Aug 26 2009

Cash for Clunkers in focus

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 2:01 pm

Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota has explained the “cash for clunkers” program this way.

we borrow money from the Chinese to pay money to ourselves under the banner of cash for clunkers, so we can feel better about buying cars from ourselves and companies we own, General Motors, so someday, we might be able to pay ourselves back.

Is this robbing Peter to pay Peter? The problem is the Paul had his hand in the cashbox after the robbery… so there isn’t enough left to pay Peter back for what we just stole from him.

Our problems are only getting started.

Aug 26 2009

Ignoring Iran at our peril

Category: Iran — harmonicminer @ 12:32 pm

In a report that pulls no punches, published in the Christian Science Monitor, a former spy for the CIA tells us that the West cannot ignore Iran any longer, and just hope for the best.

Today the West must make one of the most important decisions of our era. Will we defend what remains of democracy and freedom in Iran, or will we succumb to Tehran’s murderous government?

It’s a question that goes to the heart of our own security. Iran is a thugocracy of Islamic mullahs, and it will soon have nuclear arms. Any misconception about the intentions of fanatics with nuclear bombs will have grave consequences.

I know because I spent years alongside them as a CIA spy working under cover in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards starting in the 1980s.

The Guards Corps was set up as a check on the regular Army and to serve and secure the Islamic revolution. Thirty years of Western appeasement hasn’t stopped them from terrorizing the West, or Iranians. Today, with Tehran’s leaders caught in a power struggle over the June 12 election and the legitimacy of the regime, the Guards, led by zealots, are calling the shots.

The Guards, and the hardliner clerics they protect, are vulnerable, however. This summer’s grass-roots uprising has put them on the defensive. A strong Western hand now could tip the balance.

We don’t have a moment to lose. If we can’t upend the Guards now, how can we do so once they have nuclear bombs?

The story he tells is not flattering to Europe or the US in past dealings with the mullahs.  It lays bare the selfish acquiesence the West has sometimes practiced regarding Iran, and says the bill is coming due now.  It’s a very powerful piece, and I hope you read it all.

Aug 26 2009

Who is uninsured, and how many? The facts.

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 11:12 am

MYTHS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS ABOUT THE UNINSURED

President Obama misstates one of the key facts in the health care debate by repeatedly claiming “46 million of our fellow citizens are uninsured.” Actually, his own Census Bureau reports only 36 million citizens are uninsured, with 10 million foreign nationals in that category, most of them illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, 14 million uninsured citizens are already eligible for Medicaid but they don’t spend even the minimal amount to join that program. Why not? They prefer to wait until they’re seriously ill and really need the program, since federal law says they must be accepted regardless of condition at no extra cost. Like the more than 25% of uninsured households that earn more than $75,000 a year, these Medicaid dropouts are uninsured by choice. It’s simply not true that the majority of those without insurance are unable to get it.

Aug 26 2009

Rest In Peace, Mary Jo.

Category: Uncategorized — amuzikman @ 12:30 am

The man responsible for your death is gone.

I pray his passing will help to ease the pain your family and friends have suffered for so long.

His legacy will forever be connected with the name “Chappaquiddick”… as it should be.

In the coming days I hope the words of tribute to him will be tempered by the memory of your terrible and untimely death.

Aug 25 2009

Consoling the inconsolable

Category: church,ministry,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 12:38 pm

I have a friend who is a chaplain for the local sheriff’s department.    We’ll call him Fred (not his real name).  He is a former Navy man, and he also served many years as police officer, I think mostly as a Deputy Sheriff, though I’m not entirely certain.  He’s a middle aged guy now, retired after some hard years of service, but on call when there is a need.  As you may expect, these things come in waves.  He may go a few weeks without a particular issue that requires his services..  and then an officer may be severely injured or killed on the job, or some young man commits suicide and the department calls my friend to be with the family, or a toddler falls in a pool and is in a permanent coma, or simply dies, or…..  you get the idea.

There are several aspects of this that come to mind.

It’s fairly common for a certain segment of Christendom to portray Jesus as being sort of an extra-spiritual community organizer who took care of the poor while sharing profound narratives with subtle meanings about the responsibilities of the rich and privileged.  People who are so inclined tend to downplay the aspects of His teaching that involved life after death, salvation of the soul, eternal destination, and so on.  But whether or not Jesus was an ancient socialist just doesn’t enter into the picture when you’re trying to minister to people in extremis.  They are struggling with the single most important issue of life, namely the certain death we all face.

What do you say to someone who is suddenly, shockingly bereaved, or so injured that life will never be the same?  Pastors deal with people dying all the time…  but, thankfully, there is usually some warning, some opportunity, however inadequate, to prepare for the inevitable.  But Fred has to walk into a context where the entire family is stunned, in shock, perhaps blaming God for the entire situation, and somehow he has to bring the peace and love of God with him.  I’m sure that sometimes all he can do is just be there with them, and share in their suffering.  Jesus wept.

And I expect that, sometimes, when people in great pain are asking where God is right now, it may only be later that they realize that He sent an emissary to them, in the form of a chaplain who didn’t have to be there, but felt sent by God.

Consider the task.  Some people in these situations will be believers, and the job is to comfort them, and reinforce their faith that God is God.  Others will be complete agnostics, perhaps only now confronting the bedrock issues of life and death, and this can be an opportunity to show, without preaching directly at them, that there is another reality worthy of their attention.  There may be people who are “nominally” Christian, but haven’t taken it at all seriously…. and oddly, these may be inclined to blame themselves, thinking if they’d been “better Christians” maybe it all wouldn’t have happened.  And on the other side of it, these “nominally Christian” folks may be the ones most likely to blame God for it all.

So what kind of person can DO this work?  To start with, you must be steady as a rock.  You have to be able to confront great pain, and not melt away, which means this work can mostly only be done by those who have suffered plenty already.  You have to be enormously grounded yourself.  And you have to know that no one is really prepared for this work, and so your only recourse is to trust God to speak and show His love through you.

It takes a lot of courage.  I have the feeling that, tough guy that I know him to be, Fred sometimes goes home and simply mourns for the loss and pain that people must endure.

And God prepares him for the next call.

UPDATE:  I happen to be in the hospital at this update, for what will probably not be a major matter, though it has caused some discomfort.   My friend “Fred” just came to visit with another friend from church.  After he left, another friend from church called, and asked how Fred was doing.  I asked what she meant, and she told me that Fred had just spent 30 minutes doing CPR on an accident victim he’d come across on the highway, in a remote area where services were slow to arrive.  The man had probably been dead before Fred started…  but Fred just did what needed to be done until emergency services arrived.  Typically, he didn’t mention it to me when he visited me.

Aug 25 2009

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore…

Category: race — amuzikman @ 12:53 am

The other day I wrote a humorous blog about the beer summit, race and political correctness.  I tried to be as absurd as possible to point out the absurd rhetoric so often used in discussions on the subject of race.

Well, I’m here to say I have been clearly outdone.  Someone has far surpassed me on the race and color absurdity scale.  Only one small difference – they aren’t trying to be funny!  The speech police are coming.

Read the entire article here.

Aug 24 2009

Radical Islam is not our only problem

Category: China,freedom,national security — harmonicminer @ 9:06 am

Not very long ago, it was assumed that the US ability to project power with carrier battle groups was sufficient to deter the Chinese from an attempt at military reunification with Taiwan. But while we’ve been busy elsewhere, the the Chinese have been busy, too, according to a recent RAND report.

The new report, in typical RAND style, uses sophisticated modeling to simulate a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the 2010-2015 timeframe, including a preemptive ballistic missile bombardment, a cyber assault on the island’s infrastructure and a Normandy style amphibious landing.

In a 2000 report that looked at a similar scenario, RAND predicted a bloody repulse for the attacking Chinese as Taiwanese and U.S. aircraft savaged the Chinese air fleet and seaborne landing force. However, this time around, RAND sees China establishing air superiority over the strait within hours of the first shots being fired.

How to explain such a reversal? Primarily, it’s due to China’s burgeoning stock of increasingly accurate short range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), around 1,000 of which are deployed opposite Taiwan. Launching a preemptive strike, RAND figures that with 90 to 240 SRBMs, China could: “cut every runway at Taiwan’s half-dozen main fighter bases and destroy essentially all of the aircraft parked on ramps in the open at those installations.” Follow on bombing raids by Chinese aircraft armed with precision bombs would destroy any surviving Taiwanese aircraft parked in hardened shelters.

The questions I have are two:

1) Will the USA do what needs to be done to protect Taiwan, including making it very clear to the Chinese that the USA is militarily commited to Taiwan’s independence?

2) Will the USA let the Chinese know that in the event of an invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese, the Chinese can simply kiss the US market goodbye, and no, we won’t be paying back any of our loans?  You don’t pay back the money you owe to the neighborhood bully in the next block.

This is going to be the premier test case of whether engagement and economic relationship with a potential foe trump the simple desire for power. That’s been the assumption of US foreign policy for awhile, now. Thomas P. M. Barnett thinks so.

I hope he’s right.  But I think it will aid the Chinese in reaching the proper conclusion if we build two more carrier battle groups and park them in the Taiwan Strait, and sell the Taiwan government some seriously powerful weapons.

Call it peace through superior firepower.

Aug 23 2009

Catch 22

Category: government,society — harmonicminer @ 9:32 am

You may be familiar with the notion of a CATCH 22. It has recently appeared in regard to the marketing of a device to make a copy of commercially copy-protected DVDs, which resulted in lawsuits by the film industry to suppress the manufacture and sale of the device.

“The court appreciates Real’s argument that a consumer has a right to make a backup copy of a DVD for their own personal use,” Patel wrote, but noted that “a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies.”

Got that? You have the right to make the copy, but not the right to make or sell a device that allows the copy to be made… which means you don’t have the right to make the copy.  The film industry insists on distributing their products in a form that makes it essentially impossible for citizens to access their right to make a backup copy.  It would be far more honest for the law to simply say that you have no right to make a backup copy, good luck, better take care of the DVD and don’t play frisbee with it.

The law giveth and the law taketh away….  blessed by the name of the law.

In many places, you have the right to self-defense, but not the right to have a weapon with you, which makes the right to self-defense of marginal usefulness, unless you happen to be a martial arts master, as well as young, strong and healthy….  which those accosting you are likely to be.  It would be far more honest for the law to say that the right to self-defense is limited to pleading for your life in the face of force majeure…  which seems to be the case in Britain these days.

Another excellent example is the case of nationalized health care, which may be imposed on people based on the notion that “health care is a right,” and which always and everywhere results in the denial of health care for certain people, in certain situations, with certain diseases, at certain stages of life.  It would be far more honest to say, “You have the right to as much healthcare as some people who never met you think you might deserve, and if they turn you down, you don’t have the right to get it anywhere else, either.”  Of course, “unavoidable delays” are the same thing as denial of care, even though they aren’t called that directly.  You can easily die waiting for care that is your “right” to have.

Lady Justice is indeed blind.  But she is watching you very closely.

Aug 22 2009

Where’s the outrage?

Category: abortion,left,media,science,terrorism — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

Animal activists torch home of Novartis chief

Anti-vivisectionists in Austria are thought to be behind a string of attacks on the Swiss-based pharmaceuticals giant Novartis.

In the most recent attack, on Monday in the Austrian town of Bach, activists are believed to have set fire to the holiday home of the company’s chief executive officer, Daniel Vasella. A fire accelerant was found at the scene, suggesting it was started deliberately, reports Reuters.

Last week, activists desecrated the graves of Vasella’s parents, stealing an urn containing the remains of his mother. That echoes a similar incident in the UK in 2004, when activists dug up a coffin and stole the remains of a woman whose family had run a business breeding guinea pigs for research.

If this had been done to an abortionist, it would have made major headlines around the world, accompanied with bloodcurdling cries of “terrorist!” and dark comparisons to “religious fundamentalists” who have violent tendencies.  Of course, in this case, since the religion in question is earth-worshipping paganism, and the target was the CEO of an evil corporation (never mind that abortion is ALSO big business, VERY big business, but one that is considered holy by some people), no such connections will be made.

In Austria, the activists also left the message “Drop HLS Now” on the headstone of Vasella’s mother’s grave, a warning for Novartis to cease funding animal experiments at Huntingdon Life Sciences – a company in the UK that conducts animal experiments for pharmaceutical companies.

Huntingdon Life Sciences has been the focus of a huge campaign by activists whose leaders are now mostly in jail following trials last year. But Novartis says it has not worked with HLS for years.

About three weeks ago, graffiti attacking Novartis and Vasella was scrawled over the church in Vasella’s village of Risch in central Switzerland. According to CNBC, messages have also been left on roads (with video) near Vasella’s home, including: “Vasella is a killer”, “We are watching you”, “Death to Vasella”, and “We’ll be back”.

What’s really crazy: this sort of talk wouldn’t even qualify as “hate speech” under the USA hate speech laws that the Democrat congress is trying to ram through. That’s because people who support basic medical research that saves lives are not a protected group.

Exit question: did you hear about this story ANYWHERE else in the media? If you did, did it get anything like the play it would have gotten if it was about something done to an abortionist? This post is going to be posted about two weeks after the events. So there will have been plenty of time for the coverage to happen…. if anyone cares.

Class dismissed.

Aug 21 2009

It’s a really, really, really big universe

Category: science — harmonicminer @ 9:23 am

Wherever we look, there appears to be something there.

If astrophysicists are correct about dark energy and dark matter, what is visible is only about 4% or so of what is actually there.

And we seem to be placed in an improbably ideal place AND time from which to view it.

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