Comments Posted By Jonathan
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Hmm.. Google News only shows a couple of stories when I entered "Khamenei Dead" both of them from questionable sources.
I think I'll wait on some more reliable news organizations to report this before I celebrate.
I do note that Jamil Hussein seems to have been found.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 10:35
SECURING THE HOMELAND FOR 2007
Hey, thanks for the link to UNpartisan.com, I haven't seen that one before. Looks like a really good reference.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 4.01.2007 @ 05:59
THE THIRD ANNUAL, BI-ANNUAL IN-HOUSE BLOG BLEG (UPDATED)
Joe:
You do a great job with your site and trying to edit those who try to make this a profound site.
I guess I'm missing something here, why would Rick need to edit those trying to make this a "profound site"?
Seems to me just the opposite would be true, that those who are being shallow and disruptive should be the ones that are edited.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 08:53
Rick,
I enjoy your writing and I'm really surprised that you don't get more comments than you do. It's a crying shame that someone with your talents doesn't attract more attention.
As you have probably figured out, I'm leaning left. As an atheist I find the constant religious harangue from the right extremely distasteful. Even if I agreed with many Republican policies (which I mostly don't) I would have a hard time voting for them just for their would be theocrat ways.
I started out politically as somewhat libertarian but as I have aged and learned I have moved leftward. I wouldn't consider myself extremely left but I definitely sympathize more with the left than the right. Although I'm a believer in Darwinian evolution, I find social Darwinism to be a thoroughly despicable doctrine. We are not beasts of the jungle and acting like we are denies our very humanity.
Maybe if I wasn't disabled and my wife wasn't having to work sixty plus hours a week and commute another fifteen or so to allow us to barely get by I would be more likely to sympathise with the right. Unfortunately my own situation is very precarious and I really can't emotionally separate my own situation from my politics. Being disabled has very much made me painfully aware of how many are struggling to barely get by in this, the most dynamic economy on earth.
If it wasn't for our Internet connection, one of the few luxuries we allow ourselves, I think I would probably have gone completely stark staring mad by now. The Internet has allowed me to feel connected to the world again and allowed me to converse with the many people that I will never see in real life. I spend most of my time now reading, researching and pondering. I've just recently started posting again after a long period of self enforced silence. I found that I was getting too emotionally involved with what I was writing and it was starting to affect my mental health for the worse. My wife and daughter urged me to stop and I reluctantly agreed.
For many reasons over which I had little control I never graduated from high school but I've been a life long autodidact and have a little knowledge about a great many things. I've been interested in history since I was a young pup and like Mark Twain I've concluded that, while history doesn't repeat itself, it often rhymes.
Anyhoo.. I've rambled on long enough. I'm going to take a look at the budget and if she who must be obeyed decides it's possible to spare a few bucks I'll try to make a donation. I read quite a few lefty blogs and some righty ones too, but I find few where both sides come together and try to converse in a gentlemanly fashion, if you will. As long as each side only converses in their own echo chambers we will never manage to get this country on some sort of path that doesn't lead ultimately to disintegration of the American experiment.
Good luck and good night.
Jonathan
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 4.01.2007 @ 01:09
"GOODE" GRIEF! HERE COME DA MOOSLIMS
Unlike Islam, Christianity does not have a “take over the world and replace all laws of man with the laws of the Book†mentality.
I live among lots of fundamentalist Christians and I can assure you that “take over the world and replace all laws of man with the laws of the Book†is exactly how many (not all I admit) of them think. All the rhetoric about a "Christian Nation" is aimed at least somewhat in that direction, IMO.
The problem does seem to be considerably worse in the Islamic world. I've been aware of Sharia law for about forty years now, when I was in high school my mother had a book relating the bad treatment of women in Islamic cultures and it had considerable information on Sharia law.
From what I understand, some of the more barbaric customs such as female genital mutilation are cultural rather than strictly Islamic.
The spread of theocracy is a troubling question indeed. From my perspective, Bush returning calls for jihad from Muslims with a call for crusade from Christians was an amazingly stupid error, all it did was further inflame moderate Muslims and drive more of them into the arms of the fundamentalists who seem to be the enemy.
What the answer might be, I have no clue, but I really don't think that military force is going to be the be all and end all solution to Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, I think that over reliance on military force is going to be counterproductive in the long run.
When the only tool you know how to use is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 4.01.2007 @ 21:52
... unless his religion largely influences his policies, which is a major charateristic of Islam. It’s not just a religion. It’s a philosophy of life that must be applied in all circumstances, inside or outside the Mosque, inside or outside the halls of government.
Hmm.. Like Christianity doesn't influence the policies of those who subscribe to it? Christianity is not "a philosophy of life"? Better let the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists know about that, not to mention the Quakers.
Abortion.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 3.01.2007 @ 13:50
Stem Cell Research.
Religious Symbols and Documents in Public Places.
Prayer in the Schools.
Anti-Gay Marriage Amendments.
Tax Monies Funneled to Religious Organizations.
Christian Chaplains in Congress.(on the taxpayer dime)
Religious Discrimination in Land Zoning.
(the last is probably going to be used aginst muslims though)
Tax Monies Going to Religious Schools. (school vouchers)
Official "Jesus Day" Proclaimed in Texas. (guess who)
Apparently the good people of Congressman Goode's district found him acceptable to represent them in Congress. I rather think that Congressman Goode is just doing what the citizens of his district expect him to do.
I live in one of the reddest of the red states (you know, the one where a chickenhawk painted a triple amputee Vietnam vet as a "traitor" in 2004 and won a Senate seat for it) and I can assure you that Congressman Goode is echoing what many of my neighbors think.
I am of the age and race that many people automatically assume I'm a bigot and people let slip lots of bigoted comments to me.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 2.01.2007 @ 22:03
RELIGION AND POLITICS: INTOLERANCE IS GROWING
And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Religion and Politics: Intolerance…
Congrats, Rick.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 02:52
Rick,
I just noticed that you briefly mentioned Scientology in your piece above. I found this quote from L Ron Hubbard here.
"Enemy... Fair Game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued, lied to or destroyed" -L. Ron Hubbard
Kind of says of Scientology what some are claiming the Koran says about deceit being acceptable practice.
I don't know enough about either Scientology or Islam to have an opinion of the truth of any claim about them, I'm just posting this as information to consider.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 5.01.2007 @ 02:48
I thought you guys would be interested to know that over at Balloon-Juice.com they are using BDS to refer to Republican derangement in _favor_ of Bush. :-)
From the left leaning perspective Busheviks do seem rather cult like. I mean face it, Bush does sound like he's a couple of french, err.. freedom fries short of a Happy Meal. And yet he's been treated by the right as just slightly less august than Jesus the Christ Himself.
Speaking of freedom fries, I wonder if any righties now regret pouring gallons of French wine down the sewers? Seeing as it now appears the French were right all along and invading Iraq was a singularly stupid thing to do.
My son-in-law (a former Marine as am I) thought I was a fool and coward (though he didn't say it to my face) for predicting pre-invasion that Iraq would turn out to be a disaster.
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.†-Mark Twain-
SIL now listens to my opinions with considerably more respect than he did four years ago. :-)
Once he started listening to me I told SIL that anyone with a knowledge of the history of the region could have made the same prediction as I. Iraq was't even a nation until 1920 when the French (hmm.. remember them?) and British carved it out of the Ottoman empire without paying any attention to the politics of the various factions in the region. In fact it was standard procedure in the British Empire to play various wog factions off against each other, that's how a relatively few Brits could control nations of tens of millions. The Brits had the advantage of a thousand years of vicious European political infighting, they went through wog political structures like a hot knife through butter.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." -Mark Twain-
That's one of the many reasons that electing an intellectually incurious, brain damaged (from thirty years of drug abuse) non-reader to the Presidency was a remarkably foolish thing to do.
Bush may well be getting verbal briefings from staff but he reads little and probably very slowly. I can read about ten times as fast as anyone can talk and can hence absorb much more information in a given time period than even the best aural learner. That's the advantage that good readers have over non-readers, they just know a whole lot more if they are intellectually curious.
"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -HL Mencken-
"No leader should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no leader should fight a battle simply out of pique. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life. Hence the enlightened leader is heedful, and the good leader full of caution." -Sun Tzu-
I wonder if Bush has ever even heard of Sun Tzu?
[Eric Shinseki] is famous for his remarks to the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee before the war in Iraq in which he said "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for post-war Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz publicly disagreed with his estimate."
-snip-
"On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, USCENTCOM Commanding General John Abizaid said that General Shinseki's estimate had proved correct"
"The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose." -Sun Tzu-
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 4.01.2007 @ 07:27
