Faith, Beer, and Other Things That Interest Geoff

Iran's Proxy War Against the U.S. and the Iraqi Government (PDF)

Bookmark and read later.

Labels: iran, iraq

The Left's Viet Con

If you like this article read Sen. Webb's barn burner from 2000.

One of the first actions of the Democratic "Watergate babies" was to vote to deny South Vietnam $800 million in military aid, including ammunition and spare parts.

Five weeks after that vote, a surprised and delighted North Vietnam began planning an armored invasion of the South, knowing we had grown war-weary and would not help.

Bacevich speaks of a "Republic of Vietnam, created by the United States," that was not "able to govern effectively or command the loyalty of its people." Yet, as history shows, Vietnam did not fall to a popular uprising by pajama-clad patriots.
...
It was these failures that led to the January 1973 Paris Peace Accord. But when a Democratic Congress legislated an end to U.S. operations in Indochina that summer, it also stopped U.S. air support of a friendly Cambodian government under siege by Hanoi and the Khmer Rouge.

Former Rep. Tip O'Neill, D-Mass., who was later to become speaker of the House, declared at the time that "Cambodia is not worth the life of one American flier."

The rest — as they say, professor — is history.

Labels: vietnam

Michael Vick Thoughts

Actually, I have football-related thoughts. I never thought that Vick was that good. I think Falcons have a (football) blessing in disguise. Or many not in disguise. They free up a lot of cap room and they will hopefully get a better quarterback.

Labels: football

Now This Is Right Up My Alley

A Christian group in Germany has a kosher-certified beer and they are associated with Jews for Jesus.

Labels: beer, jews, jews for jesus

No Link Between Yakking and Crashing?

Norwegian Justice

No recap can show the utter silliness of what I read.

My Public Apology to the Chipper Jones Fan Club

A bunch of young men dressed up as Chippendale dancers at the Phillies vs. Braves game last Saturday in support of Chipper Jones. Let's just say I said a few things I shouldn't have.

They have my sincerest apology.

Give a Plausible, Naturalistic Origin of Life Scenario, Win a Million Dollars

I can say with honesty that you'll have better odds playing the lottery.

Labels: evolution

Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered?

If a woman is old enough to sign a contract, buy a house and get married, isn’t she also old enough to sip champagne at her wedding? If a man is mature enough to serve on a jury or risk his life in a war halfway around the world, isn’t he also mature enough to drink a beer?

And didn’t we have this debate almost 40 years ago?

Labels: alchohol

1998 No Longer Warmest Year on Record

Labels: global warming

Pleasing the Peace Activist Community

Here is an interesting picture I saw on a peace activist website.



Now, what is interesting about this? This pre-dates the Iraq War. What were they complaining about? Sanctions against Iraq were hurting Iraqis. They wanted them lifted. Prior to 9/11 there was pressure to lift sanctions on Iraq.

So they didn't want pressure on Iraq. But they didn't want an invasion.

The only other option was to let Saddam Hussein run around amuck.

Labels: iraq

Darwinian Group Admits Mutations Not Enough to Explain Evolution

I believe they want to add lateral gene transfer into the mix.

Labels: evolution

Liking Hillary More and More

Yes, it is true.

Hillary tells the truth about lobbyists and gets booed.

"A lot of these lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans. They actually do. They represent nurses, they represent social workers -- yes, they represent corporations that employ a lot of people."

A lobbyist is someone who supports a group or cause you don't believe in. If they support what you like, you don't use the l-word.

Labels: hillary clinton

What I Learned From Hurricane Katrina

I saw this on a bulletin board and had to share.

If you expect the federal government to protect you, you are an idiot.

I went to Mississippi and Louisiana with the utility clean-up crews. In Louisiana, the government has trained people not to fend for themselves. When the hurricane came, they disarmed people, and gangs of thugs roamed the streets. Result: Crime wave amidst people schooled in the ways of helpless whining. In Mississippi, signs went up in lots of neighborhoods saying, "You loot, we shoot." Result: No crime wave.

In Louisiana, people with an ingrained welfare mentality are still homeless, broke, and blaming Bush for everything. In Mississippi, people a bit more in the habit of fending for themselves started rebuilding their destroyed coastlands. It'll take a while, but Mississippi will fix it all.

Incidentally, the damage in Mississippi was 50 or 100 times worse than it was in Louisiana. Trust me; I went to both places. But which state do you hear about in the news perpetually whining about their situation?

Conclusion applied to bridges: States and counties need to take care of their own public works. If they don't, the feds will step in and take all the money. The bridges still won't get fixed, and the people who could do the work will lose the authority and the home-grown money to do it.

Moral of the story once more for the slow of heart: If you expect the federal government to protect you, you are a screaming, blazing, incurable idiot. A zombie. A zoid. A moron. A thick-headed chunk of fish bait. And stupid on top of that.

Not sure if I agree with all of it, but it gets the point across.

Labels: government, hurricane katrina

Woe is the Poor Silicon Valley Millionaire

I have to comment on the New York Times article about Silicon Valley millionaires.

By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it.

Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States.

Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company, still striving for his big strike. Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.

“I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,” Mr. Steger says. “But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore.”

Ok. Cost of living is really high there. But life is about choices. And the desire for things is what is trapping this guy.

Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.

But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people with more wealth — often a lot more.

I have an old-fashioned word that cover this: covetousness. As in, "thou shalt not covet" your neighbor's goods. We all fall prey to this. But the insanity of this sin is more apparent when you see someone who is worth millions falling prey to this.

When chief executives are routinely paid tens of millions of dollars a year and a hedge fund manager can collect $1 billion annually, those with a few million dollars often see their accumulated wealth as puny, a reflection of their modest status in the new Gilded Age, when hundreds of thousands of people have accumulated much vaster fortunes.

“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Envy.

“People around here, if they have 2 or 3 million dollars, they don’t feel secure,” said David W. Hettig, an estate planner based in Menlo Park who has advised Silicon Valley’s wealthy for two decades.

Oh, the deceitfulness of riches.

But there are also good anecdotes in the story.

Many of these millionaires have options, of course, beyond working hard to earn another $5 million to $10 million. A few even choose to jump off the golden treadmill.

That is what Mark Gage, 51, an engineer, and his wife, Meredith, did when they left the Bay Area in 2005 with $3 million or so in assets. They bought a house in Bend, Ore. — “a bigger, much nicer home with dramatic views” — and now Mr. Gage works only when the perfect consulting job presents itself.

But it ends on a somber note.

To Mr. Milletti, it all looks like a marathon with no finish line.

“Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent,” he said.

“You try not to get caught up in it,” he added, “but it’s hard not to.”

That's because we are all born with sin natures.

Many of the more modest millionaires here feel sheepish, even guilty at times, about their piles of cash. Talent played in a role in their financial success, but so did being at the right place at the right time.

Why feel guilty?

Labels: original sin, sin

Interactive Home Run Chart

The New York Times has created a chart showing the home runs of each 500 home run hitter by age. In regards to steroid use, it may help expose suspicious patterns.

A-Rod is on a torrid historical pace.

Labels: baseball

John Kerry Explains Himself on Vietnam

Mr. Taranto mistakenly views the violence after 1973 as a direct result of our withdrawal. In fact, the violence arose from the conditions that led us to withdraw: a Vietnamese civil war we couldn't stop supported by a Cambodian insurgency we couldn't bomb into submission. It's horrifying that so many South Vietnamese suffered. But, even accepting Mr. Taranto's estimate of 165,000 Vietnamese deaths--double that of most academic sources--this is a significant decrease from the preceding eight years when 450,000 civilians and 1.1 million soldiers were killed.

He's responding to this editorial.

I want to focus on the "we couldn't stop" line of reasoning. The Soviets and Chinese supported the Communists of that region. Should we give up simply because the other side won't?

By 1973, things, as far as I've read, were working according to Nixon's plan. We established a peace agreement. But the withdraw of support by Congress gave North Vietnam the green light to keep going.

I've also read a quote from a North Vietnamese general relating how anti-war groups greatly helped them.

The truth of the matter is that standing behind our allies in South Vietnam against a long-term threat from Communist aggression was an option. We are helping South Korea to this day. The will to do so was not present. And it had consequences in lost lives.

Labels: vietnam

Korean Backlash Against Korean-Christians

If the world hates you, remember it hated Him first.

If the Taliban kills another one of its hostages there will be great sadness here, but also more anger against Christians. A posting on Naver earlier this week gives a taste of the degree of resentment some Koreans feel: "The missionaries are getting what they deserve," wrote a woman who described herself as a secular Buddhist. "Maybe now some of them will stop trying to ram Jesus down our throats."

It Appears Dems Freaking Out About Surge Success

Go here and here.

Labels: iraq

Interesting Take on Iraq

Everyone is missing the most important point about what seems to be happening in Iraq!

There is only one major question that dominates everything else in Iraq -- what are the customers buying? When it comes to those selling al Qaeda terror bombings of civilians, the customers are deciding in increasing numbers that they don't like it.

I can understand liberals, given their love of government and its top-down "solutions", focusing on the state of Iraqi democracy. I don't understand libertarians and those who focus on the market missing this.

What is important is that ordinary muslims, not just in Iraq, are looking at the terror bombings killing ordinary Iraqis and deciding that this is not what their religion is all about. More and more of them are deciding that they don't want it anymore. So support for the terrorists and their cause is declining among muslims in Iraq and around the world.

Hey people! This is good. THIS is the big issue. The whole point of democracy in Iraq is to show ordinary muslims how life can be better when you don't obsess about blowing up infidels. If we are making progress on that main goal anyway, without as much progress in the originally chosen method, let's focus on that important point.

Sure, a stable democracy is better than not having one. It would still pay huge dividends. But let's not get diverted from the primary goal which is reducing the danger from Islamic terrorists. If the terrorists continue to lose support from those they seek to influence, we are making progress --real and very significant progress.

Labels: iraq