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View 473 July 2 - 8, 2007

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Highlights this week:

• Battle Hymn
• Trojan Warning
• The Roswell Incident resurfaces
• Global Warming and National Review: discussion with the NR Author
• Beverly Sills, RIP
• The "pardon"
• NASA Administrator and Global Warming
•  

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TOP

In preparation for the 4th of July you might want to look at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
IHVZK7nFYRQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2
Fbestofyt.com%2Fvideo%2Fnational-cathedral
-battle-hymn-of-the-republic

I am astonished that this seems to be the best available recording of the services following September 11.

It has been speculated that the American media in the current war send messages similar to those broadcast by the Japanese government during WW II.

On the other hand, we certainly do our best to act as if 911 never happened. A Google search for 911 Video turns up numerous videos proving that it was all a hoax and a government conspiracy; but I found very little footage of the outrage even though it was covered by every TV station for a hundred miles around. People jumped off the buildings; but you won't see much of that now. The American people are to be protected from all this.

Because we certainly do not act like we are in a war. There is no rationing, no sharing of hardships. We are not told to use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. We are more concerned with being "green" than with sacrifices to win the war. As a result we are not winning. We have the perfect war, of the kind Frederick the Great wanted, in which the burghers in the towns and the peasants in the fields neither know nor care that the state is at war. War profits are not taxed. There are no price controls. There is, in a word, nothing to remind people that there's a war on. And certainly there are no white feathers.

I suppose it is all for the best. If we were to show what happened, with the burning buildings, and dancing in the streets all over the Middle East as Americans in New York and Alexandria Virginia burned and died, we might decide on warre; we might fight as the Republic has fought in the past. Fight for unconditional surrender. That is how republics make war.

We sang the Battle Hymn once. But we have forgotten.

========

"If we had a 2 million-man army, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2007/06/30/AR2007063001075_pf.html

-- Roland Dobbins

=================

    WARNING: do not open electronic greeting cards unless you know what you are getting. See mail.

==========

For my views on THE ROSWELL INCIDENT, see MAIL. I have written a fairly long and somewhat passionate piece...

=======

Global Warming and National Review.

The author of the NR article I cited a couple of weeks ago replies, provoking a very long reply from me. His reply is here. The exchange is worth your time.

========

I am converting many of the documents and books in the subscriber section to Microsoft Reader, which seems to be a pretty good format for reading stuff on line. I have done several of them already and there will be more to come. This might be a good time to subscribe...

Monday   TOP    Current Mail

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  Beverly Sills, RIP

  Opera legend Beverly Sills has died at 78 Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera diva who was a global icon of can-do American culture with her dazzling voice, bubbly personality and management moxie in the arts world, died Monday of cancer, said her manager, Edgar Vincent.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19572218/from/ET/

Perhaps she has an assignment as choir master.

Fred Saberhagen, RIP

Science fiction writer. Good night, old friend.

=================

Bush has commuted the sentence. This is in my judgment a grievous error. He will get all the hatred he would have got for a pardon, while not in fact making Libby whole. He has left his faithful servant humiliated and financially ruined. What Bush should have done is issue a pardon on the grounds that since there was no original crime, and the government has known who actually leaked Valerie Plaime's employment status since well before Libby was questioned at all, the prosecution served no useful purpose, and Libby's inability to recall when he said what to whom is perhaps unfortunate but hardly a felony. Enough is enough.

Instead he has infuriated the Democrats and given them all the ammunition they would have had from a pardon. I do not know who advises Bush, but that advisor needs an exciting new career, perhaps in dish washing or managing a MacDonald's.

The entire incident reflects no good on anyone. There was no original crime; there was no need for special prosecutors (an institution of absolute and unaccountable power: once that beast begins to pursue you with all the resources of the government, you are doomed); there was no deliberate crime of any great magnitude -- who among us remembers the details of twenty conversations, or when someone told us what?

Bush had a chance to make things right and make a statement about the entire mess.

Tuesday   TOP  Current Mail

This week:

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Happy Birthday America

Declaration of Independence and Mencken's interpretation are over in mail. I am working on a photo essay on the local Studio City parade.

It was not a good day for Al Gore III who was arrested on DUI and possession of marijuana at 2 AM in Orange County. His environmentally friendly hybrid car was doing over 100 miles per hour. Paris Hilton has issued a Fourth of July greeting admonishing people not to drink and drive. Rocky Delgadillo insisted that Paris Hilton serve her full term in jail, citing rule of law. There is no message from Rocky about Al Gore III, but we're standing by.

Dracula's castle is for sale, but only to those who will treat it with respect.

The Mayor of LA says he wants to keep his private affairs private but he'll keep his word to Los Angeles. His mistress was formerly associated with another Latino politician, but has upgraded. No word on whether Mayor Tony Villaraigosa with change his name back now that his wife Raigosa is divorcing him. We suspect that Tony Villar and Rocky Delgadillo may now have to move aside, but that's all right. There's no shortage of Latino politicians to take their place. Roberta says that 20,000 came across the border this morning.

=================

The Studio City Parade began at 10:00 AM

 The Parade assembles. Dress code optional. We decided that the combination of kids, food, and other dogs was enough to make us leave Sable at home. Everyone asked about her.

Neighbors everywhere. That's Ed Begley Jr with the motorized bicycle. We have journalists, screen writers, actors, and a lot of stay at home moms. Plus the usual assortment of real estate agents.

More later.

(Actually, I have decided to combine the column and the parade report; the column will also be a report on problems with Windows VISTA and Word 2003 and doing photos.

Wednesday  TOP  Current Mail

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Cleaning up. The column is sort of done, but Brian has problems formatting it as you will see. I'm trying to clean things up here. And there's fiction to do. It's a full life if you don't weaken...

Thursday   TOP  Current Mail

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IPhone Cracked

Oh dear.

http://rixstep.com/2/1/20070703,00.shtml 

-jer

Oh dear indeed!

============

See mail for more about Global Warming, and about Education.

Friday   TOP  Current Mail

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NASA Administrator: Global Warming Is Not A ‘Problem’

 This morning on NPR, NASA administrator Michael Griffin was asked, “Are you concerned about global warming?” His answer: “I’m aware that global warming exists” but “[w]hether that is a longterm concern or not, I can’t say.” Griffin said he is “not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/31/griffin-nasa-global-warming/

While we're at it, recall that the Vikings were in Greenland for centuries. Their burial ground is known. All of it is under permafrost now, as are the dairy farms where the Vikings lived. Clearly neither was under permafrost when in use. You can't graze cattle on permafrost, and given the tools of the Vikings even so stark a people as that wouldn't be digging graves in permafrost.

Of course

James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, called Griffin’s dismissal of global warming “an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement.” “It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change,” he added.

Well, that's one possible interpretation. I can think of another.

============

Holey Moley! The democrats are complaining that the borders are too open! Ye flipping gods.

Saturday   TOP  Current Mail

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I miss Art Bell. He was reasonably sane. He retired, and tonight we have a man who believes that the President is guilty of high treason, you can run your cars on hydrogen with a slight adjustment of the carburetor, and after all hydrogen is one of the most plentiful substances on Earth, and what is water? Why, it's two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.  But the big oil companies that run the country don't want you to know any of this. I don't know whether the show's science advisor, Richard C. Hoagland, agrees with all this. In any event we no longer need the second law of thermodynamics.

So 911 was a government conspiracy, and no airplane hit the Pentagon, and all those people who supposedly died in the crash of that airplane must have been spirited away by the FBI and one supposes they were murdered by their families.

What hit the pentagon is apparently a small remote controlled airplane.

I miss Art Bell.

=====================

There is an interesting article on how utter nonsense became the consensus view of intellectuals and remains so to this day. See mail.

 Sunday   TOP        Current View  

 Current Mail

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