Funmurphys: the Blog

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Winds of Change has a remarkable story about a young Kurdish woman and her fight for a free Iraq.

Q and O is all over the al-Qaqaa story. My own two cents is that it is much ado about nothing. There is nothing all that special about the explosives, or the amount, or the non-involvement of the Bush administration.

Consternations advises how Bush should respond to Kerry's handling of al-Qaqaa. Of course, Bush could have responded this way over several other issues.

In the wake of the latest caca, I've been thinking to myself that in any other line of work, Dan Rather would be off the air hoping his name would be cleared in the Ra^thergate fiasco, instead of on the air waiting for the fury to die down. So I'm with Rich and Dodd on boycotting CBS affiliates, and I can still watch my Survivor.

Sir Charles takes a look at the Heartland of America and thinks it can be trusted and invites your comments as to why.

Deroy Murdock takes a look at Saddam Hussein and terrorism. It isn't pretty. (via INDC Journal).

I hope you can stand one more al-Qaqaa link, because it's time for some humor to ease the pain. Blame Bush! gives the big picture response to the hype with verve and enthusiasm. I know it's no laughing matter, but it keeps the crying at bay.

Robert Musil looks at polls so you don't have to - and concludes with the wisdom of James Carville: "You know what they call a candidate who's counting on a lot of new voters? A loser."

JOHO the blog reports on a study that shows that people on the internet do come into contact with more points of view than people who aren't internet users (who is that anymore, I wonder).

Into the Sunset has already voted (I'd do that too if it meant I didn't see any more political ads) in Arizona, and tells us who and why. I'm with Brad on Bush -- on those issues where I'm disapointed (yes Virginia, Bush isn't perfect), Kerry has promised to be worse, and has the record to back it up.

Da Goddess has already voted too, only in California, and she too lays it all out for us.

The Interocitor, who I think is a wonderful guy, looks at what the lunar eclipse portends -- he thinks good news (except for that Red Sox thing). Years ago when America Online was my ISP, another Kevin Murphy IM me about how neat our name was. I replied I was happy for us both, and he replied with some profanity about how he thought it was a great name. He seemed a little young to me at the time. Hope that wasn't you, Interocitor.

The Belmont Club (can you really be a club with just one person?) looks at Arafat and his legacy. It, too, isn't pretty.

Dust in the Light responds to a letter to the editor about the separation of Church and State brought on by the Catholic Church's recent attempts to explain how their faith intersects with politics. I wonder if anybody responds to my letters to the editor?

OK, that's enough politics. Time for some beauty, so go check out Shelley Power's Tinfoil project for some gorgeous photos, mainly of scenery in and around St. Louis. Trust me, her pictures look better than the reality.

Thank You Maam, May I Have Another

I'm not one to criticize the family of politicians (minor children are strictly off limits in my book), but Teresa Heinz Kerry is exceptional. She throws around insults like breath mints. She's like Leona Helmsly, only with less charm.

Just Wondering

I suppose it was seeing the Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on a Hyundai that got me wondering - what's the difference when a company "outsources" jobs overseas and when someone buys a product made overseas. I ask this as an ardent free trader. Really, what's the difference when a company looks at the options, and decides it is in their best interest to buy the time of a worker overseas, and when a person looks at the options, and decides it is in their best interest to but the product of a worker overseas. Same difference really, isn't it?

Bizarre Claim Of The Day

My family considers my work stories the height of boredom: engineering tales about stuff they don't understand and don't care to understand. My wife works as a claims adjuster and we all love her claims stories. In fact, my son instituted "bizarre claim of the day" time at dinner where the funWife describes the most bizarre claim of the day. Today she had nothing, but yesterday was a good one.

A vegetarian goes to a fast food burger restaurant and orders a burger, hold the burger. That's right, a burger, but don't bring me the meat part of the hamburger, just the bun and toppings: the anti-Clara Peller. So when they bring her her order, she bites right in and is horrified to discover that there's a burger in her burger. She doesn't look to see if there's a beef patty lurking in the depths of the burger, she doesn't notice the difference in weight, or the unmistakable delicious aroma of cooked beef. But she wants $2500 for the mental anguish of taking a bite of meat.

The down side to my wife's job is the impression you get of people - clueless yet greedy.

What Would You Say?

Margaret Hassan was seized several days ago by Iraq-based terrorists. She is the Iraq director of Care International, an aid organization. According to "The Beeb", she "has dual Iraqi and British citizenship and has lived in Iraq for 30 years.":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3946673.stm

Ms. Hassan appeared on a video broadcast by al-Jazeera, urging British Prime Minister Tony Blair to save her life by withdrawing British troops from Iraq. The depressingly familiar pattern in these situations is that the terrorists threaten to cut off the hostage's head if their demands are not met.

I was wondering what I would say on the videotape if I were held in a similar manner. This is a bit more than idle speculation - my group has a project in the United Arab Emirates, and I have volunteered to travel there. A lot of things would have to go wrong at once for me to get snatched, but it's more dangerous than staying home under my bed.

Angelo de la Cruz pleaded for his life, and the Philippine government pulled their troops. I don't think George Bush or John Kerry or Tony Blair would pull thousands of troops from Iraq just to save the life of some budding meteorologist. So what I say doesn't really change what's going to happen to me. A few other hostages have pleaded for their lives, but Italian hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi was defiant: "I'll show you how an Italian dies!"

So here's the situation: The terrorists are going to cut off your head. But first, they want a videotaped statement. You have no guarantee that they'll actually show it, but maybe they don't understand English well enough to censor anything they don't like. Here are some things I thought of saying (some are more sanctified than others):

1. "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing."
2. "Vote for Bush!"
3. "My family, I love you."
4. "Bomb Fallujah!"
5. Sing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God".
6. "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a horse's rump!" (but I wouldn't say 'rump')
7. "Vote for Kerry!"
8. "How do I know you guys are really going to show this thing?"

Bear in mind that your choice of words while sitting comfortably there at your computer might not be the same words you would actually say after getting captured, beaten up, frightened, tortured, and threatened by some very nasty people. The question is what you would intend and aspire to do, if you had the courage and strength at the crucial moment to do it.

What would you say?

Bush For President

The official FunMurphys endorsement for President goes to George Bush. While I don't think there would be much difference in the outcome domestically between Bush and Kerry due to the wonderful apparatus of divided government, I think there would be a huge difference between Bush and Kerry in how the War on Terror is fought.

The war we are fighting in not against a single man, or a single organizatinon even. Iraq is currently the central front on the War on Terror because it is the struggle for the future of a nation in the heartland of Islamofascism. Afganistan is on the edge - it's importance derived from being a nation fun by Islamofascists. Now that the Taliban is on the fringe, so too is Afganistan. Instead, Iraq is front and center because it holds the ability to demonstrate that Islamofascism isn't the future, but the past. And it borders the hotspots - Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia - of the Middle East.

Bush will stay the course in Iraq, Kerry would find a way to cut and run. The fate of Iraq isn't in our hands; it's in the hands of the Iraqis. But the best chance for moderate democrats to come out on top there (or at least come out somewhere other than another mass grave) is if the US stays committed and the Iraqi people feel that committment.

We would return to the years of watching and waiting - as we did when we knew that Al Qaida was running terrorist training camps in Afganistan but did nothing. We were content to hold high level meetings in Washington to talk about fighting terrorism, but we only acted in limited response to attacks against us.

We would return to the years of only doing the easy. As near as I can tell, Kosovo was good because it was easy, but Iraq is bad because it is hard. But you can't just do the easy stuff and get done what needs to be done.

We would return to pretending that the UN is something other than a failed institution, a snakepit of self interest, and non-corrupt.

We would return to a foreign policy of acting like the parent who nags their child but never does anything about their behavior. We would be deeply disappointed with Syria, Iran, North Korea, and the other evil dictatorships that are still too plentiful, but we wouldn't actually do anything other than sign another check to try and appease them.

I don't want to go back to those days, and that has been John Kerry's foreign policy for as long as he's had one. To marry a man and expect him to change is the folly of women; to elect a president and expect him to change would be an equal folly for the electorate.

The War on Terror is going to end with a lot of dead terrorists; the only question is how many they take with them. They are equal opportunity killers, as you can see by how many Iraqis they kill for trying to make Iraq a country for Iraqis. Our war is with Islamofascists, and if it goes well then they will be killed mainly by other Moslems; if it doesn't go well, they will be killed mainly by us, and sadly we will kill other Moslems with them.

Vacation Act 1 Scene 2

At the rate I'm posting the summer vacation pictures, I won't be done before the next one. Anyway, we crammed a lot into our first full day in Colorado. First, we went to the Denver Botanic Gardens in the morning. Then we went to Casa Bonita for lunch. The pictures from there didn't turn out, but it's a giant (and I don't throw that term around loosely) Mexican restaurant complete with game room, gift shop, and cliff divers. To walk off lunch, we visited Red Rocks state park outside Denver. After the park, we went and visited the Drews at their house in Boulder. They fixed us a mighty fine dinner and it was nice to meet Christina and catch up with Carl again. On vacation, you cram it in until you're exhausted, then you get up and do it again the next day, and the next day, until finally you get home and go back to work so you can rest up.

Yes, this is the location of Red Rocks Ampitheatre:

The rocks were a lot bigger in person:

We hiked down the hill in front of the rocks, and then back up the hill behind the rocks. The trail was only supposed to be a couple of miles, but there was no end in sight of the rocks as we were going down the hill, and we knew we couldn't be more than half way there until we circled behind and started back up the hill. It must have been the thin air and thick lunch:

Thankfully, the day was sort of overcast, or it would have been really hot that day. The rocks sure were impressive:

The Murphy Women are lookin' good through it all:

The trail at last came to an end, and so too do the pictures. I hope you aren't as tired at the end as we were, but the cold sodas on the back patio were delightful.

A Foot Without A Sock

It's time for that old inside blogging standby, a stroll through the referrer logs. Yes, I check them like my dog checks his food dish - reguarly, optimistically, but always the same old same old. Well, not only do I still get people looking for hairy female armpits (with optional sweat), I am now a prime desitination for variations on "Maureen Dowd Sexy". I have to admit, her current picture is flattering, but then it ought to be. It's not like they run candid photos of columnists. But the number one google hit for that search will put you off even thinking about the question ever again.

Speaking of sexy, I laugh everytime I see one of those Victoria Secret ads (sorry, policy prohibits the link) that asks "What's Sexy?" like there is some question, and then answers it by parading around nearly naked women whose bodies are so spectacularly rare that they earn millions of dollars just for having them. If wearing their products made the average women look as spectacular as their models, Victoria Secret would be worth much more than Microsoft and much more popular. The crazy thing is, the average women is capable of being far more sexy than some airhead model with a pneumatic figure parading around in almost nothing.

Hello. Remember Me?

Contrary to the rumor started by my lack of posting, I haven't been spirited off to a secret bunker. I have changed projects at work and life has been busy - in other words, situation normal. I managed to see two, count 'em two movies last weekend at the movie theater. That hasn't happened since, well, since seeing two movies in one weekend wasn't a big deal. First up was a family outing to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow which was a fantastic B movie -- a whole lot of fun and not much else. Then we saw Shall We Dance?" with friends. I enjoyed the movie, a mix of comedy and drama with Richard Gere for the ladies and J Lo for the gentlemen. I can recomend both movies.

Conservative or Liberal?

Okay, this whole election thing has gotten way too serious. it's time for some political fun!

In religious discussions I avoid the terms "liberal" and "conservative" because they aren't Biblical terms, but in politics they are fair game. And speaking of "game" . . .

There are (at least) two theories of how to teach children to read. For our purposes these two theories are

1. Phonics.
2. Whole Language.

"Phonics" is learning to read by considering the sound of each letter in the order that they are written, or "sounding it out." The child strings the phonemes together, and "C-A-T" becomes "kuh-ahh-tuh" becomes "cat".

"Whole language" refers to recognizing the entire word as a group, and pronouncing it as a whole word. The child is taught to learn and pronounce letter combinations. Using the example above, "C-A-T" is pronounced "cat".

There is debate over which method is best. Note that this debate centers around how to teach children to read, not over how adults actually read.

Here's the game: Sometime in the course of human events one of these theories got tagged as "liberal", and the other one got labeled "conservative". Can you guess which one is which?

I don't think there is anything fundamentally liberal or conservative about phonics or whole language. To me, they are competing theories of learning that have to be evaluated on their own merits. It's unfortunate that politics has interfered with what should be a straightforward evaluation.

To play the game, first determine in your mind which theory is conservative and which one is liberal. Maybe formulate a reason for your choice Then go to the comments section of this entry. I will post the answer there.

Good luck!

At Least We Agree On Something

The following story on CNN.com:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/16/iraq.main/index.html

included the interesting quotation below. This person represents the insurgents in Fallujah.

A representative involved in talks to bring peace to Falluja said Saturday that the group won't continue discussions with the interim government until the arrested head of the delegation is freed and U.S. warplanes stop bombing the city.

Sheikh Khalid al-Jumaily, speaking on behalf of the Falluja group, made the remarks.

Stated another way, Sheikh Khalid al-Jumaily is promising that if the U.S. Air Force continues to bomb Fallujah, his terrorists will not try to worm their way out of the predicament they're in through "negotiations".

"Is there a downside to this?" -Hades, in the Disney movie Hercules.

It sounds like a perfectly acceptable arrangement to me. And I'll bet the Marines agree.

I hope the Sheikh doesn't change his mind.

A World Safe and Secure

During Wednesday evening's debate in Tempe, Arizona, the two presidential candidates were asked the following question by moderator Bob Schieffer:

"Will our children and grandchildren live in a world as safe and secure as the one in which we grew up?”

The correct answer to this question is:

Yes, the world will be 10.33% safer for our children.

Here's how I know this. In 1960 the life expectancy at birth was 69.7 years. In the year 2000 it was 76.9 years. See http://www.moralityindex.com/6.html#Data%20Sources for the entire data table. I was born in 1960, and my children's birth years average about 2000. We calculate

((76.9 / 69.7) - 1) * 100 = 10.33%

So our children will likely be about 10% safer from premature death. The ever-increasing life expectancy graph sailed right on up through September 11, 2001 with nary a blip. (I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why there was a huge drop in life expectancy during the First World War and not during the Second.)

If you personally want to be safe, wear your seat belt and don't smoke. Everything else is worry.

You are also a lot safer now from getting murdered than you were in 1990. (Note:The crime statistics are not valid before about 1980 because of missing data, so you should ignore those years.)

In fact, you are safer from property crime, too, compared to about 15 years ago:

Warning: There is a false ramp-up in these graphs during the early years! The data comes from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, which have gradually increased the number of reporting agencies over the years. But that dramatic drop you see in crime during the Clinton era is very real. You can swipe the data tables from http://www.moralityindex.com/crime.html and graph them yourself if you want.

The point is not that we can calculate our relative safety to three significant digits. The point here is that questions of safety and danger can be determined by reliable statistics, not by someone's feeling on a certain day with regard to how safe we are.

Bob Schieffer and others have this rosy glow about the "good old days", and how safe and wonderful things were back then. Sure, I walked to school when I was a kid and never worried about someone snatching me. But my brother got hit by a car on his bicycle and ended up in the hospital with a concussion and a broken leg. Of course he was not wearing a helmet - nobody did in 1966! Now my children and I do not get on our bicycles without a helmet. We have to wear seatbelts in the car or get a fine. On a global level, I was growing up during the Cuban Missile Crisis. People were building bomb shelters and we were close to global thermonuclear war. That doesn't sound very safe and secure to me.

The numbers show that we are living longer and safer. If politicians want to make intelligent public policy, they should look at the numbers and not rely on some around-the-water-cooler analysis.

I'm sure that terrorism has increased, and global leaders are rightly concerned about it. "On December 31, 1964 a squad of Palestinian guerillas crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel. ... their target: a pump for conveying Galilee water to the Negev." The operation failed, but al-Fatah leader Yasser Arafat extolled their service in the cause of Jihad (book: "Six Days of War, June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East", by Micheal B. Oren, 2002, page 1).

Nowadays the terrorists don't attack water pumps, they fly airplanes into office buildings. Arafat has morphed from a terrorist leader into an ineffectual national leader who issues perfunctory condemnations whenever his countrymen blow up civilian buses in Israel. Other scum like al-Zarqawi have taken over the headlines. Yes, terrorism has changed over the years.

But we're still safer on the whole.

Lucky or Smart?

I have never understood why the left has obsessed over "stockpiles of WMD" in Iraq. Now we know that Saddam didn't have had any when we invaded. While the left seems to think this somehow invalidates the decision to go to war, despite the fact that WMD "stockpiles" were not the reason we went to war, I think it shows good fortune on our part. I mean, the other possibilities are that Saddam would have unleashed WMD during the invasion when it was clear that we would depose him, resulting in at best horrific civilian casualties amongst the unprotected Iraqi people, or that he would have resumed making WMD when the crumbling sanctions soon fell.

Political Ecclesiastes

I've reached that age when the political give and take has a certain dreary sameness over the years; when it becomes clear that many a partisan excuses faults in what he believes to be "his side" while condemning the same in "the other side". Long term memory is a terrible thing in a political junkie.

But there is something new under my sun - the desire for Bush to confess and recant his mistakes. Torquemada had less fervor than his modern brethren who demand with self-righteousness that Bush admit his mistakes -- although his direct methods were clearly worse than their Chinese verbal torture. I can't recall such a demand in the last, oh, thirty years. Not even of Jimmy Carter, the man of a thousand mistakes, both large and small.

Of course all Presidents make mistakes. I wish Bush would repudiate his signature of McCain Feingold's ruinous law, but that ain't gonna happen. Even Reagan, now so beloved of the Democrats despite their spittle at the time, made his fair share of mistakes.

Please spare me the faux pleadings of how you only want Bush to learn from his mistakes when it's clear that you only want to beat him upside the head with any admission of mistake.

More Politics From the Second-Graders

In my city, negative advertising from the political campaigns is percolating down to the children.

Isabel has a little friend Paulina from down the street, who goes to a different school. Yesterday morning we heard that most of her friends would like to vote for John Kerry. Why? "Paulina says that George Bush is going to put everybody on fire."

Um - are you sure she didn't say "set everybody on fire?" "No - George Bush is going to put everybody on fire." I thought I was well-informed, but I had never heard of this development!

This claim was a little easier to refute than last week's claim. "Honey, do you know that George Bush has been president for four years?" "Yes, Dada." "Well, if George Bush really wanted to put everybody on fire, he probably would have done it already. So I don't think the story is correct."

I'll admit that my logic was not air-tight. President Bush knows that putting everybody on fire would most likely encounter some political resistance. Maybe he's waiting until his second term to implement this dastardly plan, when he's not facing re-election. Yeah, that's it.

I still can't figure out what led to this claim. Did some parent say that Bush the war-monger is going to leave the world in flames? Is he going to make everybody mad? Is he going to "light the fire" of some evangelistic crusade? Your guess is as good as mine.

Talk about conspiracy theories! You heard it here first.

Campout!

This weekend was our cub scout pack campout. We were back at Castlewood State Park and had a great time. Castlewood is very popular with hikers and bikers (no, not the Hell's Angels type but people who own $6,000 mountain bikes). We camp near the Meramec river and you feel like you're in the wilderness despite being 10 minutes from home. I'm a little sore from our help on building a trail and a little tired after sleeping (or rather, mostly not sleeping) al fresco.

Our pack has a great campout organizer, so as Cubmaster I mainly get to wander around and have fun. When our afternoon activities went faster than planned, especially the Raingutter Regatta, I made the decision to ignore the planned times and move the different dens to the different activities based on the times activities were actually taking. I'd rather get done sooner and let the kids play before the hike than to have the kids bored waiting for the next activity to start on time. I was informed that not all the parents were happy because they followed the clock instead of the boy and so missed out on seeing their son do some particular activity.

Cub Scout events are loosely organized chaos, and flexibility is key. At the pack meeting that night, I had a nine page plan; due to circumstances the start time was changed; some elements of the plan were dropped or moved -- sometimes I drop something just as it's about to start based upon the mood of the pack (myself included). This is entirely normal, and for every meeting I have a page of jokes to cover dead time that may pop up. I never know in advance when I'll use them, but it's a rare meeting when I don't use them all.

We had a ball doing skits around the campfire. We got started a little late and the Tigers were all asleep and didn't get to do their skits. This year I got to be involved in three of the skits. My daughter and I did one together, and the two older Webelos dens asked me to be in one of theirs, Yaputcha, and Ugliest Man in the World -- the cub master's job is to be the butt of the jokes. I had another page of jokes to tell while the dens were coming forward and setting up and I used them all up. It was nice to just sit (boy were my dogs barking after being on my feet all day) around the fire afterward and chat with friends.

Next morning we had crispy cremes for breakfast, and frozen OJ. McDonalds (thanks!) donates the OJ, and even after asking them nicely for thawed OJ the day before, we still got frozen. Sometimes I have a hard time recognizing the ladies without their makup; I've learned to wear a ball cap to both keep warm and hide my bed hair. And then we have the hardest but most important task: organizing the boys to police the campsite. Some of the boys fall right in; others require constant supervision to keep them on task. As Scouts, we do our best to leave no trace, even in an area that sees constant use like where we camped. Then we stress leaving it better than we found it, which means yes, you need to pick up the beer bottle caps.

It's Coldest Before the Dawn

I just handed in a research paper on the sandstorm that hit Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom last year. You'll all get to read this paper when I post it on the web after the professor grades it. The dust storm was most intense on March 25, 2003, so I looked up some old news accounts of what was going on then. Basically, the U.S. Army and Marines were approaching Baghdad, and the Iraqi Republican Guard were getting into position to defend the city. What was most interesting to find were the opinions expressed by correspondents and bloggers on both sides of the conflict.

There was a lot of pessimism on the coalition side. Many observers thought the siege of Baghdad would be long and brutal. The media worried that a lot of Iraqi civilians would get killed, that every block of the city would be defended.

There was also a lot of bravado from the Iraqi government, and not just from Information Minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf. Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed had this to say (posted on March 28):

Asked what kind of battle he expected, Defense Minister Ahmed said: "Baghdad is the cradle of civilization. Iraqis inherited this history from their forefathers. They will defend this inheritance in a way that will satisfy God."

"God willing, Baghdad will be impregnable. We will fight to the end and everywhere. History will record how well Iraqis performed in defense of their capital," Ahmed said.

Ahmed said that the U.S. supply lines were overstretched and reached as far as 300 miles and called a sandstorm that slowed the U.S. push northwards toward Baghdad in recent days "a gift from God."

You can read the rest of the story at rense.com:
http://www.rense.com/general36/bbe.htm

Remember that? It was only last year. I was kind of discouraged myself at that point, wondering how we would go about capturing Baghdad. I even discussed some options with a former tank commander friend of mine.

As it turned out, Ahmed was exactly right. History did record how well the Republican Guard performed in defense of their capital. I saw pictures of Republican Guard soldiers stripping off their uniforms and running away in their underwear.

If the sandstorm was "a gift from God," then Ahmed's expression of theistic meteorology did not work out the way he expected. General Tommy Franks and his staff made a military move during the sandstorm that drastically altered the war in our favor. That's a teaser - you'll have to read about it in my paper. The historical facts show that U.S. forces soon captured Baghdad after a series of armed incursions. The statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square was toppled on April 9.

The point is this: On March 25, 2003, things looked pretty bleak in Iraq. But a major military turning point came during those few days, and Saddam Hussein in bronze fell to the ground just two weeks later. Sometimes when things look the worst, there comes a turning point that nobody realizes until later.

The news from Iraq was depressing until about a week ago. It seemed that our side was losing cities to the insurgents, as more and more "no-go zones" developed. I think we were actually losing progress, as defined by the measures discussed here several months ago.

Take courage, my friends! Najaf is peaceful once again, even though too many of the al-Sadr militants got away. The shrine's okay. Samarra has been re-liberated from anti-Iraq forces. By now many Iraqis have had it up to ^here with militants turning their neighborhoods into battlegrounds. I expect Iraqis have also realized that people who sabotage pipelines aren't doing squat to defend Islam or fight for Iraq or improve anyone's lives. Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi is holding tough. And most people who make the decisions have recognized that Kevin was right back in April when he said that the right thing to do in Fallujah is to take back the city from the terrorists, not withdraw.

If John Kerry is elected president he will follow basically the same plan in Iraq as Bush is following now. Kerry says he will execute the plan better, and any voter can decide if they believe him or not. The Democrats made the choice of Kerry over Howard Dean in the primaries, and with that choice they rejected the option to withdraw from Iraq. Tony Karon at TIME Magazine can complain that Kerry doesn't offer a choice on Iraq, but that choice is off the table now because it was already rejected. No matter what happens in November, America plans to finish the job that we started in Iraq. And finish it right.

Thank you, Tony Blair and the United Kingdom and Australia for being there with us all the way! Thank you also to the other coalition countries.

By my count progress in Iraq is at about 85%. Progress is at 50% automatically because Allawi is in charge and Iraq is sovereign. When I look at the map of Iraq I see about 30% of the population and land as "no-go zones", meaning 70% is relatively stable and functional. So 50% + 70%*50% = 85%. You do the math.

Meteorologically Speaking:
The old saying that "it's darkest before the dawn" is incorrect. Night is relatively constant in darkness, except for the hour after sundown and before sunrise when blue photons are scattering over the horizon and lighting up things a bit. Surface temperature pretty much follows a sinusoidal curve during the day, with the peak temperature at about 2pm. Surface temperatures are coldest before the dawn because the earth's surface undergoes radiative cooling all night, at pretty much a constant rate.

So it really is coldest just before the dawn.

Thar She Blows!!!

What are you doing reading this blog when you could be watching Mt. St. Helens erupt from the comfort of your desk??!!! Check out the Mt. St. Helens VolcanoCam:

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/

There was a pretty good-sized puff this morning! A big plume of steam and ash belched out of the crater and sailed up higher than the camera's view. Pretty cool.

Look, I know that we're in the midst of a hard-fought presidential campaign, al-Qaeda terrorists are trying to kill us all, Iraq is not yet a functioning country, construction workers just cut down a bunch of beautiful locust trees outside my new office, and I can't seem to get Swing icons to draw in color. We've got problems, no doubt about it.

But when I can sit here at my desk, write Java code to implement my new OutlineView, and watch a volcano erupt in real-time - it's good to be alive!

Debate Transcript

You can find a transcript of the first Presidential Debate here at the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_0930.html

I kind of like reading the debates instead of listening to them! I can read at my own speed, review certain sections, search for keywords, and skip past any repetitive sections. I think the substance-to-style ratio is higher than with the live broadcast on TV. I didn't reach for my bowl of broken glass even once!

If you're going to comment on the transcripts, please have some grace with the two candidates. They are both speaking off-the-cuff, and it's pretty easy to snip out a fractured sentence that makes the speaker sound like he can't talk right. Try to quote whole paragraphs.

Special thanks go to the person or persons who typed in the entire program.

Substance over Style

Some substance-over-style reactions that echo my sense of last night's presidential debate. First from the Kerry Spot's roundup of reader comments in More Debate Reaction Than You Can Shake A Stick At (bullets added):

3) "While John Kerry showed poise and looked presidential, I think he is still flip-flopping on Iraq and the war on terror. To summarize his comments:

• It's the wrong war at the wrong time, but I'm committed to winning it;
• We're spending too much on Iraq ($200 billion), but I'd send more troops and equipment;
• I'll bring in more nations to help Iraq, but the other nations currently in Iraq were coerced and do not provide much assistance; Saddam and Iraq were a grave threat, but Osama is the only terrorist worth pursuing;
• Terrorists are pourng into Iraq, but Iraq is a distraction to the war on terror.

I still have no idea what he would do as President to fight this war on terrorism."

Next from the comments section of Reached Down Deep for a Good Post in the In DC Journal

While many viewers of the debate may not pick this up, I think Kerry took some extremely troubling positions in the debate:

1. His idea that taking preemptive action to protect the US should meet some "global test"...his codeword for unanimous international approval, something which is almost impossible to get
2. His idea of bilateral talks with North Korea. Clinton tried this and got snookered; this is what has led to our problems with NK today. Bilateral talks are a codeword for appeasement: basically, the US tries to buy NK cooperation, but of course NK cannot be trusted. Bush is 100% correct in that the only way to apply meaningful pressure to NK is through multilateral talks, largely because of the influence China has over NK. And Kerry's assertion to do both is laughable; once we give NK what they want in bilateral talks, the multilateral talks collapse. Once again, Kerry is trying to have it both ways.
3. His idea to abandon the nuke bunker busting bomb. This is reminiscent of his idea of a nuke freeze during the Reagan era: simply disastrous. Here is a weapon that could really strike fear into the heart of a man like Kim Jung Il and force him into cooperation, and Kerry wants to abandon it. Simply sickening. Basically, Kerry is establishing a moral equivalence between the US and these rogue states: since we are equivalent in Kerry's mind, all we need to do is to stop building nukes, and they will as well, for they have the same motivations we do. It's all so simple, see: we make nice, they make nice. Appeasement all over again.
4. His bizarre scheme to give nuke fuel to Iran: again, more appeasement, and reminiscent of Clinton's deal with NK.

I must say with the 4 above points, any one is sufficient to reject Kerry. One cannot overstate how disastrous those 4 policies of Kerry would be to the US.

Posted by: Another Thought at October 1, 2004 10:06 AM

And finally from Lilleks

Ask yourself this: you’re a dictator who has violated the terms of a peace treaty over and over again, and frequently shoots at the planes enforcing the treaties. Who do you fear the most?

1. The magnificent concert of allies in the UN, some of whom you’ve bought off, who are desperate to prove their legitimacy by prolonging the process into the 22nd century
2. The United States, Britain and Australia, who have several hundred thousand troops on your border and frankly are in no mood to put up your crap any longer

There are some substantial differences between the candidates, and once you peel back the anything you can do I can do better atttacks there are some serious contradictions in Kerry's positions. September 11, 2001 changed a lot of things, and adjusted our national priorities. I don't really get that in Kerry's remarks.