Why Desegregation Fails.

Simply put, parents who value education and self discipline will continually refuse to send their own children to public schools where violence is a daily norm.

I was raised in Thornton, Illinois and attended Thornwood High School in South Holland, the next village over... It was a good school then; integrated, with students bussing in from parts of Calumet City, Hazel Crest, and eventually, from Chicago's South Side, taking public transit and claiming a grandparent or an auntie's address in the south suburbs for enrollment purposes.

Slowly, the feeder suburbs ... "changed." The public school had more and more hallway fights, necessitating not just security guards but local police responses. More and more whites, with school age children, moved to northwest Indiana and downstate Illinois.

While affirmative action lowers the competitive standards necessary for racial minorities to gain entrance to colleges and entry level jobs, no special protections exist for non-black or non-biracial youths. They still need to compete academically, stacked up against other white youth throughout the nation.

Luckily, wealth has little to do with the competitive desire to learn...

Rich folk, particularly rich liberal white folks riding their historical privileges, will never admit this. They honestly believe the only way to assure competitiveness is to fix the game -- to right past wrongs by handicapping white newcomers.

Thus, you have high schools today graduating students in no way prepared for college. You have community colleges doing the jobs decent high schools used to -teaching basic science and mathematics, English grammar, US history, a foreign language, nevermind the arts.

The truth is in the test scores.

Even without the expensive test prep teaching one how to game the system, an intelligent reader with a solid scholastic foundation and a desire to learn could honestly score in the upper 90th percentile. Immigrant children, with no history of excuse-making to fall back on, continually show us -- it's not the amount spent per pupil, nor the overall school academic reputation, that determines what one gets out of their public education.

If you want it,
there are dedicated teachers, outside reading materials and open enrollment extra academic programs on Saturdays, weekday evenings, and in the summertime. Even poor schools can educate those who want it bad enough.

But the everyday violence deemed 'acceptable' in some cultures? Nobody is going to put up with that... not immigrant whites, not middle-class blacks. Once you start thinking of public schools simply as a place to warehouse and control your young people, the better class of parents and guardians will consider doing what it takes to finance private schools, or look around for other neighborhoods with better, safer public schools for their growing young women and men.

Sometimes I wish the liberal elite would stop their heavy-handed "helping". The goal is equal opportunity for all, not picking winners and losers based on skin tone and pity.

Let's get back to honest competition -- like we see now in the sports world.  Let the better players compete with the minority hires, those coming out of school with 'connections', and the collusion-, two-fers-, and legacy hires.

If we're serious about getting the country competitive again, we've got to stop lowering standards and start raising the bar for all.  Those who think their pathetic 'muscle' is stronger than the best and brightest young brains need to be shown the door quickly: battery and the threat of assault, whether against teachers or fellow students, cause serious students to flee...

You can call that racism if you like.
I call it realism.

An On-the-Record Correction.

George Will uses history as a lesson...

[T]he term “isolationism” is being bandied as an epithet, not to serve as an argument for U.S. military interventions but as a substitute for an argument. To understand the debate that roiled America before World War II is to understand why today’s reservations about interventionism are not a recrudescence of isolationism.
...
It is preposterous to equate today’s mild debates about foreign policy with the furies unleashed by, and against, real isolationism. Yet again, ignorance of history causes us to disparage the present.

...to spank Bill Keller.

America is again in a deep isolationist mood. As a wary Congress returns from its summer recess to debate Syria, as President Obama prepares to address the nation, it is instructive to throw the two periods up on the screen and examine them for lessons. How does a president sell foreign engagement to a public that wants none of it?

The cliché of the season is that Americans are war-weary from our long slogs in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is true, but not the whole story. To be sure, nothing has done more to discredit an activist foreign policy than the blind missionary arrogance of the Bush administration. But the isolationist temper is not just about the legacy of Iraq. Economic troubles and political dysfunction have contributed to a loss of confidence. Add to the mix a surge of xenophobia, with its calls for higher fences and big-brotherly attention to the danger within. (These anxieties also helped give rise to the expanding surveillance state, just as nativism in that earlier period gave license to J. Edgar Hoover’s obsessive eavesdropping.)

Isolationism is strong in the Tea Party, where mistrust of executive power is profound and where being able to see Russia from your front yard counts as mastery of international affairs. But sophisticated readers of The New York Times are not immune, or so it seems from the comments that arrive when I write in defense of a more assertive foreign policy. (In recent columns I’ve advocated calibrated intervention to shift the balance in Syria’s civil war and using foreign aid to encourage democracy in Egypt.) Not our problems, many readers tell me.

Isolationism is not just an aversion to war, which is an altogether healthy instinct. It is a broader reluctance to engage, to assert responsibility, to commit. Isolationism tends to be pessimistic (we will get it wrong, we will make it worse) and amoral (it is none of our business unless it threatens us directly) and inward-looking (foreign aid is a waste of money better spent at home).

“We are not the world’s policeman, nor its judge and jury,” proclaimed Representative Alan Grayson, a progressive Florida Democrat, reciting favorite isolationist excuses for doing nothing.

“Our own needs in America are great, and they come first.”

At the margins, at least, isolationists suspect that our foreign policy is being manipulated by outside forces.

No Better Than Ezra?

or, It's the Collusion, Stupid, the appearance of collusion, even...

If you've wondered at the oddity of the uber-liberal columnists -- Keller and Kristof, to name two -- who insist that only pre-emptive military action by the U.S. will satisfactorily end Syria's Civil War, perhaps the fellas are just playing a useful political role?

Turns out--
whilst the NYT was editorializing on behalf of the need for Congressional approval to take the country into yet another militarized mid east conflict, top people at the paper were secretly meeting -- off the record, wink wink -- with the president's people...

Still waiting for the paper's independent ombudman to address the issue, now that it's become an... on-the-record recorded fact. ("Discretion is the better part of valor.")

The mainstream media's credibility has taken an incredible hit in recent years: They were found chuckling, a few years back at one of those Washington correspondent's dinners, at GWB's silly skit searching for Saddam's invisible weapons of mass destruction, which led us to first intervene militarily -- hotly, aboveboard -- in the region.

Instead of cleaning house after the media failure -- no honest investigation, just cheerleading half the country into war, while so many stood back and supported the effots by shopping and clapping with purple-painted fingers -- the NYT just reshuffled the personnel deck, it seems.

So here's Bill Keller, back preaching to us about morality, and the threat of ... WMD proliferation, should the US not hotly intervene. He's laughable, no longer credible, nor his elitist civvy opinions taken seriously...

Too bad his employer doesn't realize the value of independence in the news biz: following the facts where they might lead you, by truthfully reporting on what independent, on-the-record sources know about what is actually happening, on the ground...

So the Times wants to rebuild their brand, gain new readers?
No more 'secret' meetings...
It's the Collusion, Stupid, the appearance of collusion, even...

Trust me,
the president doesn't need the help in selling his message.
Why risk further tarnishing the work of others, the reputation for independence and neutrality, in order to jump on the MSNBC and Fox new band of biased 'journolists'?

We need an independent media now more than ever.
Retire Keller already; steer clear of hiring any more ... connected wonks, or their wives, who preach on economic matters with their English degrees; and stop the secret meetings, already.

Duh.

Get back to the basics of honest reporting, and maybe the readers who value intellectual honesty will stop scoffing at the work product turned in by the elder white wisemen who make up the majority of the editorial page...

hth -- Hope this helps.

Saturday.

Saturday.
What word in the English vocabulary contains as much promise, as much freedom to shape the day according to one's own whims and needs?

It's worth getting up extra early for, to stretch out the daylight and live the promise...

---------------

*Say, have you heard about the lonesome loser?

"He's a loser, but he still keeps on tryin'..."


Make it a great day, whatever it is you've put on your plate.

Israel Comes Clean.

Turns out,
arming the terrorist rebels, overthrowing Assad, and leaving the remaining Syrians behind in the al-Qaeda-led aftermath is in Israel's strategic best interest all along...

The Israeli ambassador told the United States that Israel has wanted to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad removed from power since before the outbreak of war in Syria- a shift from its publicly-stated position.

It sees his defeat by rebels who include al Qaeda-linked Islamists as preferable to his current alliance with Iran, ambassador Michael Oren said.
...
"The initial message about the Syrian issue was that we always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." Oren said.

He also said that this was Israel's position well before the outbreak of war in Syria and had continued to be so.

Hmm...
I wonder if our intelligence agencies were privvy to the info, and it was just the public kept in the dark.

Oren went on to say that Assad's overthrow would also weaken the alliance between Israel's arc foe Iran and Tehran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

"The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc.

Oren described al Qaeda-aligned rebels as 'pretty bad guys' but said that others were less radical.

Israel believes around one in 10 Syrian rebels are Sunni militants sworn to its destruction. Assad's Alawite sect is closer to the rival Shi'ite Islam of Iran and Hezbollah.

Wow.
Thank heavens the United States is so much better positioned geographically, for all our talk of 'securing the borders' in recent years.

Strategically,
the mainland protection of two oceans, one internally stable and reliable ally, and another whose bloody criminal confrontrations we monitor at a distance, allow Americans more breathing room...

This is where independence, and geography, show their value: in any nation, civil wars prove endlessly bloody -- a fight to the end; American can afford to keep out of Syria's and indeed, might humanely prove better off on the sidelines than to keep the fight going by continually supplying the latest weapons to the bloodbath. Don't confuse neutrality with isolationism.

Geopolitically,
it's more difficult for Israel, who might be tempted to ... more actively interfere in Syria's Civil War, which first began with peaceful protests and has greatly escalated since, with over 100,000 Syrians already dead and millions of civilians displaced in the ill-fated attempt to overthrow the Assad regime.

In the interview, excerpted ahead of its publication in full on Friday, Oren - a Netanyahu confidant - did not say if or how Israel was promoting Assad's fall.
...
His comments in an interview with the Jerusalem Post marked a move in Israel's public position on the civil war in Syria. Though old enemies, a stable stand-off has endured between the two countries during Assad's rule.
...
The Jewish state, which is widely assumed to have the region's sole atomic arsenal, has played down any direct Syrian threat to it but is concerned that a weak Western policy towards Assad could encourage Iran.

Netanyahu casts Iran's disputed nuclear drive as the main threat to Israel and world stability.

-------------

ADDED:
Interesting to read now what was being said back in April...

Many officials, including the hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, say that Assad's tough crackdown on his own people has robbed him of any legitimacy to remain in power.
...
Others believe Assad's departure would weaken what the Israelis call Iran's "axis of evil" in the region — the anti-Israel alliance of Iran, Syria, Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Fears that Assad might attack Israel to divert attention from his domestic troubles have also subsided. Some even believe he will be replaced by a moderate, Western-leaning government.
...


Although Israeli officials now believe Assad's days are numbered, they say they are keeping their distance from the key players in Syria. They do not want to be seen as intervening in Syrian affairs. For this reason, officials say, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been extremely careful with his public statements, condemning the bloodshed but saying nothing about the future of Syria.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel would welcome international action against Assad, just as international action in Libya helped oust the late Moammar Gadhafi. But he said Israel is not openly pressuring the West to take action.

"We know our place. It's not for us to give advice," he said. "We're not doing anything to make him go. We're not getting involved or even thinking of any interference."

Palmor said Israel has no idea who might replace Assad. But Israeli security officials believe that if Assad goes, there is a good chance that a moderate, Sunni, Western-leaning government will take his place.

Officials said this assessment is based on "the latest intelligence" and the belief that Syria is far different from Egypt, where Islamic parties have risen in influence since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year. They declined to elaborate and acknowledged they are uncertain what lies ahead, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a sensitive security assessment.

Alon Liel, a former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said he met with opposition figures in Turkey several weeks ago. Liel said he believes fundamentalist Muslims are not so influential in Syria as they are in Egypt.

Happy New Year.

Well let's thank heavens that crisis was averted, eh?

My wish for this new year is a wake-up call: that all those leaders and intellectual elites surprised at the overwhelmingly negative response to 'more war' recognize this as a new reality.

You see,
if hurt people hurt people,
then it's also true that to fight for somebody else's cause, one expects some support in return. Nobody likes being played for a sucker. If you take, you gotta give.

We've pretty much crapped on 'the People' for the past decade. We've rewarded the rich risk-takers, who played and lost; we've bailed out others with no return, except to reward our biggest losers; we've had more and more of our natural freedoms taken away, all in the name of a security that really only blankets the top tier.

The more we provoke, the more independent People here at home are at risk. Their pre-existing problems are suddenly on our plate to gag down, and we never even got to sample the enticing appetizers, nevermind the fancy wine courses and desserts.

No mas.

Our new demographics here at home point to more pressing problems. Do you think Mexican immigrants, for example, have the Syrian situation on their Top Ten list of concerns?

Immigration;
realistic healthcare cost control;
jobs, Jobs, JOBS.
Decent education, for those with kids;
competitive career tracks, once those educations are earned;
less elite connections, more opportunities open to all who can compete on the same playing field... that's how you build a better country for all.

The problem with all these wars, under both administrations, isn't so much the destruction that we caused, and then necessarily abandoned when we finally realized the military is not properly in the missionary or rebuilding business...

It's the destruction we caused here at home.

Ignoring important issues that will need to be addressed, saddling our future generations with the cost of our choices, crippling our economy and pretending that we've all recovered...

Finally perhaps,
those comfortably cocooned are realizing that it really isn't right to leave more than half the country behind, while the folks who are never called upon to do any heavy lifting continue in their quest, always, for more.

Hurt people hurt people, afterall, and continual ignorance of the needs of others in our shared country likely means you're likely not going to be able to count on unconditional, all-giving hearts in your own time of need...

Pick up the pace, wealthy America, of addressing our needs here at home, and you're much more likely to create a class concerned with others outside our own circles...

Fight for us, fairly, that is,
and when the time comes, we're much more likely to help fight your battles for you. Otherwise, get used to the risks that come to those who would stand alone.

------------------------------

PS. Who's this Judy Collins?,
 all the new kids in America want to know... ;--)

Generation translation, please.

Moving Pictures.

or, They Make the Big People Big...

Well there's a little boy waiting
at the counter of the corner shop.
He's been waiting down there, waiting half the day...
They never, ever see him from the top.
He gets pushed around; knocked to the ground.
He gets to his feet and he says...

"What about me? It isn't fair.
I've had enough, now I want my share.
Can't you see? I wanna live...
But you just take more than you give."

Well, there's a pretty girl serving
at the counter of the corner shop.
She's been waiting back there, waiting for a dream...
Her dreams walk in and out; they never stop.
Well, she's not too proud, to cry out loud
She runs to the street and she screams...

"What about me? It isn't fair.
I've had enough, now I want my share.
Can't you see? I wanna live...
But you just take more than you give."

(More than you give...)

Take a step back and see the little people:
They might be young, but they're the ones...
They Make the Big People Big.
So listen, as they whisper:
"What about me?"

And now I'm standing on the corner
of a world gone home.
Nobody's changed; nobody's been saved
and I'm feeling cold and alone.
I guess I'm lucky, I smile a lot... :)
but sometimes I wish for more, than I've got...

"What about me? It isn't fair.
I've had enough, now I want my share.
Can't you see? I wanna live...
But you just take more,
you just take more,
you just take more than you give."

Songwriters:
Garry Frost and Frances Swan

A Good Cry...

I didn't get out the door to the gardens soon enough, before clicking over to Volokh this morning.

I admit it: Will Baude's post made me cry... and remember Ruth.

Insensitivity and Good Intentions in Commemorating 9/11
By Will Baude on September 12, 2013 8:25 pm
Sometimes it is hard to know what one is supposed to do or say about a tragic event. Yesterday a manager of a Marriott hotel here in San Diego put out coffee and mini-muffins for half an hour in the morning, “in memory of those we lost on 9/11.” Somebody offended by this posted a picture to Twitter and many people on the radio and internet complained about or ridiculed the gesture.

There is of course something laughably inadequate about this gesture, in some sense. Mini-muffins? For thirty minutes? But that’s inevitably true of almost any concrete gesture for a tragedy of this scope. There’s really very little that a regular person could possibly do to commemorate 9/11 this year that wouldn’t be crass or trite or kitschy, if actually compared to the enormity of what happened. And yet I think there is something nice and well-meaning and deeply human in wanting to do something, even if just provide muffins and coffee, and just for half an hour.

I realize that this is a sensitive topic, but I am inclined to think that we should be charitable to those who are doing their best to do something nice. That is why we send thank you notes even for ugly wedding gifts. I am also inclined to view this gesture in light of the longstanding American tradition of offering to cook or bring food for those who are bereaved. (I’m also inclined to be less charitable to those who used 9/11 in commercial advertising, such as yesterday’s “$9.11″ golf special.)

Finally, proving that life does often imitate the Onion, my friend Alex Potapov reminded me of this column from the September, 2001

Onion: Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American Flag Cake.

Feeling helpless in the wake of the horrible Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands, Christine Pearson baked a cake and decorated it like an American flag Monday.

“I had to do something to force myself away from the TV,” said Pearson, 33, carefully laying rows of strawberry slices on the white-fudge-frosting-covered cake. “All of those people. Those poor people. I don’t know what else to do.”

Pearson, who had never before expressed feelings of patriotism in cake form, attributed the baking project to a loss of direction. Having already donated blood, mailed a check to the Red Cross, and sent a letter of thanks to the New York Fire Department, Pearson was aimlessly wandering from room to room in her apartment when the idea of creating the confectionery stars and stripes came to her.

“My friends Cassie and Patrick [Overstreet] invited me over to have dinner and just talk about, you know, everything,” said Pearson, a Topeka legal secretary who has never visited and knows no one in either New York or Washington, D.C. “I thought I’d make something special or do something out of respect for all of the people who died. All those innocent people. All those rescue workers who lost their lives.”

Mixing the cake and placing it in the oven shortly after 3 p.m., Pearson sat at the kitchen table and stared at the oven door until the timer rang 50 minutes later.

As the cake cooled, Pearson gathered materials to decorate it. She searched the spice cupboard for a half-used tube of blue food coloring, but could not find it. After frantically pulling all the cans and jars from the cupboard, she finally found the tube in the very back. Emitting a deep sigh of relief, she spread the coloring over the cake’s upper-left-hand corner to create the flag’s blue field.

“I baked a cake,” said Pearson, shrugging her shoulders and forcing a smile as she unveiled the dessert in the Overstreet household later that evening. “I made it into a flag.”

Pearson and the Overstreets stared at the cake in silence for nearly a minute, until Cassie hugged Pearson.

“It’s beautiful,” Cassie said. “The cake is beautiful.”

As Alex put it to me, “Anyway, if I saw that at a hotel I’d be touched, silly as it is.”

Happy Friday: "Go, Fight, Win..."

Damn, it's been a long week...
For all those itching to get the US involved in yet another mideast civil war, consider what happens when we -- the world's biggest strongest richest most exceptional world superpower, *stroke stroke* with a moral responsibility like Superman to protect all the little boys and girls and women across the world... -- jump in the game and upset the natural balance of power.

You see,
I'm always wary of those who would have others fight their fights.

If an internal revolution needs to rely on external superpower to bring down their country's leaders, heck -- even to pull down a statue of their country's leader -- then they're not up to the fight.

Better to wait, plan, and let's be honest -- get out -- before risking your own lives in a fight you're not going to win.

The US wars of choice of late have ensured that these rebellions are well financed thanks to the US taxpayers, naively supporting foreign concepts of freedom.

Middle-aged professionals whose closest taste of combat comes from video games and suburban gun range visits on the weekends. Their balls big and bloated, they contribute little if nothing to our national defense, except in term of tax dollars -- whoopie, and perhaps the occasional social benefit where they might get to actually rub shoulders with a real soldier, who spends time with men in the field, and not pretty campus co-eds before retreating to the safety of a big cozy home with a beautiful wife and exceptional daughters.

(These types never seem to have sons, oddly, nttawwt... but you do wonder if there's some unfulfilled masculinity thing going on there, urging on their warrior instincts that so many others fulfill with hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, and generally, spending time in the outdoors for extended periods of time with other men*...)

But back to the heroic tale... if you don't have enough internal strength to even take out your own leaders, you've little chance of rebuilding what you've destroyed, of creating something better for your land and your own people.

I leave you with today's news of the aftermath in Libya. We sowed superpower strength bombs and bullets there; the 'rebels' had no chance of destroying their country without our supersized military help...

Is this what we're willing to reap by 'protecting' from afar the people of Syria? Sip our wines, boohoo the dead children, and cheering for more? one, two, we want more... one, two, we want more...

Two years after local militias overthrew the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, many of those same fighters have brought Libya’s critical oil industry to a halt, as a challenge to the latest in a series of that country’s interim governments.

Protests and strikes at several large export terminals and oil fields have throttled Libya’s daily oil production to one-tenth its capacity in recent days, jeopardizing the national economy and tightening world oil supplies at a time when unrest is spreading in the Middle East.
...
The crisis began last month when armed groups seized the country’s major oil export terminals, claiming that the national oil company had engaged in corrupt sales. They also demanded autonomy for the eastern region where the rebellion against the Qaddafi government had been strongest.
...
As the western protests have grown, local utilities have been forced to cut back power generation, which has caused blackouts.
...
The Parliament ... has also appointed a crisis committee to go from village to village to negotiate with local governing councils allied with the militias.

David L. Goldwyn, the State Department coordinator for international energy affairs in the first Obama administration, characterized the government’s efforts as “a fight-and-talk strategy.”
...
Oil, the mainstay of Libya’s economy, has in recent years accounted for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings and 75 percent of government revenues. The government estimates that the country is now losing roughly $130 million a day in oil revenues.

While experts say the government should have six months of reserves to keep the state apparatus functioning, international oil executives are watching developments carefully to see if Tripoli can regain control of the country and ensure security for foreign investment.

“Libya is grinding to a halt,” said Badr J. Jafar, president of Crescent Petroleum, an oil and gas company based in the United Arab Emirates that has had conversations with the Libyan government over investing there.
...
The falling Libyan oil output — which under normal circumstances would represent roughly 2 percent of global supplies — comes at a bad time. Unrest in Syria and Egypt potentially threatens to spread more widely through oil-producing regions of the Middle East, especially Iraq. Persistent attacks on a major pipeline in northern Iraq have already interrupted as much as 150,000 barrels a day of production in recent weeks.

Global oil prices, which have risen moderately over the past month, would probably have climbed much higher had Saudi Arabia not increased its production to the highest level in 32 years to compensate for the lost Libyan crude, oil experts say.
...
Before the NATO-backed insurrection against the Qaddafi government, Libya produced more than 1.5 million barrels of high-quality crude oil a day, mostly selling to Europe and Asia. Oil production and exports came to a halt during the 2011 revolt, but revived quickly after the fighting ended.

The recovery of the Libyan oil industry helped cushion global markets as the United States and Europe tightened the oil embargo on Iran over the past year or so.
...
[P]roduction fell in recent months to 550,000 barrels a day, and in recent days to as low as 150,000 barrels. Exports have tumbled to 80,000 barrels a day.

Few foreign companies now have more than skeleton crews of expatriates working in the fields, because of the dangerous security situation. OMV, an Austrian oil company that is a major producer in Libya, announced this week that it was suspending production.

“The situation is so bad, it’s unsafe,” said Dragan Vuckovic, president of Mediterranean International, an oil service company that withdrew from Libya during the fighting two years ago and has not yet returned.

“Every village has a militia, and there is no central government.”

-------------
*Ok, that's all can do here...
off to Mal's with Buddy to get in a nice long river paddle as we watch the dry leaves drop from the trees. A boxload of tomatoes onions and garlic will accompany me, as we plan to get in some salsa-making.

(There's)
Something inherently satisfying in working and creating with one's own hands and brain that the hard-on of temporary destruction and temporary burst of short-term might can not match. I remember when the Jews of old taught me that, before they got all muscular.

Artificially muscular, at that...

-------------

* Of course, these aren't the types whose wives make a living whining on the perpetual victimization of American boys and men.

HANNA ROSIN: Why Feminists Won’t Accept That The Patriarchy Is Dead.“My young interrogator might be annoyed to learn that many of those women who pick up the trash yearn to bring back at least some aspects of the patriarchy. They generally appreciate their new economic independence and feel pride at holding their families together, at working and studying and doing things on their own, but sometimes they long to have a man around who would pay the bills and take care of them and make a life for them in which they could work less. And they want the men in their lives to be happy. It’s elite feminists like my questioner and me who cling to the dreaded patriarchy just as he is walking out of our lives.”

Don’t you love him as he’s walking out the door?
Posted at 7:19 am by Glenn Reynolds**

If you don't like your situation, work to actively change it? The power indeed is in your hands, and it sure beats simply exercising your trigger finger on a range, or cheering wars, missles and drone strikes abroad.

**You gotta read his comments on that one too. Stuck at grade-school-level sad, still playing girls v. boys...

becket
Hence, on a, errr, deeper level, the overwhelming popularity of Fifty Shades of Gray. Once again, it's not all about the sex.

OldSchoolConsrvtive
There are actual physiological differences between men and women that in general forces them to trend toward their old stereotypes. Women trend toward mixing emotion into decisions and nurturing. Men trend toward using cold logic and divorcing emotion from decisions. Neither is especially bad or good just different. The differences compliment each other in many situations. the differences are not strict or universal, but trends in the overall population.

Amphipolis
All of the women are expected to be like the men, and all of the boys are expected to be like the girls. That's modern diversity. Oh, and mothers/fathers must be interchangeable. Being equal before the law is just not good enough. We all must be identical.

So sad to read those who think like that... They cripple themselves.

Fudging the Numbers.

Sweet Jesus, they did rely on the unscientific method of watching rebel-posted youtube videos to come up with those exact numbers:

"Instead of being tucked safely in their beds at home, we saw rows of children lying side by side sprawled on a hospital floor, all of them dead from Assad's gas and surrounded by parents and grandparents who had suffered the same fate. The United States Government now knows that at least 1,429 Syrians were killed in this attack, including at least 426 children," he said.

Some U.S. congressional sources are now casting doubt on those figures.
...
One of the congressional sources said that administration officials in closed door briefings said they could not rule out that some victims included in the U.S. death toll were killed either by conventional explosive parts of rockets which carried poison gas or in the artillery barrage the United States says followed the gas attack.

A second source, who is sympathetic to White House policy, said caveats administration officials attached to the 1,429 death total were of sufficient magnitude to cause the source to avoid citing the figure.

A third source said that administration officials confronted pointed questions from members of Congress about the accuracy of the numbers and acknowledged that they "couldn't be sure" about the cause of death for some people counted as victims of chemical poisoning.
...
Administration sources told Reuters that they relied on a valid intelligence methodology to make the death estimate. An official said that it involved analyzing video pictures of victims, then eliminating from the fatality total any live person, any dead body with visible injuries and shrouded bodies showing blood spots.

Classified intelligence tools then were used to confirm the provenance of the videos and to ensure that bodies were not counted twice, the official said.

The official noted that U.S. intelligence had more resources to gather information than human rights or other non-governmental groups, which had smaller death tolls.

God help the country if those currently screeching for an attack to avenge the gassed children's deaths manage to go against the will of the People and our common sense.

This is not about dead children.
This is aboout snaring America into yet another mid east conflict.

Something is not adding up properly here...
Keep US out, Mr. President. Keep us out.
--------------

ADDED:

The Afghanistan war has cost $657.5 billion so far, we spend $17.2 billion in classified funds a year fighting terrorism through the intelligence community, and the Department of Homeland Security spent another $47.4 billion last year. And we have very little idea whether any of it is preventing terrorist attacks.

Remember, neglecting the people's needs at home, while pumping billions of their own into Afghanistan is what ultimately brought down the Soviet Union.

Not any harsh words by Ronald Reagan.

Carrying the Weight of the World. Solo.

Over in his London home, NYT columnist Roger Cohen and his dinner guests are second-guessing the choices of the American people.*

“It’s the post-American world — and that means chaos.”

one German friend of his observed.

We were joined by John Kornblum, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, whose verdict was similar: “What you’re seeing is the steady break-up of the postwar system.”

Cohen and his foreign pals, naturally, would like our taxpayers to continue picking up the world's 'security' tab, underwriting real dangers so other countries can continue to concentrate on internal investment and development, prospering while their world markets are well protected.

Nevermind the young American blood shed.
The costs of crippling injuries to vets, and the permanent disability payments for these families affected, which will be born by the next two generations of Americans, at least.

You see, 'war' -- the hot destructive phase -- is easy really...
especially when you're comfortably situated, munching on your sweet dinner nibs, surely drinking a fine wine, and contemplating the loss of American muscle...

I'm ok with that.

Here's the part that concerns me: clearly, Cohen and friends are unable to articulate a convincing case for the American taxpayers to fund terrorist rebels looking to overthrow the Syrian government.

So, they're proposing an end-run around the Constitution, bypassing the will of the People, and looking to force the use of force on Americans, regaardless of what we here at home want...

It might even be that Putin, having made an impassioned case for international law, will rise above his Libyan hangover and allow a Western-drafted Security Council resolution framing the deal under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which allows for military intervention in the event of Syrian noncompliance. (Without this, any agreement is meaningless.)

Who wouldn't want to live the good life on another man's tab? Plenty of non-militarized nations are profiting nicely of late, in fact. Woof woof. They're just more competitive, I'm sure...

No doubt Cohen and friends will be able to easily stomach the deaths of Christians -- children even, just no gas please. Bad memories and all... -- and the slaughter of non-Jewish religious minorities in the self-contained chaos that would come when they conclude the destructive work is done, the rebuilding is on somebody else's chore chart, and we leave yet another leaderless vacuum behind. ('Americans are such suckers'. heh.)


They seem to have no trouble digesting what's been wrought already in the countries we've 'helped'... to the tune of billions and billions of dollars that could have been much better spent fixing problems in our house.

So raise your glass in the air, and all that, three cheers for the Americans. Hoorah. I mean, who could imagine a world without us?

"Party over; oops... out of time."
------------

* Why am I picturing this group as the philosophical Jewish golfers led by Alan King whose discussion on the course opens and closes Sunshine State?

"Nature is overrated." but "we'll miss it when it's gone."

In Sunshine State, John Sayles' witty, bitter new movie about the rape of old Florida, three smart-mouth Yankee retirees on the Atlantic coast negotiate nine-irons and sand traps while philosophizing on the state as Paradise Sold. Florida was nothing, one old boy says, nothing but a place of swamps and alligators, "populated by white people who ate catfish." Then, hallelujah, the developers came and gave us the condo, the strip mall, the gated community and that highest triumph of Middle-Class Man over Wilderness, the golf course -- "Nature on a LEASH."
...
Toward the end of Sunshine State, the golfers discuss how species are going extinct right and left and how Florida will one day return to the sea from whence it came. One golfer, disgusted with the depressing intricacies of weather and global warming, snarls, "Nature is overrated." Then the other one comes back with, "But we'll miss it when it's gone."

Freedom in Action.

Positive comments on Putin's piece:

Darbari
Seattle

The fact that the Russian leader thinks he can influence national policy by directly appealing to the American people and the fact that a national newspaper decides to publish his article are two of the many reasons that makes America exceptional. Signed `an immigrant'.

Sept. 12, 2013 at 12:40 p.m.

Heh.

Quick Hits From Social Media:
Shane Nickerson@shanenickerson
Putin's op-ed piece in the Times makes sense to me. Am I a commie?

0:12 AM - 12 Sep 13 Reply Retweet Favorite
-----------
Wonderful to see those out there "doing journalism" keeping busy ... dialoguing directly with Vladimir Putin's NYT op-ed today.

(A 'Dear Putin' letter being the print equivalent of looking directly into the camera and spilling your innermost thoughts by personally demonstrating your heartfelt connection, no?)

You see,
while very often the polls show the majority of the country here indeed disagrees with the idea the policies coming out of Washington are always 'exceptional' -- think Obamacare, domestically, or our major misgivings about invading Iraq, which read like a child's make-your-own-adventure book -- we have an abiding faith in our basic Constitutional framework upon which the entire ship of state sails...

Or sinks, depending upon how much we deviate from that common-sense, shared balance of power ideal.

So while Putin's right: -- our policies, foreign and domestic, which are continually evolving, are in no way guaranteed to be exceptional, we are exceptionally blessed to live within a system that gives voice to those who would choose to make theirs heard.

Our First Amendment, guaranteeing both the Freedom of Speech and the freedom to practice -- or not practice -- one's religion of choice, unmolested by the State, to me is key. (Others from totalitarian countries might especially appreciate the right to bear arms...)

If you've had roots in a country where the Church and State shared power, or where civilians' weapons were banned and only in the hands of State, or where merely speaking of controversial social ideas can bring State blowback, you get an idea of some of the many things we are thankful for, when we go around the Thanksgiving table counting our blessings...

Freedom -- the freedom to be an exceptional individual; the freedom to fail; the freedom to rise again and the freedom to write a whole Second Act to one's life (or third, or fourth...)

We hold these truths to be self evident -- that within us all is the power to determine our futures via the choices we make, the timing, and naturally, luck. We can limit our freedoms in pursuit of 'security'; we can have our freedoms limited for us, like so many socially immobile class-based societies around the globe.

Most importantly, we have mechanisms built into the system to ensure our intellectual elites, our most well to do, and our most distinguished bloodlines have an equal say over the country's policies as the majority, the 99 percent. 

Just because we don't get it right the first time always, doesn't mean we can't self correct in directing our collective course...

God Bless America, again...

By Jove..

...I think she's got it.

Kathleen Parker is antsy for this "pre-war chitchat" to wrap up, so we can get the men in the world-protecting business back to work already...

There is certainly merit to discussing military action carefully in advance of deployment, but such lengthy, often confusing, verbal perambulations as we’ve witnessed the past several weeks — stressing the urgency of taking action while repeatedly postponing action pending fill-in-the-blank — do create fresh sets of problems.

The debate of late has most closely resembled a busy mom’s calendaring challenge: Let’s see, we can’t vote to strike until after Labor Day vacation — and the president’s speech can’t be on Monday because the Redskins are playing and, no, not Wednesday either because 9/11 is too fraught.

But she's catching on...

The sense created by so much clearing of throats has been that one is not quite certain of one’s intentions, and, therefore, one’s rationale for war. President Obama’s reticence is understandable but also disconcerting. Creating and then moving a “red line” is inherently problematic and otherwise lacking in, shall we say, clarity. Another hitch, commensurate with the preceding, is a rising trust deficit among the American people, not to mention the world, followed by a lack of will. If war is not urgent, as this one seems not to be, then perhaps war is not necessary.

...and mama is not happy. Feel the snark, people:

If war is not urgent, as this one seems not to be, then perhaps war is not necessary.

Imagine, as a dead poet once crooned.

Oh, ouch. *sting.* Back at it:

Then there is this appealing thought: Once nations reach the point of talking a war to death, rather than fighting one to the death — a coalition of the unwilling — aren’t they participants in some sort of tipping point? We talk ourselves out of things all the time. Why not talk ourselves out of war?

She does get a few things right, sprinkling in these bon mots to her sour-candy party*:

Despite assurances to the contrary, no one really believes that our engagement with Syria will consist of a few strategic, limited strikes, especially given Assad’s promise to (counter)retaliate.

Yes, there seems to be a tiring tit-for-tat pattern of destruction developing in this continual state-of-war region, with very few winners and plenty of displaced 'losers'...

And America keeps shaking its head. No.

Again, she's spot on...

The trust deficit is not a new problem, and it certainly can’t be blamed entirely on Obama.

*Ding, ding, ding*...

Can intelligence ever be trusted again when rationalizing military action against a sovereign nation?

We are so close to a win here, I can smell the chicken dinner in the air...

The clamor for support from all quarters, including Moscow and Damascus, has been somewhat breathtaking. Was that all it took?

Good faith negotiations -- working with those willing to work with you, aboveboard -- can work wonders... Weally.

It is too soon to declare war avoided, but there is reason to hope.

And, some find, to have faith and believe.

God Bless America, again...

"A Better Man"

I've always thought the guy in this song comes off as a cad.

Still, never noticed how much he reminds me of GWB, until this video...

(or a young Brett Favre even.)

What do you say when it's over?
I don't know if I should say anything at all.

One day we're rollin' in the clover
Next thing you know we take the fall...

Still, I think about the years since I first met you
And the way it might have been without you here ...

And I don't know if words from me can still upset you
But I've just gotta make this memory stand clear ...

Where Were You?

Here's one song -- pushing private remembrance -- that has held up over time...

Where were you when the world
stopped turning that September day?
Out in the yard with your wife and children,
workin' on some stage in LA?

Did you stand there in shock
at the sight of that black smoke
rising against that blue sky?
Did you shout out in anger and fear for your neighbor,
or did you just sit down and cry?

Did you weep for the children
who lost their dear loved ones
or pray for the ones who don't know?

Did you rejoice for the people
who walked from the rubble
and sob for the ones left below?

Did you burst out in pride
for the red, white, and blue,
and the heroes who died
just doing what they do?

Did you look up to Heaven
for some kind of answer
and look at yourself...
and what really matters?

I'm just a singer of simple songs;
I'm not a real political man.

I watch CNN but I'm not sure I could tell you
...the difference in Iraq and Iran.

But I know Jesus, and I talk to God
and I remember this from when I was young:

Faith, Hope and Love
are some good things He gave us...
and the greatest is Love.

Where were you when the world
stopped turning that September day?
Teaching a class full of innocent children;
driving down some cold interstate?

Did you feel guilty
'cause you're a survivor?
In a crowded room did you feel alone?
Did you call up your mother and tell her you love her?
Did you dust off that Bible at home?

Did you open your eyes;
hope it never happened...
or close your eyes and not go to sleep?

Did you notice the sunset
for the first time in ages,
or speak to some stranger on the street?

Did you lay down at night and think of tomorrow;
go out and buy you a gun?
Did you turn off that violent old movie you're watching
and turn on I Love Lucy reruns?

Did you go to a church and hold hands with some stranger?
Stand in line and give your own blood?

Did you just stay home and cling tight to your family?
Thank God you had somebody to love? ...

I'm just a singer of simple songs;
I'm not a real political man.

I watch CNN but I'm not sure I could tell you
...the difference in Iraq and Iran.

But I know Jesus, and I talk to God
and I remember this from when I was young:

Faith, Hope and Love
are some good things He gave us...
and the greatest is Love.

Songwriter:
~ Jackson, Alan Eugene.

Real Respect.

or, "Their lives are bigger than... any big idea."

Forget those who would regularly trot out 9-11 widows, orphans, and deceased's family members as political pawns:

"No matter how many years pass, this time comes around each year - and it's always the same," said Karen Hinson of Seaford, N.Y., who lost her 34-year-old brother, Michael Wittenstein, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee.

"My brother was never found, so this is where he is for us," she said as she arrived for the ceremony with her family early Wednesday.
...
Hinson said she would like the annual ceremony to be "more low-key, more private" as the years go by.
...
That focus was clear as relatives gathered last September on the tree-laden plaza, with a smaller crowd than in some prior years.

After the throng and fervor that attended the 10th anniversary, "there was something very, very different about it," said Charles Wolf, whose wife, Katherine, was killed in the trade center's north tower. "It felt almost cemetery-ish, but not really. It felt natural."

*Please note also today those pundits, bloggers and blowhards who would continually use our memories of 9-11 to draw attention to themselves and their own careers.

A Telling Slip Up...

Observed in the comments section:

IfUAskMe 5:59 AM CDT
"At this point, the White House has a surprisingly good plan to avoid war while achieving the limited goal of disarming Assad’s **nuclear arsenal**. "

What nuclear arsenal?
------------

Ezra Klein apparently corrected himself:

At this point, the White House has a surprisingly good plan to avoid war while achieving the limited goal of disarming Assad’s chemical arsenal. But it relies on them making a very bad argument for a much larger war with much broader, more humanitarian, objectives.

If we can maintain national unity in rejecting calls to attack Syria now, surely we will later do the same in opposing a pre-emptive strike on Iran, the way things are trending now?

That's the real fear on display over Syria, I suspect...
not so much the dying Syrian children.

ADDED:
You can find the original error still up in the 'speech reax' compilation, over at sullivan's blog. Interesting none of his co-editors picked up on that.

"Mira, Mira* --- Dead Children as Pawns..."

The Sandy Hook Carnage: the bloody aftermath of slain children in their colorful classrooms, hallways and school closets. Talk about undignified deaths and non-intact little bodies...

That fully grown, fully alive Dr. Gosnell-aborted baby boy 'fetus'.

A very long reel of Chicago schoolchildren shot down in their parks, yards, front rooms and streets... as innocent collateral damage of the drug trade underage gang initiation, which come about when the government looks the other way and fails to regulate the market. Imagine if someone had the presence of mind to whip out the video camera at that moment to film all the final death gurgles...

----------------------


Would video of any of these children's deaths -- surely they add up to well over 400 over the recent years -- have changed your views on banning guns, banning late-term abortion, or legalizing drugs?

If not, if you are secure enough in the value of your pragmatic thinking over your emotional heartstrings, then why would viewing porn videos of gassed, gasping children affect your opinion about the wisdom of intervening in Syria?

Why do we look away from those dead children and go on with our lives, not willing to sacrifice our own freedoms in accepting that some people, in some circumstances will die because evil exists and we will always have killers -- takers of defenseless human life -- amongst us?


It seems,
the more one is a supporter of Israel -- as opposed to a neutral stance: one little country, no more special than another, in a world of many -- the more one fears the use of chemical weapons in conventional warfare and supports US intervention.

Why?
Because one day it might be their own people, their children over there in risk, like Jewish-American children family vacationing, making their bar mitzvah at the segregated wall, enjoying a birthright trip, or just working abroad for the summer.

This is the same logic behind arguing that only one country should have the Bomb's deterrent power in the region.

The more one supports Israel, the more one will push for the US to 'bomb Iran -- bombbombbombIran', sing it with me? -- to preserve Israel's artificial balance of power in the region.

At this point, the best we can hope for is mutual deterrence keeping things quiet enough, or drawing all parties to the negotiating table. The threat of a few plaster scratches on Israeli children will never do that.

----------
* (Ven aqui.)

Because Everyone Knows...Numbers Never Lie ;-)

Hmmm...

MY USA TODAY EDITOR WRITES: “Your laughingstock column was among the top five in social media reactions across our whole site in the last 24 hours. You beat Zimmerman/wife drama and a story about a testicle size and parenting. That’s huge.”

I want to say, by the way, that I think Barack Obama is an excellent father.
Posted at 8:50 pm by Glenn Reynolds

By the way, am I the only woman out here to observe that the big swollen balls generally indicate a lack of regular ... release?

Also, is commenting on the size of the ... presidential package, something special the law professors do there in Tennessee ? Not sure I noticed that topic trending today over at Volokh, but then I've never noticed those guys posting tittie pics of their wives to draw reader eyeballs in either...

Oh well, to each his own. Some men talk big; some really are, I guess...

Chessmaster's got a point...

You cannot simultaneously prepare for war and plan for peace. *~Einstein.

Late Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Obama administration was pursuing a dual-track effort to authorize military strikes even as it sought to avoid them by eliminating Syria’s chemical arsenal, an approach he said could not work.

The disarmament plans “will work out only if the U.S. and those who support it on this issue pledge to renounce the use of force, because it is difficult to make any country, Syria or any other country in the world, unilaterally disarm if there is military action against it under consideration,” Putin told Russia Today.

Let's work with them, motivated by the memories of dead gassed childen, and drop the military fallback incentive.

Plenty of time for WWIII,
for those convinced it will only come to that, should we not go gangbusters into Syria now already...

Mm.mm.mmm...

.

Don't Blow This One...

or, Hey, he did tip us off to the Boston, pressure-cooker killers...

Today's NYT reports on the good cop/bad cop drama playing out domesti-politically, with President Obama and Sen's. Kerry and McCain in the lead roles, respectively. (Know your roles, gentlemen.)

“Putin knows that everyone wants an out, so he’s providing one,” said Fiona Hill, a former national intelligence officer and co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.” “It seems like a bold idea that will get everyone, including Obama, out of a bind that they don’t want to be in.”

Plus, if I was soon to play host to a worldwide party of young healthy people, the last thing I'd want  is to be making promises on which I wasn't willing to deliver...

“It just adds to the uncertainty and makes a vote soon a little more difficult,” said Howard Berman, a Democrat and former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “It just gets dragged out and causes the Congress to say let’s wait to see what happens with this before they vote.”

Difficult? Try impossible, Mr. Representative...
and that was before an alternative resolution was placed on the table.

All of which had White House speechwriters revising their drafts before Mr. Obama addresses the nation Tuesday night in what is shaping up as one of the most challenging moments of his presidency. 

I strongly believe this is also a turning point for the country as a whole.  Plan to break that out in a separate essay later; please stay tuned...

The twists and turns in the Syria debate have whipsawed the nation’s capital and by some accounts imperiled Mr. Obama’s presidency. Democrats are mystified and in some cases livid with Mr. Obama for asking Congress to decide the matter instead of simply ordering one or two days of strikes and getting it over with.

There is none so blind as he who cannot see... this was the best move of the whole ordeal:

If there's any hope of blasting open the logjam that's built up in Congress, ripping the wheelchair out from underneath each of them, our political servants, and forcing them to stand on still functional legs, this is that moment.

It only works though, if we get back to the beginning...  The power in this country is to be held by our  people -- not our monied interests, not our patrician superiors.

 No, I'm not predicting an invasion of buckskin in the halls of Congress, worn by those capped with camoflauge Happy Happy, Happy  hats.  But  we all know Davy Crockett's story, if we know our history, and the point is:  the whole system is set up to go to those ideas most popularly accepted by the majority, short of robbing others of their personal rights...

We could do worse than to have the majority of the people's voices listened to more often...

Although Mr. Obama’s decision to ask for a Congressional vote has come to be seen as a strategic mistake, White House officials consider that hypocritical second-guessing from lawmakers who want to have it both ways. “One of the things we heard with near unanimity was a desire by Congress to have its voice heard and its vote counted,” said Antony Blinken, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama.

Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was more cautious. “If this thing is real, I think we should look at it,” he said. “But the question is this: Do you trust Assad, and do you trust the Russians?”

Hey, he (Putin) did tip us off to the Boston, pressure-cooker killers... too bad we didn't trust him and listen in on that one, eh?

Bring It *ON...*

or, If this is failure...

You're going to see an awful lot of this in the coming days.
Gird your loins.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Obama Diplomacy Is Making Him A Laughingstock. And that was written before yesterday afternoon’s absurd new developments.
Posted at 8:59 am by Glenn Reynolds

Prayers Answered ?

Clearly,
the US will not not approve missle strikes on Syria, nor will the president override Congress' formal decision, should it even come to a vote this week.

The people prevailed.

We'll explore all options still open, instead of first resorting to a symbolic show of force with too high a pricetag...

It doesn't matter who takes credit for the latest promising developments, but we probably should get our words correct, mediapeople...
Americans are more world wisened than war weary. We everyday people are actually stronger and smarter, more alert than you might first think emerging from your cocoons to hear us...

Also, the appropriate comparable to promising fast punitive air strikes on Syrian soil is the military action recently undertaken in Libya -- not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not ... Pearl Harbor 1941 (take it down a notch there, soldier.)

If you see the current Libyan lawlessness as a plus, or the timeline of what occured there as a US military success to be emulated, you're nuts. We did air strikes, supplied the rebels by running them guns and weaponry, and 'assisted' whilst they hunted down their leader like a dog and killed him in the same fashion.

This is us?
Our American appetites sated, we're pushing back from the mid East banquet, no longer wishing to pay the price to be seated at the head of their table.
----------------

*Thank you God for Prayers Answered ...
support all your people, and show them mercy in their days...
*In your name, we beseech thee.... in your might, we trust.

The Calliope* Crashed to the Ground.

PARIS (AP) — The U.S. tried to rally support on Saturday for a military strike against Syria, running into resistance from the American public and skeptics in Congress and from European allies bent on awaiting a U.N. report about a chemical attack they acknowledge strongly points to the Assad government.
...
In Britain, an anti-regime monitor of the fighting in Syria says it has been compiling a list of the names of the dead from the Aug. 21 attack and that its toll has reached 502. The Obama administration reported 1,429 people died, including 426 children, citing intelligence reports. The Assad government blames opposition forces for the deaths.
...
The DVD compilation of videos of victims of the gas attack near Damascus was shown to senators during a classified briefing on Thursday, and some of the videos were first broadcast Saturday on CNN. Supporters of the Syrian rebels had posted the videos on YouTube.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein of California requested the material from the CIA, and members of her committee watched the videos on Thursday. The DVD is a compilation of footage of victims of the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of the Syrian capital of Damasacus that were posted on YouTube by supporters of the Syrian rebels.

The U.S. official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the subject of a classified briefing, said the videos were also referenced in the government's four-page intelligence assessment, released last week, that blamed the Syrian government for the chemical attack.

Please tell me they are not building their case using CIA-gathered youtube videos...

Doctors without Borders, I think I read, confirmed treating/seeing  around 365 dead gassed victims, not the ... 1429 our administration is currently reporting.

Not too precise with time or numbers, this group.  Boy, those videos sure are emotional, though...

Democratic congressional aides said Obama's planned speech to the nation on Tuesday and briefings that top members of Obama's national security team will give to the entire House on Monday would prove pivotal in the thinking of many lawmakers.

Republican Representative Justin Amash, who opposes U.S. intervention in Syria, suggested classified briefings would make no difference. "If Americans could read classified docs, they'd be even more against Syria action," he tweeted.

*A calliope is a musical instrument that produces sound by sending a gas, originally steam or more recently compressed air, through large whistles — originally locomotive whistles.

Time for cool change .

Don't you know that it's time for a cooool change?

~ Little River Band

Splitting the Baby... or, What Value Current Life?

It's a Solomonic choice, no?
Does your respect for the children, the people of Syria overcome your hatred of dictatorship and acts of war that are morally repulsive?

Need we disrupt further those Syrians clinging to basic norms of civilian life, simply to reign* down destruction and death and undoubtedly create more displaced refugees on the run?  Most importantly, what comes next once we've got those hawkish urges out of our system?

Who really pays for our ... feel-good  symbolic demonstrations of moral strength? 
The baby that would be cut in half, Solomon says, or simply shredded to pieces...

-----------------
 *sic, intentional. 
Kings simply overrule their people, right?

ADDED:  He's no John Wayne...

Pope Francis has called upon all the faithful worldwide to join in a day of prayer and fasting of September 7 for peace in the Middle East, and especially in Syria.    

At his Angelus audience on Sunday, September 1, the Pope announced his plans for the day of prayer, to be held on “the vigil of the birth of Mary, Queen of Peace.” He called all Catholics to join in the prayer and fasting, and issued an invitation to “each person, including our fellow Christians, followers of other religions and all men of good will, to participate, in whatever way they can, in this initiative.”  ...     

“With utmost firmness I condemn the use of chemical weapons,” Pope Francis said, saying that such offenses incur the “inescapable” judgment of God and of history.     At the same time the Pope signaled clearly that he would oppose a US-led military intervention.

“Never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake,” he said. “War begets war, violence begets violence.”   

“With all my strength, I ask each party in this conflict to listen to the voice of their own conscience,” the Pope said. He exhorted international leaders to promote efforts toward peaceful negotiations. He also encouraged humanitarian aid to the innocent victims of the conflict.

Comment of the Day.

Found somewhere out there, online:

...
It is uncanny how out of touch with reality the President and Secretary Kerry seem to be with the American people.

The prevailing public opinion in the U.S. and abroad has nothing to do with whether it's OK to use WMDs but whether another destructive rushed bombardment will accomplish anything more than collateral civilian deaths and destroy yet another ancient civilization.  

The answer is No and everyone except the Administration seems to recognize that fact. Even supporters of the President are "lukewarm" to say the least.

Forget about the self-inflicted political wounds to Obama. The President asked for what he is receiving. The Administration has inflicted far more serious wounds to the nation by once again charging up the hill with little or no preparatory groundwork to bring international opinion along with us. When Vladimir Putin is able to seize the "high ground" by appearing to be moderate while lying through his teeth and dripping with complicity for the civilian murders in Syria it's obvious that U.S. policy has been abysmal.

The President was correct to send the decision to Congress. Now, get out of the way and let Congress say No loud and clear....

White Phosphorus.

Is this considered a 'chemical weapon' not to be used against civilian populations?

If we're courting further war based on 'morals' and not the likelihood that our punishing military adventures and revenge-seeking will have any strategic effect, perhaps we need to search our souls...

Sadly, we've become immune to dead children; so many killed as US forces and drones target peace and prosperity via military dominance abroad.

 Meanwhile, Germany prospers...  Go figure.

“The scars of history are really very, very serious, and so we made the decision to bid farewell to the concept of a state based on power and become a merchant state,” Joschka Fischer, the former foreign minister, told me.

*Potatoes.

*It's been so dry here, yesterday afternoon I dug up the 3/4 row of red potatoes, whose tops had browned out weeks ago...

*They weren't big  -- only a score as large as the palm of my hand -- but with enough stew potatoes to fill  a medium box.  They smell great, nice and hard, and I only sliced one with my tree spade. Not enough to sell, but plenty to share and for personal consumption.

*Naturally,
 I thought of Seamus Heaney as I worked:  it was so dry, the roots didn't go deep before the plants  died, so it was more dusty than dirty labor.  There's a good line in that great 1979 movie Breaking  Away, where the college-impersonating "townie" schoolboy figures out where exactly he fits in, as a young American coming from a working-class culture into the seeming snobbery of a campus that doesn't appreciate the men who physically built the place.

*I'm paraphrasing, but the father essentially tells the son, "We were the cutters, not you and your  friends..."  He's essentially reminding him of why his generation physically took on the tasks of building the future, so the next generations might have a better platform to launch their own hopes and dreams...

*The sweet potato ivy-like tops are still thriving, so I'm hoping they're making the most of our shorter  growing season up here, and less numerous days of extreme heat.  Sweet potatoes, I've read,  like it hot.  I'll try to stop and snap some photos when they're eventually unearthed.

*Hope you're having a healthy, happy and prosperous week yourself, too...

...to find the Narrow way.

*Lyrics
Blessed are the poor in spirit, longing for their Lord, for God’s coming kingdom shall be theirs.
Blessed are the sorrowing, for they shall be consoled, and the meek shall come to rule the world.

Refrain
Lead me, Lord, lead me, Lord,
by the light of truth to seek and to find the narrow way.
Be my way; be my truth; be my life, my Lord, and lead me, Lord, today.

Blessed are the merciful, for mercy shall be theirs, and the pure in heart shall see their God.
Blest are they whose hunger only holiness can fill, for I say they shall be satisfied.

Lead me, Lord, lead me, Lord,
by the light of truth to seek and to find the narrow way.
Be my way; be my truth; be my life, my Lord, and lead me, Lord, today.

Blest are they who through their lifetimes sow the seeds of peace;
all will call them children of the Lord.
Blest are you, though persecuted in your holy life, for in heaven, great is your reward.

Lead me, Lord, lead me, Lord,
by the light of truth to seek and to find the narrow way.
Be my way; be my truth; be my life, my Lord, and lead me, Lord, today.


- John D. Becker