Blogito, Ergo Sum - Monday the 20th day of November 2006

Now if I can just get this danged formatting figured out… I read the auguries this morning and the results were mixed. Carol woke with a migraine, that’s bad. It got me up early enough to get the garbage out to the curb, which I had failed to do for so long now it was becoming a neighborhood health hazard (although a poll of the dogs showed them to be hugely in favor of the idea). That’s good. I personally feel the worse for wear this morning, and that’s bad. It’s a cool, high-overcast morning, that’s good. I guess, on balance I’ll decide things are okay, I hate it when I have to start the week by slaughtering one of the animals to check out the entrails. Although if those dogs don’t stop barking all night long….

One of these days pretty soon, however, this may be the first issue of St Ives ever posted to our new internet site, although the above date may be somewhat aged as to the actual posting date. St Ives was originally written for “miscellaneous kids, cats, sacks and lives of other beloved persons who don’t always manage to get a letter for various rationalizations which seem reasonable to the author even though possibly unacceptable to the authored”, a tradition which will continue.

If this does, indeed, turn out to be the first post…well, then, welcome and I hope you find something interesting, funny, enlightening, challenging, argumentative, and perhaps all of the above.

My only request is that all of the above can be done without any of us losing our tempers. Let’s promise to keep Will Rogers in mind: “I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.” Then let’s take that beginning and expand upon it.

What, he intends to stop sending Syrian ‘freedom fighters’ into Iraq? No, well, then, maybe he wants to send Iraq some Syrian troops to help quell their sectarian militias? Why doesn’t some fearless reporter ask those questions? Not to even mention why any Iraqi would agree.

The Iraqi and U.S. governments have accused Syria of contributing to the violence by allowing fighters to cross into Iraq to join the insurgency. … "Syria's intensions toward Iraq are good in all times, and on that principle we are looking forward to a good relationship between Iraq and Syria that takes history and common interests into consideration," (Syrian Foreign Minister Waleed) Muallem said during a news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

Syria and Iraq have been adversaries since the 1980s, when Syria sided with Iran in its war against Iraq.

Some prominent U.S. officials say that engaging in talks with adversaries such as Syria and Iran is key to curbing the violence. The Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton, is expected to recommend such action in its report, set to come out next month.

U.S. officials have resisted talks with Iran because they believe the Tehran government has fomented tension in Iraq and because they are worried about its growing influence in the region.

U.S. officials also say Syria's borders have become an entry point into Iraq for Sunni Arab insurgents. Muallem denied that assertion.

"We are making all efforts to secure the borders, but that does not come from one side only," he said. "America has not been able to stamp out its borders with Mexico, so they started to build a wall between them, and that tells us how it is difficult to control the borders."

He has a point. I still don’t understand how “some prominent US officials” can say that Syria and Iran are the key to curbing the violence without at the same time admitting that they are CAUSING the violence. Like the man pointed out, the three countries weren’t buddies in Saddam’s time, either, it simply ain’t all one big happy world over there except for American interference.

The American-Iraq war has caused 3500 American casualties and perhaps 65,000 Iraqi casualties. The Iran-Iraq war caused an estimated million or so on each side. I’m sure that Syria and Iran now both want to help out the poor Iraqis, all the more so since Iraq started it all.

Well, US politics is going to be a lot more fun to watch. As Robert D. Novak points out:

The freshmen, Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, campaigning in 2004 in Oklahoma and South Carolina, promised not to fall in line with GOP leaders. Fulfilling that pledge allied them with the long-termer John McCain. They have been backed by Jeff Sessions of Alabama and another freshman, John E. Sununu of New Hampshire. In the lame-duck session's first week, they played Horatio at the Bridge by combining to block a pork-filled omnibus spending bill.

That would place responsibility for spending excesses on the new Democratic majority taking office next year. It is highly unlikely that Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a legendary king of pork returning as Appropriations Committee chairman, will reverse the habits of a lifetime and listen to ordinary voters' revulsion over excessive federal spending.

It’s funny the things that come out after an election. How many of you had heard that Fightin’ Jack Murtha was also a king of pork, he loved earmarks and trading favors in smoke-filled rooms. And I’m only talking about the legal ones, now.

The bipartisan dismay the dissenters have caused cannot be exaggerated. Hard-working staffers are beside themselves that their lame-duck feast of pork is being thwarted. K Street lobbyists are frustrated that they are being deprived of a vehicle for their special-interest amendments.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran wanted President Bush, in Asia on a trade mission, to phone DeMint and ask him to stop blocking the agriculture appropriations bill. It did not happen, and the Republican leaders mournfully agreed to the cost-cutting resolution. An irate House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, who has taken pride in passing his committee's bills on schedule and filled with earmarks, called the outcome an "absolute disaster and catastrophe."

Among senators wailing that their pet projects are being derailed, none has been louder than Democrat Kent Conrad, who will be Budget Committee chairman in the new Congress. A self-described fiscal conservative (because he wants tax increases), Conrad submitted 41 proposals busting the Bush budget in 2005 alone.

Give you a little different view of Bush’s problem with enforcing a budget? Oh, I know, I know, it’s a lot easier to just put all the blame on one person, also gives a lot of Democrats cover among the smoke and mirrors, but as you all should know it is not the president who passes the budget, it’s the congress.

I sometimes wonder of Howard Kurtz is for real. In the current Media Notes he says:

Come ON, Howard, where have you spent all of your life? If I’ve heard one complaint about American Jews perhaps being more loyal to Israel than to their own country, I’ve heard a thousand. It’s even been asked of Joe Lieberman. And as for Catholics, doesn’t anyone remember the ‘concerns’ when Kennedy ran for president…not to mention questions that Kerry got about whether or not he was going to obey the Pope. Have another cup of coffee, Howard. Sure, it may be a dumb question but if isn’t one that singles out only Muslims.

Uh, either that or both presidents have a point, however imperfectly worded, and it is the New York Times which has shown the lack of progress? One wonders if the complaints had been worded more diplomatically and elegantly if Kurtz might not have been able to discern some similarities other than simply his own preferences?

Here’s a headline in the MSM to which I will confidently predict the liberal response:

It will be Bush’s fault. No, any speeding up of the economy was not due to anything he did, not the tax cuts or anything, that was just the normal good old American economy doing its thing…but, mark my words, the slowing will be Bush’s fault, just the same.

This wasn’t the subject of Deroy Murdock’s column, which was about Giuliani, but I have to respond to the question just the same:

Can’t anyone figure out that the drug companies, often taken to task for their single-minded and obscene desire to make huge profits, don’t see any potential for those huge profits here? Don’t you think that if they did they’d be elbowing each other out of the way to be first in line? Of course they would. Maybe the drug companies know what they are doing?

Wouldn’t it be even funnier if the drug companies could get the taxpayer to fund the research so that drug company profits would be even greater? That damn Bush, he’s cutting off government spending for big pharma again!

I find myself wondering…do sine if these pundits just write whatever seems to make sense to them at the time, without any internal questioning or peer review? Take this American Spectator article by George Wittman asking how we can get out of Iraq:

The price we are paying now -- beyond the deaths and maiming of our magnificent men and women in military service -- is loss of leverage on Iran at a time when a maximum effort has to be made to coerce and cajole Tehran out of their rush toward nuclear weapon development.

The Iranians know we need their help and also know that this gives them the upper hand in negotiations on their nuclear plans. We will not be able to obtain Iran's help in our problems with Iraq without granting Tehran's objective of becoming the first Persian Gulf nuclear super power.

Therefore the real question facing the Bush Administration, the new Democrat majority in both legislative houses, and the Iraq study group is whether the United States is willing to step away from its effort to corral Tehran's ambitions for nuclear weapons. Are we willing to make that trade off? Does getting out of Iraq mean that much to us?

That will be the price unless Iran loses its Russian and Chinese patrons. James Baker's group is asking that question right now. What do we have to give to Moscow and Beijing to get them to abandon their protection of Tehran's political and military desires as embodied in the Iranian nuclear weapon development?

Each step along the way toward the United States getting its troops out of Iraq is balanced on another action that is impacted. But there's nothing new in that either. It's what good old Henry Kissinger would refer to as Realpolitik.

Can he really believe that what he writes is sensible? The first reality that must be met when dealing with Realpolitik is “what does the other side want that I have which is valuable enough to trade to them for what it is that I want?”

What is it that Iran wants? Why, it is abundantly clear unless your library has closed its doors and your internet connection has been severed. For generations—longer, for millennia—the Persians and Arabs have warred for control of the Middle East. Think Cyrus The Great, think Darius I, think Xerxes. They do.

Back in the days when tv news wasn’t geared to the lowest-common-denominator, people in the Western World knew about things like this and even played the various sides off against each other for their own gain.

This was called Realpolitik. What’s that you say…you think it is duplicitous? Why, of course it is. Diplomats have always known that their job is to best serve their country’s interests while trading away the least they possibly can, and in doing their jobs they have done what lawyers have done in their own professions: namely, invent a special code of ethics which allows them to do what some consider abominable things while still, by virtue of creating their own definitions, behaving honorably. This is how Japanese diplomats were able to be negotiating a peace treaty in “good faith” the night before Pearl Harbor, just to give you one example. Their job description included it.

Americans and others who today are advocating a “diplomatic” solution in Iraq need to have this explained to them, apparently, because it seems to have become forgotten.

How long have the Western nations, beginning with Europe, played the Persians and the Arabs, among others, off against one another so that neither would become too strong? Maybe it’s time to remember how Iraq came into being in the first place.

Iran now sees little to prevent it from conquering Iraq, finally, and assuming dominance in the Persian Gulf. Once they have an atomic bomb they will assume dominance of the entire Middle East once again. (Unlike some other people, I’m not nearly as inclined to believe they intend to share a lot of nuclear technology with their other rivals for power. The one nuclear power currently in existence there they mean to eliminate.) The Persian Empire is ancient history to us, but not to them.

And this is our ‘best-case’ situation, because it assumes that Ahmadinejad doesn’t really believe it is his religious obligation to create peace on earth by restoring the Hidden Imam to his throne. If that really is the case, however, there absolutely, positively and definitely is nothing we can offer him that would be better than that.

As for Iran’s so-called patrons, China and Russia, what is it the US has to trade to them that they will consider worth more than what they have now? If the U.S. succeeds in establishing any kind of stable democracy in Iraq (at least of a stability equal to, say, Italy) then that will, of necessity, place curbs on Iranian influence in the region. If the U.S. further succeeds in removing Iran’s nuclear capabilities for war then that will further diminish Iranian influence as well as greatly increase the strength of the U.S. hegemony.

I don’t believe either Russia or China desires to see those things happen. No, I didn’t think you really believed that, either.

So why would the Iranians and Syrians, et al, offer a diplomatic olive branch now? Why, because they know the Americans are the naïve new kids on the Realpolitik block. They can make any deal with us that they like, take whatever we will offer them for as long as it suits them, and then resume their old ways when the time is right. (Cf., North Korea.)

So why do they even pretend, right now? Why, because they are much more realistic than the foolish and soft American people. The Iranians know better than anyone else, especially the Murtha-blinded, that the Americans have the world’s most-powerful military machine sitting in the country next door to them. Charlatans playing politics in the US have tried to convince people that our military is too broken, too over-extended, even too demoralized to fight a war, but the Iranians know better.

One of the reasons so many Americans have allowed themselves to be fooled is that they see Americans troops unable to prevent sporadic random acts of violence everywhere in that country, not only all of them but also without fail. We have the false idea that if we’re really such hot-shots why, then, we should be able to impose perfect peace in Iraq at all times. Sure, just like the Washington DC police department does. Republican man-of-steel Rudy Giuliani is highly regarded for only reducing the crime and murder rates in New York City, he didn’t need to eliminate them in order to become a heroic figure.

The American military forces are having difficulty fighting small and almost anonymous groups of insurgents who have neither army, navy, nor air force to target, that’s certainly true.

Ah, but that won’t be the case if and when they go to war in Iran. In that case we’ll be matching our military machine against theirs, our tanks against theirs, our jets against theirs, our aircraft carriers against theirs…yes, even our atomic weapons against theirs, if we wait that long.

The Iranians aren’t big enough fools to believe they can win that type of contest. And especially not now, not with our troops already there, supply lines in place, no more begging Turkey or other allies for overflight rights to enter Iraq, our military-industrial complex already on a warlike footing, the missiles and bullets and hand-grenades rolling off of the assembly lines on schedule, etc etc etc.

No, much better to, ah, how shall we put this…resolve the Iraq crisis diplomatically! Settle things down long enough so the Americans can disband their military and send their troops back home to civilian life. The Democrats will be delighted to reduce the deficit by their traditional methods, slashing military spending.

So now we have identified the one and only thing that the Iranians, Syrians, Russians and Chinese really want from the U.S. in the Middle East: take your troops and go home.

Well, we’ll sleep better if we return to domestic politics, instead…or maybe I should say, in this case, Dempolitik. Ah, I’m about to enjoy the next couple of years, as Byron York tells me in National Review:

August 3, 1988, the House of Representatives voted on a resolution, co-sponsored by Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers, to impeach Alcee Hastings, the federal judge in Florida accused of conspiring to take a bribe. On that day 18 years ago, some of the Democrats who are today preparing to take power in the House were relatively new to the job; others were, even then, veterans who had served in Congress for years. For both, the vote was a rarity; Hastings was just the 10th judge in U.S. history to face impeachment.

One of the newcomers to the House was the future Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had been in office a little more than a year. She voted to impeach Hastings. … In fact, just about everybody in the House voted to impeach Judge Hastings: the vote was 413 to 3.

A few of those members have left the House, moved on to the Senate, or died. But the ones who remain — the ones who now have the seniority to hold influential positions — have another tie to Hastings: They’ve been his colleagues for more than a dozen years.

The question of whether Hastings should be put in charge of the Intelligence Committee is not as clear-cut as the vote to impeach him years ago. For one thing, these days the 43-member Congressional Black Caucus is solidly behind Hastings, who is black. …
Late last week, the CBC sent a letter to Pelosi affirming the group’s support for Hastings “The CBC sent a letter to Ms. Pelosi just to let her know that the CBC is behind Mr. Hastings 100 percent,” CBC spokesman Myra Dandridge told National Review Online Friday.

On the other hand, the 37-member Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate Democrats, has sent a letter of its own to Pelosi, this one in support of Harman (a Blue Dog member herself).

And if you think the sole fallout from Trent Lott’s reappearance in the Senate GOP leadership is going to be just “a few bad headlines and a little disgust” … well, I think the word “macaca” can refute that notion. With Lott’s return to leadership, all of the GOP’s outreach efforts to African-Americans that were already sputtering after Katrina just collapsed. What’s more, the GOP just alienated millions of non-aligned soccer-mom-type voters whose sole mental picture of Lott are his comments about Thurmond and his stammering, ham-handed efforts at damage control afterwards. (Yes, the Democrats’ procedural wizard, Robert Byrd, was a Klan member (from one kind of a wizard to another, huh?) and yes, it’s unfair that the media gives Byrd a free pass. Deal with it. Life is often unfair, particularly in Washington, and particularly when dealing with the media.) Every time Lott plays a key role in a vote in the coming two years, we will see or hear the words “Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, who offended many African-Americans in 2002 with comments that appeared to endorse segregation, said today that…”

I thought the Republicans did an exceptionally poor job in selecting their leadership after taking what even George called a whupping. Makes me wonder if that won’t happen again a couple years from now.

Unlike some, I’m not so offended at what anyone might happen to say on any particular silly or even downright stupid occasion, from Lott to Gibson to, tonight, Seinfeld’s “Kramer” guy, maybe because I’ve been too often guilty myself (I would give anything to have two of mine back, and, no, I’m not going any further with that except to say they were to my wives at the time), but I do have to admit that some things can just be used against you so effectively in political life afterwards (like the man said, life is often unfair) that it’s just as well if you shake your head sadly and surrender, moving on to another role. Imagine Lott as an undertaker, say, instead…wouldn’t he be perfect? No, I’m not trying to insult undertakers, I’ve been a fan of them since Digby O’Dell.

Nor am I absolving bigotry, although that’s another one of those charges like ‘racism’ that seems to fit people of all sizes, sexes, creeds and colors, one I suspect is claimed more often for political leverage than for any other purpose.

Interesting commentary by Nibras Kizimi in the New York Sun about the Sunni side of the Arab street with regard to my earlier comments about Persia (Iran):

The bad guys are now celebrating the Democratic Party's sweep of Congress in the belief that the American electorate has pronounced its verdict on the grand visions of the neoconservatives — the fall guys for what is hyperbolically called the "catastrophe in Iraq." The most compelling example of this jubilation has been the audio message released by the current head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the elusive Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, who read the election results as a victory for his dark cause. At this stage, as the Democrats articulate their plan for Iraq, they need to ponder why evil men are hailing their anti-war talking points.

…

Coming in rapid succession, Saddam was sentenced to hang by an Iraqi court in Baghdad, and the neoconservatives are due to be lynched by an angry Washingtonian mob. Draping a noose around Saddam's deserving neck had been the vision of many neoconservatives, but now they must face their own reckoning for tinkering with the status quo in the Middle East. The allegation against them, made by many in Washington, is that the neoconservatives deliberately brought Iraq to ruin by deliberately seeking to liberate it. The role played by the likes of al-Muhajir is conveniently glossed over.

Nevertheless, the Democrats and the antiwar camp must have felt a little queasy when al-Muhajir noisily crashed their post-election partying. His message to the American people was one of commendation for "putting their steps on the right path out of this quagmire" and electing Mr. Bush's opponents and discrediting the "Israel gang"— read, the neoconservatives — around the president.

Beyond the theatrics of denouncing Mr. Bush as "the stupidest president the nation of slaves and drugs [America] had ever known" and threatening to blow up the White House, al-Muhajir's message is important on many practical counts. He positions Al Qaeda as the defender of Sunnis not only in Iraq, but also across the region in facing down the Shiite menace. He warns that Mr. Bush's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have enabled the Persians, that is to say the Iranians, to expand the writ of the Shiite "heresy" into these traditionally Sunni domains, and beyond, to Syria and Lebanon. Al-Muhajir even takes the rising stardom of Shiite Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to task by referring to him derisively as "Nasr-Al-Lat," literally, the Victory of Lat, with Lat being a pre-Islamic pagan deity, implying that Nasrallah is not a Muslim.

But what is most surprising in al-Muhajir's message is his belief that what he perceives as America's imminent military retreat from Iraq has brought an end to one of the "phases of jihad." This is an occasion for al-Muhajir to herald a new phase: the establishment of the caliphate. Al-Muhajir pledges allegiance to the hitherto unheard of " Abu Omar al-Baghdadi." The glaring hint that he is indeed Al Qaeda's candidate for the job of caliph is al-Muhajir's insistence on highlighting al-Baghdadi's Hashemite pedigree — a traditional must-have for any would-be caliph.

This should help give you some idea of how likely the Persians and Syrians really are about helping stabilize things for the democratically-elected government in Iraq.

I will probably get in trouble for even saying this, but I sometimes get the idea that the Muslims take their religion a lot more seriously than do many members of the several dozens of various branches of American Christianity. I mean, I was brought up in some pretty conservative branches of evangelical faith when I was a young boy, then went to high school and college in Utah, where I got to know and admire many Mormons, and while I understood very well that we all believed in the Second Coming of Christ I also somehow got the feeling that the statement of faith which said no man could know when this was going to happen also meant that nobody was going to be too surprised if it didn’t happen on the following Sunday. My Mormon friends believed in keeping a year’s supply of food on hand, for instance, to carry you through bad times, an excellent idea I think everybody should attempt to practice even—or perhaps especially--today, but doesn’t that also sort of imply that things aren’t expected to end during at least the coming year?

I hope I’m not having my own Mel Gibson moment here, I’m not trying to say anything negative about anyone’s particular variety of religious belief—or even aggressive non-belief in the case of some atheists—but merely noting that somehow I get the feeling that the followers of Islam, or maybe it’s just the jihadists, feel the event is much, much closer at hand?

Or maybe the difference is something that just this second occurred to me… I got the impression from what I was taught that the event was something that would happen in due course, when the appropriate time for it came, neither sooner nor later, whereas Iran’s Ahmadinejad apparently believes it is within his personal power to CAUSE it to happen according to his schedule. And maybe al-Mujahir thinks he can, too?

And don’t you get the impression that many Americans prefer to think that this kind of talk is ‘only’ rhetoric, that the guys don’t really believe these things but are saying them to their own people simply for effect?

Ayatollah who backs suicide bombs aims to be Iran's next spiritual leader

An ultra-conservative Iranian cleric who opposes all dialogue with the West is a frontrunner to become the country's next supreme spiritual leader.

In a move that would push Iran even further into the diplomatic wilderness, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, 71, who publicly backs the use of suicide bombers against Israel, is campaigning to succeed Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, 67, as the head of the Islamic state.

Considered an extremist even by fellow mullahs, he was a fringe figure in Iran's theocracy until last year's election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fellow fundamentalist who views him as his ideological mentor.

In a speech yesterday, Gen. John Abizaid was quite blunt in assessing the threat posed by Islamic radicalism. He also questioned whether the West has the will necessary to confront it now before a broader war erupts. From Reuters:

The top U.S. general in the Middle East said on Friday that if the world does not find a way to stem the rise of Islamic militancy, it will face a third world war.

Army Gen. John Abizaid compared the rise of militant ideologies, such as the force driving al Qaeda, to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that set the stage for World War Two.

"If we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we'll go through World War Three tomorrow," Abizaid said in a speech titled "The Long War," at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, outside Boston.

If not stopped, Abizaid said extremists would be allowed to "gain an advantage, to gain a safe haven, to develop weapons of mass destruction, to develop a national place from which to operate. And I think that the dangers associated with that are just too great to comprehend."

Abizaid said the world faces three major hurdles in stabilizing the Middle East region: Easing Arab-Israeli tensions, stemming the spread of militant extremism, and dealing with Iran, which Washington has accused of seeking to develop nuclear bombs.

"Where these three problems come together happens to come in a place known as Iraq," said Abizaid…

Ah, I do get tickled when I write something and a little later stumble across something similar from a real writer who really knows what he is talking about. Here’s Reuel Marc Gerecht in the Weekly Standard on the subject of a regional conference about Iraq:

Unfortunately for my ego, he comes to the same conclusion (i.e., we really don’t have anything to offer that they either want or don’t think they have already) but he sees different motivations than I do. He thinks the Iranians and Syrians figure they will benefit by continued instability, whereas I see them figuring to benefit from a short period of pretended stability just long enough to get our forces to go home.

Let's note a historical contrast. Realists like to cite the international conference on post-Taliban Afghanistan as an instance of a positive Iranian role in the region. However, Iranians were not "cooperating" because they wanted to be helpful. In 2003, the clerical regime's fear of the United States was palpable. Iranians had watched the United States wipe out the Taliban to the east and Saddam to the west. Tehran was focused on the superpower on its doorstep and an American president who'd demonstrated, unlike his predecessors, that he would invade Middle Eastern countries that posed a threat to the United States.

So what does the United States have to (now) offer the Iranian clergy that might tempt them to compromise their interests in Iraq? Well, there's the bomb. However, this, too, makes no sense. There is zero chance the president would allow these negotiations. Besides, an American promise not to interfere in Tehran's nuclear-weapons program would mean nothing since the mullahs now think they've already won, in great part because they believe--and the U.S. media, prominent realists, and much of the Democratic party reinforce the view--that America is too enfeebled by Iraq, too fearful of possible Iranian retaliation inside the country, for the Bush administration seriously to challenge Iran's nuclear aspirations.

I think Ahmadinejad is still a bit more wary of the crazy American president, myself. And he’s also enough of a realist to know that he probably has to wait only two more years and that problem will go away…if the American troops do, too. But I base my ideas on the fact that both Syria and Iran are initiating the “let’s talk” moves, which I can’t see them doing if they really think that continued instability is better for them right now.

In two more years, even if we have a suddenly-warlike Hillary in command, once the troops have come home and disbanded they won’t be going back again any time soon.

The unusually-cool weather continues. Last night the breeze was, uncharacteristically, from the west and cold enough I closed the doors. This morning the temperature says 74 but it still feels cool to my bare feet and legs, I’ve left the windows closed. Still a solid high gray overcast, too, essentially featureless. Doesn’t look like any rain in sight, but in Costa Rica you simply never know. Betting against it won’t win you much money, however.

Technically I understand we have begun our “dry” season, but in La Fortuna I’ve discovered that doesn’t mean a whole lot either way. Some days it rains and some days it doesn’t, whether wet season or dry. But only occasionally, at least here, does it rain a lot for a long period of time. I never, for instance, carry an umbrella or wear a raincoat. On the whole, that suits me very well because I like the idea of God keeping my plants alive on His own. Down here He seems to like to do that for a lot of them, too…during my California summers He preferred mostly to preserve manzanita and poison oak, it sometime seemed.

Odd morning so far. I got up to find Carol not in bed but in the guest bedroom. Usually this means I snored too much but I was a good boy yesterday, had wine with lunch but that was all,, so I’m afraid this means her migraine is back again…or should I say continuing. I heard Tony noises downstairs so got up to keep an eye on him and was very surprised to find another adult in the house at this hour…took me a startled second to realize it was only Lis. She wanted to leave early this afternoon for some reason and so decided to come early to make up for it. Boy, do we have a jewel in Lis, but I’m afraid she is maturing rapidly into a rather pretty young woman and we’ll be losing her one of these days all too soon.

Well, enjoy things while you have them, that’s my motto, the glass is always half full and not half-empty…well, unless you don’t have any more beer in the house and you are doing hot and sweaty work, that might be different. Not only is Tony having a great time at his morning day-care, the kids all seem very happy that he’s going there. He’s a bright and personable little boy, if well imbued with the Aries traits of stubbornness—excuse me, singleness of purpose—and the insistence that whatever he wants is due NOW, not whenever you are ready.

The three little girls across the street miss him, he used to be going across there to share their baby-sitter in the mornings, but after she quit and we found the day-care place the little girls have gotten him only on Saturdays. I’ve heard he is a bit bossy with the little girls but they seem to really want him to come and play, so I guess he can’t be too bad. You know how it is with women, anyhow, they need macho, bossy men. (What’s that, dear? Okay…coming…)

I’ve heard a lot about the macho Latin culture, and while some of it may be true, perhaps more so than in the US, some of it is the stuff only of legend. A favorite joke of at least my more-domesticated friends is that in Costa Rica the man always has the final words: “yes, dear.” On the other hand, there are some other distinct cultural differences.

I’ve heard that the idea was to win big and give a certain air of unstopability to her election in order to create her 2008 persona, maybe that’s it?

If only 19 of them had been singled out about five years earlier, huh? Sorry, you imams, it’s like the guy I quoted above said about life, sometimes it just doesn’t always seem fair. If you think it’s bad now just wait and see what happens if and when ‘militant’ Islam engages in another serious event in the U.S. Fair won’t even be three letters of CAIR, I’m very much afraid. If Muslims are unaware of what happened to America’s Germans and Japanese citizens in previous wars then they had better start hastily boning up on the subject.

Well, I’ll reveal my ignorance. Why did the other three not feel the necessity to do what 1,699,999,997 Muslims around the world did every day?

You want to talk about somebody revealing their ignorance about religion, how about THIS gem of a NYTimes item!

I don’t think I even want to try to figure out what that writer meant. I hesitate to even try to imagine what he (or she) must think a ‘scientist’ is and/or does. I mean, we all know from watching television that they have to wear a white lab coat and hold a clipboard, and always look directly into the camera and speak very solemnly, but what else? ‘Evangelical’, according to my dictionary, apparently refers to only Christians, so what, I wonder, does he think that Darwin was…a scientist or an evangelist?

You get the impression that people apply the ‘evangelical’ label only to those Christians who they feel possess an unseemly “ardor or zeal” in their religious beliefs, but the particular religious belief of thus-defined evangelical Christianity is simply that salvation of the individual can be achieved solely by personal acceptance of the belief that the death of Jesus was an atonement for man’s sins., and specifically that individual’s. However, once again that is also the underlying belief for all of the various flavors which Christianity comes in, so what is the real objection here…open expression? What about the First Amendment?

But how does that affect a scientists approach to his or her, ah, work? What is the ‘work’ of a scientist? If you are a scientist trying to discover (I sometimes think that is what lay people mean by the word scientist, someone who discovers things) something like the cold fusion process that will release Americans from their addiction to oil, for instance, will you approach your work differently if you are an evangelical, say, than if you are a member of a non-Christian religion, an agnostic, an atheist…or maybe even one of the apparently more acceptable types of casual Christians who never mention the subject of their religious beliefs?

Like, for instance, is you are a cosmologist thinking deep scientific thoughts about the origin of, well, virtually everything, and come to the conclusion that at some point all of the matter composing the universe, everything, was contained in some infinitesimal point which let’s call a singularity, although of course back then nothing was called anything because there wasn’t anyone around to call things names, not even “me Tarzan; you Jane”….anyhow, so you get this idea and call it the Big Bang Theory, since even you aren’t arrogant enough to call it a fact like some now claim ‘evolution’ to be even if Darwin himself did not…somehow, if you were an evangelical your approach would be to think that God did it, after which you would stop working, but if you are not then your approach would be a secular “stuff happens”—after which you stop working?

I’m not sure what’s going on with the ‘evangelical’ and ‘Christian’ thing in the NYTimes, anyhow, some of their things seem kind of odd, to me…I mean, like why? For instance, this item today:

What significance does that have when we are talking about Syrians and Hezbollah? He was shot in his car, too, so was it a Mercedes or a Citroen? Was his Armani suit relevant?

And no sooner did I finish my scientific-approach-vs-evangelical-approach rant than I came across this interesting item in the NYTimes about a meeting captioned “A free for all on Science and Religion”, interesting enough if for no other purpose than pointing out that sometimes people aren’t even arguing about the same things even though they are using the same words.

Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University known for his staunch opposition to teaching creationism, found himself in the unfamiliar role of playing the moderate. “I think we need to respect people’s philosophical notions unless those notions are wrong,” he said.

“The Earth isn’t 6,000 years old,” he said. “The Kennewick man was not a Umatilla Indian.” But whether there really is some kind of supernatural being — Dr. Krauss said he was a nonbeliever — is a question unanswerable by theology, philosophy or even science. “Science does not make it impossible to believe in God,” Dr. Krauss insisted. “We should recognize that fact and live with it and stop being so pompous about it.”

You see, to me those are apples and oranges being argued about rather than the same thing. I mean, what seem to some people like the peculiar ideological beliefs of still some other group, some sub-set of humanity no matter what size it might be, whether concerning six-thousand years or sun-gods (who were probably space-travelers unless you believe that the complexities of science and evolution occurred only on planet earth among all of the zillion others, which various religions might deny but science hardly can…(whew, pause for breath)) to me aren’t matters of capital-R Religion but the reflections created within the mind of some certain man or group of men who at one time or another influenced others around them into believing some thing or another.

Thus if Group A specifically requires you to believe one particular item, and you do not, you are clearly not qualified for membership in Group A, but that fact alone does not mean you do not possess any religious beliefs at all, merely different ones.

Both Science and Religion attempt to do the same thing, after all, when it comes right down to it: explain the mysterious things man sees happening around him. We call it science rather than religion whenever we can discern a clearly demonstrable and reproducible cause. The religious witch-doctor gives the sick man some ground up herbs over which he has chanted magic incantations, but when the doctor gives the patient the same digitalis that is science.

For instance, was it science when careful watchers observed that flies appeared on dead animal carcasses by means of what they called ‘spontaneous generation’ at that time? Well, certainly it wasn’t religion, but it wasn’t until later that men discovered what had previously been the mysteries of fly larvae, definitely turning the observation into ‘science’ at that point.

As some of you have read perhaps too many times before for your own liking, in my own field of geology/geophysics, when I was a student Alfred Wegner’s concept of what we later began calling continental drift and now refer to as plate tectonics, was considered as impossible an idea as had been that of the earth revolving around the sun rather than vice versa. The mystery of why the fly larvae are alive and the animal they are living in is not, however, is still not capable of scientific explanation.

But was the Pope expressing what I call a Religious belief when he said Galileo’s ideas did not agree with his own interpretation of the Bible at that time or was he expressing a political interpretation of something at that point not yet, ah, what’s the term…ah, yes, scientifically explained? After all, a subsequent Pope did change his mind about the subject, yet the religion is not diminished by that fact.

Karl von Clausewitz said: “War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means.”

I like to think of what I call the multitude of “organized” religions (the ones that attach different names to themselves in order to distinguish one from another) as essentially political relationships being carried out by other means.

In terms of what I like to call capital-R Religious belief, it seems to me that the difference between the sub-sets are perhaps not so much religious differences as they are political ones. Maybe that is what people actually get so hostile about, politics rather than religion?

But my point is that those don’t really represent what I prefer to think of as Religious belief. I guess it all goes back to the question that man has been trying to answer since Bill Cosby asked “who is this…REALLY?” If you can listen to a “scientist” explain the Big Bang creation theory and feel that it is sufficient explanation for you, that now we know everything there is to know about that because there is a scientific answer, then if that works for you, and you have no more questions, fine. You believe in a scientific explanation.

If you still have questions left unanswered, you believe in a religious explanation, or perhaps you are an agnostic.

Because science, by definition, produces answers. Religion (by which I mean the philosophical abstraction rather than any political sub-set of a named group) by definition, does not. The principal requirement of at least the Christian religion is faith, is it not? ‘Faith’ meaning what you believe BECAUSE it can never be known.

How do you figure it out when the scientists arguing against religious belief start arguing against their own argument?

“What concerns me now is that even if you’re as brilliant as Newton, you reach a point where you start basking in the majesty of God and then your discovery stops — it just stops,” Dr. Tyson said. “You’re no good anymore for advancing that frontier, waiting for somebody else to come behind you who doesn’t have God on the brain and who says: ‘That’s a really cool problem. I want to solve it.’ ”

“Science is a philosophy of discovery; intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance,” he said. “Something fundamental is going on in people’s minds when they confront things they don’t understand.”

With all due respect, Dr Tyson, when in human history has that happened? Galileo, to quote just one, basked in the majesty of God, as did Darwin, but neither stopped their process of discovery as a result. For many centuries, in fact, scientific discovery existed almost entirely, at least in the Western World, under the protection of the Catholic Church.

And I think Dr Tyson makes my point even as he refutes his own: science is also the confrontation of things people don’t understand. If you weren’t in ignorance to begin with, what would be the purpose of scientific investigation? How do scientists discover anything if the work only with things that are already understood?

Both religion AND science need to avoid the fatal flaw called ‘dogma’, where they come to a human conclusion that all things have become known and defined such that questions about them are no longer allowed. How can a person even make a statement like science being a philosophy of discovery but is not the confrontation of things not understood?

Puck would be laughing. Scientists think religion has closed off discovery and religionists think science claims it can explain everything.

As regular readers know (and sometimes despair) what I really enjoy is exploring intellectual contradictions…yes, my own, too, although by definition one’s own are more difficult to discern unaided. Fortunately, many friends seem willing to help me with this problem.

For instance, let’s talk about space travelers, and the possibility that the earth has been visited before, perhaps even seeded or colonized or whatever. Would a scientist call that belief rational, or foolish? Would it be science, or science-fiction?

But how could a scientist, who accepted evolution as a natural process, a scientific fact, which occurs over sufficient time when physical conditions are appropriate, take a look at the hugeness of the observable universe, as well as the amount of time science has been able to ‘prove’ the universe has existed as well as the time the earth has also existed, and possibly conclude that the earth was the only possible location in which such an evolutionary process would have occurred?

Since the mathematical science of simple probability would seem to render this, ah, improbable, why would it seem likely that humankind on earth represented not only the furthest advanced in the field of space travel that any other species had ever accomplished but would also represent the only one?

It’s unfair of me to postulate this without being able to ask him, but why is it I feel that Dr Tyson would pooh-pooh this whole idea of other space-beings as being unscientific? Flying saucer stuff, you know.

I can easier envision a religionist believing that all of this unimaginable universe is some gigantic version of “The Truman Show”, because, after all, this means that ‘someone’ is producing it for a specific reason for someone else’s benefit, but surely the cool and rational scientific mind would be ready for the arrival (return?) of space ships containing superior beings at any moment, although who knows when that moment might be?

Justin Morneau beat out Derek Jeter (Carol’s favorite baseball player but possibly also the only one whose name she knows) for the American League MVP. It has been decades since I lived and died for baseball, although I well remember those glory days as being a huge lot of fun, and I don’t follow baseball that well any more. What’s the story here, I wondered?

Morneau hit .321 with 34 homers and 130 RBIs., leading the Twins to a division title. Oh. I think he qualifies. Jeter was .343, 19 and 97, not bad numbers in anybody’s book, but I think he did well to finish second in this vote.

A “Times Select” article I didn’t read, since I didn’t join even for free, called Urban Planet and written by Stephen Johnson, “explains how the US is divided between the blue city and the red country”.

I haven’t seen it around much since the 2004 elections, but there used to be a red/blue map reproduced which showed the voting not by states but by counties. I pointed out back then how poor an understanding of the country you would get if you compared only red and blue states, especially the territorially large western states, so I’m interested to see that now apparently Johnson has written an article about it.

You would completely misunderstand my former home state of California, for instance, if you thought of it as a ‘blue’ state or Nancy Pelosi representative of the state’s inhabitants, because a county map reveals the state clearly to be mostly red with a narrow blue fringe which includes the major coastal cities.

What’s that? Did I say lunatic fringe? Well, no, I didn’t, but now that you bring it up…

Richard Cohen, who describes for me perhaps the perfect Liberal, says he sees the parallel some do not between Vietnam and Iraq, except:

I would have fought neither war.

Before you protest "of course, Cohen," let me explain that the "I" in the foregoing sentence is really four people. There is the "I" who originally thought the Vietnam War was morally correct, that the communists were awful people and that the loss of South Vietnam (the North was already gone) would result in a debacle for its people. That's, in fact, what happened. It was only later, when I myself was in the Army, that I deemed the war not worth killing or dying for. By then I -- the second "I" -- no longer felt it was winnable, and I did not want to lose my life so that somehow defeat could be managed more elegantly.

Things are precisely the same with Iraq, and here, too, I -- No. 3 -- originally had no moral qualms about the war. Saddam Hussein was a beast who had twice invaded his neighbors, had killed his own people with abandon and posed a threat -- and not just a theoretical one -- to Israel. If anything, I was encouraged in my belief by the offensive opposition to the war -- silly arguments about oil or empire or, at bottom, the ineradicable and perpetual rottenness of America.

On the contrary, I thought. We are a good country, attempting to do a good thing. In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic. The United States had the power to change things for the better, and those who would do the changing -- the fighting -- were, after all, volunteers. This mattered to me.

But these volunteers are now fighting a war few envisaged and no one wanted -- not I (No. 4), for sure. If at one time my latter-day minutemen marched off thinking they were bringing democracy to Iraq and the greater Middle East, they now must know better.

The perfect Liberal, who votes for things when they make him feel all warm and fuzzy like he is doing something moral, but gets cold feet whenever things start to turn out harder than expected. And when it comes down to the chilling reality that he could actually lose his own life over a principle, when he’s actually in the army himself, well…well, let’s go somewhere to live more elegantly even in defeat, because Richard’s avowed principles—the awful communists would result in a debacle for the people of South Vietnam, which he admits did in fact happen—weren’t really worth dying or killing for.

It was the same thing for him in the case of Iraq, he says, only this time he wasn’t personally at risk. Once again he thought ridding Iraq of a beast was a good thing, as was removing a threat to Israel, if not actually to us, indicating as clearly as anything could his willingness to recognize a huge difference between saving allies and saving ourselves when push came to shove…but suddenly for Richard none of these things mattered if we weren’t ALSO bringing democracy to Iraq and destroying WMD, since absent them none of Hussein’s other crimes mattered sufficiently…not if Americans were going to endure more dangerous effort than simply an application of therapeutic violence! I shake my head to think even a confused Liberal could make such an utterance. Violence as therapy.

Thomas Paine described him, and the many like him, perfectly. “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country. … Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered…”

Please understand one thing perfectly while we are on this subject: I’m claiming no moral or patriotic superiority here!

I joined the Marine Corps in 1953, fully expecting to go and fight in Korea, perhaps to die (actual combat was an idea which terrified me!), but not because I had any great love for South Korea. I didn’t even have any real idea (I was 18) whether the spread of Communism in Asia represented a threat to the distant United States or not, not for sure, Of course I had read that millions were dying under communism in far-off lands, but I not only did not live in far-off lands but also I did not know many people who actually were at risk in them. I went because my country’s leaders, for whom I did not even have the right yet to vote, sent me.

Would I have been happy about being drafted and sent to South Vietnam, perchance to die, for a similar concept? No, I quite doubt it. But would I have gone, just the same? You bet your booties, no escape route to Canada existed in my philosophic make-up. It would have been inconceivable.

Joining the National Guard would have been an acceptable alternative, as was getting a student deferment, since those were legal and legitimate routes, unlike the Canadian sunset.

Some people have chided me recently: if I believe the war in Iraq is necessary, and worth fighting, why won’t I suit up and go over there, myself? How do you answer a question framed in those terms? Do I believe that rape and robbery are crimes which a civilized society must of necessity prevent from taking place, and if the answer is yes must I then be willing to join the police force and patrol the city streets or else I don’t really believe what I say? If I believe the criminal justice system is of vital importance to the continuance of a civilized society, does that mean that I must become either a prosecutor or a defense attorney, mayhap even a judge, in order to demonstrate any right to advocacy for that belief? If I think that an honest democratic republican form of government is essential to the future welfare of my children, must I run for political office, myself, or otherwise be branded a hypocrite for failing to do so?

On the other hand, what about those who do? One huge difference with Vietnam which the people attempting comparisons simply cannot overcome is Richard’s recognition of today’s volunteer army. We see, like the volunteer cops, and firefighters, and prosecutors and defense attorneys, judges, and even politicians, everybody has to decide what their own contribution to the world is going to be according to their own individual inclinations and capabilities.

If a man says he has decided that the right and proper thing for him to do with his life is to follow one of those roles, even to go and fight in a foreign land for an abstract concept like ‘freedom’ which the beneficiaries might perhaps neither respect nor appreciate, who are we to judge him and tell him he is either right or wrong to follow his own conscience in the matter?

My problem with Richard is that he seems to think that whether or not he believed either for or against either war, or even both ways at the same time, or first one and then the other, or not ever, that gives him the right to pass judgment on those who disagree with him.

And, unfortunately for Richard and the MSM, there simply are too many reports filtering back from those individual troops, over the internet and other places, which tell us that our dedicated Americans who have chosen to defend us with military service at the risk of their own lives do, in fact, know better. Here’s one I got today:

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 11:37 AM
Subject: A MARINE'S RESPONSE TO JOHN KERRY..

This was written by my husband, Aaron, who is currently deployed to
Iraq, in defense of a recent comment made by Senator John Kerry. Pass it
along, it might inspire someone else to speak up! ~ Michelle}

Yesterday John Kerry said, "You know education, if you make the most of
it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be
smart, you can do well, and if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq"

So I wrote him a letter:

I am a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. I am currently on my
second tour in Iraq, a tour in which I volunteered for. I speak Arabic
and Spanish and I plan to tackle Persian Farsi soon. I have a Bachelors
and an Associates Degree and between deployments I am pursuing an M.B.A.
In college I was a member of several academic honor societies, including
the Golden Key Honor Society. I am not unique among the enlisted troops.
Many of my enlisted colleagues include lawyers, teachers, mechanics,
engineers, musicians and artists just to name a few. You say that your
comments were directed towards the President and not us. If we were
stupid Senator Kerry, we might have believed you.
I am not a victim of President Bush. I proudly serve him because he is
my Commander and Chief. If it was you who was President, I would serve
you just as faithfully. I serve America Senator Kerry, and I am also
providing a service to the good people of Iraq. I have not terrorized
them in the middle of the night, raped them or murdered them as you have
accused me of before. I am doing my part to help them rebuild. My role
is a simple one, but important. You see Senator Kerry, like it or not,
we came here and removed a tyrant (who terrorized Iraqis in the middle
of the night, and raped them and murdered them). And we have a
responsibility to see to it that another one doesn't take his place. The
people of Iraq are recovering from an abusive relationship with a
terrible government and it's going to take some time to help them
recover from that. We can't treat this conflict like a microwave dinner
and throw a temper tantrum because we feel like it's taking too long.

My objection to Liberals like Richard is neither what I consider their moral instability, their summer soldiery, nor their seeming hypocrisy, but the idea that communists and Saddam were beasts who should be defeated, until suddenly it wasn’t worth it for some other reason, as well as their arrogant belief that even though they NOW recognize this current situation as a “war few envisioned and no one wanted”, because violence did not apply in the nice therapeutic manner they imagined it would, they NOW have the right to sit in judgment and punish certain people for their misjudgments. But which people, and for what?

I find especially repellent, to borrow a phrase, the idea that his careful “and others” addition might conceivably, but without actually saying it in so many words, include all of the unnamed Democrats and members of the previous Clinton administration, not to mention the intelligence services of virtually every other nation in the free world as well as a few others who are not, even the United Nations, who prior to 2003 had declared, openly and publicly, and without coercion or deception, their fear—no, even their outspoken belief!--that the WMD were still in Saddam’s possession.

I am REALLY repelled by untrue allegations, such as Richard’s suggestion that Bush and Cheney told the troops that they were going to “sever the link between al-Qaeda and Hussein” as a primary casus belli, since certainly even an, um, journalist like Richard must have read the Joint Declaration signed by Congress, he must certainly admit what I have to call at least as much exaggeration as he claims guilt for Bush and Cheney when he says careless things like that. In fact, it is even a more hideous abuse of the public trust for a journalist to now deny that there was any link at all between al-Qaeda and Saddam, when captured documents prove otherwise.

And this denial is even worse when done by those fearless journalists who deliberately publish their own country’s secret classified documents, defending their actions as “the public’s right to know” (I hasten to add that I am not charging Cohen with this particular abuse) but don’t think the public has the right to know things the journalists would just as soon themselves forget.

But look at Richard’s own words, just before he turned faint of heart. Even if there were no WMD and even if there was no al-Qaeda link, he nonetheless, in his own words…

He needed neither additional casus belli to recognize these horrific facts. But after the war got long and bloody, turning into a war

those things no longer counted so highly on his moral qualms meter, perhaps not even at all. Now they even disappeared, whited-out in favor of his greater moral abhorrence for Bush and Cheney’s repellent exaggerations.

Unlike many Liberals, who I actually consider to be deliberate and intentional hypocrites, I rather admire Cohen for his open recognitions of guilt in committing what I call Liberal Logic, the circular reasoning that leads them to contradict themselves from one moment to the next with what one of my favorite Gilbert & Sullivan characters, the Pirate King, would call their “credulous simplicity”, yet without any apparent realization that they have done so. Richard, after all, by his own scorecard is batting .500 on the subject of the two wars, and that’s more than enough to win a batting championship in the major leagues.

But, in true Liberal Logic fashion, he is able to look at his own 50-50 record and conclude victory for…for…well, maybe not for his side, perhaps, but for at least his most-recent conclusion.

Can one practice Liberal Logic without incurring actual guilt in the process? Of course, one merely has to become temporarily blind:

Alas for our credulous simplicity about that suggestion, this war has simply lasted too long. Those (perhaps originally venal?) guardsmen who enlisted for more cash but thought they had the right to choose the duties they would be required to perform for God and country in order to earn it, have had time to re-enlist. And so they have, all across the military spectrum, in large number. Those whom Richard would have us believe Bush and Cheney duped into going in the first place have gone, seen, and even volunteered to go back again. Some, even severely wounded and maimed, asked to return to do what they thought was right, even if it placed them once again in mortal peril.

Unlike Richard, they still believed that Saddam was a beast whom their consciences still felt no qualms about quelling for humanity’s greater good, WMD or no WMD. That moral position remained true and valid for them no matter what was said afterwards or otherwise.

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot slink off when the sun sets and the cold winds begin to blow, when the battle looks like it can no longer be won, when the cause—even if just—appears lost, and tyranny is not easily defeated.

The question before the house now is this: do we have more Marine sergeants like Aaron or more (and it sickens me to define him thus) Marine lieutenant colonels like Murtha?

Well, back to political humor. Charley Rangel just found out he doesn’t have that much clout with Pelosi, she shot his draft idea down without even turning a hair.

Mr. Rangel, an Iraq war critic who will become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, urged a new draft during the 2004 presidential election. Other Democrats floated a rumor that the Bush administration plotted behind the scenes to institute compulsory service because of missed recruiting goals.

The Republican leadership quickly moved for a floor vote that October. Then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, said of Democrats, "We've had enough of that. We're going to call them on it. The Democrats are the only people that have a bill instituting the draft. We're going to bring it out there, and we're going to put a nail in it."

Mr. Rangel's proposal, which would draft women as well as men, was defeated 402-2. He even voted against it, saying Republicans brought up the bill up as a political stunt. Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, who subsequently called for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, and Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat, voted in favor of the bill.

Poor old Jack Murtha, he’s such a clown. He was one of the 2 on the losing side. When his own bill they mention, above, was brought to a vote, which he similarly called a political stunt (what an idea, people actually vote on the bills you propose?), even HE didn’t vote for it! Well, at least you could say he wasn’t on the losing side of that one, I guess.

And I have to add that no matter what I think of Rangel, he’s not completely wrong in my opinion:

I think he’s absolutely correct. We should have some type of universal military service plan, perhaps related to the Swiss concept, in which every person, without exemption, should put in a couple of years of community service. It doesn’t have to be in the armed military services, necessarily, for those who object on conscientious grounds (assuming such there be), but there are plenty of other services which need to be performed.

Rangel forgets, interestingly enough, that Democrat-favoring unions would never let him do this. Pelosi hasn’t.

It looks like this is going to be my first post, after all. Here we go. Try to be kind, huh?