Soccer Dad: Watchers of weasels 10/04/06

October 4, 2006

Watchers of weasels 10/04/06

Council nominations are in, voting is taking place. Here are the entries for the other members of the watcher's council.

AbbaGav confronts his own mortality as he attends crossing guard school

The main thing I learned about being a crossing-guard is that it is seriously dangerous, and the odds are quite good that I could be killed by a derelict driver or angry and impatient parent whose kid is going to be late unless I stop traffic NOW. Looking on the bright side, though, I learned that under such sad circumstances, I would in fact be fully insured, provided I was killed wearing the proper, police-issued vest.

In "The Media we Deserve" fourth estater Done with Mirrors observes the similarities between President Bush's critics - be they political or journalists - and Ayman al-Zawahiri and what that suggests.

All you'd get is Bush's remark and the political response from Democrats. Nobody even had the guts to ask, "well, is their rhetoric essentially the same as the enemy's propaganda?" The leading Democrats certainly aren't going to bring that up on their own. The similarity is rather embarrassing to them, I'd think.

The Education Wonks lament that a fine teacher of the fine arts has been dismissed

So... after 28 years of successful teaching service, this award-winning educator is losing her job because one parent (who had signed a "parental permission slip") is unhappy with the fact that his or her child saw nude art on a field trip to an ART museum.

Gates of Vienna considers "'Peace' and War on an Autumn afternoon alternatively spending time with folks anticipating "Industrial collapse" and then with a group commemorating Military History and observes

The chasm between those who think war can always be avoided and those who know otherwise is vast indeed. In this small town, only four blocks separated them. In the ongoing struggle in the real world, it might as well have been four light years.

Invoking the words of Abraham who asks God to look for the good people of Sodom The Glittering Eye in "For the Sake of the Fifty" argues that we mustn't lump all Muslims together he sees a dichotomy, credited to Ernest Gellner, between the rural and urban strains of Islam.

I have no doubt that Islam is compatible with democracy any more than I do that Christianity, particularly the tradition to which I belong with its implicit (and, frequently, explicit) endorsement of a social hierarchy, is.

But I don�t think that tribalism is compatible with democracy and (again in my uninformed opinion) there are far too many Muslims who conflate Islam with the tribalism that is older than Mohammed.

Joshua Pundit compares the accomodations of terror suspects vs. US military personnel who are incarcerated in The Horrors of Club Gitmo and Camp Pendleton

The food served to the residents of Club Gitmo is better in many cases than the food being served to our troops in the Armed Services. Believe it or not, Congressional decree prevents the military from serving MRE�s (Meals Ready to Eat � vacuum packed sealed food bags served to U.S. troops) to detainees because it would be considered "abuse." I'm sure our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan would be proud and happy to know that the people that were shooting at them are now being fed better than they are...

The ironies, alas, do not end there.

Rhymes with Right considers that politics surrounding the death of a Houston police officer at the hands of an illegal immigrant and wonders

If someone can�t talk about the flaws of a city policy that create a public safety issue when someone has died because of that policy, then when exactly can you talk about it? There is no more appropriate time than now! And I'd suggest that faux Republicans Pam Holmes and M. J. Khan might also want to get with the GOP platform or get out of office.

Right Wing Nuthouse takes Jonah Goldberg to task on the subject of torture and writes

This is why strictures against torture must remain in place � even strictures against waterboarding and other techniques that only cause a prisoner psychic discomfort or physical inconvenience. Without the �taboo� of violating the Geneva Convention, there is no hard surface beneath our feet where we can anchor ourselves against the ravages of our own rationalizations and self justifications. Ends and means can blur together into unresolvable amorphous shapes making it hard to differentiate between what is necessary and what is merely convenient or easy. In this respect, Goldberg�s arguments fail the tests of specificity and consistency.

Shrinkwrapped grapples with the question of what motivates the evil we saw in Pennsylvania this week and has No Words

Often we see such sudden changes in Depressed patients who decide to finally take action to relieve their psychic agony; once the decision is made to kill themselves, they feel better. They know they will no longer suffer. That still begs the questions: What does it take for a man to decide to take others with him? What kind of thinking is involved in a decision to kill innocent girls?

Neither do I.

Socratic Rhythm Method considers what libertarians and conservatives have in common. It may not always be much but there's something there

Neither group is a fan of planned innovation � libertarians don�t like the �planned� part, by which I mean imposed by force of law, and conservatives don�t like the �innovation� part. This is a Venn diagram with a very small shared area, but it�s important. If a public policy think tank lobbies Congress to pass a law requiring that a new program be implemented, libertarians will reflexively line up against the �think tank� and �Congress� parts in favor of a market solution (if there is indeed something to be solved; never a given), and consertatives will reflexively line up against the �new program� part.

The Sundries Shack wonders Whatever happened to Ruthlessness (and this isn't really all that different from a last week's entry about commitment)

Which brings me to another topic: ruthlessness. I had a conversation today with one of my professors and the subject of the war came up. One of the points he made was that, from the very outset of our actual fighting this war, the President has never made it clear that we need to bear down and actually fight. Sure, he�s told us that we�re going to be involved in fighting terrorists for a while and that we should expect that maybe this fight will last a generation, but he�s never really imparted on us what that means. He�s never impressed on us the need for a sacrifice of any sort or what sort of sacrifices we should be making.

Apparently, though, a lack of commitment or ruthlessness in fighting an enemy is not new as I came accross a fascinating bit of history yesterday

However, there was a catch to Pershing�s mission orders from Wilson that would be decisive in the end. Pershing was to pursue and punish Villa, but not to upset the Carranza government by firing on any of his troops. The futility of Wilson�s orders was plain even before the expedition began, when the local Carranzista commander at nearby Palomas threatened to attack the Americans. Pershing was only able to stave off an incident by hiring the man as a guide for his troops. Carranza would take advantage of Wilson�s restrictions to make life miserable for the Punitive Expedition throughout their mission.

And what can I say about my entry, Democratic Israel Jujistu? Has it been rendered moot already?

Please check out the many wonderful non-council nominations this week too.

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