassinations. Anakin was too powerful to control, and so Mace wanted to keep him on the sidelines while he destroyed Palpatine. He was a fool. He paid the price for his lack of vision.
Yes, it was Anakin who turned to the Dark Side, but Mace would have been the first to turn had he lived. It was Count Dooku who originally had the idea of overthrowing Palpatine in Episode II, but needed help to do so. Obi Wan bluntly declared, "I'll never join you, Dooku."
But Dooku would have found a willing accomplice in Mace Windu.
11 September 2005
Grad school was at the top of my list a few months ago. It's dropped off considerably, an afterthought where I keep law school, getting a job, and the other unwanted backups. Reading a liberal political theorist trying to dissect the reasons that nations would rationally go to war is really quite trying. It really is a challenge trying not to discount everything the author says as he builds his argument, while you try to supress the thousand outraged objections screaming in the back of your head.
I don't know how much of this crap I could take. If I did grad school, I'd probably have to do history.
I visited the local army recruiter recently. It's a small office of three or four desks, a waiting area, and a back room. Three seargents sat at there desks chatting casually. As I waited one of them turned in my direction and asked if I would be offended if they swore. I didn't mind, I told them. They resumed chatting, taking no notice of me. I never quite realized that dropping f-bombs can be such a form of art. It can be used as a noun, an adjective, an interjection, and other ways, but never as a verb. They would probably consider that impolite.
They won't let me join for a year. I have to be off my medication for that amount of time before they let me in. So I quit cold turkey. I don't need it anyway.
I think I'd do well as a psych ops specialist. But I would need airborne training for that. Running into enemy fire doesn't scare me. Jumping out of a freakin' airplane scares me.
But whatever. I may end up doing it. But there's plenty of other jobs that don't require airborne training. Sure wouldn't mind being an intelligence analyst.
They made me take a practice test. It was an aptitude test of some kind, but I think it was really a test to make sure I wasn't a total idiot. It was much like taking a super dumbed-down version of the SAT. Since I got a 99%, I think that means if I join the army, I can do whatever I want.. or something close to that anyway.
I really only have one condition to make upon joining the army, and that is that they buy me a monster, cutting-edge killer labtop. I think they do buy me a computer once I join, but I don't know how good it'll be. But I'll get at least an $8000 signing bonus. Yes, a Pentium 6, 5.0 GHz, with 2 gigs of RAM should do it. Grad school looks so lame compared to that.
Maybe I should look at Air Force and Navy though. And of course, I keep waiting for the government to form a separate branch of the armed forces exclusively for ninja wizards.
05 September 2005
Your living room may be flooded, but why leave? You wouldn't want to miss all the great college football games on.
This man is my hero. Notice the many coins on the floor of his living room, probably flipped into the water as though it were a fountain in the park. Let us take a minute to mentally applaud those who were too lazy and too stupid to get out of town, and still had enough dumb luck to survive to watch cartoons the next day.
What a great country.
Do I just have bad health or do I just get sick so often because I rarely give my health a second thought?
I've been sick the last five days, and yet I think this has to be the first week in several semesters in which I attended every one of my classes. They're better this semester. I often spend several weeks trying to figure out which classes are the blowoff ones and which are the ones that require work. It's not so ambiguous this time around.
Watching the Neon Genesis Evangelion movies is a lot like watching a Tarantino movie. One comes away dazzled by the artwork and creativity and also deeply disturbed. The audience can't help but admire the director/arists and still wonder how much time they have spent in mental institutions.
Our rental house is an insect zoo. The house isn't just ours. We share it with the local crickets, ants, and mesquitos.
I haven't kept up much with flood coverage. I don't watch tv; and the print media can only do much justice to the human suffering that keeps most people interested.
I've looked for ways to volunteer. No one seems very serious about it though. Fill out a form, and they'll call you in a month.
It's funny how the news has morphed into a political football. Turn on the radio. It's not really a tragedy of human suffering. It is a political event. No one is interested in alleviating human suffering. They are interested in how this affects the political standing of elected officials. More or less, every talk show on the radio takes this approach.
Politics has become like sports. We root for our favorite teams (political parties). Katrina is a game. Fox News and CNN are always there to bring us the highlights and tell us the score. Think of Sports Center, except for current events. Ideology has become dummed down for the uneducated nitwit. People root for policies they don't understand in much the same way I root for the Texas Rangers -- nothing really except sentimental attachments.
It seems the task of the journalist to provide an illusion of coherence to subjects about which neither they nor their audience really know anything. Substantive policy discussion is something exclusive to academia.
This is the Cardinals' year. No one's going to stop them.
