Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins
8 December 2006, a day that shall live in infamy
Carol woke me to the news that the dogs had torn open a trash bag and scattered crap all over the driveway, I needed to get up and DO something. When I got out there, my disposition was improved by seeing that they had also played some doggie games with the Christmas tree which had not yet been brought indoors because it was leaning against the garage wall waiting for me to build a stand.
I turned on the pressure-washer, after picking up the bigger pieces of garbage, et al, and drank two cans of beer while venting my displeasure by blasting fungus into kingdom come, alternating between muttering curses and giggling insanely. I am now ready to rejoin the human race...well, no, first I have to read the New York Times...
Dueling Views Pit Baker Against Rice
Many of the critiques in the Iraq Study Group’s report boil down to the differing views of a former secretary of state and the current one.
Dear Mr. Baker: Your 15 minutes of fame expired some time ago. You are not Secretary of State Emeritus, we do not have that position. Please sit down. Take Mr. Kissinger with you while you are at it.
The buying power of U.S. workers is now rising at the fastest rate since the economic boom of the late 1990s.
Kerry muttered that he didn't give a damn, it was still the worst economy since Herbert Hoover.
House ethics committee says more should have been done to protect teenagers from advances, but staffers did not break any rules in handling case.
You're kidding me, right? I mean, if any Republican had DARED make any negative comment about a gay relationship between people above the legal age of consent, just imagine the firestorm that would have raged over that one!
Yes, it's a sad fact of life that liberals have consistently fought to lower the legal age of consent, for marriage and voting and drinking booze and whatever, so that now teenagers are considered to have the right to make choices they shouldn't have to face until they are adults, but unless you are willing to change everything back to age 21 then please don’t bother me with any more "teenager" headlines.
As I said before--and not in defense of either Foley or the Republicans--what do people imagine could have been done that would not have led to an ACLU lawsuit?
Go ahead...take your time...I can wait.
Okay, stand back, we're about to enter the God wars. Joan Chittister on the subject:
This is a question I understand all too well. The fact is, I was one of those children. My mother was Irish Roman Catholic. My father was Presbyterian. Whose God was really the True God?
It was not an easy arrangement in a religious world where ‘we,’ whoever that was, were right and ‘they,’ whoever we named as “other,” were wrong.
Like even greater numbers of children today, I was the child in-between it all, trying to figure out how it was that God–all merciful, all loving--the God, whom the catechism assured me, had made everyone, loved some of us more than the rest of us.
And why? Because we all went to different places to worship that same God in different ways. What was even worse, I finally came to understand, was that most people had never even heard of our church at all. So how could they be there?
Very confusing, if you’re a child. Very confusing if you’re an adult. And very hard on God, as well. After all, what kind of a God is it who creates people just to condemn them for not being what they do not even know about.
Look, isn't it really simple? God is this non-human being we do not and cannot, by definition, understand.
So then all of the problems involving our understanding of God are not created by Him (to select a term in common use) but by us...by various groups of people. God, therefore, unknowable, does not condemn or approve anyone for their behavior. And even if He/She/It/Them did, we wouldn't be able to tell. because it isn't within our capabilities to do so.
Alternatively, there is no God, no "higher" power, no intelligent creator, but even if that were so the results would still turn out the same way...whatever you think it is you have discovered that makes you special, or different, is only an illusion you have created for yourself.
Whether there is a God or isn't a God, man doesn't define that power either way. Whenever a man says he is doing this or that in the name of God, whether "saving" black souls in deepest Africa or destroying Israel, he's only deluding himself. Well, sometimes he can also convince some others, I have to admit.
Plus, of course, as I have pointed out before, denominations are not religions. Being either an Irish Roman Catholic or a Presbyterian is not being a member of a different religion but of a different political group.
Speaking of which...
Sen. John McCain, joining a growing list of critics, yesterday said the Iraq Study Group's widely touted book of proposals for settling the war in Iraq is a recipe for defeat.
That puts him in the lead, in my book.
I love a good line. This one, by Wes Pruden, deserves extra credit:
George W. Bush appears to be rationing the nice things he's saying about the efforts of Mr. Baker, if only to keep peace at the supper table when he goes home to see the folks. Some of his praise was barely faint enough to damn.
I mean, that's nicely put.
The Baker-Hamilton panel delivered themselves of 169 pages of argle-bargle in the language so beloved on Capitol Hill, full of rant and second-guessing, accusing many and persuading few. Argle-bargle never packs the punch of the obvious delivered with the bark on. John McCain said it plain: "I don't believe that a peace conference with people who are dedicated to your extinction has much short-term gain." Right on.
Okay, now he is WAY ahead in my vote.
Okay, it's been a long day, I'm way behind in my reading, but I have to finish with a quote from Richard Rahn on a favorite subject:
Mr. Lott, Mr. Rangel and most other politicians have learned it is easier to be re-elected by merely pandering to the ignorance of the people rather than take time to educate them (President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher were exceptions to this rule). If they and their colleagues really believe increasing the minimum wage does not increase unemployment, they would be advocating a minimum wage of at least $10 per hour (or why not make everyone well off with a minimum wage of $100 per hour)?
Great point. If the objective is a "living" wage, why stop at $7 or $10 or anywhere?
Costa Rica is a socialistic democracy and we have specified the appropriate wages for about a thousand different types of jobs, from maids to managers, but it turns out that few of them are realistic and thus few are observed...the market dictates the wages actually paid, as it always does.
I think the dumbest thing the Republicans could ever do, if they try, would be to oppose a raise in the minimum wage. Whatever the Democrats propose they should double...make the Democrats look like Scrooge, for a change. We aren't talking about people who are going to be working of Halliburton, after all, and none of them are going to be voting Republican no matter which way the Republicans vote on the issue. And we're talking about only a tiny fraction of the work-force as the most, many of them working for Taco Bell, now shut down because the pickers have to take their dumps in the fields in order not to lose an hour's time of minimum wage earnings.
Actually, raising the minimum wage to the point where the unskilled will be unable to get any job at all will be the most effective way to solve illegal immigration.
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We survived the Terrible Twos, now we are into the Tough Threes.
Tony is an extremely bright little boy. In addition, he is extremely stubborn and very hard-headed. (For those of you in the know, he is an Aries.) I kind of like the little kid, myself, but I understand the problem others can have with people like us.
He's a tough little guy because he has had to be in order to survive. During his first couple of years he was seriously neglected by a mother who simply was not around to look after him. Before we became involved, the Costa Rican child protection services had removed him from her custody.
The rest is a long story not necessary to be told here, but the nitty-gritty is that he was taken away from his mother and put into their custody, then in turn given over to his presumed father but in actuality he stayed mostly with us, then rejected by this man after a DNA test proved negative, and THEN he was forcibly removed from us just before Christmas last year and returned to the children's home--if he hadn't been a tough little guy he never would have survived it all.
This is really his first Christmas, at home, with a tree and presents.
The strangest thing that happened was when we finally reclaimed him from the "protective" services. After two months of legal battles, during which time he had not heard from us at all (for fear we might lose and not wanting to raise any hopes we would not be able to fulfill), we finally appeared at their office with all of our documents and our lawyer in tow. Tony was brought to the office from the back room, not knowing what was happening, once again being summoned before adults deciding his fate.
He looked at me and at Carol one time, then covered his eyes with his hand, and wouldn't look up again until after we got back home fifteen minutes later. He did not cry, he did not say anything, he simply sat there in her lap with his hand over his eyes while I drove home.
I think the poor kid has been having a tough enough time just deciding who Mama and Papa really are. Complicating the situation is the fact his birth mother shows up now and then and spends a Sunday afternoon here with him...along with her latest infant. He knows who she is, seems happy enough to see her, but also shows no distress when she leaves.
I feel personally VERY lucky that he did not make any real attachment with the person who had been presumed to be his actual biological father...whatever Tony may have believed back then, that is not one of his issues today. I am his Papa, me, period. Oddly enough, I cannot remember the first time he called me by that name...it seems now like he always has.
I have to admit this is immensely satisfying to me. The legal situation remains somewhat complicated, and one of these days in the far future Tony might enjoy tracking things down, that would be fine, but at the moment he has no doubt at all who his Papa is. Me. Period.
Pardon me for feeling that is my best Christmas gift of all time.