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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once. - Robert A. Heinlein -
This one-man brain-trust was a CIA agent before 9/11? And yet Al Qaeda was able to hit us nevertheless? Huh. What a fucking shock.
Mingle2 - Online Dating
The other people know that you don't get rich, or famous, or achieve greatness by sitting on your front porch bragging about what you did in highschool. You find the highest peak you can, and start climbing it, because the reward at the top of that peak is worth all the risks involved. And if you only made it halfway there, you can at least look down at all the miserable pukes who didn't even try, and pity them. Or tell them where the hand-holds are. Or both. What if the Wright Brothers said "Nah, too risky!'? What if the Pilgrims said "You know, Greenland should be good enough don't you think?" What if Christopher Columbus had said "Turn it around boys, it's too risky."? But they didn't. They were the other people.Somewhere, that old cracker is laughing his ass off, surrounded by nekkid wimmen on a sunny beach.
Rob Smith was one of those other people. You read his blog, and you didn't know whether to curse him out or laugh out loud. You looked at the things he did in life, and you had one of two thoughts. It was either A) "Oh hell, I wish I'd done that!" or B) "Did you mean to fuck it up that bad, or was it an accident?"
Never once did you read his writing and go "Meh. Whatever."
(............)
Rob had written steadily for years. He influenced more people than even he knew. And when the bullshit was flying, you could always count on Rob to cut through the crap and lay out the truth as he saw it. Even if you didn't like what he presented, you knew he wasn't giving you a line of BS. He had a hell of a life, both good and bad, and towards the end of it managed to beat down his personal demons. Again, life on his terms. There wasn't anything that was going to control him if he had anything to say about it.
Rob wrote the way people should write. He was popular because he not only put his heart out on his blog, he made sure you could understand how he felt and why he felt that way. He was a better communicator than most of the intellectuals today could even dream of being.
Dammit, Rob, you're going to be missed. This planet needs more of people like you, not less.
But Godspeed, brother.
WASHINGTON — Despite low approval ratings and hard feelings from
last year's elections, Democrats and Republicans in the House are reaching out
for an approximately $4,400 pay raise that would increase their salaries to
almost $170,000.
Pope Benedict XVI has approved a document that relaxes restrictions on elebrating the Latin Mass used by the Roman Catholic Church for centuries until the modernizing reforms of the 1960s, the Vatican said Thursday.
Benedict discussed the decision with top officials in a meeting on Wednesday and the document will be published in the next few days, the statement said. The meeting was called to "illustrate the content and the spirit" of the document, which will be sent to all bishops accompanied by a personal letter from the pope.
Al Gore has claimed that there are scientific forecasts that the earth will become warmer and that this will occur rapidly. University of Pennsylvania Professor J. Scott Armstrong, author of Principle of Forecasting: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners, and Kesten C. Green, of Monash University (and Armstrong’s Co-Director of forecastingprinciples.com), have been unable to locate a scientific forecast to support that viewpoint. As a result, Scott Armstrong offers a challenge to Al Gore that he will be able to make more accurate forecasts of annual mean temperatures than those that can be produced by current climate models.
· A deadline for withdrawal is an incentive for Iraqi political compromise.
Levin thinks we ought to pressure Iraq's government with a warning tantamount to saying: "You better fix the situation before we leave and your country descends into chaos." He should consider the more likely result: an American exit date crushing any incentive for Iraqi leaders to cooperate and instead prompting rival factions to position themselves to capitalize on the looming power void.
My experience in Iraq bore this out. Only after my unit established a meaningful relationship with the president of the Samarra city council -- built on tangible security improvements and a commitment to cooperation -- did political progress occur. Our relationship fostered unforeseen political opportunities and encouraged leaders, even ones from rival tribes, to side with American and Iraqi forces against
local insurgents and foreign fighters.
· We can bring the war to a "responsible end" but still conduct counterterrorism operations.The problem with this argument is what a "responsible end" would mean. What is "responsible" about the large-scale bloodshed that would surely occur if we left the Iraqis behind with insufficient security forces? What is "responsible" about proving al-Qaeda's thesis that America can be defeated anywhere with enough suicide bombings?
The senator also seems to believe that America will have success fighting terrorists in Iraq with a minimal troop presence, despite the fact that 150,000 troops have their hands full right now doing precisely that.
· We are "supporting the troops" by demanding an immediate withdrawal
from Iraq.Levin says that "our troops should hear an unequivocal message from Congress that we support them." He explains his vote to fund and "support" the troops while simultaneously trying to legislate the war's end. But what kind of "support" and "unequivocal message" do the troops hear from leaders in Congress who call their commanders "incompetent" or declare the war "lost"?
Such statements provide nearly instant enemy propaganda to every mud hut with a
satellite dish in Iraq and throughout the Arab world. These messages do not spell support, no matter how you spin them. And they could inspire insurgents, making the situation more dangerous for our soldiers and Marines.
You could argue that even the world’s worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought were doing good things for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc. Only the Saudi royal family is driven by the same motives as Bush, but they were already entrenched. Bush set a new precedent. He came into office with the attitude of “I’m so tired of the public good. What about my good? What about my rich friends’ good?”
How can anyone not see it? It’s not that their policies have been misguided or haven’t played out right. They. Don’t. Even. Mean. Well.
This past week, I’ve engaged in several discussions both here and at other sites about how national emergency or calamity causes the power of the State to grow, and whether (in America’s case) this growth of power is either Constitutional or not.
The fact is that we’ve always struggled with this phenomenon, and the great strength of our nation is that we find compromise—indeed, what sets us apart from the rest of the world is our ability to do so. Where in Europe, the growth of the modern State has been a story of pretty much unchecked movement thereto, and elsewhere likewise, whether through an entrenched ruling class, theocracy or soviet institution, the growth of the State has been kept in check to a marked degree, by the popular effort.
This is not going to be seen by minarchists, anarchists and populists as being correct, of course, given that they tend to view the growth of State power as both dire and inexorable; but I have faith that in the end, the power of We The People to restrain the State will endure.
Let me start by giving a small historical example.