We will, we will rock you

Imagine you had an Ant Farm, lots of kids had them. Now, imagine that you, as the only source of food, stopped feeding them.

And now imagine that the ants are actually people, trapped behind walls you control, with little or no food or resources. And finally, imagine that you are one of the people trapped in the Ant Farm. I'm pretty sure you'd be really pissed. Mad enough to fire some rockets at your captors? Probably:

Israel, backed by the United States, Europe, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, has sought to isolate Hamas by squeezing Gaza economically, a policy that human rights groups condemn as collective punishment. Israel and Egypt, which control routes into and out of Gaza, have blocked nearly all but humanitarian aid from going in.

The result has been the near death of the Gazan economy. While enough food has gone in to avoid starvation, the level of suffering by ordinary people is very high and getting worse each week, especially in recent weeks as Israel closed the routes entirely for around 10 days in reaction to daily rocket fire.

Opening the routes to commerce was Hamas’s main goal in its cease-fire with Israel, just as ending the rocket fire was Israel’s central aim. But while rocket fire did go down drastically in the fall to around 15 to 20 per month from hundreds per month, Israel said it would not permit trade to go back up until the rockets actually stopped, and because Hamas continued to smuggle weapons through desert tunnels from Egypt. Hamas said this was a violation of the agreement, a sign of Israel’s real intention and cause for further rocket fire.

Hamas is some bad guys, and the whole "destruction of Israel" thingie isn't really a good idea, as if it would ever happen. But Israel has been no less truculent, nearly starving the Palestinians, and destroying the economy with their foolish and provocative blockade, crippling West Bank commerce.

GWBush promised a peace agreement, and as expected, that promis has as much validity as his promise of "humble foreign policy. For more analysis, read Jon Perr's post at Crooks & Liars today:

In January, George W. Bush famously predicted he would broker a Middle East peace by the end of his presidency. Now with Israel's launch this morning of airstrikes in Gaza -- which so far have left 155 dead -- Bush's pledge of a two-state solution is just the latest failure of his disastrous tenure in the White House.

Tensions between Israeli and Hamas forces have been escalating since the expiration last week of a six-month truce negotiated by Egypt. The retaliatory tit-for-tat has included Israeli strikes against militants in Gaza, and Hamas firing rockets and mortars into Israel. And while Israel reopened border crossings Friday for deliveries of food, supplies and humanitarian aid, the AP reported that the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "wrapped up preparations for a broad offensive."

On Thursday, the scandal-plagued outgoing Prime Minister issued a warning to Palestinians in Gaza. As Reuters recounted:

"I didn't come here to declare war," Mr. Olmert told Al Arabiya, an Arab broadcaster widely watched in Gaza. "But Hamas must be stopped - that is the way it is going to be."

He issued what amounted to a public call to Gazans to overthrow Hamas, the Islamic group that controls the territory. "I'm telling them now," he said. "It may be the last minute. There will be more blood there. Who wants it? We don't want it."

At least Hamas is doing humanitarian work for its people, as both a real and political counter to Israel's aggression and domination. Still, some real diplomacy by the outgoing Bush Admonistration would have been a good thing.

Oh wait, what was I thinking.

Bastards.

Emperor Short One

No don't say a prayer for me now, save it til the morning after

(Save a Prayer)

Another Orange Co. minister has spoken out against Rick Warren's Invocation at the upcoming Obama inauguration, but not in the way you hoped:

Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake bashed Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren this week, saying "God will punish" Warren for agreeing to give the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration next month.

"I pray He is kind to you in this punishment that is coming," Drake wrote in a widely-released e-mail. In it, the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park pastor criticizes Warren's "recent plan to invoke the presence of almighty God on this evil illegal alien," a reference to Obama.

Who is this idiot? Clearly someone who doesn't support the U.S. Constitution:

In early 2008, while he was the pastor for the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Reverend Drake was a vocal supporter of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign. He sent out a letter personally endorsing Huckabee. However, the letter was on church stationery; thus, to the Internal Revenue Service, Rev. Drake was endorsing a political candidate as a church leader and endangering his church's tax-exempt status.

Rev. Drake's violation of federal tax law was reported to the IRS by an advocacy group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), which had warned him for endorsing Dick Mountjoy for a U.S. Senate race with a Southern Baptist Convention letterhead. Rev. Drake asked his parishioners and others to pray for revenge using an imprecatory prayer for the punishment, shame, and even deaths of AU officials. He defended these actions by saying, "The prayer does call for serious, serious punishment on people. But I didn't call for that, God did," and, "The Bible says that if anybody attacks God’s people, David said this is what will happen to them…." Drake also did not fear IRS investigation, explaining, "They don’t scare me. I don’t give a rip about the IRS. I don’t believe in the separation of church and state and I believe the IRS should stay out of church business."

I'm not sure about who Drake's God is, but it sure doesn't sound like this guy:

Romans 12:19-21
Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,"says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Ephesians 4:31-32
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Psalm 37:8
Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.

Leviticus 19:17-18
Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

How much ignorance, stupidity, and hate can be rolled up in one person . . . Oh yeah, I forget, there's also Rev. Fred Phelps.

Bastards.

Both of 'em.

Merry Christmas, darling

I never met her, but I did work with Richard quite a bit, and he's a fine gentleman, and very talented.

This is just a lovely song:



Addition by The Sailor. Here's another lovely Christmas song by Eartha Kitt who now resides at the North Pole (AKA heaven):

They're not random, they're chaotic!

Random thoughts:
If banks & corporations are 'too big to [let] fail' then why were they allowed to consolidate to begin with? [/rhetorical]

And why not bust them up (e.g. like Bell was) and make the smaller parts sink or swim on their own merits? [/simplistic]
********************
If you give bailout money to institutions & rich people, they hoard the money. If you give it to people in financial crisis they spend the money. Why aren't we giving the money to individuals in this crisis? It's not like their economic record is worse than Wall Street's. (i.e. they lost thousands, Wall Street lost billions.)

Which reminds me of a Buddy Hackett joke: A couple on vacation in Las Vegas, is having an argument in their hotel room. "How could you lose $200 playing slots!" he yells.
"Why are you yelling at me," she says, "you lost $3,000 shooting craps!"
He says "Yeah, but I know how to gamble!"
********************
I'm very fortunate this year, I still have my job and my 401k (FWIW!) and my health benefits. So I spent my xmas $$ at local businesses and matched it at a food bank & community kitchen.

I think my Community Kitchen has the best charity model I know of. They feed anyone who walks in the door. No bureaucratic hoops to jump thru, no invasive questions, just food. (They also do meals-on-wheels and take out for shut-ins.)

Does it get abused? Maybe. There are probably people who could afford food who take advantage of it, but at the cost per meal of less than $2/person that's a lot cheaper than a welfare program with hundreds of bureaucrats checking their lists and checking them twice.
*******************
Every time I hear folks say 'I survived because [insert your deity's name here] was looking out for me', I think that this is the most self-selected poll in existence. It's not like all the other devout folks who were praying to their god and still died had a say.
******************
I've been seeing a lot debate this year in blogtopia about whether to continue the Santa Claus myth with toddlers or tell them the 'truth.'

Oddly enough the negative POV is presented by some christains & atheists. (See they do have common ground!) The christains don't want the competition and the atheists don't want the indoctrination to magical beings.

My take is that kids will be exposed to the myth regardless of what a parent does and kids want to believe. And since kids believe there are monsters-under-the-bed/in-the-closet regardless of what their parent say, this seems like at worst a harmless fantasy.

And fantasies die all too soon for most children. Entertaining your imaginary guests is part & parcel to being forever young. I regret that I lost that ability when I reached maturity (which only happened in the last couple of years.)

Happy holidays!




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Hold Your Fire For The Holidays

We (along with Digby and others, we am sure) entreat and implore you cats and kittens in Internetland...



;>)

All is calm, all is bright

Pat Buchanan gave a particularly incendiary anti-immigrant speech at the '92 Republican Convention. Molly Ivins (I bow down and worship at your statue, Molly) remarked that Pat's speech "sounded better in the original German". Oh snap!

Well, some things do indeed sound better in the original German, like the fab Christmas song "Stille Nacht".

My dad, a music teacher when I was young, was a fan of the recorder, an end-blown early flute. He wrote his first Master's Thesis on the recorder and its use as an educational tool. And he started teaching me the instrument, it's fingering, and musc theory at age 7. My school musical education began the next year, when I started playing flute at 16th Street School in San Pedro, CA. My music teacher, Mrs. Schmidt, was a treasure. Patient as a saint, she persevered while a sincere but seemingly untalented geek kid tried to master the flute.

One day, near Christmas, she played a recording of the Vienna Boys' Choir singing a version of Stille Nacht, the original lyrics to what we call Silent Night, and it was an epiphany for me. I experienced my first emotional reaction to music. The strange lyrics made it more mysterious, and the sound of the pre-pubescent male voice, as pure as the sound of the recorder, was entrancing to me.

I later became pretty fluent in conversation German, but that performance of Stille Nacht changed my life. The Viennese kid who sang the solo in '57 is probably retired now after a fairly normal life; work, kids, grand-kids, an ulcer or two. But his pure voice singing those foreign lyrics changed my life forever.

Here's a more recent performance by the Vienna Boys' Choir:



Now these guys have an interesting take on the song:



And these guys take it even further:



Christmas Rocks!

Does anyone else see the irony here?

Bump & Update:

Police to get training after head-scarf wearer's arrest

The Douglasville Police Department said Monday its officers will undergo "sensitivity and cultural diversity training" after a Muslim woman who refused to remove her head scarf at a courthouse was jailed.

"We never want this to happen again. It's not our intent to embarrass anybody," Police Chief Joe Whisenant said at a news conference.

The judge who had the woman jailed briefly for contempt of court will also take part in the training, Whisenant said.

Original post:

Ga. judge jails Muslim woman over head scarf

A Muslim woman arrested for refusing to take off her head scarf at a courthouse security checkpoint said Wednesday that she felt her human and civil rights were violated. A judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta's west suburban outskirts.
[...]
Kelley Jackson, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, said state law doesn't permit or prohibit head scarfs.
[...]
Valentine's husband, Omar Hall, said his wife was accompanying her nephew to a traffic citation hearing when officials stopped her at the metal detector and told her she would not be allowed in the courtroom with the head scarf, known as a hijab.

Hall said Valentine, an insurance underwriter, told the bailiff that she had been in courtrooms before with the scarf on and that removing it would be a religious violation. When she turned to leave and uttered an expletive, Hall said a bailiff handcuffed her and took her before the judge.

Hmm, I guess you can wear a scarf in his courtroom!



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark

40 years ago today Apollo 8 launched and became the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon. 3 days later Mission Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders became the first inhabitants of planet Earth to ever see the far side of our Moon.

Earthrise by William Anders
(BTW, this is the proper orientation as conceived by the photographer and the earth concept of North/South poles.)



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Can't We All Just Get Along? Short answer: NO!

A Chance for Consensus on Iraq
By John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham
[...]
Now it's time for the unthinkable to take place in Washington. For the past several years, Iraq has divided and polarized our parties, our policymakers and our people. The debate over the war has often been disfigured by politics and partisanship, precluding the national consensus so important to American security in a dangerous world.

Consensus!? Freakin' CONSENSUS!? You dumb,lying,malevolent bastards! There's been a consensus for years! 60%+ Americans want us out and 70%+ Iraqis want us out, that's your consensus! The sovereign government of Iraq stated it quite clearly in the SOFA. Remember when Bush said we'd leave when they asked us to? They not only asked, they're telling us to get out!

The op-ed continues:

To achieve this, the president-elect, his national security team and all of us in Congress should seek the counsel of Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of coalition forces in Iraq.

Oh really!? Listen to those treasonous bastards?

US Military Defiant on Key Terms of Iraqi Pact

U.S. military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.

The scheme to engage in chicanery in labeling U.S. troops represents both open defiance of an agreement which the U.S. military has never accepted and a way of blocking President-elect Barack Obama's proposed plan for withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office.
[...]
Gen. David Petraeus, now commander of CENTCOM, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who opposed Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan during the election campaign, have drawn up their own alternative withdrawal plan rejecting that timeline

The first time one of them pulls this crap after the inauguration I hope Obama does a Truman to their MacArthurs!



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak