Blow Job v. Snow Job
My boss today: "I'd rather have somebody getting a blow job in the Oval Office instead of the snow job that's going on in there right now."

Very interesting discussion... she says, if Shrub gets reelected in November, he and his administration will even more flagrantly stomp on the American system ... look at what's going on now: he has to have Dick Cheney with him in the room to talk about 9/11 issues? his "talking head" representatives sound like the worst kind of late-night used car sales advertisements, trying to sell us the latest lemon on the lot? we're putting one of Saddam's generals back in charge of a military/police force? Shrub's TV mogul friend refusing to run the Nightline requiem for the US military's Iraqi war casualties? and how much more that we don't know about because of "executive privilege" claims?

- posted by Chris @ 4:59 PM

 
It's such a simple message ...
Sometimes, when I get on one of my feminist rants (solitary, except for a puzzled-faced cat), I stop and wonder, "Is it really that bad out there?" Then I find something like this:

The enemy is not America - OpinionPamelaBone - www.theage.com.au: "Is not fear of women the basis for the punishing, the covering up, the locking away, the banning of them from public life, that reached its most extreme under the Taliban but which is still common throughout the Middle East? "

... and I realize, YES. It is. And I have to talk about it. I have to remind myself, and the men in my life, that women are not lesser or fragile beings, that we are their balance, as they are ours. And the species needs balance, desperately, so much so that every decision men make about how they treat women, even in this mostly liberated Western country, makes a difference.

And the message? Beyond the "do unto others" that should be the foundation of our decisions.... a civilization with a culture dominated by men is measured, and judged, by how it treats its women. (Yes, my friends, if the culture were dominated by women, and the government run by them, it would be judged by how it treated men.)

UPDATE: This is also worth looking at ... what does happen when your population, not just your culture, is out of balance?
- posted by Chris @ 2:13 PM

 
Times they are a'changin'
Head spinning ... a thought maze ... information overload ...
How do you even begin to sort out the craziness?
1. Iraq exit strategy. Ranges from "get the hell out now" to "stay as long as it takes" .... What did we hope to accomplish? Get rid of Saddam? Done. Establish Western democracy? Not gonna happen. 60 years after the end of WWII, we're still in Germany. Not like we were at the beginning, but still there. Ditto Japan. Our stabilizing, security and democratizing goals in both places morphed into complex relationships that are not always comfortable for either either side. We shared enough cultural and historical background with Germany to make it work, mostly. Japan has always had an "accommodating" culture (they take what they like and make it work for them), and we skirt the edges of their tolerance ... because better us than China? But what can we do with Iraq? Stick it out, establish a "temporary" military presence that is really permanent, and hope for the best, surrounded by countries and cultures that don't want the American way of life in their faces? In Germany and Japan, we were really looking only in one direction at an enemy for the first 40 years or so. In SW Asia, we'll be looking over our shoulders, scanning the horizon in all directions, and hoping that somebody is covering our ass.
2. Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We like Israel because we can understand them a little better? Yes, among other reasons. We are freaked out by people who will blow themselves up? Definitely, and we don't want them blowing us up. Give them each a piece of the ground they want? It's mostly barren desert saturated with religiosity. How do you divide the good stuff so they stop fighting each other for it? You don't. You expect them to share. Right, like that happens ... human hardwiring is damn hard to circumvent.
3. Global economic shift. What happens when China really enters the late 20th century? Lots of production, lots of pollution, lots of people who really want better lives. Imagine early 20th century United States on steroids.
...
and there's so much more! My brain is full, all I have is questions.
- posted by Chris @ 10:44 AM

 
More Liberal Arts Education
Condi Rice laments that we had trouble "connecting the dots" before 9/11:

RICE: There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. In hindsight, if anything might have helped stop 9/11, it would have been better information about threats inside the United States -- something made very difficult by structural and legal impediments that prevented the collection and sharing of information by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. CNN.com - Clarke vs. Rice: Excerpts from testimony - Apr 8, 2004

I suggest more liberal arts education, too. People who learn to think across disciplines, instead of becoming a specialist in just one at age 21 or 22, are more likely to see the dots, and come up with creative connections.

Could we have prevented 9/11? Nope. The date might have changed, and the targets and methods been different, but 9/11 wasn't about the technology used or the method of destruction. It was about hitting the American people on their home turf. It was about making a point. And it did. It showed the inefficiencies of our intelligence network. It highlighted the trouble democracies have in dealing with zealots. It gave us a lot of information, and the point of these hearings about that horrible day shouldn't be finger-pointing; it should be figuring out how to best use what we're still learning.

Does it matter that Rice and Clarke have different perspectives? Yes. Should we be searching for a scapegoat? No. Let's just work on seeing the bigger picture ... not so that we can be overwhelmed by all the information, but so that we can bring a variety of perspectives into focus on the point: we're at war with narrow-minded thought and closed-minded faith. On multiple fronts. We need to figure out how to live and lead in a world that wants the benefits of American progress while it fights the influence and export of our excess.

UPDATE: Wrote above then found this
- posted by Chris @ 10:25 AM