Hamas - Lights, Camera, Action!

Hamas' existence (the blind, all consuming hatred of the Palestinians for Israel) is a bad thing. Hamas' victory in the Palestinian elections is a good thing. You can't fashion a solution to a problem until you clearly identify the problem. Being the ruling party will deny Hamas the ability to operate in the shadows as Fatah's mafia. They are officially in charge, and must bear now the responsibility of being in charge - meaning that they must now face the music for their actions. Let's now see if they stick to their avowed reason for being - the elimination of Israel on the planet - and if they do, how they manage to survive and function with greatly diminished $ support from the West.

No more "spin" about what the Palestinian leadership or citizenry stands for. They are all about hatred and killing and rage. The elections do nothing but remove some of the noise from the Left, trying to muddy the waters with emotional and theoretical arguments in defense of the Palestinian cause. For these clueless bleeding hearts who cry that to cut off aid is to make innocent people suffer, I say this - all citizens of a government must bear some collective responsibility for the actions of their government. The Palestinians have freely expressed their desire to have murder and genocide as their official preferred platform. The defenders of human liberties - personal, religious, and political - are suffering in defense of our platform ... that the Palestinians should suffer for their platform is only fair, too, is it not?

Energy - givers and takers

Bill Oreilly is, imo, a true American hero for the voice of common sense and focus he has provided to date.

One disagreement - On his 1/27/06 radio show, he cited America's use of 25% of the world's energy as support for his call to start conserving energy. HIs intent is a good one, but the argument is spin. The key factor is productivity - what he omitted is that the US creates almost 30% of the world's industrial output, therefore we are a "giver" to the world's productivity, not a "taker".

I agree we can all be smarter about personal energy consumption, but any national energy discussion should accurately portray the U.S. as a 'rower' of the boat, not a 'passenger'.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Google

When the U.S. government asks Google to divulge not individuals' names, but just search patterns and volume for child pornography and child pornography websites, Google climbs up on its moral pedestal and refuses to comply with the U.S. government's request to gain some traction against child pornographers on the grounds of principles of freedom and privacy.

A couple of weeks later, when the Chinese government tells Google that it must censure and block out the search results of 1.3 BILLION Chinese if the search includes anything having a political element to it, Google of course tells the Chinese government where it can stick its request, just like it did the US government, right? Wrong! Google rolled over for the Chinese government like a drunk, paid-off prostitute.

The difference, of course, is money. Standing on principle against the US gov't request cost Google no loss of revenue - it actually gained them free publicity and the admiration of the mainstream media. But standing up to the Chinese government on principle would have cost Google huge revenues in advertising dollars, so Google told the Chinese gov't "we'll do whatever you say, just please let us get our lips around that revenue crack pipe."

Nice to know Google believes in principles. Sad that those principles are on sale.

NSA datamining - some common sense from Andrew McCarthy

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200601231259.asp

Stopping Domestic Terror success

here is a fantastic success story, told by Michael Yon. American heroes are everywhere - why can't the main stream media ever seem to find any?

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/fight-on-the-home-front.htm

Jill Carroll

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060118/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Americans are the most generous people on earth, and generally are quick to forget, with a propensity to a 'live and let live' attitude. Americans have historically been slow to anger, but when our blood is up there is no fiercer people on earth, and nothing will quicken that national blood quicker than harming women and children. The worst thing these terrorists can do is to kill Jill Carroll, both for her and her family, and also for the terrorists' cause. They should want a disconnected and theoretically hamstrung American public, not an outraged and focused American public that has turned its unified eye on them.

Seeing her in the 20 second video made my blood boil, and I'm sure millions of Americans felt the same emotions.

Right Now!

One of my best reps over the years used to say that her secret to success was "working scared." She always told herself that if she didn't make contact with her clients Right Now! that her competitors would beat her to the punch. Right Now! is a great way to work, to plan, to live. Having assessed that a Nazified Europe would be not only a military and economic threat to America, but a threat to our very civilization, FDR approached the conflict with red-lined intensity. He signed the go ahead for the Manhattan Project on Dec 6, 1941 (sheer coincidence to Pearl Harbor the next day), and in 3-1/2 years, the US spent the equivalent of $20 Billion dollars, employed 130,000 people, and produced 2 atomic bombs that ended World War II and saved many many hundreds of thousands (and probably millions) of American and Japanese lives. From idea to completion of mission in 3-1/2 years ... WOW!!! After 9/11, the US gov't resolved that it must create massive amounts of biological antidote for American people. In 3 years, all it has managed to do is get passed the 'go ahead' to begin the program. 3 years to accomplish only that we can begin the first step ..... wow. The casual attitude of our government and many of our citizens is the recipe for disaster, and possibly defeat. Failure to survive is the logical outcome of a failure of imagination, and/or a failure of will and/or a failure of means. Americans have the means, the majority of us still have the will ... the big question is does our government (I refer not to our current elected administration, but rather to the thousands of career govt bureaucrats who either grease or brake the skids of daily gov't functions) have the ability to imagine the far side of darkness, and to combat it in its infancy?

National Unity is required for national survival

These words were spoken by a US Supreme Court justice during WWII, and those words ring just as true now as they did in those dark days.

More than any President since FDR, President Bush had that unity but let it slip away, by ignoring a fundamental principle that every successful business leader knows - communication is the lifeblood of any team.

My friend, Rex, had an insightful observation in discussing President Bush's "report card" since 9/11. He said that the President had a cohesive, motivated audience in the American people - united in the aftermath of 9/11 more than at any time since World War II - and while he has done a good job of taking the fight to the enemy, he really fumbled the ball in regularly/constantly communicating to the American people where we are, where we need to go, and why we need to go there. Any organization or group needs inclusive, frequent discussions/communications with its leader(s) to keep the goals - and necessity for those goals, and the methods to achieve those goals, and the rewards for achieving those goals - clearly fixed in the peoples' minds, so that they will be continually reassured that the future rewards are worth the current sacrifices being made.
President Bush was very distant in this regard, and in that communication void came all the dissenting opinions and voices, gaining traction with every day that the Bush Administration chose to 'hover above the harping'. He allowed momentum to be lost, and it has exacted a very real price in terms of hampering our ability as a nation to act decisely and cohesively in our best interests.

Big man on Fiji

Ted Kennedy is a tired cliche - a carton of big gov't, bleeding heart "I'm the champion of the little guy" liberal. Of course. how much of the "little guy" championing is real, and how much is just so much gas? You decide ... the Kennedy fortune - some 500 million dollars U.S. - is mostly inside trusts that are based out of the island nation of Fiji ... and the taxes those trusts paid on that $500,000,000 was a miniscule $116,000 (that's 1/50 of 1 percent). Who do you think he's looking out for?

His rudeness and posturing in his questioning of Judge Alito has been inexcusable. Especially his insinuations about Alito's immorality in his ruling on some cases of discrimination and race. All I can think about is Senator Barry Goldwater's comment, when told that Ted Kennedy thought Goldwater's position on an issue of the day to be immoral, "The last thing I need is a lesson on morality from the hero of Chappaquidick." Here here.

Myopia

Regarding this story about protests over a fighter jet flyover tribute during a MLK march (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20060113/ap_on_re_us/king_march_dispute) ...

The point the protesters totally fail to grasp is captured by the bumper sticker - "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank a soldier."

Imagination

I believe that Westerners who do not think that Western civilization is under attack, suffer from a lack of imagination. It is incomprehensible to them that another culture wants their demise and destruction and death, simply for having a different opinion and different way of life. But, of course, human history is lousy with examples of exactly that.

The world is a 1000 piece puzzle, and any one person - based upon his life experiences and observations - sees clearly only one to three or four pieces. Arguments of the current state of affairs are largely useless if they are based upon these one to four pieces of the puzzle, because even the four-piece guy can have no clue what the overall picture of the puzzle is. Life must be lived forward, but can only be fully seen and understood after the fact, in retrospect. Understanding human nature, finding parallels between current events and history, and identifying the motives of the current players is the best way to chart trends and formulate strategy.

The What? principle

There are obviously a lot of Islamists that are determined to cause America (its people, its society, its domain) as much harm as possible. I hear arguments ad nauseum as to the causes, the solutions, the boundaries, the ramifications. But I rarely see these discussions begun from the proper premise. In my opinion, the first question in any discussion about Islamic terrorists should be "Is it war?" Because the answer to that question will dramatically color what are "reasonable solutions." Solutions a society deems acceptable in peacetime will differ a great deal from what that society deems acceptable against the backdrop of war and its own survival, right?

Any serious discussion must begin with an application of the "What" principle, which borrows its essence from Marcus Aurelios, who said "In each thing, examine its essence - what is its nature, in and of itself?"

And so, in regards to the increasingly global conflict between Islamic believers and Western society ... Is it war?

Introduction

I have started this blog in an attempt to expand my understanding of the important questions and issues of the day and of the ages. I have questions, hopes, fears, frustrations, truths, and so do you. Do you see starlight? So do I. Smell the fire? I do, too. Draw close, let us tell each other a story ...