" Faust the other way around. The young man asks the devil for the goods of this world. The devil (who wears a sports coat and likes to say cynicism is the great temptation of intelligence) gently replies: 'But you already have the goods of this world. You must ask God for what you lack— if you really do think that you lack anything. You can strike a bargain with God, and in exchange for the goods of the next world you can sell him your body.' After a pause, the devil lights an English cigarette and says: 'And that will be your eternal punishment.'"—Albert Camus
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." —Emerson
I admire this passage from "Self-Reliance" very much. But the passage also provokes a question in me. How do you tell the difference between hypocrisy and integrity? If we are to do what Emerson suggests we would not be hypocritical. Being a hypocrite does not mean simply to contradict oneself. I went to that ever wise and sage oracle Mirriam Webster. He says hypocrisy is "a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not." So long as one does not say what he does not believe at the a given time, even if it contradicts something he previously said, he is not a hypocrite, but a man of integrity.
Uday & Qusay are dead. Though I don't trust this administration farther than I can throw a barrel of crude, it seems likely that these two men are indeed dead. Although I never take joy in the death of a human being regardless of how wicked his actions, this is probably a good thing. We can hope that the number of attacks against our troops will decrease as a result. However, it is entirely naive to think that all we have to do is to get Saddam and his sons in order to stop the attacks. While this would be a good thing, attacks will continue. There are Shiite clerics who hate the US presence as much as Saddam's Baathist loyalists. There are a number of Iraqi's with no particular affiliation that resent US occupation. One can see that there will always be a problem so long as US forces are the authority in Iraq. Without international involvement we will be there for many, many years to come. One can see this in US attempts to create a police force. As soon as the US trains Iraqi police, local militia kill them off. America, unsurprisingly, has no credibility in Iraq.
"Everytime a man gives way to vanity, every time he thinks and lives in order to show off, this is a betrayal... we do not need to reveal ourselves to others, but only to those we love. For then we are no longer revealing ourselves in order to seem, but in order to give." —Albert Camus
The following from a Kucinich campaign email.
"On the day of the All Star game, Congressman Kucinich introduced a
creative piece of legislation: "The Baseball Fan Protection Act." The
Kucinich proposal, co-sponsored by several members of Congress, would
amend a tax break given to team owners in 1967 in an effort to increase
the availability of games to over-the-air TV broadcast stations. In
some cities, only cable TV viewers have access to the games. Peace,
justice, sustainability...and baseball."
"To be worth something or nothing. To create or not to create. In the first case everything is justified. Everything, without exception. In the second case, everything is completely absurd. The only choice then to be made is of the most aesthetically satisfying form of suicide: marriage, and a forty-hour week, or a revolver." —Albert Camus
I don't normally waste my time reading warblogger sites but I was bored so I took a look at Pejmanesque.com. What the hell is with the name anyway, is he only like Pejman, but not really. When commenting on Uranium-gate Pejman says, "Out of the above passage, precisely one sentence of 16 words had to do with the purchase of uranium from Africa." It only took 7 words to impeach Clinton. "I never had sex with that woman." I think 16 should be ample to impeach that lying bastard Bush. It makes me wonder if Pejman is some kind of strange numerologist. Its not the number of words, its what they say. Bush's 16 words and the pattern of deception they represent got a lot of people killed. Clinton lied, Hillary cried. Bush lied, people died.
"The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz," -The sergeant at the 2nd Battle Combat Team Headquarters
When asked what he would say to Rumsfeld if he were in Iraq Spc. Clinton Deitz "If Donald Rumsfeld was here, I'd ask him for his resignation."
These quotations are from the ABCNews story A Big Letdown. Request for resignations are becoming popular. The Veteran Intelligences Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have asked for Vice-President Cheney's resignation in a strongly worded letter to the President. A president who is more than a few cards short of a full deck.
A Guardian Article reports we have a whistleblower on the Bush administration. Gregory Thielmann, who served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, said yesterday: "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq." Mr Thielmann said that, as of March 2003, when the US began military operations, "Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbours or to the United States".
There was a story at Capitol Hill Blue that reported Terrance J. Wilkinson was present when a report showing there was nothing to the alleged attempts to obtain uranium from Niger. That story has been retracted. So this is the first real whistleblower.
In response to questions about weaponsgate, Rumsfeld said, "the fact that the facts change from time to time with respect to specifics does not surprise me or shock me at all; it is all to be expected. It is part of the intelligence world we live in." Well it sure as hell shocks me. I thought that the word "fact" denoted a true state of affairs at a given time. I hate to be black and white here, but it is either a fact that Saddam Hussein tried to obtain weapons grade uranium from Niger or he didn't. The fact is that he didn't. That doesn't change over time. It wasn't true that Saddam was seeking Uranium from Niger when Bush lied about it in his State of the Union address last January, and it still isn't true now. Read more about Rumsfeld's comments on this and other issues surrounding Iraq here.
MSNBC fired Michael Savage. This time his bigotry went too far. "Oh, you're one of the sodomites," Savage said to a caller. quot;You should only get AIDS and die, you pig." MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said, "His comments were extremely inappropriate and the decision [to fire Savage] was an easy one." My only question is why it wasn't an easy decision not to hire him in the first place. Fair ran a campaign against Savage when it was announced he was going to be hired. Anyone who had actually listened to his program could see that he goes beyond merely presenting a right wing view with an edge. He presents an irrational, hate filled rant that could only be appreciated by a psychopath.
Via Calpundit I found a very interesting poll. The poll asks a number of questions on political issues and rates presidential candidates according to which candidate best matches your views. Here are my results.
1. Kucinich, Cong. Dennis, OH - Democrat (90%)
2. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (77%)
3. Gephardt, Cong. Dick, MO - Democrat (73%)
4. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (72%)
5. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (68%)
6. Lieberman, Senator Joe CT - Democrat (66%)
7. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (65%)
8. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol IL - Democrat (57%)
9. Graham, Senator Bob, FL - Democrat (54%)
10. Bush, George W. - US President (8%)
Calpundit also had Kucinich as his top candidate even though he doesn't support that candidate. To me another interesting result is that my results have Kerry and Gephardt ahead of Dean. I guess I have been a little taken in by his anti-war rhetoric at the expense of other issues. Go take the poll and let me know how you score.
Here is Bush commenting on the mounting American casualties in Iraq.
"There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush told reporters at the White House. "My answer is: Bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation."
My God!! How adolescent can a person get. This is not a frat party before the big college football game for Fuck's sake! That comment is going to get American Soldiers killed. What a cretinous ass!
We heard countless times leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on his own people. Well it turns out that the United States did something similar. The United States used carcinogenic chemicals to simulate chemical attacks on our own soldiers. The United States also used real chemical weapons on the surface of American vessels and aircraft for one test. "Although all the Utah tests made public Monday did not use actual bio-warfare agents, some of the tests under the Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD) program involved spraying vessels or aircraft with toxins such as Sarin and VX to determine the effect on U.S. service members on board. " This is like taking a hot poker out of the fire place and touching your child on the arm with it. "Uuuh, duh... I wonder if this will hurt?" We seem to have a habit of emulating nasty dictators in a watered down sort of way. Some of you may recall that the Topaz internment camps for people of Japanese decent were also in Utah during World War II.