America - Living Up To The Left's Rhetoric

What if the United States and the Bush Administration in particular actually decided to live up to the absurd rhetoric from the left at home and around the world.

The People's Cube article "America Takes Off Gloves, Puts on Brass Knuckles" is a Friday must read.

A Christmas Story

Only the greatest Christmas movie ever!

Quote of the Day

"It's amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites."
- Thomas Sowell

Quote of the Day

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other forhis faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to a Committee of the Danbury BaptistAssociation, Connecticut, January 1st 1802)

Christmas Is Sweet in a Sucking Kind of Way

From a funny MSNBC article by Steven Fried:

"I run into my friend Tom shopping at a jewelry and crafts store. He has a look of sheer panic in his eyes, and his lips are so tightly pursed that his beard and mustache practically meet. I know that look. It's a very specific form of performance anxiety that starts gripping married men this time of year. It's fear of "gift impotence," and Tom has an especially bad case."

. . . The holidays are hell for husbands, in all kinds of ways that wives will never appreciate. And most of us are smart enough not to complain about these pressures (except to one another) because how much sympathy can we really expect?"

Audio Book Review

KITE RUNNER
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Unabridged Fiction

Afghanistan of the 1970's through the Taliban (pre U.S. invasion) is the backdrop for this remarkable story of shattered childhoods, betrayal, redemption, and human suffering.

Read by the author, an Afghan emigree from the early 1980's, the audio read is simply remarkable. With such a passion for telling his story, enough personal relationship to the country and its suffering to convey it, and a thick Afghan accent and proper pronunciation the listener is drawn into the story and the setting. About a third of the way into the book I had to remind myself that this was fiction, not autobiography.

Amir is the son of a wealthy and highly-respected Afghan businessman in the final years of the Afghan monarchy, which was toppled by a coup and then eventually the Soviet invasion. Hassan was Amir's playmate, the son of the house servant. Amir, blessed with a wealthy father and cursed with the death of his mother in giving him birth, he struggles with his identity and the serious cultural issues of his country.

I won't give away the story here, but Amir and Hassan are split apart in a shocking set of betrayals. With the arrival of the Soviet invasion, Amir and his father flee for a new life in the U.S. A life tortured by guilt, the adult Amir is called back to Afghanistan to see his countryland devastated by the Soviets and then the Taliban. What he is really called back for is an opportunity to right his very deepest wrong and to demonstrate courage for the first time in his life.

A truly remarkable story, the Kite Runner (a title referencing a boy's game in Afghanistan) is also a fascinating look at Afghan history and the unbelievable tragedies experienced. The first half of the book, focusing on Amir's childhood is the best part of it. The second half is somewhat predictable and just a tad bit hokey, maybe because it is so heavily weighted in the Taliban context (horrible, indeed) that the author is unlikely to have experienced himself. This is not a book of cheerfulness, but is filled with sorrow and enlightenment about Afghanistan, it's people, and the horrible things that people can do to each other.

Drama Queen Moron

As John Wayne said it once: "Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid."
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Enough of this woman! Cindy Sheehan in an article in The Guardian, as part of an interview during her trip to Great Britain to bash Blair and Bush as "terrorists."

"I don't blame the people who killed Casey but the people who brought us into this, who lied and deceived the world," she says. "But the anti-war movement is growing at all levels. Congress is starting to talk about bringing the troops home and you never saw any of that before."

Enough. First, how does a mother mis-speak in saying that she doesn't blame the people who killed her son? She doesn't blame the enemy? But the second sentence of the quote really underlines her motivation. As she has been accused, the death of her son is simply a tool for her to argue against the war. She is so entralled with her celebrity status that she will do or say anything to stay in the limelight, to justify her behavior. It's going from sad to infuriating.

Secret Presidential Authorization to Spy on Americans

The New York Times is credibly reporting that in early 2002 (shortly after 9/11) President Bush signed an executive order authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on international phone conversations placed by from within the United States. Aimed at monitoring thousands of suspect phone lines for terrorist communications, the authorization allowed the NSA to conduct this surveilance without a court order.

Clearly, this is a disturbing development. Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches are certainly being seriously tested here by what is, by any reasonable look, a broad net of surveilance. Without a court order, the only protections allowed U.S. citizens is the confidence in unknown bureaucrats not to abuse this special power to listen-in.

I am really torn on this issue.

We are at war. Not so much the Iraq war here is a concern, but the war against al Qaeda that has not ceased since 9/11. Better put, the war to defend ourselves from continuing efforts to attack the U.S. homeland. The threats involved here, the technologies, and the speed of response required are so out of alignment with the realities of the 18th century constitution that one has to do a reality check.

If we place protecting our comfortable sense of privacy and constitutional rights purity over very dire security issues, what price may we pay in the not so distant future. How many thousands of lives might be lost if we tie one hand behind the backs of our intelligence and security forces fighting to prevent domestic terrorism?

According to author James Bradford's best-selling Body of Secrets and other sources, the NSA actually has been monitoring telephone, internet, fax, and other communications of U.S. citizens sent overseas for some time. The key distinction is that their targets were the overseas end of the connection. For instance, John Smith in Chicago calls someone in Madrid, Spain. The NSA could listen in on the Spanish side of the connection. This splitting of hairs effectively allowed the NSA to keep listening to international communications when U.S. citizens were involved.

The difference in the current controversy over the Bush executive order is that the NSA could target the U.S. side of the call, target U.S. citizens, and do so without a court order. The advantage of this for the NSA is that by monitoring outbound calls on particular U.S. suspects they can determine any number of international sites that a U.S. caller (potential terrorist) is calling. For instance, if John Smith in Chicago were calling his al Qaeda handler in Istanbul. This allows the NSA to find overseas bad guys faster and get information quicker.

Fine. This may be necessary. But how do we balance the potential for abuse.

I can't say that I'm completely comfortable with even a Bush Administration having this power and the potential for it to be abused for political, business, or personal purposes. When I think about how this could be used by a Clinton or Kerry administration to spy on political opponents, help compliant corporations spy on competitors as rewards for campaign contributions, blackmail, etc. then I get really nervous.

Where do we draw the line? Can we build in protections? I think its the lack of a court order to conduct the surveilance that gives me the most unease. While I understand that some judges would hamstring the NSA in very honest, credible surveilance work just to demonstrate their ACLU fitness, some level of oversight is certainly necessary.

Quote of the Day

"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal."

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900.

Not Much Time Left

4 weeks left until Little Ms. Maximus' scheduled arrival.

However, reportedly only 4% of babies are born on their due date. So it is just about alert time for Maximus to spring into action.

Stinking Hippies

Anti-war activists greeted the President in Philadelphia on Tuesday. This just speaks volumes about the anti-war movement.

Quote of the Day

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt

Iraqis Very Positive; ABC Poll Finds

A new ABC poll of 1,700 Iraqi's shows that 70% have a positive view of their own situation and two-thirds expect their lives to improve in the next year. Similar percentages indicated support and confidence in the new elections and the new Iraqi constitution.

However, less than half of Iraqis think their country is better off than it was before the war (curious how they asked that question) and two-thirds oppose the presence of U.S. forces.

This apparent contradiction between the very positive view that individual Iraqi's have of their own condition and that of their country and the U.S. is probably partly a result of uncertainty about national events they cannot control. However, the economic indicators for Iraqi citizens have skyrocketed in the last year, certainly a factor in their positive views about their own condition:

• Household incomes have increased 60% in the last eighteen months.
• The % of households with cell phones has grown from 6% to 62% in the last year, along with similar explosions in consumer goods such as satellite TV, air conditioning, etc.

Quote of the Day

"In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."
- Ayn Rand

Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Threat Update

John Kyl's April 16, 2005 op-ed Unready for This Attack from the Washington Post provides a worst-case scenario for a terrorist EMP threat.
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Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack (2004)
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And from GlobalSecurity.org:

"High-altitude EMP (HEMP), is the most significant and, potentially, the most hazardous to our security (of EMP weapons). The explosion of a nuclear burst at an altitude greater than 30 to over 500 kilometers above the earth's surface will produce the above scenario. Due to the very thin to non existent atmosphere at these altitudes, the gamma rays emitted from the explosion will travel radically outward for long distances. Those gamma rays traveling toward the earth's atmosphere are stopped by collisions with atmospheric molecules at altitudes between 20 and40 kilometers. These collisions generate Compton recoil electrons which interact with the earth's magnetic field to produce a downward traveling electromagnetic wave. This high altitude burst will not generate any other nuclear effect at the earth's surface.

However, this type of nuclear explosion also produces a vast ground coverage. Significant HEMP levels occur at the earth's surface out to where the line of sight from the burst contacts the earth's surface. Consequently, a nuclear burst over the central part of the United States at an altitude of 500 kilometers would produce an EMP field that would incapacitate all communications systems in the continental United States. "

Source: Electromagnetic Pulse-From Chaos To A Manageable Solution, Major M. CaJohn, USMC. Global Security.org.

Elegance and Power

Ah, Maximus can dream of a new Kimber Royal II .45 ACP. :-)

But Maximus will be angry if Santa or his elves plot and don't let him buy it for himself when he's ready. :-)

Asteroid Impact in 2036?

News is coming out about an asteroid named Apophis (after the Egyptian demon of evil and destruction), a 390 meter wide asteroid that computer simulations suggest could strike the Earth in 2036.

The damage would be inconceivable, but one has to wonder if it would be a global species killer. A 390m asteroid is only about three football fields wide. That's huge and the destruction would be immense on a sub-continental basis with global impacts, but its manageable size would suggest that options might exist to deflect it at some point.

Tracking these asteroids is quite a challenge and estimating their trajectory made all the more difficult based upon various gravitational tugs. Until recently downgraded, Apophis had been rated the most likely major strike identified since such projections began to be developed with a one in 37 chance. Now, we are talking about chances of one in thousands or tens of thousands, but still something to watch and wonder about.

Read more.

The EMP Nightmare

If you aren't familiar with the threat from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), created by a nuclear detonation in the atmosphere above a continent (as opposed to a traditional nuclear near-ground detonation), Rick Moran over at Right Wing Nuthouse provides a good and sobering description.

You could be in your car driving to work one morning when, in a blink of an eye, American civilization would be destroyed. The first inkling you would have that something was amiss is when your car suddenly died. You turn the key to start it again and…nothing. The engine doesn’t even turn over. The next thing you would notice is that the exact same thing has happened to everyone else on the road. You reach into your pocket and grab your phone to call your boss to tell her you’ll be late and find to your horror that the phone is completely dead – not only no signal but the phone itself is gone.

Perhaps you run into the bank to try and get some cash. The bank employees are frantic. The back-up generators that were supposed to supply electricity in the case of a power outage aren’t working. Later, you find out that your account records have been wiped along with trillions of gigabytes of data stored in millions of other computers around the country.

This is just the beginning. When you finally make it home you realize that you have no electricity, no water, no refrigeration – nothing. Your battery operated radio doesn’t work. In short, you have been propelled back more than 100 years in time and, for the foreseeable future, must live as your great grandparents lived.This nightmare is the result of a relatively small (10 kiloton) nuclear device exploded approximately 300 miles above Kansas. The 2 million degree heat generated by the nuclear chain reaction lasts for only a millionth of a second or so. But then as it cools, that thermal radiation becomes gamma rays which interact with the atmosphere and the earth’s magnetic field and generates an electrical field a million times more powerful than anything on earth.

Quote of the Day

"...there is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Ronald Reagan, January 21, 1981

Audio Book Review

Leadership
Author: Rudolph Giuliani
Abridged Non-fiction

Leadership is a word that seems perfectly chosen for a book by former NYC mayor and 9/11 legend Rudy Giuliani. However, as much as the word and title might make for good book sales, the content is decidedly weak in this regard.

Not that Giuliani doesn’t offer up some interesting perspectives, but if you’re looking for a how-to on leadership skills and tools or want any sort of in depth look at Rudy, pass on this one. The book not only covers a limited set of examples and stories, but there is little depth provided about the process, personalities, or politics involved. It’s a relatively good technical reminder about the value of good management practices to changing government and the services provided (and Giuliani deserves huge credit for NYC’s pre 9/11 rebirth).

Giuliani enjoyed packaging all of his decision making as being alternatively rational or emotional as it suits him (he seems to go out of his way to paint a picture that he is a man who cares, maybe to compensate for his technocrat image or something). Crass, ego-centric political maneuvering in his history is couched in terms of rational, business-like analysis and decision-making, not ambition. Most annoying (OK, there were many) is his penchant for talking about loyalty, but his glossing over his history of sticking it to fellow Republicans when it suited his own political interests.

Still, it is an interesting listen and a reminder that good management and good practices can be employed in government.

Squirrel Wars