Russians Squeeze NASA for More Bucks

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Dragon X Commercial Space Vehicle
successfully docks with Space Station

The price just went up on the cost of getting American astronauts into space.  The price of shipping our astronauts to the space station via Russia's "spam in a can" Soyuz capsule just increased from 62.3 million per seat to 70 million per seat.  

Thanks to this brilliant move, NASA is stuck hitching rides with the Russkies until at least 2017 - a deal which puts American astronauts in the hands of 1970s Russian technology in order to reach the space station. 

And the left is, of course, still blaming it on George Bush.

 I had intended to make some comment about how the Obama Administration's new goals for NASA had switched from space exploration to making Muslim nations feel good about themselves and their contribution to science, but let's let the president's choice for NASA head honcho speak for himself:




Note that none of the three initiatives the president charged Bolden with has anything to do directly with space exploration. It's all about political agenda.  The first thing NASA did under the Obama Administration in 2009 was cut the Orion crew size and delay the project for years, guaranteeing we continue to rely on the Russians to get our guys into space for close to a decade.

Notice that the evil commercial sector which is busily "lining its pockets", has already launched freight carrying space vehicles that cost NASA half what it's own rockets cost, delivering bigger and bigger payloads.  The Dragon X manned capsule will be ready long before Orion is. Space planes and inflatable hotels in space are already in the offing. 




And care to guess which president pushed hardest for NASA to open the doors to commercial space flight?

Meanwhile Obama's NASA will be busily "inspiring" children to "get into" science rather like they get into video games and rap music.  And the boss, Director Bolden, will be wandering around the middle east looking for ways to make the Muslims feel good about their contributions to science (his words).

Don't get me wrong. I do appreciate Arab contributions to science like unpronounceable names for constellation and that whole Arabic numerals thing.  Technically though they should be called "Hindu-Arabic numerals" because the Persians and Arabs borrowed them from their Hindu inventors (rather before any of your actual Arabs and Persians actually became your actual Muslims).  We are grateful that the Arabs, by then Muslim, passed Arab numerals along to the west no matter that they were misnamed.

Westerners grabbed onto the new number system instantly - probably because they were stuck trying to multiply CMLXXXVII times MDCLXXVIII  (the answer has something like 1,656 "M's" in it).  So let me formally thank the Middle East for 0 through 9.  Right handy it's been all in all. Without it we'd have had a right job of it to figure out which shuttle mission was STS-CXXXV.  And think of all the money NASA has saved on hiring the guys that paint the lettering on the spaceships, not to mention the cranes, the vehicle assembly building and the catering trucks. 859 takes a lot less paint than does DCCCLIX. 

At the rate things are going, I fully expect the greedy capitalists to be back on the moon long before NASA can figure out which Middle-Eastern leader most needs to be reassured that Islam has contributed to "science".  I'm sure, however, that millions of children will be "inspired" to "go into" science by NASA's new propaganda mission.  When NASA finally finds its way to Mars, they'll be able to land their one way space pod full of "inspired" kids in the parking lot of a Martian McDonald's right between a Ford orbital shuttle and a BMW interplanetary cruiser. 

Good plan, Big "O".  Really great plan.

I'm just saying.

Tom King

* Don't get me wrong. I think the Arabic numeral system was a peachy idea, but that predated Islam and actually they should be called Hindu-Arabic numerals because the whole idea originally came from India and was borrowed by the Arabs who lent it to people whose brains were fried from trying to multiply MCLXXXVII times MDCLXXVIII. 

The Old World Really Wants to Meddle with the New

 UN Investigator Wants to Go After Bush Too
(c) 2013 by Tom King

And now the UN is getting in on the Bush-bashing - as we knew it would given a little Obama encouragement.  The president seems to have been taking lessons from Clinton on the art of misdirection. Now he's got his internationalist buds blaming stuff on Bush too.  These guys aren't going to be happy till they put the former president in jail.

All I've got to say is - from 9/11 to the end of the Bush administration and for months beyond it - no terrorist attacks on US soil.  Teddy Roosevelt always said, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."  Bush did that pretty well. The Arab nations understand the big stick.

The Obama administration is more like "Speak a lot but don't actually do anything really meaningful unless France gives you permission."  Unfortunately, the Arab nations see that as weakness and an opportunity to go after us again. This UN report basically says, that when you go after terrorists, you must be polite about it and stick to Marquis of Queensbury rules and protect the human rights of terrorists with great care. 

If you don't, the reasoning seems to go, the terrorists might try to blow you up... 

They also want to prosecute American leaders they don't agree with which sets a dangerous precedent.  This kind of UN meddling reminds me a bit of that one world government with "teeth" that even international church leaders like the pope endorsed a couple of years back - one that would be organized by trade and labor unions, international political parties, and diplomats which would be strong enough to keep powerful nations like the US in line. Now we have the UN demanding we prosecute US leaders for being too tough on terrorists.  Next they'll be assigning international representatives to monitor our elections..........................oh, wait.  They've already done that.

We are seeing the rise of internationalism on every hand, which might not be bad, were it to focus on stuff like stopping terroristm, preventing one nation from attempting to drive the people of another nation into the sea or driving tanks over another nation's borders in order to permanently expand their own borders or harboring terrorist training camps and paying terrorists to perform terrorist acts or developing nuclear weapons when they are openly and vocally threatening other nations and supporting providing equipment and training to terrorists and terrorist nations.

That might be useful.  Unfortunately, the focus of internationalists seems to be on weakening the US and creating a strong enough world government to reduce America to a feeble, economically weakened, militarily impotent power. In this, they've had the aid of our own libs (both varieties - the progressive and Ron Paul isolationist varieties - I can't see a lot of difference between the two on this issue).

Look, I've seen the way most of these nations form governments. It's a mess and heaven help you if the bad guys get enough votes to take over. That is NOT something we want to be subservient to. The United States is a haven of liberty, personal, religious and physical liberty. If we take down the walls that protect that liberty, if we lay down our arms and lock up the guard dogs, we will not last long.  If we as a nation decide to do this and submit ourselves to "international" opinion, we will soon find ourselves living in a nation like all those other coutries our ancestors left, piling on freighters, cattle boats and anything they could find that would float in order to get to America. 

Now we have their descendants clamoring to bring the Old World that our forefathers left into America's business - with TEETH? Do they NOT teach history in public schools any more.  The Monroe Doctrine should still be in force.  Hey, we'd even make it a two-way deal and leave them all alone, if the Old World wouldn't keep calling us over to clean up their messes every time we leave them to their own devices for any length of time.

There are reasons our ancestors left the Old World.  Perhaps we need to re-examine those reasons ever once in a while.

Where's a Statesman When We Need One?



The Greatest Statesman of My Lifetime - Bar None

 One of my favorite weblogs, "The Art of Manliness", just ran a piece called "The Four Qualities of a True Statesman."  Brett & Kay McKay, the authors, certainly picked a subject that would get a lot of comments. Predictably the Paulestinians came out in force and I'm thrilled they're getting so many hits off those guys. They've really kicked the ad revenue of small political blogs like mine into high gear. All you have to do to get a spike is to mention Ron Paul and step back and let the comments roll in.

I agree with Brett's analysis as to what a statesman is. It's not hard to spot a statesman. The top 4 American statesmen who made president in the 1800s are carved on Mt. Rushmore. I think you could add Daniel Webster and Henry Clay to that list whether you like their politics or not. Of all of them, I think Washington was the father and model of true American statesmanship. Lincoln had the toughest job, Jefferson the greatest impact on personal freedom and Teddy Roosevelt was the man on foreign policy - him and his "big stick".

In the 20th century, I’d pick FDR, Eisenhower and Reagan – and possibly Harry Truman. Reagan always befuddled "real" politicians because Reagan actually believed all that stuff he was saying and "the people" believed him when he said it. I believe the others I mentioned had that ability as well, with differing degrees of success at carrying public opinion along with them. Truman, who was no career politician, believed the buck stopped with him and that is very statesmanlike and all kind of manly.

In the 21st century we’ve had a shortage of statesmen so far. I’ll give you Ron Paul as statesmanlike, but no more. He’s as principled in what he believes ought to be done as George W. Bush was on the war on terrorism. GW was wrong on some issues as is Ron Paul. Both have fatal flaws in that they fall short in the consensus building department. I don’t think the 21st century has yet seen its first great statesman yet. The closest to a principled politician I’ve seen so far is Sarah Palin. That woman really believes what she says, though I’m not sure we’re ready to hear it from a woman quite yet, despite our efforts to change our culture in that regard. Sadly, we’re not ready for an American Margaret Thatcher. I do hope one will take the stage at some point. It would be nice to add an American iron lady to that list of iron men.

I do believe that statesmen are no accident. I believe, when we need a statesman, God will raise one up.

• “The greatest want of the world is the want of men—men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.”  - E.G. White

Oddly enough, it was a woman who wrote that. but then who better to recognize a real man when she sees one?

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Onward Christian Soldiers!

How does a Christian relate to war and military service.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

My good friends who like Ron Paul's foreign policy approach are a stubborn lot.  They keep sending me articles and weblinks, Youtube videos and links to documents in an effort to convince me to accept the apparent core doctrines that they hold. The main ones I've heard are

1. "George W. Bush was evil"
2. "We ought to withdraw all troops back home. No one would dare attacks us here because there's too much water separating us from them. Besides we're too big to attack."
3. "If we leave the world alone, they will love us again and everything will be hunky dory." 

Oh, you mean like detente'?  I don't remember that working out so well for us back in the 70s.

I carefully read the latest piece by a former Air Force pilot turned priest out of respect for my friend. It supports, of course, the idea that we ought to have a military, but just not use it and that Christians should probably not participate in the military at all. 

I was doing okay until he blithely cited some revisionist history about World War II and our use of nuclear weapons.  He stated flatly that Japan wanted to surrender, but would just wouldn't accept it.  He ignores the account of Japanese Army officers' attempts to kidnap the emperor to prevent him from announcing the surrender on the radio. This was after two nuclear strikes on the homeland. I have read accounts by Japanese officers and historians much closer to the action that make it clear that a last ditch, hedgerow by hedgerow fight for the homeland was, not only planned, but embraced by soldiers and civilians alike. It seems pretty obvious to me that the specter of dying uselessly in a nuclear blast, unable to take an enemy with you, completely unmanned the Samuri in the officer corps sufficiently to convince them to accept the ignominy of surrender.

 

The thing that colored the writer's opinion most, I believe, was his military experience.  The war in which he served was Vietnam - a US foreign policy disaster if ever there was one. Eisenhower warned us of the power and dangers presented by what he called the military-industrial complex in his final speech as president. He was right. Vietnam little more than a corporate war run by war profiteers and supported by both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It was about field testing new equipment and experimenting with "limited warfare" as a form of diplomacy by other means. Our soldiers were mistreated, hamstrung and placed in an impossible situation where most still managed to serve with honor despite the horrific conditions into which they were thrust.

 

Limited warfare is always a bad idea. War is a blunt instrument that should only be used in extreme circumstances. It is almost never used effectively by the U.S. because we are so damned ambivalent about it's use.

Were we to use total war selectively and with a clearly conceived policy behind it, we would be a far more effective "global force for good" (as the new Navy recruiting commercials put it). Orson Scott Card's fictional "Ender" novels outline what such a strategy might look like. His books are read at West Point by soldiers studying policy issues related to warfare. Card's hero, Andrew Wiggin reacts to any attack with sudden and overwhelming force and insures his attacker can do him no more harm.  The policy implications are something I could get behind. I
Extrapolated to the world stage, the policy would go something like this:

 

1. Leave your neighbors in peace. Treat others the way you would like to be treated.
2. If attacked, respond instantly and with overwhelming force instantly. Go after the instigators of the attack and remove them. Do not stop till they are no longer able to wage war against you.
3. Help clean up the damage caused by the war. Help those caught in the middle to rebuild their lives.

The writer* of the piece I read, incorrectly credits President Reagan with almost starting a nuclear war. Reagan did no such thing! He built our own military to a high state of readiness. It was the Soviet Union's leaders, seeking to preserve their own power and position that were pondering starting a nuclear war. They did not because they knew we would fall on them like a ton of bricks if they did. There was no way for them to win, so they did not fight. We came far closer to war when our nation was engaging in detente'. We looked vulnerable and the Soviets assumed they would eventually find a way to take us down.
 
Reagan wasn't always able to consistently follow his own policy. Political expediency forced him to focus on those he considered our most dangerous enemies and compromise with the diplomats and Democrats in other cases.  That intense focus on the mission at hand, he successfully eliminated an entire class of very dangerous nuclear weapons and made a "first strike" attack by either side almost impossible.

 

It is a shame that diplomat types went back to the same old confused military strategy after he left office.

 

The Hebrew language in the Old Testament's Ten Commandments probably reads less like "Thou shalt not kill" and more like, "Thou shalt preserve life". Others have suggested "Thou shalt not murder." Whatever it says, the Old Testament often suggests killing as a political solution for a nation state when it is under attack. God, Himself, wiped out whole cities. Based on my knowledge of God's character, I suspect such drastic action was done in the interest of preserving life. There was a time in recent history when a nuke on top of Hitler's mountain hideaway would have saved a lot of lives. 

The Jews did a lot of killing at God's instruction.  Sounds terrible, but remember that many of the pagan cultures of the time were slaughtering tens of thousands of innocents on pagan altars and in innumerable raids on their neighbors and wars of conquest. Israel became known for cleaning out the corrupt and evil inhabitants of the land as they settled Canaan. That's why there was a huge mixed multitude. Many of those inhabitants, like Rahab and her family, recognized that things would be better without the corrupt kings, sleazy priests and evil gods and joined the Hebrew nation and joined up with Israel.

  

Ecclesiastes suggests there is a "time to kill and a time to heal". It is difficult for a Christian to decide which time that is. It is why many Christians adopt a noncombatant role in conflict. Some Christians do, however, feel called to participate in defending our country. That's why so many join up in the aftermath of events like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. We feel the call to protect our nation. Since we are not the president or congress, we have to rely on God to guide those men in their decision-making and do our best to serve as best our conscience dictates.

  

I know a lot of folk would like hard and fast, black and white rules that apply all the time and in all circumstances. God gives us 10 basic ones. Jesus whittled them down to two. Then God surrounded those nice black and white principles with hundreds of pages of interpretation, necessitating that a Christian spend his entire life on his knees with that book and in prayer trying to figure out how to apply what he has learned in the real world.

  

I don't know all the answers. I know from experience how to deal with thugs and bullies. I know from experience that being the one who stands in the breach and deals with those thugs and bullies can very easily turn you into one yourself if you're not careful.

 

Two presidents, I think, made an attempt to move our military policy in the right direction. They were both dragged down by politicians and pundits and never able to fully implement the kind of effective military policy that might have brought us peace. Ronald Reagan understood peace through strength and reminded the Russians that "trust but verify" was their own old adage. He defeated a real enemy and almost made them our friends if later politicians hadn't messed it up. We should have shared what we learned during our SDI program with the Russians as Reagan promised. I think we'd be better friends now. Instead, political backbiting killed SDI and left us with only the marginally effective Patriot missile system when we needed it in the Gulf War. 

 

The other president who got it, was George W. Bush. His dad didn't. When Sadaam overran Kuwait, Bush did exactly the right thing. He gathered a coalition and took back Kuwait and gave it back to its people. His mistake was not striking back with overwhelming force and eliminating Sadaam Hussein. Had we done so, there would have been relatively little further bloodshed. The Iraqi Army was defeated and unwilling to fight any further. They knew they were in the wrong and I believe that we could have taken Iraq, set up a new government and been out of there before the end of the century.

  

Instead, we reinforced a lunatic's belief that he, personally, was invulnerable. We abandoned those who revolted against Sadaam and left them to slaughter. We encouraged fanatic jihadists and made ourselves a target instead of a trusted friend. We absolutely missed an opportunity.

  

George W. knew we had to take out Sadaam and the Taliban in order to prevent a wholesale jihad against the U.S. spurred on by the successful attacks on 9/11. It was messy and not as effective as it could have been had we finished the job the first time around.

 

George W. and Donald Rumsfeld attempted to lead the military to a new "leaner, meaner" design structure which emphasized special ops troops (highly trained nation builders) over massed armor and huge formations. They tried to skip a generation of weapons and go straight to weapons that were faster, cheaper and more deadly.

 

Again, the congress, the political generals at the Pentagon (David Hackworth's "perfume princes") and the military-industrial complex launched a campaign to discredit that whole idea, continued to waste money on big ticket projects and to move massive formations around the battlefields like so many chess pieces.

  

We had an opportunity and we missed it because the powers that be in congress were addicted to a big, expensive, awkward military that spent tons of money in their districts for big defense contracts. Rumsfeld and Bush took the blame in what was, in essence, a blizzard of a snow job by big defense contractors and the stooges they support in the Congress. We could do better, but, so long as the military is run by self-serving "perfume princes" instead of warriors in service of the people, boys will die needlessly in half-cocked, ineffective fights all over the world.

 

Why do we put up with Somali pirates, for instance? A few Seal teams riding on a few ships so that the pirates didn't know where they were, could obliterate any attacking force. How long would it take for word to get around that if you wanted to spin the old "wheel o' luck" and attack a ship in the Gulf of Aden, there was no chance you would leave the scene alive?

 

Remember what Reagan did after the attack on our servicemen in Germany by the Libyans? He bombed Ghaddafi's flippin' house. Remember what happened when a couple of Libyan fighter planes decided to play chicken with US Navy Tomcats and popped off some shots at them? The Libyan Air Force was suddenly missing some planes. Remember how quiet Ghaddafi got after that? Remember how anxious he became to restore good relations with the US when our tanks rolled into Baghdad?

 

We should not play around with evil men. Removing evil people can be "destabilizing", but if done consistently, evil men become much more well behaved after only a few examples.

 

Americans, however, and Christians in particular, have no stomach for this kind of warfare. We're peaceful people and we live in hope that we can rap the knuckles of bad boys and reform them It never has worked well with bullies in our public schools it doesn't work with international bullies.

 

I saw this played out on the playground once. Eight grade thugs were making the lives of the smaller kids in the junior high school miserable. A very large young man, Charlie, who wasn't part of the "in":group anyway, was sympathetic with the oppressed kids. The got sick of it and next time it happened, he placed himself between the kids and their tormentor and politely asked them to stop. One of the bully boys laughed and took a poke at our hero. When the dust settled, he was stretched out on the ground with two black eyes, some assorted bruises and a total disinterest in persecuting his fellow many any further. Charlie took three licks from the principle for fighting. When he walked back out onto the playground, the smaller kids were his devoted followers. The bullies slunk quietly away. Word got around that Charlie would take licks if he had to in order to defend his friends and that getting a beating from Charlie was very painful. Charlie's "foreign policy" led to a very peaceful school year for everyone.

  

Maybe, that's a simplistic solution, but I do think it would work.

 

Sadly, I don't think a Pax Americana is possible in this world. Too many bullies and too few brave men and women. Thank God, Jesus is coming to rescue His own.

 

Incidentally, from my reading of Scripture, what happens to the bullies when He comes back will not be an exercise in detente'.

 

Just my opinion.

 

Tom King

 

*Making War: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.

The Problem Is, Isolationists Don't Understand Bullies!

 I watched an interview with President Bush last night.  He was unapologetic for taking us into Afghanistan and Iraq.  God bless him.  He took the responsibility for the decision, a rare thing for a politician to do.  Lately he's been taking the responsibility for all President Obama's screwups too.  I admire him for his patience in not speaking out in his own defense.  GW is a class act. He understands the proper balance between the Golden Rule and a leader's charge to protect his people from thugs and bullies.

I was reminded of his policy of preemptive military action, when a reader of my last weblog took me to task for defending the principle on which Bush based his military action.  I've written extensively about how the "fortress defense" as proposed by both Liberals and Libertarians, is absolutely wrong and won't get us anything but overrun in the end.  I believe you have to go after your enemies when they go after you.  You don't respond to military style attacks (machine guns, bombs, missiles and projectile aircraft) by sending police to arrest people.  It's stupid and doesn't work.

My friend responded saying, "Probably would not be a good idea to try that tactic on the playground..... "striking your potential enemies". Good way to start a problem.... and would def. not solve the problem. I think the counsel given in the NT might be better."

That all sounds reasonable on the face of it, but I can tell you from hard experience, the playground analogy doesn't work.  In fact, it proves my very point.  

On every peaceful playground there is one superpower - the teacher. To keep peace on the playground the teacher intervenes right now or else bullies and thugs reign supreme and the little ones are persecuted unmercifully.  When I was a teacher, I had a peaceful playground because I practiced President Bush's doctrine of strategic response.  I watched the kids closely and I picked off the bullies before they could get started. Having been on the receiving end of bullying, I recognized it when I saw it happening and took immediate preemptive action.  At the first indication that one of my young hoodlums was going to torment a smaller kid, I caught 'em up by the scruff of the neck and set them down the playground wall.  They soon learned to play nice or they wouldn't be allowed to play at all.

I grew up in a school with an unsupervised playground. The teachers often stayed inside to grade papers for the first 15 to 20 minutes of recess.  It made for a miserable time of it for the smaller kids.  I didn't bother anybody (according to my friend's and the New Testament's suggestions).  I was skinny and small and made good grades.  I might as well have worn a target on my chest.  The local bully boys tormented me until I finally either got tired or (in one case) bloodied a nose.  I finally decided I didn't mind getting beat up for standing up to them  If I stood up to them, my beating usually was spectacular enough to draw the attention of a teacher and they'd get in trouble and have to miss a few recesses which made for a few days of precious peace.  Since it discouraged them from messing with me, I figured being on the receiving end of a little pain was worth it.  I went home bruised and bloodied many a day, but the local thugs finally got tired of getting a few bruises of their own and winding up in detention for their trouble.  The teachers knew I was a peaceful kid and was being bullied, so I never got in trouble for defending myself.  The bullying kept up till eighth grade, after which, they finally left me alone for the most part.  That was partially because I grew big enough that they thought I might have become a threat to their own noses.  

Ironically, the reader who made the playground analogy, actually went to my elementary and high school and knew the bullies I was talking about. Somehow, though, he missed the lesson I learned all too well.  Bullies do not forgo bullying just because you leave them alone or try to be nice to them. They are predators and only understand a rapid and forceful response - usually by whoever is the local superpower.

There was one guy in particular that one afternoon took a basketball away from a bunch of the smaller guys that were playing at the other end of the basketball court.  Without the ball, we couldn't play any more.  He did it for no other reason than to spoil our fun. Mr. Pauly, our PE coach and principal hadn't come out onto the court for PE yet, so we were unsupervised and at the mercy of the school bullies.

I had got tired of their thuggery and went after the ball. My nemesis snatched it back.  I got nose to nose with the guy and explained rather heatedly that he had no right to take our basketball from us. I told him exactly what I thought of him.

He hit me square in the face with a hard right.  I put my hand to my face. It came away with a considerable amount of fresh blood.  I glared at him eye to eye, then turned and walked away just as Mr. Pauly came out of the building.  He saw my face and asked why I was bleeding.  I mumbled something about a basketball and went inside to clean up.

For some reason this particular guy didn't bother me much any more after I stood up to him and took a punch in the face.  I think he was ashamed of himself for attacking me.  He was also scared of the consequences if I told the principal who had hit me.

Like Pres. Obama suggested the U.S. ought to do, I "absorbed the attack".  It probably protected the younger and smaller kids from bullying at least for that day.  After he hit me, he threw the ball back to the others and Mr. Pauly watched them like a hawk.  The principal knew what had happened even without proof and all the playground thugs knew what would happened if they gave him any excuse to punish one of them.

You see I had this guy's fate in my hands.  If I'd told Mr. Pauly, he'd have been in far more trouble than he wanted to be.  He was already in trouble most of the time anyway.

Mr. Pauly, as principal of the school, was the superpower you see.  This young man knew the principal would take action if there was any more nonsense - severe and stern action that would make this boy very uncomfortable indeed.  They still used paddles in those days and Mr. P had a powerful arm.

Roosevelt had it right.  "Speak softly and carry a big stick!"  If the local bully boys know you'll use that stick, it makes for a much more peaceful world for you and everyone about you.

People who don't understand that may simply have had such really good teachers that the bullies were kept in line.  They might have been too young to understand why their world's were so peaceful and sheltered when they were children, so they take it for granted that being peaceful insures others will be peaceful to you.

Either that OR they were running with the bullies themselves and still, as grown adults, don't recognize the harm and misery they inflicted on their classmates with their thuggery.

I am a devout practitioner of the Golden Rule.  I have often "absorbed attacks" rather than retaliating because it was the right thing to do.  I get that whole New Testament advice and apply it on a personal level.

However, the role of a government, a teacher or other type of leadership is to protect its charges from those who would, without just cause, attack them.  God, Himself, called upon kings and rulers to defend his people.  That's what soldiers do and it is an honorable profession if you take up the sword reluctantly and only to defend those weaker than yourself. It's not a bad job for those who are strong and tempted to be bullies themselves - a way to exorcise those demons by protecting rather than attacking.

Or as King Arthur said, "Not 'Might is right,'  but 'Might FOR right!".

That's my opinion whether you like it or not.

Tom King - Tyler, TX

Penn, McCain and Feingold - Oh My!

Sean Penn Movie Handily Skirts McCain-Feingold Just in Time for November Elections

Once again Sean Penn and company have dragged poor old George Bush's dessicated political corpse out of the land of political make-believe where they keep it stored in case an election looks like it's going badly.  Last time it was the dismal "W". They once trotted the Al Gore opus "An Inconvenient Truth" around the track to try and influence public opinion. Then there's always Michael Moor who's good for a "timely documentary". Then there was Nicholson Baker's liberal fantasy novel "Checkpoint" in which he has George Bush assassinated. That one kept many a Democrat up late with their flashlights and a bottle of hand lotion.

And now, just in time to sway the ignorant masses before an election, comes "Fair Game", a fictionalized account of the outing of Valerie Plame for which Bush aide, Scooter Libby, took the fall after an artificially outraged media conducted a witch hunt that lasted for months. I probably should have capitalized the "F" in fictionalized.  Just from the trailer, you can tell it got the full liberal conspiracy theory treatment.  It looks like they turned Valerie into a CIA version of Jane Bond and transformed Sean Penn into her "good as gold", highly moral, man-of-the-people, hubbie the disgruntle ex-ambassador, who attacks the Bush administrations "evil" plot to overthrow that nice man Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who, of course, has absolutely no plans to develop nuclear weapons or, for that matter, any weapons of mass destruction at all.  After all who could doubt the "truth" on which this movie is based.  Sean Penn, playing Joe Wilson in the trailer says, "It is my opinion that a sale that size, could not have happened!" and in the liberal-cum-socialist community, opinion is everything--so long as it's the opinion of someone with the right (actually left) ideology.

Next thing you know, the president (George W. Bush-Republican) is going after poor old Joe's wife.

The Bush administration (surprise and shock) comes off badly in this Hollywood propaganda opus. It's not out yet, but the film company is planning a November 5 limited release, 3 days after the election.  This gives them a month to pummel the voters with ads for the movie. The ads I've seen are basically 30 and 60 second commercials casting Republicans as bad people - especially George Bush.

I wonder if John McCain regrets the whole McCain/Feingold thing yet.  My bet is, that after this election he will. The movie is, in effect, going to attempt to influence an election for the Democrats by smearing good old George Bush again. The trailer makes the case in short order that the Republicans deliberately risked the life of an intrepid CIA agent, her family and Iraqi agents working for her in the Middle East in order to pull a fast one over on the American people and start a war.

McCain/Feingold prohibits "soft money sources" from running issue-oriented ads in support of political candidates or parties 60 days before a general election, precisely the time frame in which "Fair Game" trailers will be hitting the airwaves and theaters nationwide. What's even more fun is that if a "soft money source" like, say, George Soros decides to "invest" in the film, he could pay for as many ads as he wants to run and McCain-Feingold be damned.

I teach a class for 6 to 11 year olds at my church.  Psychologist Eric Erickson, in his "Stages of Psychosocial Development" calls the issues addressed at this stage of a child's development "Industry vs. Inferiority".  At this ages kids learn "what happens if..."  A nine year-old tends to be really concrete in his thinking - very little abstract thinking goes on.  They want to know the rules.  They want to know what happens "if".  The only thing is that in my experience they mostly want to know the rules so they can figure out a way around them.  I promise you if you catch a nine year old breaking a rule, he's got an argument all prepared about how it doesn't violate the letter of the law at all.  "You said I couldn't have a cookie. Those are 'tea cakes' and you never said I couldn't have a tea cake."  Nine year olds are not very big on the "spirit" of the law. 


Reminds me of liberals. They reason like nine year-olds.  If a liberal want to make the rules, you can bet on it that they have already figured out a way around them.  If they want to tax luxuries like yachts, you can bet they have their own 60 footer safely docked at a marina in Rhode Island for repairs (where by sheer coincidence the taxes aren't so high).  If they want to hit the "rich" with high taxes, you can bet that for some reason, they are exempt from paying it. If they make a rule stifling free speech, you can bet they've got a way around it that only they have access to.

This is a brilliant bit of dithering on the part of Penn and Company. By opening the movie after the election they can say they weren't trying to influence the election at all.  "We didn't open it till AFTER the election." they will point out.  While technically true, what they hope you don't notice is that they get to run ads for the movie BEFORE anyone actually sees the movie. That way bad reviews and dismal box office numbers for the film can't dent the Bush-bashing impact of the commercials as it did in the case of "W".  It's a movie that doesn't have to even be any good to accomplish what the Hollywood glitterati hope to accomplish - preserve Democrat seats in the house by frightening voters with the specter of a resurrected George W. Bush.

Sadly, for the liberal establishment, talk radio and growing conservative news source haven't been given the "Fairness Act" treatment yet and the point that the libs are skirting the intent of McCain/Feingold will be made - unless, of course, they throw themselves on the "Fairness Doctrine" hand grenade hoping it won't blow up.  The question they have to ask themselves is "Are enough of these sorts of work-around media blitzes coming to quiet the proletariat again and encourage the huddled masses to, once again, return the 'People's Party' to power?"

I wonder what those rascals are going to do next.  Maybe they'll release a new cleaning product - "Libbo, the soap so powerful it can even get a Republican's hands clean?"

I wouldn't put it past 'em.

I'm just tellin' ya' what I think.

Tom King

Enigo Montoya on the word "Fair"....

   "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

                                                                                    - from "The Princess Bride"