Points to Ponder:

As a blogger who sees lots and lots of headlines through various sources there is one thing I would love to do. I wish I could write a search and replace macro virus that would go through all of the various news organization style guides and make some changes.

Headline writers are just getting too lazy. One word I especially see used way too much is "slam" or "slams" Apparently everyday somebody is slamming something. In fact later generations if they go by news sources will be convinced that at one point there was an Pope who took the name of Slams since so many headlines say Pope Slams this and Pope Slams that. Though it isn't just the pope who gets the slam treatment, it is used throughout all headlines on just about any topic.

In almost all cases slam can be replaced with "disagree" or "criticizes." I guess those words just aren't as sexy for headline writers. But surely people get desensitized to always using slam and it will be less likely to catch your eyes. [Jeff Miller]

For some reason, the quiz graphs below are not posting right. Nonetheless, here are the results I was given...

Based on your responses, your top candidate for 2008 is below.

Your Top Match: California Representative Duncan Hunter (R) 90.00% match

You are number 1,629,444 to use the Candidate Calculator.

It is a shame that Rep. Duncan Hunter is not getting more press coverage. He would make a great president and I do not say that because he agrees so much with me -though that would not hurt of course ;-)

Congrats to Venezuela for Avoiding a Potential Repeat of Munich in 1933

Points to Ponder:

The relationship between authority and personal judgment may be described as dialectical. That is to say, the two are neither identical nor separable. Our personal convictions about what is right and wrong are at least partially shaped by what the community and its leaders have taught us, and on the basis of those convictions we determine whether to follow the community's authorities in a given instance. To the extent that we have been successfully socialized into the community, our free and spontaneous judgments about right and wrong tend to coincide with the rules and expectations of the community. [Avery Dulles, SJ]

The Storm Cone:
(By Rudyard Kipling)

This is the midnight-let no star
Delude us-dawn is very far.
This is the tempest long foretold-
Slow to make head but sure to hold

Stand by! The lull 'twixt blast and blast
Signals the storm is near, not past;
And worse than present jeopardy
May our forlorn to-morrow be.

If we have cleared the expectant reef,
Let no man look for his relief.
Only the darkness hides the shape
Of further peril to escape.

It is decreed that we abide
The weight of gale against the tide
And those huge waves the outer main
Sends in to set us back again.

They fall and whelm. We strain to hear
The pulses of her labouring gear,
Till the deep throb beneath us proves,
After each shudder and check, she moves!

She moves, with all save purpose lost,
To make her offing from the coast;
But, till she fetches open sea,
Let no man deem that he is free!

Pope Benedict XVI's Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi on Christian Hope

Points to Ponder:

Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice. [Thomas Paine]

Miscellaneous Threads Worth Reviewing:

Just a few as time is too short to say much at the present time...

Poll says Chavez loses Venezuela referendum lead

I have two predictions on the above thread's information. First of all, Chavez will do whatever he can to not lose on the referendum including cheat to "win." Second, supporters of Chavez -not a few of whom are deluded enough to think that Bush "stole" an election in 2000{1}- will care about as much as Washington state Chavez supporters cared about the fact that the corrupt King County election machine stole the governors election from Dino Rossi in 2004.{2} The evidence for the latter dwarfs the former like Snow White dwarfed Sneezy but it goes to show the sorts of unethical double standards that many activist sorts will go to in propagating their particular weltanschauung.

Digging out more CNN/YouTube plants - Abortion questioner is declared Edwards supporter (and a slobbering Anderson Cooper fan); Log Cabin Republican questioner is declared Obama supporter; lead toy questioner is a prominent union activist for the Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers (Michelle Malkin)

Nicely done Michelle!!! Does anyone care to bet that the Clinton Cable News Network will not allow Republican declared questioners at the next Democratic Party debate???

Planet-saving madness (Christopher Booker)

None of this is a surprise -indeed readers of this weblog know that we pronounced on the global warming matter some time ago{3} but it does not hurt to remind readers of this considering the magnitude of the confidence trick many are attempting to pull with the so-called "global warming" schtick.

Notes:

{1} And no to any Bush Derangement Syndrome readers of this humble weblog but there were no presidential "stolen" elections in either 2000 or in 2004. The Supreme Court made the correct decision under the law in 2000 with the blatant crime being the activism of the Florida Supreme Court on that matter.

Yes we all know that the vote to stop the recount was 5-4 for Bush, but there is more to the story than that. For example, 2 of the 4 who sided with Gore concurred with the majority that there was no uniform standard of vote counting and that there were constitutional issues in what the Florida State Supreme Court was requiring. Further still, one of those justices who concurred with the majority but did not vote with them was a personal friend of Al Gore and therefore he arguably should have recused himself. With such a recusal of course a 5-3 vote on the matter would have taken place. (4-3 if Scalia had recused himself also though the connection he had to Bush was far less solid.) In other words, 7 of the 9 justices concurred on the problems in Florida but had a plurality of views on how to remedy the problem.

More could be said but the constitutional problems in Florida with the vote counting -to say nothing of 50,000 military absentee ballots which were ignored and the military vote for Bush would have been at least 70%- presented a problem that could not be resolved during the waning days of an election cycle when the results have to be certified by a fixed date. Besides, Bush had already won four recounts anyway. There is no rational way to conclude that Florida was "stolen" in 2000 when all the factors above among other ones are taken into account.

As for Ohio in 2004, the irregularities there were no different than what happens in a lot of states though I do not recall the Democrats calling for investigations into the election oddities in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin which were if anything more suspicious than Ohio. Oh yes, they won those states so there could not have been voting irregularities!!!

{2} A few threads were written by us on that event at the time which are noted here from oldest to newest:

"Grand Theft Auto Election" Dept. (circa December 5, 2004)

A Reluctant Rerum Novarum Prediction That Has Unfortunately Come True (circa December 23, 2004)

"Grand Theft Auto Election" Dept. -The Saga Continues (circa December 30, 2004)

On the Washington Governors Heist Race and Other Tidbits (circa January 16, 2005)

{3} On the Fraud of "Global Warming" With Greg Mockeridge and Kevin Tierney (circa April 16, 2006)

Debunking the Galileo Myth (Dinesh D'Souza)

The Road Not Taken:
(By Robert Frost)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Miscellaneous Notes:

This was supposed to post last night but for some reason did not. Nonetheless, I have a few brief items to cover here; ergo...

--I just realized that November 22nd is Thanksgiving and therefore am moving the posting previously scheduled for that day until probably November 24th.

[Update: I have neither the time nor the desire to deal with that posting at the present time. It will be added in the coming week probably on Monday. -ISM 11/24/07 7:25 pm]

--If you need another case study in why the government should not be trusted with much, consider what has recently happened in Great Britain with the confidential information of half the country's bank accounts going missing.

--One of the many important elements of the United States Constitution is the provision that a civilian will be commander and chief of the armed forces. The reason this was insisted upon by the Founding Fathers was a fear of a military coup. Pakistan had one of those back in 1999 and one of the problems with a general who is also chief executive is that there is no way to rein him in.{1} I note these things here because President Musharaf of Pakistan may be quitting the Pakastini army to assume the presidency in a civilian capacity. We in America should be thankful this year (as much as any other year) that we have not had to deal with the problems of having a military executive.{2}

--I also want to remind readers of President George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789. It is not that long a text indeed the previous sentence contains a link to it. But notice if you will how many references in the text are to God -fourteen in three paragraphs counting the signature of President Washington on a public act of the President of the United States. So those of you who are buying into that canard about the so-called "separation of church and state"{3} which has been paraded about in recent decades that dog will not hunt.

And of course a Happy Thanksgiving from those of us at Rerum Novarum to you and yours.

Notes:

{1} Vigor is of course important in any executive and a weak executive is never a good thing for a nation to have. However, if there are not due limits on executive power, the temptation towards tyranny will always be present even among the best of men.

{2} And to any of you readers who may suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome President Bush for all of his faults is not a military dictator.

{3} The only "separation" that the Founders envisioned was that there would be no official religion of the state the way there was (and still is) in Great Britain.

Miscellaneous Musings:

Two tidbits and then I will probably not blog again until the new blogging month begins in four days unless it is a "stray link of interest" sort of posting. Nonetheless...

--I have finally decided as of yesterday morning to outline a few things pertaining to where this weblog has focused in the past year as well as what my blogging policies will be into the indefinite future. Hints have been dropped here and there in the past year (some intentional, others were of a more implicit nature) since I outlined early in 2007 some areas I wanted to focus on both in blogging as well as in the real world in general. I do not want to say more on it until then as that posting will explain things adequately- both by revisiting those previously enunciated intentions and also point out certain factors subsequent to them which have crystallized my mind on the matters at hand both with blogging as well as real life.{1} But enough on that for now -see the thread when it is finished and blogged (which it will be on November 22nd) for more details.

--The counter at TheReligionofPeace.com has in the past few days tallied over 10,000 in the number of deadly casualties inflicted by terrorists since September 11, 2001 -standing at 10,019 as of this writing. I doubt that the media would give that figure even one hundreth of the attention that the much bandied-about 2,000 figure got a couple of years ago when the figure of US servicemen who have died since theI noted military intervention in Iraq in March of 2003. Nonetheless, we at Rerum Novarum have noted on occasion the rising tally and certainly the 10,000 mark seems appropriate to again point readers to a reality that the mainstream media does its darndest to either ignore or significantly downplay. The site itself (TheReligionofPeace.com) has a good reflection on the milestone above and I recommend readers to give it a viewing when they have time to.

Note:

{1} I will briefly note that it takes time and the impact of various factors to round generally nebulous notions into a solidified reality -perhaps the process can be explained better but that is all I have time for at the moment.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA -Plaintiff vs. BARRY LAMAR BONDS - Defendant

The above text is the indictment of Barry Bonds which was handed down today by a San Francisco district court. Readers of this humble weblog know full well your host's views on the matter of Barry Bonds being the new "home run king" as we outlined them back in October. Nonethless, we want to state for the record that our opinion on this is based solely on our knowledge of human physiology as well as the effects of steroids. (Based on our observation of others we know who have taken them in years past.) But that point aside, all one needs to do is look at these pictures of Bonds and notice how starting in 1999 he begins getting a bloated face and bulk on his frame and by 2001 it is unmistakable.

Even if Barry Bonds survives these indictments, the die is cast and his career while at one time a sure future Hall of Fame winner{1} is less likely now. If he does get in, along with Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and others their achievements will always be questioned and rightfully so.{2} Bonds would at the very least be able to offset some of it if he comes clean on this matter -he may have to go through a Pete Rose kind of exile{3} before eventually being accepted. As for the records which have been altered as a result of this usage -by Bonds as well as others- time will tell what major league baseball will do about it.

Notes:

{1} Bonds was arguably the best player in baseball during the 1990's prior to the steroid controversy. Certainly he was one of the most well-rounded players in history and the only player to ever have 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases. (Prior to 1998 he was a consistent base stealing threat.) He also played excellent field defense and was a productive and clutch bat in the lineup. His 400-400 status at that time alone (400 home runs, 400 stolen bases) would have made him a shoe-in for the Hall in and of itself as no one else has matched that combination of power and speed. But he acted unethical and for that he should endure an exile from baseball akin to what Pete Rose has had to endure up to the present day.

{2} Perhaps putting astrisks by their names and any career numbers they put up would be a good idea.

{3} My view on Pete Rose is essentially this: he made mistakes and has had to pay for them for some time now. Ultimately though, a player's status for the Hall should be based on what they do on the field and Rose was arguably the hardest worker in baseball history. He holds a few records none of which (to my knowledge) were attained by cheating. In other words: reinstate him into baseball so he can be eligible for the Hall of Fame.

Points to Ponder;

[It] is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man. [Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903)]

Iran Hands IAEA Nuclear Blueprints

Along with Muammar al-Gaddafi{1} and the latter's agreement to expose his WMD program to UN Inspectors a few years back{2}, one has to ask if any of these developments would have happened if the United States had not involved itself militarily in the Middle East after 9/11. According to former Italian Prime Minister, this was what motivated Gaddafi to volunteer to reveal his WMD's and submit his country to inspections by the UN.{3} It seems feasible that the surge (a subject recently covered in some detail at this very weblog) may be a motivating factor in Iran's latest move -too early to say for sure but certainly it seems appropriate to advance that hypothesis tentatively so I will do so at this time.

Notes:

{1} Whose name I rarely spell right by my own admission.

{2} Briefly on Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi's Situation (circa December 22, 2003)

{3} President George W. Bush and other supporters of the Iraq War portrayed Gaddafi's announcement as a direct consequence of the Iraq War by stating that Gaddafi acted out of fear for the future of his own regime if he continued to keep and conceal his weapons. Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a supporter of the Iraq War, was quoted as saying that Gaddafi had privately phoned him, admitting as much. [Wikipedia: From the Article Muammar al-Gaddafi]

Points to Ponder:

Notice everything, turn a blind eye to much and correct a few things. [St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)]

On the Situation in Iraq as of Early November 2007:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

These musings were the result of the following article from The Washington Post which we read about a month ago:

Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled (Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung)

To start with, the article itself is another piece of evidence for the hypothesis that the surge approach in Iraq is working. However, there is as always a broader approach to these matters that needs to be considered and I will touch on it now for those who are interested.

One of the reasons I have not reacted to every news story on this subject the way so many do is because the principles whereby I formulated my original position on the military involvement in Iraq nearly five years ago has not changed and will not change. That being said though, it does not mean that I have always liked the way things have been done over there.

Now I did not to my knowledge say anything publicly{1} on it but for the better part of over three years I was admittedly not happy with what appeared to be our approach to post-war stabilization and development. I have been pleased with the surge approach and as I noted earlier this year both briefly in passing{2} as well as later in a bit more detail{3}; however, I have not publicly to my knowledge explained one facet of the equation for why I view the postwar situation there as I do except perhaps indirectly in one of the threads where I have dismantled the "chickenhawk" canard paraded about by certain pundits opposed to the war.{4} One of the principles enunciated in those postings also applies to this issue but there is more to it than merely preserving morale on the home front. There is also the credibility of the United States in keeping its word -something that was seriously damaged in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and which still is a factor involved here.

The United States did not lose the war in Vietnam. Indeed our troops defeated the North Vietnamese in every battle including one that the msm tried to spin as a "defeat" for the American forces.{5} And this was also despite some of the most incompetent of bureaucratic attempts to micromanage the war itself. But after the withdrawal of troops after the signing of a peace treaty in 1973, President Richard Nixon pledged to South Vietnam the United States' assistance to help maintain the peace. This written pledge was reneged by the Congress in 1974 and 1975 when they cut off funding and left the South Vietnamese to be slaughtered by the North Vietnamese. This is why I say that the United States won the war in Vietnam but the Congress lost it. And what was lost in the process was the confidence of other nations and people that we would keep our word.{6}

It is no exaggeration to say that the loss of credibility of the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War is what gave the Soviet Union the confidence to assist communists worldwide and saw ten nations between 1975 and 1980 fall into communist hands while President Jimmy Carter's military endeavours failed miserably -particularly his invasion to try and rescue the hostages taken by Iran in 1979.{7} President Ronald Reagan when he came into office in 1981 checked this with his tough approach to the Soviets and even set into place policies designed to export democracy which saw democracy flourish in places it never had before during the 1980's and 1990's. But one thing which was not cured was the perception that set in after Vietnam of a loss of national resolve on military matters.

The reaction of the US after terrorists bombed the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 was a rare case of reacting weakly to terrorism during the Reagan Administration. But even then, there were no military endeavours the US was involved in which were not able to be dealt with quickly and the concern in all cases was always to avoid making any of them "another Vietnam." President George H. W. Bush's approach to military interventions was on the whole good but he did make the mistake of not supporting the Iraqis after the Gulf War. He persuaded them to rise up and then did what President Kennedy did with the Bay of Pigs and the result was similarly disastrous. And with that the Iraqi people were given a good reason to doubt the resolve of the United States.

Indeed the continued lack of military resolve as manifested by the Clinton Administration during the 1990's was what sowed the seeds for 9/11 with Bin Laden himself claiming that he knew the United States was ready for an attack when he saw how the Clinton Administration handled difficulties in Somalia after the Black Hawk Down incident.

While the overall approach taken in Iraq has by all statistical standards been remarkable -both in the low casualty figures for troops and civilians during the war as well as troop and civilian deaths in the postwar stat- it has taken a while to see things finally appear to have some semblance of progress in the postwar period of stabilization. There are a variety of possible reasons for this from events being cyclical to the surge itself etc. but I want to suggest one which the surge strategy{8} strongly implies and it is this:

--The surge sends the message to the people of Iraq that when we promise to have their back this time that we can be trusted to keep our word.

I believe this is an important element and one that cannot be underestimated. It is a key reason why I never bought into the whole "they will welcome us as heroes" presumption that many had when we went into Iraq and liberated them from the clutches of a spawn of Satan. The Iraqis were obviously happy that he was ousted but like the hydra of Greek mythology, cutting off the heads of the monster only resulted in more heads developing whereas stabbing it in the heart was how the beast was killed. The surge idea is one that potentially can get at the heart of the Islamic extremist beast and kill it off sufficiently enough to where we can get Iraq capable of full self-government faster and thus be able to at the very least draw down the forces we have there. The question though is one of trust though; namely, can we be trusted to keep our word and have their backs.

It is my opinion that the Iraqis are finally starting to trust us enough to inform us of where the extremists are enabling us to clean out their hornets nests to a degree we were not able to before. This trust has not come easy and it had to be earned to this point. Again, we encouraged the Kurds to overthrow the government in Iraq after the Gulf War and when they rose up, we did not provide support and Saddam crushed them. It makes sense to speculate that the Iraqi people remember that and only recently have started to trust us to actually be there for them and not tuck tail and run at the first signs of trouble Black Hawk Down style. I hope that even those who did not support the war and who are not happy that we are there as a result of it would at the very least be willing to reconsider their presuppositions on this subject with those factors in mind. However, before we can expect that, it seems appropriate to touch on some of the reactionary approaches that critics of the military endeavours in the Middle East have involved themselves in.

On the latter factor, there are of course sites out there that publish outlandish figures which have margins of error that (if you read the fine print) make them utterly worthless. Well, that is not completely true: they are worthless for anything except the sensationalist headlines that those more interested in promoting their agendas than actual facts can manipulate them for.

Unlike a lot of people, I am willing to give credence to the positions of others (even if I do not generally agree with them) as long as they show a concern for trying to find the truth rather than taking an "support my operative presuppositions by any means possible" approach which is a variation of "ends justify the means" methodology. Similarly, if those who try to tally such sites showed a concern for being thorough and interested in actual context rather than vague and merely looking to count anyone they can, it would be much easier to give their view credit as at the very least something to take into consideration. However, far too often it comes across as simply trying to create inflated numbers to sway the emotions of the largely malleable and generally-quite-uncritical public.

Pardon those of us who take reason and logic seriously if we do not give the time of day to those who engage in such charades. There can be (and should be) responsible criticisms of any position taken on this subject or any other. But before that is possible, there needs to be a separation of the wheat from the chaff on the part of both supporters of the war as well as those who oppose it. And furthermore, each side needs to show a willingness to reconsider their presumptions in light of relevant new evidences either of a circumstantial or a fundamentally philosophical/principled nature -to challenge if you will (in the words of the late Benjamin Franklin) "a bit of their own infallibility."


Notes:

{1} Some people heard an earful on it from us privately though.

{2} On President Bush and His Administration As of Mid 2007 (circa July 11, 2007)

{3} On the Iraq Situation, the Military Surge, and Playing Politics (circa August 21, 2007)

{4} Here are the threads on that subject for those who are interested:

Revisiting the Absurd "Chickenhawk" Purported "Argument" and on the Odds of a Military Draft Anytime Soon (circa September 9, 2007)

Briefly Dispatching With A Standard Pseudo-"Peacemaker" War "Argument" Yet Again (circa July 28, 2006)

Revisiting the Flawed "Chickenhawk" Argument (circa May 1, 2006)

Another Flawed Argument From Pseudo "Peacemakers" Bites the Dust (circa October 21, 2005)

Perhaps the best of the threads for a very short synopsis of the key issue is the one from June 28, 2006. (I say this as the threads prior to that one -particularly the one from 2005- are longer and the one subsequent to it was written when your host was tired and a bit cranky thereby not having the most irenic of tonality to it.)

{5} I refer here to the Tet Offensive for those who do not know.

{6} This is not the first time something like this happened of course -certainly The Bay of Pigs comes to mind. But the failure to keep our word in Vietnam was far more significant than what happened with the Bay of Pigs invasion. (Though the latter could be said to have been a kind of precursor for what was to follow.)

{7} Some might point to the planned Soviet invasion of Poland as one example of deft diplomacy but I would argue that the reason it was not undertaken was that President-elect Ronald Reagan said his incoming administration would support the outgoing Carter Administration and the Soviets knew that Reagan would not be the kind of pushover that Carter had been.

{8} It bears noting that the additional troops for the surge were not all in place until a few months ago: right about the time the number of casualties begin noticeably declining. This does not mean that the two are necessarily connected of course, only that it is possible. I would argue for reasons noted further up in this posting why this is a logical cause and effect outlook on the matter in question.

Points to Ponder:

I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. [Galileo Galilei]

More reasons to like Nicolas Sarkozy

Points to Ponder:

Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution." [Dr. David Schwartz]