But you, O Lord, are ever living and in you nothing dies, for you exist before the dawn of the ages, before anything that can be called "before"; you are God and Lord of everything that you have created.
St. Augustine of Hippo
354-430
found at J-Walking
I have to admit a certain fondness for Newt Gingrich. No one is better at expounding conservative ideas and their historical background in ways that the average person can understand. I like watching him on talk shows.
On the other hand, Newt's personal life is far from consistent with the ideals he expresses so eloquently. Here is a nice summary from Wikipedia.
It is interesting that Newt was apparently using the oral-sex-isn't-really-sex argument long before Clinton in trouble for the same thing. So however correct he may be about many things, Newt isn't someone I would trust with a lot of power. Men who can't even keep wedding vows often find it easy to break promises to those who elect them.In 1962, Gingrich married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old; she was seven years his senior at 26 years old.[4] They had two daughters together.
Anne Manning - who was also married - had an affair with Gingrich in 1977. Manning stated in a 1995 Vanity Fair article: "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say: 'I never slept with her.'"[5]
Gingrich divorced Jackie Battley in 1980. Battley has charged that Gingrich discussed the terms of their divorce settlement while she was in the hospital after cancer surgery.[6] He refused to pay alimony or child support.[7]
Gingrich married Marianne Ginther in late 1981.[8] Marianne was quoted in a 1995 article in Vanity Fair as saying: "I don't want him to be president and I don't think he should be."[9] They divorced in 1999, the same year Gingrich had another extramarital affair with a then 33-year old member of his Congressional staff, Callista Bisek. He refused to discuss the affair until he admitted it in March, 2007.[10]
In August 2000, Gingrich married Bisek. Gingrich resides in Virginia with Bisek, who appears with him on the back cover of his book "Winning the Future".[11]
We in America like to think that our government is above the petty bribery and corruption that is common in the Third World. In fact, our politicians are as self-serving as any others. It is the checks and balances built into our system that hold the graft down to a minimum. When these safeguards fail - or are ignored - the trouble begins. Neither party is above it.
Last December the Bush Administration fired 8 U.S. Attorneys from various parts of the country. Each U.S. Attorney - there are 93 of them - is the top federal prosecutor in his area. This is a very powerful position because the U.S. Attorney decides what types of criminal activity will be pursued and prosecuted. They are appointed by the president and can be fired by him any time. No one disputes this.
That having been said, a mass change like this is unusual. It becomes even more unusual when we realize that these 8 prosecutors had a couple of things in common. They were either 1) pursuing corruption cases against Republican politicians, and/or 2) not pursuing corruption cases against Democratic politicians.
The (Republican) White House contends that the prosecutors were fired for "performance-related" reasons. Yet most of them had received exemplary evaluations. It is also strangely coincidental that one of them was to be replaced by a close associate of Presidential guru Karl Rove.
Congress is now on the case and the Democrats will no doubt be quick to publicize any more damaging information that turns up. Maybe it is a big deal over nothing. On the other hand, maybe it is the tip of the iceberg.
We have an administration that spent the last six years with minimal oversight because its own party controlled Congress. The checks and balances that the Framers gave us haven't been exercised much lately. I won't be too surprised if we learn that more elements of the Bush Administration gave into temptation, thinking they would never be caught.
Read more here.
I am sorry to report that I am not the winner of last night's $370 million "Mega Millions" jackpot. I'm not a regular player. However my boss, who is a very kind and generous man, occasionally buys tickets for everyone in our office and says we will split the money if somebody wins. I got a ticket that way and still came up empty-handed.
The odds of hitting the jackpot were, according to this story, 1 in 176,000,000. Tell this to a lottery fan and the reply usually is "Yes, but somebody will win it." True enough, but look at it another way: your chance of winning the jackpot is quite a bit less than the chance you will be hit by a truck and killed on the way to the convenience store and back home.
In fact, we can say with statistical near-certainty that several people in the U.S. did die that way yesterday. Playing the lottery cost them their lives and they still didn't win. No one thinks about this, of course, because the media focus on the winners.
The lottery is a bad idea for other reasons, too. Generally speaking, I oppose anything that provides the government with additional revenue because they will simply use it to oppress people in new and more creative ways. The lottery is just another kind of tax. You may say it is voluntary, but it's really not. Let's call it what it is: a tax on people who lack basic reading and math skills. Stand in line at the Quickie Mart on Jackpot Day and you will see what I mean.
Now why do these people lack basic reading and math skills? Because they are the product of public schools! See how it all works together? First make sure the public is dumb, then steal from them. This strategy takes time but after a couple of generations it works really well.
Even if you do want to raise money for your state, the lottery is not a very efficient way to do it. Only about 35% of the proceeds go to the government. The rest goes to the winners, the retailers who sell tickets, and the promotional budget.
If 90% of this 35% is wasted on pointless and counterproductive government programs, then only 3.5% of the lottery sales actually go toward doing anything useful for society. We would be better off just leaving our spare change in little buckets for the state to collect.
Gambling is fine for people who understand what they are doing and can afford to lose the money. For them, it is just another form of entertainment. Government lotteries are intrinsically evil, in my opinion, because they are specifically designed to take money away from people who usually don't understand what they are doing and can't afford to lose the money.
See the difference? So next time the jackpot hits nine figures, just stay home. You'll be safer and much better off.
We Americans may joke about what goes on in trailer parks, but for the most part we have a deep belief that men don't hit women. Period, end of story. We forget that not every culture feels this way. Below are two videos of imams explaining to Muslim men how to properly discipline their wives. It's remarkable how calmly they talk about a practice we Americans find abhorrent.
How widespread is wife-beating among Muslims? I can't find any hard statistics. Anecdotal evidence suggests it is common in certain places, rare in others. A Google search revealed several articles that deny the Koran orders or allows men to abuse their wives. This says otherwise. I don't know enough to say who is correct.
We should note that every religion has its fanatical wings - even Christianity. So it isn't surprising if there are some Muslims who are convinced Allah wants them to beat their wives, and others who are equally certain they should not. Islam doesn't have anything equivalent to a Pope who gives authoritative answers on such things.
Hat tip: StrategyPage via Voice in the Wilderness
Since my original story about the repulsive conditions wounded troops are living in at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, all heck has broken loose in Washington. The president vowed to fix the problems and made it the subject of his weekly radio address. Congress is holding hearings. A two-star general has been relieved and the Secretary of the Army resigned under pressure. Reports are emerging of similar problems at other installations. It's not just Walter Reed.
With all this noise I think it is safe to say the wounded soldiers will soon be living in much better conditions. I am glad the administration is taking action. I am not yet ready to forgive and forget, however. Either the White House and the Pentagon knew about this neglect - in which case they are evil beyond description - or they didn't know about it, in which case they are alarmingly incompetent.
I would like to think the latter possibility is the answer. Yet I'm afraid the top brass had to know this was going on. To understand why, you have to understand how the military works.
American soldiers are not mindless robots. They love to complain and they have plenty of ways to do it. Commanders are required to have an "open-door" policy to listen to any problems their troops have. Every major command has an Inspector General whose job is to investigate complaints and bring the justifiable ones to the commanding general for action. There are equal-opportunity people who look into any allegations of racism and sexism. Every soldier has a statutory right to complain to his Congressperson if none of the internal mechanisms are helping. I've seen congressional complaints come down the chain and believe me, they get action.
So, if the various problems as described in the media are remotely accurate, I think it is a safe conclusion that at least some of the wounded soldiers and/or their families tried to bring it to the attention of those in charge. What did it accomplish? Nothing, apparently. In desperation someone started talking to the press and then the Administration finally woke up.
If the Secretary of Defense and the White House didn't know about the conditions in their own hospitals, it is their own fault. They are obviously not demanding the kind of reporting and accountability from their subordinates that they should. I suspect we will see reports emerge in the next few weeks that top officials did know what was going on and did nothing about it. More heads will roll - but not those that really should.
There's a deeper explanation, too. As is now painfully clear, the Bush Administration launched itself into Iraq with little thought about what would happen afterward. They were genuinely surprised when they found themselves fighting a counterinsurgency battle. Large numbers of wounded soldiers, who would need extensive care, were a perfectly foreseeable consequence of this conflict. Yet the Pentagon and the VA appear to have put little effort into preparing for this inevitable result.
That's the real problem. We have an administration that acts without thinking about all the consequences. Then when the consequences pop up, they ignore them for as long as they can get away with it. It makes me wonder what else is going on that we don't know about yet.
UPDATE: I don't often agree with Arianna Huffington but this column makes some excellent points. Check it out.
