Heroes Aren't Hard To Find: Part 1

"Everyone, we have a new member tonight. Please give a big FA welcome to... WordGirl."

"Hello, WordGirl."

"Congratulations, WordGirl! This is your first FA meeting. We are so pleased to have you with us. Remember, you are under no obligation to share. But when you're here, you're always in a safe place, okay? Is there something you would you like to share with us?
WordGirl?"

"Hi. Um... M-my name is WordGirl... and uh..."

"Hello, WordGirl."

Giggle.
"I... um, I'm a recovering Fundamentalist."

If there were an organization called Fundamentalists Anonymous, I'd be the first (albeit nervous) person through the door.
And I've uncovered a dirty little secret,too.
I would find myself in vast company.
Wonderful, caring, disillusioned and wounded people seeking guidance and love would be sitting right next to me and we would all have horror stories to tell.

Does that mean I have I given up on "church"? No, not at all. I have simply taken myself out of the mold and begun to examine who I really am. I had to. Or I was going to die.

For over five years I was the member of a strict Fundamentalist church. And as such, I believed there was an easy answer for everything. There was black and white. No gray. No blue. No yellow.

Self-righteous legalism had been stamped upon my forehead and I was taught that not only could I not trust myself, I couldn't trust anyone on the "outside" either. All those outside our "church" were suspect -- be they Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian or Catholic. They were all in error. We were supposed to pray for them. We were supposed to pity them. But we were never to take their views seriously.

We raised our hands, spoke in tongues, anointed the sick, fasted on prayer days, shouted, sang and prophesied. And I wanted so much to be a meaningful member of "God's elect" that I never considered the cost. You see, we were the children of God, the Bride of Christ, the sheep of the Good Shepherd -- and as such, we should not sin.

Did I lose you?

I hear you saying: "Wait, wait, wait. Hold on a sec, there, WordChickie! Isn't that a foregone conclusion? Of course we shouldn't sin! We want to please our Father, right?"

Of course. And my former church would certainly agree. But there was whispered an addendum. Their version read: We shouldn't sin out of Love. And if we truly Love, we shouldn't be capable of sin.

Ah, there's the rub.

I cannot count how many times I heard "if : then" come from that pulpit. "If you're really a Christian, then you won't..."
Or:
"If you're truly saved, then you would never ..."

Which lead to their ultimate "if : then":
If we sin, then we're not really saved.

And in my self-righteous, legalistic state, that didn't mean as much. Until it was turned on me. Because one Sunday I heard my Pastor say just such a thing.

Now I don't know about you, but I've committed sins in the thousands since I became a Christian. Some on purpose. And true, while I didn't rob a bank or anything, I did transgress.

Where did that leave me? What did that mean? I didn't know, but I cried the whole way home, wondering why I'd ever given my heart at all.

I've been back to that church only once.

Still, while it was hard to leave, it was harder to find another "church" that filled what I'd been accustomed to. Because what I'd been accustomed to was so extreme , I was terrified of going anywhere else for fear of being "out of the will of God."

A trip to New England helped to put that in perspective. Surrounded by the Faithful attending Catholic churches, I was forced to ask myself:
Which is closer to the heart of God: Raising your hands and shouting or kneeling in silent prayer?

Better (and untainted) study of my Bible has given me even more food for thought. We can't earn Approval. Approval eternal has already been offered to us by Grace. But we will never be free of sin in our bodies. Even Paul (Paul!) wrestled with this:

Romans 7:14-25
14 ... I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.
18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do this I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law;
23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law
of sin.

Our slate is wiped clean. Not once for a one-time do-over, but for all time. For eternity. There's nothing that can break that.

Romans 8:33-39:
33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.
34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died - more than that, who was raised to life - is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
36 As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But some Fundamentalists would have you think that there is something you can do to make God forget you and turn away. Usually, their solution involves more church attendance (even though you're already coming 3 or 4 times a week) and giving more money than just your tithe. Leadership is held up as totally "righteous" while the laity is always merely "striving." They should pay closer attention to Paul.

Romans 3:10-18 & 21-24
10 As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."
13 "Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips."
14 "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know."
18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes."
...
21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference,
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

In the next few posts, I want to expand this issue and discuss one of the most overquoted passages of Scripture. It's the synopsis of the "heroes of the faith" in Hebrews 11.
At first glance, these personalities seem daunting, simply because we've been trained to think of them as somehow "holier" than other Believers.

What I hope to shed light on is how we are no different than they, nor they than us. And in the process, we can begin to remove the Veils between ourselves and those who would seek to subjugate us.

Further study for those interested:
Philip Yancey, "Soul Survivor"
&
Johnson & Vanvonderen, "The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse."

WWJB -- What Would Jesus Blog?

Following blog trends? Pick up Hugh Hewitt's God Blog Con I (being facilitated by SmartChristianBlog ) for some interesting speculation. Seems as if a whole crop of Evangelical Christian blogs have taken root and gained critical readership.

Readership enough to have the pesky MSM shaking in their shoes? Well, with the number of EC's who turned out for the last election, as well as the boo-yow that unaffiliated bloggers put down on Rathergate...

Simply scroll down the left side of Hewitt's main page under the heading "God Squad" and link to a few. Refreshingly, these blogs aren't frothing (a la street preacher) about the end of the world or telling anyone they're destined for the fires of hey-yell. This is smart, well-composed, thoughtful blogging... with a mission statement.

Blog themes range from apologetics, Pastored sites, sites for teens, politics, missionary work, and on and on. Evangelical Underground is even hosting an awards event for the best EC blogs. And E-Involved is exploring the exact title of this post -- no, seriously.

I for one hope Hewitt's EC blog hypothesis is correct.
Two reasons:

A) It shatters the notion that EC's are a bunch of naive simpletons who have no concept of the world beyond the stained-glass windows. And it forces non-EC's (and the MSM who spies on emerging demographics) to take EC's out of the box and look at them a little harder. It also forces EC's to look at each other. Something that is sadly, done far too scarcely.

B) It gives me a fresh perspective when my faith is falling down. (For more on this point, read my "Heroes" post.)
And if nothing else, it gives me someone else to argue with. Which is almost always worth it.

MoltenThought Film Festival: "A Shot in the Dark"

Wordgirl and I are deep in the throes of the first-ever MoltenThought Film Festival.

Unlike the hoity-toity Sundance Film Festival, we're watching strictly good movies.

The theme of the first festival is "The Ten Best Movies Ever Made" with a strong tendency toward underappreciated gems.

We arrived at our list by separately picking our ten favorites, then applying a weighted ranking to each list based on how much we wanted to see the movie again. We drew a line at the top ten weighted scores and incorporated these films in our final list. We're watching them in reverse order.

The first of these films is Blake Edwards' classic farce, "A Shot in the Dark" (1964). It is the first sequel to "The Pink Panther" and features the inimitable Peter Sellers reprising the role of bumbling French policeman Inspector Jacques Clouseau.

Whereas the first film was more of an ensemble cast, with strong performances and plenty of screen time from Robert Wagner and David Niven, "A Shot in the Dark" is a Sellers vehicle, pure and simple, although at a few points Herbert Lom as the deteriorating Inspector Dreyfus and Burt Kwouk as Clouseau's sidekick Kato steal their scenes and quite nearly the movie.

The whodunnit is of minor importance as the investigation into a murder at a VIP's mansion is merely the trigger of a cascading series of outrageous scenes showcasing Clouseau's bumbling good fortune. Rowan Atkinson clearly cribbed much of "Mr. Bean" from this movie, which revels in placing the silly but dignified Clouseau in awkward situations. My favorite of these is Clouseau's tracking a lead to a nudist colony, and having to "go native" to continue his investigation.

The "Pink Panther" movies open a window onto the 60s as few other films managed to accomplish. The shifting cultural mores, the colorful locales, the tension between the old cool and the new cool are evident in every scene. Indeed, Sellers' over-the-top slapstick (leavened by his hilarious attempts to rein it back in) is itself revolutionary in that the laughs are steeped in irony---we're mocking the silly Frenchman who insists on taking himself deadly seriously.

Taken as a whole, I prefer this movie to the first film, which dragged in spots as it lavished screen time on scenery and hewed a little to closely to James Bond-style conventions. The laughs are bigger, and the payoff larger, than in the original.

The only downside is Elke Sommer's performance, which I thought was awful, if not inappropriate for a woman who is simply popular for her beauty. Fortunately, her screen time and lines are limited.

All in all, this was a great, lighthearted romp with which to kick off the proceedings.

Recommended.

We Read Lefty Propaganda So You Don't Have To

Today's entry---the self-appointed former doyenne of the White House press corps, that diva of the Democrats, the rudest woman in Washington, Helen Thomas:

The question about America's new secretary of state is: Will Condoleezza Rice remain one of the primo hawks in this administration, or will she become the top U.S. diplomat that her new role demands?

Hold on, I'm confused already. I thought the official DNC talking points hold that the problem with Rice is that she's got a hole in her back so Dubya can make her lips move on cue, as opposed to say, Saint Colin of Washington, who speaks truth behind the backs of power except when the cameras are on.

Rice's hardline past as national security adviser during President George W. Bush's first term speaks for itself. She was one of the most consistent voices in favor of pre-emptive war against Iraq, and she used her position to promote an American attack with scary warnings that Saddam Hussein had a "smoking gun" that would turn into a "mushroom cloud."

Well, it doesn't really speak for itself if you have to explain it to us, Helen. Otherwise you could save word count for channeling the moonbats (TM Wizbang!). And didn't Saint Colin of Washington argue that Saddam had WMD? Did Saddam not have a nuclear program, as a defecting scientist described in detail? Was Hans Blix sent in merely to pad his expense account, or to make sure Kofi's oil-for-food money got wired to Kojo?

She was a go-it-alone unilateralist and demonstrated her disdain for many of the collective security treaties that the United States made in the post-World War II era.

Really? What collective security treaties did she disdain? As I recall the way collective security treaties are supposed to work, when your cosignee is threatened by acts of war, you either rush to their support (say, as Britain and France did when the Nazis and Bolsheviks invaded at the outbreak of WWII) or you break the treaty. For 10 years following the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein broke the terms of the ceasefire almost daily, particularly by firing SAMs at Coalition aircraft enforcing the No-Fly Zone. Seems our allies had an obligation to us, not the other way around. Put simply, so even Helen might understand it, collective security agreements are enforced when we are attacked, not when we (or another ally) attacks another nation. Thus, our NATO allies such as Spain had an obligation to honor the NATO alliance following 9/11, and when Hussein failed to meet the 1991 ceasefire terms. They cut and ran, good little leftists that they are.

Also, Helen, you're a professional writer. Words mean things. "Unilateral" is defined as "Obligating only one of two or more parties, nations, or persons, as a contract or an agreement". Thus when your buddy Jimmy Carter caught the vapors and advocated unilateral disarmament, he didn't really expect Brezhnev to disarm at all. By definition, military activity which involves more than one nation must be either bilateral or multilateral. In the case of the Iraq War, more than 30 nations fight with us. That's why we refer to our forces as "The Coalition" and not "The Americans". You can look it up.

Even were that not the case, you seem to misunderstand what the role of the Secretary of State is. The Secretary of State's job is not to present the interests of the world to Americans. It is to present America's interests to the world, and to help ensure our interests are preserved. As Disraeli told the Queen of England, "England has no permanent allies nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests." I guess he was a unilateralist.

But don't be too embarassed by your ignorance of the proper role of a nation's top diplomat---Colin Powell couldn't figure it out either.

In the lead-up to the Iraq war almost two years ago, there was hardly a Sunday talk show that she didn't use to promote the imminent U.S. invasion. Her basic spiel came down to her contention that Iraq posed a threat to the United States, even though we had a chokehold on Saddam with tight economic sanctions and bombings in the two no-fly zones. We have yet to hear any apologies from Rice for her mistaken prediction about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Nor will we. It's not in the nature of this administration to admit a mistake.

Promoting U.S. foreign policy is exactly what we want the Secretary of State to do---weren't you listening?

Those "tight economic sanctions" enabled Saddam Hussein to replenish his military stores while making gobs and gobs of cash and buying the willing compliance of the UN bureaucrats who were supposed to be enforcing the policy, Helen---somehow they don't seem very tight.

As for WMD, why you and the rest of the MSM seem to be unable to comprehend the definition of WMD is beyond me. Perhaps you're expecting sinister humming boxes with WMD stencilled on the outside. That simply isn't so. WMD is everything from high explosives (hmmm, seems like a lot of those are being employed in Iraq these days), chemical weapons (why is it that the Iraqi soldiers had protective equipment in the first place? We haven't gassed anybody since WWI, your buddy Peter Arnett's bogus claims not withstanding), biological weapons (we did find portable labs, and there were accounts of villagers being asked to secrete stuff which looked quite a bit like it), and nuclear weapons (Saddam's own bombmaker detailed his efforts here, and the Israelis, of course, proved the point by taking down Osirak some years ago).

Also, Helen, why do you think all those trucks headed into Syria during the delay imposed by our "allies" in the run-up to the invasion? Was there a fire sale on torture implements or something?

As for admitting a mistake, Dubya might just be following the advice of the Clinton Administration. Has Clinton yet apologized for turning down Sudan's offer to hand us Osama bin Laden, or for Jamie Gorelick's infamous memorandum which turned the War on Terror into "Law and Order"? Why don't you ask him?

Earlier, Rice failed to heed warnings of a hijacking and plane attack against the United States just weeks before the 9/11 terror disaster. Gen. Henry H. Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State, said she put terrorism "on the back burner."

Helen, Helen, Helen.

Anyone who's read that PDB knows you're completely mischaracterizing it. It is not a smoking gun. It gives nebulous warnings that are written in Washington cover-your-hinder bureaucratese.

And your buddy Richard Clarke made clear that the "back burner" was already on---that's where Bill Clinton put terrorism years before.

Bush told a news conference this week that she would make a "fine, fine" secretary of state. Rice is described as the president's "closest confidante" on foreign affairs and there is no doubt that she speaks for the president when she talks about international issues.

Is described as by who? Sid Blumenthal?

Helen, the freakin' Secretary of State job description is to speak for the President when she talks about international issues. Do you even remember Madeleine Albright, the Chicken Hawk?

Rice did not have an easy confirmation and won approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a strict party-line vote after two days of tough questioning by Democrats on the panel.

Democrat intransigence does not speak to the quality of the candidate. Dr. Rice is far more qualified for the job than, say, Colin Powell was. Powell's diplomatic experience rested largely in sticking a shiv in his competitors' backs through typical Washington skullduggery. Why Dubya expected he would turn those skills outward toward America's enemies I don't really know, but Powell will go down in history as the most overrated SecState since, oh, Madeleine Albright.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told her that her loyalty to the Bush administration to sell the war against Iraq had "overwhelmed your respect for truth."

Rice replied that she had "never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. It is not my nature. It is not my character." She accused Boxer of "impugning my credibility or my integrity."

This was a good try at the theory that a good offense is the best defense. No one had attacked her integrity, but her credibility certainly was fair game.

Well, Helen, your disgraceful performance during the impeachment saga of Bill Clinton rather confirmed that your loyalty to the Clintons and the DNC overwhelmed your respect for the truth.

But let's not go there.

Is Dr. Rice a mouthpiece for Bush or a dangerous, unilateralist hawk? Could you please make a coherent argument for either, but not both?

And for God's sake, if someone accuses you, as I have done, of "losing respect for the truth", how is that not a shot at your integrity?

Helen, let me spell it out for you: I am challenging your integrity. You are a pundit who pretended to be an objective reporter for many years. You made no effort to put forth both sides to the political stories you covered. You lost respect for the truth, and for your readers. I question your integrity, madame.

Rice clearly was not used to being grilled, an unaccustomed role she will have to learn because a Cabinet secretary is expected to testify before Congress from time to time and answer tough questions, almost always asked by members of the political party that doesn't occupy the White House.

I'm too bored to even go search for a reference where you lauded the Republicans' tough questioning of any Clintonista. Why search for Santa Claus? I know he doesn't exist.

The Senate confirmed her in an 85-13 vote.

Wow, that wasn't even close to party line, was it? She picked up 2/3 of the Democrats and all of the Republicans. Why'd so many Democrats vote for a dangerous, unilateralist, Bushy mouthpiece anyway?

When she took her oath of office earlier this week, Rice became the nation's 66th secretary of state, and the first black woman and the second woman to serve in that post.

She will make her first foreign trip as secretary of state when she visits Europe and the Middle East next week. One goal is to keep Israel and the Palestinians talking to each other.

Ahh, the dog that didn't bark. The race and gender card. Funny how color and genderblind Helen and the other Lefties become when they want to knock down a Republican.

Here's the other dog that didn't bark. Powell didn't travel all that much. He spent much of his term huddled with Armitage playing petty Washington politics when he could have been strongarming the North Koreans or hunting for bin Laden or something.

A Secretary of State needs to spend most nights sleeping in foreign hotel rooms, not gossiping like a little girl with the members of the Press Club.

And Helen: the goal of U.S. policy on the Middle East is not to keep the Israelis and Palestinians talking to one another. That was Billy Boy's disastrous policy. It is to keep them from killing one another. Deeds, not words.

At her inauguration, Rice said "history is calling us" to spread freedom throughout the world.

Let's hope she understands it can be done peacefully.

Can it be done peacefully? What tyrant has willingly given up despotic power to give his people freedom? Cincinnatus is the only example I've come up with, and that was 2000 years ago.

Liberation invariably involves violence. Tyrants yield power when they are killed or captured, not before. And that requires the steady application of fire and steel.

Dr Rice knows this, which is why she will make an excellent Secretary of State.

[Edited as I confuse Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden. Despots look alike to me.---Teflon]

Your Prayers Are Welcome...

...for those brave Iraqis who will risk their lives to vote this weekend, and for the brave Allies who will risk theirs to protect them.

In a more honorable time, with more honorable men in the press corps, Americans would be treated to wall-to-wall coverage of Iraqi spirit in the face of terror.

Instead, the French Wing of the Columbia Journalism School Alumni Association will spend their precious airtime spreading Ba'athist propaganda and trying their best to consign these brave and noble people to wear the yoke of despotism once more.

They deserve better, as do we.

May God be with them, and their liberators.

As the Worm Turns

From the AP:

SEATTLE - A teenager was sentenced Friday to 1 1/2 years in prison for unleashing a variant of the "Blaster" Internet worm that crippled 48,000 computers in 2003.

Jeffrey Lee Parson, 19, of Hopkins, Minn., will serve his time at a low-security prison and must perform 10 months of community service. He had faced up to 10 years in prison, but the judge took pity on the teen, saying his neglectful parents were to blame for the psychological troubles that led to his actions.

"(The Internet) has created a dark hole, a dungeon if you will, for people who have mental illnesses or people who are lonely," U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said. "I didn't see any parent standing there saying, 'It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality.'"

Defense lawyers said Parson feared leaving the house and his parents provided little support. He pleaded guilty last summer to one count of intentionally causing or attempting to cause damage to a protected computer.

Parson created a Blaster version that launched a distributed denial-of-service attack against a Microsoft Windows update Web site as well as personal computers. Blaster and its variants, also known as the LovSan virus, crippled networks worldwide.

Parson's lawyers said he has made great strides since his arrest. They also credited him with making a Seattle School District video warning teens of the dangers of Internet vandalism.

Parson apologized to the court and to Microsoft, saying, "I know I've made a huge mistake and I hurt a lot of people and I feel terrible." He will still have to pay restitution to Microsoft and to people whose commuters were affected in an amount to be determined at a hearing next month.

Parson was charged in Seattle because Microsoft is based in suburban Redmond.

Can't say he didn't deserve this, but how irony challenged is that judge?

Locking yourself in a room and creating your own reality is what Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer do every day the Supreme Court is in session.

Does Truth in Advertising Apply to the Left?

From the Drudge Report:

Hispanic Caucus Declines To Endorse Gonzales Nomination
Fri Jan 28 2005 09:44:08 ET

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has declined to endorse Alberto Gonzales in his bid to be the first Latino attorney general.

ROLL CALL reportes: White House spokeswoman Erin Healy shrugged off the loss of a potential endorsement, saying, "Judge Gonzales is well qualified and will make an excellent attorney general. Throughout the confirmation process, he has met with 27 Senators, both Democrats and Republicans. He spent an entire day before the Senate Judiciary Committee and provided them with over 450 written responses."

Developing...

I'd like to see a federal antifraud measure requiring any race-based group which only supports candidates of one political party to add that political party's name to their official title.

Then we'd have:

The Congressional Democratic Hispanic Caucus
The Congressional Democratic Black Caucus
The National Association for the Advancement of Democratic Colored People

Saves confusion, no?

Tap a Kidney, Save a Life

From Drudge:

Man peed way out of avalanche

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.

He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out.

But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through.

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: "I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there."

I hate to mention this, but he probably would have gotten the same result pouring the beer on the snow as he did by hosing the snow down.

Had this been Colorado instead of Slovakia, he no doubt would have been cited for drunk driving and public urination.

Could You Spare a Day to See the Gulags?

Another outrage from The People's Republic of California and the AP. A particular howler:

The UC Davis students, who arrived Jan. 2, had to pay $10,000 each for their 10-week program.

They say the elongated period is letting them move beyond tourism and Cuban government propaganda to get a true sense of life on the island. But, they add, the lengthier stay also gives them more time to discern contradictions in U.S. policy toward Cuba and witness harmful effects of the trade embargo on the Cuban people.

"On paper, this place looks good," said Gabe Feinberg, 25, a political science student. "But seeing that all the money and the tourism has created an upper class and the rest of the people are still pretty much at poverty level - it was a bit disillusioning."

If you're a political science student who believes Cuba looks good, even "on paper", your professors are doing you a grave disservice.

Here's an idea: how about using some of the 10 weeks of Bolshevik beach time to slip your minders and visit the political prisoners in the stinking, festering holes Fidel Castro shoved them in. They'll get a kick out of your Sweet Baby Che t-shirts, I'm sure.

That money and time would have been much better spent interviewing the Cuban refugees in Miami and providing a comprehensive account of their experiences under Castro and their flight from that island hell.

Nah, that would have involved actual learning.

BlogRoll: Brainster's Blog

Word Girl and I have been reading blogs for quite some time now, but one of the joys of blogging ourselves has been discovering blogs we never knew existed.

Brainster's Blog is one we happened on thanks to Blogfather Hugh Hewitt's recent Vox Blogoli. It's smart, funny, and covers a wide array of hot topics. Moreover, if you think you hate Maureen Dowd, you have not lived until you have singed your corneas on the white-hot Dowd-hating creamy nougat-filled goodness that is Brainster's Dowd coverage:

Hey Gang, What Time Is It?

It's Dowdy-Doody time!

Slow Mo is back with another of her spinster schoolgirl columns. It's even more insipid than her usual tripe, with Dowd "proving" that Secretary of State to be Condoleezza Rice doesn't know elementary subjects. Now, you might think that a woman who gripes all the time about how no man wants her because she's too smart might have a little sympathy for a super-intelligent, single woman. Guess again!

"Her geometry is skewed if she thinks she'll now be more powerful than Rummy and Dick Cheney. Doesn't she know that the Pentagon has more sides than her Crawford triangle with George and Laura?"

Two can play at that game. Hey, Maureen if only Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones had agreed to your suggestion of a menage a trois, you wouldn't be a shriveled-up and bitter skank. Well, actually you would still be a shriveled-up skank, but you wouldn't be quite as bitter.

And I thought Luskin was tough on Krugman...

Also, for some unKos-like disclosure, Pat at Brainster had some very nice things to say about our blog. In my defense, I had already vowed to link to this excellent blog upon seeing their Vox Blogoli response.

So with a heave, and a ho, to the BlogRoll it will go!

Blues News: Turn On Your Love Light For Bobby "Blue" Bland

Bobby "Blue" Bland, legendary soul blues vocalist, turned 75 years old today. (Hat tip to Powerline):

I doubt anyone who has heard his silky voice slide from a croon to a wail while his horn section boils over will ever forget him. He brought a horn-driven orchestral approach to the blues that has been imitated but not surpassed.

Bland has had a great number of outstanding songs. For my money, "Turn On Your Love Light" remains the finest, although he's justifiably famous for "Stormy Monday Blues", "Cry Cry Cry", "I Pity the Fool", "Ain't That Lovin' You", and the classic opener he performed for many years with former Beale Street Singers bandmate B.B. King, "Let the Good Times Roll."

allmusic has this biography of the great bluesman. The picture by Michael Ochs below is from that wonderful site.

Reliable Sources: Joe Galloway

I criticize journalists a lot. More than a lot, in fact.

It's only fair to highlight good journalists whenever I get the chance, to demonstrate why it is we should be so disappointed in most of the scribblers who so dishonor their field today.

Joe Galloway is a war correspondent whose name you might recognize. Mel Gibson recently immortalized him with his movie "We Were Soldiers Once..And Young", adapted from the book Galloway and Brigadier General Hal Moore wrote on their experiences in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965, the first major battle of the Vietnam War.

I met Mr. Galloway and General Moore shortly after their book was released. I had the honor of dining with them, and received a signed copy of the book from General Moore.

I will never forget the stories they shared at that dinner, nor of the rare bond between embedded reporter and career soldier I saw displayed that night, a bond that lasted a lifetime.

Joe Galloway is the real deal. He's not cut from the Mike Wallace prima donna mold, pontificating on the duties of the journalist while failing in his duties as an American, as a man. Mr. Galloway earned the respect of General Moore, and I daresay every soldier on the ground that bloody day in Ia Drang. In the process, he produced some damned fine war coverage as well.

He's been one of the few journalists I can call a professional without irony ever since.

I'm not going to link to a single piece, but rather to a gateway to a whole slew of his work. Check it out, and you'll see why I get so angry when one of his colleagues churns out DNC talking points under their byline instead of breathing chromite and blood like Mr. Galloway has done.

You'll notice that he's dubbed "The War Reporter"---check out his Iraq coverage, and you'll agree that he's earned that "The".

[Edited to reflect the correct topic header---Teflon]

Count Every Vote Update

Your intrepid correspondent continues to ferret out voter suppression efforts in the 2004 election cycle.

Why, here's an interesting update on dead people, clones, and felons voting in Washington State, courtesy of Wizbang!

And here's an update on voter fraud in Milwaukee, which looks to be the subject of a criminal probe, from the Powerline folks.

And Gateway Pundit continues to uncover voter fraud in Illinois.

Well, I'll be darned. These are all cases of DEMOCRATIC voter fraud.

And here I thought John Kerry, Jesse Jackson, and Barbara Boxer were all about making sure every vote counted. I guess they were so diligent they thought every valid vote for a Democrat should count twice.

Hmmm, somebody warned us what would happen if the election was close:

Sy Hersh, Muckraker of the MSM

I'm mulling two tests which I believe could be infallible in exposing MSM bias toward the Left.

Ask your favorite crusading journalist the following questions:

1. Who do you think are the moderates in the Senate today?

2. What do you think of Sy Hersh?

I suspect question 2 may well be the better indicator, given how Dan Rather viewed moonbat (trademarked by Wizbang!) Bill Burkett as "infallible."

Max Boot makes the case for Question 2.

Hat tip: The Corner.

[Edited as I gypped Wizbang! a link---Teflon]

Court TV: Guilty!

As seen on NRO, Court TV commits felonious spin with "The Exonerated."

The Left has a lot invested in the notion that honest-to-God innocent people are sitting on Death Row, and some have been executed. It is the holy grail for death penalty opponents.

As this broadcast demonstrates, if they can't find the real deal, they'll just by a leather mug at a Renaissance Fair and stitch "Property of J. Christ" on the bottom.

The Population Dud

Instapundit points us toward a looming catastrophe no one seems to be talking about, but is the root cause of Social Security and other woes:

To put it straightforwardly, and perhaps a little cynically, in the past children used to be regarded as investments that provided their parents with means of subsistence in old age. In Czech the word "vejminek" (a place in a farmhouse reserved for the farmer's old parents) is actually derived from a verb meaning "to stipulate": in the deed of transfer, the old farmer stipulated the conditions on which the farm was to be transferred to his son. Instead of an "intergenerational" policy, there used to be direct dependence of parents on their children. This meant that people had immediate economic motivation to have a sufficiently numerous and well-bred offspring - whereas today's anonymous system makes all workers pay for the pensions of all retirees in an utterly depersonalized manner.

Read the whole thing.

Culture Wars: "Coffee and Cigarettes" Leave a Bad Taste

For anyone who's ever relished a smoke with a brazen cup of joe, this movie seems like a great premise.

Think:
College, Waffle House, 2am, the clinking of plates and silverware, orders shouted over the din, activity, people-watching, the smell of hot grease, robust conversation, the rebellion and idealism of youth.

Or better yet:
Spring Saturday morning, bleary eyes, first cup of Columbian, television, stepping onto the creaky patio of your first apartment, compulsory Marlboro.

Hell! Even:
Coffee shop veranda, newspaper, book, pack of smokes, people walking past would suffice.

All of this apparently escaped the attention of Jim Jarmucsh. His embarrassing effort to capture the love affair connoisseurs have with the caffeine/nicotine speedball comes off as amateurish at best.

What he offers is a series of skits which are supposed to be arty, iconoclastic, gritty and off-beat, but instead smack of first-year film school, stilted acting, disjointed musical score, and painful self-congratulation.

We're supposed to praise his efforts because he's managed to film the entire thing in black and white and grab some interesting cameos. Oh, and we're supposed to be dazzled by the ubiquitous linoleum checkerboard and the odd locales as well.

No. Huh-uh.

From the very first skit we're doomed. The repartee between Roberto Begnigni and Steven Wright is not only not funny, it's not even interesting or quirky.

And the second skit with Joie and Cinque Lee is plodding, silly, and dull. Fans of Steve Buscemi perk up when he pops into frame in a waiter's uniform. Maybe the skit will grow legs when he says the pair remind him of magpies. Might there be some witty smack-down coming on? Wait for it... Wait for it... Nope. Nothing. Buscemi gets away unscathed and launches into some rant about Elvis's evil twin which (shockingly!) goes nowhere.

The rest blurs into a mundane haze, the only bright spot is Cate Blanchett's portrayal of her fictional punk cousin, Shelly. Again, the viewer is hopeful (though certainly less so after roughly an hour of substandard material). But this skit falls flat as well through bad writing and crap editing. The final "punchline" is stale and very unfunny.

By the time we reached Jack White's Tesla coil, I had to turn it off.

No more. No way. No how.

In short:
Bad writing. Bad acting. Winkingly esoteric music. Obviously staged locations. And, if you can imagine this, bad smoking.

I'm a busy person, and I live in a location that has one indie theater. And with the inherent gamble on indie films, it's always good to get a second opinion before investing. I bought this movie on the advice of Roger Ebert. Advice I have decided to shun henceforth.

"Coffee and Cigarettes." Glad I quit.


[Edited to include hyperlink -- WordGirl]

Howard Kurtz: Arrogance

Maggie Gallagher responded to this Howard Kurtz article on her failure to disclose her government contract with a statement today worth reading in its entirety.

What I find most interesting is Kurtz' response to her statement:

In response, Kurtz told E&P: "It's too bad that Maggie Gallagher, in the process of apologizing for her mistake, has seen fit to blame the messenger. My story made quite clear that her work at HHS included writing brochures for the President's marriage initiative, ghostwriting a magazine article for a top official, and briefing other department officials on the issue. That sure sounds like promotion to me, but none of this would be a media controversy had Ms. Gallagher disclosed the contract in her writing trumpeting the Bush marriage plan."

It seems to me that Gallagher and her HHS contact know a whole lot more about what she was hired to do than Kurtz does, and of course, only Gallagher knows what her intentions were in drafting her statement. Nobody likes to be accused of making an error, especially not media bigwigs like Kurtz. But to respond in such an offhand and unprofessional manner makes me question Kurtz' reporting on this in a way I would never have had he not seen fit to claim omniscience in his response.

Or does Howard Kurtz actually think that what "sounds like promotion" to him may in reality not have been promotion of the policy at all, at least in the eyes of the unanointed?

Why We Fight

The Library of Congress has just provided online access to 9/11 records.

The MSM may have an embargo on 9/11 exhibits; the Internet does not. Check it out here.

Do They Realize God Is Mocking Them?

The heartless bureaucrats in Britain, that is, who have no trouble condemning babies to slow death, but wouldn't dare do something so barbaric as give a murderer a lethal injection:

A PREMATURE baby that the High Court ruled should be left to die by hospital doctors has survived against the odds. So remarkable is the little girl’s progress that lawyers for her parents will this week go to court and ask for the ruling to be lifted.
Charlotte Wyatt, who weighed just 1lb when she was born prematurely, was given only months to live after a hospital won the legal right last autumn not to resuscitate her if she stopped breathing.

Doctors secured the ruling, against the wishes of Charlotte’s parents, on the grounds that she was brain-damaged and it was in the baby’s own interests not to be resuscitated since it would prolong her suffering and would be “purposeless”.

Doctors expected that Charlotte, now 15 months old, would succumb to an infection that would prove fatal without emergency intervention. However, she has survived 3½ winter months since the ruling; there is also evidence that her breathing is becoming stronger and she is less dependent on an oxygen supply — an improvement confirmed by hospital sources. The family claims she has some sight and can hear clapping.

Yesterday Carol Glass, a friend of the Wyatts, said: “Doctors said Charlotte would not live to see her first birthday and that was months ago. The hospital then said she was unlikely to make it through the winter months, but we are now a good way through.

“Charlotte should not have this ‘do not resuscitate order’ left hanging over her. She could now live on with the right treatment. Her parents Darren and Debbie want her to be treated and are hoping that one day she will be able to go home with them.”

For those who might be inclined to think, "Can't happen here", I have two words for you: Terry Schiavo.

[Edited for homonyms---Teflon]

Yet Another Difference Between Adult Cinema and Real Life

I somehow suspect that pizza delivery guys would get similar consequences for this sort of thing:

Cherry revealed Monday that he had launched an investigation into charges that the four firefighters - three men and a woman - had engaged in group sex in their Hollywood Park station house.

"This will be the real test," said Councilman Steve Cohn about Cherry and Thomas' handling of the allegations. "Obviously the message is not yet strong enough - we will not tolerate inappropriate behavior."

When Fargo was asked Tuesday if she believed Cherry was capable of turning around the troubled department, she replied: "He'd better."

Hat tip: Drudge

Vox Blogoli---Insurgents in Sportcoats Round Two

Yesterday, Jonathan Rauch of The Atlantic Monthly replied to the blogosphere's dissection of his statements regarding religious conservatives and allowed Hugh Hewitt to post his full article. Thanks first to Mr. Rauch for taking criticism head-on, something more MSM types ought to do.

Mr. Rauch enters the CBS Plea of Haste in his partial mea culpa for analogizing religious conservatives to abortion clinic bombers and Iraqi terrorists ("insurgents", as Reuters would have it). He further self-mitigates with a recourse to the Context Argument (we've taken him out of context, of course).

All well and good.

Here's the paragraph which preceded the snip Hugh provided:

Moreover, although party polarization may disgruntle the center (can't we be for stem-cell research and school vouchers?), it helps domesticate fanatics on the left and the right. Though you would be partly correct to say that the mainstream parties have been taken over by polarized activists, you could also say, just as accurately and a good deal more cheerfully, that polarized activists have been taken over by the mainstream parties. The Republican Party has acquired its distinctively tart right-wing flavor largely because it has absorbed---in fact, to a significant extent has organizationally merged with---the religious right. As Hanna Rosin reports elsewhere in this package, religious conservatives are becoming more uniformly Republican even as their faiths and backgrounds grow more diverse.

The first and second sentences continue Rauch's pose as a moderate, looking askance at both Left and Right Wing "extremists." His last two sentences, however, oddly focus only on the Right. Let's take a closer look at them.

"Distinctively tart" is an interesting way of describing the Republican Party's alleged "right-wing flavor." Distinctive typically refers to something different, almost uniquely so. As we're comparing Republicans to Democrats in this paragraph, does Rauch mean the Republicans are "tart" to an extent the Democrats are not? He's comparing extremists to the middle elsewhere in the article. Does he mean to imply that the Republicans are further out on the tart spectrum (thus disctinctively so) than the Democrats? Tart isn't a good flavor, most of the time---the connotations of the word imply a rather shocking sourness. Given a choice of being described as sweet or tart, I suspect most readers would choose the former, even if they happened to be religious conservatives.

Either way, Rauch ascribes this GOP tartness to the religious conservatives in the party. Why, to make the entire soup "distinctively tart", one presumes these particular ingredients must be very tart indeed! The last sentence seems to buttress this interpretation, as Rauch is contending that being in the Republican soup not only makes the soup more tart, but makes the religious conservatives less so.

That's fine for sour things, as Rauch evidently finds religious conservatives, but let's trade "tart" for "toxic", shall we?

The Republican Party avoided David Duke like the plague in 1988. Would embracing him with open arms not have tarted up the GOP? Surely it would have. Would it have mainstreamed David Duke? Of course---that's what he was looking for. According to Rauch, not doing so weakened "social peace". Which is, of course, hogwash.

The two-party system works not because it embraces extremes but because it embraces the mainstream. Multiparty democracies tend to build unstable coalitions of radicals. If Mr. Rauch wants to see his model in action, he need only pop over to Italy. The U.S. is different, thanks largely to the Electoral College (which the Dems are looking to undermine). Because the President has to gain an electoral majority, he must be a mainstream figure palatable to a wide swath of the country. To do so, he's going to push his party toward mainstream policy---this is why the platform debate occurs at the presidential convention. He is also going to marginalize extremist tendencies within his party, as Bill Clinton famously died with his "Sista Souljah moment" (and failed to do with disastrous consequences when his wife decided to become the Medical Czarina).

It is no surprise that the religious conservatives have clout within the GOP. The President happens to be one. The DLC likewise had clout within the Clinton White House, since he emerged from their ranks. Where Rauch gets it wrong is the notion that religious conservatives are a radicalizing, extremist influence on the President and his party. It just isn't so. Indeed, Bush's compassionate conservatism creed stems directly from the ranks of these religious conservatives, and runs right against the grain of the entitlement-hating GOP rank-and-file. It's not the religious conservatives who are up in arms over Bush's spending at the moment.

Mr. Rauch never quite gets around to telling us what policy positions are being advanced by the religious conservatives which are so radical. Perhaps he takes exception to their opposition to gay marriage, in which case he has "radical" and "moderate" precisely backwards.

In any case, Mr. Rauch continues to misunderstand the role of religious conservatives within the GOP, continues to inflate their level of radicalism, and fails to draw the obvious parallels to the hodgepodge of disgruntled leftists which make up the Democratic Party today.

I'll make it real simple: If the Democrats are more moderate and less extreme than the "distinctively tart" Republicans, how does Mr. Rauch explain their continued and historic electoral losses at the state and national levels?

Update:

JollyBlogger doesn't much care for Rauch's notion of tamed Christians.

Skye Puppy notes Rauch's strange blind spot when it comes to leftist terrorism as well.

Update II:
Brainster nails Rauch for selective outrage.

No Left Turns marvels at Rauch's "Bipolar Disorder", and wonders if moderation isn't being defined through negation.

The Dutch Wake Up

Testimony this week in the brazen murder of a Dutch filmmaker for his critical portrayal of how women are treated in Muslim countries ought to provide a much-needed wakeup call in the War on Terror.

"What's extraordinary is the calmness with which as he did this," said the prosecutor, identified only as F. van Straelen. "Several witnesses described how he coolly knelt next to Van Gogh's body and reloaded his gun."

An autopsy showed Van Gogh's throat had been cut nearly to the spinal cord with a kitchen knife.

A note impaled in Van Gogh's chest threatened prominent politicians and vowed Islamic holy war, or jihad, against nonbelievers.

A bystander who witnessed the crime yelled at Van Gogh's killer "You can't do that!" to which the suspect replied: "Oh, yes I can. ... Now you know what's coming for you."

Bouyeri allegedly then walked away, apparently in search of police, Van Straelen said. He opened fire at the first police car he found, injuring a police officer.

The gunman fired about 30 times in a shooting spree, Van Straelen said.

Western Europe has been thoroughly infiltrated by terror cells among recent Muslim immigrants. Rather than aggressively deal with this problem, Europe does what it has always done---appease the worst offenders and lock out the rest, in this case, by denying moderate Turkey EU membership in addition to limiting the influx of Turkish workers West.

Turkey's response to terrorism is much different, and not surprisingly, more successful.

31 Marines Killed in Iraq Helicopter Crash

If Reuters is going to call foreign terrorists in Iraq "insurgents", why not call U.S. troops "liberators" or, better still, "heroes"? There's a lot more truth in the labels I'm recommending than in those Reuters is employing.

Goodnight and Sleep Well

Larry Miller's remembrance of Johnny Carson is simply wonderful.

No Child Left Behind, to Embarassment of Education Lobby

Another indicator of improved education since President Bush began the push for standards (hat tip: Drudge). The Edu-Bolsheviks, of course, have concerns quite different from trifling matters of teaching children:

To avoid inflating state performance, the College Board counted students once regardless of how many AP subject tests they passed. But that obscures the point that students in wealthy areas often have access to multiple AP courses while other students do not, said Bob Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, which monitors standardized testing.

"Unfortunately, despite the value of AP courses, they end up reinforcing huge gaps between haves and have-nots because of differences in where courses are offered," he said.

For many students, an AP course is often their first exposure to challenging material, said Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, which advocates for minority children. In that sense, she said, the growing participation rates are clearly good news.

But the AP popularity raises questions, too, Haycock said, such as whether the program takes the best teachers and leaves less experienced ones for struggling students. Among students who go on to college, about 40 percent take at least one remedial course.

"It's not the total answer," Haycock said of the AP. "If we think this is the way to improve academics in high schools, we need to think a little harder than that."

Here's an idea---why not put together a special Blue Ribbon committee of the kids who aced the AP tests and ask them how to educate kids? It's got to be a better solution than letting the mental mediocrities of the educational establishment have another crack.

Dirty Bomb Plot a Dirty Lie

The FBI maintains that the Boston dirty bomb plot was a false alarm.

White Male Senate Democrats Oppose First Black Female Candidate for Secretary of State

There's a headline that you won't be reading in the MSM, although you can bet that if Condi Rice were a Democrat, the New York Times would be paying me royalties (hat tip: Drudge):

"Dr. Rice is responsible for some of the most overblown rhetoric that the administration used to scare the American people into believing that there was an imminent threat from Iraq," Byrd said.

Kicking off the Democratic assault, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts charged that Rice, as Bush's national security adviser, provided Congress with "false reasons" for going to war. Had she not, Kennedy said in a speech, "it might have changed the course of history."

Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., accused the Bush administration of lying and said he was voting against Rice's confirmation as a way of trying to stop mistruths. Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., charged she concealed the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites)'s skepticism that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium for a nuclear weapons program from Africa.

Oh, those poor, gullible senators, tricked into supporting a tragic war to liberate 30 million people by that wily Dr. Rice.

Oh, waitaminute, wasn't it Rice's predecessor, the sainted Colin Powell, who gave the key WMD testimony these silly people are so upset about?

Better confirm Condi quickly, then, and get that liar out of there.

[Edited to remove gratuitious Senator Byrd reference---Teflon].

In other news, Barbara Boxer gives Condi pointers on integrity:

The Most Disgraceful President

Man, this clown makes Andrew Jackson look like George Washington:

Carter worried by inaction on democracy, American region's giving record

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Former US president Jimmy Carter charged that members of the Organization of American States were not doing their utmost to reach the regional body's goals on defending democracy.

"I am concerned that the lofty ideals espoused in the Democratic Charter are not all being honored. I am concerned that poverty and inequality continue unabated," the Nobel laureate said in an address to the Washington-based pan-American body.

"I am concerned that we in this room, representing governments and in some cases privileged societies, are not demonstrating the political will to shore up our fragile democracies, protect and defend our human rights system and tackle the problems of desperation and destitution," Carter added.

In many nations across the Americas, he said "we run the very real risk that dissatisfaction with the performance of elected governments will transform into disillusionment with democracy itself."

Carter also lamented that "Americans give just 15 cents per 100 dollars of national income in official development assistance. As a share of our economy we rank dead last among industrialized countries."

Two things:

1. Was there any U.S. President with a worse record regarding the expansion of human freedom than Jimmy Carter? Weak and feckless doesn't work. Ever.

2. Notice the weasel-wording regarding "official development assistance" as opposed to charitable assistance, in which Americans consistently come out in the top ranks. Notice also the "as a share of our economy". I know Carter did everything he could during his disastrous presidency to improve this number by destroying our economy, but does this idiot really think that poor people care what proportion of the giver's income the dollar they're handed is?

This, of course, is after he claimed the Palestinian elections were as pure as the driven snow.

Michael Moore should have refused to sit next to him.